Forums
A spinoff from the Religion, Spirituality and Deadheads thread:
A safe place for us to discuss perspectives on life that aren't deity dependent.
Sounds of Silence
As much as I've always loved that old S&G tune, I never could rise above its title contradiction. Cage got it righter.
sage and time
for anyone in England, the AV Festival 12: As soon As Possible runs between 1-31 March 2012.
Titled after ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible), by pioneering artist John Cage, the theme explores how artists have stretched, measured and marked the passage of time. Some works last the full 31 days others are infinite in duration or move imperceptibly slowly: 14 seconds become 31 minutes, an hour becomes 24, and we can all dream in a 12-hour sleep concert.
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/programme/2012
please, please support if in the area. or better still, plan a vacation!
Sounds in silence
If you ever spend time in an anechoic chamber (and it doesn't make you so nauseous that you are unable to focus on anything besides your stomach), you'll find that there's a lot more sound in silence than you might imagine.
Which I guess is part of Cage's point, though probably not exactly what Simon was thinking about.
Psychedelic Clowns
I imagined a conversation with Wavy Gravy once, in which he told me to create the community you crave. I think that's what we're doing here, isn't it? Building what's hard to find.
Minus the Tryptamines
Thanks for the links, jonapi. I teach freshman composition at a community college, and in a recent classroom discussion about the persuasive strategies used in advertising, I had the opportunity to introduce my students to the thinking of McKenna, through his quote, "Culture is not your friend." It got real quiet in the classroom when I spoke those words, and then a young man in the front row raised his hand and asked me to repeat the name of the source of the quote. I repeated the name for him and watched him write it down in his notebook, and then made a mental note for myself; the student is in his early twenties and the subject of his first essay had been about the US Marine Corps and his plans to enlist later this spring. Needless to say, I'm very curious about what sort of outcome the bringing together of these two disparate ways of seeing the world might yield, but I'm resisting mentioning it again because I don't want to exert more of an influence than I already have. Call it small scale social engineering; like the old bumper-sticker says: Think Globally, Act Locally.
think globally act locally
a most perfect application.
let's hope that young man makes the right decision. the most one can do is point another in the right direction; it's their journey after all.
but it's difficult to develop a wider vision when the soul has been reduced and compartmentalised; the services can be an opportunity when it looks like there is nothing else.
but there is.
i still feel that Terence McKenna has been unforgivably marginalised and swept aside towards that dreaded notion of New Age or worse still, Drug Culture; taking everything he said literally would be missing the point. one has to engage on a personal level to truly feel.
the mainstream (or sadly, that fake bohemian-right on-hip-clique), dismissing his enlightened, intrinsic knowledge as mere "counterculture" (is there anything more asinine or fatuous than that herd?), has diluted his healing properties and theories.
one must apply one's own judgement of course, but both religious (obviously), scholars (sadly) and scientists (shamefully) have neglected to construct a rigorous, thorough investigation into a quite solid and tangible view.
why should all "disciplines" be kept so separate? alas, it smells of money, prestige, accomplishment, ego, acceptance and critical regard and high esteem.
since when did that contribute to true evolution?
sea-stoned
quite apt.having recently watched a rather still, depressingly, concern for the oceans and especially coral reefs via a Monty Halls documentary, i thought this was worth a showing for anyone who missed it.
and
Pro v. Con
> since when did that [money, prestige, accomplishment, ego, acceptance and critical regard and high esteem] contribute to true evolution?
My understanding is that evolutionary processes select against an organism, rather than for an organism; we do what we do, and natural selection then determines whether what we have done is effective in terms of survival. Here's another way to say it: nature hasn't selected for humans, it just hasn't selected against us yet. Hence, the conclusion that "money, prestige, accomplishment, ego, acceptance and critical regard and high esteem" may not "contribute to true evolution" is premature, I think. These factors are determining the condition of the world; what remains to be seen is whether these factors will extend humanity's time here, or bring it to an end. In a way, these factors can be seen as having extended our time here; they've been in place for some time now, (5000-10000 years at least), and we're still here.
molecular ladders
yes, you're quite right.i guess it's my frustration that after all this time, a proper coherence and joining between the scientific and the "spiritual"; a serious study on a widespread scale seems particularly unforthcoming.
a more shamanistic view is still shunned as unworthy of serious "academic" investigation (except, of course, when Western medicine and pharmaceutical companies rape indigenous cultures of their knowledge, while steadfastly refusing to reinvest in or reimburse centuries old traditions and experience). Jeremy Narby's book The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge brings up some highly pertinent points on this matter.
but those kinds of study will not get you a grant or serious acceptance in the scientific field. and so it remains on the margins for a curious few to stumble across. unsurprising really, as free thought and inner-cosmonauting is not going to be readily encouraged in these here times!!!!
i'm also highly curious as to "whether these factors will extend humanity's time here..."; let us wait and see, eh? we have it in us if we all but try.
fascinating solar storm occurrences recently. what may it bring?
Ideals v. Individuals
> I guess it's my frustration that after all this time, a proper coherence and joining between the scientific and the "spiritual"...seems particularly unforthcoming.
In his text, Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, Jacques Derrida writes that, "as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of a desire." Back to that in a minute.
In Walden, Henry David Thoreau writes that "Every child begins the world again, to some extent." In my opinion, that extent is near total and my evidence is the unanswered question, What is love? We have no answer to that question yet and I doubt that we ever will. The problem with getting science and spirituality to cohere is that science is an institution of culture, which accumulates itself and transmits its ideals into the future, and spirituality is a function of spirit, whose manifestation is Thoreau's child. Humans don't advance, while culture does; hence, McKenna's observation that "culture is not your friend." Unfortunately, it seems that individuals exist for the benefit of culture, and not the other way around. A culture's agenda is not necessarily akin to the goals of its constituents; hence the lack of coherence.
Publish or perish
"individuals exist for the benefit of culture, and not the other way around" is an interesting way of looking at it. What we are able to contribute to the growth and development of advanced notions like culture and society as individuals is our legacy. Hopefully many of us will be more generous and productive than Hunter's sad creature in China Doll who apparently contributes nothing.
As for how long it's taking us to get further, it is worth noting that in geological terms humans per se have only been around for an eyeblink, and even less than that in cosmological terms. Hell, it's only been 520 years since somebody had to prove that the earth was round, not flat, and less than 400 years since someone was effectively jailed (by a religious order, thank you) for heretically suggesting that Earth was not the center of the universe and in fact orbited the sun. We have come a long way (baby) but there is so much more we don't know than we do.
Love? Well, I can't prove it, but my belief is that Love is a fabric of shared energy, bigger than any one individual. We all contribute to it and draw from it using processes we don't quite understand but can recognize its presence and absence. I like to describe it as being like the smell of bacon. Once you know what it is, you never need to have it explained to you again. And you can recognize it instantly, even from a long way off.
Il Pianeta Azzurro
a film by Franco Piavoli.
a vision of beauty and harmony
in a universal language
for all ages
a poem, a voyage, a concert
on nature, universe, life.
a different image
from the one we always see.
- Andrei Tarkovsky.
lost alphabet of reality
we don't need the answer to "what is love?".we only have to experience it; some questions should stand adrift from analysis. personally, i don't want love to be reduced to cold calculations, clinical forensic dissection.
feeling can take the place of discussion and speculation sometimes. ruminations appearing cheap, almost debasing to it's purity.
this could be seen as a contradiction when other ineffables are encouraged by myself. but true love is beyond strict notions of explainability; the moment you try it will vanish, and rightly so.
one can analyse the psychedelic experience too but no amount of chatter will reproduce the same effects. sensation is paramount and of the Now.
improvisation the key to enlightenment. swimming in bliss. don't capture, let it go.
if only it were that simple.......
something jonapi has only ever experienced, truly, a handful of times. but what times they were.
living versus existing.
---------------syawlA---(----@
I have loved you always,since I can remember, xo!
But alas...today...
I love you, syawla.
But why?
Of the moment I find myself in:
Always is
but a menstrual pad,
with wings.
and
Always is
but Walmart's low prices.
How could I defame them,
by wrongly using Their word.
So,
syawla, uoy evol I
xo
Trademarks.
Best wishes to Everyone-
"Always".
"Have a happy period."
Awww shucks!
Hopefully this month I will.
"I Love You, All" -Too.
@-sherbear-@
"no, don't remember where i put it, actually...."
like a new toy at christmas.engaged, enthusiastic, brimming with excitement.
"it's all i ever wanted!".
a cat pawing a furry ball.
distraction.
"yep, coming; running all the way...".
then.
indifference.
not such a concern after all.
"just who's idea was this topic anyway?"
heart attack and vine.
beeeeep "you have no new messages".
next!
"strike a light.............."
me too!
ha ha ha ha!
Whose thread is this anyway?
Um, it's Ours. Anyone who is kind enough to contribute, and all those just watching. It's a piazza, not a podium. Hopefully more will speak up if they feel they have something to add. Or interject.
Finally had a chance to watch the Synthetic Biology vid, jonapi. To me the scariest thing about it was the title, with its embedded preconception of the existence of a god. The most encouraging aspect was the community center filled with all sorts of normal folks, adults and kids alike, experimenting with the technology. This stuff needs to be demystified and unfettered from the paranoiac caterwauling of those limited by the strictures of Organized Religion. It also needs to be readily available, and not the sole province of Monsanto et al. Very happy to see the Open Source model being utilized widely here. Anybody can have the parts for free. Create value by making something useful out of them.
It does strike me as curiously ironic that the initial research in this field was done by an Augustinian monk who was neither jailed for heresy nor accused of "playing god." But he was just fidgeting with peas, and they aren't really life forms anyway, right? Well, at least not ones that actually matter. And what about that broccoli stuff? Dogs? Cats? Cows? Corn? We humans have been haphazardly mucking about in other gene pools for a long, long time. Personally, I think it's better that we go about it armed with fuller understanding and finer grained control over the process.
hurting issue
ha ha!! just being a little cheeky, that's all, Mr. P.!!we don't want any podiums here! true true!
maybe we can have some pizza instead of piazza though...it's gotta have anchovies on it whatever the case! mozzarella olives tomato and anchovies...mmmmmmm....
yes, that community centre was great, wasn't it? reclaiming for future generations hopefully. a magnificent enterprise.
interesting recent reports here on airlines and ferry companies being threatened by animal activists over the transportation of live animals for scientific research. many are now refusing to offer such a service.
apparently there is serious concern over lack of test subjects for cancer drugs. to be honest, i'm not sure where i stand on the matter personally; could they be used to potentially cure someone who would go on to alleviate animal suffering in the long term? or make a huge advance in the study of all beings?
i don't consider myself above any other species. wouldn't (or dare i say it, shouldn't?) a cancer sufferer offer themselves up for testing? i would. if it's to preserve the human strain, can't we be taking experiments upon ourselves? should an animal, without a voice, be plucked from it's habitat (bred for this very purpose, i feel, is no argument here; also morally wrong i believe).
my heart and conscience is torn. yes, i've witnessed first hand the terrible suffering caused by cancer in my own family. horrific.
but hand on heart...is it right to involve animals?
it surely isn't right to have innocent lives threatened by activists though; i'll say that for sure.
i just don't know really.
apocalypse
Possibly the best way to 'alleviate animal suffering in the long term' is to get rid of the people, not rely on people to fix it. Can't trust them one little bit.
signed
A badger
universal compression
Is it strange to be a turning tea cup of a natureal compression. A learning proccess from my understanding of learning as the mind. being a muscle. Expands as with knowladge based on a bio pressure system.The heart rythmicly drumming with a engine like dc vibration.Much like the gap ,two points between 2 solar systems based on the structure of einstiens theory equation of compression.
Or is it this strange sub dead space on this pc?
Or are you realy listening??????????..perhaps its just me............ hey.........///
iboga unity
in pessimistic mood, eh badger?!human beings can do extraordinary things too. but i'm repeatedly aghast at the scales being tipped in favour of one species over another.
sad to think that all beings have so much in common, yet one is forever convinced of it's authority.
i humbly point all in the direction of ayahuasca.
recipe for perturbation
i'm very sorry for your loss......
the right to bear arms or the right to arm bears? i say get yerselves tooled up, CB! maybe the Russians will sell some to you (gosh, how topical of you jonapi...).
bear there
emotional flux based atmospheric pressure.Exusmyjiberish, however, .......................why are you looking....?..///
timmayyyyyyyyyyyyyy
don't worry about badger mr. p.; he sold his british brethren down the river by lording it up with a plethora of ladyboys in vietnam.up to his nuts in guts, by all accounts.
don't let that moral mask fool you; he's a wrong un' and no mistake.
unrepentant atheist? bestial bigot more like..........
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the secret you
Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science's greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are? while the thoughts that make us feel as though we know ourselves are easy to experience, they are notoriously difficult to explain. so, in order to find out where they come from, he subjects himself to a series of probing experiments.
he learns at what age our self-awareness emerges and whether other species share this trait. next, he has his mind scrambled by a cutting-edge experiment in anaesthesia. having survived that ordeal, he is given an out-of-body experience in a bid to locate his true self. nd in Hollywood, he learns how celebrities are helping scientists understand the microscopic activities of our brain. finally, he takes part in a mind-reading experiment that both helps explain and radically alters his understanding of who he is.
visions of the future
the intelligence revolution.
the quantum revolution.
the biotech revolution.
So It Still Goes
"We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
Mark Vonnegut, quoted in Kurt Vonnegut's last novel, Timequake.
Label,catorgize,distingusih,seperate. hippie. disunband.
such compresion, particule dust has no motion.so,na na na, I choose to inore you.
I'm relatively moved
Stillness, another one of those illusions that fools so many humans. Everything in the universe is constantly in motion, in absolute terms. Things only appear to be motionless because they are moving at the same rate and in the same direction as we are, so relative to us they seem still. Unpropelled things on the surface of the Earth are moving at about 3,272 miles per hour relative to the center of the Earth, except that the Earth itself is moving about 33,314 miles per hour relative to the Sun. And the Sun appears to be spiraling in towards the black hole at the center of the Milky Way at about 559,234 miles per hour. I'm not up to speed enough on my astrophysics to calculate how fast the Milky Way is hurtling away from the locus of the Big Bang or to defend any such calculation against the other potentially valid schools of thought on the subject, but I am prepared to assert that there is a preponderance of evidence supporting the notion that the universe is expanding at some rate.
So what does all that mean? Well, the next time you're tempted to skip over Space when listening to a show, consider that (relatively speaking) it will be over in the blink of an eye, so why not just enjoy the ride?
must you coment,mean
pullarity from a center point, expainsion, oposit of compression.
-------------------------(----@
I was just thinking of bacon andwanted to drop in and sher the moment.
But do not confuse bacon with the bacon
I speak of.
Bacon is just an example.
I love you ALL so much.
I read and watch and listen
all the time. Like bacon wafting
in the morning air. I love you, All.
just poking around...
A loving and sensual day to ya, ALL.
xo
Bumper, Car, Discourse
I saw an interesting pairing of political statements on the back bumper of a vehicle the other day; on the left side was a sticker that read Socialism Sucks, while on the right was a sticker thick with flags that read Freedom Isn't Free. Besides the bumper that they were affixed to, I was able to unify these stickers under the idea of contemporary conservative politics; even the side-by-side placement of the two stickers seemed to mirror our left versus right division. But more fascinating to me is the thinking that went into the selection of these contradictory sentiments; on one side, there's a clear acknowledgement that our political system comes at a cost, while on the other side, there's a denial of that cost. I really didn't have a point in posting this bit, it was just a strange little thing that I noticed, but now I'm wishing that I had a bumper sticker with me that day to affix in the middle: If you get confused, listen to the music play...
a really great quote...one
that's a really great quote...one that stuck out in my mind when i first read it. >
"We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
Mark Vonnegut, quoted in Kurt Vonnegut's last novel, Timequake.
....it's good to know the sentiment resonated with somebody else
All in the Family
I guess I should have mentioned that Mark Vonnegut is Kurt Vonnegut's son, and that Mark wrote a book titled The Eden Express, back in the 70s. It's the story of how the younger Vonnegut went from being a psychedelicized Swarthmore College graduate, to establishing a commune up in the backwoods of British Columbia, where he came to have a mental breakdown that was diagnosed as schizophrenia at the time. After his recovery, he went on to get an M.D. and now practices family medicine back east. And yeah: he seems to have inherited his dad's gentle wisdom, and then some. So it goes...
A Manifesto for Heathens
This is a nice expression of what it means to be an atheist (heathen)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/25/atheists-please-rea…
Hey- This falls under Everything.
:( Sadness for sad things.
Sometimes being honest is
the greatest expression of
sadness possible.
I weep at the reality of it.
Like a swift river carving
out a new ridge in the banks
edge making the landscape
new and never able to be
what it was. Rivers are like that,
sometimes.
----------TheBuddha-------(----@
The Buddha was born 543 years before Jesus.
--------------Jesus-----(----@
Jesus was born 543 years after the Buddha lived.
We are Meaning Making Machines
Under the Gregorian Calendar, today is the twentieth day of the fourth month of the year, the popular significance of which made me think about Bob Dylan's song Rainy Day Women 12 & 35. I don't know how many times I've read that title before, it must be hundreds, at least, but then this morning, something well beyond my ability to understand made me want to do the math: 12 x 35 = 420.
Yowzers, Mike!
Was that revelation brought on by a case of Blunt Force Trauma? Certainly no need to feel so all alone...