{"id":45904,"date":"2022-05-31T10:49:27","date_gmt":"2022-05-31T15:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/?page_id=45904"},"modified":"2022-06-01T06:58:48","modified_gmt":"2022-06-01T11:58:48","slug":"the-moral-virtues-of-going-offshore","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/the-moral-virtues-of-going-offshore\/","title":{"rendered":"The Moral Virtues Of Going Offshore"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By Paul Rossenberg<\/h3>\n

We all understand the economic virtues of going offshore, but I\u2019m convinced that they run second to moral and self-developmental virtues.\u00a0 Going offshore…separating… even \u201crunning away\u201d are important, positive experiences.<\/p>\n

There are two primary aspects to this: the internal and the external.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll begin talking about the external, then move on to the more important part of this, the internal.<\/p>\n

Neo-Tyranny\u2019s Kryptonite<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a new tyranny in town.\u00a0 We\u2019ve all seen it: Mass surveillance (including through Silicon Valley mega-corporations), facial recognition, big data analysis and the lack of any limits. We\u2019re right to be horrified, but the problem goes still deeper, because this is the focal point of a new kind of power.\u00a0 The new power isn\u2019t burdened with the slow, difficult process of passing laws and marshaling large, armed men to force compliance.<\/p>\n

Rather, it operates almost silently.<\/p>\n

(Relax, there is good news coming, and you\u2019re part of it.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an example:<\/strong><\/p>\n

More or less every person of the middle class or above has a credit report that drastically affects his or her life. Yet control over the credit rating agencies rests not with the state, but with the banks who acknowledge those ratings.<\/p>\n

If, next year, the agencies decide that credit ratings will be cut for citizens who fail to insure their property according to certain standards, millions of people will be pushed into upgrading their insurance, and promptly.<\/p>\n

All that is required for such an operation is networked power: A few whispers in linked corporate boardrooms rather than long fights in congress. It should be no surprise, therefore, that building new networks of power is the ruling fetish of the age. Indeed, the new legislative efforts \u2013 NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obamacare and so on \u2013 have been precisely those that created networks.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re like me, the idea of networked power \u2013 massive, precise power without a face \u2013 is troubling.\u00a0 But this system has one major linchpin, which boils down to this:\u00a0 It requires more or less everyone to play their game. If any significant
\nnumber opt out, their system soon enough fails.<\/p>\n

And so,the great bet of the net workers is this: that the masses are incapable of acting against what they\u2019re taught\u2026 that even short-term pain is too great an obstacle for them to transcend.<\/p>\n

By dropping out of the system in any significant way \u2013 and going offshore is a powerful one \u2013 we upend a silent tyranny. Going offshore alone won\u2019t do it, but it\u2019s a significant act, and if combined with making all your Internet transmissions invisible to them, and perhaps taking a few other steps, your contribution will be significant.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Not to be too dramatic about it, but by going offshore and going as \u201cdark\u201d as possible, you\u2019re fighting\u00a0 the enslavement of the next generation.<\/p>\n

The Tyranny Inside<\/strong><\/h4>\n

All the tyrannies of history have rested upon human weaknesses.\u00a0 Acting on his own, Joe Stalin would have killed a few dozen before someone got rid of him. But by manipulating and deceiving
\npeople, he gained their cooperation and killed tens of millions. Most of the people who cooperated wouldn\u2019t have killed on their own, but Stalin took advantage of their weaknesses. They were intimidated, afraid to stand upon their own judgments, and conditioned to believe in the \u201cnew Soviet man.\u201d<\/p>\n

I like to say that fear and shame are chemical weapons, and they really are. Our weakness is that those chemicals can be generated in our bodies by manipulative outsiders. I\u2019ll forgo a detailed explanation, but we grow past this weakness by believing in and understanding ourselves.<\/p>\n

That should be a very normal thing, but it isn\u2019t. All the large and centralized systems of this world oppose it: They need us to march compliantly along, regurgitating their slogans and never relying upon self-generated thoughts. As it turns out, breaking away is a major factor in repairing ourselves. And the reason is fairly simple:<\/p>\n

Living with others inevitably leads to a web of expectations imposed upon us, a web that can engulf nearly every aspect of our lives. This isn\u2019t necessarily malicious; it\u2019s simply what happens among groups of people. But this web of expectations locks us in place, and so we go through life playing \u201cour role.\u201d<\/p>\n

By breaking away, you strip off the <\/strong>accumulations of your lifetime and <\/strong>find yourself underneath.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

That\u2019s why I say that going offshore, or other variation on the theme, are virtues\u2026 moral virtues. And if you spend time studying history, you will find this virtue in most of humanity\u2019s greatest.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a partial list:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, the Apostles, Confucius, Diogenes, Pythagoras, Sappho, Cicero, John Locke, Thomas Paine, Victor Hugo, Daniel Defoe, Frederic Chopin, Leo Tolstoy, George Orwell, and Albert Einstein.<\/p>\n

Breaking away involves risk, and we need to take risks and expose ourselves to the possibility of failure. Being fully alive comes only from self-generated causes. (Anything external is a secondhand experience.) You must break your own inertia, break through your fears, and move because of your own desires. And this internal breaking of tyranny is more potent than defeating it externally. Your friends and family need to see you doing it.\u00a0 Even if they complain, it will open new and crucial possibilities to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cOutside\u201d is where the best things happen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Paul Rossenberg We all understand the economic virtues of going offshore, but I\u2019m convinced that they run second to moral and self-developmental virtues.\u00a0 Going offshore…separating… even \u201crunning away\u201d are important, positive experiences. There are two primary aspects to this: the internal and the external. I\u2019ll begin talking about the external, then move on to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":702,"featured_media":43430,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"yst_prominent_words":[14536,36659,5002,36644,4646,19606,9113,2022,36660,4621,36647,2061,1793,8224,15287,4824,36658,36643,20054,36131],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/45904"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45904"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/45904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45931,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/45904\/revisions\/45931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=45904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}