Philosophical Soapbox
The following is a treatise on the philosophical aspects of using a service like the BERN. What follows is nothing but personal opinion regarding values, responsibilities, and liberties. None of this is required reading, nor is it meant to cast the BERN in policial light. To be clear the BERN is an apolitical entity. It merely facilitates communication, it is not a lens of any kind, just a mouthpiece.
While I may have built this website, and am an active participant in the BERN, the BERN is not mine, and my own ideological underpinnings hold no sway over it.
Fundamental Human Needs
Human existence requires several fundamental resources. Among them, food, water, shelter, air, and the like. As soon as we add more than one human to the mix, the ability to communicate soon rises to become another fundamental need.
Without access to reliable communication, it is impossible to make infomred decisions. Without communication, we are all individuals without the capacity for cooperation.
On the hierarchy of needs, communication may not fill a hungry belly, or quench a thirst, but it can inform you where, how, and when it is safe to do those things.
Centralization of Authority
We live in a highly centralized society. People from untold miles away make policies which have direct impact on how you live your life. This may take the shape of State or Corporate actors, or more often, a combination of the two. These policy makers don’t know you and don’t have your best interests at heart, yet they are making decisions that reach into your life and change it in fundamental ways.
How many things do you own in life that someone can not just turn off? Food, water, internet, mobile and land-lines…even your car can, and indeed have been, remotely disabled by “Official” acts.
The BERN, and mesh networks like it, can never be turned off as they are user generated and will exist as long as there are users to populate it. A small $35 investment in a mesh radio may not seem like much. But once you hold something in your hand that can not be taken away from you or turned off by and act of policy or legislation, your perspective on things shifts.
“Central authority is bad. The bias should be for freedom. And without a central authority, there are lots of little authorities, and we learn which ones to trust.” -John Stossel
You begin to wonder why you ever put control of these basic human needs in the hands of so few, so far removed from you and yours. It should make you mad, and once you get mad…you’ll inevitably want to start to do something about it.
Parallel Systems
During the Cold War, countries under the heel of the Soviet Union were successful in shaking off the authoritarian yoke by building, maintaining, and working within so-called, Parallel Systems.
Rather than utilize State services for things like banking, libraries, goods, or culture, the people created their own parallel systems to serve one another. In so doing, the official agencies withered from lack of use while the people received better, more reliable goods and services, through these unofficial, parallel systems.
It is no exaggeration to suggest that the collapse of the USSR and the rise of progressive democracies throughout the former Eastern Bloc nations owes significantly to those brave citizens who were able to establish and maintain those parallel systems in the face of an authoritarian government trying to stop them.
Promise of the Mesh
The BERN, and mesh networks like it, represents a wholly different paradigm of communications. Nobody owns the BERN, but everyone with a radio owns a part of it.
If no one owns it, no one controls it. If no one controls it, no one can shut it down. If no one can shut it down, it’s more powerful than anyone who would try!
There is no corporation to commoditize your personal data, boosting corporate profits by selling your private information to the highest bidder. There are no advertisements, no shadow-bans, no algorithms, no commercials, and no content moderation of any kind.
The $35 radio you hold in your hand may not seem like much. After all, it is a lot of work to achieve something as mundane as text messaging. However, that $35 is an investment in buying a slice of independence. A tiny victory in principal, in a world hell bent on creating a subservient race of paid subscribers and consumers for the most basic of human needs.
There aren’t too many things left in this world like this, but here is one way you can take something back from those who would use technology as a yoke to control you.
No one controls the BERN, Everyone controls the BERN.
Does that make the BERN some kind of Prepper thing?
The BERN and other mesh networks are what you make of them. They can be used for something as mundane as local, neighborhood gossip, road and weather reports, or something as serious as emergency search & rescue.
The use cases are as varied as your own imagination!
One person’s prepper tool is another person’s gossip box is another person’s dog-tracker…let us know the innovative uses you’ve found for yours!
Do your part for yourself, your family, and your community, join the BERN, or your local mesh network today!