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Thursday, April 27 through Sunday, April 30, 2006.
I just heard of the Xara Project. Sounds wonderful. Here's the basic description from their website:
Come share 4 days and 3 nights with a thousand other brilliant souls living the life of a future paradise, and celebrate again the experience of your own life.Xara Dulzura is an outdoor retreat exploring personal, creative mythology through visual and performing arts, workshops, landscape, hospitality, and one another.
Madre Grande Monastery is located on 264 secluded acres of oaks, stony hills and meadows high above and beyond rural Dulzura, in southeast San Diego County.
Here we pre-enact Xara, a pastoral paradise civilization 400 years in the future, imagine the myths and rites that would inform and sustain that world, and dream them to life for one another through interactive visual and performing arts. The most important vision and spirit is your own in this shared exploration of creative mythology through mutual art, hospitality, and personal experience.
We hope you will join our future Floralia as we celebrate the coming of new summer, the full-throated roar of life in its prime, and the building of the new.
I've been observing the optimism and "pronoia" espoused by upwinger and Chris in their posts, and the angst espoused by Ralph Metzner in his article, and in their own unique ways, by Paul and eventhorizon. I'd like to offer a perspective on how we can reconcile these divergent perspectives into a single worldview, and how we can "take charge of the situation" and proactively instigate the future of joy, ecstacy, freedom, and abundance that God has prearranged (but not preordained) via universal intelligence. I've been researching a "hyper-holism" that reconciles epistemological and ontological opposites — so that we can: a) see the world's political situation in its true context, and b) effectively reconcile religious and political opposites. What follows is the preface for a large paper/thesis that I am working on. Following the preface is a description of a special twenty-one page .pdf file that I have prepared, and a link to it. It is meant to offer a message of hope that is unbridled, yet grounded in the deepest Truth of our Reality. I can not think of a better forum in which to release this material, and hope you will find it to be both interesting and useful.
------------------------------ Beginning of Preface ------------------------------
Collective Empowerment and Entheogenic Freedom
This work is based on ten years of research at the point where science and the world's many religions come together without compromise. This research reveals a symmetry in the structure of human belief, as per the four cardinal paradigms of culture depicted below. As such, this paper draws insight with equal ease from: a) hard rational logic, b) the inspired appreciation of scripture, c) awakened subjectivity, and d) heartfelt ecological sensibility. This research also shows that the goals of collective empowerment and entheogenic freedom are closely related to each other, and to the securing of a unique destiny that is virtually unknown outside "psychedelic futurism." In particular, it shows why these twin goals can not be easily and fruitfully secured unless the quest to do so is made inseparable from a destiny characterized internally by communal, nanotech ecotopia, and externally, by a system of cosmic life that would eventually compare to this earth, in the same way that a towering oak compares to an acorn. It then maps out the way forward in detail.
Religious Monotheism
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...Mystical Pantheism --------.....-------- Scientific Materialism
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Paganism/Environmentalism
This paper cuts through mundane superstition to tackle the subject of time-symmetric causation head-on. The belief that cause always precedes effect is the most deeply ingrained superstition of the human race. Many are aware that time as we know it is an illusion. Few however, are aware that behind this illusion is a meta-reality in which objective forward in time processes, and subjective backward in time processes engage a holographic relationship of infinite depth. The paper introduces the nature of this relationship, and describes the primal challenge therein (and backs itself up with an appendix detailing the 12+ logical/philosophical arguments and 40+ pieces of empirical/observational evidence that overwhelmingly confirm the reality of time-symmetric causation). In this regard, it: a) presents the living destiny that has been prearranged, but not preordained, by the gestalt quantum-computational intelligence of Reality, i.e. God, and b) shows how the interaction of the real-numbered physical realm and the complex-numbered imaginal realm is rapidly bringing civilization toward an Eschaton characterized by a stark bifurcation of destiny.
This paper's goal is to give an overview of how we can help guide civilization through the lethal economic crisis that it will face circa 2010-2014 — while at the same time, securing freedom for entheogens in the context of specific group energy rituals. It is meant to offer a solid foundation for the challenge at hand. I hope it will be the starting-point for the wide-ranging discussions that will need to occur in these areas.
-------------------------------- End of Preface --------------------------------
Because this proposal touches on so many different aspects of culture, I have assembled bits and pieces of my work into the special twenty-one page file mentioned above. This file is designed to acquaint "psychedelic futurists" with the scope of my analysis, and the course of action that I am proposing. Because the new hyper-holism is so radical in its breadth, and the journey through and beyond the Eschaton even more radical, I have interspersed various charts with the text, and put everything in the order that I believe will be the easiest to follow. Included are the following:
1. A two-page chunk that contains the above preface and a high-level conceptual overview.
2. A two-page chunk that details the true role of the Divine Feminine vis a vis the Eschaton.
3. Two one-page charts that describe the four-fold symmetry of human culture in detail.
4. A detailed six-page introduction of how we may understand and navigate the Eschaton.
5. A two-page chart that describes "holographic libertarianism," an innovative political idea.
6. The three-page description of what life might be like in the "Millennium" and beyond.
7. A four-page list of experiments that should powerfully confirm time-symmetric causation.
This is obviously a work in progress, and some things may still be a bit rough (especially the list of experiments). Beyond that, the main six-page introduction contains a lot more information than would normally be there (to momentarily compensate for the unfinished paper per se). Please bear with it, for I feel that this research will prove to be accurate, and that the proposals based on it will ultimately be useful.
This file is intended to take people on a visionary journey. I hope Paul and the other people here experience it that way, and by this means, feel the living energy of an entheogenic future that is forever trying to get our attention. My suggestion would be to print out a copy, fasten your seat belt, and happy journeys!
http://home.earthlink.net/~thomaswinans/CollectiveEmpowerment.pdf
If people are interested in hearing more, I'll be happy to discuss the subject matter here, and/or post links to the various sections of the paper as I complete them. Please give me your feedback.
Sincerely,
Reverend Tom
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?
Future Hi pal Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the seminal book Breaking Open the Head asked me to share this with you. This article appears in the latest issue of Arthur Magazine.
__
A few months ago, I attended the Burning Man festival, in the Black Rock desert of Nevada, for the fifth time in a row. Burning Man has been called the world’s biggest party, but I don’t even know if I have "fun" at Burning Man in any ordinary sense – being there is incredibly intense, a kind of psychophysical endurance test. Despite the difficulties, I will continue to return as long as it is possible to do so. The gathering acts as an enormous shamanic transformer, constellating new insights and clearing away old junk.
I chose to go to Burning Man instead of staying in New York for the protests surrounding the Republican Convention. My increasing suspicion is that traditional forms of protest, at this point, are only playing into the hands of the security apparatus. The police and military get the opportunity to test out their latest tactics and shiniest gadgets, while the corporate media finds the most incendiary images to broadcast across the US, amping up the anxiety. The catharsis that protestors get from yelling slogans across barbed wire barriers and out of "free speech pens" might be energy that could be more creatively invested in other ways.
As the corporate and governmental superstructure continue a lockstep march towards their own self-destruction, their attempts to pulverize the collective psyche into submission becomes more transparent and overt. Electrical currents of spite and anxiety ripple across our public discourse and private lives. The individual’s refusal to fall into these traps or accept this negative conditioning can be a great liberation. At Burning Man, I kept thinking that the most meaningful political act, right now, is to continue cultivating fearlessness in pursuit of joy. To be fearless, calm, and joyful is to jam a wrench into the "Brave New 1984" technodystopic machinery that is seeking to impose itself on our world.
I consider the current sociopolitical abyss to be a kind of evolutionary tool. The control apparatus of modern society may be functioning as a training ground for a new level of consciousness. Many different thinkers of the Twentieth Century, as well as the prophecies of archaic and indigenous spiritual traditions, have proposed that a major change in human consciousness is imminent. This has been articulated in various ways. Before his death in 1961, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw that the "reality of the psyche," repressed by the modern mentality, would soon become unavoidable. Mankind was being forced to climb "to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness," to handle "the superhuman powers which the fallen angels" had dropped into our hands.
The Austrian visionary Rudolf Steiner (founder of Anthroposophy and Waldorf education) claimed that the mission of his life on Earth was to return the knowledge of reincarnation to the West. According to Steiner, individual human beings reincarnate again and again, and the Earth itself passes through successive incarnations. He considered this phase to be the fourth incarnation of the Earth. Steiner thought we are approaching a fifth incarnation, the "Jupiter state," where humanity would evolve new capacities and reach a new level of wisdom – actually, not just humans. According to Steiner, the plant and mineral kingdom would reach a higher level of consciousness during this next incarnation, while humanity would split into several different "human kingdoms," undergoing different forms of evolution.
The Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo also felt that we were moving towards a new level or intensity of consciousness. In one of his last essays, The Mind of Light, he defined this as the "supramental" state. Just as life had self-organized out of matter, and mind had self-organized out of life, consciousness would evolve beyond the obscurations and ignorance of our current condition – to attain a level of truth-consciousness, and spiritual awareness, that could not be manipulated or fooled. Aurobindo speculated that our evolution would accelerate exponentially from that point. Once we had reached this supramental state, this truth-consciousness, we would be able to transform our physical reality and our bodies. "Man," Aurobindo wrote, "is a transitional being." The powers unleashed by technology might be reintegrated into the psyche, at a higher level of development.
As counterintuitive as it may seem at first, I propose that our current environment, saturated with noise and chaos and fear-mongering, is the necessary background for attaining this supramental condition, for accepting and mastering the reality of the psyche. The new mindset stems from a fearless curiosity and hunger for truth, and a rejection of the cynicism and negative programming foisted upon it by the corporate-controlled media and current power structure. The new intensity of consciousness accepts the reality of psychic and occult levels of reality, denied by modern materialism, but integrates this understanding with a scientific, pragmatic, and empirical approach to existence. As a speaker at Burning Man pointed out, it is not "New Age," but "New Edge."
My hypothesis is that at least a portion of humanity attains this level of "supramental" consciousness – including, as Aurobindo proposes, an accelerated evolution – as we approach the year 2012, prophesied by the Mayans as the end of the 5,125-year "Great Cycle" of human history. Despite current appearances, we are on the verge of a transition into a new intensity of human consciousness that will institute an harmonic and utopian situation on the Earth. This thesis is not mine alone – it is carefully elaborated by Carl Johann Calleman, among others, in his new book, The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness (Bear & Co.). This book supports the basic ideas of the writers Jose Arguelles and John Major Jenkins – a new outsider paradigm is crystallizing.
Calleman, a biologist who has worked with the World Health Organization, considers the development of human consciousness to be an organic process akin to fetal development. Chemical signals are transmitted to the fetus in an incredibly complex and perfectly orchestrated sequence. The proposal made by Arguelles, Calleman, and others, is that the evolution of human consciousness on Earth follows a similar process on a planetary scale, and we are currently approaching the birth of the higher mind, or noosphere, of the Earth. After many years of research, Calleman as well as Arguelles understand the Mayan Calendar to be a synchronically-attuned device that indicates the year-by-year changes, in this final period, leading to the inevitable phase-transition of human consciousness.
The run-up to the 2012 transition appears, necessarily, as universal capitulation and collapse – just as birth is a messy process that would appear horrific to the uninformed observer. According to Calleman’s study of the Mayan Calendar, the global economy – and with it, the materialist paradigm currently holding the collective psyche at a certain level of development – will collapse around 2007 - 2008. Right now, we are being forced to witness the shadow of the psyche projected into material form through systemic misuse of technology, biospheric destruction, as well as our current political farce. During the transition, things seem to be getting simultaneously – paradoxically – much better and much worse. Time itself seems to be changing form, accelerating, as events follow each other at breakneck pace.
Obviously, it is a difficult leap for most people to accept the possibility that the Maya had a deeper understanding of time – as a synchronic order, rather than a simple linear extension – than we currently possess. However, it seems to me that any impartial study of the current world situation makes it obvious that the current social and political paradigm is unsustainable, even in the short term. We are depleting and burning out our global resources at an ever-accelerating rate. A cynical or nihilistic perspective on the imminent fate of our species is, of course, plausible, but unproductive. An alternate perspective sees the destruction of the biosphere – and the development of technology – as byproducts of the psychospiritual evolution of humanity, bringing us to a new form or phase-state of consciousness.
One of the most beautiful aspects of Burning Man is the wide-open expanse of the desert itself, which seems to represent the infinite potential available to the liberated human imagination. While I was bicycling across the playa one night, enjoying the laser lights and carnival displays of the festival from a distance, I thought that the shift to a new planetary culture, and a new form of nonhierarchical social organization matching our new level of mind, does not have to be a cataclysmic or destructive one. The transition could occur in a manner similar to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Empire – a sudden piffle, and a shocking surrender. However, for this to happen, the new paradigm must already be in place, at least as an undercurrent. Lacking a model or an imprint, the collapse of the current system will result in a world resembling that of the Road Warrior films, without the occasional flickers of irony.
If we can make the transition to a truly rational planetary culture based on compassion, generosity, and dharmic principles, this will inspire a change in our basic conception of science. Rather than seeking to resolve dualisms and institute some final "Theory of Everything," the science of post-history will embrace and explore paradox, going deeper into conundrums, relinquishing delusory attempts to achieve closure. Superstring physics describes a universe of nine, ten, or eleven dimensions. If reality is, as Buddhism proposes, actually maya, a projection of subtler levels of the psyche, then we may come to accept that the extradimensional object or hypercube described by physics is the psyche itself, in its full multidimensions.
I suggest that the planes or surfaces of this object can be incorporated into awareness as the various vectors or intervals or vibrational field-effects experienced in non-ordinary states – induced by psychoactive substances, meditations, dreams, shamanic trances, and so on. Different psychedelics open "lines of flight" or ingressions across the extra-dimensional object that is the psyche itself. When we have matured to the point that we can accept the "reality of the psyche," investigating these areas will be recognized as natural and even essential to expanding the parameters of human understanding. The science and art of post-history will be dedicated to exploring the numinous paradoxes of psychic reality. Instead of seeking closure, we will open new possibilities and explore infinite new realms.
Sorry for the large number of political posts coming in the wake of this election, but I figure the mood is right to discuss it while we are so hungry for hope. I think all this stuff is VERY relevant to our future because it's going to effect everyone on the planet. Incubating positive and sustainable futures is going to require heroic work by all of us if we want to see it come to pass. It will be to our advantage to see where political forces are moving to best prepare us for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
You may have heard Bin Ladin's latest video communiqué, where he's stated his true intention of bankrupting the United States. Bruce Sterling posted an interesting piece, but the most enligntened analysis I've ever read of Al Qaeda is here.
What I find ironic is that before Bin laden, America already beat him to the punch! America is already bankrupt, but our economy is being artifically propped up by other nations, especially Japan. With Bush having taken turned the countries biggest surplus into the biggest deficit has been nothing but a final blow into the belly of the beast. Bush and Bin Laden can fight for credit for bankrupting the country if that's what they want to do. Who cares, the job is done already. It shoud also be noted that bankrupting the government has long been on the agenda of extreme right fiscal conservatives such as Grover Norquist, who is one of Bush's main economic advisors and has stated repeatedly that is precisely what he intends to do. And if you've been following the news, the Bush Administration recently asked for the debt ceiling to be raised a couple more trillion dollars! What a joke.
All of this of course is completely insane, yet people are getting all upset because supposedly our children and grandchildren will have to pay it off. Sorry, but that is just nonsense. You can't bleed blood from a turnip either. It's time for a serious reality check. America's debt is now so huge that it will never be paid off! And what do debtors do who can't pay off their debts? They declare bankruptcy. The only reason America hasn't done it yet, is that all sorts of foreign investors have kept it from happening, especially Japan. But bankruptcy is now inevitable and will likely occur on Bush's watch, now that he is president again for the next 4 years.
So what then does this really mean for the American Empire and in turn the rest of the world?
Several months ago Future Hi Editor and good friend Flemming Funch posted this interesting analysis, which I've quoted below in it's entirety.
How, then, does a nation deal with debts that so greatly outrun its ability to pay? There are basically only five strategies. All are unappealing. Most are calamitous.The most difficult strategy is, not surprisingly, the honest one: raise taxes and pay your bills. This is what King George III did following the Seven Years War with France in 1763. England had quadrupled its national debt in fighting the War and needed money to pay it off. It turned to the richest people in the realm, the Colonists, and began taxing paper, glass, paint, lead, and, of course, tea. The result, as we know, was the American Revolution.
It was the same strategy-raising taxes on the rich-that Louis XVI attempted in 1789. The French national debt had grown 10 fold under the pharoic opulence of Louis's grandfather, Louis XIV. Louis called the nobility and the clergy together and told them they would have to ante up. They, after all, had been exempted from taxes by Louis XIV in order to buy their complicity in his autocratic reign. Indignant, they refused to pay, precipitating the French Revolution, the most explosive upheaval to established government in the last thousand years.
A second strategy to deal with excessive debts is simply to print money. This is what Weimar Germany did to address the crushing debt imposed by the vengeful Treaty of Versailles. Before it was over the government had inflated the money supply by over a trillion times, leading some to comment that it was a waste of ink to put it onto paper worth so much less than the ink itself. The German middle class, whose assets were held at fixed amounts in government pensions, was destroyed. The collapse gave direct rise to Adolph Hitler.
A third strategy for dealing with onerous national debt is to sell off national assets. This is one of the first strategies the IMF imposes on third world countries that have gotten behind in their payments to western banks. Government-run industries, from telecommunications to water systems, are "privatized" and the country's natural resources are sold off to the highest foreign bidder. This is what Great Britain was forced to do in the aftermath or World War II.
Two world wars in only 30 years had ravaged the British economy and the pound sterling. Facing collapse at home (and revolution abroad), the government surrendered almost all of its colonies, from India and Pakistan to Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These had been among the greatest wealth-producing properties of modern times, the ones that had made the British Empire what it was. Their loss left Britain a second-rate power with only misty memories of its once imperial greatness.
A fourth strategy for dealing with excessive debt is to repudiate it. This was used for centuries in the early days of the modern world and was revived two years ago by Argentina which brazenly refused to pay some $110 billion in debts it had accumulated over prior decades. More ominously, it was this strategy that was used by the Bolsheviks after they took power in the Russian Revolution.
The new communist government refused to be bound by the debts of the overthrown Romanovs. But the French had loaned heavily to the Russian government for decades before World War I and now were left in a lurch. A cascading series of defaults from one bank to another caused a liquidity crisis on the continent, ultimately setting off the Great Depression.
Finally, there is plunder. When a nation's debt load becomes so huge it cannot plausibly reassure creditors regarding repayment, it must seek some source of wealth, any source, to keep the borrowed money flowing. This, naked predation, is what kept the Roman Empire alive for the last two hundred years of its existence. It is the strategy adopted by the Spanish Empire-silver and gold from America-and which eventually destroyed the vitality of its own merchant and civil servant classes.
Which, then, of the five above strategies will the U.S. adopt to deal with its exploding debt problem?
The author concludes, quite reasonably, I think, that Bush's answer will be a combination of solutions 3, 4 and 5. Sell off big chunks of assets to private interests, negate the responsibility for covering future social security, and go and plunder resources in other countries. Not pretty, but one might possibly keep it going for a while before anybody notices.
I think the world is starting to notice. Question now is what is the world going to do about it?
My thinking is that if America goes bankrupt so will most of the world. Large companies like Halliburton, which have acted as parasites of taxpayers’ money will go down the tubes with it. I can see two possible futures emerging from this. The first is Bin Laden's dream of seeing the entire modern world come crashing down into a new dark ages. The other is seeing all the worlds’ people, empowered by sustainable technologies and global communications, w building a better society out of the ashes of the old. It reminds me of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. When it fell, it was the start of a 1000-year dark age. Can this time be any different? I think so. One very important thing separates us from those 1600 years ago. Today we have technology that is speeding up like crazy. Nanotechnology is right around the corner; perhaps just in time to pick up when everything else comes crashing down.
For half of my life I've heard many people say it's going to get worse before it gets better. Perhaps it will take a disaster of "apocalyptic" magnitude for humanity to self-correct. In my opinion the current system is broken beyond repair. Now with the fundamentalist on both sides declaring jihad, this broken system can't maintain itself much longer. Something is going to give, and when it does I expect the whole house of cards to come falling down with it. Lets just hope that there will be enough progressive and enlightened people in the aftermath to lead us out of the darkness into a new more enlightened golden dawn.
Some parting thoughts via DRT News:
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability.
Since a long time, one of the subjects I'd like to delve more into and write about is the subject of making realities. That could be addressed from many angles. Personal Reality. Shared Reality. Virtual Reality.
Now, that's starting off with an assumption that each of us have a hand in what reality we're experiencing. Some people don't believe that. Even some of those people who're best at constructing realities that they get others to live in. Many people will insist that reality just is some kind of objective finite thing which one can establish and prove and that's it. Ironically, some of those people probably live more in a reality inside their skull than outside it. But that wasn't my point.
The way I use reality here is as that which we can perceive ourselves to be living in, and which we actually can live in. There can be several or many of those. One might live in one without being conscious of it, or one might willingly step in or out of different realities at different times.
You can think about a movie, for example. If it is well-made and you enjoy it and you're watching it in a movie theatre, you can live yourself into it and believe it while it is playing. Oh, you're still aware that you're watching a movie, but if it is made well enough, you'll forget it to a considerable degree and it will be real, and you have some kind of relation or response to the characters and situations in it. Even if what you're watching is really photos of a plastic model and actors pretending to be other people than they are, you might go along with the whole thing.
Good film makers and good actors know a bunch of things about making convincing realities. For example, a method actor would work hard at developing a lot of invisible things that are part of the character they're asked to portray. Like, what is their past history? What are their feelings and actions rooted in? What is really motivating them? What do they feel? What happened to them before? Where are they going afterwards? Even though you see none of those things directly, if the actor has chosen for himself what they are, his character will appear more real to him and to you.
A very simple example: If a character is supposed to say a sentence that gets interrupted in the middle, like "But why do ...", and then something happens. If the actor only practices saying "But why do .." and then stopping, it will look and sound kind of fake. It will work much better if he worked out for himself what the whole sentence should be and why he's saing it, even if he never gets to do so. The fabric of the reality he's presenting is more coherent and complete. And you notice that, even if you only get to see a corner of it.
Realistic realities have a number of perceptions to them, and they have depth. It is not just that the right words are said. They sound right, they look right, they smell right, they feel right. The periphery seems right.
If you say the word toothbrush, it doesn't count for much. But if you can hold it in your hand, and put toothpaste on it, and put it in your mouth, and clean your teeth with it, and your mouth feels nice and fresh, then it is a convincing reality. It doesn't matter if somebody else thinks it is a hairy-nosed wombat. If you can brush your teeth with it every day, and have a minimum of cavities, you're fine.
No, it doesn't quite mean that it is just as good to live in a delusion as to live in a reality. A delusion would be when you exist in a certain reality and you deny it, and maintain the abstract idea that it is different than it is. A functional reality is made of perceptions, not just of a concept. Perceptions are abstractions too, in relation to what the universe REALLY is, but they're much more solid than recooked abstract concepts that are based on denying perceptions. Important difference. If you sit by a table and you tell yourself you're flying a spaceship, you probably won't be doing anything very sensible. If you can actually operate the controls and land on another planet and pick fruits off the trees, then you might actually have something. If you're only thinking: "This is not a table, it is a spaceship", and you convince yourself, then you're probably just a human who'll have difficulties functioning.
Affirmations are a common newagey way of getting something you want to happen. Nothing wrong with that. Prayers are in the same category. It can be quite useful to affirm or ask for that which you want. You might get it. Better than not to ask for it, or to ask for that which you don't want. But it is also very flimsy as far as realities are concerned. Just a concept and some words. To really get something different, you need to feel it, see it, hear it, taste it. You gotta be able to get into it and drive away. If you only have a movie prop facade, like from Universal Studios, you can't live in it. Workable realities have a whole range of dimensions to it. You can't eat a picture of a cheese. It needs to have a certain consistency, it needs to taste right, and it needs to be nutritious. There's a whole bunch of perceptions and details that need to be there. Realities have a lot of detail, and detail that is not just on the surface, but which sticks quite deep.
However, if we don't need to eat it or live in it, we can be persuaded to accept realities that really are rather flimsy, and which aren't much more than props. But they're detailed enough that we'll accept tham as real without actually inspecting them. You'll probably accept the news and the state of politics in that manner. You don't really go and double-check the news for yourself, to see if it is real. You might check some other sources, but you'll probably stop when you feel you have a picture that is sufficiently self-consistent. It is still just a concept, and has the real substance missing. It is pictures and words and opinions. But it is impractical to get the real thing, so you've become used to accepting a prop. And you're just looking for a certain coherence of the picture, rather than whether it really is edible. And most likely you vote for political candidates the same way. You haven't met any of them. You've just seen them on TV.
So, the people who design mass realities for us have a much easier time than what would be required to design livable realities. You don't have time to receive much more than a cardboard cutout, so their job is simply to provide a cardboard cutout that seems to suit you, and which will survive its journey through the news media, and which will fool you sufficiently. It doesn't have to be the truth and it doesn't have to add up.
But the same rules still apply. You just need less of them. For example, if a certain political character is presented as taking a certain stand, you'll want to hear the history that let up to that. I.e. you want to hear about a background that is consistent with what they're presenting. And you want them to sincerely look like they're playing that part. And you want other people to confirm it. Whether it is the truth doesn't matter. It is obvious that you can't add up everything, so you'll settle for accepting things as more real if you've heard them enough time from people who look like they know what they're talking about. And their story makes sense to you.
You'd want to know about how realities are made in order to protect yourself from mass manipulation.
And for your own sanity you'd want to know how to make your reality that which you prefer. Personal realities are on one hand harder to make than mass realities, because they require more detail and self-consistency. On the other hand they're easier, because there's mainly one person involved, and because the things that make the most difference in your life are rather subjective, and don't really need to be validated by anybody else.
Some people accomplish great things and breeze by even the most impossible obstacles. That's not just because they're gifted in that way from the beginning. More importantly it is because they implicitly believe that things work that way. They don't just believe that as a loose and shakey idea. They feel it, see it, hear it, taste it. They have experiences to back it up. They're both coming from somewhere and going to somewhere that is well-defined, self-consistent and in accordance with that which they're accomplishing. And, no, not just because that's what REALLY happened. Mainly because THEIR reality is structured that way.
The reality you're seeing and touching might appear very real, but it is in no way THE reality. It is probably more real than many of the delusions one can have ABOUT the reality. But as far as the universe goes, there's no scarcity of options. The table you're sitting by is probably just one of zillions of possible tables. The sub-atomic particles it is made of could be in any of an unfathomable amount of states, and they probably are, at the same time, depending on who's looking. You could call that parallel dimensions, or the quantum soup, or Reality with a capital R, or whatever. Regardless, any insistence on that table, or your political views, being some kind of only and ultimate reality is laughable on the scale of infinity. Time and space are but somewhat illusory properties of the way you happen to perceive things. The same pieces appear in so many other guises, at the same time, the appearance of which has a whole hell of a lot to do with how you perceive them and interact with them.
Maybe it is a little pretentious to call it "making" or "creating" realities. It is maybe more like choosing. Every possible different perception you might have about anything at any time forms a possible branching point. Nobody forces you to take any one of them. There might be some inertia going on, but you're always free to start branching off in a different direction at any time.
But it helps to know what realities are made of. Detailed perceptions. A coherent and consistent history. Depth. Multiple levels that all work. Systemic synergy. Things fit together. And for us humans: a meta-story, a set of beliefs about how and why it works. And realities have a certain continuity. They don't flicker on and off all the time. They're there even if you look away and look back again.
You could call it a worldview, but, no, I mean it more tangibly and mechanically than that. As well as bigger. Like the structure of the interface between consciousness and an infinite universe. If you don't believe consciousness really exists, half of what I'm saying is probably making no sense. In that case, think of being able to download yourself into a virtual reality. The power will remain plugged in, and you can populate the reality with what you choose, and you can adjust the parameters of the program. I'd bet you'd want as many perceptions as possible, a certain multi-layered systemic coherence, and you want a certain history and consistency, and some good people to hang out with, and a suitable level of surprise and adventure, and the chance to do really well. Just like in real life.
Ever since I was a small child I’ve had the most amazing dream life. Although I’ve also had my share of nightmares and even off periods, most of the time my dreams are always deeply satisfying and beautiful. Like most children I lacked the capacity to clearly distinguish between the dream world and reality. However, if you ask the Aborigini’s, such a distinction is meaningless anyway, with the dreamworld being the more "real" of the two. For me this is a belief I share with them and have carried into adulthood. My dreams have offered so many profound insights, and the lucidity of them has been so intense and real to the depths of my being, that to deny the veracity of these experiences would be to deny my very soul – the deepest meanings that guide my life. And it is here that people start to make value judgments that although the inner life of dreams might be significant, the external world is more important, because without it we die. In the West particularly this emphasis has been valued almost exclusively to the detriment to our inner lives. As Ghandi once said when asked what he thought of Western Civilization, he said, "I think it’s a good idea."
So what am I getting at? Quite simply, I have come to believe that dreams are actually quite real, more real the so-called “waking life” and that this waking life is simply part of what we must make authentic via this dream world. I can’t speak for others, but I am now quite certain (as certain as I can be about anything) that my dream life is trying desperately to become manifest here in the real world. This might sound too new agey for some people, but it all makes perfect sense to me. When things go right in my life, they have this unmistakable resonance with my dream life – the feelings, sensations, gestalts and so on. In my dream life all the answers are there, the solutions to our problems, to world peace, to sustainable society, to genuine happiness for everyone. It seems so obvious, so simple in my dream life, and yet so complicated here. I have speculated often about how I think there are “dark forces” that are conspiring in one way or another, perhaps merely out of greedy and banal self-interest to further their own ends, at the expense of everyone else. So as a result over the centuries we now have this overly complex, rigged system that benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of not only everyone else, but now the planet itself.
Bucky Fuller said way back in 1965 that right now we have the capability to feed, house and clothe everyone on the planet sufficiently that everyone would live like billionaires. So why hasn’t this happened? Because those at the top want remain the exlusive shareholders of such graces. To sacrifice their exclusivity would be to sacrifice power and control. Since fear ultimately rules these people, that fear will keep them stuck in this struggle for power. Unfortunately for them, their days of power and control are coming to an end. Despite the signs all around of us of increasing repression, surveillance and control, there is no way the system can sustain itself much longer. I have written about this lack of sustainability here and here.
I started thinking deeply again about all of this since I came back from Burning Man a few weeks ago. The evidence of a build-up towards some kind of cambrian explosion as Ming points out here is all around us. What amazes me these last few years is how much everything has changed from a 'potential' standpoint in terms of connectivity, collective intelligence, communications, smart mobs, internet, global network point of view, yet how much everything has remained the same.
How much longer can the old hierarchies, this old civilization keep hanging on amidst so much grass-roots intelligence burgeoning all around us? Burning Man is a good example of just how much energy and connectivity is there - so much that it was overwhelming... and until I went I had no idea! I could feel it everywhere, the social networks, the people all talking with each other, most of them all on this high vibratory wavelength. It's not a fluke, and it's not just because of Burning Man. It's already there. I compare it to the functioning of mushrooms, which are merely the sex organs of this vast underground mycellia network. This network grows, and grows, and it then reaches a critical point, where it then flowers. I see the same thing now in what I recently called Counter Culture 2.0. The connections are so thick and complex, that no manner of oppression can wipe it out now, except the end of life itself.
And since each day the technologies of connectivity continue to minuturize and grow smarter each day, there will come a point, soon I think, where this huge breakout will occur.
Those at the top are not stupid, they know this, sense this is coming, which is why I think they are so scared, and the global politic is getting so nasty and repressive, especially here in the states, where this connective freedom is greatest. That is no coincidence.
So rather than some smooth "controlled" evolutionary move upwards, its going to be a sudden out of control breakout. I suppose I was hoping for the former, but I'll settle for the latter over stagnation and death.
I'm more hopeful than ever.
I just arrived back from Burning Man fully transformed. I suspect it will take me several months to fully digest this most awesome experience... maybe just in time for next year. It was wonderful to finally give warm embraces to people I've known only online.
As the Official Burning Man Website says, this event is notoriously indescribable. When I was there it becomes quickly obvious that no amount of eloquent speech or series of pictures could ever do it justice. Quite simply, Burning Man has to be experienced. It is Utopia. One of the things that struck me about every 30 minutes or so as I wandered the playa is, "I can't believe this exists, it is beyond description". I would look out to the horizon in nearly every direction to find this immense amount of novelty. During the day, art installations of various kinds were scattered about - some within a few hundred yards, others some one or two miles away, as if a mirage. Certain structures like the Temple were over 100 feet tall and were noticeable from almost any distance. Nighttime was equally amazing, when many more art pieces come alive to join the spectacle. Nearly everywhere I went, looking in front of me and in every direction, there was some kind of dynamic activity. It's not the dense activity of an urban city with its rules and boundaries, but a vast unbounded playa stretching for miles in every direction, filled with light, fire plumes, neon floating caravans with distant yet pleasant volumes of lounge-techno music, and thousands of glow sticks representing and protecting people as they walked and rode their bikes across the playa. So imagine seeing thousands of these various colors randomly crisscrossing the desert, stretching for several square miles in every direction. The sense of freedom, joy, excitement and possibility filled my every cell. I danced and moved and rode my bike hither and thither for hours on end, stopping at different installations, spending time in distant planetarium, and then traveling further out into the playa, which this year represented the heavens. As I traveled further from the Esplanade (the main arced avenue), the further out into "outerspace" I was going. At about a mile and half beyond the Esplanade, I encountered an illuminated and pulsating star with alien creature blowing in the night winds. I took several photos of it, but my camera is very old and doesn't work well at night, so here is a day shot.
On a typical day I would spend some 14-15 hours wandering the interacting with the art and enjoying immensely the company of fellow burners, hanging out at center camp for some hot chai, dance for awhile at Solarhenge, and back to camp to hang out with friends at Prometheatrics. I was introduced to this wonderful bunch through Mark Pesce, who unfortunately was unable to attend this year.
I spent a couple of lazy afternoons hanging out at The Brane, home of the 2nd Annual Palenque Norte lectures. When I first came into the tent I met Carey Thompson whose Galactivation Art is so beautiful. About an hour later I ran into Dlight of Tribal Oasis, who spoke eloquently of creating this type of post-modern tribal community full time. His ideas are very compelling and he now has me convinced of their attainability. He went on to tell me that regardless of what we've been told, hierarchy has ended and we now need to get used to living without those rules. The technologies of liberation are expanding so fast, that hierarchy simply cannot survive, and so we as a species need to finish the job of deprogramming ourselves out of this primitive hangover. He also mentioned that the singularity is really just another form of misguided monotheism, another type of hierarchy. The future is not a singularity, but a Cambrian explosion of diversity and creativity heading out in every direction. Perhaps it was my own state of mind at the time (he he), but his words struck a deep chord, ringing true like few things do for me these days. His message was hopeful, positive and inspiring. LVX23's words ring true too when he says that out on the playa we are expanding the mythos or morphogenetic field of modern humanity. Burning Man is pioneering the cutting edge of possibility - not a counter to culture, but front-runners scouting out the frontier of what is possible. This might sound overly grandiose, but the feeling on the playa of genuine fast-forward evolution is palpable.
I feel like I could write a book on my experiences, like it's been every other year I've been. Burning Man is a super-condensified experience - a day can seem like weeks have passed. I never escaped the feeling that I had landed on some beuatiful alien planet filled with novel delights at every turn. This alien feeling was immediate and viceral and I didn't want it to end. No manner of sci-fi movie watching can prepare you for it. A cross between Barbarella, Mad Max and Tatooine might give you a hint, but that's all. I missed the last few years, and feel very sad now that the event has come to an end. I'm so looking forward to next year, and I'm just bursting at the seams with new creative ideas to make happen for next year’s event. With all the walking and riding bikes I did this year, and coming across so many wandering, tired people, we are planning on creating a playa taxi service for next year, which we're thinking of calling Trip N' Taxi. Great way to meet new people, and a lot easier to get around. It’s merely a single idea of many. Several members of Prometheatrics and I schemed a few more ideas, which will have to remain hush-hush for now. If you're interested in creating and collaborating on some art installation for next year, please get in touch with me at psiphius at yahoo.com
One last thing, LVX23 mentioned this year there was not enough deeply sublime art as last year. I found out today that a lot of regular artists skipped this year’s event because they're too involved politically with the coming election. From what I've heard the numbers are large enough that an impact on the playa art would be felt, and so it was. Having missed the last three years I didn't notice it and was instead just so grateful to be here again, and in turn was even more enthusiastically participatory and social this year, and even more inspired to make more art for next year.
Hope to see more of ya on the playa next year!
Stay tuned for more pics - I'm working on an entire section of photos.
This guy was towering over me and must have been 6'6.
This year's Burning Man had the highest attendance ever, hosting over 35,000 people. The weather was moderate with some winds and a few balmy nights (as well as a few very cold ones). Our camp setup went pretty well but had to be re-evaluated when the winds picked up on Weds, blowing in from the northwest, and further adjusted on Thurs when they shifted from the southeast. Before anything else, you're camping in the high desert. Everything is bound to the weather.
This year we camped in walk-in way out on the southeastern perimeter of the city. At first it was nice to be a bit removed from everything. The increasing din of the playa nights was subdued and distant offering solace when bedtime finally arrived. But this distance made it more difficult to travel, putting us about 2 miles away from the epicenter, a good distance from the port-a-potties, and generally sheltering us from the community. In the end we were too far removed and missed the steady flow of people. The upshot was that we were pretty close to Lush, the biggest party on the playa.
Lush camp is one of the two main soundsystems out there (the other was Sol Henge). There are hundreds, but most pale in comparison to the scale and magnitude of the two corner camps. Lush had dancers, fire spinners, trapeze artists - all wearing next to nothing. Revellers danced amongst transported (and dessicated) palm trees and fire pits, beneath the billowing parachutes suspended on old tree limbs 30 feet above. I spent a fair amount of time at Lush, but in the end I was left a bit hollow. There seems to be a trend towards spending a lot of time and money on large clubs with free bars (there is no vending at Burning Man), and less on actual art. I'll return to this point later.
However, nothing adds to a party like a home-made propane flamethrower. 
Sadly, Burning Man doesn't burn so much as it used to. Environmental pressure to minimize burn scars on the playa has forced open fires into designated steel bins. It used to be that by Saturday night everything was burning. All across the city. But I digress. My buddy and I brought the flamethrower out to lush one night for a couple of hours of devilry, harrassing the ravers with sudden bursts of very close flame. There's a sort of jaded regard for fire that one develops out there. Groups of ravers would pass, we'd spark the torch and watch as they casually disregarded the fire light cast by our torch. Fire is still commoon out there so a sudden orange glowing isn't too surprising. But then they'd realize the flame was about 3 feet above them and quite hot. The usual response was a reflexive cower accompanied by a baleful, horrific stare, followed quickly by our evil, mocking laughter. After the liberating moment of mortal fear had passed, it was "do it again!", the terror replaced by smiles and wild cheers. By the end of the evening we had pretty much re-engineered the flamethrower in our heads to make it bigger, louder, and more portable. Such joy!
Burning Man is always a great party, but what I really look for out there is a sense of transformation and spirit. Usually I find this in the awe-inspiring sublime works of art that have been the staple of the event. In years past I've been brought to tears by such creations, scattered across the playa like a canvass for the heart and soul of humanity. Sadly, as I noted, this year there just wasn't very much art. And herein lies my emerging criticism of Burning Man. It's turning into too much of a party and losing its soul in the process. The growing attendance has necessitated a larger bureaucracy to manage the event. This has created a widening gap between the ideals of the founders and the practicalities and concerns held by the organizers. Burning Man is a hierarchical corporate enterprise, albeit a highly progressive one. But in their attempts to keep the event going by appeasing any opposition, they've marginalized a lot of the freedom and expression that is the real heart of the event. Art is being regulated more and more, and larger attendance by families has brought about increasing censorship and parental uptightness. Similarly the growing popularity is altering the landscape, moving more towards club-style camps with open bars. Alcohol seems to be edging out the entheogens. It also seems that the nudity that was once simply a form of freedom is becoming more and more sexualized in this party atmosphere. As with all good underground movements, they become diluted and changed as their popularity grows and they become more mainstream.
But the experience of Burning Man is still a phenomenal one. The spirit of community and giving continues to flourish. The BMorg continues to resist any attempts at commercialization and keeps the media wolves at bey. I think they need to put a cap on attendance at somewhere around 15k. This would cut down the overhead significantly and narrow the crowd to those more committed. BMorg should also open up the restricttions they've imposed on art and themes and channel more funds into art works, discouraging the rave clubs a bit. (And I'm an old raver but the whole Esplanade seems to be turning into rave soundsystems.)
The burn on Saturday was fantastic. Not much of a prelude beyond the standard parade of fire spinners (though the flaming wings were pretty cool), but the burn itself went like clockwork. Fireworks exploded into the sky as the fires began to climb the observatory. The whole affair was very well choreographed, free of the common errors that have often plagued past years. More fireworks as the flames grew higher. The wood geodesic dome under the man began to glow with flames forming a spectacular geometric pattern of fire, spinning off vortices of flame & smoke. The man began to burn fiercly, launching caches of rockets from his thorax and neck until, finally, he was fully engulfed. A tug or two on the lines and the man fell into the raging inferno, to great cheers of the 30,000+ crowd.
Once he fell the fire safety lines were broken and much of the crowd moved in towards the flame. I followed, as I always do, pressing through the thick mosh hotter and hotter until I finally reched the inner edge, open-faced to the blazing ruins of our burning man. 
I've noted before that the inner mosh always rotates counter-clockwise around the fire, though I never really knew why. This year tehre were a lot of folks who didn't understand the rotation at all and were just standing. As we pushed against them trying trying to keep the flow, a fellow pagan reveller shouted out "Counter-clockwise! Counter-clockwise! Banish!", and my intuitions rose to conscious awareness: we were indeed banishing the old, clearing the ritual of our phoenixed effigy, formerly swollen with all of our hopes and desires packed in over the last week, now released and free. All things renewed by fire.
I made about two revolutions around the inferno, ducking out into the open, running until I had to pull my cloak over my face to shield the burn, then diving back in behind the outer row of people. At this proximity it feels like every inch adds 15 degrees. Suddenly I was aware of a harmonic field at the edge of the circle. About 15 people were gathered, mashed in, auming steadily, while a wildman riffed arabesque on a tenor saxaphone. I was immediately captivated and joined the group, intoning deeply to find my register. Within moments I was tuned in and, like crickets at dusk, our aums gently synched together, all inhaling at once, then auming out together, again and again, the wildman spinning out scalar runs on his sax. This was the moment I was looking for. This was the singular point of devotion and spirit I come to Burning Man for, sudden and emergent, strangers brought together in the purity of transformation. There were no words exchanged between us, just occassional sideways glances of knowing, communion, an awareness of hope that we might help add a little more intent to this bacchannal.
Burning Man is, in whatever form it takes. I always leave transformed in some way, ever prone to re-evaluating my life in its wake. For me the veils of illusion have dropped a bit this year, and I hope it's only a temporary lull. I didn't have the transformative shamanic experience that I've come to take for granted as part of my yearly trek to the Black Rock Desert. 
This is certainly due in part to my own expectations and headspace, though I feel I can fairly level some criticisms as well. One realization is that it's really up to me to contribute my own spirituality and creation to the event. If it decays into some ribald pagan frat party and I've done nothing to counter it, then it's only me who's left to blame. Another thought is that I shouldn't rely so heavily on this yearly event to provide me with the psychic housecleaning I seek. I need to make it happen elsewhere, find the time in my daily life to engage in the same spirit and communion that seemed to flow so freely.
In the end change is constant and Burning Man will inevitably fade, hopefully to be replaced by another similar current, appropriately occulted from dilution and evolved to bring newer generations closer to the utopic ideals of it's founders - ideals that are really the same ideals shared by all of us since the infancy of humanity: warm companionship and community, expression and creativity, freedom from meaningless routine, and a communion with the ineffable and un-namable mysteries of creation. Burning Man is simply one point in time carrying the current onward, sustaining and nurturing the human spirit as it blossoms into hyperspace.
A Kind of Innocence We'd Never Seen Before: Thoughts on the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, and Collective Consciousness.
Suddenly people were stripped before one another and behold! as we looked on, we all made a great discovery: we were beautiful. Naked and helpless and sensitive as a snake after skinning, but far more human than that shining nightmare that had stood creaking in previous parade rest. We were alive and life was us. We joined hands and danced barefoot amongst the rubble. We had been cleansed, liberated! We would never don the old armors again.
This is a new article in What is Englightenment magazine, which is one of the few magazines I purchase when it hits the shelves.
Cross-posted from my site, LVX23.
Here's a curious document I ran across about market branding in the new age - it's a transcript of a speech by Cheryl Swanson given to the Business of Marketing Strategy Conference Institute for International Research, April 27, 2004 in Boston. While it is creepy to the core, explaining how branding must evolve to capitalise on the emerging humanism in our culture, it's also intriguing to note that the advertising world agrees that such humanism is indeed growing.
This highlights a conflict I've been struggling with for some time: is it ultimately beneficial when advertising co-opts the underground? Thinkers like Grant Morrison and Doug Rushkoff maintain that media advertising and it's desire to be ever-hip provide opportunities for radical artists and ontologists to present their visions to a huge audience, essentially using the exposure of the corporate brand as a vector to deliver the ideals of the progressive underground. But it begs the question, "Does corporate co-option dilute the message of the underground, tying it to consumerism and desire instead of engeandering progressive social evolution?"
Some excerpts:
The visual landscape of the 21st century is morphing from a masculine, machine-based vision, rational, geometric, linear and logical world, toward an organic, bright, sensory reality that celebrates the human spirit. This viewpoint provides a wake-up call filling us with optimism. Organic shapes and sensory textures reunite our biorhythms (if but for a moment) with our emotions. This new world combines masculine with feminine principles; organic, soulful, soft, inward oriented, producing a more humane landscape...As we compress the sleep cycle, man finds himself losing touch with his wellspring of myth and fantasy. Brands take on a subliminal, emotional role in society, replacing myth and fantasy to become the defining cultural artifacts of our hopes, dreams and fears...
How does this human inspired vision of the future affect design and brands?" The "human principle," a sharing of our imperfections, weaknesses, feelings, and idiosyncrasies, rather than the perfection of machines or a divine being, is highly relevant to brands. We have identified four themes that make brands relevant in this "Survival of the Fastest" era. Brands can remain relevant only when they remind us of our humanity. Brands need empathy, sensory, simplicity and optimism ("ESSO") to make a solid human connection...
Indoors we yearn for the colors, textures and forms of nature. In reaction, home design is integrating the sounds of water and natural light.
The yoga craze expresses our need to reunite with our bodies, to re-learn how to breathe, to stimulate our senses with aromatherapy, strong mints, body lotions.
Our senses hunger - we must nurture them.
A feeling of excitement and relief exists when our senses are engaged. Materials and manufacturing innovations will continue to create unique sensory shapes, textures, and colors.
The SOFT concept is being embraced at every level, from softer lines and materials with skin-like qualities to highly textured things that respond to touch. These products can be high-end like the Cappellini Gel Chair, or mass like the elastic techno-gel pens at the local drugstore.
Brands are investing in high-sensory experiences. Design is breathing new life into packaging in an almost magical way. Packages are becoming experiences, especially high-end fragrances and liquors, even waters like the Fiji brand...
Optimism is a celebration of the human form. We will continue to see fewer unapproachable corporate signatures as we favor lighter, brighter, more emotionally evocative symbols.
The human face and form is enjoying a renaissance in everything from corporate identity to product marketing to design. Institutions and utilities, insurance, medical, science and technology companies are choosing to visually communicate their human spirit.
This is from a synopsis of "Beyond Civilization" by Daniel Quinn:
I haven't read the book. I've read Ishmael, though. And I probably agree with him. We've got to get over that big monolithic hierarchical civilization thing. I'm not sure I would call that "beyond civilization". I've called it a "new civilization", which would a more bottom-up, distributed, self-organizing, free, collective intelligence way of organizing. Which is contrasted to the "old civilization" which is hierarchical and centralized. Somebody is in charge, somebody owns and controls most elements you need to live your life, and collective stupidity is the norm.One of our most fundamental cultural beliefs is this, that Civilization must continue at any cost and not be abandoned under any circumstance. This notion seems intrinsic to the human mind --self-evident, like The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Implicit in this belief about civilization is another: Civilization is humanity's ULTIMATE invention and can never be surpassed. Both these beliefs exemplify the cultural fallacy, which is the notion that one's beliefs are not merely expressions of one's culture but are intrinsic to the human mind itself. The effect of this fallacy is that it's almost impossible for the people of our culture to entertain the idea that there could be any invention beyond civilization. Civilization is the end, the very last and unsurpassable human social development.
No one is surprised to learn that bees are organized in a way that works for them or that wolves are organized in a way that works for them. Most people understand in a general way that the social organization of any given species evolved in the same way as other features of the species. Unworkable organizations were eliminated in exactly the same way that unworkable physical traits were eliminated--by the process known as natural selection. But there is an odd and unexamined prejudice against the idea that the very same process shaped the social organization of Homo over the three million years of his evolution. The people of our culture don't want to acknowledge that the tribe is for humans exactly what the pod is for whales or the troop is for baboons: the gift of millions of years of natural selection, not perfect--but damned hard to improve upon.
Civilization, in effect, represents an attempt to improve upon tribalism by replacing it with hierarchalism. Every civilization brought forth in the course of human history has been an intrinsically hierarchical affair--in every age and locale, East and West, as well as every civilization that grew up independently of ours in the New World. Because it's intrinsically hierarchical, civilization benefits members at the top very richly but benefits the masses at the bottom very poorly--and this has been so from the beginning. Tribalism, by contrast, is nonhierarchical and benefits all members with notable equality.
It's out of the question for us to "go back" to the tribalism we grew up with. There's no imaginable way to reestablish the ethnic boundaries that made that life work. But there's nothing sacrosanct about ethnic tribalism. Many successful tribal entities have evolved inside our culture that are not ethnic in any sense. A conspicuous example is the circus, a tribal enterprise that has been successful for centuries.
Beyond civilization isn't a geographical space (is not, for example, somewhere you "go and start a commune"). Beyond civilization is an unexplored cultural, social, and economic space. The New Tribal Revolution is our "escape route" to that space.
I agree as well that a new kind of tribes might be a key. Get together with the people you're in sync with, and work together. There's no need to try to impose your view on everybody else in the world. But there are problems to solve as to how it would work. I don't know if Quinn gives the answers to that. I'm not sure if it will do it just to work for more simplicity in general. The problem might well be too much simplicity in the old civilization, too much simple-minded centralized decision making, and what is needed is more complexity. Complexity in the good sense - a more intelligent and flexible system, distributed but inter-connected in a synergetic and self-adjusting manner.
Here's more, from a review at Amazon:
Futurist Daniel Quinn (Ishmael) dares to imagine a new approach to saving the world that involves deconstructing civilization. Quinn asks the radical yet fundamental questions about humanity such as, Why does civilization grow food, lock it up, and then make people earn money to buy it back? Why not progress "beyond civilization" and abandon the hierarchical lifestyles that cause many of our social problems? He challenges the "old mind" thinking that believes problems should be fixed with social programs. "Old minds think: How do we stop these bad things from happening?" Quinn writes. "New minds think: How do we make things the way we want them to be?"Indeed, I'm all for that. The old civilization is woven of a material that doesn't really serve most of us. A lot of the structures were created with an eye towards how to control large populations, and milk them for their productive output.
Our economic system is a pyramid scheme, and there's not much democracy anywhere - despite what it is made to appear like. It is sometimes possible to very locally create good conditions of democracy, freedom, and healthy economy. Which makes most people think that the system is inherently alright, and stand up to defend it. But there's a hole in the bottom of the barrel. The system is slanted so it is always an unhill battle and synergy is hard to attain. There will be somebody standing on top of the hill to tell you that the weather is nice and everything is fine, and you just need to work harder. But most people are stuck trying to get up the hill, while powering somebody else's water wheel. And it doesn't have to be that way. This planet can quite well support that we all live comfortably, even abundantly, and without destroying it in the process. But, yes, we need to get beyond our old kind of civilization, which isn't really ours anyways, but that of our kings and emperors and bankers who managed to harness our collective irresponsibility to their advantage.
The counter-culture of the Sixties was an amazingly vibrant and exciting time. I was a small child when it reached it's peak, and it still forged a tremendous imprint on my psyche. I grew up in places like Laguna Beach and Los Altos, California. I have vivid memories of hanging out at the beach in the late 60's watching naked guys (probably on acid) riding their bikes straight off the pier. My parents tried to shield me from them, but it didn't work. Once I had a taste of the "energy" these people exuded, it never wore off. As a child of 4 or 5 it was pretty obvious these guys were having lots of fun and I wanted to be a part of it. For at least the first 10 years of my life I had lots of exposure to hippies of every variety in my home neighborhood, including this incredibly gifted artist who made the most intense, colorful, beautiful psychedelic drawings I have ever seen, which right then and there turned me on to art forever.
Like I said in my political optimism piece we are witnessing the collision between the old culture and the new heating up at a furious pace.
I believe we are on the verge of another Counter Culture, this time brought on by THE MAN of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). David Weinberger has an excellent transcript of his talk on NPR. I urge you to read it, or listen to it - Real Audio, or Windows Media. Some would say that the internet itself is a counter-culture, and I think this is true to some extent. But I think it's more accurate to say that the Internet is an extension of our culture, rather than counter to it. This is a great thing, but I fear such an extension is about to be nipped off at the bud by DRM. That leaves only one alternative... a counter culture.
Counter-culture will happen, because it will be just that - counter to so-called "culture" that is propagated in a highly controlled, locked-down way by the media oligarchs. Since they are denying their memes... the same freedoms that other memes enjoy, they won't spread as fast, far, or wide as counter-cultural memes without such restrictions. Additionally, their memes can't mutate, since DRM prohibits fair use and deriviative work. Counter-cultural creations will have no such restrictions.
In the marketplace that is as much a part of the natural world as plants and animals, Darwinian counter-cultural meme propagation will out-compete expensive, crippled memes, leaving corporate-controlled media eating the dust of an out-of-control Cambrian meme explosion. As this meme propagation accelerates towards the singularity, corporate dinosaurs will die off, wasting away in the pollution of their own making. The irony of it is, in the age of infinite duplication, there is no scarcity, so their desperate gasping is their own refusal to breath readily available air of a new culture.
Some say that open-source creative work won't be that high of quality, since there is less financial incentive, but I disagree. The counter culture was not driven by money either, but by a strong desire to communicate a new awareness, a new consciousness being opened up by psychedelics. This new counter-cultural will be as popular if not more popular than anything we have ever seen. Except this time the counter cultural will be global and instantenous. It will give birth to a new renaissance... I'm guessing THE Renaissance of our age. Empowed by cheap tools of creativity, music & video production, blogging, smart mobs, and even more empowering and creative tools on their way, the sky is the limit for anyone with the desire to participate. Bye Bye Hollywood!
Meanwhile the government is losing what currency it had of trust. It's exhausting it's remaining credibility with its stupid and dishonest war against some drugs, especially regarding MDMA. Its continuing dishonesty with both the drug and Iraq war is only making maters worse. I think this is really sad, because trust in governance is what makes for a healthy democracy. So instead people are looking within themselves and each other for a more honest and genuine "reality". So while the media monopolies continue to lockdown and fence off their cultural creations, increasing numbers of people will seek out freer (as in expression and cost) alternatives.
And lets not forget the emergence of smart mobs... decentralized social networking on a scale like we have never seen. Imagine if the counter culture of the sixties had access to these 21st century tools.
Meanwhile media monopolies are showing their true colors with online distribution of works, with their recent decision to eliminate the 99 cent download cost. Now they want to bring the cost back up, so it doesn't cut into their CD sales. So obviously they still don't get it. They are not interested in seeing a digital distribution. They are trying to fight against the future itself. And they WILL LOOSE. In the meantime, The FCC is adding things like the broadcast flag; HP, Intel, Microsoft and other companies are adding increasingly strict digital restrictions, making it almost impossible to use the digital media the way you want. So it is inevitable that alternatives will spring up, people will create more and more work that is in the public open-source domain without any restrictions. These are the works that people will download. These are the works that people at school will be sharing, watching and listening too, and influencing their outlook on life. This will be the real cultural driving force. Meanwhile the media monopolies will have locked themselves out of future cultural evolution, a cultural primarily driven forward by young people who've grown up with computer consciousness from the time they were born. They won't accept anything less than total information liberty.
When it comes to politics, I prefer not to discuss it unless I can provide something constructive, rather than just ranting about what's wrong. There are so many things wrong about it, that I feel my energy is best spent attempting to shed somethng positive light on the situation. So with this, my first political post to Future Hi, I hope to provide something positive in the face of so much negative news. Besides, I think the major challenges facing us are more environmental than political in nature.
There is too much to possibly fit into one blog entry, so I will attempt to be as concise as possible.
What we are witnessing today is a collision between the old and the new or as Flemming Funch says,
An old rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up.
This collision has been inevitable for a very long time. The current stress and instability is the friction being generated from this collision. The hope is this friction doesn't create so much heat that we all burn up.. I’m optimistic this won’t happen, and below I'll explain why.
Here is a list of worst-case political scenarios that most people tend to worry about, and below the reasons why I think they are unlikely to happen.
Martial Law
I have no doubt those in power would declare martial law if they think they could get away with it. The reason they haven’t, is they know they can't. If they did, how could they possibly enforce it? It would take massive amounts of military and law enforcement resources, way more than is available. Look at the situation in Iraq. Iraq is the size of the state of California, and the entire might of the United States military is finding it more and more difficult to maintain martial law and order. How then, could they possibly enforce any lasting order over a landmass the size of the United States? Another factor is those who would enforce such a draconian police state would be the men and women of our own country, our friends, brothers, sisters and children. And if there is one thing I know about our military personnel, they will not as a group fire on their own citizens. This fact is acknowledged by most conspiracy theorists, which is why their theory requires the placement of foreign/UN troops on American soil. Even without our current strained relations with most other countries, can you honestly believe sufficient foreign troop placement would ever happen? If there were to be Martial Law in the United States, it would have to be an invading army like China. But is this even possible, without willful complicity? We have nukes, they have nukes. Since nuclear war is unwinnable, no nation will ever engage in it.
New World Order/Fourth Reich
This idea is synchronous with martial law. To pull off a global order of this magnitude is almost impossible, as to be laughable. They can barely contain the Iraq situation; so imagine an attempt by the Neocons to do this over the entire world. This has been their agenda all along, but I’m afraid it’s way too ambitious. Most of the world is simply not going along with such imperial ambitions. As it is, many nations are in open revolt to the American Neocon’s agenda. How about the United Nations? Maybe, but that would mean the entire world is actually cohesively aligned within the UN, and the UN is pretty weak at the moment. Personally, I don’t believe in a world government because it means even more consolidation of power. But like I said, I don’t see how such a consolidation can be cohesively maintained. There are too many competing power interests, especially at the grass-roots levels, whether they are malicious terrorists or benevolent decentralized emergent democratic forces. Look recently at what happened in Spain to understand the power of the ends. A Centralized order is not sustainable under any circumstances. The only way I see a peaceful world emerging is one that values the ends first, then the connections between them - a bottoms-up, grass-roots democracy enabled by the network.
World War 3/Global Thermonuclear Exchange
Some people are already saying that we are seeing the beginnings of WW3 right now. The situation in Iraq is heating up with no exit strategy in site. So this could happen. Who would be the players, and how would it play out? The worst-case scenario is Russia, China and many other nations joining forces to take the US down. But we are no longer on any remotely level playing field. There is nothing close to a conventional war theater. We all have nukes. If WW3 does happen, we all die. Nobody wins, so why would Russia or China even consider it? They would lose; it would be a suicide mission if they attempted to take the US down. Since such a global war would be between large nations, I believe the same rules apply as they did during the Cold War. Stalemate would be reached quickly in any global showdown of force. If global chaos were to ensue it would have to be large-scale guerilla terrorism. If anything that is the most likely of the scenarios. If a nuke is set off in the states, you can kiss the mid-east goodbye, maybe. If the US did nuke the Mid-east it can also kiss goodbye one of its major assets - oil. There have been hundreds of billions, probably trillions of dollars spent building and maintaining the oil supply infrastructure. If the US did nuke the area, it would be like nuking it's own foot, or more accurately its own food supply. So the global economy, like it or not, will be just the thing preventing it from happening. Could it still happen? Yes. Will it happen? I doubt it.
An Orwellian 1984 Panopticon Surveillance State
This is a very complex issue, but I don’t think it can be sustained either, for lots of micro and macro-economic reasons. For some background on my thinking in this area, please read Capital, Power and Ecology.
A much anticipated issue about the Singularity and an article called the Panopticon Singularity was set to appear in the latest issue of Whole Earth Review, but before it was published WER went out of business.
The article talks about the inevitable emergence of surveillance technology that has the potential of rendering every aspect of our lives visible and policed. These technologies, many of which are discussed at length, are smart cameras, p2p surveillance networks, gait analysis, terahertz radar, Celldar, ubiquitous RFID 'dust', un-Trusted computing and Digital Restrictions Management, cognitive radio, Lab-on-a-chip chemical analyzers, and comprehensive data mining.
It's a very thorough and brilliant piece and I suggest you read it. Here are some salient quotes:
We are all criminals, if you dig far enough: we've broken the speed limit, forgotten to file official papers in time, made false statements (often because we misremembered some fact), failed to pay for services, and so on. These are minor offenses -- relatively few of us are deliberate criminals. But even if we aren't active felons we are all potential criminals, and a case can be -- and is being -- made for keeping us all under surveillance, all the time.
A Panopticon Singularity is the logical outcome if the burgeoning technologies of the singularity are funneled into automating law enforcement. Previous police states were limited by manpower, but the panopticon singularity substitutes technology, and ultimately replaces human conscience with a brilliant but merciless prosthesis.
There is no doubt that within 10 years all of the technologies will exist to create such a society. There is also a societal trend based on fear and need for security that will encourage the proliferation of these technologies. However, I don't think it's going to happen. Here's why:
Such a system would be so thorough that everyone would eventually fall into its trap - and that includes the very wealthy and powerful. Currently if you are rich and powerful enough you can afford privacy. For example, I doubt anyone could get access to Bill Gates or Larry Ellison’s credit report or social security number. And even if we could, we would be powerless to actually make use of it. That's because they have enough money to make themselves invisible and immune to all but the most trusted parties. But such a panopticon as outlined in this essay will even make their lives completely visible to Joe Six pack with a $20 PDA circa 2012.
What this means in real terms, is that for the first time in centuries we'll start seeing a massive effort to rid ourselves of all but the most useful and practical laws. The Panopticon society will probably survive, but the majority of the laws most definitely will not. If they did, not only would this bring down the most powerful, as so many of their "enemies" have a vested interest in doing so, but it would throw so many people in jail, detention or probation that any legal system no matter how automated couldn't handle the overload, let alone the HUGE drain on the economy. With the best and the brightest falling into jail along with the rest of us, this panopticon society will collapse under its own very stupid weight. Natural economic selection would not favor a panopticon society with draconian laws over another one with looser restrictions. Same goes for copyright.
Wired has an excellent article about how if the US maintains it's ever increasing extremism on intellectual property, the real innovation will move elsewhere. Same goes for a panopticon society.
Grass-roots terrorism
Of all the dystopian scenarios I've covered so far, this is probably the most likely. But before we even tackle this problem it would help to actually know the truth of what terror is. The problem is we are constantly lied to by the Bush administration on the true extent of terrorism. They have been all-too willing to use terrorism as an excuse to do conduct global piracy and plunder of world resources. I think the real terrorist threat is much less than we are being told. I think the Al Qaeda threat, although existent, is mostly fiction created by the Bush Administration to provide them with the necessary boogeyman to carry out their agenda.
I think the very best solution against any kind of terrorism, as well as virtually all forms of corruption, whether government or corporate can be reduced by transparency. I think transparency is inevitable. For my analysis of the inevitability of transparency, read my article The Coming Leisure Society.
Ultimately, I think terrorism is only going to be solved when we address the vast descrepancies in economic health and democratic choice around the world. You can almost always trace the route cause of terrorism to people who are marginalized by their government and/or economic conditions. Remove these problems, and the root stressors that cause people to pursue extremest religiious/political terrorism evaporates.
These economic disparities are entirely artificial. There is no reason for it, and I believe they are happening in large part due to special elite interests mucking up the true global economy, which would work just fine if these same special elite power brokers are exposed through transparent systems, which are becoming more available as the net grows.
Also, coming this week is an International Workshop on Inverse Surveillance. For a good overview of this workshop and the implications of grassroots democratic sousveillance, read Flemmings recent post.
There are so many other trends going on that our working on the side of creating a new, more open, democratic society to cover in this article. But I hope I've given you enough food for thought to get you thinking in this direction.
Here's some good follow-up links:
Unmediated - Tracking the tools that decentralize the media.
Spark - Spark is a new magazine about the good things that are going on all over the world, and the people working to create a brighter future for us all.
When I was a kid I was very interested in the future. One thing that was pretty obvious, other than flying cars and space stations, would be that by now we'd really not have to work, per se. It was sort of self-evident, even when I was ten. Of course, if we keep being able to do things better and better, more and more efficiently, more and more bang for the buck, more and more automation - then there would be less and less of an actual need for work. It is a simple calculation. The stuff we need could be produced by a smaller and smaller percentage of the population. Which would allow us to spend our time being creative and having a good time.
The reason that didn't happen might be in the same category as why a brand new 3GHz PC isn't any faster than a 4.77MHz IBM PC from 20 years ago. In principle it should be a thousand times faster, and it is, technically speaking. But it doesn't do anything more. It takes longer to start up Word on it than to start WordStar on that ancient relic. And there are many more things that can go wrong, and more one needs to learn in order to use it.
Maybe the reason is in the same category as why my household budget looks about the same, no matter how much or how little I make. There's not quite enough for what I need, and I tend to pay things late. If somebody came along and gave me $10,000 extra per month, I would at first feel rich, and pay all my bills, and put some aside. But gradually I would come to think I needed a bigger version of everything, and I'd invest in some things I wouldn't otherwise have. And pretty soon I would have used it up, and have more regular expenses, and I'd again be a little behind. While still living essentially the same way. You know, in a house, eating food, driving vehicles, wearing clothes, breathing air.
You can probably draw a nice systems diagram of how there are several self-reinforcing loops involved in these scenarios. If there's capacity to make more stuff or do more things, they will be done, and they will create new needs and new ideas about new things that need to be done. The PC of today would indeed run WordStar like lightning, but I'd be missing the graphics, and would quickly look around for other things it ought to do. Voids will be filled. And there's the influence from all the other folks who have some new gadget or feature. If my neighbor has 3D displays on his walls, I'll feel a little left out, even if I was doing great with a monochrome screen at some other point in time.
So, what would it take for progress to actually add up to progress, rather than to staying in the same spot with some slightly different gear?
I think the main limiting factor is not the envy of my neighbor's stuff, but the economics of production. It doesn't have to be that way, but with the way business is currently structured economically, it is quite natural. Economic rewards flow to those who keep the wheels churning, rather than necessarily to those who solve the biggest problems in the most efficient way. There's no economic incentive to constructing the machinery that would give everybody in the world food to eat every day, without them having to work. Even though it would be fairly easy and comparatively cheap to do. But it wouldn't turn a profit. People who aren't working don't make money to buy stuff, so they aren't good consumers. People who aren't working is a problem in the current scheme of things. Something that requires the financing of unemployement payments, which requires that the wheels are churning faster somewhere else, creating profits that can be diverted for that purpose. It is all pretty insane of course.
If you can formulate an economic scheme that clearly measures the actual costs of various approaches, and the value people perceive in them, and which which allows easy financing of the permanent solving of big problems, and gives little value to wasteful and unnecessary work - then it can all change rather quickly. No, I'm not talking about communism. Rather about a free market with a good enough flow of high quality of information, using a different kind of currency. A currency that is built on quality of life, and which doesn't have a built-in accelerating corrosion that encourages fake productivity for its own sake. Rather, a system the encourages the optimization and maximization of free time and creativity.
It is not too late to arrive at the future we were promised.
I agree with Jon Husband that technology alone is not the source of our enlightenment. I think positive change comes from subjective, deeply felt experience. But I think many of these tools have the potential to empower us to touch and feel the world in increasingly new and intimate ways. Sure, they they can just as easily be used to disconnect socially. But being that humans are largely social creatures, internet connectivity brings the world closer toghether than tears it apart, and will inceasingly do so as wiresless computing becomes ubiquitous.
David Weinberger mentioned the echo-chamber effect as a side effect of this connectivity, but this happens anyway among our peers. The internet connects us to more people of like mind, which in turn increases the overall level of intimacy than we would otherwise have.
In some people's eyes the bigger issue is why is the average American (not sure about Canadians), so socially alienated from their physically proximate neighbors? I think it's because our culture has celebrated the individual more than the most previous cultures.
Will these connecting technologies increase the amount of echo-ing at the cost of our already increasingly alienating physically proximate neighborhors? Or does this change is social space from physical proximity to mental/emotional proximity facilitated by the Internet, make our physical locations less relevant, both to ourselves and society as a whole?
I think the Internet, by allowing you to make a greater number of connections, increases the level of intimacy we have with those online buddies, which in turn enhances our sense of individuality. Whereas physical proximate space most often has us in proximity to a random mesh of values, beliefs, and social customs, which increases the pressure for us to adhere to the perceived collective norms.
Coming soon are location-based services, bringing more of physical space into cyberspace. Combine this with p2p social networking software and you could seriously increase the level of intimacy and connectivity possible with like-minded people who are close to you physically.
The more I use social software like Orkut, the more I realize how its potential is only just begun. Before too long, a set of open-source p2p social software standards will emerge that bring all its participants increasingly closer together. Ming has a piece where he writes:
To imagine a world where we all had a high level of telepathy is an excellent starting point for a lot of revolutionary possibilities. Lies would no longer have any manipulative value if everybody could see right through them and know the truth without
