An Enigma of sorts

 A disturbing trend in corporate policy is companies having a "social media policy" restricting the freedom of speech during non-work hours.  Someone once said freedom of speech is not the same as freedom of consequences.  Why do corporations think it is within their realm to enforce consequences for behavior that is done off company time?  Remember - you represent the company 24-7-365 and what you do reflects on the company.  This reeks of a social credit score being enforced in its infancy.  Be careful with what you let become known about yourself and your life.  Be an enigma and carefully manage your brand in a professional environment and in the real world.

Historically I have been an avid Facebook user.  The appeal of spouting off Facebook posts with every thought that flashes through my mind is strangely appealing.  Think of me as being as temperamental and mercurial on Facebook as Donald Trump was on twitter except more crude and vulgar.  It's also a form of self-care to release my thoughts and concerns from my body to prevent keeping them bottled up inside destroying my mental state.  It's a release and coping mechanism for me and part of my self-care routine.  When I wrote on here I tend to be more thoughtful and composed as a write without ripping the first thing off that comes to mind.  Posting on Facebook or twitter is throwing a grenade over the fence to see what happens.  Writing a blog is shooting a missile into the universe with a crafted message.  Corporate America would obviously frown on such behavior.  In the early years of Facebook I thought it would be great to have all my coworkers as friends.  I learned otherwise when someone from the company hauled me into my office and told me it is not my job to comment on problems it is my job to fix problems.  Noted.  After that exchange, I kicked almost everyone I worked with out of my 'friends' list and restricting the audience to my more colorful posts to 'friends except X,Y,Z,A,B,C as a way to protect myself against these shenanigans.  I also started using an alias and an old email address that hadn't been actively used for 25 years.  Protect thy self.  Using what I write outside of working hours against me in my career is misguided as it has absolutely no bearing of the quality of work I produce.  I closed my Facebook.  I miss seeing what people are up to and miss seeing pictures of what my family is doing while I am away.

I tried twitter and while interesting I thought it was a bad idea because people might use the content of what/who I follow against me if it is not in alignment with someone else's (ie corporate America) thinking of what is appropriate, important or truthful.  Because the truth is no longer objective.  It is a subjective perspective.  That irritates me.  What if I follow someone who thinks the Maui wild fires were deliberate and intentional to cheaply seize the land from people who can't afford to rebuild?  What if I follow someone like Peter Navarro because I agree with his views on economic development and production being brought back to America while making every effort to decouple our economy from China?  Going against the globalist agenda is considered a deliberate OSHA violation with the potential to jeopardize employment status.  I never had an instagram, tiktok, snapchat...  Just another way for propaganda to be directed your way and another way for the thoughts created and consumed to be collected, monitored and used against you.

I don't promote my limited social media activities to anyone but the closest of friends.  As it turns out, freedom of speech does not equate to freedom of consequences and there are many people acting as enforcers if they don't like what I have to say, think about or believe.  Limit exposure to being known and generating controversy.  All my employer needs to know about me is the quality of work I produce for the company.  The rest of my life is none of their business.

There has been talk of creating a central bank digital currency regulated and controlled by the government.    Remember when the truckers were protesting covid mandates in Ottawa, Canada?  The truckers dug in their heels and created gridlock for weeks to take a stand against being forced into vaccination.  The truckers refused to vacate the downtown area until their demands of exemption from covid regulation and vaccination enforcement were met.  Until the government turned off their ability to access their financial resources.  The government did not like their behavior and cut the legs of their protest off at the knee.  Debilitating their ability to survive economically.  Government did not like their behavior and acted to cease their protest.  It worked.  But it was totally OK to protest other things - like racial injustice, BLM etc.  It wouldn't surprise me if government added to their preferred protesters economic situation in an effort to erode the rule of law and social justice.  Not cool.  

What I'm getting at is at some point, through the use of the patriot act and technological surveillance, the government will know what you think because it's all stored on a server somewhere.  They know what you think, what triggers you, what you agree with and what you disagree with if you document any of your thoughts or beliefs online.  With the use of cell phones, connected cars, etc they can track everywhere you go.  They can profile you.  You spend too much time in a bar.  Slice and dice you into nice little demographic groups, risk groups or whatever.  Now that all this information is documented it can be used to create a social currency and be scored.  Those that are compliant, don't make waves and don't generate controversy will have a high social currency score.  If you're like me and speak out against globalism, climate change without being afraid of consequences, you could have a low social currency score.  Your social currency score can then limit your access to economic resources such as utilizing your earned income, access to credit to get a financial loan, or they could turn off your electric car and restrict your ability to transport yourself to work and force you to use public transportation or carpool.  Your carbon footprint is too big.  Take the bus.  You're at the bar too much, you stop at McDonald's too frequently - we're going to assign a risk level to you that will correspond to what kind of insurance is available to you and how much you pay for it.  They'll know if you speed, roll through stop signs, how much electricity you use. to cool your house  They can make your life a living hell because someone, somewhere makes a judgement that you keep your house too cold and they're going to charge you more for electricity.  Especially if it's used during peak times.  

I guess the government already has access to this information but it is a little more complicated for them to access because some people pay in cash and other people use credit cards.  Technically information about economic activity should not be shared with the government unless there is a subpoena of some sort.  Our lives should be segmented or siloed.  No one should be able to paint a portrait of my life based on tracking what I do and how live.  What I spend money on should be between me and the provider.  What I think about should be my business.  How much I drive and where I go is no one's business.  Technology has made it easy for every aspect our lives to be tracked, intertwined and tangled into a web that can be extorted by the government.

I've never quite understood why a large swath of the population in a developed/first world civilization jumps on to the latest high tech thing.  Electric cars, cloud connected thermostats paid for by the electric company, social media, etc.  Combine that with a digital currency and the government has the ability to monitor your behavior, profile you, enact policies to change your behavior, your consumption, what you think, where you go and use all of that against you if they dislike what you do or enforce the behavior someone judges as desirable.  It's very disturbing and I'm surprised more people aren't concerned about or even think about it.  The best thing to do is live your life like you lived in the 1980s or earlier.  When technology wasn't so prevalent.  Drive an old analog car.  Use an analog thermostat.  Pay for things in cash.  Turn off your phone when not in use.  Get rid of your cell phone and use a land line.  Stop posting your life on social media. Stop consuming media on devices that can be tracked or services that can be monitored.  The more someone or the government knows about you, the more someone can use it against you.  Technology can be used to gather a holistic portrait of who you are - subject to judgement, retaliation and modification.  Who you are is no one's business but your own.