Resistance | Creative Choice

Monetizing Facebook the Civilized Way

It took me a few weeks after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the public outcry for theoretical "freedom of speech", but today I arrived at a fresh idea. It pertains to this world's largest virtual territory, with more than a billion inhabitants - Facebook. Today, Facebook is a multi-billion dollar marketing machine. The money ...

25 January, 2015

Kamiel Choi

conversation, developing world, facebook, monetization, social media

Essays, Resistance

Collaborative Anti-Consumerism

The word "consumerism" seems to imply that the act of consuming is the essence of our being, something more profound than what existentialism or Freudianism were hinting at. I understand that pushing a shopping cart and loading it with things that we decide all by ourselves to pick from the shelves can occasionally give us ...

26 June, 2014

Kamiel Choi

Essays, Resistance

Let’s call it a day

Suppose a respected scientific magazine would have written in October 1962 during the Cuba missile crisis, that a blow-up was inevitable, or even that the rockets were already in the air. Would the public just shrug it off and go about their business? But this is not the 1960s. In our "information" age, the intensity ...

20 May, 2014

Kamiel Choi

doom, time capsule

Essays, Resistance

The Enemy we Need?

Starring: Corporations (or rather any constellation that has so much capital at its disposal as to develop the emergent quality of being able to ignore the disastrous "externalities" they cause - of not giving a shit about reality) We are entering a new phase of schizophrenia. In today's globalized world the military powers might still ...

8 May, 2014

Kamiel Choi

Business law, Coca Cola, Corporation, International relations

Essays, philosophy, Resistance

Countdown from Peak Child

I watched an entertaining and instructive talk by Swedish professor Hans Rosling the other day, because YouTube recommended this video. Mr. Rosling introduced himself as a dry statistics professor but did everything humanly possible to maximize the probability of laughter he induced among his mixed audience. Watch the first few minutes of his presentation and ...

3 April, 2014

Kamiel Choi

Ehrlich, gapminder, peak child, population growth, Rosling, Weisman

Essays, philosophy, Resistance

The Aura of Money

A little anecdote that showed me recently what is wrong with our money: We were eating out in an Indian restaurant, where they serve excellent vegetarian dishes, fresh naan-bread and aromatic rice. The portions were quite large, and we were enjoying the many flavours, while feeding some of the salat cucumbers to our one-year old. ...

28 March, 2014

Kamiel Choi

homeless newspaper, Indian restaurant, Money

Essays, philosophy, Resistance, The good life

To respect us, is to respect this land

So today I can't write a hymn that flows well, but I want one for all the good people trying to live a life of respect for Mother Earth. Would you help me make the lyrics below sound better, express better what we aim for? Don't worry about hurting the "author's" feelings because there should ...

6 March, 2014

Kamiel Choi

Essays, Poetry, Resistance

“But you need money”

Money. I've always had enough of it because of my natural thriftiness. So I can't really speak for those who have experienced real poverty (the UN's $1.25 a day kind of poverty), and for whom an empty wallet means an empty stomach. I know the predicament of all too many people: They simply need money ...

5 March, 2014

Kamiel Choi

Charles Eisenstein, Economic growth, Mark Boyle, Money, moneyless, poverty, USD, Washington Post

Essays, philosophy, Resistance

The Average Family

Kansas, 2050. - The shit has hit the fan, years ago. The Surveillance State has diabolical proportions and every citizen gives voice to dissent, shows abnormal behavior or otherwise deviates from the average, is arrested. Family Grey has always lived comfortably, and during the first months after the crises (a term that was used mostly ...

28 February, 2014

Kamiel Choi

average, FEMA

Essays, Laughs, Resistance, writing

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation introduces vaccine against Affluenza

SEATTLE, Washington - Following recent outrage over a

15 February, 2014

Kamiel Choi

affluenza, Gates, vaccine

Essays, Laughs, Resistance

Think like a network [draft]

It is nice to focus on our own social group. The search for more community spirit seems to be a common denominator of many people who have fallen, for various reasons, out of love with the individual consumerist worldview and its promise of satisfaction through material saturation. So we head for the exit, we dream ...

15 January, 2014

Kamiel Choi

community, network, sharing, village

Essays, philosophy, Resistance, The good life

The Aura of Stuff

In sweatshops in Bangladesh, and shipped by a fossil-fuel hungry transport network, before being advertised by sexist media and sold to people who neither can afford nor really need it. And now this t-shirt is speaking. "I cannot wash away the sins committed in my name", it says (if it's a Catholic t-shirt), "but I ...

6 December, 2013

Kamiel Choi

aura, Charles Eisenstein, fossil-fuel hungry transport network, India, materialism, stuff

Essays, philosophy, Resistance

Republican Senator Defies Gravity

Senator Ab Pallin has given a short speech yesterday, denouncing the scientific status of the theory of gravity. "Like all else our scientists come up with except marketable products, we are dealing here with just a theory. Don't let them tell you anything, my dear fellow freedom loving, god fearing citizens. Here's all there is ...

10 November, 2013

Kamiel Choi

climate change, democrats, gravity, satire, taxes

Laughs, Resistance

Looking for a rapper

we will make heard the voices of the exploited whose land and livelihood is being destroyed but who don't have the dollars to fight the white collars we will make heard the voice of the suffering grasses don't mistake me for a gangsta rapper or some fake flashy fast car leper stuck in his McMansion ...

29 September, 2013

Kamiel Choi

ecocide, gangsta rapper, indigenous, planet, rap, rapper, resistance, Turtle Island

Poetry, Resistance

Applause

[series-miru] Miru is now clapping her hands. At almost nine months, she is a very happy baby, and the occasional bouts of crying are interspersed with laughter and endless joy - for her as well as for her parents. She's a perfect baby, and if you a) don't believe me and b) read Korean, rising. ...

28 September, 2013

Kamiel Choi

Applause, future generations, Human behavior, imitate, laughing, Miru, parenting, permaculture, responsibility, strip mining

Miru, Resistance

Planning book to help save the world. Got ideas?

Lately, I was reading "Eaarth" by Bill McKibben, the founder of

10 June, 2013

Kamiel Choi

book, capitalism, publication, resistance, solidarity

Resistance

Why Conspiracy Theories are not even Necessary

As a way out I now think of creating pockets of moneyless economies, because EVERYTHING that we express in money seems to fall prey to the capitalists: The first step is putting a price tag on your land, the next is you selling out. I feel more and more that the dollar (the universal currency) ...

8 June, 2013

Kamiel Choi

conspiracy, conspiracy theory, currency, Money, universal value

Resistance

Two-party deadlock

The confusing topic of conservative liberals and libertarian conservatives, of liberals using preservatives and conservatives opposed to preserving common sense. It was on my list so I want to add my pinch of salt. It is an emotional topic, a topic capable of generating severe weather conditions when dearly held persuasions are perceived as being ...

29 May, 2013

Kamiel Choi

Communist, confusion, libertarian, Two-party deadlock, US politics

Resistance

Tractatus Logico-Economicus

0. The economy revolves around things. 0.1. Things are products, services, and consumers. 0.1.1. Products depend on finite natural resources. 0.1.2. Services depend on finite time. 0.1.3. An economy with a value-function based on products and services needs endless progress. 0.1.4. Endless progress combined with finite resources results in devaluation. 0.1.5. The value of products ...

17 May, 2013

Kamiel Choi

economy, wittgenstein

philosophy, Resistance

One Human Nature?

Prize question: What is more harmful, the assumption that there is one human nature, or the idea that there are many? History suggests several answers. We can argue that the assumption of human beings as "economic agents" interested only in maximizing their own profit, leads to the current neoliberal system with all its destructive tendencies. ...

15 May, 2013

Kamiel Choi

human nature

philosophy, Resistance

Mixed revolutionary ramblings

Every day now I become more averse to the system. I observe how my own mind struggles, and how it always shouts the word "local" in both my ears as the key to a solution. A local community is larger than a Greek oikos (etymological origin of the word economy) or household, but smaller than ...

8 May, 2013

Kamiel Choi

capitalism, resistance, solidarity

Resistance

Monsanto Creates Plant That Grows Money

Creve Coeur (MI), April 13th, 2011. Biotech giant Monsanto (NYSE: MON) has reported that they have for the first time created an organism capable of growing money. The plant, MON1971$, and the undisclosed technologies involved in creating it, have been patented in the US. Technically, the invention is based on the insertion of a gene ...

14 April, 2013

Kamiel Choi

Bill Gates, DuPont, food production, growing money, Hugh Grant, MON1971, money tree, Monsanto, substantially equivalent

Resistance

Healthy competition

One assumption most people accept is that competition is always a good thing. When we talk about competition, we assume a scarcity of resources that can't be shared and are fought over by individuals or groups. In this sense, competition is the natural state of organisms, from which they can only evolve if there is ...

9 April, 2013

Kamiel Choi

cerebal hardware, competition, cooperation, coopetition, Healthy competition, Imperfect competition, Lord of the Flies, neocortex, neoliberalist

Resistance