Back in 1987, Octavia E Butler's first novel in the XENOGENESIS TRILOGY "Dawn" was published, followed eventually by "Adulthood Rites" and "Imago".
I was literally struck dumb by these novels, as a growing species of THINKER, as someone genetically unaware of the role MONEY would play in my thought patterns, the foundation upon which my present view of the world would rest.
It's very strange how, as a race, we act separately to envision the world from our own perspective. We're all seeing the world, not as it is, but how we want it to be. Yet it still works, sort of. The gears might be grindy or rusty or melty or worn but our simulation of 'that daily reality' is still valid enough for us all to trundle along with it, the way the loyal mutt runs alongside his master; tail wagging, tongue lolling, contented to just be.
But we can't be that faithful animal anymore, because we've learned over recent years what a horrendous PLAGUE has been foisted upon mankind in the name or EMPIRE, namely PROFIT. What poison has infested the alien (or amoral (or financially abstracted) corporatised) way his mind works.
The whole point of starting the Free Planet blog was to AWAKEN AS MANY OF YOU THE PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE to the lie your Consumerist life has become, the things you're taught to believe in from an early age, the way your 'preception of earth' has been manipulated for SOMEONE ELSE'S GAIN.
This first book "Dawn" was basically an allegory for the slave ships of The Old Colonies, bringing the genetic material to a new world, to work the land. That's how I saw it, back then. But re-reading the trilogy now in the re-issued form LILITH'S BROOD, it could also be an allegory for how LONG DEAD HUMAN Creativity, Passion and Kinship are being awakened by normal people like me, by simple blogs like Free Planet. It's like we're all out there (united in thought) in the void of non-compliance within the Consumerist universe we're told we inhabit, looking in, hoping for TRADE.
Trade - that's how we can power our Free Planet once money is dead, and it will die. Money is just a mechanism for hierarchic control of the masses, and by the masses I mean you and your families. But money (and payment) has had its day. People will see the sense of everything mankind can INVENT being supplied by mankind, ethically-planet-friendly, FOR FREE. Do right by Free Planet is the one AND ONLY rule.
But, Mike, what's the going rate? Equal trade. Each partner (or partnership) sets the going rate. You might even have a different rate for the same trade with the same person on different days. It's up to you, individually what you get from it. Value is assigned on a per-issue basis, person-by-person, trade by trade.
It's what tha alien lifeforms of Lilith's Blood do, in fact for them there's nothing BUT trade - at the genetic/historic level - trade literally is their flesh and blood. Every waking moment revolves around THE JOY OF FAIR TRADE and the connection between lifeforms from across the spectrum that allows for such.
Entities who take pride in making the best of their world, that's what Free Planet is hoping to encourage from its readers. That they will love to share each other with each other and learn and be taught by the trade.
Learn a new thing each day.
Teach a new thing each day.
Now, tell me Free Planet can't work.
Debate Magazine
