Black Ops Peace Corps

In the stories on the front page, It's made clear that the operatives
and the organization focus on keeping their actions a secret. That's
what differentiates what Evoke Agents do from standard disaster relief
workers. And I think more than one of us may be asking "Why?" Why does
Evoke operate in the shadows? I'm going to outline a couple reasons I
think there is for this.

1: Intellectual Property.

A lot of solutions to problems are patented. Ideas are owned and
solutions are sold to people. People who don't have the money don't
have the solution. For example, Gene-Engineered seeds might be able to
thrive in conditions that would kill normal crops, but you have to buy
them from the company. I'm sure you've all heard Monsanto horror
stories. Another food example is permaculture. As a design process you
can't really control who uses permaculture, but the basic permaculture
manual costs 150 dollars, and the actual certification course costs 1-2
thousand dollars. This is out of the reach of many 1st-world citizens,
much less 3rd-world subsistence farmers.

The right book, the right medicine, the right technology to solve your
crisis may already exist somewhere. Now there are a growing number of
open source solutions, but not every proprietary technology has an open
source equivalent. We could work to create open source versions of
everything, but remember that one of the secrets of innovation is if
someone else has invented something, you don't have to. Every ounce of
effort spent creating open source alternatives could have been spent
creating new technologies (that would be released opne source, natch.)
It's wasted energy.

A secret organization doesn't have to pay lip-service to Intellectual
property laws. They can Pirate, copy, and share whatever they want. An
Evoker could, for example, make or acquire a PDF copy of the
Permaculture manual, and then email a copy to anybody who sent them a
PM requesting it. That'd get useful information into the hands of
people who need it affordably. This would be illegal, of course, but it
helps.

2. Technically Illegal activity

Many of the things we do may be illegal, depending on where you are.
Guerilla Gardening involves planting on land you don't own. Many
energy-efficient and eco-friendly options for you home won't be up to
code. Your neighborhood association or city ordinance may prevent
things like owning chickens or planting veggies in your front lawn.
Carrying useful tools like a Hori Hori may violate weapon laws where
you are. Teaching Kids something useful to do to help their families
could violate child labor laws. Maybe you need permits to build or to
hunt and going through all the red tape is more trouble than it's
worth. And that's just my tally for today.

There's too much to do too fast to worry about petty legalities. We
still need to behave like good human beings: No stealing, no murder,
the usual stuff that should go without saying. But obeying the law in
of it self is no virtue, especially when it prevents you from taking
effective action.

3. Reprisal.

Lets face it, some people will get pissed at us for doing what we do.
Some people will resent us as meddlers. Others will see organizing
people as a threat. Local warlords don't want people to get together
and learn to work together: their control depends on keeping people
weak, scared and separated. Less obvious tyrants won't appreciate local
independence, because a people who don't depend on them for their
necessities are less controllable. Even governments that ostensibly
have the best interest of their people at heart are a little afraid of
strong citizens. The essential story of government is that you need
them to solve problems. As they prove unable to effectively deal with
modern crises, that fiction is all the more important. They need their
citizens to believe they are doing the best that can be done. If we
come in, organize people to solve their own problems, the ones
governments couldn't solve, then they might ask what that government is
good for anyway. I can see that making some, if not all, governments or
members of governments uneasy. And we know what happens to people who
make governments uneasy in many of the places we work.

4. Mistique

Lets face it, being part of a secret organization is COOL. This
attracts members. It also is good PR. When something goes right we get
to take credit, when something doesn't work as well as it might have,
we were never there. Our failures get forgotten and our successes
magnified. This is the exact opposite of what happens to transparent
organizations. Also, since it makes good story, people are more likely
to spread the story.

I don't expect everybody to agree that all those are good reasons to be
secret. I think any one of them alone would be a decent reason. There
are Non-clandestine organizations that do what evoke does, so I'm not
sure there's a real need to come out of the shadows. That work is maybe
for someone else.

Or maybe I just like being a Black Ops peace corps. may be asking "Why?" Why does Evoke operate in the shadows? I'm going to outline a couple reasons I think there is for this.

1: Intellectual Property.

A lot of solutions to problems are patented. Ideas are owned and solutions are sold to people. People who don't have the money don't have the solution. For example, Gene-Engineered seeds might be able to thrive in conditions that would kill normal crops, but you have to buy them from the company. I'm sure you've all heard Monsanto horror stories. Another food example is permaculture. As a design process you can't really control who uses permaculture, but the basic permaculture manual costs 150 dollars, and the actual certification course costs 1-2 thousand dollars. This is out of the reach of many 1st-world citizens, much less 3rd-world subsistence farmers.

The right book, the right medicine, the right technology to solve your crisis may already exist somewhere. Now there are a growing number of open source solutions, but not every proprietary technology has an open source equivalent. We could work to create open source versions of everything, but remember that one of the secrets of innovation is if someone else has invented something, you don't have to. Every ounce of effort spent creating open source alternatives could have been spent creating new technologies (that would be released open source, natch.) It's wasted energy.

A secret organization doesn't have to pay lip-service to Intellectual property laws. They can Pirate, copy, and share whatever they want. An Evoker could, for example, make or acquire a PDF copy of the Permaculture manual, and then email a copy to anybody who sent them a PM requesting it. That'd get useful information into the hands of people who need it afford-ably. This would be illegal, of course, but it helps.

2. Technically Illegal activity

Many of the things we do may be illegal, depending on where you are. Guerrilla Gardening involves planting on land you don't own. Many energy-efficient and eco-friendly options for you home won't be up to code. Your neighborhood association or city ordinance may prevent things like owning chickens or planting veggies in your front lawn. Carrying useful tools like a Hori Hori may violate weapon laws where you are. Teaching Kids something useful to do to help their families could violate child labor laws. Maybe you need permits to build or to hunt and going through all the red tape is more trouble than it's worth. And that's just my tally for today.

There's too much to do too fast to worry about petty legalities. We still need to behave like good human beings: No stealing, no murder, the usual stuff that should go without saying. But obeying the law in of it self is no virtue, especially when it prevents you from taking effective action.

3. Reprisal.

Lets face it, some people will get pissed at us for doing what we do. Some people will resent us as meddlers. Others will see organizing people as a threat. Local warlords don't want people to get together and learn to work together: their control depends on keeping people weak, scared and separated. Less obvious tyrants won't appreciate local independence, because a people who don't depend on them for their necessities are less controllable. Even governments that ostensibly have the best interest of their people at heart are a little afraid of strong citizens. The essential story of government is that you need them to solve problems. As they prove unable to effectively deal with modern crises, that fiction is all the more important. They need their citizens to believe they are doing the best that can be done. If we come in, organize people to solve their own problems, the ones governments couldn't solve, then they might ask what that government is good for anyway. I can see that making some, if not all, governments or members of governments uneasy. And we know what happens to people who make governments uneasy in many of the places we work.

4. Mystique

Lets face it, being part of a secret organization is COOL. This attracts members. It also is good PR. When something goes right we get to take credit, when something doesn't work as well as it might have, we were never there. Our failures get forgotten and our successes magnified. This is the exact opposite of what happens to transparent organizations. Also, since it makes good story, people are more likely to spread the story.

I don't expect everybody to agree that all those are good reasons to be secret. I think any one of them alone would be a decent reason. There are Non-clandestine organizations that do what evoke does, so I'm not sure there's a real need to come out of the shadows. That work is maybe for someone else.

Or maybe I just like being a Black Ops peace corps. Give me feedback, this is a conversation I'd like to have about the nature of what we do.