Hey all, my name is Taylor Martin and I’ll preface my introduction by saying that it will be long. Meritocracy offers the groundwork for a community that I feel like I truly belong to and as such, is invaluable and inexpressibly meaningful to me. If there was ever a place to bear my soul, it is here, in front of the meritoriously minded individuals of the world. For those of you who take the time to read and begin to get to know me, I appreciate it and look forward to getting to know you as well.
Where are you from
I am from Bethesda, Maryland in the United States, a place that houses quite a few of the people we oppose. It is a suburban town just outside DC and is one of the most affluent and intellectual communities in the United States and we are known for our snobbiness. We like to say that anyone who is anyone in DC, lives in Bethesda,[or one of the surrounding affluent districts].
I was an accident child that came around before my Dad finished law school so I am not quite one of the trust fund baby 1%, but, because my Dad is extremely smart, hard working, and wise and as such he has become one of the top lawyers in his field and we have definitely built a life that is at least the top 5%. I have never needed anything and I was taught not to want for anything. I have had the best public schooling (our local public school system blows even some of the best private schools out of the water), enjoyed access to our nations capital (by that I mean, access to the knowledge prevalent in the city as well as dinner table access with many who make decisions), traveled, volunteered, gone to a great expensive private college, am highly intelligent, and really just grown up in an environment that has opportunities for everything.
And yet…I have grappled with a deep seated and abstract philosophical depression. I have spent much of my life teetering on the edge of Nihilism because how could I feel so negatively about the world when the entirety of the world environment that raised me is more than anything I could have needed? There was a time where everything felt meaningless.
I have an amazing family, truly one in a million. I was raised with love and discipline in such a way that I have become the person I am today. I am proud of myself and owe all of it to the wisdom and enablement of my family that shaped me into someone who can be productive, in all senses of the word. But I grew up with all types of really horrible families. If you ever have read the book “The Overachievers: The secret lives of driven kids” by Alexandra Robbins then you can get an understanding by what I mean. This book was written about my high school and I grew up with the people in that book along with countless other similar stories. The pressure to be, not just good, but the best, is incomparable and I am so thankful that my family is nothing like that.
Having a loving and supportive family that pushed me to do my best but accepted that I wanted to follow my own path has given me a very useful perspective on the so called ‘elite’. I got to watch the elite make other elites, rub shoulders and have dinner and make friends with them and ultimately my conclusion…its just abuse, plain and simple. I have friends who have broken down into full blown panic attack, end of the world sobs, post 16 years of age because they got a B+ on a 10 point homework assignment in a class where ALL the homework amounts to 5% of the overall grade because they were not just scared to show mommy and daddy (who may or may not beat, abuse, neglect, or verbally assault their child) but because their entire identity and life aspiration to be a lawyer/doctor/phd/politician/fortunee 500 is supposedly shattered in that moment of minute weakness. I mean it is truly a warped perspective that is prevalent in my hometown, and unfortunately, many of the decision making minds of America.
My perspective on where I am from, as it is surely a target for the redistribution of wealth, is this. People are good. Looking at my friends now 15-25 years later, some have grown into horrible exploiters, consciously or ignorantly, and some have grown into amazing and altruistic talents…ALL started off as good kids, nice kids with hopes and dreams to save the world and do good things. Somewhere along the line they lost interest in helping the world or they grew a false understanding on what actually makes the world a better place.
Escaping the influence of a misguided family is near impossible, and never having anything but positive experiences with my family, I can forgive a lot of the ‘bad’ people in the world as just having a less than beneficial childhood. I am able to see how the institutionalized inequality, violence, and exploitation is manifest in the world by growing the mechanisms/people for such a system by the technique called raising a child poorly. Its all really that simple to me.
Hopefully through my introduction it will be apparent that I have escaped such an environment as a unique and beneficial identity, as opposed to a perpetuation of the same system that made that environment.
Where do you live
This is somewhat complicated. I am currently at home in Bethesda to see some doctors with regard to a recent psychological collapse. I have had quite a few traumatic brain injuries in my life and, probably for the rest of my life, cope with several neurological symptoms. This isn’t as dramatic as it sounds as I ultimately can manage everything by a regimented lifestyle that requires me to be disciplined with my diet and my sleep cycle.
So pre-current-collapse but post-college-graduation I worked in South Africa doing Great White shark conservation research (side bar, everyone should help out the sharks too, amazing creatures). When my time ran up there I got a “good” job in Bethesda with a nice fancy title doing strategic regulatory consulting for pharmaceuticals, bio medical devices, and companion diagnostics. I lasted about 6 months before I quit because omg is that a horribly boring and ultimately useless profession.
Right as I quit that job my friend got transferred down to South Florida, and expressing his concern about being depressed about not knowing anyone, I volunteered to go with him. So I did, packed up my clothes and lived on his living room floor for the last year. I spent the first 6 months down there teaching martial arts at night and marine biology to kids during the day. Ultimately my bosses were quite arbitrary and had personalities that I find incompatible. I also was not making enough money to start up anything I wanted to to really start becoming a meaningful influence. I looked for another corporate job with the idea I could bite my tongue and just fast track my career to make enough money to make a change…naive and inefficient I suppose.
I got one doing pharmaceutical marketing at a top tier company in Miami. Holy fuck they don’t make wealth inequality like they do in Miami. I just couldn’t do it. And I want you to understand fully what I mean.
The very nature of the lifestyle and ultimate ideology of living/working in such a place/position is opposite to my intrinsic psychological and spiritual needs. The schedule was not conducive to me taking care of my brain the way I needed to and I collapsed, most likely as a direct result of getting this new job and less directly as a result of my brain reaching critical mass of knowledge.
Probably because of my personal quest to understand the illuminati and ancient wisdom they hold (I am very interested in learning how to die). I think a lot of us found our way here through the Armageddon Conspiracy website/texts and I am no different, but for me that was just the next bit of information in a long life of experience and searching. My personal hobby aside, in the last year I have, often personally, and mostly through the deepweb, traveled down all the rabbit holes I could find, all the way down to the point where atrocity itself was right in front of my eyes, touchable, and horrifying. I have since made peace with such things, but the initial confrontations were nothing short of traumatic.
When I came across the Armageddon website it was after coming across many, many other sources (I’m talking tens of thousands of pages of reading), many convincing, all claiming one thing or another. As much as I can respect secrecy, it is a concept that I have struggled to accept as I believe in overt and radical honesty. I trust the faculties of my mind and therefore can discern truth and falsehoods or indistinguishable information as I encounter it and thus can explore the world of secret society with an open mind.
Regardless of the esoteric interests I have, this website offered me Meritocracy. A concept I have often thought about. I often spend time thinking about if I ran the world, and with my maturity and understanding of, well, reality, has come my belief in Meritocracy. I just didn’t have a name for it until finding the Armageddon Conspiracy. If I’m honest, I haven’t even started reading the book yet and I’m only about 3/4ths the way through the website itself, but that doesn’t matter because that website, and subsequent forum I find you all here, has offered me something I have never encountered in all my years of research (this is significant because what I like to do in my free time is research sooo I’ve done a lot of it).
What it has shown me is rationale truth to support their claims and to link the common denominators of history, religion, science, and philosophy in a logical and rational way. It thus far has linked together…everything that concerns all aspects of my/our mind. It is rationale truth and a community interested in truth that I have been lacking when it comes to much of my research and my interaction with society itself. All questions have truths and all brains can discern truth and my truth is simple.
I need to be involved with Meritocracy to feel like I am living a meaningful life. It is the only movement I have encountered that can/will shift society into a new era of enlightened society in a realistic and viable manner. It can be done so it should and as to where I live now…
I’m going back to Florida because it makes financial sense for me at the moment, I have a girl whom I love there, and I don’t think its a coincidence that I have found this forum and that one of the few American threads is from Florida.
So now, bethesda, near future, Florida, most likely outside Tampa.
Have you been involved in politcal activism? Other volunteer activities?
Formally, absolutely not. My experience has taught me that the majority of the people who are capable of and who actually do make decisions look down on most of the forms of political activism. Things like protesting and petitions and the like are often laughed at by elected individuals. I know because I’ve been there and had these conversations and experienced what its like to mention x, y, and z political movements to x, y, and z politician and to have them shoot down the entire ideology and methodology, ultimately because of their own poor thinking/perspective. This translates to an ineffective way to manifest change and so I have never jumped on any band wagons.
I have always been a fan of direct action but sadly its hard to do those types of things without getting into some kind of trouble. In truth, a lot of the most ambitiously effective direct action plots would be considered terrorism and to get involved would be to doom myself to ineffectiveness.
That being said, growing up I have spray painted speed camera signs that are privately owned and generate revenue for private companies as well as the government. I have point blank told some VERY important people that they can fuck themselves and should be made to suffer all the suffering that exists in the world, and other such defiant victim less crimes and interactions.
But no, never formally been involved in any movement, charity, ngo, non profit, activist group or anything related as anything short of a complete overhaul of human psychology and global governmental structure and practices is inadequate and a distraction. Maybe not true, but its how I feel. Meritocracy offers a path to those goals.
So as of this introduction, I am politically active with Meritocracy.
I have volunteered for several such band aid cause throughout school, and been president of many clubs, but nothing outside the academic sphere.
What is your native language?
English. I have learned french and russian but am so far out of practice that I wouldnt even classify myself as semi-fluent. But grammatically its all still there, so living in either one of those countries could have me fluent within a matter of months.
What formal skills do you posses? What personal qualities do you highlight in yourself?
Well I was a triple major in college in biology (emphasis on synthetic genetics/genetic engineering) , psychology (emphasis on personality/social psych), and russian language (emphasis on getting to know russian woman 
).
I have extensive lab experience both at school and at the National Institute of Health, including designing and implementing my own research track in an attempt to create a novel probiotic.
I have, technically, 3 black belts but am very proficient in martial arts as an entity. It is through motion and violence that I have come to understand energy and communication respectively.
I have worked extensively with kids, both academically and in sport.
Every major job title I have had has included the word researcher in it. I can research and learn and express myself confidently.
I have run out of fear. Through one accidental and one purposeful ego death experience and a lifetime of putting myself into every situation I possibly could to make me feel a little bit of adrenaline, I can confidently say that I can not imagine a situation that causes me to experience fear in a debilitating manner. Thus I say I have no phobia, and fear is a minor influence. Fear, like all emotions except for love, does not dictate my decision making. I think it is rationale to act from a point of emotional love and my family has been a model that has taught me how to love unconditionally.
What is your understanding of meritocracy and why does it interest you?
Well without repeating the definitions and essays I would hope we have all read, Meritocracy is one of the most viable and realistic methods to facilitate the transition to global unity and to begin enabling humanity to reach its ultimate potential.
As I am not a member of the illuminati nor have I figured out the grail quest independent of initiation in such secret knowledge I cannot pretend that I know what that ultimate potential is. I do know that science has caught up to the understandings of philosophy/religion and that there are several significant scientific discoveries and rational theory that makes all religion, esoterica, paranormal, psychic, and magical/mythological possible within the confines of our reality/universe.
Meritocracy offers a platform to build a world that is capable of enabling society to learn truth and to make all truth self evident from birth.
It also represents a peaceful transition. I have spent much of my life very angry, even spiteful and it has been a challenge for me not to support just killing all the bad guys. I have since grown out of that mentality but looking at the world, it is hard to see many effective outlets for global change that manifests change within my lifetime. Meritocracy is such an effective outlet and this is how I have come to understand it.
I guess you could call me a true believer, except all my beliefs are backed by data, the scientific method, and championed by the ideals of preserving and enabling life.
Meritocracy is my path, for sure. I have developed something of a complex with society that no drug or therapy could begin to remedy. My remedy is the success (or failure) or meritocracy, either way, its the right thing to do.
How would you ideally like to contribute? What can you do immediately?
Oh dear, I have already been so long winded. I have several ideas that I think will contribute but ideally, I just want to contribute. I am a team player as much as I am an individual and I would love to participate in all facets of the movement. There is a place for all aspects of knowledge to benefit meritocracy and a thousand ways to incorporate a thousand things and my ADHD compels me to be involved with all of it.
Realistically, I am quite interested in developing a meritocratic business model. I am currently writing up a proposal that consolidates all my ideas into a business model that I can pitch to some investors to get started. My challenge is in explaining that I am not interested in profit but rather in the destruction of currency itself. Personally, I have little faith in political methodology and don’t participate.
I think America is much more influenced by capitalism than politics and I have been racking my brain trying to think of a way to realistically get rid of it. In short, the current path our country is on and the level of ingrained capitalistic thinking that is pertinent in literally 99% of the people I have ever interacted with, even those who claim to be against capitalism, ensures that we can not get rid of capitalism as we know it. The scars of this disastrous ideology will be with humanity for many many years.
But I do have an idea! Capitalism will inevitably fail. We know this because of math, our past, and our leadership. When it does fail will be the time to rebuild something new and many fear that that “new age” will just be an extrapolation of current capitalism into a global unified old world order government. So lets accelerate that process and then offer an alternative to the old world thinking.
We can stress capitalism to its breaking point, force the collapse, and rather than turning to the UN or other global governing entity infected with old world ideology, have systems/models/communities in place that demonstrate where capitalism went wrong and offer solutions that prevent humanity from falling into the same pitfalls.
This is a VERY rough draft, look for me in the Florida threads for a post of a more detailed plan. But this is what I think is possible and what I would love to start doing today. I want to start a company whose business it is to make industry itself obsolete, eventually leading to the idea of personal profit being obsolete as well. It works like this.
We have the technology and knowledge to take every individual off the grid and alleviate their dependence on municipal government. So we create self sustainable, green, carbon negative technology in any given industry, the kinds of technology that gives you an edge over the traditional dominating force within that industry, and then you open source it. Not quite like Mr. Musk but rather by overtly releasing all of our business strategy.
I have yet to lock this down into a succinct train of thought so bear with me. I imagine starting a re-purposing company that is ultimately geared towards re-purposing society through community development.
So the tiny house movement, earth ships, eco tree houses, shipping container houses and other such sustainable DIY housing plans are already out there and working and cheap. So we create, for example a tiny house development (because you can make a tiny house that is completely self sustaining for about 25k or a shipping container house for less than 50k) that offers people a way out of debt faster than a mortgage.
The way I see it is there is a box, and there are people in the box who have been disillusioned and seek an alternative box to step out of, and there are also people who have been forced out of the box, like the homeless, who seek nothing more than to get back into the box and reconnect.
This creates both a market (people who are spent and just want to heal) and a labor force (people who just want to work and earn their place) interested in an alternative box to live in.
Now we can create hydroponic gardens for any number of crops in a shipping container attached to a rain water collection unit that effectively will create a self sustaining, and essentially free crop production. Recycled rain water, optimum nutrients, insect pesticides and true organic farming with all modern tech.
So I imagine that I can take a farm and exponentially increase its production as well as create continuous optimum growing conditions year round (particularly in a place like florida). All that is required is people to pick and maintain the crops, a minimum wage job if there ever was one, and who is more than happy to take a minimum wage job, the homeless and impoverished.
There are places called tent cities (see documentaries on netflix) where the homeless establish their own government and self regulate their society. Currently there are activist groups helping them to get jobs and representation. I want to give them (the meritorious homeless) a shipping container house or a tiny house as part of working for me. Part of their salary will go towards paying off the structure automatically and they will be living right near where they work, so no need to really have anything else as these structures take care of individual needs.
Other like minded people can buy their own house and live in the community as well. I would set up an earthship community center and offer free office space to meritorious non profit causes. The technology I would use, that exists, is the kind that actively contributes to nature instead of being a detriment like keeping a bee hive. This can pollinate my crops as well as the nature around me for example. There would be community space for arts and activity that enable people instead of limit them.
I would design the optimal conditions for optimal crops and I would start with growing the most expensive crops. Then I would follow walmart and undercut the hell out of everyone, particularly walmart. Im basically copying them but instead of securing cheap and crappy quality, I would focus on designing the best/optimum products and sell them at whatever the wholesale rate is, as ideally, I would be able to create a system that really is super cheap if not free to maintain.
I, as the CEO, would be required to be transparent. I am perfectly comfortable putting my bank accounts and financial interactions 100% in the public eye to ensure I follow the rules and ideology I claim to support. The solution that I am offering is a radical restructuring corporate culture in a way that requires transparency and minimalism. As I have mentioned in another post, I think Meritocracy needs to champion trust. I think the world fails because it is so hard to trust the world.
So I offer a company whose philosophical purpose is truly to establish trust with leadership. I do this by maximum honesty and transparency. So we design an app, or a computer program or a new kind of bank that I can register as a CEO. And as a CEO I am entitled to be the decision making head of the company but I am not entitled to anything else. In fact, I know that sitting back and making decisions (when they dont directly involve life and death) is far easier than most of the lowest paid jobs so I get the lowest salary. Ill live and support myself by the success or failure of my company. I can get my products free, which is why I want to focus on housing a farming first. I’ll feed myself and live in one of the houses we make but beyond that, I get the lowest salary. Realistically I want to have some money to do things before this model becomes viral but I forsee a day when I can have NO salary. Regardless I would never get something as ridiculous as a bonus.
All of the money goes towards paying the workers, first and foremost. This will be reasonable salaries on par with whatever the national average is, but they get discounted products from the company, which first produces housing and food. I have also seen an idea where the pay scale per month is directly proportional to the profits of the month and I’m open to exploring these kinds of alternative pay scales.
As we undercut industries for particular products, either forcing them out of business or to adopt our green sustainable technology and price guide, we can modify the economics to gain some kind of profit. That profit never goes to things like bonuses but exclusively to research and development. Intelligent growth being the purpose of making money in the first place.
The idea is to create a self generating and self sustaining business model that inverts profit incentive and designs a system that holds the leadership accountable for their ideals. So as the leader/ceo, I forfeit my privacy. This is a small price to pay when you consider the amount of power and influence really successful companies wield. If I make it to that level then that is payment enough. The knowledge that I can manifest my ideas in the most streamlined manner is worth all the bonus check of a life time. THAT is the incentive to be a leader.
If you want to make money then you can work for me because I will pay you competitively and even could offer lower leadership positions with a relatively high salary. But you will not work for me with any other incentive other than to drastically accelerate your freedom from debt.
Effectively the company will be something, that by its nature and design, will offer customers an accelerated chance to be debt free and employees an accelerated chance to be debt free. Because the company is effectively a community and its business is to create community, then the customers and employees will be living together with like minds and the profits of the company go towards creating the non-profit community center (for example, many other ideas) or artist enclaves or whatever, so that once one is debt free then one can pursue their passions, ideally free, realistically for a drastically reduced fee compared to other businesses.
This freedom I think will go viral. We can demonstrate free and self sustaining community, trust worthy leadership that doesn’t require trust to see, and showcase the talent that comes out of free people enabled to pursue their passions.
AGH! I’m sorry I ranted and I know this is a terribly inadequate explanation of my idea. As I said, I havent consolidated the entire plan on paper yet, but when I do, this forum will be where I post it first. I welcome help and guidance and definitely investment. But I truly and viably think we can use capitalism to kill and replace capitalism. If we are clever then we can do it without the old world order really knowing whats going on because, except for the management getting paid the lowest, it conforms to capitalist cutthroat ideology.
What it takes to work is true believers, like myself, who are interested in change over profit.
Anyway, my eyes hurt and I don’t want to extrapolate more on my ideas or myself so I hope I’ve given you an idea of both. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to what I have to say. I have way more to say and I look forward to further participation and discussion.
Let’s fix the world already, we absolutely can, its just a matter of follow through.
EDIT: I also want to come up with a fantasy football style game that focuses on TEDsters instead of athletes. But I havent thought that through yet.
And the last but not least, this community goes with an idea that I’ve been dreaming of since one year ago.
I haven’t done any political activism before, but I do give time to social volunteer work - helping out families in need, that sort of thing. Aside from working I spend my time at the gym, following current events and reading up on subjects relating to politics, sociology, history and philosophy. I’d like to consider myself a person who cannot simply watch suffering from the sidelines, someone who considers knowledge as a value in itself and knows there to be more to life than jealously guarding all the benefits of my immediate social circle and those of my nation or any other innate tribal construct.