Peter Stuifzand

Poking from the sideline

I really love the thoughtful blog posts and videos from people who are in the middle of the thing they’re talking about. Those people know what they are talking about and also have a way to make a change for the better.

Christopher Hitchens was a author and journalist and fighter against religion and absolute morality. His articles in Vanity Fair are both eloquent and interesting. Also see him speaking against dictatorships and totalitarian regimes of all kinds.

Eben Moglen is a law professor, who started the Freedom Box Foundation and talks about privacy, free software and how Facebook is a great way to collect information and help people spy on other people. He gives amazing talks about these subjects, which you should see if you think this is just a bit interesting.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Lawrence Krauss, astrophysicist and theoretical physicist, both talking about the wonders of the universe, the things we know and don’t know.

These are mostly very long videos, but if you’re only a little bit interesed you should give this some of your attention.

In How to change the world professor Moglen talks about how you can change the world if you know exactly what you want and exactly how to do it. And if you take a look at his fight against software patents and “spying for free” you will get an idea about how to understand what he means by changing the world.

Still, if I see these people talk and read what they write, I don’t think I have a chance to make the same impact they had on peoples lives. You could ask, is that necessary? And I would answer, I’m not sure. But I would hate to lose the freedoms we have (or had).

But to get back to the title of this post, I sometimes feel like I’m yelling from the sidelines and poking here and there, but don’t have any impact, at all.

So for me there is this way to get around this: I want to increase freedom for people and myself. Increasing freedom is a good thing. I don’t have to impose rules on other people, I don’t want to say: you have to this or that. I wouldn’t like other people telling me to do this or that.

© 2023 Peter Stuifzand