New Moon Academy

Mission

We are living in dystopic times. Within a few decades many of the wildest dreams humans had over millenia have become reality, yet their hopes for freedom and justice have been disappointed. Around the world millions are starving, millions waste away in factories to produce cheap consumer goods, while in the wealthy societies people are anxious, lonely and suffer from depression and other mental illnesses like never before. The machine is eating its children.

Many social, political and religious movements have risen up over the course of the last century to correct this state of affairs. Today their promises ring hollow and their utopias have left a bitter taste on the tongues of those who once longed for them. Even the term Revolution has become so ambiguous that it can mean anything from tyranny and slaughter to an edgy advertisement slogan.

To us, revolution is not to impose an idealized blueprint upon society with whatever means, but to liberate people’s dormant agency, their society’s moral and political legacy. Democratic civilization has existed for much longer than its state-based hierarchical antithesis, and it continues to exist to this day. The Free Software movement and the development of the Linux operating system are excellent examples of democratic civilization in our age. Technology has always been highly political and shaped by the ideas of its time. It is therefore not surprising that today, in the age of the End of History, we are taught that science and technology are beyond the realms of morals and politics, always neutral and objective.

What we are in fact at the end of is a certain period of history. We are at a crossroads. We can resign ourselves to a future of collapse and oblivion, hypocrisy and ignorance. Or we can lead the way to a new Renaissance, a future of free federated societies that shape their own destinies. To do this pioneers are needed, brave and compassionate people who are engineers, warriors and philosophers at the sam time, who learn to broaden their horizon in many different fields while excelling at one. Their path is one of dedication, empathy, perseverance and humility, of being students as well as teachers.

New Moon Academy is a decentralized virtual academy. It will begin with offering courses in programming, economics, political philosophy. Other tasks include the curation, creation and translation of education material, texts and resources. The virtual academy will feature a forum, wiki and archive.

Activities

  • Educate ideological hackers
    Mentored courses in programming and economics, with a focus on anonymous engineering, counter-economics and sovereign infrastructure. Philosophy studies as part of all courses.
  • Research strategies for the future Analyze macroeconomic and political developments and develop proposals for economic sovereignty and social autonomy accordingly.
  • Preserve and curate knowledge
    Study resources, collect and distill information, translate materials and make them easily and widely accessible, prepare educational content.
  • Culture and community
    Build an intellectual culture of open, honest and controversial discussion through messaging and active forum engagement. Spread lunarpunk ideas on technology, economy, politics and society, provide explanations of key concepts through text, audio and video in a variety of languages. Enhance spectrum of lunarpunk imaginary through artistic interpretation.

Methodology

We critique the prevalent student-teacher relation, where a teacher dictates a course schedule to a student who has to learn the material. Students are not self led, and instead become reliant on an instructor, instead of developing independently. Creativity is supressed since students do not explore and engage with knowledge in a dialectic way.

The academy fosters a system of mentorship. Everybody engages in study and research inside the organization. Subjects are not separated from one another and we encourage people to read multiple subjects, but in a directed way. Our aim is to train leaders, and bring people up. Therefore they must strive for:

  1. Strategic knowledge to be able to make strong macro analysis and direct activity.
  2. Strong skills to directly affect change themselves.

We emphasize a combination of both. Ideas are only as valuable as what we do with them in practice. However blind undirected action is wasted effort. Therefore we seek to foster both aspects in participants. With the mentorship system, whenever members are studying, they are self directed but under the influence of more senior mentors. If they get stuck, they can ask mentors for assistance to get past difficult concepts or discuss ideas to gain a better understanding. Learning through dialogue is encouraged since it creates stronger bonds and relations between people in the community.

Funding

The academy emphasizes long-term learning and strategic development of skills. Students will be carefully chosen and receive grants to cover their needs and create an optimal focused learning environment. The academy aims to be fiscally self-sustaining within 24 months. Once students have their own income as a result of their studies they are expected to give a percentage back to the academy. Other forms of income include:

  • trading and investment
  • paid research and advisory services
  • monetized intellectual content