Taking a Second to Reflect

“[after Bruce’s funeral, Blake walks to his car, Gordon is behind him]
Commissioner Gordon: Can I change your mind? About quitting the force?
[Blake shakes his head]
Blake: You know, what you said about structures becoming shackles? You were right and I can’t take it. The injustice. I mean, no one’s ever gonna know who saved an entire city.
Commissioner Gordon: They know. It was the Batman.”  –The Dark Knight Rises

That is exactly what this blog is about. Fifty years from now no one will know who preserved our internet freedom and rights, all they’ll know is that it was Anonymous. Anonymous: the loose group of ordinary people who can’t take the injustice, the group that pulled countless pranks, the group that committed crimes against humanity, the group that took down a bill in congress, the idea, the symbol, the group that changed the world.

From this blog I take that we are a part of history right now. Anonymous, and the events correlating will go down in history like the Boston Tea Party, or if you dare to go bigger, the American Revolution. Is that to say that I’m going to go Anonymous and wreak some havoc on the government? I doubt it, but I wouldn’t tell you if I was now would I? 😉

This blog has taught me that its not about the answers, but rather the struggle for the answers. I mean, I haven’t gotten to many conclusions on this blog, just posted a lot of questions, and if I found all the answers this blog wouldn’t have really gotten far. Never stop asking questions, even if you don’t get the answers you are looking for, you will get answers that maybe you weren’t looking for. This blog has lead me to think about things that I would have never imagined crossing my mind. I came into it not even knowing about Anonymous, and now its just a natural concept to me; its real, its happening. It’s sad, but not many people even realize that.

Never take anything for granted. I strongly encourage for you to always think through things for yourself. Higher thinking gives you power. That power can be used to do great and terrible things. Use that power to RISE up and make a difference in your world, or in somebody else’s world. As Alfred would say “…he [batman] can make the choice that no one else can make, the right one”. You are in control of your own decisions, so embrace that power and make the right choice.

So I leave you with these words:
Anonymous is the hero the world deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So they’ll hunt them. Because they can take it. Because they’re not our hero. Anonymous is a silent guardian, a watchful protector, and Digital Dark Knight.

A Theological Thought

A few weeks ago I compared Anonymous to Jesus in the post Anonymous the Catalyst. So I was thinking “What they hey”, let’s talk about it some more. I am a man of faith. Is it possible for someone to be religious, and take part in Anonymous? Is it right from a theological stand point?

It seems to me that. from what I’ve seen of Anonymous, not many of them care much for God or religion. I’m not making a judgment upon them, and I don’t want to they are all the same person (though that’s the point of Anonymous is it not?), but rather an observation that I have made based on the way they conduct their actions and so forth.

Was the American Revolution a violation of religion? They were religious people; and they went against their government in the name of God. The Declaration of Independence begins with “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Romans 13:1-4 says “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. ² Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. ³ For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. ⁴ For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”

How do we know when an issue gives us the right entitled by God to declare ourselves against the government. Or is there really a point where we can do that?

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are a good example from the Bible of going against the government. They were essentially protesters of their government. They would not submit to the terms of Nebuchadnezzar, and yet in the end God saved them in the end.

We are to follow the example of Jesus Christ, and Jesus’ life would live true to Romans 13. Jesus spoke out against false religious leaders, but he never once spoke out about the injustices of the Roman government. He died for us under a that corrupt system.

There are examples on both sides of the spectrum here. There must be some sort of line where if crossed you are sanctioned to go against the governmental authority, but where that line may be I have no clue. As for Anonymous, it is kind of different because of the way they go about doing things. They don’t always do “good” in a sense of social morality to say the least.

A lot of questions here, not a lot of answers. I’m no theologian, just curious.

Oh! …and Batman becomes a Jesus figure in The Dark Knight Rises because he takes away the bomb, and sacrifices himself for Gotham. (Just had to connect this to the Dark Knight some how.)

Reaching Out

Batman doesn’t have all the answers, he needs Alfred to help him out sometimes. So I’m trying to reach out to people who know more about Anonymous than I do, and that can answer my questions better, but I’m having trouble wording my questions, and just getting answers. I’ve tried to contact Gabriella Coleman, Amber Lyon, and Quinn Norton who are all journalists that know a lot about Anonymous. I asked them “Do you think that Anonymous, with the way that it and society are evolving, will it ever rise to a place where it is not looked at as the villain anymore?”. Gabriella was the only one that responded, and she I should read her work, and that’d I’d find my answers there. That was true of course, and she really had some great stuff, but I just feel like I should ask a different question. I asked an Anon who follows my twitter if he thinks that Anonymous is losing its original trolling attitude in the midst of all this activism. He hasn’t said anything yet either.
How do I ask simple enough questions about the ethics of Anonymous without requiring too long of an answer?
Any ideas on better questions, or just a better way to go about this? Any feed back would be greatly appreciated.

An Unexpected Post

Upon the release of the film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey I began reading the book, and just thought that there was something to be said on the matter. Why talk about the hobbit here? Bilbo Baggins was not a dark knight, a white knight, or a knight at all for that matter. He was an your ordinary little hobbit from the Shire where he loved his ordinary life in his comfortable hobbit hole. Yet, half way through this story that ordinary hobbit becomes something extraordinary, and the main reason for that is just that he tried things he never knew he could accomplish. Yes, Gandalf showed up on his doorstep to push him into this journey, but he eventually took it upon himself to do great things. 

The point here is that Gandalf isn’t going to show up at your doorstep pushing you out into the world, and send you on a life changing adventure. It’s up to us to push ourselves out of our comfort zones and do things we would never dare do. If we delve in we will learn, and we will accomplish things that we never knew possible just like Mr. Baggins. He found himself a magic ring to help him along, maybe we have to start our adventure before we can find out what our magic ring might be; what our unique abilities might be. 

So how does this relate to Anonymous? Well, its as simple as going on an adventure. Venture into the world, into a group, into Anonymous, or just become a part of something. Just put your foot in the water, and see what happens. You never know what you’re capable of until you test your capabilities. 

Anonymous the Catalyst

I found this blog post recently by Damon Garcia called The Dark Knight Rises, He Is Risen Indeed: Thoughts On A Better Resurrection. This post is about how the Dark Knight Rises compares with the resurrection of Jesus. I strongly encourage you to go and read it.
I would like to talk about how what he says relates to Anonymous. Damon says:

“In the middle of the film Officer Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt; swoon ladies, swoon) asks Bruce Wayne about why he would wear a mask as Batman. Bruce tells him it’s to protect the people closest to him but then he hits on something that stuck with me more than anything in the film.

Bruce Wayne: The idea was to be a symbol. Batman could be anybody. That was the point.
Blake: Well, it’s damn good to see him back.
Bruce Wayne: Not everybody agrees.
Blake: They’ll figure that out in the end.

The idea of the Batman was never supposed to be idolatry of Batman. The Batman was supposed to only serve as a catalyst to spur everyone else into actually making a difference.”
I couldn’t say that last line better in any way, and the same concept applies to Anonymous. Anonymous is not a hero, not an idol, but rather a call to action; a catalyst for revolution. If they became a hero, or were idolized they would get in the way of their own purpose.

…Yet society is always out to idolize things; to make idols of things. We want the hero; the clean cut, white knight, that can do no evil. But that’s not how it works. Idolizing things doesn’t do the world any good. Taking action is what gets things done in the world.

The idea is to be a symbol. Anonymous can be anybody. That is the point.
Hopefully they’ll figure that out in the end.

What do you think?

CISPA Returns

Aaron Swartz was correct in saying SOPA was just the beginning, and that this bill will now come back in multiple forms. In order to stop this bill we need to compromise it. I can be good, but it needs change. Change that only the people can make.

The Name is Bond, James Bond

So you’re probably wondering what this has to do with The Dark Knight. Not much… other than I’ve hear the new Bond movie Skyfall called “The Dark Knight of the Bond series”, which I don’t necessarily agree with, but we’re gonna go with it because Skyfall addresses some very interesting modern technological topics.

There are popups that continue to appear on M‘s computer throughout the film, and they end with the phrase “Think on your sins”. Every time this occurred I could not help but think of Anonymous. A little lulz program and then “Expect us”. In the end this was just one person behind the hacking, but none the less it was a form of online terrorism.
Bond represents a digital immigrant, and Q is a digital native. They have this encounter where Q says to Bond “Well, I’ll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field”.

So what does this mean?
A. It means that modern hacktivists tactics, and this sort of content is making it’s way into main stream media. Its becoming more widely know as a reality rather than something out of a futuristic movie. Which you’re probably thinking isn’t that big of a deal because you have a pretty good understanding of Anonymous. In my experience there are a great many people with no knowledge that groups like Anonymous exist at all.
B. It poses this battle which is going on in today’s society between the digital realm, and the physical realm. A reoccurring theme in this movie is that sometimes the old way is the best way. There is this big digital cat and mouse chase between Q and the villain, and the villain does so much through his computer, but in the end a knife is what kills the villain, and the old way prevails.

This brings up the question of how the battle of the physical and digital realm will play out in the future, or rather will the physical realm and digital realm become one in the same?

Aaron Swartz on The Dark Knight

So it has been pointed out to me that Aaron Swartz made a blog post, in his blog Raw Thought, about The Dark Knight in November of last year called What Happens in The Dark Knight. I will talk about some key points in his post, but I would really encourage you to go a read it for yourself, it is extremely insightful into what the Dark Knight is all about.

I really want to talk about what Aaron says at the end of his post about the Joker. In the final paragraph he says
“The movie concludes by emphasizing that Batman must become the villain, but as usual it never stops to notice that the Joker is actually the hero. But even though his various games only have one innocent casualty, he’s much too crazy to be a viable role model for Batman. His inspired chaos destroys the criminals, but it also terrorizes the population. Thanks to Batman, society doesn’t devolve into a self-interested war of all-against-all, as he apparently expects it to, but that doesn’t mean anyone enjoys the trials.”

A few weeks ago I made a post called Joker Philosophy, and in this post I talked about how these people who “want to watch the world burn”, like the joker, are the people who keep Anonymous from becoming the very thing that it is fighting against. You can go back and read the post to find out exactly what I’m talking about.

If you combine what I said and what Aaron said it comes out something like this. The lulz people are like the Joker, and the political activists in anonymous are like Batman. By what Aaron said, the Joker and Batman essentially worked to together to take down crime in Gotham without knowing it. The Joker even says to Batman at one point “You complete me.”, and how true of a statement that really is. Anonymous works because it has these two sides; because it is so loosely organized. The political activists take the fall for what the lulz group does, but they keep the group in tact. These two sides of Anonymous work together like yin and yang; they complete each other.

I also wanted to point out that he ended this post with “Thus Master Wayne is left without solutions. Out of options, it’s no wonder the series ends with his staged suicide”. And it was just that, that most likely caused Aaron to tragically take his own life this January. This was the last post on the blog. We can’t ever forget this Aaron Swartz’ life. His life and death carry meaning, and we can’t ever let that meaning fade away.  He was a hero.

What Inspired this Blog

This blog was all started because I am a huge fan of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, and when I learned of the existence of Anonymous I immediately made a connection with Batman. 

Phrases from the movies such as 
“not a hero”
“a silent guardian, a watchful protector”

Batman and Anonymous are both masked vigilantes who fight in the name of freedom. They are both looked down upon by society because their tendency to be outside the law, and then the dark knight rises to be revered by those people who had looked down on him. I feel like Anonymous is in the process of rising in that same way. 

All of these thoughts got me thinking about all the possibilities within the Dark Knight Trilogy that I could use in this blog. Because these films tell such a good story, and in a great way, I could take on all aspects, and just use it to talk philosophy of Anonymous. The joker is all chaos and anarchy. Bane, the masked man, brings up questions about order, and organized crime. 

It all works quite well and I think that looking at Anonymous through this new lens is really helping me learn a lot about who they are, and just what kind of world we live in now. I hope that it does the same for you.