Interview with Elektra 1. By Valeria Viancos

This is an Interview made by Viviana Viancos with Corinna "Elektra" Aichele, before she made a presentation in Espacio G. The photo is moment of her presentation on November 15th in Espacio G, Valparaíso, Chile.

Viviana Viancos: 1. How will be your participation in the 2nd Digital Culture Meeting? Can you describe it?

Elektra: I will help to build a free and open wireless communications community here in Valpo, by explaining the technological principles and physical and software basics of a wireless mesh network. We will do practical network building, lectures, workshops. I am training people to use the Linux distribution OpenWRT, which is used to flash commodity (cheap of-the shelf) routers and transform this hardware to something even more useful that can be used to form a relatively large and cheap communication network. It can cover a large section of a city or even an entire city. I am introducing people also to the routing algorithms, principles of radio physics and the philosophical background of such a mesh network – which is basically based on mutual aid.

Viviana Viancos: 2. How does the idea of making this kind of intervention comes up?

Elektra: I have been involved in the development of Freifunk, which is a free and open communications community in German speaking countries and I have met Enrique at the ResPublica 2014 in Berlin, who suggested me to come. Besides: Freifunk has a nice film on youtube, with subtitles in Spanish, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z12OjnPADA

Viviana Viancos: 3. I've been told you were an hacker philosopher, can you explain me what is it about?

Elektra: I am the "philosopher of non-thinking"
I don't make my brain think: My brain thinks me.
To explain it a bit:
The fact, that you talk in your head, doesn't mean that you think, but only that you speak – and since nobody else can listen to your talk, you are most likely talking to yourself. But how useful is self-talk?
According to communication theory, if two instances involved in communication have reached the exact same level of information, they can stop the communication process: I don't have to tell anything to myself, because everything I know and think – I know and think, too!
Autocommunication is merely manipulation by autosuggestion. Autosuggestion doesn't always mean self-programming, as the content of the autosuggestion is not neccessarily originated from the individual itself. Others might be able to exploit the habit of an individuals autosuggestion in order to harm the individual. I think of it as a brain-malware. And by the way: What good is it to manipulate ourselves?! Are we not good enough as what we actually are, why do we need to optimize ourself in the way of fools?
One can not explain the meaning of ones life, the life of others or the secrets of the universe to oneself, by talking to oneself. Truth and reality are outside outside head. So I go out to the world, explore and follow my intuition, as intuition is the natural cognition of the brain.
If people ask me who I am, in reply to these thoughts, I tell them:
I am the voice of Elektra Wagenrad. My mistress is currently not at home. So please, leave a message. Someone might call you back later...
There are two fundamental concepts of cognition:

1/ The first concept of cognition has been developed and implemented by nature. Nature has developed the nervous system of animals, including us human animals. The cognition of our nervous system, which happens automatically and independently of our "free will" is often disrespected and disregarded by the ruling morale and education, because it can not be controlled by "our free will". If humans make mistakes, they always blame it on their animal-human nature. Hence, humans consider their own physical existence "imperfect" or even "bad" or "evil". I call these people that disrespect and disregard their animal-human existence "body-haters".
Biologists call the natural, independent cognition of the human body "irritability": The nervous system responds to external or internal stimulus in order to keep us alive and make us happy. A internal stimulus is hunger or thirst, for example. An external stimulus is that we see birds fly, want to fly too, and build planes. That is the sole purpose of our nervous system.
The brain has a stimulus-reaction scheme. We touch the hot plate as a child and burn our fingers. We draw back the hand in response to the pain. However, we consider this act a "lower function" of consciousness and are ignorant to the many, many immensely complex cognitions of our brain, that it performs with ease every day.

2/ The concept of thinking of the "mind" or "free will" – that almost everyone in society believes in today – I consider an illusion. One doesn't become smarter by imagining a smart little man in ones head, that takes our matters in his hands. We do this all the time when we ask ourselves – because if we don't know the answers, why are we actually asking ourselves – a.k.a. the little man in our heads?
This is a childish philosophy that originates from our phase of magical thinking, a phase that we all are likely to go through in our childhood. Sadly, ~96% of the human population, young or old, follow this basic philosophy today. I consider that the fools way to wisdom. Basically all schools of thought, world view, philosophy are merely modifications and modulations of this childish philosophy.
Talking to the average dude about this, triggers a strong experience of cognitive dissonance and subsequently strong emotional acts of cognitive realization by the little man in their head, who feels endangered and calls for arms and injustice and lack of logic in a fight for self-little-man-defense.
The self-talk in our heads also is a stimulus, that our nervous system will respond to, according to the natural stimulus-response scheme. Schizophrenic people believe, since they can influence their nervous system with their self-talk in their heads, that they are able to control and optimize how their brain works. This is the same logic like believing you will become smarter if you hit your forehead hard enough with a hammer, as one can indeed influence brain activity with a baton.
The philosophy of non-thinking goes beyond thinking, so it can not be understood by thinking Talking to yourself about it, i.e. hammering on your forhead with your mother-language will not help you to understand anything better.
I am trying to cast a spell: To create a virus in human language, a meme, that goes from head to head and destroys the logical fallacy of "mind", to set us all free from the magical ban of mental slavery by autosuggestions

Viviana Viancos: 4. Did you knew about this Digital Culture Meeting? What do you think about this?

Elektra:I learned about it from Enrique. It is providing a framework and brings us together to learn from each other: The power of networks and their effects can be beautiful.

Viviana Viancos: 5. The first edition of this Meeting was developed in Santiago, now it will be in Valparaíso. What does it mean for you to work in this city, considering its history and cultural heritage?

Elektra: I'm sorry for my lack of knowledge about Valparaiso, so I don't think I can come up with an elaborated answer.
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