Apathy and defeatism is a false sense of weakness. The fatalist despairs and thinks: "What can I do? Why worry about problems I can’t change? I have to just accept how things are."

The easiest argument for doing nothing is that you are powerless to do anything. Who can be expected to do what is impossible? If you understood that you could do something about almost anything, you wouldn’t have that excuse any more. Instead, you would have a choice.

Feel subject to forces beyond your control?

“In Absentia Luci, Tenebrae Vincu. (In the absence of light, darkness prevails.)”

—Hellboy

Rational Ignorance

Economists believe that there is a rationale behind ignorance. Like General Motors recall coordinators applying the "cost of recall versus cost of wrongful death libaility" formula, each one of us is inclined to know something if the benefit of knowing it exceeds the effort required to learn it.

If effort exceeds benefit, we don't want to know.

In otherwords, if people see more benefit or less required effort, they will learn more.

The Price of Apathy

"The greatest danger to our future is apathy."

—Jane Goodall

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese

“Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be, the man who thinks, becomes a light and a power.”

Empowerment is a choice.

Many people are convinced they have no power. We resemble war veteran amputees who feel phantom limbs where none remain. They have tingling sensations where the limb used to be and dreams as though they still had the freedom to leap and play sports with their whole body.

We’re the opposite, like emancipated slaves who still feel the chafing of shackles long outlawed. We have phantom chains that no longer exist.

No human power can make us slaves except in our own minds. Some people do live under fascist dictatorships. There was once a time when our ancestors feared physical violence, but the power that rules us is psychological and economic. There is no system of control now that public awareness and activism cannot remedy. It’s not a question of being right or left, but of active or passive, involved or silent, aware or asleep.

Activism is what makes Empowerment effective and the reverse is also true. Without Empowerment, activism is very difficult and undisciplined.

The ultimate responsibility for the world lies with individuals. The best system can be ruined by worst people and the worst system overcome by the best people. We’re responsible for making choices about the world’s future.

It’s time to come out of the rainy trenches to warm up with an umbrella movement that allows everyone to achieve their goals.

Why should I give my time, energy, or finances, regardless of how much I agree that gun control would be good, or that restraints on corporate owners or even attaining a whole new economy would be good, or that more and better alternative media would be good? My contributions will not yield much, so why bother making them?

Skepticism about prospects and I suspect perhaps also a kind of embarrassment to be seen as naively thinking that one can make a difference curtail even easy, low cost commitment.

Our good will and humane values don’t repeatedly get trounced because we cannot, in fact, win change. Conditions and possibilities are not insurmountably unfavorable. We fail to win, instead, most often because we think we cannot win.

This sad situation must be reversed both in the large, regarding the institutions of our societies, and also compositely regarding our local campaigns and operations... How do we improve confidence and thereby in turn increase involvement? Or put differently, what have guns got to do with alternative media? These are question worth our time, I believe.”

Okay, I believe in empowerment. But surely that’s not enough? Thinking positive thoughts doesn’t change the reality. How can all this empowering thinking translate into effective actions that make a difference? And how will my small contribution make a difference? I don’t know where to get started.

Everyone can begin empowering themselves instantly and easily. And anyone can take their empowerment as far as they wish. There is no barrier to entry and no glass ceiling to advancement.

Empowerment is some or more, not all-or-nothing

Empowerment is different for each of us. It is not an all-or-nothing binary switch to be thrown for instant change. Conventional activism has alienated the masses by setting the bar too high for casually concerned citizens and then slamming a glass ceiling into the heads of those who do step up and take the challenge to become activists. Getting started is scary, and getting somewhere is difficult.

On the one hand, activist groups seem like an all-or-nothing proposition. You are either with them or you’re not, without a connection to what is going on. People want to start where they are comfortable, moving along a gentle gradient of increasing mobilization and working their way up towards becoming full-fledged activists.

Participation opportunities should be omnipresent, instantly satisfying and escalating. Everywhere you go, your optimal opportunities to participate should be presented alongside information to make what you learn actionable in a way that is always available and offered without digging. Participation should be instantly rewarding.

Individualistic Systems

The ultimate power in the world is the individual human being. Groups are merely ways of describing the individual actions of many related individuals. All group-centric activism systems to date miss the point. And when empowered individuals join forces, their combined efforts produce historic achievements. The strength of each individual team member is the difference between a herd and an army.

The Army Of One concept embodies both of these inextricable ideas: the centrality of individual empowerment and the power of many highly trained individuals acting as one unified team.

The Empower Thyself principle is instructive in designing systems to support empowerment. Whereas existing infrastructures tend to be controlled by groups with individuals treated as "members", "users", or some other such subordinate resource unit, an individualistic system starts with the user and frees them to act on their own initiative and associate with groups as they choose or create their own.

"It's as much mine as it is yours you know... This does not belong to us. We are not special... What do you want? Should I email you? Should I put this on your primary action item list? You decide your own level of involvement! What would you wish you'd done before you die?"

—Tyler Durden in Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

(A two-page spread diagram shows the gradient from disagreement to ignorance to apathy to interest to acivism.)

Some of the levels shown

• Joining mailing lists
• Writing letters to decision makers
• Volunteering for campaigns

Do you have the time?

What prevents you from getting more involved in your community?

• 41% I'm too busy with family and work
• 30% I don't have confidence in government (or other institutions)
• 7% My contribution won't make a difference
• 4% It's just not a priority
• 19% Other

Real Heroes Exist

Superman had the power to fly and shoot lasers from his eyes. Cute. Gandhi had the power to actually exist. Fictional heroes’ actual exploits are limited to selling comics, books, movies, video games, action figures, bedsheets, lunchboxes and other assorted product lines.

Whereas Superman battled imaginary evil with "man of steel" violence, Gandhi rescued a real nation in distress and defeated the supervillainous British empire by non-violently changing people's minds. Compared to comic book superheroes, real ones win by default. Real people are infinitely more inspiring than fiction.

The most impressive superpower any hero can have is to matter in the real world, not imaginary ones filled with amusing fictional characters.

Our media paints a disturbing picture for our entertainment that is hardly worthy of our emulation. The role models provided for the youth exemplify a warped version of heroism glorifying sex, violence, power, ego and anti-intellectualism. Most of the characters who are portrayed as highly intelligent and self-motivated are the villainous "evil masterminds" whose grandiose plots are foiled by rugged, simplistic anti-heroes.

Where are the real heroes who have really changed the world again and again to give us everything we take for granted now? Surely we can turn our creative abilities towards promoting real role-models with the respect and attention they deserve.

Children should be growing up playing with action figures like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, not the stars of vacuous cartoons and video games exploiting the lure of consequence-free violence to sell toys for profit.

Will The Heroes Please Stand Up?

All of us have the choice to live a heroic life that makes a difference. It does not take a superhuman to make an impact; heroism is not something only other people are capable of.

From reading a history book, you might get the impression that a handful of great leaders determined history. But the leaders of movements were ultimately figureheads for the thousands of committed participants who accomplished the day-to-day actions that made everything happen.

Less Spectators, More Contributors

People love heroes because they simplify things. With a hero in charge, everyone else can watch as spectators. Studies show that during emergencies the more people who are in a crowd, the less responsible each one feels for doing something about it.

It is common sense that for any given task, the more people who help, the less effort each person needs to contribute. There's no reason to stand around waiting for a hero to handle everything when we can all do something heroic. We can all change the world and together we will.

‘The One’ We’ve Been Waiting Is Everyone

“You look like you’re waiting for something… Being the one is like being in love. No one can tell you you’re in love, you just know it.”

—The Oracle, The Matrix

Many movies, games and books talk about ‘the one’ in hushed tones of reverence, a messiah who saves the powerless people from their own weakness and delivers them from injustice. ‘The one’ is a painful cliche and a heroic figure of our collective imagination, an archetypal champion we root for again and again through all the challenges they overcome.

Anyone can be ‘the one’ and what we really need to do to change the world is to wake ourselves up to this fact. Each of us is ‘the one’ and relying on somebody else to save oneself is crazy. Self-reliance is a virtue that enables one to take responsibility for making one’s way in life. If one is confronted with challenges, one must overcome them courageously and ask for help when it is needed, not run away from learning experiences (the phenomenon formerly known as impossibly scary things) in the hopes that they will go away or someone else will do it for us.

The Beatles Were Just A Band

“What is possible for me is possible for you.”

—Frederick Douglass

“It is spiritless to think that you cannot attain to that which you have seen and heard the masters attain. The masters are men. You are also a man. If you think that you will be inferior in doing something, you will be on that road very soon.”

—Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure

Elevating celebrities to mythical status makes them seem different from us which excuses us from doing as they've done. We have to stop glorifying heroes as being apart from us.

All the towering historical figures had their share of flaws and experienced the same trepidation before they did what they did.

What gave Gahndi or Martin Luther King the power to change the world? There was no magic to it. They were as human as anyone, with much the same abilities, skills and frailties. Their power was in their ideas. Everything that made them do what they did and say what they said was motivated by their ideas, which anyone can live by.

“I put my pants on like the rest of you, one leg at a time. Except that once my pants are on, I make gold records!”

—Christopher Walken on SNL: More Cowbell

It's In Your Hands

Contrary to popular belief, authors don’t spend years writing for ego’s sake. The author is almost totally irrelevent. This book is written for you, the reader in the hope that you’ll find it worthwile and enjoyable. It’s what you think of it and do with it that matters. Books are just ink, paper and glue until you bring them to life by your own choices. Every one of us matters to the world. It is said that you can judge the thinking of a society by the books it is reading. The reverse is also true: this book can be judged by the society that reads it. Best-sellers are irrelevent. What matters are best readers like you.

You’re important to yourself for obvious reasons. And you’re important to every person in the world because you have the opportunity to change each and every life on earth with your choices.

Believe in yourself. Find out what you are capable of. Have fun. Surprise yourself. You have more power over your life in your ability to choose than the “system” or “society” or the rest of the human race combined. Understanding how the world works just reminds us of that. If changing your own life necessitates changing the whole world to suit you, so much the better.

Towards An All-Leader Culture

The best way to avoid being a cult leader seems simple: don’t start a cult. Given that virtually every organized group exhibits cultish behavior, that’s harder than it sounds if you want to mobilize an effective movement.

In many people’s minds, leaders shouldn’t be human. They are supposed to be perfect heroic figures. They never are, except in the sense of heroism that we can all embody when we empower ourselves and make a difference. A ‘hero’ has one real purpose: to inspire the heroism within everyone. Self-aggrandizing ‘Heroes’ who disempower others are just bums.

Empowerment can't have a leader because either everyone who is empowered is a leader unto themself or they aren’t really empowered at all. That’s a neat trick of escape artistry, but it also happens to be true. Think for yourself may be an ironic imperative but you choose to do something because you think it is a good idea, not because you are told. As self-contradictory as it sounds, you don’t need leaders because you can learn to lead yourself.

Leadership doesn’t start with about getting other people to follow your lead. First it is about getting clear with yourself. It is not really about mobilizing against enemies. Our capacity for self-sabotage is more dangerous to our dreams than any outside boogeyman. 

The "E Pluribus Unum" Fallacy, or Everyone is the One

Up untill 1956 the official motto of the United States was 'E pluribus unum', latin for 'From many, one.' This is traditionally interpreted as describing how the original 13 colonies became one country. However, it is useful for our purposes in that it describes a prevailing philosophy of our time. The idea that heroes and great leaders are rare and have inherent special qualities that set them apart from the majority. The reality is that these people exhibit the same qualities as the rest of us, they just had the insight to follow through with their own lives, they were empowered.

It is easy to step back and wonder at the heroes and heroines, and ascribe their nature to something inherent in their genes, their spirit, their faith. But it is far more amazing to realize that these people who have shaped history are not one FROM many, they are one IN many.

Empowering humanity is like putting a man on the moon. Empowerment will not be our first great victory and it will not be our last.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

"If I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun—almost as hot as it is here today—and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out—then we must be bold."

—John F. Kennedy, We Choose To Go To The Moon

Go Big or Go Home. Half-measures won't cut it anymore.

The complexity of the challenges facing the modern world calls for comprehensive solutions that weave numerous threads together into a strong and expansive system that addresses all the interrelated aspects.

Solving problems with half-measures satisfies immediate needs but it doesn't lead to the fullfillment of our potentials.

Comprehensive solutions may sound complicated, but the effort is worth it,

A comprehensive solution takes more work to tie together, but it becomes an expanding platform on which to build.

"It is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one."

—Sir Francis Bacon

Comprehensive solutions needn't be overwhelming. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something, and we can contribute to little pieces of the puzzle that ties into the pieces other people are working on and add up to a larger purpose.

Reaching Escape Philosophy

Gravitational friction pulls revolutions down before they get off the ground and how a successful transformation must reach escape philosophy in order to get enough momentum to break free from this tendency towards returning to business as usual.

Got Side-Effects?

Solving a food shortage problem without considering the environmental impacts may solve the food problems of today but it could be an even larger problem of tomorrow. 

A good example of such short term planning is the modern nuclear waste crisis.  Sure the problems of power shortages where alleviated at the time but now we are generating volitile waste to be the insolvent problems of tomorrow.

Solving one problem while creating another creates a half-solution.  We need complete and comprehensive solutions for our world and our lives!

Every solution must solve the problem on hand without creating additional problems down the road without having a sustainable plan to alleviate these aftershock issues. 

“99% of what passes for news is of the nature that the average person can do nothing about. There was a time when the purpose of information was to solve specific problems in the environent, people sought information because they needed it to do something in the world.

We’ve become inundated with information from all over, mostly input with no output from us. We can watch a murder on television or something as lurid and awful and continue to eat our chicken sandwich. We’re not invited to do anything here. This may have created a sense of impotence. If you’re constantly getting information about which you can do nothing, it can suggest that you are impotent.

Maybe this accounts for a surprising indifference people have for toxicity in the physical environment. Wouldn’t people be interested in warming or rainforests? Its possible that we’ve become conditioned to think information has nothing to do with us, its just a kind of commodity.

We need to convert information into knowledge.”

—Naked Ape to Superspecies with David Suzuki

Skill Mastery

You can always learn something new. School is not the only place to pick up new skills, and being accomplished in one area doesn’t stop you from starting fresh in another.

Education Pays Off 

“If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

—Benjamin Franklin

“Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead.”

—Aristotle

Get Simulated Experience

“Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you’re too damned old to do anything about it.”

—Jimmy Conners

Using the Empowerment Game to simulate experiences can give you a head start in life. 

The education of youth is essential. Young people are ready to learn at their own pace and experience things now.

“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

—Will Durant

Prepare Yourself For The Coming Trials 

“Tomorrow’s battle is won in today’s practice.”

—Samurai maxim

“The more sweat in training, the less blood on the battlefield.”

—General Patton

Preparing yourself now to have the capabilities to help others could come in handy when you least expect it.

Broaden Horizons

“Every master was once a disaster.”

—Harv Ekcart

“The doors of wisdom are never shut.”

—Benjamin Franklin, self-taught

“In times of change, learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned are beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists... If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

—James Thurbur

Mainstream and Subculture

Subcultures are fun. They're not intended as a solution for everyone though. They're too insular and exclusive to allow major impacts on society.

Many groups like Rant Media identify themselves as outspoken and unapologetic counterculture. Activists express opinions in a take it or leave it fashion that inspires those who resonate and baffles others. Lines are drawn in the sand.

Imagine rubbing all such lines out and drawing only the line between apathy and empowerment, putting people of widely differing opinions together in one basket and disinterested bystanders in the other.

The goal is to help everyone take action. The Empowerment aims to expand participation in activist citizenship beyond traditional "hardcore" circles to supersede the mass culture of apathy.

To empower people of all ideas, Empowerment must adhere to a more measured and neutral tone akin to the "NPOV" (Neutral Point of View) sought by Wikipedians.

The Empowerment exists to empower people of all ideas and doers of all persuasions. Empowerment can enable you to enhance a subculture. Projects that espouse specific points of view can use The Empowerment, but they cannot be endorsed as representative of the institutionally neutral core. The Empowerment can cover controversial issues without taking sides, giving doers of all stripes a common ground.

Empowerment Is Broadly Inclusive of Many Ideas

History is full of movements that championed narrow causes to achieve limited success because they could not really engage their opposition before attrition wore out their momentum and resources. As long as the battlefield puts activists in the trenches slugging it out against equally entrenched enemy lines, the idea war will continue to be an end onto itself that consumes combatants like a maelstrom. The state of warfare perpetuates falsehood on both sides as necessary evils because both believe the other will use it to gain an advantage. The atom bomb was justified by its researchers because the Nazis were expected to try to use it too. Likewise, misleading and manipulative media tactics are a prerequisite to competing in the modern mind war.

Think Outside The Trenches

World War I provides a moving lesson to illustrate absurd conflict. The fighting bogged down into a bloody stalemate where neither side could win a decisive victory. Generals on both sides poured millions of lives into the deathtrap of trench warfare. They lacked the technological and strategic capability to win so they settled for a war of attrition rather than rejecting the stalemate and seeking an alternative course of action.

But an unexpected glimmer of a solution appeared. Soldiers from the German and British lines put aside their spirit-crushing military struggle to sing carols together in No-Man's Land and celebrate what they had in common. It showed the arbitrary nature of war between ordinary people who just wanted to live and let live.

On Christmas Day, 1914, only 5 months into World War I, German, British, and French soldiers, already sick and tired of the senseless killing, disobeyed their superiors and fraternized with "the enemy" along two-thirds of the Western Front (in times of war, a crime punishable by death). German troops held Christmas trees up out of the trenches with signs, "Merry Christmas." "You no shoot, we no shoot." Thousands of troops streamed across a no-man's land strewn with rotting corpses. They sang Christmas carols, exchanged photographs of loved ones back home, shared rations, played football, even roasted some pigs. Soldiers embraced men they had been trying to kill a few short hours before. They agreed to warn each other if the top brass forced them to fire their weapons, and to aim high.

A shudder ran through the high command on either side. Here was disaster in the making: soldiers declaring their brotherhood with each other and refusing to fight. Generals on both sides declared this spontaneous peacemaking to be treasonous and subject to court martial. By March, 1915 the fraternization movement had been eradicated and the killing machine put back in full operation. By the time of the armistice in 1918, fifteen million would be slaughtered.

—The Christmas Truce

Not surprisingly, the military brass didn't approve and artillery bombardments of No Man's Land prevented any more lulls in the fighting.

But what if the peacemakers had been celebrated as heroes and inspired their nations to end the killing? The fog of war may have made it impossible for the sides to reconcile then, but today we still have a chance to see the absurdity in some of our struggles and find common ground.

Being No One's Pawn

"Are you still alive? You have the devil's own luck, no matter what you do. On the battlefield, a soldier's life is worth no more than a silver coin. As if it were nothing, most men's lives are controlled by a handful of nobles and royalty. Well even a king is really unable to live his life as he pleases... We all just rely upon this great flow known as fate until eventually we leave this world. Time will run out, and the tide of life will recede before we know who we really are."

One of the reasons people don't get involved in politics is that they don't want to feel like a pawn in someone else's struggle. It is more rewarding to act as an empowered individual than as a "human resource" cancelling out opposing pawns.

Some Shared By Left, Right And In Between

The word empowerment is popular amongst conservatives and liberals alike.

• Conservative lobby group Empower America (now Freedom Works): neutral Wikipedia profile, critical SourceWatch profile.

Providing a Means to YOUR End

In high-school, during the first student council meeting that I attended, a teacher was temporarily mediating the council until a student president was elected. Once we were assembled the teacher drew a diagram on the whiteboard. At the top and bottom he wrote '15%', and in the middle he wrote '70%'. He pointed to the top and said,

"These are the students who actually care about school. They work hard and apply themselves, this is where all of you are." He then pointed to the middle, "these are the students who dont really care, they do the work, they show up, but they are largely indifferent to what happens at school." Lastly he pointed to the bottom percentage and said, "these are the students who hate school, they despise being here, they skip class, slack off, and don't get anything done." I smiled to myself because I identified more with the bottom 15% than the top that were supposed to be here. I hated high school. I absolutely hated it. There was no disparity, the students were treated like cattle wihtout the right of everyday human beings, and therefore we had no say in how policy was made or how the school was run. The only reason I was in the student council was because it was the best place to spark any change. I didn't get to be student president, and I didn't change much while I was there.

But looking back at the experience I find myself amused by the fact that the council was seen as a place for those who had no problem with the system rather than those who did, and there is no doubt that this was the purpose of the council. The only things they ever accomplished were social events designed to make the school feel less like some kind of twisted low-security prison and more like a twisted cult (hell, most of us had the track suits and sneakers already). I wonder now why no one was bothering to listen to the disenfranchised students, the ones who could tell the faculty what was wrong with the school and how they could change it, to be more appealing to the student body. They weren't all stoners and slackers- I applied myself at every assignment, got almost straight As, and never touched drugs, but I still hated it there.

If only The Empowerment had been born before I found myself in that situation, and if only I had been able to find a copy on some library shelf or at a random street corner, I may not have given up so easily. I may have found an alternate route to the faculty, and had my voice heard. With The Empowerment I would have had the tools to help me be an activist for the students that the system wasn't serving. The Empowerment would have given me the means to the ends that I still regret not accomplishing.

That is what The Empowerment is about. It is about acknowledging that the ideas we have do not correspond with the world that we see, and provides us all with the means to realize those ideas in the real world. The Empowerment doesn't serve the keeners and optimists in the top 15%, or the slackers and the rebels at the bottom. The Empowerment doesn't distinguish between those on the right or the left, those who believe and those who do not. The Empowerment distinguishes between those who want to change something, and those who cannot be bothered."

—KindelingBoy

Empowerment Already Exists

Empowerment isn't new, it is an umbrella to unite the many efforts that people have made since humanity first dreamt of a better world.

The Empowerment satisfies a need that already exists by enabling more people to become active participants. There are already many people engaging in activism of various kinds. We're just taking it to the next level and making empowering culture mainstream.

Empowered With A Capital 'E'

People all over the world who already better themselves and change the world are already empowered in their own ways.

People who take up The Empowerment cause to empower themselves and enable humanity in an effective way are Empowered.

What's In It For You?

Empowerment can't be everything to all people, but it has something for everyone.

Contributors, You've Found The Ultimate Project

You may be looking for a truly worthwhile project to pour your artistic ability or technical expertise into. Empowerment is always hiring, and there are virtually unlimited opportunities for voluteers to contribute.

Critics Needed

If you’re a critic, you can provide much-needed feedback. Wheather you love it or you hate it, you are free to make it your own. There’s certainly plenty to critique. What isn’t controversial about the world and any imperfect attempt to understand it? Make your feelings known in the Empowerment Criticism Forum. But try to understand what you’re commenting about or expect to be told to ‘RTFM’.

The More Confused You Are, The Better

If you care about the world but don’t see how you can make a difference, you are in the right place. This is like a training manual that provides all the information you need to get started changing the world in easy little steps.

Activists Can Take It To The Next Level

If you’re an activist, you are already changing the world. The Empowerment is a platform to enhance what you’re already doing and reach out to others who are new to activism. The Ideas section is a useful guide to how media works. Wherever you are on the political spectrum, be you liberal or conservative or whatever, the Ideapedia section can help you clarify your own ideas and understand other perspectives with more empathy.

Gamers Get Something Really Worth Playing

If you’re a gamer, you are already playing all the games you can get your hands on and have time for. You’ve probably noticed that many games are instantly addictive to play but turn predictably tedious after the investment of many hours until they end in anticlimax with little learned or accomplished. Why not play something worthwhile? Gamers are always searching for the next big thing, a game which will show them something outside the tired clone genres. Empowerment is the game gamers have been waiting for. And unlike escape fantasies, this game prepares you for participation in real world activism and provides ample opportunities to get involved.

Non-Gamers Needn't Play To Participate

If you’re not a gamer, don’t worry about the gaming-related parts of this book. Real-world empowerment is the goal, and the games are just a part of the greater project. You don’t have to play any games to practice Empowerment. The games are just training tools for the real world activities that are quite real and practical. You may become a gamer yet.

ALWAYS DO THE RIGHT THING AND JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL

What do you believe in?

What values do you hold dear? How far would you go to defend what you believe is right?

DO NO HARM

What do you think is harmful?

Wrongdoing is wrong, regardless of excuses or justifications made. It is self-defeating to use extreme and harmful methods to achieve one’s goals. The tricky part is that people debate about what is and is not wrong doing, as well as what is and is not right action.

“When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.”

—Ryokan, Zen poet

“Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

—Jesus (Luke 6:31)

“See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?”

—Buddha, Dhammapada

“None of you is a believer until you like for others what you like for yourself... Give ungrudgingly and do not withhold... There is a reward for your treatment of every living thing.”

—Mohammed

We live in a business owned society.

Who controls business controls the future.

Corporations have access to every part of our lives. They control what we see, what we wear, what we eat, how we perceive and how we think. They are not the only entities that do this, but they have the most money, the most power, and the most control. They are in control of what the audiences of the world bare witness to. This is not good or bad in itself, it is simply the way the world works. However, "With great power comes great responsibility", and we must ask ourselves if this immense amount of power is being used wisely, if it is being used democraticaly, if it is being used for the best interests of the people.

The Corporations are the gatekeepers to the world of ideas. Through their advertising and media programming we have acquired many memes and perceptions of the world. They are not the only method by which memes are spread, but they are guarding the best ways to do it, like television. By controlling what the majority of people in the world's only hyperpower see on billboards and TV 24/7 they have complete control of all the memes that could be spread through this effective and popular medium. We are bathed daiy in the ideas they choose to show us. Again, this description should go without ethical bias, we need only ask how it is being used.

Square Deal

"Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-dealing, and commonsense."... "We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.""The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us."

New York State Fair, Syracuse, September 7, 1903

"A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled, and less than that no man shall have."

Speech to veterans, Springfield, IL, July 4, 1903

Ask yourself of every action, what will come of this? What ramifications do my choices have for my future and for the world? What kind of example am I setting for my own habits and those I could inspire?

The Myth Of Inaction

Doing nothing is doing something.

Beating the People With The People's Stick

Courage is doing what scares you and perseverance is doing what bores you.

All too often, tedium is more formidable than terror, and it is the little things that wear people out rather than the big things that scare them off. It takes stubbornness to persist when early successes slow to a crawl and changes become gradual or setbacks are suffered.

When we confront real problems, we have a choice either to despair at the difficulty or be glad for the opportunities to make the world better. Without awareness of what is really going on, warts and all, we have no ability to improve things.

Sometimes you must be steadfast in pursuing your goal even when it seems impossible.

EMPOWER THYSELF

SELF MASTERY

“When the fight begins within himself, a man’s worth something.”

—Robert Browning, Bishop Blougram’s Apology, 1855

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

—Thomas A. Edison

“Little strokes fell great oaks.”

—Benjamin Franklin

“Plan your progress carefully; hour-by hour, day-by-day, month-by-month. Organized activity and maintained enthusiasm are the wellsprings of your power.”

—Paul J. Meyer

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

—George Bernard Shaw

“No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial He will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it.”

—1 Corinthians 10-13

“It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.”

—Eric Hoffer

Purpose Gives Life Meaning

“A life lived just to see another day is unacceptable.”

“Real life is a life that leaves a deposit in the shape of something alive”

“Joy comes from using your potential.”

“Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.”

“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.”

“Life is an effort that deserves a good cause.”

“A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

“This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

“Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will.”

Purpose Inspires Strength

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

“We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering.”

“Focus on your one purpose.”

Changing your life changes your world. People have a choice to make: activism or apathy, creating change or suffering its effects. To suffer is to allow others to drive change, to be adversely affected, to put up with something painful. To prosper is to succeed through embracing change.

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

“When you love to the point that it hurts, you find that eventually the hurt stops.”

VISION

SET GOALS WORTH DOING

“Establishing a goal is often harder than reaching it. Once established, a goal can develop a low pressure zone that pulls resources, energy, and know-how into its realization.”

Once you have a purpose in life, it is time to envision a way of making your dream a reality.

Do you know what you really want?

Are you being stingy with your list?

Is it more like a christmas wish list than a true reflection of your most fundamental desires?

The more thought you put into what you want, the more your goal consciousness grows and the closer you are to achieving your AIMS.

If you have a visionary list of aspirations, the to-do list to achieve it will practically check itself off.

ENVISION, PLAN AND EXECUTE. IF YOU CAN COOK A RECIPE, THIS SHOULD BE A PIECE OF CAKE.

Courage is doing what scares you. All of us live with a myriad of fears of dangers both real and imagined.

Perspective

"I stood in front of a sea of flaming coals fifty feet across, an inferno so hot it belched fire tornadoes. The crowd circled, a hundred thousand thronging faces aglow in firelight.

Some of the revelers seperated from the orbiting masses and gathered at either end of the burn, looking intently into the flames. One by one they mustered the courage to to cross the hellish fires, braving what looked like deadly peril to emerge on the other side with an ecstatic, exhilirated sense of accomplishment in their faces.

I felt drawn to crossing and the rush of adrenaline thrilled me until suddenly it happened: Just as I was about to brave the burning gauntlet, a man crossed with recklessly clumsy haste. He lurched halfway across before he tripped and pitched forwards into the flames, dissapearing into a shower of sparks. Firemen suited like astronauts leapt forwards to carry his melted body towards a medivac helicopter and I know not if he lived or died or which would be worse in his condition.

Should this man's gruesome example dissuade me from trying it? Or was there an opposite lesson? I looked at the charred but unmelted shoes of those who had crossed already and realized that the heat however great was as nothing compared to the danger of painicking and making a rashly fatal misstep. Crossing was safe, fearing was deadly. I calmed myself, gave up the thrilling pleasure to be had in scaring myself, and walked calmly across. I ignored the alarm of my heat blasted skin and recrossed to return to where I stood, unharmed."

Questioning

If we care about the truth, we should seek truth in everything that we do. Either the truth matters or it doesn't. There's no such thing as half-truth, diet truth, just one fact, not quite true enough. Either we care about the truth or we don't.

Listening

Deciding

Exposing Lies

Standing For Something

It is a poor truthseeker who seeks the truth but ignores what they find. Many people find a complete understanding discouraging. The complexity of things can make it hard to understand clearly enough to take a considered position.

READ BETWEEN THE LIES WITH OPEN EYES

Intelligence is illusory without open-mindedness.

How can you hope to understand the truth if you refuse to hear different points of view?

If your ideas are rigid you cannot learn.

Ideas tempt us to become loyal fanatics because it is in their own self-interest to innoculate us against newer and better ideas.

Let what you read and hear spark your thought processes and provide a starting point for your own individual questioning of reality. Empowerment Can’t ram answers down your throat or force acceptance of any narrow doctrine. Even if it tried, you could resist with a critical mind practiced in detecting propaganda.

Evolving Ideas

Sort yourself out because no one can do it for you.

People often have a lot of things to resolve in their lives.

Most of the time, we already know what we should do, we just ask other people so that they will tell us to do it.

This phrase "sort yourself out" comes from the Sort Yourself Out segment on the Newsreal with Sean Kennedy podcast in which advice seekers are often told to start taking responsibility for their own lives and doing what they already know is right.

Asking for advice is not a bad idea, as we are sometimes too stubborn or blind to see our own path in front of us and need someone else's common sense to snap ourselves out of denial.

The important thing is to ask ourselves and others important questions with the intent to do the right thing, whatever it may be, without shirking from the more difficult road of immediate challenge for ultimate benefit.

Required Listening

The Imperadox

"Think for yourself" is an ironic imperative. Just be yourself.

Who are they to say who you are?

There are marketers and influencers who will stop at nothing to tell you who to be and what to think.

Who are they to tell you who to be and what to think?

You decide who you are for yourself.

Think for yourself! Paradoxical as it may be to demand disobedience, ask your own questions, do your own research, form your own opinions, come to your own conclusions and choose your own destiny. Don’t accept anything at face value. You are more valuable as an individual independent thinker than as a blind follower.

If you don’t hold with Empowerment’s principles, fine. don’t consider yourself part of it. Do your own thing. Take what you like, change what you don’t.

Being yourself is the application of critical thought to anything that reflects your self image. These things can be anything from clothing, to behavior, creations and emotions- anything that will communicate your values and opinions to other people. By doing this you can give an accurate picture to yourself and those around you. Being yourself allows you to reflect on your own aesthetics and provides ample justification for a diverse set of personalities, each reflected in an equally diverse presentation of these characters.

This philosophy is in direct opposition to advertising. Advertising tries to influence who people are by telling them what they should wear, think, and act in order to be happy.

Who Are You?

Who are you is the most important question you can ever ask yourself. It is deceptively simple, and there is no wrong answer, but there are better answers than some. If you just reply with your name, you have not answered the question, because then you are saying that you still don't know who that name belongs to. Who you are is what you live for, it is what you believe to be most important about you. It is your purpose. It could be your job, it could be your hobby, it could be the books you love. The important part to remember is that it should be something that you have considered, the answer needs to be more than just a label someone stuck on you. If it is not your answer, then it is theirs.

Who you are may not be original, but that does not matter. You may look the same and dress the same as hundreds of other people, it is the thought that counts. If you put consideration into what you do, into who you are, it does not matter if that someone turns out to be like many others, what matters is that you were the one who figured it out, and you didn't just take what someone else gave you and slapped it on yourself and said, "Yes, this is good enough, this will do."

Individualism

In dealing with larger-than-life ideas, it becomes equally important to empower oneself as an individual with commensurate vigor and independence. To assert ones' own autonomy is of the greatest importance before one immerses oneself in the tides of historic forces and artificial conceptions of the world lest one lose oneself in the tumult and find oneself a pawn to ideas beyond one's control.

Stirner's political doctrine repudiates revolution in the traditional sense, and ridicules social movements aimed at overturning the state as tacitly statist (i.e., aimed at the establishment of a new state thereafter), putting forth instead a unique model of self-empowerment and social change through "union activism"

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