While some have often written of themselves more self-indulgent or autobiographical, I had never chosen to do so historically. However, I feel challenged by this profile topic. I suppose like many I could simply write about my work, of my history, and background. But all these things would simply be about what I do. They would not however define who I am.

As a child of Western culture, I know that is part of what I have learned, but even this is not who I am. Western culture, especially in it's emphasis on industrialization, production, efficiency, and valuation, has little room left for humanity. But there is no gene I know of that makes one believe these things, just as there is no gene designed to turn off our humanity and make us into the efficient machines such a society demands and desires. Hence, I consider and am aware that Western culture is part of what I know, but I choose not to let it define who I am.

Some have actually incorrectly called me a Marxist, a word I reject simply because people do not call themselves Darwinists or Einsteinians, but also for me Marxism too often is not a revolution to western thought or the western ideal of living in dominion over nature vs living in communion with the natural world, but rather it's completion. From Plato to Hegel and Marx, it is too often a triumph of the efficiency of the western values of and concerns with economy and materialism, of value and and it's distribution, of man as a machine and a utility, over the values of being human and part of the natural world, although I do find some hope and inspiration in Marx's works and ideas, and especially in the last things he worked on. Some have labeled me an anarchist, although I think my arrest record may simply say trouble maker. What my government's files may say of me or may label me I do not know. I know people choose to define themselves by labels. Yet, I have checked all my over my skin and I could not find one.

I have been fortunate to travel widely and speak and meet with many people in many parts of the world. Each of my journeys have given me some personal insight into the wider question of humanity, and what it means to truly be human. These, more than anything I learned as a child, have helped me to define for myself who I am and choose to be. One can listen and learn from others if one chooses to and does so with an open mind and an open heart.

When I say choose to be, I believe it is a matter of choice one is free to and must exercise. I believe we are all individually "sovereign" to ourselves first and foremost, if one will allow me a slightly extended use of the word. Many societies reject this idea for the "greater good" of a dominant culture or dominant worldview, which to me is a terrible and fundamentally anti-social imposition on the freedom of others to choose and think for themselves.

The western model and history is not one of individual liberation or empowerment, but rather one of refined and redefined enslavement. The rest is largely social illusion. Even the most basic freedom of thought seems to be dying in what has become the economically "dominant" culture in this period in history, for it is not efficient, and it is certainly not productive, for others who wish to create and derive value for themselves from you as their culture has taught them to do.

I know and I am quite happy with who I am. All people need and deserve the right to be the same, and all cultures given the chance to fully explore their potential. As self sovereign I claim my liberty from the culture I was raised in as a free human being, and believe all should have the right and freedom to choose how they should live, yes even those who may choose purely western values, so long as it is not done at the expense of or suppression of others or those who do choose to be free from it.

Those who recognize and value the freedom of themselves and the freedom of others I consider simply being worthy of being human, of being called my brothers and sisters, my comrades. Those who supress others suppress themselves and their own humanity in the process. It is only those who believe only in the values of this dominant culture or it's extensions, those that learn only the lessons of "self" and not of others, who have in learning "who am I" have forgotten "who are we", and then try to fill the empty voids with consumption and cheap plastic throw-away toys or the need to exploit others are those I reject, that I oppose.

This defines who I am and hence why I am here and why I share myself this way, for I wish to see all have the same chance to be free, both as individual human beings free to live and be sovereign to themselves, and to be free to live in the culture and model of their own choosing.

http://www.gnutelephony.org

Free Knowledge, Free software, Human Freedom

GNU Telephony

Free software and telecommunications