Hoffman's 100 Years: Report

Luc Dala just sent this report to me. It's heartfelt. I too ask myself where are our modern day psychedelic warriors and what happened to that crazy widsom we so desperately need today? Indeed! Here it is:

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Albert Hofmann: 100 years

Basel was the place where lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25) was first extracted and synthesized (with Dr. W. A. Stoll) from ergot in 1938, where Albert Hofmann had his first experience with it on April 16th 1943 and his famous Bicycle ride on April 19th, and although Dr. Hofmann now lives in his beautiful Rittimatte in Burg, Basel was the right place for this conference, subtitled “the spirit of Basel”. Albert Hofmann turned 100 years old on January 11, 2006 and after a more intimate party on his birthday the conference “LSD: Problem child and wonder drug” on January 13-15 brought more than a thousand participants to the modern conference centre of Basel. In fact, so many more visitors showed up during the weekend, that the organization spoke of close to 2000 attendants.

The reason I went there was first of all to see and congratulate Albert, whom I had met a couple of times before, in Amsterdam and Heidelberg and I spent a beautiful day with him and his wife Anita in Rittimatte in December 2002. Especially that last visit, he was already 96 at the time, was one of the most splendid days of my life. There was such a kindness and tolerance in this somewhat stiff looking Swiss man and his wife, such genuine wisdom, I then realised that Albert Hofmann was more than a renowned chemist, more than an icon of the psychedelic tribe, he was a true master of life, a sage and someone who stood out from the crowd of would-be hippies, psychedilicists, psychonauts and know-it-all scientists as a humble but passionate “Mensch”. I had noted his energy before, he danced into the night at the Melkweg in Amsterdam when he was well over ninety, but at Rittimatte I became aware that his energy was the logical effect of an intimate connection with the source of all energy, with nature, with the people around him. I wanted to see this man again, and what better place and time than his 100th birthday. Of course, there was an impressive, if not slightly overloaded conference program, with many friends to meet again and some people I would like to hear lecture and connect with. This would be a historical opportunity to see the psychedelic tribe together, meet them, listen to them and film them. I had already interviewed many of the speakers. Since my association with the Mondo 2000 magazine (around 1989) I have written and televised hundreds of articles, programs about consciousness, religion, psychedelics and transpersonal psychology, but what an opportunity to see them again and maybe discuss their work and see if they would be interested in my psi-matrix, a comparision chart of psychedelic substances (www.net.info.nl/hoenu/psimatrix.htm).

Looking through the program I was sure to meet many of those old friends, but I expected that there would be many more, attracted by the same vibe that made me go to Basel. Our party, we drove by car from Amsterdam, consisted of myself (56 and writer/journalist/entrepreneur) , my ladyfriend Stefani (34, therapist) and my son Michiel (26, game designer). Maybe by chance we kind of represented the three main groups of attendants of the conference. Those who knew Albert Hofmann personally, those who were interested in LSD and its effects and those who came because this would be an historical event, a chance to see and hear a generation and a culture slowly vanishing.

Now that sounds a bit pessimistic, but most of the people with serious expertise in the field are pensioners, most of the lectures were about the past and really new understandings of what psychedelics could mean were rare. LSD is an illegal substance, no self respecting university or institution dares to touch it, funding research is difficult, most governments are dead against it and the few exceptions and projects now under way have not yet yielded substantial results. There is hope, there are anecdotal stories and miracle treatments, scores of books about the potential of these substances, some religious use is tolerated, but we are far from having psychedelic research accepted as a mainstream scientific subject.

I realize the organizers and most of the participants had hope for a rebirth of the movement, a new wave of research into the effects of psychedelic substances, a new spark to revive the psychedelic revolution, but was that realistic? I have emailed most of the Dutch media with information about the event and Albert’s birthday, but the response was minimal. LSD is still seen as an evil substance, research into therapeutic or medical use of psychedelic substances seen as promoting drug use. Being among those who have personally experienced the debunking effects of Lucy in de Sky with Diamonds, feeling part of the psychedelic tribe, the “movement” of course changes one’s perspective. In a way this was a religious event, a bit cult-like, and that of course gives social cohesion, we were all one and with Albert as the Grand Master of this cabal we all felt pretty good. A certain “us and them” feeling, and when the Narconon people (the Scientology folks who condemn psychiatry and drugs) were protesting outside they were seen as enemies. I did interview them and will make that part of the story. They have their truth and reality perception too and deserve to be heard, isn’t tolerance one of the great lessons we can take home from visiting the realms of multiple realities?

Media attention

Although there were 150 or more journalists or those pretending to be, scores of documentary makers, and about every third participant had written at least one book, the interest of the mainstream media in the event was low. No serious big camera’s with a CNN, ZDF or BBC logo, a serious interview in the New York Times was the peak in media exposure. The hope, that this was the beginning of a second wind for Albert’s Wunderkind did not materialise in widespread publicity about its discoverer and this unique event. But so what; could one seriously expect the Fox, MSNBC, NewsCorp media to report truthfully about a serious conference concerning an illegal drug and its potential as a mind and consciousness enhancing tool.

Maybe it is better this way, having two thousand people going home with a heart-felt message, a sense of connectedness and esteem for those present, certainly for dear Albert himself. In the Basel Conference Centre one could clearly feel that something holy, sacred, important was given to us, in those April-days of 1943. Hofmann himself remarked, that it was LSD itself, that had chosen him to bring its message to the world. And what a messenger, esteemed as a scientist, clearly loved as a truly human soul, a friend, a beacon of loving kindness. The people who came to celebrate his 100th birthday were his closest friends or became at his his admirers at this event. For that stands out in my mind and even more in my heart, this small, neatly dressed man, this epitome of Swiss correctness, he was the centre, the juice, the spirit, the object of such veneration, such love, such esteem, that words are not enough to describe what I felt and feel. Albert Hofmann, that humble servant of science and nature, he rose to be a giant, a hero of kindness and understanding. Frail of body, obviously a hundred years are beyond the design lifespan of the average human being, but clear of mind and intention, addressing the thousands with a clear voice, giving thanks to all, and bowing to the divine spark with such intensity, giving credit to sacral substance, thereby making clear that his message of a conscious creation went beyond the flowers and butterflies he loves so much, he admitted it was the LSD itself that found him, charged him with the task to make it known and what a job he did. For behinds the attendant at this conference were the thousands, the millions that experienced LSD as a life changing experience, a step into the realm of wonder, the hidden dimensions of the mind and consciousness. And strange dimensions they are, the far reaches of our imagination, the wondrous land of trippy constructions, the exhibits of psychedelic art illustrated the kaleidoscopic quality of our inner worlds. Whether these inner worlds have any relationship with actual realities or dimensions or are just the product of our minds going berserk did not really matter at this conference. Madness or miracle, wonderdrug or problem child, devil or touching the divine, in Albert Hofmann everybody recognized the synthesis, both sides are there.

I must confess that I have only participated in a few of the lectures, I was present at the opening sessions, the press conference with Albert and the impressive closing ceremony and else walked in and out of a number of the podia and lecture sessions. It was grand, so many esteemed speakers, so much stories, so much to do, and also so many to meet, to see, to hug and to greet. Knowing that all lectures and forums would be available as DVD’s, I didn’t care too much about attending, I did buy some 25 DVD’s and will take time to watch those 40 or more hours of conference material. My interest was in the people, old friends, new friends, a meeting of minds and hearts. Of course there were interesting new views, some of the new research with modern brain scan techniques yielded interesting pictures, insights in where and how the brain functions, what chemical connections happen, the dirty pictures (chemical formulas) Sasja Shulgin talks about. I was fascinated by the new perspectives on the Eleusian mysteries, the role of the internet in making information about these substances available, the computer art as an extension of the more traditional psychedelic art forms, the musical developments resonating with fundamental frequencies, the integration of shamanic practice and lore into the psychedelic culture, the terrible side-effects and victims of the war on drugs, the acceptance of the psychedelic churches, of course there was ample material to make one think, discuss and take home to digest.

On the other hand, having been at a number of these conferences, it was more of the same, more data but not necessarily more information, more knowledge but not more wisdom. There are more books, more libraries, more research, but most of it is about the history of the movement, about details and sideshows. The bold visions, the great vista’s are lacking. I know and appreciate the deep messages, Albert’s gospel about how psychedelics opens us up to nature and the deep force of creation has been heard, but what is new? Who dares make the link between homeopathy and psychedelics, who talks about radionics, who defines the subpersonality processes in our culture, who suggest that Holy Mass was or is a re-enactment of a psychedelic ritual, who claims a right to LSD for the dying, who looks into the deep reason in Islam to forbid drugs and magic, where are the political statements, the hero’s, the slogans that wake us up like Leary’s “Turn on, tune in, drop out.". Everybody there agrees the world is in a sorry state as far as freedom goes, that we are sacrificing civil liberties in the name of security, that the environment is at risk, that independent thinking and acting is suppressed. But there were no bold banners, flags, touching poems, politically this conference came no further than asking for more research and legalization (not liberalization) of LSD. Of course, don’t rock the boat, be good citizens, obedient academia, operate under the radar, but at the same time, what a shame. The movement has become a vessel of convenience, an excuse for smoking too much hash, recreational use, hiding behind empty rituals, engaging in self-serving research, it has lost much of its pioneering spirit. Albert himself, lovely man, has now become our symbol, our idol, our loving godfather, but where are the warriors, the martyrs, how do we connect back to the crazy wisdom.

We have engaging performers, Christian Rätsch and Hans Cousto among them, Simon Vinkenoog, but I missed the strange ramblings of Terence McKenna, the hyper presence and ranting of Tim Leary. Ram Dass sent a telegram, so did Robert Anton Wilson, but we all knew that the pioneers of the movement are now old men or dead, their ideas old hat. I missed Houston Smith, where were the Grateful Dead, I missed you, brother David, as you are the most clear witness of the divine in the movement.

There are clearly a few schools or subgroups in the psychedelic movement. There are the medical and psychiatric researchers, there are the therapists who (legally or illicit) use these substances to work with, there are artists like Alex Grey, the (mostly younger) multimedia artists who make animations and computer art, there are the musicians, the scientists who are into knowledge, a few individuals who bring wisdom, and then a score of people who have become in a way economically and/or emotionally dependent on the movement, as speakers, writers, publishers. I have a hard time with the scientists and writers who sit on their pile of knowledge, high and dry, and with those who have become the clowns of the movement, the stage-performers addicted to the admiration of ever new groups of psychedelic neophytes. Business as usual: selling books, selling conferences, workshops, substances or websites, money did play a role at this conference. The event itself was well organized, but rather expensive, many people could not afford the fee, especially the younger generation. And many of those who came had to find a way to make some money to cover their expenses, too many people with camera’s and the hope of shooting the documentary of a lifetime, too many interviews, too much would-be press. Understandably, but there was this subtle undertone of commercialization that I felt. The contrast with Albert was so clear, his humbleness so distinct. But then, does not every movement need its pushers, its clowns, its producers and is not friction and controversy the fuel of growth? I don’t know, I have to admit that my frustration about the sincerity of some of the “personalities” of the movement might be my personal frustration, my wounded ego and not theirs. So, praise to all, let’s hope that their intentions were pure and their work worthwhile, that beautiful books and documentaries will result from this event. And of course, I am guilty too, I shot some 6 hours of material, mostly short anecdotes and stories about how people met Albert. I will produce a nice DVD for him, and probably also a number of television programs. I was very glad that many of the camera-teams stretched out their hands, helped each other and promised to exchange the material. Mine is available and I hope that we, together, can create the material and programs that will spread the light of love and hope that so clearly illuminated the conference centre this weekend.

For me, there were so many meetings, so many familiar faces, so many encounters, nice dinners, amazing resonances, it was a wonderful and very satisfying weekend. We never made it to the late night parties, the days were so full, so tiring, there was no energy left to go partying. We met new people, made new friends, everybody was approachable, everybody interested, that was an amazing quality of this conference. There was resonance, and I must admit that Albert himself was the one who exemplified that resonance. Not only with his cronies, his old friends, but with everybody. His talent and mastership is that he respects, listens and thus resonates with everybody. I remember the amazed and proud face of the security guard protecting Albert from the sometimes too pushy media people. He had no connection with the subject of the conference, but you could feel him being respected, appreciated, loved by that little man he kind of protected. That is where Albert Hofmann touched my soul, where I can learn from him, where he taught by example, by being.

The general mood of the conference was upbeat, although the middle part of it was a bit heavy, there were just too many lectures, people, forums, meetings. The finale, however, with Albert on the podium with all the presenters, Ralph Metzner making us sing and dance, will be a treasured memory. Albert’s words made it all well rounded and perfect.

I was glad I was there, they did a great job making this happen (see www.lsd.info). It took a while to digest what happened, there was so much. There were very good things, but also some observations that need to be made. It was a white event, for sure, very few woman presenters, a rare Japanese or African face, this was a tribal meeting of the aging and would-be hippies, the sixties reverberating, a trip down memory lane. What is happening in China, in Africa, does psychedelics play a role in shaping culture there? And where was the Law, I would have appreciated to know how “the other side” sees things, now we could only suspect that some of the attendants were hiding their badges.

My son, less familiar with the faces, differently impressed by the academic titles and scores of publications, but keen on meeting all those famous people, came home with a new sense of wonder. Proud to have been present at what was clearly an historical event, he had a Bicycle Ride patch sewn to his trousers. He and I have attended, some years ago, the Big Ride Home, 100 year Harley Davidson in Milwaukee, but this was different, here he met the giants of mind, not the giants of steel. My ladyfriend Stefani, with a little experience of psychedelics, came back with a very different view of the psychedelic movement. Her upbringing and education had planted the impression, that such things as LSD were dangerous, illicit and people involved in it shady types. In Basel she understood that psychedelics are a legitimate part of our culture, with historical roots but above all dedicated and sincere people that try to understand what these substances can do for us.

For myself, I came a step further on my path, which is to try to understand the relationship between data and information. I added a few lines to the punch line of my life:

a bit is only information if it bytes

a thought is only information if it matters

consciousness does

and love

Luc Sala

Amsterdam

Future Hi Needs Your Support

Future Hi is soon approaching it's two year anniversary. In that time the site has grown even more in size and popularity. In order to keep it going, there are some bills coming due. Any support you can offer to make sure we are around for another year would be greatly appreciated. Last year's proceeds made many new things possible - tons of new bandwidth to host all the great media files we have, the forums, and lots of new content added to our library section. Depending on how much we receive this year, we'd like to continue expanding our offerings to this blessed community. Along with your support, this is your chance to really make a difference.

Some projects which have yet to come to fruition include a 24 hour Future Hi radio station - like Soma FM, a bastion of utopian community building, an annual conference/convention bringing visionaries from around the globe together in one place for making even more of our positive visions a reality.

There are several other projects in the works. I've been hard at work getting online a psychedelic classic that is been out of print for 25 years. The author has also been dead almost that long. It's a stunning and heartfelt work and deserves to see the light of day. It's also one of the few psychedelic books written by a women. I've put up the introduction and first chapter, so you can see.

Marcia Moore: Journeys Into the Bright World

So if you can donate I would be very grateful. I'm looking for money donations in any quantity you wish to give. I promise you, all this money will go directly to keeping Future Hi alive and growing.

To donate, just click on the paypal button here, or on the bottom right hand column.

Martin Luther King Day

"All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality."

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"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec. 10, 1964

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"If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive."

On learning of threats on his life, June 5, 1964

Thank you Robert for sending me this, it made my day. :)

Hyperspace Ship?

I wouldn't have taken this seriously, but I read it over at Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends:

According to the Heim quantum theory (HQT) developed in the 1950s, it should be possible to build an 'hyperspace' engine allowing a spacecraft to reach Mars in 3 hours. It would also allow us to travel to stars more that 10 light years away in 80 days by slipping into a different dimension. But is interstellar space travel a dream or a future reality? It all depends if this controversial theory about the fabric of our universe is correct or not. So far, it seems that a majority of physicists thinks that this theory is either incomplete or almost understandable. Nevertheless, some scientists working for the U.S. Department of Energy think that such an 'hyperspace' engine could be tested within five years.

An extraordinary "hyperspace" engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government.

The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today's New Scientist magazine.

The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft.

Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension.

The US air force has expressed an interest in the idea and scientists working for the American Department of Energy -- which has a device known as the Z Machine that could generate the kind of magnetic fields required to drive the engine -- say they may carry out a test if the theory withstands further scrutiny.

Professor Jochem Hauser, one of the scientists who put forward the idea, told The Scotsman that if everything went well a working engine could be tested in about five years.

However, Prof. Hauser, a physicist at the Applied Sciences University in Salzgitter, Germany, and a former chief of aerodynamics at the European Space Agency, cautioned that any prototype would be based on a highly controversial theory that would require a significant change in the current understanding of the laws of physics.

"It would be amazing. I have been working on propulsion systems for quite a while and it would be the most amazing thing. The benefits would be almost unlimited," he said.

"But this thing is not around the corner. We first have to prove the basic science is correct and there are quite a few physicists who have a different opinion. It's our job to prove we are right and we are working on that."

He said the engine would enable spaceships to travel to different solar systems. "If the theory is correct then this is not science fiction, it is science fact," Prof. Hauser said.

"NASA have contacted me and next week I'm going to see someone from the [U.S.] air force to talk about it further, but it is at a very early stage. I think the best-case scenario would be within the next five years [to build a test device] if the technology works."

The U.S. authorities' attention was attracted after Prof. Hauser and an Austrian colleague, Walter Droscher, wrote a paper called "Guidelines for a space propulsion device based on Heim's quantum theory."

Dangerous Ideas?

Edge asks the Annual Question to a bunch of smart people. Last year they asked "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" Here is what I wrote about that. A great question. But, in short, it was a bit surprising how narrow-minded a lot of the answers were. This year the question is "What is your dangerous idea?" An equally great question, trying to inspire people to give their outside-the-box thinking, their most potent ideas that might change everything. At least that's how I would like to define "dangerous" in this context. Something that can upset the status quo catastrophically, but in a good and interesting way. Not all of them use it like that.

A lot of the answers are interesting in various ways. But most of them are not very dangerous. They stay within very safe territory for scientists. And, actually, the underlying subtext is the same as last year for a lot of them. It is obvious that for a lot of these guys THE most dangerous ideas in the world are Religion, God and Consciousness. Meaning, they bend over backwards to insist that it is insane to believe in a God, and that it is a hopeless fantasy to imagine that you actually exist, as anything other than some chemical processes in a brain. And that what we really ought to accept, if we thought it through properly, is that everything is the result of unconscious evolutionary processes, we have no free will, and life is without meaning. Great!

There's a certain kind of circular reasoning that many materialist scientists suffer from, which is similar to religious reasoning like "God exists because the Bible says so, and the Bible is true because God wrote it." But here you find it in versions like John Horgan mentions in connection with his idea "We Have No Souls":

"In his 1994 book The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, the late, great Francis Crick argued that the soul is an illusion perpetuated, like Tinkerbell, only by our belief in it."

You know, like, "You don't really exist, you just think you do!". To some people that sounds really clever, and there's no Logic 101 that will make apparent the craziness of such argumentation. Who's the "we" who thinks? In particular, who's is it who thinks that it thinks? Who's the agency that wonders whether it exists or not? What is it that is unsure whether it has free will or not? It is just an illusion? Just a chemical reaction in a brain? Who's concluding that? Is it just turtles all the way down?

There are, however, some nice entries from people who don't just fall into the same circular reasoning trap. Like, Rudy Rucker, with the idea "Mind is a universally distributed quality"

Panpsychism. Each object has a mind. Stars, hills, chairs, rocks, scraps of paper, flakes of skin, molecules — each of them possesses the same inner glow as a human, each of them has singular inner experiences and sensations.

I'm quite comfortable with the notion that everything is a computation. But what to do about my sense that there's something numinous about my inner experience? Panpsychism represents a non-anthropocentric way out: mind is a universally distributed quality.

Yes, the workings of a human brain are a deterministic computation that could be emulated by any universal computer. And, yes, I sense more to my mental phenomena than the rule-bound exfoliation of reactions to inputs: this residue is the inner light, the raw sensation of existence. But, no, that inner glow is not the exclusive birthright of humans, nor is it solely limited to biological organisms.

Note that panpsychism needn't say that universe is just one mind. We can also say that each object has an individual mind. One way to visualize the distinction between the many minds and the one mind is to think of the world as a stained glass window with light shining through each pane. The world's physical structures break the undivided cosmic mind into a myriad of small minds, one in each object.

There are some folks who actually can engage in a bit of self-criticism as scientists, and think about where scientific beliefs really come from. Like Marcelo Gleiser in "Can Science Explain Itself?":

What if this is all bogus? What if we look at science as a narrative, a description of the world that has limitations based on its structure? The constants of Nature are the letters of the alphabet, the laws are the grammar rules and we build these descriptions through the guiding hand of the so-called scientific method. Period. To say things are this way because otherwise we wouldn't be here to ask the question is to miss the point altogether: things are this way because this is the story we humans tell based on the way we see the world and explain it.

Or, Thomas Metzinger, in "The Forbidden Fruit Intuition":

Is there a set of questions which are dangerous not on grounds of ideology or political correctness, but because the most obvious answers to them could ultimately make our conscious self-models disintegrate? Can one really believe in determinism without going insane?

Some present the revolutionary idea that scientists might just need to actually catch up to what science already has established, like "Carlo Rovelli" in "What the physics of the 20th century says about the world might in fact be true". You know, if quantum mechanics actually were how we experienced the world to work, rather than just some bizarre math equations.

Stephen Kosslyn goes the furthest in "A Science of the Divine", to present a way to reconcile science and religion:

Here's an idea that many academics may find unsettling and dangerous: God exists. And here's another idea that many religious people may find unsettling and dangerous: God is not supernatural, but rather part of the natural order. Simply stating these ideas in the same breath invites them to scrape against each other, and sparks begin to fly. To avoid such conflict, Stephen Jay Gould famously argued that we should separate religion and science, treating them as distinct "magisteria." But science leads many of us to try to understand all that we encounter with a single, grand and glorious overarching framework. In this spirit, let me try to suggest one way in which the idea of a "supreme being" can fit into a scientific worldview.

There's a surprising entry from Michael Nesmith, you know, from "The Monkees", who eloquently argues that "Existence is Non-Time, Non-Sequential, and Non-Objective", and I think I agree.

Several people talk along the lines of Andy Clark's "The quick-thinking zombies inside us" about how most of our decision making, our "free will", really happens at a sub-conscious level, in ways we don't at all understand, so we fool ourselves concerning how much in control we are.

Several people argue for free market economies. Get governments out of the way, and let the invisible hand of the free market sort things out.

Which is an underlying theme here. Humans having figured out that there are complex mechanisms that make things happen. Complex mechanisms that make our decisions. Complex mechanisms that carry on the evolution of life. Complex mechanisms that make economies work. More complex than we simple humans easily can understand. More smart and efficient than any of us consciously can be.

But at the same time we here have a number of well-respected big names in science who claim that they've understood all of that well enough to conclude decisively that these complex mechanisms that are smarter than us aren't intelligent at all. They're just simple random processes with no meaning or purpose or intelligence, that came together completely randomly for no good reason. Confused? Well, you should be. You need to become good at circular reasoning to explain that away.

The real dangerous idea, which most people with scientific credentials apparently are afraid of thinking, is, in my words:

Life the universe and everything is all one system, which is self-organizing, intelligent and eternal. There's no outside to it. Nothing is separate from it. Whatever happens inside of it happens because it is in its nature to happen. It has no outside meaning, but it can create meaning. Its latent qualities might or might not get expressed, but when they do, it is because they're there. So, if something finds itself having self-reflective consciousness, it is because the whole system possesses the potential quality of self-reflective consciousness. Duh. If oxygen and hydrogen mix and become water, that's because they already had the property of being able to do so. If something evolves, it is because the system knows how to evolve. If something is alive, it is because the system is alive. If somewhere in the system time and space exists, and at some "time" a scientist evolves and he decides that he has understood it all and it is all really dumb and random and meaningless and consciousness only exists in brains, except for that it doesn't really exist, well, he's right, makes no difference. It is all natural. Luckily it isn't that scientist, or some guy with a grey beard on a mountain, who's responsible for keeping the whole system working, or it really wouldn't last long. The whole system is much smarter than any brain that comes along at some point and has a short-lived fit of self-importance. Doesn't matter what you call it. You can call it God, or Universe, or Physics, or Nature, Evolution or Mind or Consciousness. It is you, buddy! If you think not, you've become a bit confused by derivatives of your own abstract thoughts. Take a step back and touch Reality. Be conscious. Be very conscious! But don't get cocky. That little point of self-reflective awareness that you identify with, and which is enough to spin yourself into circles, is way, way, way smaller and more ephemeral than the big you who is all of existence, all of evolving spacetime, any dimension, any physical phenomenon, any potential phenomenon, all simultaneously, all forever. It is a lot smarter at running things than your little localized conscious focal point. You're not in control. But if you catch a ride on natural law, and go with the flows, you can go far, very quickly. Because the system works really well. It is self-regenerating. It is open source.

Well, that was my rant. But that maybe doesn't give you anything very practical to do with it. A truly dangerous worldchanging idea would be a meme you let loose, and it just breaks down the old fixed structures, and it guides the self-organization of something new and better. They don't come along all that often, but when they do, it doesn't really matter much what you think about it, as it pretty much happens by itself. It might be time for some ideas that actually change how we perceive ourselves and the world, where nothing will be the same again.

Lots of people have commented on the Edge dangerous ideas thing. Like, I just noticed Dave Pollard's Blinded by Science. He wasn't very impressed either with the dangerousness of those ideas, and he has some alternative suggestions.

Cyberfetus Rising

Forget Darwinian Evolution, Creationism, and Intelligent Design. Biological life on earth is only a larval form of a much greater organism. Or so says the Heresiarch who over the past few years has evolved the Star Larvae Hypothesis.

The Hypothesis:

1. Stars constitute a genus of organism.
2. The stellar life cycle includes a larval phase.
3. Biological life constitutes the larval phase of the stellar life cycle.

Elaboration:
The hypothesis proposes a teleological model of nature, in which ...

* Stellar nebulae manufacture viruses and bacteria in their interiors while they cool to form solar systems.
* Biological life evolves according to a plan, which in its entirety, on- and off-planet, constitutes a generational life cycle of the stellar organism.
* Technology plays a necessary role in evolution. It enables biological life to emigrate from incubator planets to weightless space.
* Postplanetary life, symbiotic with technology, manufactures the protons needed for, then metamorphoses into, new stars.
* A prescient complex of religious motifs, including ascendance, illumination, and transcendence, expresses humankind’s stellar calling and longing—its imago.
* Nature is a metabolism that encompasses the organic and the inorganic in a continuum of matter and energy exchanges.

To me, the most fascinating portion of the Heresiarch's rather long exposition of the Star Larvae Hypothesis is an Addenudum entitled, Cyberfetus Rising.

Humankind's extraterrestrial descendants, if they abandon artificial gravity and adapt to weightlessness, will grow remote from their terrestrial counterparts not only geographically, but also biologically and psychologically. One biological change they will undergo is an enrichment, or juvenilization, of brain tissue. Psychological changes could only follow. Another change is a dwindling of bone and muscle mass. This effect of weightlessness plagues astronauts and is sure to be more pronounced in native extraterrestrials, descendants of humankind who spend their entire lives weightless. An organism with an enriched brain—many neurons and many connections among the neurons—and underdeveloped bones and muscles will resemble a human infant more than it will a human adult. The effects of weightlessness on our extraterrestrial descendants, therefore, will constitute a neotenous adaptation to the environment of outer space.

Folklore and fable seem to have seen it coming. Juvenile skywalkers are familiar characters in popular storytelling. The stereotypical UFO pilot, for example, with his fetal allometry (big head, small limbs); the eternally youthful high-flyer Peter Pan; the cosmic fetus who wraps up 2001, A Space Odyssey, and other mystical and sci-fi icons suggest that living in the sky preserves youth. But the most familiar and explicit renderings of extraterrestrial tots must be the cherubim, the flying babies of Baroque and Victorian art. These infantile cloud dwellers are curious representatives of advanced spirituality.

Among the holy flying babies, the St. Valentine's Day Cupid in particular seems eager to homestead the evolutionary frontier. The infant cupid combines neoteny—retarded development—and sexuality in a context of weightlessness, a sure-fire recipe for speciation. Neoteny has a well-established propensity to spawn species in remote populations. As Ecologist Ramon Margalef notes in his "Perspectives in Ecological Theory" (University of Chicago Press, 1968), "The opening of new spaces to colonization creates new opportunities for the development of new species; such evolution does not take a slow and regular path but proceeds through neoteny or other nonhabitual or poorly understood evolutionary paths."

What space is more likely to trigger nonhabitual modes of speciation than outer space?

The proposal that neoteny—retarded development—will set the direction for evolution in space is consistent with current theories of human descent. Human evolution generally has been neotenous—meaning that human beings are the juvenilized descendants of their more apish ancestors—according to paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and other evolutionary theorists. The neotenous trend, having picked up steam under the influence of industrialization, is set to become even more pronounced under the influence of weightlessness. Humankind's extraterrestrial descendants eventually might not develop beyond the form of the fetus, the embryo, or even the zygote—the newly fertilized egg. This conjecture springs from the pattern of development that characterizes all complex organisms.

Every complex organism begins life as a zygote that inititally divides into an undifferentiated clump of cells. As the organism continues to develop—as its ontogeny unfolds—it acquires more of the characteristic anatomy and morphology of its species. The tails, fangs, and wings that sprout during ontogeny constellate into a distinctive bodily form, culminating in the adult form of the species. Pig, duck, dolphin, and human embryos share a common form, initially, then differentiate into their specific adult forms.

(This developmental trend, from a general and undifferentiated form into a differentiated and specialized one, was recognized as the basic pattern of organic development by nineteenth-century German naturalist, Karl Ernst von Baer. Among biologists, Von Baer's observation has replaced the so-called biogenetic law of Ernst Haekel as the orthodox view. Haekel's law, which asserts that during development organisms pass through the adult stages of their ancestors, in sequence, is summarized by the well known formula, "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." This formula persists in the popular mind, but scientists today dismiss it as discredited in the light of recent findings. In 1988 the president of the National Academy of Sciences concluded, "The biogenetic law is as dead as a doornail" ["Ontogeny and Phylogeny Recapitulated," American Scientist, May-June 1988]. According to von Baer's law of progressive differentiation, neotenous descendants resemble the juvenile form of their ancestors—in contrast to Haekel's law, which predicts that neotenous descendants will resemble ancestral adults.)

In environments undergoing rapid change, neoteny enables organisms to adapt to the unstable conditions. It enables organisms to jettison adaptations that have outlasted their usefulness. As for the environmental changes that promote human neoteny, technology seems to play a major role, as evidenced by anthropological digs where ancient skeletal remains are peculiarly retarded—they're toothless. Anthropologist C. Loring Brace explains the connection: "Human skeletal collections from the Neolithic and subsequent periods contain the remains of individuals who had survived for years in a completely edentulous [toothless] state. No such evidence is available for any human population that did not use pottery. Pounding, grinding, and milling tools also become common late in the Pleistocene . . . and it seems likely that this may also have contributed to the relaxation of Pleistocene levels of selection, which had maintained large amounts of tooth substance." (Brace, C. Loring, Karen R. Rosenberg, and Kevin D. Hunt, "Gradual Change in Human Tooth Size in the Late Pleistocene and Post-Pleistocene," Evolution, 41(4), 1987, pp. 705-720. See also, "Human Teeth, Small Already, Continue to Shrink," The New York Times, August 30, 1988.) Food processing technologies reduce the need for large teeth, the grinding and milling tools native to heads. The biological tools become superfluous and unable to return the metabolic investments that they require, once automation technologies, such as pounding, grinding, and milling tools, become available.

"The first tools were probably conceived initially as simple extensions of the human body," surmises David Barash in "The Hare and the Tortoise" (Penguin Books, 1986), "the club a stylized and more powerful hand and fist, the bowl and pouch more efficient cupped hands, the flint scraper a heavy-duty fingernail. . . ." Marshall McLuhan made the same observation. His opus, "Understanding Media," he subtitled "The extensions of man." Philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard defines the same relationship in "The Postmodern Condition" (University of Minnesota, 1984): "Technical devices originated as prosthetic aids for the human organs or as physiological systems whose function it is to receive data or condition the context."

The technological environment appears to be a milieu of gadgets whirring and chugging in space and time in lieu of human labor. Freud, for one, welcomed this prosthetic effect. In "Civilization and its Discontents," he pronounces, "With every tool man is perfecting his own organs, whether motor or sensory, or is removing the limits to their functioning. Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent."

Evolutionary pressures for metabolic economy apparently allow tools to supplant the specialized—adult—body parts that they simulate and outperform. By extending the specialized functions of the body, technology relaxes selection pressures for the body parts that perform those functions. Hence, technology and neoteny proceed hand in hand.

This ability of tools to shape the species finds a more formal theoretical foundation in the gene-culture coevolution hypothesis of sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson. Humankind was synthesized by "a sustained autocatalytic reaction in which genetic and cultural evolution drove each other forward," Wilson and colleague Charles Lumsden propose in "Promethean Fire" (1983, Harvard University Press). "This largely unknown evolutionary process we have called gene-culture coevolution: it is a complicated, fascinating interaction in which culture is generated and shaped by biological imperatives while biological traits are simultaneously altered by genetic evolution in response to cultural innovation."

Although Wilson and Lumsden tend to restrict their use of "culture" to mean social behavior, clearly the concept must include artifacts, implements, devices—technology. The notion of "epigenetic rules" that they use to link genes and social behaviors in a feedback relationship should apply as readily to genes and human technical proficiencies—the crafting and use of tools. In this view, a species that modifies its environment technologically becomes locked into an evolutionary feedback circuit in which it and its technologies mutually shape one another.

Neoteny and technology feeding off each other—techneoteny—is the primary mode of gene-culture coevolution among human beings. What was true of neolithic cookery should apply to subsequent generations of technologies: they each should contribute to the autocatalytic cycle of neotenous gene-culture coevolution. If we fast forward from the Pleistocene to the present, we see the techneotenous gyre tightening and taking a particular toll on the male of the species, more highly differentiated gender.

Technology tends to be associated with the prerogatives of men; ironically, it has produced an environment increasingly suited to feminine, and by extension juvenile, aptitudes and sensibilities. Havelock Ellis noticed the connection already at the end of the nineteenth century. In his "Man and Woman," he observes, "Savagery and barbarism have more usually than not been predominantly militant, that is to say masculine, in character, while modern civilization is becoming industrial, that is to say feminine, in character, for the industries belonged primitively to women, and they tend to make men like women." This feminization is neotenous, Ellis contends, citing what he calls the "infantile diathesis" of women: "When women differ from men, it is the latter who have diverged, leaving women nearer to the child-type. Women are nearer to children than are men [and] the child represents a higher degree of evolution than the adult."

The ancient world similarly perceived a link between the industrial and the feminine. Early metallurgists, for example, built their lore on a mythos of gestation and incubation. "Very early on we are confronted with the notion that ores 'grow' in the belly of the Earth after the manner of embryos," comments Mircea Eliade in "The Forge and the Crucible" (Harper and Row, 1962), "Metallurgy thus takes on the character of obstetrics. Miner and metalworker intervene in the unfolding of subterranean embryology: they accelerate the rhythm of the growth of ores, they collaborate in the work of Nature and assist it to give birth more rapidly." Eliade goes on to cite the traditions of the Atonga, who "have a custom of throwing into the furnace a portion of the placenta to ensure the success of the smelting."

Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" gives a more overtly anthropomorphic form to the notion of the industrial feminine. Critics conventionally interpret the story according to its Promethean subtitle, but critic Steven Lehman interprets it as an allegory of male womb envy. He argues, "[Dr. Frankenstein's] problem—and it is the central thematic problem of the novel—is that modern science obviates the biological gender distinctions upon which our psychology and society have been built." (Lehman, Steven, "The Motherless Child in Science Fiction: Frankenstein and Moreau," Science Fiction Studies, No. 56, 1992, pp. 49-58.) Technology cures Dr. Frankenstein's womb envy by enabling him to give birth to artificial life. It allows Victor Frankenstein to mother the prototypical problem child. If inventions mimic bodies generally, then the process of invention becomes a kind of generalized birthing process.

Inspired computer programmers have adopted "artificial" or "virtual" life as a technical grail. Some programmers claim that their growing, replicating, and adapting software constitutes a new life form. Their Frankensteinian achievements, along with those of the ancient metallurgists, can be psychoanalyzed as the expression of a male desire to deliver life. But, despite any joy that they might receive from their ersatz motherhood, the men of industrial society give birth to their own undoing.

In "The Mechanical Bride" McLuhan explains the source of male vulnerability at the hands of industry: "Under complex conditions of rapid change, the family unit is subject to special strain. Men flounder in such times. The male role in society, always abstract, tenuous, and precarious compared with the biological assurance of the female, becomes obscured. Man the provider, man the codifier of laws and ritual, loses his confidence." Given the dire circumstances, a men's movement may have been inevitable. Poet Robert Bly, a movement organizer, winces at the link between industry and immaturity: "If you walk from Boston to Labrador, you’re more mature when you arrive; If you drive, you’re more infantile when you arrive. The Industrial Revolution brought central heating and the automobile. Not only does maturity fail, but a positive movement toward regression is taking place. There’s a connection between technology and infantilism. It’s sad." (Interview in EastWest, March 1986, p.72.) Despite technology’s more immediate undermining of male roles, ultimately the specialized roles of male and female alike will be compromised and both will converge on the common child type. "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and a little child shall lead them," as the prophet foresaw.

In the twenty-first century, family members gather around the electronic hearth to consume as a unit the same cultural fare, with adults now happy to watch cartoon shows and children eager to imbibe celebrity sex scandals. Psychological de-differentiation drives cultural de-differentiation. "Being There," Jerzy Kozinski's novel, captures the trend. The novel's protagonist, "Chauncey Gardiner," grows in seclusion, a television his primary companion. The tastes, concerns, and socialized personality of a normal adult never take root. Then a disoriented Gardiner is forced into the adult world, his only social skill the abililty to recite prime-time platitudes. Ironically, innocence proves disarming. Gardiner propels himself up the political ranks and lands in a position of magical influence. He assumes a political function along the lines of that later filled by Nancy Reagan's astrologer, an angelic presence.

"Being There," at least in its movie form, suggests the next stop in humankind’s evolutionary trip. Director Hal Ashby takes liberties with the novel when the infantile Chauncey Gardiner walks on water at the end of the movie. By deifying the naif, the weightless conclusion of Being There points to a way around humankind's terminal regression. Levity is nature's remedy for gravity.

The ongoing technological extension of the body would seem to resolve itself finally in an extension of the whole body. Within a comprehensive synthetic-prosthetic environment, the biological body will not need or want adaptations that were selected for it by wild, ancestral environments. Bodies will discontinue those metabolic investments that support specialized—adult—physiology, anatomy, and morphology. And that comprehensive extension of the body is the encapsulated ecosystem of the space colony. The Freudian project of human industry is construction of an immortal mother. Then biology can remain eternally embryonic. This is where the feminine energies inherent in industry come into fulfillment, as the collection of industries takes the form of a comprehensive environment—a synthetic womb. The image is complete with weightlessness providing an environment within which embryonic protoplasm can float.

On Earth, the transition from womb to world is traumatic for the newborn. In the exowomb of the space colony, our descendants might not notice the transition—a smooth glide from one buoyant comprehensive life-support system to another. In weightlessness the purported benefits of underwater birthing will be put to the test. The effect on future generations of the elimination of perinatal trauma is a sideline ripe for speculation.

But this much seems evident: the developmental transition from the Pleasure Principle of Freudian psychology to the Reality Principle, a transition that in the Freudian model accounts for much psychological distress and dysfunction, might not occur at all. Theoretically, a fetal mentality could remain unchallenged and unadulterated given an environment that reproduces with sufficient fidelity the life-support functions of the womb. The weightless technologically comprehensive environment of the space colony recalibrates all standards of psychological and physical development, because it promises to radically truncate both.

Once the technological project of weightless encapsulation completes itself, neotenous de-differentiation will be unchained. One extreme prospect is that of unfettered expression of oncogenes. These genes would seem to be natural vehicles for neoteny, because their job is to retard cellular differentiation. Masses of undifferentiated tissue occur twice during the lives of complex organisms: once early in embryologic development and later taking the form of the cancerous tumor. Both situations are thought to be controlled by oncogenes, or at least to involve oncogenes. In the course of embryologic development, cells differentiate into the many tissues of the adult organism. But tumors don’t differentiate. They remain undifferentiated tissue. What’s more, given a sufficiently supportive culture, these undifferentiated masses—neoplasms—behave oddly: they don't die. This peculiarity of tumors contributes to the mythical dimension of the hypothesis. It suggests the original promise of heavenly immortality.

"Prominent among the kinds of cell lineages potentially immortal in culture are cancerous ones; hence the study of such cells in culture has been vigorously pursued in recent years," writes William T. Keeton of Cornell University in the college textbook "Biological Science" (third edition, 1980, W. W. Norton and Company). "The HeLa cell line is derived from a carcinoma of the cervix of a young black woman named Henrietta Lacks, who died of her cancer in 1951. This was the first stable, vigorously growing line of cultured human cells used in cancer research. Today HeLa cells are found growing in medical and research laboratories the world over."

"Culture" denotes a manufactured environment that preserves its occupants in a state of arrested development, whether it be the urban milieus within which neotenous humans live or the petri dishes within which laboratory tumors live. Tumors in this context appear to be premature posthuman extraterrestrials, as if they were mutations waiting for appropriate environments (weightless cultures) in which to emerge as evolutionary players.

As bodies and technologies fuse, and today's virtual reality systems evolve into semisynthetic skins that mediate exchanges of molecular information between body and environment, evolution in space will erase any distinction between Gaia and Techne. Both will be subsumed into a generic, extropic stuff, an amorphous technorganism. And its genetic reach could extend beyond the human.

This related prospect includes that of a new endosymbiosis, the process by which ancient bacterial cells merged to form the first eukaryotic cells, but on a grander scale. (Eukaryotic cells are the complex cells that make up plant and animal bodies.) The juvenilizing effects of weightlessness presumably would retard all species, not just humans. Assuming that our descendants bring their pets with them into space, the several species together will revert to and converge on the common embryonic form, as they de-differentiate morphologically. And the tendency already is in place. What earlier was referred to as "techneoteny" is essentially the process of domestication, which is technology-driven juvenilization. House cats are domesticated felines, companion dogs are domesticated canines, and humankind is the domesticated primate. Each species is a potential contributor of genes to an aggregate descendant that will stand in complexity to its consituents as our cells do to the prokaryotes, or simple bacteria. The convergence of species inside a weightless solid-state environment will set the stage for an exo-Cambrian explosion of evolutionary novelty.

Already we can see that silicon will play a leading role in the transition, and, as in a variety of science-fiction story, could even replace carbon in part or in whole as the main building block of biological organisms—though at that point biology will have evolved/metamorphosed into something we probably should consider postbiology. The reappearance of silicon at the end of biology mirrors its initiating role, a parsimonious symmetry.

Ultimately, the microscopic devices known collectively as nanotechnology, acting as intracellular prostheses, could enable coils of DNA to control complex support systems remotely. Nanotechnologies, if realized as advertised, could function as prostheses for the tools of molecular genetics. They might obsolesce RNA molecules, amino acids, ribosomes, and the other machinery of protein synthesis. The overlooked dimension of nanotechnologies is their potential to translate genetic blueprints for cells, organs, and organisms directly into microprocessors, supercomputers, and space colonies—cell, organ, and organism prostheses.

Something superhuman is weaning itself of its dependence on human beings.

That thing is the local expression of the universe's ontogeny. The religious vision turns out to be perhaps merely clairvoyant, rather than transcendent—heaven and its attendants are as much a part of this universe and its history as are we and the planets and the stars.