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Experiment overview
My personal awakening and response to the exploitative relationship between technology, capitalism, and digital platforms, expressed through a public manifesto that collected signatures and sparked conversation.
It has emerged from my research into how our fundamental desire for connection and co-existence is being capitalized, prompting me to articulate an alternative vision for staying mindfully connected.
I even shaved my head completely bald in a dramatic gesture of transformation - because nothing says “I’ve unplugged myself from the Matrix” quite like ensuring your shower drain remains hair-free for months.
Main objectives
The manifesto sought to illuminate the troubling relationship of technology and capitalism, revealing how our innate need for connection is being commodified by digital platforms.
By gathering signatures and fostering dialogue, I aimed to build solidarity among those who shared these concerns while challenging the extractive logic of dominant digital systems.
Achieved results
The manifesto successfully captured attention and gathered signatures, creating a point for those sharing similar concerns about our relationship with technology.
While effective in naming problems, the initiative revealed the limitations of critique-centered approaches that focus more on opposition than on constructive alternatives.
Main reflection
Looking back, I recognize that the manifesto contained too much anger toward existing systems, emotions that, while understandable, limited its constructive potential.
This experience taught me the importance of balancing critique with regenerative thinking, not just identifying what we oppose, but actively cultivating the foundations of hope for a new world.
I now understand that effective change requires more than anti-capitalism or opposition, it demands nurturing alternatives that support our civilization rather than merely criticizing what exists. True transformation comes not from anger but from imagining and building inspiring visions and suggesting reachable action to bring them to reality.
Below you can read The Manifesto in its original form as it was published on the dedicated website:
Manifesto
Note: This manifesto is open-ended, evolving and expanding along with our consciousness.
Forget everything you’ve seen before. It was an illusion!
It’s time to say it out loud. What we’ve been functioning in until now hasn’t worked. The patterns that shaped our civilization have collapsed. A civilization of lies that pursued progress only in the material realm.
We blindly chased illusions, fumbling in a reality artificially created for us, whose only purpose was to define and design ideals and ambitions that served the system’s needs.
We functioned blindly in an artificial society that gained visual form and believed in a pseudo-world that we could only admire, scroll through, and like.
The crisis we currently face is not political or economic - it’s a crisis of our consciousness, or rather, its absence.
Rise up, dreamers! Let’s create a new order together. The time has come to disconnect our consciousness from false reality. The time has come to direct technological development toward fulfilling our needs. The time has come to follow values that will elevate us above wild desires for possession.
Technologies were supposed to liberate us
But instead they destroyed, simplified, and enabled manipulation of the reality we function in and uncritically believed in.
The internet consumed our personalities, threw us into loops of constant gratification - artificially induced feelings of happiness that we seek in the external world instead of in our hearts.
We forgot that we are living beings, not producing ones. Somewhere along the way, we lost the joy of simply existing.
The time has come to accept reality as it is, to stop believing in an artificially created sense of stability meant to silence our fear of an uncertain future. The fact is that nothing is certain because everything constantly changes, especially you!
What is the system and what are its needs
The system is a monolithic global organization consisting of a series of organizations cooperating through collaboration or competition. In this arrangement, we humans are at the very bottom of the pyramid, as cogs powering the entire structure.
It’s worth knowing that the system’s goal never was and never will be to satisfy our needs; the rules that govern it work in the opposite direction. We must adapt to the system, which is led not by ideology but by greed and desire for control.
We have been involuntarily entangled and drawn into a web of rules and regulations, and our fate largely depends on people whose decisions we cannot influence in any way.
The time has come to openly criticize the cultural patterns that shape our reality. A culture of lies, hatred, and death. A culture that promoted progress only in the material sphere.
Wake up
What lies before us is an apocalypse, which from the Greek ‘apokalypsis’ means removing the veil and revelation that will expose the lies on which our civilization was built. This will lead us to cultural reevaluation and allow us to shed deeply ingrained patterns that limited our developmental potential.
Rise up, dreamers
This is the moment when, by disconnecting our consciousness from the false reality, we can rebuild our perception of who we truly are.
This is the moment when we can begin to direct technological development toward fulfilling our needs through a critical look at its continuous development.
This is the moment when we can see ourselves as equal members of the global ecosystem and stop perceiving ourselves as separate entities.
This is the moment to transform suffering into joy, emerge from depression, and end growing anxieties. Let’s release all doubts and begin to act with certainty.
A new order is coming!
Now imagine a world where you are, see, hear, understand, and feel more, returning to harmony with nature and ceasing its excessive exploitation.
A world where you live independently and at your own pace, where artificially created goals and ambitions cease to exist for you, where everything around you is built on love and truth.
A world where education focuses on learning and eternal development, and curiosity and imagination are your greatest virtues.
A world where you free your consciousness from culturally imposed limitations and begin to act in complete freedom, unleashing a sense of fulfillment and happiness that you radiate and share with everyone around you.
A world where technologies support your development because your needs dictate the direction of their progress.
A world where material goods are not indicators of prosperity, becoming virtually worthless, and you finally discover that the greatest wealth is other people, and your relationships are regulated by the law of equality between giving and receiving.
Set of values
To build a new order with solid foundations, we need values that will elevate us above wild desires for possession—spiritual values that we will share with our neighbors.
Love because it is the greatest creative force, containing the energy of creation and bringing peace. Love is the pulse of the universe. Without love in the heart, it’s impossible to build a world meant to be filled with it.
Creativity as our highest nature
Truth because only it exists
Equality because we are all humans first
Self-development as the only right path toward expanding our consciousness
Honesty revealed through balanced exchange in mutual relationships
All this must be underpinned by faith in you and your capabilities; then what we create together will certainly succeed.
Transformation plan
The vision for this transformation has been broken down into stages. The task of each is to build tools that will enable us to democratically develop and then distribute positive alternatives.
Permanent stage - education and raising awareness, and creating new cultural patterns that will allow us to gradually abandon limitations blocking our developmental potential.
First stage - disconnecting from system communication platforms.
This step will allow us to disconnect from false reality and become immune to manipulation, and reduce surveillance and monitoring of our behavior and emotions.
Second stage - reducing consumption within the system.
As consumers, we have the right to repair, which is constantly violated in the current system. Practices such as the light bulb conspiracy—deliberately shortening product lifespans—directly affect us by exerting constant pressure to work and satisfy artificially created needs.
The goal of this stage will be to revive culture and infrastructure focused on repair and popularize circular economy solutions.
Third stage - weakening the role of money as a transactional unit within the system, introducing an alternative in the form of a new value exchange carrier.
Previous settlements and product or service value estimations were based on gold or oil. Our goal is to introduce a new variable—the level of natural resource consumption. By including this factor in the calculation process, we will gradually reduce demand for products manufactured without respect for the planet’s dwindling resources. This solution also carries with it a mandatory declaration to ensure transparency in the production process.
This stage will also include creating a transaction culture based on talent exchange and time banks.
Fourth stage - disconnecting from the communication system
Creating an alternative to global communication solutions in the form of local and free computer networks developed on the principles of wireless community networks.
Fifth stage - disconnecting from the energy system
Enabling “off the grid” functioning, completely breaking away from non-renewable energy sources, and expanding technologies that enable energy storage.
The listed stages have the right to evolve in the course of working on their implementation. This stems from the fact that none of us can predict what new thought streams and talents will be awakened in us by the collective expansion of consciousness.
TUKO PAMOJA
Imagine you’re in prison, and all you dream of is escape. How to organize it? It will be necessary to dig a tunnel underground. One person cannot do this, but imagine that ten or even twenty people are working toward the same goal - if they work together, if each of them supports each other, they will be able to collectively complete the tunnel and escape.
Moreover, no one can escape from prison without the help of those who have already succeeded. One prisoner cannot find and contact such people; an organization is needed to make this possible.
In the Swahili language, there is a saying ‘Tuko Pamoja,’ which literally means ‘we are together’ — we are a group and a force, we share a sense of purpose and motivation.
When your values become your goal, and your chosen path is guided by passion and empathy, Tuko Pamoja will ensure that we succeed because we will be in this together.