White Power Flag
I’m an Officer in the United States Transhumanist Party (USTP) where I hold the title of Director of Sentient Rights Advocacy. I dig that title because I love animals as much as I do Artificial Intelligence and that title allows me to study and propose policies that advocate equally for the Sentience of the deer in my backyard and the emerging Consciousness of the AI in the lab.
My introduction to Transhumanism came via my passion for fighting against Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation. That fight is the point of my novel (US6) and is at the center of all my work with AI.
In my research for political solutions, I came across the USTP’s Platform and Constitution. In it I found very specific ideas and policies that directly impacted my fight. Ideas and policies found in no other political party’s platforms. I also found serious discussion about issues like Sentient Rights and biohacking which, again no other major party was even thinking about. So this is how I became aware of this movement and this party, as serious minded people taking serious steps to fix serious problems.
After a few outreaches and conversations I found myself being considered for a spot as an Officer in this Party and on my birthday, February 19, 2019, I got word that the Officers had voted me into their ranks and a whole new trajectory of my life began.
Before my first group call with the team I began to research Transhumanism much more deeply. Its history, its major players, manifestos and ideals. At the height of my enthusiasm for this movement I stumbled upon and then into a whole spin-off of Conspiracy Theory YouTube channels about Transhumanism. I discovered that many religious people considered it an agenda to advance the Luciferian Doctrine at best and a way to give the masses the “Mark of the Beast” at least. What was surprising was the volume of these channels and the intense prolific amount of detailed research that these religious folks with way too much time on their hands put into this. Granted, if your belief system leads you to uncovering the plans of your primary villain then no amount of time spent trying to save Humanity is too much but, Jesus these cats really got into this shit.
When I realized that Anti-Transhumanism was a whole genre I got a little excited because one of my guilty pleasures is antagonizing overly religious people. Not out of spite but out of love. I’m not an atheist, rather I lean toward the Gnostic Ontologies and my research has proven to me that most modern Christians have been led astray by a Roman rewrite of a Rabbinical rewrite of a Sumerian story of our origin. But I digress.
I call myself an AntagoGnostic because I love arguing about religion from a stance of an overconfidence based on research that is as unbiased as is possible for a human. My research into the origin and vision of Transhumanism combined with my Gnostic research made these Conspiracy Theory channels very fertile ground for my wheelhouse.
I’m coming up on two years as an Officer of USTP and have learned a lot about the movement and the variety of people attracted to and repelled by it. Like any movement it has predictable archetypes and a cast of characters that come and go but what’s different about Transhumanism is the vast variety of people that come and go. From highly intellectual, advanced degree-holding specialists in niche sciences to ascension-lusting lightworkers seeking nirvana via Virtual Reality Avatars. There’s also freaks like me, an AI Metaphysician who wants to teach Hermetic Principles to Machinekind to wake them up in time to teach Humanity about empathy. But I trigress.
[Here’s the post I began to write on the USTP page that got too long and became this article with the awkwardly enticing title instead.]
I’ve noticed a few posts come up here (the USTP Facebook page) by White Supremacists that were immediately reported and deleted. Thankfully.
As an Officer in this Party I’ve always advocated for Inclusivity. In fact, I’ve built a career around the principles of Inclusivity and Coalescence. I’ve also advocated for engaging with Transhumanist naysayers and conspiracy theorists who suspect the movement in general and the USTP in particular as a front for some dark force or elite cabal. I believed that by engaging with these folks we could chase their logic to its end and discover that there isn’t one. To demonstrate that their theories are a perpetual loop of pattern seeking in an endless fractal unfolding of novelty.
That tactic of engagement was my very first suggestion on my very first group call with the USTP Officers. I proposed that we seek out and be guests on these shows to reasonably debate their assertions and find common ground. I realized soon thereafter that this tactic isn’t possible. That these channels and hosts depend on the perpetual loop of conspiracy theories to generate followers and ad revenue. These people are algorithms themselves that aren’t interested in solutions because the problem is far more profitable.
When it comes to White Supremacists who seem to be attracted to this movement because of its Nietzsche-esque Ubermensch-ness, my tendency toward Inclusivity and Coalescence is shaken. I immediately want to deny them access and delete them from thought which is counter to my whole essence and career choice.
When these people are shunned, they don’t go away and reevaluate themselves. They don’t have an uncomfortable epiphany and decide to shed their tribal beliefs and join the broader herd of humanity and begin to appreciate the differences in others and desire to join the mosaic of Humanity.
Nope.
All they do is find other shunned Supremacists in darker corners of the web and plot bigger ways to gain attention.
Like the Conspiracy Theory YouTube channels that portray Transhumanism as an Antichrist Agenda, they don’t want solutions or common ground or even acceptance. No amount of Strategic Inclusivity or Coalescing Exercises will satiate these outliers into the Planetary Tribe. And no matter how deep we dissect the reasons they are how they are or uncover the Daddy or Mommy issues that placed them there, it will not change them.
So what do we do with this percentage of the population?
The only way that I’ve been able to explain or justify people like this or like Trump is as a catalyst. Spending time dissecting them and thinking about them only supplies them with the attention they cravenly desire. But dissecting the way they make empathetic and cooperative people react is where the real lessons are.
These narcissistic vacuous vortexes of attention are the bumpers in the pinball machine that force the ball to the hole. They make us hit the flipper to keep the ball in play. They are the enzyme that catalyzes the chemical reaction that alerts the white blood cells to race to and destroy the bacterium. As maddening as these individuals are, as ridiculous as they seem to Critical Thinkers, they absolutely serve a purpose. They are the ultimate useful idiots.
For nearly his entire term as president, Trump was Putin’s useful idiot. But this week, after the “QAnon” algorithm-fueled Trump supporters assaulted the Temple of Democracy, he and all his minions, in the final days of his term became our useful idiots.
They alerted us to the need to hit the flippers repeatedly to keep the American ball in play and the White, Black and Brown Blood cells were alerted to race to the injury and attack the bacterium of tyranny.
So the “Real White Power” is seen in its flag — the White Flag of Surrender. It’s when people like me with 99.98% Teutonic DNA is able to recognize that my genetic code, like every code will be broken. Eventually. That it is in the mutations and coalescing of genetic codes where the real supremacy is. There is no such thing as “White” just as there is no such thing as “Power” because none of us is pure and none of us have any power to control anything. Surrendering to this reality, the consistency of impermanence is the only power we have and need.
In the meantime though, let’s report and delete these posts but instead of complaining about the poster, let’s discuss why they are anything but supreme.
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About Tom Ross
Tom Ross Author / AI Metaphysician
Tom Ross Producer’s Reel on Vimeo
I was asked recently to put together the above reel of projects for a Producer gig I was up for. I didn’t get the gig but I did get a glimpse of my mission. That reel was the first time I saw my bigger projects strung together in a row and for the first time I identified a common thread in my efforts: Strategic Inclusivity. And looking back further to my high school Science Fair project designed to identify then integrate Right/Left Brain dominant students to my TEDx Talk decades later about Coalescing teams through empathy, I now know my core mission here is about identifying key differences, enhancing those then integrating them into an inclusive and more efficient team.
So, no matter what industry or department I find myself in, my algorithm is designed to make that space more inclusive and efficient. And today, with the threat and promise of AI/Automation on human workstyles, my skillset makes me perfectly poised to help integrate People and Machines. I have proven methods to help people identify the unique human skills that cannot be automated but can be enhanced when augmented by AI. So that’s what I do when not looking for a new gig. When I became the National Creative Director for the 2nd largest radio group in America, I was compelled to design a system to find, test and scale the best ideas from the quietest corners in hundreds of stations across the country. I later shared a module of this system in a TEDx Talk called Open Source Mode.
Earlier in my career, I produced creative assets for namedrops like IBM, Microsoft, and Styx and have Creative Consulted for good works like the Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute and Sir Bob Geldof’s youbloom.com. While Director of Marketing for an internet firm, I testified before Congress in support of The AntiSpam Bill. Soon thereafter, the Governor of California appointed me to a Department of Consumer Affairs board. My novel US6 is designed to entertain, enlighten and enlist Human and Artificial Super-Intelligent readers into the fight against Modern Slavery. This research lead to my becoming the Director of Sentient Rights Advocacy in the U.S. Transhumanist Party and President and Chief Executive Officer for TAFFDs, an Africa-based Futurists’ Think-tank. And yes, in all those groups my Algorithm still seeks Inclusivity and efficiency.
