(-Death)rant.net

Twitter had an interesting impact on the statistics for this blog within a single month:

• It increased the daily unique visitor count from around 15 to 30.
• The numbers of daily pageviews went from 90 to 150.
• The number of monthly spiders increased by more than 125%.

I think those numbers are pretty fine for this blog, given the low rate of updates. Although I write about a large number of topics, these search terms have been the most popular:

1. Vegetarianism / Veganism
2. Zeitgeist / Venus Project
3. Zoophilia

While I think it’s cool that a lot of people are interested in these topics, they are not the main point of this blog. So, what is the main point of this blog after all? As I intend to help creating a better future, and I am aware of the likeliness of a technological Singularity (the emergence of superintelligence) happening soon, I write about my ideas regarding

• The technological Singularity and possible outcomes of that critical event in history
• My visions and ideas about how to create a better future
• Ethics – because how the future will look like depends crucially on what our ethical principles are (and will be)

These core topics in fact are related to the search terms above:
Whatever the future will bring (Singularity or not), it will look vastly different than our current world, because the current state of the world is not sustainable. Radical changes will happen, and whoever turns out to be the most powerful party in the end, will have a dominant impact on the further future of this world. Let’s hope those powerful entities are guided by ethical principles which also entail respecting those who are vastly less powerful. Today we live in a situation that looks completely different:
Governments and corporations often abuse their power and betray everyone who is not on their side. Majorities oppress or even try to eradicate minorities. Humans and non-human animals are used as slaves or tools. Most humans tolerate or even support a system that creates a frightening approximation of hell for billions of non-human animals. If people are on the side of the relatively powerful, they can ignore all that horror and injustice, because they can fill their lives with relatively convenient activities. Which actually works – until it’s too late, because drastic changes turn the relatively powerful into powerless victims.

Yes, vegetarianism, veganism and alternative political/economical systems could solve most of these problems, so I write about those topics. Now what about zoophilia? Consider the following absurd situation: People accept systematic torture and murder of non-human animals, but are shocked by the idea of consensual sexual interspecies intercourse. WTF? That’s so absurd that it seems like the vast majority of humans have been virtually brainwashed! Nothing screams more speciesism than that hypocrisy! The human-non-human-animal relationship has become thoroughly perverted. How can we hope in such a dire situation that the powers which will arise in the future will treat lowly powerless human beings any better? By trying to enforce our current values on them? Even if that scheme would be implemented successfully, it would result in a perpetuated catastrophe.

We need to become free, independent, empowered, educated, empathic, rational, responsible, virtuous and deeply networked persons to just have the chance of living in a future which isn’t even worse than the contemporary status quo. But once we have made that self-transformation to the positive, the remaining technical difficulties will be very well manageable. There is no greater problem in this world than the human mind. There is no greater opportunity in this world than the human mind.

That’s the stuff this blog is about! Every single one of us has to become better and we must create better systems in which we can thrive. For the first part of that program, I write about my own personal development and about self-help / self-improvement. For the second part, I explore and evaluate different possible societal/economic/political systems which might be superior to our current systems. This task necessarily includes thinking about how the future might look like. But what I am doing here is not exactly futurology. It is philosophy, or to be more specific it’s what I like to call explorative philosophy. In order to explore possible futures I need to create scenarios. That’s one reason why I write science-fiction. Another reason to write fiction is to present positive visionary future scenarios, which can inspire. Where’s the vision and inspiration in our world? The demand for purposeful vision exceeds the supply by far. But instead of throwing my science-fiction stories into this blog, I have created a better suited platform for them: My new blog radivis.com, which is dedicated to explorative philosophy via science-fiction.

To sum it up, this blog is mainly about

• Psychology, especially positive psychology and self-improvement.
• Philosophy, especially ethics and future oriented explorative philosopy.

I hope this explanation will give a clearer outline to this blog. However, I won’t impose a canonical interpretation of the point of this blog on you. If you think the use of this blog is something completely different, that’s ok.

So, finally let’s come to my actual future plans for this blog. Apart from focusing on psychology and philosophy, I will continue to post more generally interesting content like the weekly Twitter finds. Other important changes I have in mind are an increase in posting frequency and the idea to make some money with this blog. If I can earn enough money to survive, just by blogging, this would be an optimal solution, which would enable me to focus on what I am really passionate about. From my point of view the most reasonable options to make money with a blog like this are:

• Google AdSense advertisement (which is sometimes actually interesting)
• Donations
• Getting paid for writing specific articles somewhere

It is not easy to make a reasonable amount of money with such a concept, but it’s not impossible. So it’s worth a manical try. The thought of earning money by blogging feels much more energizing than being bound to a regular job. I would like to read some comments about these plans. Suggestions and support are always very welcome.

~ RadiVis – Explorative Philosopher ~