Reflections on a Sad Day

Looks like NDAA & SOPA passed. I'm done talking politics. Only because I don't think it's the thing to focus on. I feel that humanity is struggling to become more conscious. The moves backward that our liberties are taking are natural symptoms of fear of the unknown. We're on the edge of one of the biggest paradigm shifts in history. If we weren't scared we'd be crazy. I'm still hopeful. Sad right now that nobody seemed to care too much that our liberties were dying but still hopeful that humans will come out of this to make a very bright future. I even think I might see some of it. Keep educating yourselves and keep loving. That's the most important thing.

The "Common Man" vs. the Exceptional

I am tired of being told that I might want to "dumb down" my delivery. Why should I compromise myself? I learned by communicating with better educated people. When I didn't understand them I either asked them to clarify and/or I went and researched whatever it was that I was not getting. This is how you learn. But we have a society that worships stupidity. Conservative politicians are lauded on wanting to keep the entire species locked in an eternal 1950s. The "Common Man" is triumphed like a Roman general. To rise above that lowest-common-denominator myth is to invite destruction. How dare anyone exhibit anything more complex than the standard, mammal territorial behaviors?


The pre-Christian West celebrated the exceptional. Those individuals who distinguished themselves through great works were elevated. Some were even lifted into the cult of heroes. This invited people to act as humans instead of animals. Now we reverse this and celebrate the alpha dogs in our pack and help them bark down anyone not sniffing the right butts.


The universe has been moving from less complexity to more complexity. To go against this is to go against the flow of nature. Align your individual will with the universal "will." Do this. It is required for sane living. The human race is fighting to become aware. Who are you to fight this? 


The term buddha translates into English as awakened one.


Wake up.   


"...Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?...do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go...Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman--a rope over an abyss...What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end...I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra, 1885 CE, translated by Walter Kaufmann

Deconstruct

"If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced."
 - The Open-Ended Proof from The Panoplia Prophetica of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood from Children of Dune (1976 CE) by Frank Herbert

Deconstruction is a term from post-modern philosophy. It means that everything, and I mean everything, must be taken apart and examined to find the hidden cultural assumptions we have kneaded into the cells and molecules of our individual lives and our civilization.


For roughly the last four years, since my wife was pregnant with our son, Alex, I have been in the process of deconstructing my 'self.' I want to find my motivations so I can live more consciously and not as much like the stimulous/response robot that five million years of mammal social programming has made most of us. My original intent was that I wanted to be a more effective father to my son but along the way I have discovered a deepening, yet lightening of my self. Am I anywhere close to Ascended Masterdom? Hell no. Not even close. I look at my life as a work-in-progress. I'm a finished product at the point of my death and I'm in no rush to get there.


For me, the discipline of general semantics, the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche as translated into English by Walter Kaufmann, and a couple of my favorite translations of the Tao Te Ching have been enormously helpful in attempting to get past myself. Or rather get past my self, or is that selves? You could say that I have a fluid theory of self. 


I have often told those who have asked that I tend to view individual personality as a sort of fiction. This is usually offered glibly but I do generally mean it. This brings me to what I call my "default setting." Based solely on some very vague feelings gained from some meditation, some psychedelic drugs, a couple high fevers over the years and some reasonably upside-down views of the human experience, I have cobbled together what is basically a halfassed monist view of existence.


I tend to look at the "whole picture," if there even is such a thing, as a complex system of countless interdependent complex systems. Turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way down. In this model, "the Universe" may or may not have consciousness itself but perhaps sentient life can act as a type of universal consciousness. So, individual personality takes a theoretical backseat to the larger drives and needs of this "whole universe." 


To me, Steve Keane, individual personality is very important but in deconstructing I have learned how to be able to look at the movements of my individual self and at the movements of humanity and the movements of growing complexity from the Big Bang through the now to wherever entropy leads us. I believe that my individual drives are largely dictated by the movements of my species and my species' movements are largely dictated by the movements of this planet, this star, this galaxy, and so on, growing in concentric circles outward to our also fictional whole picture.


This is where transhumanism enters the picture. According to some ideas bouncing around in that community our technology might be able to "wake up" the cosmos. This scenario usually proposes using nanotechnology to do the heavy lifting. Nano machines called molecular assemblers would restructure matter to act as a hypothetical substance called computronium, or "programmable matter." So, everything would be what it appears with the unaided eye but it would also be able to act as a computing structure housing potentially billions of information-based lives. The computing capacity of such a cosmos is so far beyond what we can imagine that to us the universe itself may seem fully alive, conscious and super-super-intelligent. To us, this "awakened" cosmos might just as well be "God."


Now, can you find the culturally-loaded words and concepts in any of this? There are plenty of them. To deconstruct is to reverse engineer to hopefully be able to unload and then reload 'self(ves)' consciously, to take active responsibility for our individual 'being-ness.'


Where am I going with this? Right here. Deconstruct everything. Deconstruct transhumanism. What are the loaded ideas and words? Is "The Singularity," the age of super-intelligence, life extension, post-scarcity, etc. going to happen? Maybe. 


But what if it doesn't? Is transhumanism pointless if nothing happens?


I do not believe so. For me, it's the journey, not the destination that's important.I have found so much exploration, freedom, excitement and positivity in the transhuman community that I genuinely believe a great deal of good will come from it even if we never, ever become immortal superintelligent cybernetic entities.


I write this as an introduction to those who may be afraid of what transhumanism proposes and also to those in the transhuman community, to be conscious of the hidden agendas our words automatically load into our ideas, whether we are actively aware of them or not. 


Science AND sanity, folks! And spirituality, too. Why not?

Mysticism

     Mysticism is a tricky thing. People seem to have genuine experiences around the world. What does it all mean, though, if all of those experiences are firmly rooted in the cultures of the people having them?
     The first Western mystic we know of is a classical Greek named Hesiod who wrote the Theogony, and the Works and Days. The Theogony relates the stories of the gods in much the same way the Christian gospels relate the story of Jesus. Works and Days talks about how to live a pious and decent life like the Hebrew Old Testament does in many of its books. These writings along with the Iliad and the Odyssey of Hesiod's contemporary, Homer, set down the basics for the religion of the ancient Greeks. Others adapted parts of the Greek beliefs. 
     The Roman religions grew from roots that included Latin, Oscan, Sabine, Etruscan and later on, Greek influences. Roman cults were dominant in the Western world until the Altar of Victory was removed from the curia by Western Emperor Constantius II in 357 of the Common Era, restored by Julian the Philosopher and again removed by Gratian in 382. Christianity was then the only religion recognized by the Empire.
     Did that somehow make the mystical visions of Hesiod false? Were his revelations on the Olympian deities a lie? What about the visions and revelations of others?
     In India in the sixth century BCE, Siddhartha Gautama entered into an extended period of intense meditation and from it the religion we know today as Buddhism was born. Nowhere in Gautama Buddha's actual sayings, collected by his early followers into the volume called the Dhammapada, does he mention the deities or beliefs of Christianity or ancient Egypt or of the great Chinese religions of Taoism or Confucius. Does this mean that they are not true?
     What is true, if very decent and devout people all over this planet have such wildy divergent beliefs and practices that all work quite well for them? This begs the question is any of it true or is the human mystical experience just that, human? Are we stretching the point when we try to pin our very valid revelations and visions, which are culturally based, on the gods of our lands?
     I can't answer this question. I have had some very powerful experiences that have changed my life and the Belief System (BS!) that I follow now is not the one that I was brought up with but I can not say with absolute certainty that the details of those experiences are ironclad. That I feel I had some sort of experience is beyond doubt but I think we should all be honest when we listen to those who are talking about their revelation or their salvation. Ask what is the cultural bias of the person in question. 
     Mystical experiences, by their very nature, are beyond any human's ability to really describe in words, since much of it happens in a direct emotional way that is unique to the person experiencing it. Does this mean that when that person tries to tell you about it they have to fill in the gaps in their own minds with what is already there? I believe this is so. It certainly is in my case, which is why I don't state that my experience is the be-all and end-all of everyone's spiritual world.
     There are a lot of scary people in our churches trying to pull one over on us all. Don't let them pervert the mystical experience so they can steal away our religions. Keep your eyes and ears open and evaluate for yourselves.

Symptom of the Universe

There's always a lot of sturm und drang to comment on. We fill our 9-5 lives with loads of fun and interesting bullshit to keep the juices flowing. I rant and kvetch about enough of it, too. This post is about something that's not really "important," though. No Occupy movement, no transhumanism, no ideas on consciousness. Nope. This one's about the original lineup of Black Sabbath reuniting.

I have been a fan since I was four. That was in 1970, when their first two albums were released. I had them on 8-Track. Growing up in NE Philadelphia at that time meant it was mandatory to like Sabbath, Aerosmith, Zeppelin, The Who, Ted Nugent, etc.

It was the perfect soundtrack to a childhood filled with the popular apocalyptic fiction of Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes, and Godzilla. And now I can fill my three year old son's head with all of it. He even has the Capt. Kirk Star Trek reboot to grow up with. He should be close to four by the time the reunion tour gets to the Philadelphia area so I have plenty of time to convince my wife that Alex needs to go to the show with me. It'll be symmetrical. He HAS to go.

Maybe this is the important stuff and all the other crap I write about is the insignificant stuff.

"Of all the things I value most of all 
I look inside myself and see my world 
And know that it is good 
You know that I should"

 - Spiral Architect, from 

   Sabbath bloody Sabbath, 1973

   lyrics by Geezer Butler

Occupy

My general snarkiness and contrariness is fairly entertained by the Occupy movement. I am no fan of any governance except the governance each individual exercises over their own actions. I have no solutions for how to "fix" the world, however. I feel we should work on our selves then move outward in concentric circles but I am apparently a minority.

The absolutist idea of "ideal government" strikes me as a long outdated concept kept alive in Western Civ from the time of the ancient Greeks. Time to update the software, I think. Map/territory relation. If the map don't follow the territory, change your dang map!

It's looking more and more to me like the era of the individual may be upon us for good AND ill. With the de-centralization happening in the developed world due to internet connectivity, the internet seeming to be a de facto "world nervous system," the effectiveness and even need for governors in municipal, state, national, etc. capitals appears to be vanishing.

This de-centralization is also occurring side-by-side with the growing electronic connectivity. The reason I mention good and ill is because I like the idea of this de-centralization but I fear direct democracy. Why? Because most people have no training in HOW to act as effective, and compassionate, self-contained units.

If a society looks to rebuild from the ground, up, from a base of strong individuals, then it can only succeed if those individuals know what they're doing. Until now there has been little need to have these skills. Most of us still operate according to ancient, mammal behavioral scripts. Mammals have a great deal of pack behavioral programming because that has been a survival necessity. With the success of human civilization, though, this is no longer the case.

To build the type of societies we think we want and that may be more efficient we need to learn how to self-actualize. Then we can take care of ourselves and we can help out those who can't take care of themselves without endless red tape and government-subsidized bullshit.

Early Prediction on the 2012 US Presidential Election

An observation: Barack Obama is going to win because he's African American. When he won last time I was working in an office that was in a predominantly African American neighborhood. From what I picked up, so many in that particular community only voted AT ALL because there was an African American candidate. What he stood for did not seem especially relevant. And most of these people didn't get involved in polls so no one knew what they were going to do until the election results came in. This is by no means a representative sample, I realize that. Another observation: MANY people: black, white, brown, etc. appear to vote along similar lines. Humans still retain a LOT of tribal social software which was apparently a survival mechanism early on, so, if that's the case, we will usually follow our perceived pack alphas. The reason I seldom vote: few candidates are as weird looking as me so I don't think they'll represent my tribal interests.......

I have to say that even though I usually describe my politics as "anarchist," and even though Mr. Obama isn't the perfect "Savior" every world leader is expected to be, I actually like the guy and hope he wins. I do vote from time to time, and not always for comedic reasons. I voted for him before and will again unless he does grow horns and a tail as some in the political right believe he will. You can throw conspiracy theories at any politician to "prove" they are maniacally plotting to drink your children's blood. It has been done to Obama, Bush II, Palin, Clinton, etc. Again, they will all severely disappoint plenty of people on all sides of the political spectrum but, despite our ideological preferences, I sincerely doubt any of them are actively planning on creating Satan's reign on Earth. Still, I do wish more people would start trying to govern themselves so someday we might be able to do away with the bulk of this bullshit, but I'm a dreamer...

A Symbol

"...those who control the symbols rule us." - Alfred Korzybski

If you were to read any of my social networking profiles you might be confused. I talk about using an agnostic perspective yet I also claim a religious practice. For many people an agnostic outlook, at least regarding matters usually called spiritual, would seem to be contraindicated. The US in 2011 CE would appear to be about belief or non-belief. Any room for a 'maybe' POV would look to have died a sad and terrible death sometime in the 1990s if not before then.

This is where the question of symbols comes in. Every word we use is a symbol. our words are not the things they try to describe. If they were then there would only be one word for everything we could use a word to describe. The type of vehicle used to carry goods from pier to store would only be a 'truck,' never a 'lorry.' You can see what I mean. So, if words are symbols then isn't it us, word-using people everywhere, who put the ever-shifting meanings behind them, and then string them together into sentences and arguments to explain our experience?

Why can't an 'agnostic' also have 'religion?' I define these terms for myself so I can get from the experience what I need and give back what I must to sustain the energy flow. My take on religion would likely alarm most who were to scrutinize my actions. Like the character Titus Pullo in HBO's Rome (a fictional entity very, very, very loosely based on an historical person), I make my own deals with my gods, and my idea of what gods may or may not 'be' would probably get me shunned from a lot of religious communities.

I tend to speak in irreverent phrases and the concept of worship strikes me as a brand of slavery. I severely doubt any entities, if they indeed exist, would operate on such an immature level as to require devotion and obedience. Even my 2 year old son exhibits more maturity than to demand those for himself.

To add to the confusion, I also talk a great deal about the merging of humanity with our high technology, possibly creating a future human species that will carry on from us Homo Sapiens Sapiens as we did from Homo Erectus. This idea is normally termed the Technological Singularity and there are many who act as if this is a new religion.

I recently read an essay a friend sent me by Science Fiction author Charles Stross where he mentions his opinion that concepts such as mind uploading miss several key points. Mind uploading is where the human neural pathways, with all contained experience and knowledge would be translated to another medium than the human brain. Stross says this represents the classic mind/body split fallacy, and I agree. Any complex entity represents an organism-as-a-whole-in-environments and can not be split into separate elements without severely changing, if not outright killing it.

This is not to say that something like it may not be possible someday. For me, though, it's the journey toward improving our experience that is important, not the eventual shape of what that may mean in any future. Sure, I read SF and have my private fantasies of Borg supremacy, but that's just part of my emotional life like other people's fascination and even some level of identification with the modern archetypes of the superhero, or vampire, or yoga guru, etc. Or emulation of a hero like a sports figure, politician, mentor, etc. As long as we remain mindful of our levels of abstraction in these regards, the experience can be rewarding and fun. I used to get through uncomfortable social events by adopting a watered down version of Hunter Thompson. It was a fun and convenient mask for me and I learned a lot about myself in the process. 

Now, to bring it back around to symbols. My religious life introduced me to a deity the Etruscans called Veltha, then Voltumnus. After the Romans conquered Etruria they imported him into the Roman pantheon as Vertumnus and married him to the nymph Pomona. To the Etruscans he was originally a minor agricultural god, representing the change of the seasons. His chief attribute being shape-shifting. As Rome started moving North in her conquest of Italy the Etruscans elevated Voltumnus to chief of the Etruscan Federation. Rome sent him back to the Minor Leagues but making the moves was easy for the shape-shifter. In fact it was that very ability that won him the hand of Pomona.

When I was a member of my old religious group we had a meditation to meet our matron and patron dieties. I had a very tiny awareness of Vertumnus and Pomona and the details I listed above were not known to me at the time. I have always considered myself a very urban oriented person and I thought I would end up with Apollo, god of the intellect, among other things, and Athena, another great intellectual and also a great matron of my beloved cities.

Instead I encountered the quiet and unassuming rural entities and came up from the meditation confused. It was afterward that I researched them to find out who the frick they were, as my then High Priestess informed me that it was the gods who did the choosing, not the other way around.

I puzzled over it for years and meditated on it to find the two of them laughing at me, although with seeming fondness. After that group fell apart I moved in some different directions and didn't think on the matter for about 2 years. In that time I became aware of the Singularity movement and I have immersed myself in that in my own obstinate way.

Voltumnus knocked on my inner door one day during one of my technology researches and I realized that he was here to help shape humankind's transformation from Homo Sapiens Sapiens to whatever, even if that change turns out to be a predominantly psychological one instead of the "Borg supremacy" change many in the Singularity movement are hoping for. 

This makes me happy. I don't care if Voltumnus is only a cultural/psychological construct that I'm using to make myself comfortable with humanity's current period of change, or if he's some sort of entity with a personality that I can have a relationship with like I can with my friends and neighbors. I doubt he cares if I'm 'real' or just 'in his head.'

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The Tao that you can name is not the eternal Tao.

Software Update

Our systems are ceasing to work efficiently, yet we cling to them as if they are sacred artifacts handed to us directly by the Gods. We made our systems. Politics, economics, societies, arts, etc. were all created by humans. That means we can change them when we need to. Or discard them. In the West we still cling to political ideologies largely put together in the 18th century of the Common Era. Why? This disregards the advances we have made since that time. It disregards basic facts. It is a verifiable fact that the US is no longer an agrarian nation, East of the Mississippi River, but our political system is based on that type of society. We speak of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in religious terms. This sets up a very real situation where genuine anxiety is created in people when any idea of doing something different arises. Ideas like socialism, liberalism, etc. fill people with concrete fear that their very lives are in sincere danger. Why? Because we have literally mystified our 18th century ideology. In doing so we are no longer allowed to make the changes we need to as we continue to move and grow as a civilization. This holds true for any of our self-created systems and it holds for any human society. We must remember that we are the creators of these systems. That should give us the power to make neccessary changes when needed and it should hopefully remove our fear of blaspheming against the heavens for turning our backs on their celestial mandate to never grow and develop. Please look up ideas on open-source governance and open-source economics like bitcoin. They may not be the answer but at least they are an attempt to fit solutions to the actual facts of our current existence. Do an end run around the current power brokers. Do not engage them at all. That is playing by the old rules that are no longer relevant.  

A Subjective View of Objectivism

OK the main ideas behind Ayn Rand's Objectivism are kind of anti-Steve-ism. Anyone who has read anything I've ever posted knows I think our knowledge of any 'objective reality' is pretty much a hoax. However, I really like her thoughts on individualism.

What's bugging me is the bullshit about how reading her magically turns you into a Nazi. That's the same type of stupidity Glenn Beck pushes. Think for yourself. Pick up one of her books. I did back in the Olden Times. I tend to veer left politically yet some of her ideas were very influential on me, and now here I am defending her from those who claim to represent "my side."

I was introduced to her via Neil Peart's lyrics for the band Rush. Their album 2112 is a reworking of Rand's novella Anthem. It promotes critical thinking and strong individuality. That's what hooked me into wanting to read her. Honestly, getting through The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged can be a wee bit problematic, but you may yet pick up something good from the effort. 

I don't understand the philosophy that you must agree totally with everything you read, watch, or consider in any way. As I stated earlier, I don't agree with ALL of Ayn Rand's work, but I don't agree with ALL of anything, not my favorites like Nietzsche or Korzybski, not even myself. I'm a "work in progress." Try wrapping your head around some ideas that you wouldn't normally consider. You might find the experience stretches you in some surprising, and positive ways.

Did I mention think for yourself?

Splits: Mind/Body/Spirit, Banana, etc.

"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force." - Darth Vader to Admiral Motti on the first Death Star

I read a lot of quasi-technical stuff. I'd read actual tecnical stuff if I was smart enough to understand it but I'm a little dim. Anyway, I've come across enough writing on futurist subjects to identify a pattern that could be called 'materialist' or 'rationalist,' etc. Not that there's anything neccessarily wrong with that point-of-view, as long as, in my opinion, it's kept in mind that there may yet be other ways of looking at events and that other ways are not neccessarily in opposition.

I should explain myself. I find that I walk in techno-bullshit circles as easily as I do in spiritual-bullshit circles. I think it's from my upbringing. As I was growing up, my mom typified spiritual/emotional pursuits for me, while my dad typified rational/intellectual pursuits for me. What does this have to do with anything? Well, it seems to me that we have created different ways of describing our experience to ourselves so we can get by. One of those ways is science, and another is religion. There are others, but for this discussion I'm going to stick with these two. They're the big ones.

According to my model here, science describes what we could term intellectual 'reality." Religion describes emotional 'reality.' Since around the time of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the West has moved into a splitting of mind from body. This has thrown that aspect of the organism-as-a-whole into its own special pit. There is now an adversarial relationship between these seemingly separate 'things,' not taking into account that they derive from the same source, the whole person.

We have a situation where we demand that science must prove itself to religion along emotional lines and religion must prove itself to science along intellectual lines. That's like being lost on the highway and asking the gas pump for directions and the GPS to fill up the tank. The whole vehicle at war with itself. Kooky.

What sparked this note is an article I read in a futurist magazine where a self-described non-religious person interviewed a scientist who self-described as religious. They were both polite and the non-religious interviewer tried very hard to get into the religious person's headspace but I believe if he had some gut-level idea of the mind/body/spirit split, and that it is humans who create the words we use to describe (and that the words are not what they attempt to descibe), then it might have been easier for him to see that the scientist he was interviewing, who is religious, is able to reconcile his religion and his science just fine because he is allowing them to do what they were designed by us to do. That is he allows science to help him interpret his sensory experience intellectually and his religion to interpret his emotional/spiritual experience. It seemed to me that it was much easier for the scientist to understand the interviewer than the other way around. I feel the scientist has a more integrated grasp on his unique human experience.

I can't explain to anyone, in the intellectual symbology of language, why I feel the way I do at any given time. Honestly, it's not always important for me to be able to. I think that's what a lot of people mean when they say faith is important and knowledge is not always. Emotional truths need no empirical evidence. 

Let's stop warring against ourselves. Let's accept information whether it is the empirical information flow of our intellectual realities or the emotional information flow of our spiritual realities. They work together to give us a bigger picture of the worlds we live in. I feel and think very deeply. I do not want to have to walk through a minefield laid down by people trying to be only half alive. I am vibrantly and loudly alive and I can't always tell you why in words but I want to be able to enjoy it with you if you ever come by for a drink sometime.

This is why I follow an anarchist path right now

Any type of democratic process will only work with an informed and committed populace. That ain't happening here on the planet of the apes any time soon. Humans are not fond of updating their 'software.'

In the US we're still using an 18th century political model that was designed for a small, agrarian society, not a world-spanning economic and military empire. We're using, at best, a 19th century social model that does not take into account the species' advances since that point. Our economic model has not been upgraded since about WWII, and our educational model is still an industrial one, not well suited for "The Information Age."

Personally, I choose to accept responsibility for my own actions in society. I police myself and govern myself. For now, that seems to me to be the best use of my energy. The world's political processes do not appear to me to be working well so I don't want to waste any energy on them.

I believe all of our systems are changing. Instead of participating in what I feel is rapidly becoming a gross parody of itself, I choose to screech at it when it gets especially stinky in my vicinity, but more often I just try to ignore it to live my life.

I think it's the individual's responsibility to take the ethical highground. We need to transact with one another in more efficient and compassionate ways and to no longer sit back and let our institutions do the heavy lifting for us.

Combative politics disgusts me, no matter who does it. I don't like what I see as hysterical bitching from the pundits who classify themselves as 'liberal,' like Michael Moore, Rachel Maddow or Keith Olberman, and I don't like what I see as hysterical bitching from the pundits who classify themselves as 'conservative,' like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck. It looks to me like the death throes of an old way of doing things and what I'm trying to do is look for what the new ways are going to be so I can help try to make them more efficient than what we have now.

This is why I (currently) classify myself with the label 'anarchist.' I believe that gives people something to easily understand what I'm attempting to talk about. Of course, as with any labelling words, the words are not what they attempt to describe. Our experiences occur in more dimensions than our words have the capacity to convey, but they do give us a convenient way to quickly put experience into pesonal perspective so we can act in our environments.

I realize these ideas are difficult for many to accept but I'm not asking anyone to do what I do. It works quite well for me presently, however it may not for anyone else and it may not for me in the future. If that happens then I hope I can remain flexible enough to change my model or adapt a new one if needed, depending on what transpires in my environments, including internal environments ('psychological,' 'spiritual,' etc.) and my external environments (work, home, etc.). 

"If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced." - The Open-Ended Proof from The Panoplia Prophetica of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood from Children of Dune (1976 CE) by Frank Herbert

""Is", "is", "is", - the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I

don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment." - Robert Anton Wilson

Sense of Humor

Why does it seem to be a requirement to take political and spiritual matters deadly seriously? When reading the works of folks like Plato, Aleister Crowley, Friedrich Nietzsche, Anton LaVey, G.I. Gurdjieff and even some of Alfred Korzybski's papers it's come across to me that they were quite funny. I don't know why we must approach what influences us as if the work was delivered to us by Angels of the Lord God, Jehovah (I suspect that even Moses and Mohammed had pretty advanced funny bones). Politically speaking, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were the Cheech & Chong of 18th century America, recreational drugs included. Yes, the messages these folks laid out were very serious but don't miss the humor. I believe it's there to give you some much needed human perspective. That perspective seems to me to be this: Don't take yourself too seriously. You have to up to a point so you can hold down a job and pay your bills, but beyond that, have fun. Afterall, doesn't the US constitution say something about the pursuit of happiness? Isn't that easier and more fun & beneficial if you laugh heartily along the way? Just a thought.

Will "The Singularity" Happen?

There are some who speak of what has become known as the technological singularity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity) in almost religious tones. To be honest, I am one of them sometimes. But, is it actually going to occur, or is it even important if it does?

I often describe my political beliefs as a variety of anarchism. When pressed, I usually say that I don't feel it's very important if human society as a totality ever becomes a true anarchy. That is to say that society would be structured according to competent individuals taking care of their own affairs, leading to harmonious cooperation between these competent individuals. I recognize this as an absolutist ideal that may never be completely practical, but I feel the striving for it helps hone what we have now into a more efficient and compassionate system. That's what's really important to me. It is a "quality of life" issue. Or to paraphrase another common expression, it's the journey not necessarily the destination that's important.

Maybe this is how we can view the singularity. We may never have strong AI or immortality, physiological, digital or otherwise, but maybe striving for these things can improve our quality of life in the perceived now.

Maybe that can be good enough. Then again, maybe it would be fun to live forever in an indestructible robot body, too. As long as I can get some cool flames painted on the sides...

'Human' - Thoughts on Heritage

Philip K. Dick played with the question of what 'is' human in many of his stories, but most famously in his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which was adapted for the screen as Blade Runner. In both versions of that story sentient humanoids called Replicants were portrayed as just as vividly human as the original Homo Sapiens Sapiens. The Replicants were constructed beings, designed to do a lot of the "dirty work" the Homo Saps didn't want to do. However, these beings were acculturated into the same society as the Homo Saps, so since both groups shared remarkably similar physiology, and also shared language and culture, wouldn't they fall under the banner of 'human,' too? The story suggests yes.

Anyone who knows me has heard this before, but what 'is' human? Is it a sentient, bipedal mammal living in an oxygen/nitrogen environment; or is it an inheritance of history and culture? Adopted children do not share the adopting family's particular genes but they are considered family because of the acculturation. Family here is defined specifically as inheritance of culture.

Wouldn't this be the case with what we are currently calling Artificial General Intelligences (or strong AI)? I personally feel we should start looking at it this way, before we have strong AI. That way, hopefully, a weak godlike intelligence just might look at us meatballs fondly and want to take us along for the ride instead of ignoring us, which I think is the likeliest response, orthey might nuke us into the dirt, as less optimistics opinions might speculate.

Let's remember that we control the meanings we ascribe to our words, and that the words are not the space-time events they describe. Human means what we and our descendants, fleshy and otherwise, want it to mean. I find inclusive meanings open more doors than exclusive meanings.

"...those who control the symbols rule us." - Alfred Korzybski

Conspiracy!

In keeping with what I would like to see in our future, I have to mention this. I see a LOT of conspiracy theory out there, left-wing, right-wing, centrist, etc. I feel these modes of evaluation keep us from making the most effective choices for continuing our heritage as it moves into the transhuman era. Please try to remain mindful of the fluidity of our experiential selves. My personal experience suggests what we call existence could be better described as dynamic process (verb), than as a static, block-like 'thing' (noun), which is how it is generally described. If so, then perhaps multi-valued evaluation would be more practical than rigid, dualistic interpretations of either/or logic. Conspiracy theories tend to depend on dualisms. Please try to look beyond.

Beware of conspiracy theory, folks! I have found that lines of thinking that lead to conspiracy theories tend to lead around and around in circles. Since they are often based on hard-to-verify or un-verifiable accounts, they frequently resort to referencing a very small selection of related, poorly verifiable records.

Do I personally believe there is one conspiratorial group behind world events? No. My thought is that the administration of world affairs would be too much of an undertaking for an agency od any size, much less a small, clandestine one.

Do I believe that there are many conspiracies? Yes. It seems to be in our current psychological nature to conspire in groups from two to a couple of hundred, against any and perhaps all perceived authorities. As individuals, we conspire when two or more of us decide to leave anyone out of our information loops. Does this make us part of the Bavarian Illuminati or the Priory of Sion? No. It makes us normal people.

Naming

Naming seems to give us a reassuring fiction that we control, and are separate from what we name. A Buddhist interpretation of this might state that this verbal identification leads to desire which leads to attachment which leads to suffering. My experience suggests what we call existence could be described as a dynamic process instead of an unchanging 'thing' that we desperately need to control so we don't 'lose' it. Again, our Buddhist friends might remind us that all 'things' are impermanent.

Experiment in Democracy

This was given as one of the mini-lectures at the Institute of General Semantics 2009 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture at Fordham University in NYC. They were all also printed by the Institute in their publication, "General Semantics Bulletin."         

     “Freedom.”  “Liberty.”  “Justice.”  “Patriotism.”  “Democracy.”  What is your response when you hear these words?  Do you think about them in clinical terms?  Do you write them down and diagram them the way they used to in English class in my Catholic grade school?  Or, perhaps more likely, do you feel something?  When someone says, “Liberty,” do you flush with pride because you live in the best country in the world?  Well, maybe here, tonight, you fine people take a pause to ground the thalamic reaction before you move along.  But human systems, even in the modern West, indoctrinate their ideas into their people so that signal reactions occur with certain trigger words. 

     The best definition of signal reaction that I have heard, so far, is from S. I. Hayakawa’s Language in Thought and Action[i].  He describes it along the lines of an automatic reaction to a word or phrase that creates an instant reflexive response.  Instead of a green light symbolizing go, the signal response creates in the participant/observer the reflex of green IS go. There’s no thought, only response.

     Signal reactions are why I believe buzzwords, like “Freedom” and “Democracy” have so much effect.  Their coupling with what I propose as the possible pack psychology of early man may explain the current socio-political situations.
     I invoke these specific buzzwords to make a point.  I don't think democracy is a good idea at this point in humanity's social evolution.  While trying to find a similarity of structure between the territory of human behavior and the self-created maps of our political and economic systems, I am coming to believe that democratic ideals are not necessarily compatible with how we usually seem to respond to our environments, both external and ideological.

     The word democracy, and not necessarily the concepts normally associated with the word, has been used for pushing Western political agendas.  I don't mean to bash the West, though, because even a brief reading of any history will at the very least suggest that most societies operate along similar lines.  Winston Churchill summed it up neatly when he said:

"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.“

 - The Official Report, House of Commons (5th Series), 11 November 1947 C.E., vol. 444, cc. 206–07.

     I like to throw around German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche’s name quite a bit.  I was introduced to Walter Kaufmann’s translations when I was in high school, and I’m a snarky little man, so I still get some sort of twisted joy from rereading him every few years.  According to his perspective, the bold misuse of words to force change beneficial to only one party would be an expression of unsublimated will to power.  He defines will to power as the natural desire for every organism to increase its sphere of influence.  I include whole civilizations as individual organisms in their own right.  I say that this corresponds to the concept of time-binding.  By effectively passing on information so successive generations don’t have to rediscover the joy of cooking antelope meat over fire, everyone can potentially benefit.  This would mean that each individual, or each individual civilization, would have to sublimate a natural tendency to push all other animals away from the watering hole.  The individual, sublimating this intense desire, would recognize the value of working together toward common goals and the binding of time would be showcased by an inevitable fertilization of the cultures and economies of all participants. 

     This is the point, however, where you might be thinking that all of this is implied in the concept of democracy.  Theoretically, I agree, but as any engineer or scientist will tell you, there’s often a big difference between theory and practice.  In the case of our modern societies the democracy sold to, and at times foisted upon, the people of the second and third worlds sometimes only seems like a new paint job on the already existing despotism.  In America’s case, it’s interesting to note that these new “democracies”, such as our current favorites Iraq and Afghanistan, are in areas strategic to the interests of the American government. 

     The same could be said for many other national relationships.  The White Man’s Burden “liberated” many of the black men, women and children of Africa, although modern history tends to look at things in terms of oppression instead of “liberation”. 

     Western ideals changed over the years and the buzzwords connected with White Man’s Burden, Manifest Destiny and even Divine Right of Kings changed.  In the United States many people in the North and South no longer felt that they were civilizing the African “savages”.  Hard experience suggested to them that the Africans were human beings and that the system of slavery was a degrading atrocity that brought low everyone connected to it.  Of course, there were significant economic factors involved in the industry of human slavery and the propaganda machinery of both sides of the social and economic issues went into overdrive.  We like to look at Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation as a great moral victory over evil, whereas Lincoln issued it as a political tool to help win a war.      

     If humans rose as predators, scavengers and foragers originally, then pack behavior would seem to make sense and democracy would appear to be a bad fit.  Small groups operating with a small group of leaders, or alphas, coordinating group effort, would give early humans an advantage over the stronger, fiercer and faster animals.  If this is the case, then that may be an explanation for the preponderance of the authority-driven systems we find ourselves in, in our familial, working and socio-political lives.  This is not to say that I’m advocating an official move to a monarchal or totalitarian system.  I believe our history, despite the wars and atrocities like slavery, shows genuine steps toward systems that will hopefully evolve to become more democratic and open.

     Maybe looking at human affairs in terms of pack behavior can give us a better understanding of the psychology behind something like the Emancipation Proclamation.  Lincoln is remembered as, among many other fine things, a great orator.  His marketing of the Proclamation has turned the perception of it from an expedient move into a great expression of “Democracy” and “Liberty”.  

     So, how does this linguistic hook get into us?  Humans are intelligent, aren’t we?  What reroutes information from the head to the gut?  Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil[ii] is where I originally encountered the term “herd mentality” to describe the behavior of human groups.  Having expended much effort over the years contemplating the theory, I modify the term herd mentality and say pack behavior instead.  While I haven’t come across supportive literature, I put forth that this may have been a survival mechanism for early humans. 

     Pack behavior has elements that could be called herdlike.  I believe those behaviors were what Nietzsche was reacting to.  However herd behavior implies low-level intelligence, belied by humanity’s many identifiable achievements like the first eight seasons of The Simpsons and also this gathering.  Pack animals exhibit a higher grade of intelligence through their ability to cooperate.  In spite of constant reporting of our blunders and our frequent violence, if humans didn’t create their systems upon high levels of often contentious interdependence, then I don’t believe any of us would be here tonight.  We’d probably be in our individual caves, sharpening sticks to keep the others away from our stuff.

     Unfortunately this paints a picture of biological determinism and perhaps some sort of fatalism.  At least on the surface.  Fields such as Social Darwinism, some behavioral psychology, Scientology, Ragnar Redbeard‘s Might is Right[iii], Anton LaVey‘s Satanism, etc. come across to me as playing with the more nihilistic sides of the biological determinist perspective.  To be clear, I don’t want to imply that pack psychology, or any psychology is the ultimate state, or explanation for human behavior and I certainly don’t want to advocate any “nothing matters, all is permissible” philosophy.

     This is where I come back to signal reactions, to the hook of buzzwords reeling us out of the water.  Test it out for yourself.  How do you FEEL when you hear our buzzwords, freedom, liberty, justice, patriotism and democracy?  Try to track your feeling back to why you feel that way.  Is there a tangible reason?  That hook in your mouth is probably starting to loosen its hold. 

     This isn’t just an experiment in democracy.  All of us here tonight have studied the non-Aristotelian system of General Semantics so we should be well versed in the value of subjectivity and of applying the scientific method to our language and expanding outward from there to any and hopefully every aspect of our complex lives.  I think the reason politics and religion are still not considered good conversation topics for most dinner parties, though, is due to the majority of people only having a small awareness of the coercive power of language in general, and 2q1 in particular. 

     There is always some political sandstorm swirling around on the news.  When you pick up on a conversation at work or on the train about healthcare or the war or whatever the horrible liberal/conservative media is doing now maybe you can butt in and propose the experiment.  You might get punched in the face, but you might just get someone to examine their neuro-semantic reactions.  If it’s the former, don’t worry, broken noses look pretty cool when they heal.

---

[i]Language in Thought and Action: Fifth Edition by S.I. Hayakawa S.I. Hayakawa (Author)

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• (Author), Alan R. Hayakawa (Author), Robert MacNeil (Introduction) Publisher: Harvest Original; 5 edition (January 1, 1991) ISBN-10: 0156482401 ISBN-13: 978-0156482400

[ii] Beyond Good & Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future by Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (Author)

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(Author), Walter Kaufmann Walter Kaufmann (Translator)

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(Translator) Publisher: Vintage (December 17, 1989)   ISBN-10: 0679724656 ISBN-13: 978-0679724650

[iii]Might is Right or the Survival of the Fittest (Paperback) by Ragnar Redbeard

Ragnar Redbeard (Author)

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(Author), Darrell W. Conder (Editor) Publisher: Dil Pickle Press; 1 edition (August 1, 2005) ISBN-10: 0972823301 ISBN-13: 978-0972823302