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There was article in NY Times last week: Unintelligent Design, trying to debunk the idea of intelligent design.
Now, I've seen a lot of people complain about "Intelligent Design" being a term invented by Creationists, to covertly push the idea of Creationism, but I hadn't seen any of the materials. OK, I just searched around and found a few sites: Intelligent Design Network, Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center, Origins.
Hm, seems to be about right. Those are sites that seem to try to shoot down evolution, by positioning themselves as being very objective, and pointing out the lack of evidence for evolution.
That's a shame. Oh, there isn't really much evidence for evolution. Plenty of evidence that life is evolving, and for natural selection. But very little evidence for evolution being caused by the random bumbling about that is the core of Darwinism. Nobody has found any lifeform that drew any advantage from being a half-flying bird or having half an eye or anything like that. For that matter, last I looked nobody had really found any missing links between much of anything. Oh, there are many easy ones. If it is gradually getting colder, each generation would give an advantage to the more hairy members of the species and that kind of thing, so they would be more likely to carry on the race, to become more hairy. A whole lot harder to make the case for why a wolf would jump into the ocean and develop a blow hole on its head, you know sort of randomly, a little at a time. Or how lizards who jumped out of trees got an advantage, while randomly developing flappy arms, until a few hundred thousand years later they can fly. And then there's the eye, of course.
Creationists would like to have us believe that a guy named God created it all out of thin air, fully formed, ready to go, in an enjoyable variety. And somehow they hate the idea that all of this life evolves on its own. Not for any terribly good reason other than that the Bible says God did it in seven days, and it somehow fits their belief best if it is all utterly incomprehensible and beyond humans to understand, other than in the form of knowing who to credit.
Intelligent Design is such a good term, so, yeah, it is a bit of a waste if it is just highjacked to mean anti-evolutionary creationism.
I think it is a pretty damn intelligent design. A universe with billions of galaxies with billions of stars, lasting for billions of years, with planets circling nicely around stars that provide light and heat, with elements and conditions that combine gradually into life forms. Life forms that do the most amazing things in an amazing variety. And that evolve, over millions of years, to more and more intelligent creatures, more and more adapted to their environments. In an unbroken chain over several billions of years. Until it somewhere along the line leads to US. We're pretty intelligent, although we're also pretty dumb, and is not clear yet which aspect will win. But you can't say we don't have intelligence. And we're hard at work at evolving into something better, and we probably will. Because you and I each have that several billion year unbroken success record behind us.
If all of that isn't the most intelligent design you've ever heard of, I don't know what is.
Are you going to tell me that all that could happen without it being inherent in the design of the universe that it could happen? Where on earth does intelligence suddenly come from if it isn't what naturally emerges from the layout of the universe. Just like gravity doesn't suddenly appear out of the blue for no good reason, neither does intelligence. Unless you claim to come from somewhere else, which is perfectly alright with me, your intelligence is simply a property of the universe, or the omniverse, or however big you want to look. The design is intelligent, obviously, because YOU are.
And hopefully it is a lot more intelligent than you or me individually, because humans at this point have a bit of an overblown idea of how special they are, and how much smarter they are than the universe.
That article there is a good example of that. Its argument against creationism is how badly designed everything is. You know, species die out left right and center. Life forms have loads of useless features, like the peacock's feathers, or the nipples of male humans. And that the laryngeal nerve in mammals is just too damn long. So if there were a designer, he must have been some kind of idiot. Oh, and the "moral" failures. Humans and animals are continually tortured by disease and pain and mutual cruelty. How can the designer be so mean?
See, it is all really religious arguments, for or against. It is the same kind of stuff that doubting believers in dogmatic religions go through. If God is all powerful and just, why do people starve, and why did my Uncle Harry die in a car accident, way before his time, even though he was such a good man?
Because most of the materialist evolutionist anti-creationist guys agree perfectly well with the religious creationists that the only possible God and Designer of the Universe is this archetypical greybearded fellow who just made everything up out of his little toe. And both agree that it is either that or chaos. The Creationists decide that it is most comforting if that guy did it, and that's the end of the discussion. The Evolutionists decide that no way are they going to be subjugated to that, so they choose what they think is the only alternative - the opposite. That it all happened, completely randomly, as a series of lucky accidents, out of chaos, without any kind of purpose or meaning or system. Well, actually they do a little sleight of hand trick at the same time, and imply that there's a marvelously consistent set of laws and mechanisms at work, which have worked unfailingly since the beginning of the universe. Except for that it is all just supposed to be meaningless chaos, so we go quickly past the self-contradiction in that.
Now, I'm not religious, so I don't believe in either set of dogma. They're a bit cartoonish, and neither of them is consistent with itself.
That the Design is Intelligent - that I believe in. Or, rather, there's no need to believe in it, because it is readily observable. It is the stuff you don't see that requires convoluted explanations. Just like like the fundamentalist religious person tends to get lost in circular explanations when asked to explain why an all powerful god allows pain and suffering, the fundamentalist materialist gets lost in circular complexity when asked to explain where the natural laws came from, or how human eyes assembled by accident. And mostly it adds up to: just because! You just have to believe it.
It is a shame, because it could really be so simple. If the universe itself is intelligent and alive, you don't really need to invent wild stories about how things come about. You only need those when you think you somehow are separate from the rest of the universe. What arrogance. You aren't. You're a part of a bigger system. If you're intelligent and alive, and you're a product of a bigger system, as well as an integral part of it, then of course that system is intelligent and alive. That's simple math, unless you come up with the X factor that was added to the soup to create you. And if you rather lean towards having been created by God, then how can you think you're somehow suddenly something separate from it? That's a bit of an insult to what created you. The only separation that is there is what you might create in your mind.
As to the cartoonish God-in-the-picture-of-Man who created everything, yeah, that's not a very good foundation for reality. It is an easy target. Quite easy to answer any mention of Universal Intelligence by pretending that that's what people of course are talking about. Easy to avoid the real issues, because that one discussion quickly becomes heated. And both sides are wrong.
I'm an evolving intelligent universe. I'm a design in motion, designing itself, discovering the ramifications of the design as I go along. I don't know who you are. Well, I do, actually.
I'm very glad I watched this movie tonight. Love Actually is bittersweet, moving and funny. I think it will lighten the heart of even the most cynical. The above picture shows all the love connections between the characters, and a reflective way love actually works.
In light of the Oscars tonight, I am amazed sometimes how much movies have shaped my outlook on life. Where would I be if it wasn't for watching Star Wars at the dawn of my adolescence? Being moved to tears at Brian's Song, the sublime astonishment at 2001: A Space Odyssey, the stunning realism of Blade Runner, the funny Princess Bride, or my coming of age film - Buckaroo Banzai, the even more campy but for me influential Barbarella, and one of my recent favorites, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
What are some of your favorite movies and genres?
There are only 2 days left (March 1st) to get tickets at the low price of $225. Click here to order. Both LVX, Mark Pesce (who is presenting) and myself (Paul) are all going to be there. For those of you coming, please contact me and we can all arrange to meet. Here are the details:
MIND STATES VI
MAY 27-29, 2005
Palace of Fine Arts Theatre
San Francisco, CA
Over 30 speakers presenting on the theme of "technology & transcendence."
Topics include the latest psychedelic research, transcranial magnetic
stimulation, virtual reality, sensory substitution, techno-biological
enhancement, visionary art, electronic trance-dance, video game
environments, Reflections and Inspirations: The 50-Year Anniversary of R. Gordon Wasson's Psilocybe Discovery, skeptical consciousness studies, harm
reduction, plus vendor tables, book signings, and more.
Featuring Presentations From:
Paul Back-Y-Rita, Markus Berger, Piers Bizony, Susa N Blackmore, Vibrata Chromodoris, Mike Crowley, Delvin, Sijay, Naasko, Isis Indriya, Lynzee Dava Lynx, Rick Doblin, Frank Echenhofer, Robert Forman>, Charles S Grob, Charles Hayes, Julie Holland, Clark Heinrich, Sandra Karpetas, Ramez Naam, Mark Pesce, Durk Pearson (tentative), Tom Reidlinger, Katie Salen, Sandy Shaw (tentative), Michael Shermer, Allan Snyder, Paul Stamets, Donna Torres, Sylvia Thyssen, Jim Woodring,
and others TBA
THREE FULL DAYS
Featuring presentations on topics such as:
• visionary art
• brain fingerprinting
• sensory substitution
• electronic trance-dance
• video game environments
• cutting-edge science as art
• current psychedelic research
• techno-biological enhancement
• transcranial magnetic stimulation
• skeptical consciousness studies
• EEG-mapping of altered states
• Reflections and Inspirations
• harm reduction
• virtual reality and more
After Saturdays presentations there will be a late-nite benefit party for the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors featuring a presentation by Alex Grey. Dance, music and more.
Discounted tickets currently available.
Buy now for best price!
Our past two conferences have sold out in advance.
$225 until March 1, 2005
$250 until May 15, 2005
$275 until the event
$300 at door.
Click below to buy with a credit card.
Or send a check or money order made out to “Mind States” to:
Mind States
POB 19820
Sacramento, CA 95819
JOIN OUR MAILING LIST!
Receive details about Mind States VI as they become available. This infrequent e-mail list generally sends out notices no more than once a month, and it will also keep you up-to-date about other similar events. To join, send an e-mail that says “JOIN” in the subject header to:
For those of you who haven't heard Alex Grey is working to raise money for the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. There will be a fund raising party in LA this week.
Where: Hollywood Athletic Club, 6525 Sunset Blvd, Hollywood, CA. 90028
When: Saturday, March 5th, 8 p.m. until 3 a.m.
Tickets are $25.00 before event date and $30.00 (cash Only) at the door.
Visit CoSM to find out more or make a donation.
From their press release:
Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM) is a sanctuary in New York City for contemplation and a center for events encouraging the creative spirit. The Sacred Mirrors, on display in the Chapel, are a series of paintings that allow us to see ourselves and each other as reflections of the divine.
CoSM provides a public exhibition of the Sacred Mirrors and the most outstanding works of mystical art by Alex Grey. The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors is a 501(c)(3) organization, supported solely by charitable donations from the community. The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM) is happy to have been invited to open upstairs from Spirit New York.
The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors is an exhibition of the most outstanding and widely appreciated works of art by Alex Grey. Offering devotional portrayals of the universal human journey from birth to death with healing, love, and enlightenment as the iconic narrative, the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors is a unique pilgrimage place for contemplation and spiritual renewal.
Gallery Hours - Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm
For event listings and information:
212.564.4253 www.cosm.org
540 W. 27th Street 4th floor New York, NY 10001
The Sacred Mirrors
The Sacred Mirrors series is a totally unique work of contemporary sacred art created by Alex Grey. This installation of 21 framed images, consisting of 19 paintings and two etched mirrors, examines the anatomy of body, mind and spirit in rich detail. Each painting presents a life-sized figure facing viewers and inviting them to mirror the images, creating a sense of seeing into oneself.
The life-sized representations of the human body, portraying its physical and energetic systems, are both rigorously precise and vividly visionary. The Sacred Mirrors dramatically reveal the miracle of life's evolutionary complexity, the unity of human experience across all racial, class and gender divides, and the astonishing vistas of possibility inherent in human consciousness. Alex Grey has combined ancient wisdom, anatomical accuracy and post-modern eclecticism to produce elegant, universally accessible, eternally relevant and resonant symbols.
With recent revelations regarding the probability of water on Mars, a nitrogen atmosphere and liquid water on Titan and the proliferation of extra solar planets, the question of extra-terrestrial life seems to be getting more pressing.
Many people are familiar with Drake’s Equation which estimates the number of detectable civilizations in the galaxy. When first proposed, values for all of the variables were fairly speculative, but as data pours in from the scientific community, we are starting to get a sense of how values for these values might be determined. The predictions are startling. My own estimates of the most realistic assumptions would hold that for every year, on average, that a technological society persists, there is such a technological society extant in our Galaxy right now. So, if we assume that technologically advanced society lasts for say 1000 years, there are currently 1000 such societies in the Milky Way alone. This would also be true for galaxies throughout the universe, bringing the universal total of extra-terrestrial intelligent species into the trillions. And this takes into account only extant species, the number grows even greater if we consider species that have come and gone, perhaps by orders of magnitude.
So where is everyone? The issue is discussed in depth in this earlier post. Given the extraordinary discoveries of the past week, I thought it worth revisiting. Fermi’s Paradox, as Paul points out, rests on several assumptions about the exploratory and expansionistic proclivities of technological civilizations. But even if only a fraction of the supposed technologically advanced civilizations in our universe were of an expansionist bent, they should have been here long ago.
There are a number of proposed answers, all speculative. One possibility is that they are already here. Sightings of unidentified objects are commonplace, millions believe that we are being visited constantly, but that evidence (or perhaps merely acceptance of the evidence) is suppressed. Another possibility is that the presence of alien technology is all but undetectable, in the form, for example, of nanotechnologic probes of infinitesimal size.
Another possibility, however, is that advanced intelligences are by their nature ontologically transcendent. To put it in Terence McKenna’s nomenclature, perhaps our extra-terrestrial brethren are not on distant planets, but are waiting for us in hyperspace on the other side of the transcendental object at the end of time. Given the revelations of the past few weeks, the evidence could be read as suggesting that any sufficiently advanced species evolves into a non-physical, or perhaps non-ordinary physical, space.
If so, this transformation probably occurs rapidly. If species typically lingered in an advanced technological state for say a 1000 years or longer, we would expect a lot of them around. If, however, the lifetime of technologically advanced cultures was only around say, 50 to 100 years, we would expect just a handful in the entire Galaxy. The latter appears to be the case.
This hypothesis also rests on a mass of anecdotal evidence that thousands of human beings have contacted highly advanced entities in non-physical realms:
I saw angels, extraterrestrials, then I called them guides and finally I called them ECCO and it's totally impersonal. It's way beyond what people can understand except in a ketamine or LSD state. Then they tell you, well we're at a low level, there are influences above us. It would be nice to meet these entities that experience these various states. They won't take human form, though; it's a waste of their time.
John Lilly, From Here to Alternity and Beyond
The elves and gnomes are there to remind us that, in the matter of understanding the self, we have yet to leave the playpen in the nursery of ontology.
Terence McKenna, Trialogues at the Edge of the West
So consider: first, mounting evidence suggests that the universe teems with perhaps billions of intelligent species strewn across space-time; second, against overwhelming odds we don’t seem to see them anywhere around us; and third, human beings around the world are in contact with advanced discarnate intelligences in non-ordinary states.
These discarnate entities, are, perhaps, the missing E.T.’s, existing in some non-ordinary space: in a dream-like state, or the astral plane, or the bardo, pick your metaphor, but some essentially non-physical space. If so, we may be headed there ourselves, and in a hurry. Recent discoveries of water elsewhere in or solar system, extrasolar planets and the almost inevitable discovery of life elsewhere in our solar system, all seem to support the proposition that the physical universe we currently inhabit is merely a part of an embryonic stage and that a dramatic shift in our ontological status is looming. And if so, we may find that space populated with billions upon billions of galactic sisters and brothers that have gone before us.
Or perhaps they will have already moved on . . .
Related Posts:
Life, Universe and Everything
Exotic Civilizations: Beyond Kardaschev
New Scientist has a fine article detailing the large amount of state-sponsored research currently looking at entheogenic substances as effective medications for the treatment of alcoholism, drug abuse, post traumatic stress disorder, and other syndromes of modern life. Sadly, many of the researchers blame Dr. Timothy Leary for putting the nail in the coffin of drug research. But I'd argue that Leary's evangelism of LSD was absolutely necessary to the development of western culture under the shadow of atomic war. People like to imagine that the civil rights movement and the protests against the vietnam war were separate from the acid scene. They weren't. Not to mention the impact of the psychedelic experience on music, movies, and cinematography...
Clinical trials of psychedelic drugs are planned or under way at numerous centres around the world for conditions ranging from anxiety to alcoholism. It may not be long before doctors are legally prescribing hallucinogens for the first time in decades. "There are medicines here that have been overlooked, that are fundamentally valuable," says Halpern.
...But to some brave souls, psychedelic medicine never lost its allure. One of them is Rick Doblin, who in 1986 founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in Sarasota, Florida, and who earned a doctorate from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government after writing a dissertation on the federal regulation of psychedelics. For nearly 20 years MAPS has lobbied the FDA and other government agencies to allow research on psychedelics to resume. It has also persuaded scientists to pursue the work and raised funds to support them. A similar body, the Heffter Research Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was founded in 1993 by scientists with an interest in hallucinogens.
In the past couple of years their efforts have begun to pay off. Doblin is optimistic that psychedelic research is back for good, and this time it will do things right.
Thanks to Bird on the Moon, I came across this rare and brilliant piece that expresses all that I try to, only much better. The article is by Dave Pollard. Below I've tried to excerpt some of the most salient points:
Part 1: All About Power, and the Three Ways to Topple It (Part 1):
Most of what has been written about change -- by political theorists as well as business gurus -- is about revolutionary change. It is about creating a sense of popular urgency for change. Writers on social and business innovation, by contrast, are (perhaps subconsciously) writing about change that incapacitates. Clay Christensen speaks candidly about 'disruptive innovation', the kind that catches successful businesses off guard, just like a virus or undetected parasite, and brings it to its knees. A huge amount of money and energy is being spent these days -- on so-called 'anti-terrorist' programs, on physical and computer security, on fighting file-sharing, on patenting anything even vaguely innovative to prevent a competitor bringing it to market, on the search for vaccines and cures for AIDS, BSE, Avian Flu etc., on anti-fraud measures like Sarbanes-Oxley -- all designed to fight incapacitating, rather than popular, revolutionary, enemies. Actions that are aimed to incapacitate are called guerrilla (meaning 'little war') actions. Since the Vietnam war debacle in the 1960s the very term has struck fear in the hearts of the power elite, because they know that, in today's heavily concentrated, centralized, interconnected, 'grid-locked' society, this is where they are most vulnerable, most powerless to defend themselves.
Some non-violent ways we can incapacitate the power elite, using this 4-step process:
and introduce 'innovations' that make our world a better place to live. The focus will be on new technology, new infrastructure, new models and new processes that replace the vulnerable ones that are the causes of so many of today's global problems -- and ensuring that these replacements are Open Source, and stay in the hands of all the world's people.
Part Two - Free Information, Freedom from the Grid, and Peer-to-Peer Bio-Innovation:
In a brilliant and famous Wired interview with Freeman Dyson by Stewart Brand, Dyson identifies "a return to village culture" as the most important opportunity of the 21st century, driven by three technologies: global access to free information, local energy self-sufficiency, and biotech, which together could "gentrify" (bring affluence, population stability and ecological awareness to) the villages. Dyson predicts the "collapse of the market economy" will bring about this opportunity, in 'rising from the ashes' style. He's a great believer in technology, and impatient with and pessimistic about our political and economic systems, but he has faith in human ingenuity, and the power of multiple, coordinated small-scale experiments.
| But suppose if, instead of waiting for the collapse of the market economy and the crumbling of the power elite, we brought about that collapse, guerrilla-style, by making information free, by making local communities energy self-sufficient, and by taking the lead in biotech away from government and corporatists (the power elite) by working collaboratively, using the Power of Many, Open Source, unconstrained by corporate allegiance, patents and 'shareholder expectations'? |
The first part of this guerrilla undermining of the corporatist-controlled 'market' economy -- the 'making free' of information -- is already underway. The war for free information between corporatists and people is occurring on multiple fronts: The attempt by large corporations to patent everything so it cannot be used by the people without paying an exorbitant and prohibitive fee; the attempt by large corporations to ban file-sharing without first paying extortion to the intellectual property 'owner' (little of which actually goes to the artist); the attempt to make more of the information on the Internet 'pay for itself'. But the people are winning this guerrilla war.
Related Entries
The Coming Liesure Society
Counter Culture 2.0
Left Brain Revenge, Right Brain Liberation, Leisure Society
Do you want to wow someone with your wit, intelligence, and gnostic visions? If so, then Future Hi is looking for you. It's that time of year when most of us get really busy with the mundane realities of earning a living, so the frequency of writing can get a bit thin. So if you think you have what it takes to weave some visionary memes then please contact me here.
We are also looking for volunteers to help us with our library section. Please inquire within.
(This article is from earlier this year - Feburary 23, 2005. I think it's intereting and fun enough to repost)
I love the reverb from the net. While checking the stats for the site, I saw a hit from The Uppers Organization - Your Guide to the Modern Pleasures of Living. A quick glance and I was onto a couple of articles on psychedelic futurist architecture. Always one of my favorite subjects. To my delight I re-discovered this amazing house on the Riviera which I had the fortune of visiting back in 1991 [pictured at left]. From the moment I saw it I immediately felt at home in its warm, inviting and organic environment. Perhaps it was watching Barbarella as a kid, or reading too many futurist magazines like Omni and Future. Whatever it was, the aesthetic stuck to my brain like glue. For the life of me I could never find it again, and when the internet came along I looked for it with no luck. Of course it would help to remember the name of the place. It's called the Palais Bulles, and you can read more about it at Uppers, or quoted later in this post.
Another article at Uppers talks about the Vasarely Foundation at Aix-en-Provence [pictured below]
'The whole place looks like the set of a science-fiction film of the late '60s: a huge black and white hexagon standing out on a big lawn by a motorway at Jas de Bouffan, just outside the centre of the beautiful and relaxing Aix.The building is formed by six hexagonal rooms, each wall displaying one enormous work of Victor Vasarely's kinetic art, art in movement. Black and white patterns, coloured spheres and other geometrical shapes, like the infinite column, a long sculptured column set between two mirrors, giving the sense of the infinite form.
The Foundation opened in 1976 after the idea of Vasarely, who wanted to create a cultural centre, not only a museum, but a place where architects, urbanists and sociologists could discuss together, in search of new solutions for the ideal "city of tomorrow".
The site itself was chosen by Vasarely: it was close to a motorway and car drivers travelling along could clearly perceive the sense of movement in the design of this building. Then, Jas de Bouffan had been the home of one of Vasarely's favourite artists, the French painter Cézanne.
Vasarely's style influenced deeply its time and brought many imitators among designers and architects. Some of his ideas have unfortunately proven utopian but his desire to integrate art into architecture and everyday life is still valid and gives his whole work a curiously contrasting sense of warmth and passion.
Fondation Vasarely
1, avenue Marcel Pagnol
Jas de Bouffan
13090 Aix-en-Provence
Tel. +33(0)4 42 20 01 09'
'An extraterrestrial looking house made of huge concrete bubbles, sits on the Esterel hills by the the French Riviera. It is the Palais de Bulles, the Palace of Bubbles, the summer villa of Pierre Cardin.Pierre Cardin has always been very sensitive to futuristic atmospheres and even his summer house reveals his passion for the future. The Palais de Bulles stretches in Port-la-Galère, near Cannes and it was built in the early '70s after the project of the hungarian architect Antti Lovag.
Lovag noticed that traditional habitations, like the cavern or the igloo, were round and reflected the way a human being moves in space. These houses were built "around" the human being and did not force him into rectangular spaces, like modern houses. Spheres and round surfaces reminded of the maternal uterus and avoiding any sharp edge they could prevent, according to Lovag's theory, neurosis and violence.
Lovag, together with Hausermann and Chanéac, experimented in the '60s a new idea of architecture based on natural forms and in the early '70s Lovag realized his first round house, always in the South of France, for the French businessman Pierre Bernard.
The Palais de Bulles is hidden among the vegetation, and the exterior colour is brown, to make it similar to the nearby Esterel hills.'
Of course this particular house is very expensive, but there is no reason why this type of style can't be done on the cheap. There are two institutes here in the states that are working on alternative architectures. The first one is the Monolithic Dome Institute. I discovered them in 1994 while touring this amazing house in Sedona called Xanadu. It's still there but no longer open to the public. Here is a picture of that house.
The other is Cal Earth in Hesperia California founded by Nader Khalili. I discovered him the same year (1994) when he came to conduct an earth-fire architecture workshop at Arcosanti, where I was living at the time. Khalili's methods are now used all over the world to bring affordable housing to people with otherwise very limited resources. Cal Earth is worth checking out. Not only is the potential cost of one of his home cheap, but they are beautiful to look at and live in, as well as being very environmentally friendly and energy efficient. Below is a picture of one them.
Looks like Sydney, Australia has a little of that Burning Man spirit. I can't imagine any city in the US, except perhaps Berkeley, where women would be able to ride topless down public streets. Goes to show you how uptight America is in comparison.
Links:
http://www.sbar.websyte.com.au/site.cfm?/sbar/3/
http://www.sbar.websyte.com.au/site.cfm?/sbar/2/
[Thanks Teresa!]
"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die." - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Ray Kurzweil has a new website promoting immortality and his new book the Fantastic Voyage - Live Long Enough to Live Forever.
It explains how advances in genomics, biotechnology, and nanotechnology have brought the possibility of immortality within our grasp.
The book describes three bridges to the future that can lead to longer, healthier lives:
1. Ray & Terry's Longevity Program: present-day therapies and guidance that enables you to stay healthy long enough to take advantage of ...
2. The Biotechnology Revolution, when we will be able to reprogram the genetic, proteomic, and metabolic processes of biology to turn off the root causes of disease and aging.
3. The Nanotechnology-AI Revolution: The killer app of nanotech is nanobots, blood cell-sized devices that will go inside the human body to destroy pathogens and toxins, and repair DNA errors, leading to the potential for humans to live indefinitely.
My favorite author of all time, Iain Banks, has an interview over at Salon.
Salon: But you've also written that something like the Culture may happen not as a result of individual, or even societal choice, but as a consequence of advances in technology.Ian: In the purest sense, you get to the Culture almost whether you like it or not. But it does involve getting out to space, and it does involve just a huge amount of manufacturing capability. Because what you end up with is entities, space ships or whatever, that become self-sufficient and free moving in space, and it's very hard to keep effective control of them.
The control a state can exercise is largely about the fact it can just go and get you if you are holed up in your ranch in Waco or wherever. It can surround you and attack you and go in and get you. That is going to be impossible when people can live in space or more or less anywhere. Once that becomes the case, the very idea of the state does start to wither away. But it does all eventually go back to technology. Technology determines the possibilities of society. So as technology progresses, the idea of something like the Culture is almost inevitable.
This is fantastic news. It means that the scientific truth about MDMA is finally getting to see the light of day. I'm hopeful that over the next 5-7 years MDMA will be re-classified as Schedule 2 or 3, and be licensed for use in clinical and therapeutic settings.
From The Guardian:
American soldiers traumatised by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be offered the drug ecstasy to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares.The US food and drug administration has given the go-ahead for the soldiers to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, can treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
Scientists behind the trial in South Carolina think the feelings of emotional closeness reported by those taking the drug could help the soldiers talk about their experiences to therapists. Several victims of rape and sexual abuse with post-traumatic stress disorder, for whom existing treatments are ineffective, have been given MDMA since the research began last year.
Michael Mithoefer, the psychiatrist leading the trial, said: "It's looking very promising. It's too early to draw any conclusions but in these treatment-resistant people so far the results are encouraging.
"People are able to connect more deeply on an emotional level with the fact they are safe now."
He is about to advertise for war veterans who fought in the last five years to join the study.
According to the US national centre for post-traumatic stress disorder, up to 30% of combat veterans suffer from the condition at some point in their lives.
Known as shell shock during the first world war and combat fatigue in the second, the condition is characterised by intrusive memories, panic attacks and the avoidance of situations which might force sufferers to relive their wartime experiences.
The perspective image above was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. It shows the central part of the Valles Marineris canyon on Mars, which is several times wider and deeper than the Grand Canyon, and a couple of thousand miles long. This canyon is so big, that it can be seen by telescopes from Earth.
According to this story:
A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.What [the pair] found, according to several attendees of the private meeting, which took place Sunday, is not direct proof of life on Mars, but methane signatures and other signs of possible biological activity remarkably similar to those recently discovered in caves here on Earth... Researchers have long theorized that the Martian subsurface could harbor biological organisms that have developed unusual strategies for existing in extreme environments.
All one needs to do is look at the surface of Mars, the Valles Marineris canyon, to see that water once flowed there. Do we know of any canyons carved like the Grand Canyon or Valles Marineris that were formed without water? Nope.
Now think about how same conditions that brought life to Earth once existed on Mars, and it is easy to see that life on mars is not so far fetched. Now consider that life has now been found in every nook and cranny of Earth's crust - in superheated boiling water at the bottom of the ocean, to microorganisms living in solid rock, miles below the antartic ice shelf. So when then would not life still exist on Mars today if it once did long ago? Life has shown that is can adapt to virtually any environment.
How long then before the official announcement is made that there is life on mars?
Tired of waiting for NASA or some other agency to take you to space? Then join the Association of Autonomous Astronauts - 10 years of independent space exploration programs.
Here is a video of their recent snatch of the Sojourner off the surface of Mars.
3 minutes², by French art collective Electronic Shadow, expands architectural space of a reduced volume via interartive and enhanced imagery. The space reconfigures itself in response to the individuals activities and over time.
'3 minutes² is an installation mixing space and image, real and virtual and proposes a hybrid habitat metamorphosing endlessly around its inhabitant. Hybridising of space with images, fusion of material with immaterial, architecture of memory and information design, the habitat isn’t only measured by its surface but by the sum of its potential dimensions. Parallel realities melt in one space-time, 3minutes are a space, 10 square meters are a space. 3 minutes² is a surface-time, a hybrid space living according to its inhabitant’s rhythm, his trace, his electronic shadow.
3 minutes² is an installation presenting an extremely reduced living unit. This space has the particularity to extend beyond its physical borders via the image, the space being its projection surface. This volumes demultiplies thus in as many functions as the ones described in the scenario of use of this living space.
In fact, the space permanently reconfigures itself according to its inhabitant’s activities and also defines itself in time. The scenario presents in a few minutes the compression of most activities and functions taking place in the habitat and corresponding to its inhabitant daily life, eating, sleeping, working, etc.
The inhabitant himself is contained in the image, represented as a silhouette. This shadow which represents the projection of a neutral individual in this habitat is the installation’s neuralgic centre, the habitat building itself around him as a cocoon, a more cultural than a natural extension; the habitat becomes then a character.
The presented functions correspond to vital needs and also to more complex behaviours. 3 minutes² doesn’t try to caricaturise the habitat’s functions but to draw the shape of a daily life deeply modified by technologies and the presence of the virtual, or the materialisation of immaterial.
Beyond the traditional functions adapted to this type of habitat, some activities are directly linked to this conception of space and inevitably induce radical changes in the political, economical and social organisation.
The status of the image compared to the space is permanently ambiguous, is it an individual’s printed memory in his habitat, the virtual reflect of a real life or the scale 1 model of a future space, prefigurating the use of technologies in development, such as the nanotechnologies?
3minutes² doesn’t answer to this question but tends to shift the traditional debate opposing real to virtual. Here, hybridation of real and virtual is fictively acquired and becomes the ground for the proposition of a habitat which anticipates the technological and social modifications making it possible.
No screens, no visible interfaces, the two characters touch the walls, make movements, the habitation responds to them. The technology has become totally invisible and the effect of technologic becomes then magic.'
An attempt to catch some of the Essence of Void Meditation :
Sat in the Lotus position with closed eyes and taking slow, deep breaths. The mind is still on the outer layers of consciousness. Thoughts are flowing through my head, some I cling to, some I don't. Scanning my body and one by one relaxing the parts that are still tense. Lower legs, stomach, shoulders, neck, jaw muscles, anything that needs loosening up. I pass to the next layer and relax further.
Now letting more thoughts go and checking my breathing again. Long, slow breaths, paying attention to the breath going in through the nose and down to the bottom of the lungs. It flows and swirls like a dance of energy, in and out, in, and out again. I move into a deeper state of mind. From here the unity is sensed that holds my body and connects it to the space around me. More subtle, soft light, holding me in place. Stiller now and more focused, shifting from thoughts and into purer perception. Seeing and not thinking. Feeling and not thinking. I pass further.
The grosser layers passed by, or unfolded, the body and mind begin to shift into a greater sense of Oneness. The inner nervous system the seeing organ as feeling catches swirling, pulsating energies, colours and shapes, flowing up and down and around the body. Where it was tingling in places and dull in others before, it now flows in waves. Wave after wave, and then it's just present. Attempts at explanation start to prove inadequate, and the reason why the onus is on experience becomes clear.
The waves of ether, molecules, light, patterns, now sometimes flow, sometimes not. Soft energy like a cool breeze and then clearness, movement then stillness, form and mind. Then deeper, and into the part where words go from inadequate to hardly enough to give a good enough description.
The gross and the subtle are one, each level of consciousness one, inner and outer one. Boundaries between the self and the outer world dissipate and are perceived for the illusions that they are as the mind randomly picks out the activity of the void with a heightened awareness. I'm not just my body anymore because at this point my body is nothing seperate from the surrounding area. Dimensions fuse and I begin to float in the void. Unity is attained, the sense of 'I' fades and ego is transcended. Reality is non-dual.
Here, the Huang Po doctrine of Universal Mind makes perfect sense :
"Men are afraid to forget their own minds, fearing to fall through the void with nothing on to which they can cling. They do not know that the void is not really the void but the realm of the Dharma".(1)
(1) Quote from The Way of Zen, by Alan Watts
Erik Davis, author of Tech-Gnosis, and hundreds of other fun and facinating articles on cutting edge culture, has a new workshop at Esalen the weekend of April 8-10. The title of the workshop is The Visionary State: California's Spiritual Frontiers. The title of the workshop comes from a new book he is writing along with photographer Michael Rauner.
As someone who grew up in California, I spent a good part of my life so immeshed in the culture of spiritual experimentation that I never considered that it was so revolutionary compared to how most of American looks at the world. At no time was this point pushed home harder than this last election.
"Over the last one hundred and fifty years, California has developed one of the most innovative spiritual cultures on the planet. Many of our contemporary concerns with deep ecology, human transformation, body-positive spirituality, and the technoscience of mind are rooted in the state's maverick "culture of consciousness." California has been home to spiritual mavericks like Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley, to popular visionaries like Starhawk and Carlos Castaneda, to spiritual poets like Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder, and to visionary organizations like Esalen and the Ojai Institute. Why did all this happen here?This seminar will explore and try to explain this rich legacy using poems, film clips, music, photographs, and slides drawn from Erik Davis's own exploration of California's hidden temples and sacred spots. The program will examine the idea that California's alternative spirituality forms a distinct religious tradition on its own—a kind of West Coast Hinduism, full of diverse and often contradictory sects, philosophies, and spiritual technologies, but sharing a a common cultural landscape."
[note: Future Hi is now the official home to over 100 hours of Ojai Workshop and Seminar Audio in our media section]
I composed and produced an album back in 1990 called Galactic Pleasures. I was 25 at the time. When it was made I had been playing keyboards about 7 years, and owned 2 synthesizers - a Roland Juno 6, and the phenomenal Korg M-1. For recording I had a 4 track analog with mixer. I then transposed it to DAT, and there it sat for years. I tried a few times to get my music published, but this was before the internet, and I had limited resources to make it happen. Music is very near and dear to my heart... almost a constant narrative running through my life. But life has a way of shifting priorities around. Music composition has fallen into the background, hibernating for a time to flouring in my life again. Until then I thought I'd share some of my work with you.
Galactic Pleasures was composed mostly in my head. Sometimes, I can hear 6 or 7 different tracks all going simultaneously. That was the way it was this album. It was also composed during a very high time in my life. During that time I swear I was living out on the spaceways more than here. I was also able to record about 8 minutes onto a single track directly into the M-1, as it had 4 megs of storage. So I would take it with me on trips during the summer of '90 out into the remote regions of Arizona and let the music out of my head onto the keyboard.
I was deeply influenced by the cutting edge electronic and space music of the time. I never cared if my music was accepted by anyone else, it was my way of accessing higher states of consciousness. To this day I'm not sure what genre my music would fall under - perhaps 'space fusion'.
I've added the first 2 tracks of this album to the media section. They are:
Paradise Found.mp3 (9mb) and Heartbreak.mp3 (9mp)
The guitar you'll hear on these tracks was completely synthesized.
Enjoy.
Future Hi pal Alex Steffan of World Changing (my favorite blog) has written an excellent piece about how cities can thrive in a post-oil world. He has given me permission to re-post it here. [link to original post]
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The kind of city we're building is a pivot point upon which prospects of a
bright green future turn. As we come to the end of cheap oil and run up against evidence that carbon is changing our planet more suddenly than most would have thought, we're realizing that the pattern of suburban sprawl which for the last forty years has dominated North American cities (and influenced cities around the world) was a really dumb idea. Whatsmore, those suburbs themselves face real challenges, and may in their current incarnations be doomed.
On an urban planet, these sorts of dangers raise disturbing questions. Much
hinges on the pace of innovation and the speed with which we embrace needed reforms. Can we replace an economy whose every fiber vibrates with the logic of cheap oil and careless pollution with one which runs on renewable energy, heals our surrounding ecosystems and creates no waste?
I think we can. James Howard Kunstler strongly disagrees. In a recent
speech, Kunstler savagely (and in a strange way, somewhat joyfully)
announces that we're screwed:
"The world - and of course the US - now faces an epochal predicament: the global oil production peak and the arc of depletion that follows. We are unprepared for this crisis of industrial civilization. We are sleepwalking into the future. ...Right here I am compelled to inform you that the prospects for alternative fuels are poor. We suffer from a kind of Jiminy Cricket syndrome in this country. We believe that if you wish for something, it will come true. Right now a lot of people - including people who ought to know better - are wishing for some miracle technology to save our collective ass. ...
The future is therefore telling us very loudly that we will have to change the way we live in this country. The implications are clear: we will have to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do. The downscaling of America is a tremendous and inescapable project. It is the master ecological project of our time. We will have to do it whether we like it or not. We are not prepared.
I think Kunstler's wrong, dead wrong, but I encourage you to read his remarks anyway, because some bits Kunstler's terriblisma are probably a fair representation of some of the disasters the developed world will face if cheap oil ends and we've done nothing to prepare ourselves. (Other bits are factually wrong, and others still are just plain silly, part of the weird anti-modern apocalypse dance that environmentalists find
themselves so prone to these days.)
But I don't think we will, in fact , meet this crisis with inaction. I think
we will meet it -- many are already rushing to meet it -- with guts, vision,
intelligence and innovation. And one of our central tasks is the creation of the
post-oil megacity.
(more...)
Given that we live on an urban planet, and given that the predominent urban form is (or is soon to be) the megacity, we need to figure out how to create the systems, technologies and practices which will make a bright green future work.
People like Kunstler don't believe that's possible. Or they believe it is possible, but think we aren't up to the job. Nonsense. We haven't created them all yet, true, but upgrading one's civilization isn't a job you finish overnight. I would argue, however, that we're developing some of the key pieces already:
smart growth and smart places, calming traffic and creating livably
compact cities, like Vancouver;
Large-scale renewable energy projects combined with smart grids and distributed power;
Green buildings, especially homes and workplaces which are greatly more efficient, filled with bright green products and appliances;
Sustainable transportation systems;
New methods of industrial production, leading to a second industrial revolution where waste is food and lifecycle thinking is common;
Innovations in urban form, including the greening of the city by reweaving the natural and built.
The list could go on and on. The point being: this is all stuff we know how to do now. We can rebuild it. We have the technology... or at least the ability to create the technologies. There are hundreds of examples on this site alone. And what we can do today is only the beginning. Yes, the situation is serious and the consequences of failure grave, but we're also growing more and more able to deal with that situation.
What we lack is the vision and the will. The vision we're starting to get -- every day a new plan for rebuilding some key sector of the global economy on new, radically more sustainable lines crosses my desk (take, for instance, Lester Brown's vision of a gas-electric hybrid/ wind power economy). The will is taking a little longer. But I don't think we'll get that will by promoting apocalyptic scenarios.
I think we'll get it by imagining a future worth fighting for, and cities worth building.
I was just watching a show called Extreme Homes on HGTV, which features some of the most cutting edge and innovate homes on the planet. This morning they featured the Butterfly House. The entire house is a kinetic sculpture of a butterfly.
Butterfly house is a refurbished family home inspired by the life cycle of the butterfly. An experiment in zoomorphic design, the house traces each change from larval stage, represented by the walkway, to the chrysalis, captured by the staircase and conservatory, and finally the winged canopies - the emerged butterfly.
Although this is more of an kinetic art architectural experiment, I think it demonstrates that our living spaces can become a lot more dynamic, fluid and responsive, resembling living things more and more. Combine this kinetic architecture with other sustainable technologies, and our architecture can become a seamless part of the natural environment.
Here are some more pictures of the house:
2001: A Space Odyssey had an enormous impact on me as a child. It wasn't until I was in college that I began to appreciate this film's deeper undercurrents.
Here is a nicely done flash animation in 4 parts (just like the movie) that offers up an explanation of the film. They did a really good job, except in my opinion they missed the biggest metaphor of all - the sexual/spiritual one. Here's my explanation.
The Discovery ship represents the pinacle of mans technological achievment - a phallic vessel from which it ejaculates the sperm-pod containing mans best DNA - Dave Bowman, who then enters the labial-vaginal stargate. Along the way 'Dave the sperm' experiences orgasmic psychedelic splendor culminating with germinating union with the ovum of motherly higher intelligence - resulting in Dave's death and rebirth - conception of a new being, humanities next stage in evolution - the starchild. Sprach Zarathustra!
Here is a quote from my old (1994-98) website, (archived here).
Seeding space with our phallic vehicles, we oursleves perhaps have already been seeded, are already embryonically becoming that creature who will enter the labial stargate in apotheosis to concieve yet another being...
In this metamorphosis, we are forcing ourselves like the birth of a butterfly, to continually mutate and reprogram our conceptions of the cosmos. In spite of psychocultural forces, we are creating a radically in-process, holistic open-system cosmology... an infinite noosphere awaiting our imagination...
Something that I found via Bruce Sterling's blog at Wired, it seems like an amazing idea :
'WHAT IS A CORPORATE COMMAND?
A Corporate Command is an instruction work, a call to action in the form of an imperative:
"Just Do It"
"Turn on the Future"
"Live without Limits"
"Tap into great taste"
"Think different"
"Ride the light"
"Live Like You Mean It"
It is the hypothesis of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things that these commands, largely and consciously ignored by a public over-saturated with advertisements, function at the scale of the infinitely small. Tiny events that do not disturb one's consciousness or disrupt one's identity as "free" agents, these commands seep under the surface of the individual and lay claim to the territory of the Deleuzian Virtual. Desire, memory, and future potentiality become territories for conquest and tactics for social and political control.
By compiling, tabulating, concretizing and enacting these commands in the International Database of Corporate Commands (IDCC), the Institute for Infinitely Small Things seeks to better understand the mechanisms behind this deployment of power and its larger cultural ramifications.'
This is from The Institute for Infinitely Small Things, if you want to add any corporate commands yourself, you can add them to Corporatecommands.com
I was contacted earlier today by the Executive Producer of Coast to Coast AM, a late night talk show with over 8 million listeners and 500 affiliates. She discovered Future Hi from one of their listeners. They are interested in the possibility of having me on the show for a live call-in interview. Of course this would be great. The challenge we quickly found was finding a 'focus' or 'angle' that would make me work for their audience, who are predominantly middle America. Coast to Coast is kind of like the old Art Bell show, but perhaps for a more general audience. I'm confidant we can find an angle in which to bill me for their show, and an interview format that will work. She said she would need to spend a little more time on the site to see if she can get it to "congeal" with her audience.
Lets keep our fingers crossed.
My bottom line message was that amidst all the tragedy, crisis and catastrophe in the world, there is a way out. We can have a positive future as long as we are willing to embrace that possibility. For those of you who have been reading this site for awhile know, there are positive solutions to every pressing problem we have today. Hopefully Coast to Coast AM can tap into what we have here, and bring me on to their show. Perhaps alternatively they are looking for something "shocking". We can certainly deliver on that angle too.
If you have any suggestions, please comment below.
Does reality exist? Do our perceptions accurately map the world on the other side of our senses? Can we know with any certainty that the “out there” matches what’s “in here"?
Physics tells us that the “out there” is an interference pattern of quantum magnetic fields. Our individual interfaces give it form, solidity, and meaning. Our human sensory apparatus, constructed from shared genetics, provides us all with a roughly equivalent representation of the interference pattern “out there". We all see the sun and the moon and buildings and cats, but cultural and psychological factors layer associative relationships on top of the shared forms. My sun is paternal and reminds me of desert sand and circling hawks. Another’s sun might be harsh and dessicating, inspiring melanoma. The interface becomes personalized. The reality we rely on is an exposure on the neurocortex painted by associative emotional complexes.
Language is an abstraction layer between the interface and the mindbrain that allows us to classify and communicate. As language is acquired it quickly replaces the direct apprehension of the thing “out there” with a simplified data structure. Words become a painting of the thing; an occasionally effective representation of the garbled mass of signals coming into our heads, transduced into patterns, and modulated by neurohormones washing through associative networks. The next time you think about a piece of fruit try to do it without using words. Language defines the reality that we know.
Reality with a capital R is something far greater over which we hold only marginal dominion. For us ultraviolet colors are not a part of our reality. Yet bees and other insects see the world awash in such frequencies. Most mammals engage a world of smells everpresent, yet we generally acknowledge only the more pungent odors, usually related to food. Dogs smell cancer. “Out there” is a field of probability, a fractal hologram, a quantum wave function. Reality is the interface of a billion billion perceptual organisms, collective, witnessing. Human reality is a subset, narrow in perception but rich in meaning.
When we still the mind and let words settle and cease, what we are witnessing is the naked interface between our sensory networks and the quantum field. Dust motes hanging in a sunbeam. Soft notes echoing off shiny metal chimes. A brook babbling gently. The steady pulse of blood beating through our veins. These miracles are assembled within our heads. Modifying or shutting down the sensory apparatus through meditation, sensory deprivation, exogenous chemicals, or otherwise, can strip away even the interface and reveal the singular holographic quantum field, the interference pattern of the hologram.
The remarkable quality of entering the singularity of quantum consciousness is that consciousnous does not cease in such a state. Self-awareness does. Duality does. But consciousness persists. Information can be conserved and brought back into the kingdom. The body is simply a vehicle to which consciousness attaches and is momentarily restricted by. When we think of Uncertainty and the notion that consciousness is required to collapse the wave function and cause probability to occur, we assume that means that some being like ourselves must be opening every subatomic Schrodinger’s Box in order for reality to even exist. And it may be so. Or it may be that there is indeed a cosmic/atomic consciousness that pervades everything like a unified field, incessantly causing the “formality of actually becoming". Something we are at present unable to fully comprehend. Indeed, our definition of consciousness is limited by our consciousness itself. How can we imagine what we cannot imagine?
Thanks to Bruce, this new production play put a smile on my face too.
How would we know? Maybe it is an alternate reality. But some believe it to be an alternate reality musical comedy scheduled for production at the height of this fall's election insanity.To paraphrase the infamous Twen Cen President Bill Clinton, what "reality" is depends on your definition of what "is" is.
In other words, each person’s reality is a chemically mediated, preconceptually-biased, culturally conditioned experience and interpretation of selectively filtered perception. In the case of Really Leary, we’ll go straight to the precise words of Tim Leary himself, uttered during the waning days of his first incarnation: "Everybody gets the Tim Leary they deserve."
We think you deserve a highly entertaining and imaginatively-staged spoof of politics, the media, cheesy science fiction, and the fabric of reality itself. In our world (and yours should you attend or otherwise share in the hallucination), Really Leary is a staged alternative reality, more commonly known as a rock musical comedy. Really Leary tells the altogether plausible story of the presidential election of 2052, which pits two cryogenically-thawed 20th century icons (the fully-restored Walt Disney and the head-only restored Timothy Leary) against one another. The campaign unfolds on the Disney Asteroid (DisneyRoid for short), an off-world corporate tax haven controlled by the feisty, God-fearin’ Purlie Gates, daughter of Bill Gates’s second clone (an unfortunate Beta version, plagued by troublesome code errors reminiscent of early Windows operating systems). You’ll follow the campaign from defrost to debate, with the victor decided in a dramatic showdown as the candidates go head-to-head on the interactive presidential game show, Choose Your Chief.
Posted by paul at 11:50 PM | Comments (1)
Thanks to a generous contribution from the Ojai Foundation, and its ex-program director Stephen Aichele, we now have an additional 100 hours of recorded material from people like Albert Hoffman, Houston Smith, Joseph Campbell and Terrence Mckenna. Now available in our Media Section.
Most of these recordings were done in the 1980's, even some in the 1970's. These are historical treasures now available for the first time in many years. Included is an additional 21 hours of Terrence McKenna, 6 hours of Houston Smith, 5 hours of Joseph Campbell, 3 hours of Marilyn Ferguson, and 2 hours of Dr. Albert Hoffman (father of LSD).
Some of these recordings were done more than 30 years ago, so the quality is spotty at times, but well worth it. Listening to McKenna for only a few minutes yielded some golden moments between him and the audience.
Enjoy!
I've been predicting this shift for years. From the Wired article Revenge of the Right Brain:
Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent...
To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.
My prediction is that almost all left-only brained activities will be mostly automated within 10 years. Assuming we as a collective can implement a grass-roots, decentralized, location-based, wireless, open-source, open-spectrum, transparent accounting, reputation based, super-smart social-software, semantic, next-generation internet empowered barter system, along with extremely cheap connecting devices, a full-time leisure society will be ours. It may sound ridiculously utopian, and it is, but I think it will happen anyway. Why? Because hundreds of thousands of displaced left-brained computer programmers now loosing their jobs to this shift will be highly motivated out of self-interest to make it happen!! They will not allow the consumerist corporate machine to continue reaping profits at the expense of everyone else (right brained or otherwise as the author of the wired article assumes will continue as always). Nope, the corporate controlled market is on its last legs. Knowing they are the smartest generation to be replaced, the left-brained programmers will make sure they are the last. I'm extremely optimistic that a leisure society is nothing short of inevitable at this point. For more details see The Coming Leisure Society.
This leisure society won't come without a fight. You can see the battle lines being drawn with p2p, intellectual property, tax cuts for hummers and not hybrids, property right fanatics, environmental regulation role back, corporate power grabs and consolidation. That's just desperation you're seeing. The one thing all of these people have in common is a love for hierarchy, as long as they are at the top of that hierarchy. But as Dlight has so eloquent said, centralized control hierarchies cannot withstand the force of millions of networked individuals working towards their own liberation.
So the author is right, the future will be led by the right brain - the dreamer, poets, artists will propel us along a future of never ending creation, novelty, sensual delight and joy.
Welcome to Utopia folks. It's almost here. How long from now? About 10 years tops.