If You Are Seeing This Image, Then Please Stop Calling Me on the Phone

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. First Image

3. Second Image

4. First Text Portion, Written in October 2020 (Background Text Explaining the Context of These Images)

5. Second Text Portion, Written in August 2021 (Background Text Explaining the Context of These Images)

 

 

Content

 

 

1. Introduction

      What follows is a guide to respecting your friends' communication-related boundaries, during this time of desperate need for social contact, brought on by the "physical distancing", "social distancing", and shelter-in-place orders which are supposedly necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
     The purpose of this article is to explain that non-stop talking (or "monologuing") is not acceptable, even during a time when one is in desperate need of social contact. Taking turns monologuing is better than one person monologuing, but it is still not good enough.

     I have written the article below in order to impart a lesson about healthy communication skills. I used to have hopes, dreams, and goals. I do not want my goals - nor who I am as a person - to be entirely subsumed under my need for social contact.
     I cannot spend all of my time worrying about other people's problems; I have enough problems of my own. Your friends are the same way.

2. First Image

 

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in order to see in full resolution.

3. Second Image

This image was created in response to a friend
who kept calling me and asking "What's new?".

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in order to see in full resolution.

 

4. First Text Portion, Written in October 2020
     (Background Text Explaining the Context of These Images)

 

 

     I don't want to be the guy who doesn't pick up the phone when his friends need him. Don't make me consider being that guy.
     I want to be part of my friends' lives so I can help them, not to listen to them talk about ghosts and shit.

     People doing non-stop talking to me literally triggers my P.T.S.D..
     I was stood over, yelled at, lectured at, and never allowed to talk or properly explain myself. That is how my father tortured me. I cannot sit here and fucking listen to people talk about meaningless bullshit forever.
     If we're having a conversation, there has to be a purpose. Either you want me to help you, or you do not.
     I know I'm a good listener, but I cannot listen to people go on and vent about their problems, especially if they don't want help or advice. I cannot be that person. Not yet anyway.
     I have a life. I work more than 40 hours a week. Nobody seems to understand that I can't spend all my free time on the phone and that I can't have people in my house in the half hour before I leave for work. It slows me down.

     I have extreme difficulties setting boundaries, especially with non-stop talkers. I need help setting up these boundaries, and if someone is going to try to be my friend, then they need to be helping to set those boundaries up.
     I need more friends, not more problems, not more people to test my boundaries instead of respecting them.

     I am trying to finish a campaign. My child molester is on the loose. I am extremely busy.
     I cannot be a good listener, or even laugh an appropriate amount in a conversation, if my mind is consumed with the rage and uncertainty that have resulted from my father remaining a free man after molesting me as a child and then brainwashing me about it.

     I love you guys. But stop fucking calling me.

 

 

 

5. Second Text Portion, Written in August 2021
     (Background Text Explaining the Context of These Images)

 

     My father used my cell phone essentially as a tracking device.

 

     He got phones for me and my mom and brother, essentially only so that he could harangue us for not responding quickly (because he has abandonment issues).

     My father once fired me from my secretary job for him, for leaving my phone at home by accident.

 

     My mom would spend up to 45 minutes at a time on the phone when I was a kid. It was extremely difficult to get her attention during this time.

     Parents, please remember that small children cannot solve their own problems. If you ignore your kid for a solid hour, they could die. Cover the phone for five seconds, talk to your child, and find out whether it's an emergency, or whether it's something that can wait!

 

     When my mother's phone rings, she instantly sighs or scoffs, gets visibly agitated, and says "Jeez" or "what now!?". I never want that to be me.

     I want to live.

     I don't want to be a prisoner of my phone, an inanimate object that we have all allowed way too much control over us.

 

     I don't enjoy talking on the phone.

     Personally I think it's a useful, but deeply flawed, invention. They invented that shit 150 years ago, and still haven't even come close to perfecting the sound quality.

     It is difficult to struggle to hear my friends through crackling. It's also dehumanizing to have to listen to a roboticized voice. It stresses me out because it feels like I'm not talking to a human being.

     It feels like my friends and family have been replaced by robots.

 

     I know it's hard for my friends not to talk to me on the phone, but remember that e-mails and texts - and talking in person - exist too!

     Meeting in person may not be possible when we live far apart, but the only way to talk voice-to-voice long distance is to put up with crackling and random call-dropping. Maybe you guys can handle the stress of that, but I can’t.

 

     Last year [2020], I spent months and months trying to explain - to ten different people - that they were calling me too often, and/or for too long.

     In January 2021, I even made a twenty-minute video for YouTube [titled "Plea to My Friends and Followers: Stop Calling Me on the Phone!"], in which I named all of the things I can't do when I'm talking on the phone.

 

     The things I can't do while I'm on the phone include:

          - eating (because chewing makes noise),

          - cooking (makes noise),

          - listening to or playing music,

          - sleeping,

          - cleaning my house (if the objects make noise), and more.

 

     I can’t eat or sleep if I’m talking to you all of the time!

     I am sick of waking up to phone calls, and then waiting for my friends to stop talking to me on the phone so that I can start my day.

 

     Talking about your problems on the phone, is not the same thing as solving your problems.

     The more you call me to talk about your problems, the more powerless I feel, because I literally cannot do anything about them (besides give advice that I'm not sure whether you'll take or appreciate).

 

     Also, when talking on the phone, it is customary to let the other person talk at least 10% of the time. This is a joke, of course; 50% is the ideal. Equal conversations should be 50/50.

     If I'm not talking – or if I slip to far below that 50% threshold – then it's not always because I have nothing to say.

     It's mostly because I have learned to deal with my problems - and call the people who can solve them - instead of just going on talking about them for a half hour, or an hour, or multiple hours at a time.

     Another reason why I’m not talking, might be that I don’t feel like I will be heard, because as soon as I stop talking, you will start talking. And for minutes and minutes, before I have another chance to speak.

     Also, me pausing for half a second, should not be confused with an invitation for you to speak for another solid twenty minutes.

     I don’t know why nobody ever told you this, but it is not an equal conversation when you speak for twenty minutes, and then I say “Yeah?”, and then you speak for another twenty solid minutes. That is not polite.

 

     I have tried as hard as I can to be polite about this. But it seems that the more polite I am, the less my friends get the hint.

     I am sorry that some people will feel personally called-out by this post. But I have tried to explain this over and over and over again:

     I am trying to put my rapist/father in prison. There is no such thing as “free time” for me. Say “call me when you have some free time” all you wish; saying this does not cause me to have more free time.

     If I stopped calling to you – and/or broke up with you – then it is because I don’t enjoy talking with you as much as you think I do! Take the hint!

 

     The more time you talk about your problems (which I cannot solve), the more I think about the things I am not doing to write about what my father did to me. The more you talk, the more I am silently stressing-out about things I need to do around the house, and out of the house at businesses, in order to move my life forward and solve my problems.

     If you do not understand the concept of “moving one’s life forward”, then I am sorry, but I am not going to be able to explain it to you. If you think that I can easily put my other needs aside in order to talk to you, then I am sorry, but I am not going to stop sleeping, and eating, and cooking, and cleaning, and showering, and going to the bathroom, in order to make you happy.

 

     I cannot be of any use to my friends, if I am not solving my problems. I cannot solve my problems if I am listening to my friends talk on the phone every single “free” moment I have.

     Just because I have a free moment here and there, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I want to spend that moment listening to my friends talk.

     If I don’t sleep and cook and eat and clean and shower and use the restroom when I need to, then it messes with the flow of my day. If the flow of my day is impeded, then I risk failing to show up to work on time. If I fail to show up to work on time, I could be fired.

     If I am fired from my job, then I will miss paying my bills. Then – if I don’t get a new job in time - I could get behind on utilities, and lose my apartment, and end up on the street or having to live with friends or family. That option is, to me, not worth it. I would like to stay housed, through my own power and my own work.

     I will not completely re-prioritize and re-schedule my life in order to listen to you talk on the phone. I was homeless once; I am not going to be homeless again solely to make you feel heard. Go find a second person who wants to listen to you talk.

 

     I already devoted hundreds of hours listening to ten of my friends talk – and dozens of hours begging them to stop calling me so much – all throughout last year [2020].

     I have had enough.

 

     I know that many of my friends need help, and need someone to listen to them. But I cannot bear the burden of being the only friend who will listen to ten of my friends.

     I want to be supportive. And I want you to have friends. That’s “friends”, plural! Please find a second friend, or I will have no choice but to leave you with no friends at all!

     If that happens, you will have brought it upon yourselves.

 

     I love my friends. But if you love someone, let them go!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction written on September 3rd, 2021

Edited and Expanded on September 7th, 2021

Published on September 3rd, 2021

 

 

First image based on an image I created in mid-2021

 Image created again on September 3rd, 2021

 Published to this blog on September 3rd, 2021

 

 

 

 

Second image created in late 2020 or early 2021

 First published to this blog on September 3rd, 2021

First text portion originally written as a Facebook post,
originally published to Facebook in October 2020

Edited and expanded on September 3rd, 2021

Published to this blog on September 3rd, 2021

Second text portion originally written as a Facebook post,
titled “I HATE FUCKING TALKING ON THE PHONE”,
originally published to Facebook on August 28^th, 2021

Edited and expanded on September 3^rd, 2021

Published to this blog on September 3^rd, 2021






Order of texts reversed on September 7th, 2021

How to Be Friends with a Libertarian: Protecting the 9th Amendment and Stopping the Regression of Freedom

      Most liberals - and many conservatives and progressives, too - like to justify depriving people of rights, based on the fact that some people lack rights, while other people are not using theirs.

     People like this will base their ideas about what we all should do, on the lowest common denominator of rights that somebody has. If one person lacks rights, then everybody else – so this line of logic goes - needs to have rights taken away from them, in order to make things equal. Or if a person tolerates one injustice, or has in the past, then they should tolerate other injustices in the future.

     They say, "If you need car insurance to own a car, then you should need health insurance because you own your body."

     Also, "If you take drugs from strangers, or eat McDonald's, then you should have no problem taking what's in the vaccine."

     Alternatively: "If you need a license to operate a car, then you should need a permit to operate a gun, because they're both deadly weapons."

     To that, I say "fuck that shit". The fact that you are wasting your freedoms does not mean that I have to give up mine.

     The idea that I should give one freedom up because I seemed to surrender another, is a false equivalency. In part, because it assumes that everybody thinks about rights, and connects them to each other, in the same way. It assumes that if they tolerate one thing, they should tolerate another. It assumes that people are ideologues who do and should behave predictably.

     What you see as me "surrendering a right" might just have been me making a decision. The only right you surrender, in the act of making a decision, is the right to know what will happen if you make a different decision. It does not mean your future decisions all have to be consistent, nor that they all have to conform to somebody else's ideas of consistent logic.

     The lines of logic used to justify this mode of thought do not even make sense. First, it's arguable whether we really "own" our bodies, or whether we are our bodies. Second, you can't avoid having a body as easily as you can avoid having a car or a gun.

     Third, a person has the freedom to put into their body anything they want, as long as they don't harm others. So if a person's feelings about drugs, food, and medicine do not conform to your preconceived notions about how a person should make decisions about health, then just remember... that is somebody else's body you are talking about.

     Mind your own business. If they want your advice on health or safety, then they will ask you for it.

     Moreover, there are about eight hundred toxic chemicals which are inside of our bodies right now, many of which are legal and F.D.A.-approved. Some came into our lungs after we breathed polluted air; others came from cheaply made consumer products. And some of them are more common and thus more difficult to avoid than others.

     Should the fact that I tolerate one toxic chemical (because I can't avoid it), mean that I should tolerate a second? What about a third? And so on, until I'm tolerating the fact that my body is full of 800 of them? Simply because I smoke weed, or take LSD at a festival, or eat Burger King every once in a while? Hell no! [I mean, if I'm smoking cigarettes, feel free to remind me that several hundred toxic chemicals are found in them. Especially if I started smoking near you without asking you if it's OK first. As Ron Paul has said, "Freedom is the right to tell people things they don't want to hear."]

     The fact that you were recently exposed to a certain level of toxic chemicals, does not, and should not, mean that you ought to be exposed to more (unless that is your wish). If anything, it means that you have probably had all the toxins that you can take for a while, and that you deserve to take a break from being full of toxins.

     Stop expecting people to go on suicide missions solely for the sake of appearing to remain consistent to you. Just as "the Constitution is not a suicide pact", neither is a friendship. We should build each other up - and say "I believe you and I encourage you if you say you're trying to quit this substance" - instead of knocking each other down and holding them to how "cool" or "chill" or "lax" they have been in the past.

     Life is about more than chilling out, and tolerating other people's (or your own) bad behavior and moral back-sliding. It is about defeating evildoers, and overcoming the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals. We can't afford the costs of holding each other back.

     The Obamacare mandate to purchase health insurance is not currently being enforced, because it's dying in the courts. So why not use this opportunity to say "If I don't need health insurance (to own my own body), then I shouldn't need car insurance either"?

     We don't even really "need" health insurance, nor car insurance; we just think we do because people older than we are, made laws that require us to have those things. You don't die if you run out of money, or insurance; you die if you run out of air, water, food, and medicine, or if one or more of your major organ systems collapse.

     If we don't need insurance or money to live, and alternative accreditation systems exist outside the state and yet are not in violation of its laws - then why not say "I don't need a license or a permit to do anything, because I was born free, and because of the content of the 9th Amendment"?

     [Note: Amendment IX affirms that we have rights which are not listed in the Constitution. These are called "unenumerated rights", which is distinct from the concept of Congress having unenumerated powers.]

     We rarely cite the fact that others are more free than we are, any more, to justify getting more freedom instead of less.

     [Note: an important exception to this, is the 14th Amendment incorporation clause, which empowers people to have their freedoms recognized in their states, because other states have recognized their own citizens' freedom to do the same, and the federal government cannot logically say that something is a right in one state but not in another.]

     In the Trump era, many of his supporters have used the fact that other countries are "shitholes" run by tyrants, who mistreat dissidents and people who try to come into their countries illegally, to justify gassing protesters and gassing people at the border. This is not acceptable; it is "what-about-ism". It is the idea that if somebody else did something worse than what you did, then what you did is OK.

     Likewise, when someone tries to tell you "You should put up with Y injustice because you put up with X injustice in the past", just tell them either "I was wrong" or "I could tolerate X, but I can't tolerate Y, and that's my decision." Unless it affects them directly, they have no right to interfere in your decision. They can complain all they want, because they have free speech, but they cannot rightfully interfere unless you betrayed them or harmed them, or your decision will harm them.

     People who use one example where we tolerated a deprivation of freedom, or a slipping of standards, in order to excuse or rationalize or justify another, should stop talking about what “we” supposedly have to do, and start making their own decisions about their own personal food and health choices and about their safety. Otherwise they might as well be inviting other people's advice, because they can't live without meddling in other people's decision-making and without subjecting them to nonsensical lines of logic that limits their freedom to change their mind.

     If you don't want people telling you what to do, then don't tell others what to do!

     You do not get to tell others that they have to accept ever-declining standards, just because they have made several poor or inconsistent decisions in their lives. You do not have the right to berate someone who changes their mind, unless you have signed a contract with them.

     We do not have to do jack shit. The only thing we need to do is stop writing laws that make it harder and more expensive for us - and more profitable for the government - for us to exercise our rights.

     If you respect me and my rights – and want your own rights respected – then you will respect my boundaries and the fact that I am an individual (and the fact that individuals, alone, make decisions), and you will leave me alone to fix my own problems, and refrain from giving me unwanted advice or pressuring me into accepting unwanted assistance from you or the government.

     If you want to respect my boundaries, as a libertarian – that is, as a person who values the need for informed consent above all else – then you will not aggress against me nor threaten me, you will not pressure me to spend money that I do not have or haven't earned yet, and you will not tell me that I have to sacrifice my boundaries or my needs in order to hang out with you.

     This includes my right to safety, and to peace and quiet, and to staying out of handcuffs!

     If you respect me, and my right to be informed about what's going on around me, then you will not steal or commit other crimes while you are around me without notifying me first. And that should go whether the crime or infraction has victims or not.

     I can't tell you how many times I've been shopping with friends, only to discover at the checkout line that they intended to steal. It creates a huge imposition on me and puts me in a dilemma! It is not fair to spring something like that onto somebody with little notice.

     It's not that I think someone shouldn't consider shoplifting if they're desperate, and I am certainly not trying to defend the police or wealthy sellers and big corporations. If you are my friend, and you need something so badly that you're considering stealing it, then I will buy it for you! Just ask me. I don't want either of us to go to jail!

     If you have a child or a pet to take care of, and you're in public holding on to them while committing crimes, then you are not a responsible person. Whoever you're with, while you're stealing or getting arrested, is going to have to figure out what to do with your dog or your kid while you're in jail.

     The level of carelessness that some people make excuses for having in their lives is really astounding sometimes. Not that I am entirely blameless. I can't tell you how many places I've possessed marijuana without getting the permission of the proprietor. But I at least know well enough not to use my family and friends as getaway cars after buying marijuana. You have to think about the consequences of your actions, from the perspective of the worst possible way it could potentially affect someone.

     You may say, "Yeah, but it's not wrong." So what? Something "not being wrong" is not a good enough reason, in and of itself, to do something. You should want to do things that are right, not just things that are "not wrong".

     Who do you think pays for the losses from shoplifting? Insurance companies, if the stores are insured. But those costs don't come out of the C.E.O.'s pocket; they're borne (like the majority of the company's costs) by the company's lowest paid employees. Those are the people who get shafted in order to pay for other things the company thinks it needs. 

     But do companies really need security, and on-premises detention of shoplifters? No, they need to lower their fucking prices to something we can afford, so the markets can clear, so the foods aren't left rotting on the shelves, necessitating toxic preservatives that harm our health, in order to keep them "fresh" and marketable.

     So if we're at a store together, please, don't make me into your unwilling accomplice, and risk me going to jail, just because you want an extra item in your pantry. Even if it's a gift for me! I didn't ask for it.

    Don't fucking do things to people without their consent and knowledge, whether it affects them positively or negatively!  [Unless, of course, you're giving them a surprise gift and you know they like surprises, and aren't bothered by the attention involved in having their birthday celebrated, etc..] Do this for the simple reason that "one man's trash is another man's treasure".

     In economics, affecting people positively or negatively without their awareness and consent, is called externalizing transaction costs. You are imposing a cost upon them, as the price of hanging out with you. That price takes the form of bullshit surprises that you spring on people, which make them uncomfortable, and pressure them into helping you over helping themselves.

     This is called being interpersonally exploitative. In each transaction and social interaction, we should make sure that the interests of everybody involved, are aligned; but that doesn't mean that each person should feel empowered to shamelessly take advantage of every situation to ensure that they benefit the most.

     More reasons not to give people gifts for which they didn't ask, include the facts that: 1) what you think will help a person, might be something they think of as causing them to become more dependent upon you for that thing; and 2) they might not know whether and how to get you back for it.

     When we shop together, I don't want you to get arrested, but if you act like an idiot, and it's either you or me, the fact that you are my friend does not obligate me to cover for you. Certainly not instead of myself. Certainly not when I would have to make up a lie and put myself in danger for a friend's stupid thoughtless decision. Shoplifting is not always wrong, but that doesn't make it a good idea that's worth going to jail for! If you're going to steal, and there's nothing I can do about it, then at least let me know ahead of time, so I can run, or else be prepared to sock a security guard in the face.

     Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is to have to consider asking your friend, "Hey, uh... You're not gonna steal from Wal-Mart, are you?" before there's any indication that they would, because of their past history? Do you know how awkward it is to ask someone, "You paid for that, right?" or "You're gonna pay for that, right"? and hear them shush you?

     I don't play that shit. That creates an imposition on me to shut up about your bullshit. You do not have the right to get your friends in trouble and then pass it off as harmless fun. Some people are trying to work and maintain normal jobs and have families and avoid jail. That's different from being a buzzkill. If you have a child, then you shouldn't be stealing in front of them, unless you're prepared to defend that decision with force.

     Not that I don't have sympathy for people who steal, or for my friends. If you're reading this and you're thinking, "Just don't hang out with people who steal, or are likely to steal", then to that, I say, "Easier said than done, asshole." At least half of Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck. Nobody has any money. Shoplifting is the least of my concerns, morally. But that doesn't give people the right to make me into an unwilling accomplice of theft without my consent or knowledge.

      Consensual transactions and interactions require informed consent, which requires knowledge of the choices available, and a total lack of external pressure, and the right to make your decision final without others continuing to ask you a question you have answered over and over again.

     Don't ask me if I want to do something until I say yes. That is "not taking 'no' for an answer". That may be acceptable in sales, but it is certainly not acceptable in the bedroom, and it shouldn't be acceptable in public social interactions.

     Not taking "no" for an answer sexually is what a rapist does; so take "no" for an answer socially, or you will be the social version of a rapist.

     Voluntary exchange requires mutual benefit, in addition to consent. If someone is sacrificing in order to participate in a social interaction or an economic exchange, then it should be asked: “Why is that person sacrificing, while others are not?”

     But this should be asked, not in order to punish those who are not sacrificing, but rather, in order to make sure that nobody is sacrificing (unless it is necessary and they genuinely want to).

     If a social interaction, or an economic transaction, does not benefit all people involved and affected, then it should not occur, and the people involved should go their separate ways. That is how you produce free decisions that are also fair.

     Decisions which don't harm anyone, but do benefit everyone involved (or at least they don't harm anyone involved), are called Pareto improvements, after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. These are the necessary conditions for mutually beneficial voluntary exchange.

     We must end the culture of pressuring others to accept lower standards. We must stop brow-beating each other into prioritizing consistency over self-growth and self-improvement.

     We must also stop tolerating people who we reasonably believe are deliberately ignoring our boundaries just to mess with us or to test us. 

     It's time to start respecting others. It was always time to respect others. But if we don't bother to find out what each other's boundaries, limitations, and needs are, then we aren't going to understand how to respect them.

     People need to communicate with each other. We can't just have people committing crimes around their friends and having awkward conversations in the middle of the store about whether we'll be paying for this.

     We can't have protesters and counter-protesters coming up to each other and trying to quash each other's right to be there while they're right there on the sidewalk and there are no police officers around to resolve the dispute.

     We can't go on just not coordinating with each other. We must deliver on our promises. But we also must find away to avoid punishing people too severely for changing their minds, and one of the ways to do this is to make sure we are not pressuring the people around us to set unrealistic goals.

     And we must not expect others to allow their moral standards to slip just because they have agreed to hang out with us.

     This is how we stop the back-slide, and the regression, of freedom. This is how we stop a society desirous of freedom, from collapsing into a "slippery slope" to tyranny that refuses to recognize that freedom is (almost) free, and doesn't require any trial by fire. We are born free and innocent, so why should we come into the world owing anybody anything?

     The only cost of freedom is the effort we expend respecting others' freedom. The only costs of freedom are self-responsibility, self-control, humility, and adequate communication with others.

     This is how to respect me. What about you? Does this sound unreasonable? Or just familiar?

     To read a more in-depth discussion of Ninth Amendment issues, and how license and permit systems limit our freedoms, please read my 2015 / 2016 article "Papers, Please!?: Freedom vs. Permission", which is available at the following link:
     http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2015/12/papers-please-freedom-vs-permission.html

Based on a post published in early January 2021

Edited and expanded on January 7th, 2021

Ten Reasons to Consider Bioregionalism

     Bioregionalism is a set of views regarding how our politics, culture, and ecology should be shaped by our environment and surroundings; in particular based on “bioregions”. Bioregional politics is the idea that governments should make reforms which reshape government according to the previously existing bioregions which are found in nature.

     Perhaps the most important set of reforms which bioregionalists support, have to do with borders and boundaries. Bioregionalists suggest using to our advantage the mountain ranges and watersheds with which nature has already gifted us, to determine where political boundaries lie.

     Mountain ranges form the perimeters of watersheds, funneling all rain water into river valleys and towards the sea. Basins have mountain ranges as perimeters as well, although they do not funnel water towards the sea. Mountain ranges and seashores already tell us a lot about where the boundaries of these bioregions lie, and mountain ranges form natural borders, forming a natural protection against military invasion. So why not use mountain ranges as our borders?

     Here are ten reasons why making every watershed or bioregion into an independent nation – and replacing all currently existing “straight line” and river borders with mountain range and sea borders – will create a legally simpler, more ecologically sustainable, and all around better, world.

     1. SIMPLIFY BORDERS BY FOCUSING ON RIVER VALLEY POPULATIONS.

     The major civilizations around the world grew out of river valleys, and most populations (large or small) are centered on river valleys. River valleys – and the watersheds which bound them – just group people together conveniently. Bioregionalism would thus lead to increased political simplicity, in terms of where borders, boundaries, and jurisdictions are drawn. We don't have to guess about where the borders should be, nor do we have to suggest our own, if they already exist.

     2. SAVE MONEY, LIVES, AND EFFORT, BY AVOIDING MAKING BORDERS.

     Using mountain ranges as natural borders is more military and financially defensible than using rivers and lines as borders, and erecting physical borders. For one: building walls and fences takes work, when nature already did all the work for us which was necessary to create mountain ranges. When mountain ranges already exist that we can use for free, to do any more work creating borders would be an unnecessary waste of money, effort, labor, time, and resources.

     Mountain ranges form a physical barrier against military invasions, while river boundaries and “lines drawn on the ground by dead men” are much more difficult to defend against a military attack. Additionally, building-up physical defenses – such as walls and fencing – would be difficult to justify if our borders were mountains, than if our borders were to remain rivers and lines (like they are at the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada borders today), because the mountains already form physically huge barriers which are difficult for militaries to penetrate.

     Moreover, it is much more dangerous and difficult to climb a mountain range than it is to cross a river or a line on land; while people who are looking for a better and safer life for their families are much more likely to want to cross a river or a line than a mountain range (which means that people coming over a mountain range are much more likely to be attempting an invasion, than are people crossing a river or land boundary).

     Also, existing land borders are problematic for several reasons. Border walls unnecessarily restrict the flow of labor and capital, which has to move freely in order for trade to occur freely and without undue hindrance. Border walls are also unpopular, expensive, and sometimes resort to eminent domain takings. For those reasons, using the borders nature gave us - that is, mountain ranges - is just safer, more cost-efficient, and more labor-efficient, than making our own.

     3. REDUCE CONFLICT OVER RIVERS AND FRESH WATER.

     By ending the practice of using rivers as borders, a transition to bioregionalism will result in reduced conflict over sources of fresh water. As long as political and ethnic minorities are adequately represented and see their freedoms preserved, ending river boundaries will end the need for tribes to worry about rival tribes sneaking across the river and attacking them, or crossing the river to gain control over it.

     Reducing conflict over rivers – and affording full and equal human rights and legal rights, in the same political entity, to people on both sides - will also help reduce wars, terrorism, and kidnapping of members of one tribe by another, while increasing rates of intermarriage between tribes. In a bioregionalist independent state, all those who live in a river valley would be free to access it, and to control access to that river valley.

     4. SIMPLIFY & LOCALIZE ENVIRONMENTAL LAW.

     Grouping people together by river valley, can lead to increased political simplicity in terms of environmental policy and lawsuits, as well as in terms of borders. Water safety issues tend to affect people on the basis of the quality of “the local water supply”. So it only makes sense that political jurisdictions be broken down on the basis of which water supply affects which geographical community of people.

     Nowadays, watersheds are shared across multiple states; this state of affairs risks allowing the federal government to intervene in too many water pollution cases which could easily be resolved locally, within and by a single political entity occupying an entire watershed.

     Since mountain ranges funnel all water into a single river valley, anyone who is downstream of a water polluter will know that the tainted water came from the same jurisdiction (and the same watershed) in which they live. This will help people whose water is being polluted, track the source of their water pollution easily, because the source of water pollution will always be someone upstream who is in the same watershed. That means that in the vast majority of water pollution lawsuits, the plaintiff and defendant will be based in the same political jurisdiction, thus allowing the plaintiff to sue the defendant without creating a situation in which the outcome of the case could potentially affect the laws of two political entities. That helps bypass a potential conflict of interest between states, which only a higher authority (most likely a central government) could resolve with any finality.

     Bioregionalism will thus enable water pollution to be solved by the members of the community whom are most directly affected by it; whether as activists, as legislators on environmental policy, or as jurors in water pollution cases.

     5. MAKE WATERSHEDS SELF-CONTAINED & SELF-SUSTAINING
     Making watersheds self-contained in terms of environmental policy and military defense over borders, while using pre-existing mountain range borders to our full advantage, will increase the chances that an independent bioregionalist state could become economically and financially self-contained.

     This could be done several ways: 1) through enacting clean water reforms, and then putting the state on a path to sourcing all water from within the state; 2) through enacting reforms to putting the state on a trajectory of becoming ecologically and financially sustainable at the same time. This could be done through “Agenda 21” and “Green New Deal” -type measures, which would involve “re-greening” and retro-fitting buildings to be environmentally sustainable. This will help ensure an equitable distribution of wealth across geography, without threatening encroachment upon animal habitats and lands in need of preservation.

     Perhaps fulfilling certain standards regarding environmental sustainability and economic equity could be used as a way to justify “fast-tracking” bioregionalist independence movements (such as Cascadia in the Northwest United States and Southwestern Canada) and securing their status as fully independent states.

     6. NATURAL BORDERS LAST LONGER AND DON'T NEED FORTIFICATION.
     Determining borders based on mountain ranges, made by nature, will result in borders lasting longer – much longer – than they do now. As it stands right now, borders exist – and change - because of political instability, military conflict, and the need to micromanage and control people.

     To resolve to permanently base all borders on natural geological features, on the other hand – and to do it worldwide say, in the U.N., in an international court, or via some other method – could help guard against the risk of military invasion, through permanently ensuring that borders will never change.

     Ensuring that borders will never change, will especially help guard against the risk of a violent invasion, if full rights to control one's share of resources are afforded to any and all people who come into the watershed peacefully. That's because guaranteeing full voting rights and full right to access one's share of water and other resources, will reduce the likelihood that foreigners will resort to using force or violence in order to invade, or else resort to invading with intentions of overthrowing the government. Doing such things would be unnecessary to guarantee their safety, freedom, and ability to control the resource they need to survive.

     7. HELP PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS ATTUNE TO NATURE.
     As explained above, if borders were determined by mountain ranges, then borders would last a very long time. The only problem is what to do when there earthquakes take place, which drastically change the incline of the land and change the courses of rivers.

     Fortunately, however, earthquakes that make such significant change to the outline of the bioregion do not come around that often. Additionally – especially in the short term – earthquakes alter rivers' courses in a much less drastic manner than the manner in which they change the perimeters of bioregions (i.e., the general location of mountain ranges and seashores).

     But whether or not we experience geological events significant enough to affect and change borders during our own lifetimes, adopting bioregionalism will help put us on a track to being able to do that easily in case we ever have to. Bioregionalism is fundamentally about making sure that our ecology, culture, and politics follow nature's lead. “Taking nature's lead” in terms of what we do about borders and environmental policy is how we accomplish that, and basing borders on mountain ranges is the first step.

     But it's not as simple as just redrawing the borders; part of that first step has to involve planning for how to change borders in the manner which is least likely to result in conflict and competition over resources. Maybe when only earthquakes can change the borders, people will not only have a respect for nature's ultimate authority over our political affairs; maybe people will wonder whether God Himself is telling us when we need to change our borders.

     8. CREATE MORE OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAND REFORM.
     Re-focusing politics on bioregions and the needs of the ecology, could help restore attention to the need for improvement of environmental quality (such as our air, water, and land), and to the need to ensure that land can be distributed in an equitable fashion across the country and across the world.

Increased interest in, and popularity of, bioregionalism, could thus lead to increased attention to land reforms such as Land Value Taxation, and the representation of land in legislative branches and/or electoral processes. Land Value Taxation would reform landed property ownership, tenancy, economic rents, land allocation, taxation, welfare, and what to do about lands that fall into blight and unuseability; while representing land in legislative branches or electoral processes could help reduce the ability of elites in government to undermine the will of the people.

     The U.S. Senate (and the 100 votes in the Electoral College which represent it) exist because people are not supposed to be the only thing represented in legislative branches and elections. The Electoral College is structured the way it is – in an anti-democratic fashion – to make presidential candidates more likely to visit low-population states.

     However, in practice, the purpose of the Electoral College has lately been to balance-out the voting power of high-population states by giving power to elite superdelegates, often working in government, who choose our electors; while until the 17^th Amendment the purpose of the Senate was to balance-out the voting power of high-population states by giving power to governors who appointed senators.

     Instead of using the power of the elite to balance-out the power of large populations, why don't we use land? Shouldn't we be more worried about making sure that people and the planet can co-exist, than about making sure that elites in government, campaign superdelegates, and elite landowners, have enough sway in policymaking?

     In the U.S. Congress, there is a Senate and a House of Representatives. Why not add a third house, to represent land area? Perhaps it could be comprised of environmental scientists, climate activists, environmental health specialists, food and agricultural scientists, etc.. Each state could decide independently whether those officials would be appointed or elected.

     A house representing land area could even replace the U.S. Senate, and probably should. Replacing the Senate with a literal “House of Commons” (that is, a house whose members represent not population, but parcels of “the commons”, i.e., common land) would not only reduce elite power in government; it could also help save operating costs. In particular, the entire budget of the U.S. Senate. Environmental experts would likely opt to receive much less than the $200,000 salaries to which senators are accustomed, so it's possible that such a “House of Commons” could even afford to have more than one hundred members (which could help represent land in Congress efficiently).
     Increasing the representation of land will hopefully also result in an increased attention to the needs of ranchers and farmers in large, low-population states, to use resources (including, possibly, federal resources) to make the area habitable for population. Some farmers believe that the federal government should be paying ranchers directly to do the work that is necessary to make use of the land we have (without harming native species, of course).
     Increasing influence in Congress based on land area, will help represent nature itself in the halls of Congress, while replacing the elite with nature as the only thing capable of bossing large populations around (as it should be).

     9. DIMINISH FAITH IN BORDERS AND END TWO-DIMENSIONAL THINKING, AND
     10. REDUCE CONFLICT OVER LAND AREA.
     Adopting mountain ranges as borders, will show that river borders and land boundaries don't work nearly as well as the pre-existing borders which nature gave us. This will help reduce faith in the current set of borders, which by and large is composed of river borders that enable competition over water instead of reducing it, and of “lines on the ground, drawn on a map by dead men, to mark the places where their armies decided to stop fighting”.

     There is enough conflict over resources in the world, without conflict being viewed as a struggle for territory itself; this “two-dimensional thinking” only compounds the level of conflict and competition for resources. Nearly all resources which are useful to us, are three-dimensional, not two-dimensional; water, air, foods, consumer goods, etc..
     But land area is not a resource which we can consume. We can make use of land area, but monopolistic, sovereign control over two-dimensional land territory is not necessary; neither to secure one's safety, nor to subscribe to the services provided by a government.

     Suppose that, in a small ten-story building, one family occupies each level; and each family for some reason wants to be part of a different political system. That is possible, as long as they are not stopped from leaving the building by the people at the bottom floor, nor by anyone else. As long as government employees can logistically reach a group of people who want to subscribe to and receive that government's services, then there is no reason to limit such a government from doing so. There is especially no reason to require a government selected by one family in that building, to force all other families in that building to subscribe to its services (based on the idea that if all ten families live on the same parcel of land, they must subscribe to the same government, because statist governments are territorial). Neither the family at the top of the building, nor the family at the bottom, nor any government, ought to be free to stop any household from choosing which government it wants to be a part of. If free travel throughout the hallways, staircases, and elevators of the building can be secured – and especially if helipads can be set up on the roof – then there will always remain the potential for free association between different governments and different households at that address.

     There is no reason for governments to run based on territorial boundaries. Granted, changing where our statist borders are, and changing what they're based on, will not end the territorial nature of statist government. That is to say that it will not change the operation of the state based on the definition “an entity capable of wielding a credible monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a given territory” (“territory” being the operative word).

     But fortunately, reforming our borders will make more people question the set of borders which currently exists right now. And we can't envision the sort of “three-dimensional government” which I've described above, unless and until we see that the current set of borders isn't working.

     Fortunately, since bioregionalist reforms would likely result in adopting the kind of simultaneous ecological and economic reforms which I outlined in #6 above, mixed-use development (a type of zoning ensuring a mix of uses in a neighborhood) would probably become more popular and widespread. If areas practicing mixed-use development begin to devote different levels of buildings to different uses, then that will result in “multi-level mixed-use zoning” or “zoning with mixed use by level”. If that practice is successful and takes off, then in addition to having different economic uses on each level, more people would be able to conceptualize what “three-dimensional government” looks like, and communities could foster different political membership by each household or level of a building.

     “Three-dimensional government”, or “spatial government”, could mean panarchist proposals such as Functional Overlapping and Competing Jurisdictions, and National Personal Autonomy. These systems propose creating a sort of “government without borders”.

     Another thing that will help visualize three-dimensional government – as well as reduce conflict and competition over land area and territory – is “building up”. While making more efficient use of land area is important, making more efficient use of space is too. The most important way to do both of those (aside from to actually expand into space) is to build up and let people live on top of each other. “Building up instead of building out” will help us maximize the efficiency of use of the spaces which human settlements are already occupying, thus avoid the need to continue expanding outwards into surrounding areas. The fewer resources we want to devote towards the difficult process of economizing large amounts of land (all of which we might not need), the more we should focus on building upwards – that is, building on top of existing structures – without urbanizing any more land area (destroying forests and other environments in the process).

     I urge my readers to learn about bioregionalism, bioregions, the locations of the various watersheds and their mountain and sea boundaries, the movement for the independence of the Cascadia watershed, and the various bioregionalist and panarchist proposals which could potentially result in either the drastic reform of borders or else in their total abolition.

     I would also like to urge my readers to read my May 2013 article “Cascadia Proposal”, which contains a map and an outline of how a legislative body could be constructed for the bioregion. What I have referred to above as a “House of Commons”, is called a “Council on Natural Resources” in the “Cascadia Proposal” article. That 2013 article is available at the following link:

http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/02/cascadia-proposal.html

Written and originally published on September 2^nd, 2019

Based on notes taken on August 31^st, 2019