There can be little doubt that the world is in trouble. We face enormous challenges here in the first decade of the 21st century and while many of us have become paralyzed by fears that it's too late to stave off the impending doom of environmental collapse, nuclear armageddon, terrorism, and dystopian police states (to name just a few of the bigger threats facing us), we at tomorrowtoday believe that it is fear itself which presents the most immediate obstacle. We've become accustomed to having our fears exploited rather than assuaged and the truth is that fear can immobilize us, preventing us from using man's greatest asset, imagination, to find a way out.
Our imagination is the quality which separates us from all other life forms on Earth: the ability to step outside of ourselves, beyond the constraints of physical reality--life as we know it--to envision solutions to problems, to see life as it could be. Our imaginative faculty is innate; children engage their imaginations every day when they play because it's how they figure out life and make sense of the world. This phase in our development is incredibly important, not only in shaping the persons we become as adults, but also in determining how we as a species order our world. Perhaps it's this larger role that imagination can play that is the reason why a child's imagination is only nurtured (or, more often, grudgingly indulged or tolerated) for a short time before it's channeled, restrained & constrained--effectively deadened--by the process of socialization. Whether there really is some agency of the status quo that is responsible for the dampening of our innately creative imagination, or this is simply the result of having to address the practical, pragmatic concerns of life is ultimately irrelevant. Tomorrowtoday does not entertain conspiracy theories, politics or any of the other competing systems which together crowd our vision: we will instead focus exclusively on what could be. We've had quite enough of what is.Regardless of its causes, the great obstacle facing us in coming up with viable, practical, even elegant solutions to our many seemingly insurmountable problems is that our imaginative faculty has been dimmed and we'll need to reawaken it somewhat in order to proceed. A recent article in slate.com has come to our attention which examines the conclusions to a number of studies which investigated the role of fantasy in the lives of children (The Real Reason Children Love Fantasy, by Alison Gopnik.)
The new consensus emerging as to why children intuitively, instinctively engage in fantasy, whether in their play, or their reading, etc, has nothing to do with the "accepted wisdom" of the past. It is not, for example, for therapeutuic reasons, to
"'work out their problems' or as 'an escape.' Children's lives can be tough, certainly, but relatively speaking they are considerably less tough, more protected, more interesting, even, than adult lives. Happy, healthy children are, if anything, more likely to be immersed in a world of fantastic daydreams, public or private, than unhappy or troubled children."
Nor is it because,
"...as earlier psychologists, from Freud to Piaget, also suggested that children might be unable to discriminate between reality and fantasy, truth and imagination. It's not so much that children embraced fantasy as that they were unable to recognize reality. But 20 years of empirical research have shown that this also is simply not true. Even the very youngest children already are perfectly able to discriminate between the imaginary and the real, whether in books or movies or in their own pretend play. Children with the most elaborate and beloved imaginary friends will gently remind overenthusiastic adults that these companions are, after all, just pretend."
Gopnik begins the argument for the new interpretation by summarizing the real reason that children engage in fantasy:
"In fact, cognitive science suggests that children may love fantasy not because they can't appreciate the truth or because their lives are difficult, but for precisely the opposite reason. Children may have such an affinity for the imaginary just because they are so single-mindedly devoted to finding the truth, and because their lives are protected in order to allow them to do so."
In other words, when they engage in fantasy, children are actually intuitive little scientists:
"Two decades of research have shown that children construct and revise an everyday physics and biology and, above all, an everyday psychology. These everyday theories are much like the formal, explicit theories of science. Theorizing lets children understand the world and other people more accurately...At first, you might think that the idea that children are intuitive scientists would be completely at odds with the childhood passion for fantasy. But in fact, theorizing and fantasizing have a lot in common. A theory, in science or in everyday life, doesn't just describe one particular way the world happens to be at the moment. Instead, having a theory tells you about the ways the world could have been in the past or might be in the future. What's more, a theory can tell you that some of those ways the world can be are more likely than others. A theory lays out a map of possible worlds and tells you how probable each possibility is. And a theory provides a kind of logic for getting to conclusions from premises—if the theory is correct, and if you accept certain premises, then certain conclusions and not others will follow.
This is why theories are so profoundly powerful and adaptive. A theory not only explains the world we see, it lets us imagine other worlds, and, even more significantly, lets us act to create those worlds. Developing everyday theories, like scientific theories, has allowed human beings to change the world. From the perspective of my hunter-gatherer forebears in the Pleistocene Era, everything in the room I write in—the ceramic cup and the carpentered chair no less than the electric light and the computer—was as imaginary, as unreal, as fantastic as Narnia or Hogwarts. The uniquely human evolutionary gift is to combine imagination and logic to articulate possible worlds and then make them real."
This, then, is the mission of tomorrowtoday, to recapture this ability, "the uniquely human evolutionary gift (which) is to combine imagination and logic to articulate possible worlds and then make them real." The most amazing thing about this effort is that it's far easier than we had thought. The next most amazing aspect of this project is that success leads to further success; one area just naturally takes us to another. We've decided to divide the project into the following "categories," in order to allow visitors to navigate among areas of interest more easily, but it soon becomes apparent that the divisions are somewhat arbitrary. Society & art, for example, have a great deal to do with habitat & environment, and so on, but as a framework for this effort we feel this is a useful system.
Please join us in this effort. Comments and suggestions will be taken into serious consideration as this project matures. This is an exciting and necessary step in mankind's journey; it is our firm belief that envisioning solutions is the greatest part of the work. Once we've formulated our vision together, our intuition is that, as a sympathetic voice recently put it:
"...it makes me think that if we could just imagine that better world -- not a perfect world, but one that was freer and more honorable and more creative than our own -- it would release a great, pent-up wave of longing and desire. That people would recognize it the moment they heard tell of it and would want nothing more than to bring it into existence."
Let it be so...(thanks, S.!)
just wanted to say what i thought about the question you asked on RI:
do you really believe that the prevailing conditions of your experience reflect the sum of our potential? That it's human nature to act in brutal, asocial self-absorbtion?
i would say no, from what i've learned i don't even know if you could say humanity has a nature except what ignorance provides for us. if all humanity knew everything there would be no problem, and vice versa. its a long process and for a while the smarter more amoral and cunning will exploit that ignorance to their benefit.
oh yea and all fear is..is ignorance exploited.
dugoboy,
Sorry about the delay in responding--I've been running in circles today and have only now finally sat down again. I got your email (through some weird channels that I don't quite understand the parameters of yet--I'm still working on the email function at this site--) and it looks as if we are pretty much interested in the same idea. I need lots of technical blogger-type help, although I have a nephew who's far more knowledgeable than I on the case already, and I'm also open to discussing where we want to go with this thing. Until I fix the email function, this comment forum will work for any and all discussions (we can always clean up what we don't want cluttering up the landscape later). So, I'm going to make a list of the things I know I need right now (bits of html, some image/permission stuff, etc.) and then I'll post it here and see what we can do...
Wow!!! what you are saying is that we create our reality by our thoughts, right? This is incrediable stuff it makes alot of sense. I always felt there had to be something more to life than what it is and I'm thinking this could be what it is!
dugoboy,
I agree that the human psyche is so incredibly malleable that it's sort of missing the point to talk about what our "nature" is or isn't. This essential malleability is both curse a blessing, since it allows us, on the one hand, to be manipulated and Milgrammed, but on the other, it is the very key to our future. The creative potential of the human imagination does not have any limits. We can imagine our way out of anything, once we've recognized the chains that bind us, the tricks that blind us.
Dan,
I'm very happy that you've found your way here. We're just getting started now, but great things are afoot, that I promise you.
All the thoughts, suggestions and, maybe ultimately most importantly, the dialogue you engage in is most humbly appreciated by me and my eclectic, far-flung staff.
Smooth sailings & happy trails.
oh i am so glad you responded IC. i thought you didn't because i never recieved an email from you, but i had also not looked back at the site until today. i'm glad you responded, we will be able to do much.
i saw the movie v for vendetta last night. have you seen it? it led to an explosion of realization. and then i read jeff's article and it led to an explosion of thought. here are the results. i posted it as a comment on his blog but i will put it here as well:
fear is the only way they can control us. as time goes on we will catch on easier and faster. it is through the development, expansion and better integration of the internet that we are more able to see whats really going on. it crashs back and forth, between our minds and the computer screen..it will only become more apparent. when we become genuinely fearless they will nothing left to take from us. there will be a time where they will realize the solution would be to shut the power grid down. but by then it will be too late because true courage would make them realize they have already lost. they lost the very instant they believed they could control people forever. in a very real way i think one could even say that the internet has made or is the holographic universe in the manifest?
the truth is very simple: WE ALLOW THEM TO CONTROL US. IT IS OUR DECISION WHEN IT NO LONGER WORKS!
i actually think we are the authors of our own existence...they just want us to forget that. that is all they can do: make us scared or make us forget we run our lives. when we are fearless (the only thing we have to fear is fear itself) and never forget (like elephants) they are SOOL.
something like that..its an idea in constant flux.
Glad to see that you're up and running. I very much agree that the focus needs to shift towards viable solutions, as opposed to the endless rehashing of all the things that are so obviously not working. Wish I had more time to comment, but I've got to run for now.
Dugoboy said 'what happened to talking in the park'.
It's a good point, but why don't we make it easier to identify ourselves and others with similar views 'in the park'.
Something simple - an item of clothing, an accessory, a type of ribbon.. anything that could be seen and would clearly indicate a shared will to imagine something better.
..
I've just stopped to think about this ..
In V for Vendetta it was the Guy Fawkes mask.
Inappropriate perhaps, but does anybody see what I'm imagining here?
IC-
Cool that you've got a blog going. Look forward to reading. I read a couple of comments by a common RI character and when I scrolled to see your name as one of the next comments I thought to myself;"Why don't you have a blog? I would read that!". A synch in the matrix -- I've only been here a few minutes, I'm going to look around. Thanks -Ned
Sending a shout of support for your new blog. Very exciting ideas. I'd like to live in one of those tyre and rammed earth homes. Wondering... What if the "negative" will always be with us? What if the loosening of our imaginations' bonds will be accompanied by an increase in the "bad stuff?" Balance and yin/yang and so forth. The better things get, the worse they get, forever, and it's only in an embrace and enjoyment of this flat-out cognitive dissonance that we will ever find our true rest and relaxation. Our bones will be broken, but won't it feel wonderful? This probably comes off as hopelessly masochistic. I just don't think that we can outrun or outcreate our shadow, or the hologram's shadow, whatever's casting the shadow. We have to sit at the same table every night. It's here, it's fear, get used to it. Perhaps it's only a predatory holographic universe, and... b-dee-a b-dee-a b-dee... that's all folks. I'm rambling. Sorry. Sorry for the lame Porky Pig impression. All of the above isn't meant to suggest that we shouldn't try to beautify Earth and ourselves. Let's get busy. IC, best of luck with the blog. I'll be checking in daily.
yea i think we've got something going here. maybe you can get a forum going so we all could discuss this stuff better?
i like what you said on RI:
"I...became convinced that while it's true that it's necessary to know how we got into this mess, focusing solely on the problems, in all their conspiratorial nastinesses, was like looking into the evil eye for too long--it drains you of hope and energy."
thats exactly what i was feeling recently and then you come along with this idea, and boy have i needed someone to do this, iv'e always wanted to be a part of something this. it also seems you really mean it and you mean to search for some real solutions. no pointless protests and false ideas.
there are a lot of forces that have their designs on us. there is still time left..
hey rudy van hooten, i would suggest beauty is in the interpretation. it's not as bad as it has to be. it all has to do with memes we in human society have carried with us for thousand's of years.
IC you might want to read this thread:
http://p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm10.showMessage?topicID=6272.topic
read to the end, you'll see.
here's the link:
wayne madesen: Bush's gay Air force past suppressed
Synchronicity brought me to this blog, so I was pleasantly surprized to see that someone else thinks similar to myself. I have always 'fought' to retain my 'magical' thinking ability that i was born with as a child. I am one of the lucky ones I believe in that I have fashioned my own worldview which presents reality to me in a way that gives me feedback by showing that I create the Universe I live within. This ability is inate I believe and teachable to others of like mind. The ability to set oneself free by unleashing the untapped potential of MIND is amazing, and I continually amaze myself in what I am able to create within my life with this sort of thinking/creating reality as I see fit. Fear is the block that binds us to primative mindsets of 'fight or flight' and Imagination is the key to unlocking the potential of humanity to reach the stars and survive here on Earth. I wish you luck with this blog and I have enjoyed what I have found so far,,
I have often wondered why so many people focus on Dystopias and have forgotten that the dreams of Utopias form the bedrock of humanities struggle for self awareness and completeness. We can create a Utopia if we so choose,, we have already created the Dystopia, and when enough of us tire of this 'play' another will supplant it soon enough for future residents to live fulfilling lives of rich creative natures. Hopefully we can see the first rise of this very soon in the 21st century. Such as Auroville in India set in motion by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. There is so much potential and possibility to explore,, fear is the roadblock to this future and we must start to dismantle the power of this illusion as quickly as possible. Our Evolution as a species demands it of us.
Thanks for coming by, folks; sorry I haven't been posting these past few days (template headaches, but it's more or less resolved now.) Nice comment, Scott--the dystopian focus is a trap alright, difficult as oit sometimes is to tear your eyes away from an oncoming disaster.
Dugoboy, did you mean that bit about empathy at the end there? If so, you're right, but that's the really difficult part, isn't it? I mean, it's not at all hard to focus on the positive, etc, once you get used to it, but to embrace the bastards who make the world this way with love & kindness is a cheek-turning that Christ and the Buddha together might find hard...Still, if that's what it takes, right?
I'll be back with loads more new stuff, so please stop in again, dreamers...cheers!
Is it just me, or are we witnessing the birth of a "virtual" Be-In?
Channeling Lennon. Excellent. Count me in. Shall we all mentally invite Yoko and see if she surfaces? Put the collective mind up against a few blind and not-so-blind tests? Or am I being too empirical here, too results-oriented? (it's a habit)
Perhaps a simple game of Guerilla Metaphysics instead?
I've always thought the incremental perspective of our perception of time as opposed to strict linear -- integrated with something akin to the M-band noise narrative -- felt about right.
The wherefore and why is pretty straightforward. A purely linear model doesn't allow for the levels of complexity perceptible around us in the physical plane/world/picture show. Life as a trajectory, rocketing forward through time, is just too damned Werner von Braun.
An incremental model feels less like a parabolic burn and more like a tip-toe through the tulips, with perhaps the occasional mad sprint in rubber boots and some seasonal standing about, weeding and digging in the rain.
So, if the physical form we photon-activated acid coils with a libido collectively inhabit and drive is meant to answer some greater purpose, then perhaps these sensory inputs in the here and now (and any we connect to fore and aft through breathing or alkaloids) are meant to comprise a significant part of the lesson. Hmmm.
I departed the states to renovate my wife's old family farm in rural Germany and reconnect with the earth in a fundamental way, largely by way of healing the vessel we speak of so casually here in lofty metaphysical circles.
Much self-study. Learning to feed ourselves in pre-industrial ways and getting to know other local small producers. Almost four years in and the results have been as expected. Sans industrial medicine and food stuffs, we're each better off than we've ever been physically. I'm stronger and in better shape at forty than fifteen, and I had an athletic streak.
This was an individual act of will, times two, and I expect none of you were privy prior to now. Thus, we are all authors. All the time. It is the polarity of those decisions that decides your own position relative to the collective energy blazing away in the dark spaces between everything. Good vibrations. Bad vibrations. Your call.
Or was our presence here pre-ordained? I'm just positioning myself via some sub-conscious pineal connection to maintain contact with my own tally stick of cosmic increments?
I sincerely hope not.
As far as moving away from dystopian porn by consciously initiating a collective thought process, I say what have we got to lose?
I'm already certain I'll be eating well in the lower-energy decades, as I've already engaged the issues head-on in my day-to-day existence. We're preparing to house and feed others, as we are blessed with such a location through our own initiative. This path is being pursued for our own welfare, first and foremost (think airplane oxygen mask), but we also expect we'll be in a position to be passing on all that we're re-learning now in the years ahead. We're adapting, that's all.
Howard Zinn's words, penned in 1993, could have been written today.
"And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
miraculix,
Thanks. I have two main purposes with this project. On the flashier, more quixotic level, yes, I am pushing for this conscious consciousness test--kind of like the old acid tests, but this time as a scientific experiment to see what happens when we focus our collective consciousness together--but on the more "pedestrian" level, I wanted to simply spread the awareness that we can live differently, with or without the agency of a malleable universe. Your story of life on the farm is testimony to this other way. Are you familiar with the ecovillage network? I'll post links if not...
hey IC, how are things going? can you tell me something to look forward to? things kinda got a little bleak on the national sceme of things recently. i think all these shootings are pretext to indocrinate police action. i also believe the republicans are getting thier wings clipped to allow the democrats to take the house courtesy of Rep. Foley. i have a feeling theyll let the dems take it for 2 years and during these 2 yrs a new terrorist attack will hit the US. theyll blame it on the dem controlled house....
i can't help but see the darkness coming...i'm trying to look at things in the more long term but that offers no comfort for the coming years. so again i ask, is there any hope?
I'm aware of the eco-village movement IC, having read materials from obvious sites like Lebensgarten, the Findholm folks and others. So, I'm rich with links and text, but thanks a million for the mentioning.
Our rural re-connection experience was ultimately kick-started -- and is still being fashioned by -- numerous interwoven threads. I was raising the subject as early as '97. We began discussing possibilities in '99. At the same time, I should also mention, I was also leading my natural-dissident-Zappa-fan-and-yogi of a wife off into the realm of Zinn and Vonnegut, R.A. Wilson and tantra. A sixty-foot shipping container departed Long Beach, bound for Rotterdam, in 2002.
Declining physical health, despite full-frontal efforts, was the proverbial back-breaker. It was the topic that showed her to the banks of the Rubicon. As I mentioned in the first post, our motivations here are selfish to the core. We may be learning how to live "off the grid", more "sustainably" if you like, and sure there's a sense of good works in decreasing one's footprint and all that. However, in all honesty, we both didn't want to lead the life of literal pain and suffering most modern ciivilized lifestyles appeared to offer.
The real kick in the ass has been how simple the answers to so many supposedly complicated health problems ultimately are.
My primary interest in the eco-village movement is limited to gathering foreknowledge. That is, gaining a clearer mental image of what sort of future I'm planning and building for in the here and now.
As migration from the industrial and urban centers ringing our rural region gains traction in the years ahead, I suspect labor issues on a holding of our particular scale will sort themselves out pretty seamlessly. For now, we re-learn the skills and seasonal rhythms of the landed rural holder, slowly erecting a place to serve us well in a low-energy future atop the substantial bones of a centuries-old family farm.
Interestingly, the sense of historical connection via the physical responsibilities of and to the place, proffers a great deal of hope for our future. The underlying sense of stewardship, of taking up a torch carried by generation after generation of my wife's ancestors in this very place, doesn't bear any burdens, latent or otherwise. By contrast, those who persisted here survived five centuries of near-constant conflict or outright war between 1542 and 1945.
Such knowledge has an effect on the perspective of your average American psyche, no matter how far afield he's been reading over the years.
I expect the serious and dedicated eco-villagers of the world discover similar sensations in the work, in the learning, in the communal aspects of their arrangements. Without ever proclaiming ourselves as such, we will probably quite organically "become" an eco-village as the days and months pass into years. Hell, we probably already qualify in some ways.
The eco-village concept has always had the flavor of a secular-monastic renaissance on my tongue. They put words and principles into action, not to mention hands and minds.
I (finally) stopped trying to change minds in 2002. I came to the conclusion that changing the world is easier. Today, I know the truth of it. I'm doing it every single day.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words can we trade for a conscious action?
dugoboy,
Yes, I'm working on it--pathetic as that sounds. In a way I regret having launched the project before I had all my materials together, since I fear some momentum may have been lost in the past week, but it's such a huge project that I had to get it out there sooner or later anyway, so...
I'm currently working with an engineer on some ideas, and I have a bit of economics to wade through--on top of the unfinished habitat & environment intro--but I'm making progress. Please hang in there, as your support is much appreciated.
miraculix,
That is an awesome story. I always wondered while I was wandering around the Eiffel (and, more often, parts southerly therefrom) if I was the only idiot singing Trouble Everyday under my breath and looking for fnords while hanging out at the local Umsonst und Draussen festivals, thinking, "Now this looks like a place where people can (and do!) live differently..." Obviously, nothing and no one is ever truly alone or unique, which in this case is quite heartening. Thanks for the great background story. I'm sure there's a lot more to talk about as well.
Tschüß, for now...
Dan...
I've been dealing with the "psychic" repercussions -- or at least my conclusion after much rumination -- of a sane answer to your perceptive question:
Am I unwittingly contributing to the building of a dystopian future by focusing on the problems rather than a solution?
Such a question can only launch the awakened human conscience on a full parabolic burn into the gray.
In the end, my conclusion was yes. Yes, since we are all the authors of our own destiny via the never-ending act of decision at the core of every aspect of our conscious state.
Awakened, we move ever forward, chasing our metaphysical tail, if folks like Fuller and Fort were lucid. I think they were. Unhinged from the mortal helix and frequency-adjusted into dream-state, we are free to slide back and forth, up and down, uncompressed coils reflecting on our own presence in the "dark matter" that lies between.
Shamanistic experience, accessed via ancient alkaloid alchemy from our distant tribal past or corpus control relying on applications of yogic/vedic techniques as pranayama, is a waking bridge. Nirvana isn't heaven. I isn't a crystal wellspring of metaphysical harmony. It's just home. It's the energy source from whence we all surge and ebb from birth to death and back again.
Considering that we possess self-consciousness, the implication arises that said energy source is as well. And there it stands, in all its over-mythologized glory, the capital-G god. The self-aware central hub of all existence. (I suspect most plants and animals are self-aware at some biological level or another as well, as they are quite alive and only hubris can deny it outright -- until we learn to speak their languages.)
Only we humans, many still trapped and deathly afraid behind the veil of flesh, have a few physical design issues that allow us to be compromised. "Hot button" issues. Quick-response nerve pathways hard-wired for survival and long since reflected in each and every one of the socio-cultural patterns of our species. They speak to safety and comfort. Appreciation, acceptance and satisfaction. You know the ones.
Each and every one reflects a uni-directional perspective -- toward the center. It is the collective nature of our existence showing itself to us, beyond any one individual's control, looming large across the vast plain of our physical existence. And so we turn in awe and reverence toward the source, all facing into our perceived psychic center, into the void. Perhaps first it was the sun, the Sun! Today, it is just one of many memetic reflections of same -- The son, the Son!
But stop for a moment and consider the actual position and arrangement of this power source relative to physical matter. Dark matter? Between. Unbridled, seething energy around which our refractive soul casts the solid shadow of our corporeal existence.
Tesla was tapping into it. Reich toyed with it. We emanate from it. This "dark matter", that great in-between referred to so often by many of the best multi-disciplinary authors of speculative fiction like LeGuin, Herbert, McCaffrey, Silverberg, et al. If their work holds any water, and I'm of the mind that it does, why are we facing the center with any sort of reverence when the power is actually flowing through us all, all at once?
In facing the center we are not gazing upon the source of our power, we are simply sensing the actuality (emanence, if you wish) of the common source personified. This "inversion effect" is best gripped via the "Ghost Not" concept at the heart of the Reciprocality experiment.
What is a dystopia? The opposite of utopia? Not exactly. It all depends upon your perspective. Are not the "utopians" currently creating a modern dystopia in our world today dealing the safety, security and comfort cards masterfully from the bottom of the deck?
If you face the center, seeking security in the noisy hum of the great collective, you may find waking solace of a fleeting kind. But when you are alone again inside your head late at night, restless between the sheets, who do you find there?
Why, Darth Vader, of course. You. Inner space. Dreamland and the great between. We are indoctrinated from the center to perceive the biological awareness we possess to sense the collective power flowing through us as the Big Guy, capital-G god.
But the energy actually flows from the great beyond. The between. Which is anything but centralized. It is perhaps the ultimate distributed network. Eureka. The soul isn't you. It is the distributed (invidual) energy source flowing from collective between. Mystical sub-atomic interaction between here & there as a physical "battery", while "you" are reflected outward from your DNA, itself an amazing biological energy capture system driven by photons and individual intent. Free will. (I'm mostly jivin' along with Campbell and Schopenhauer here.)
When you stop facing the center and turn to the inner space, you find that you too are ripe with the ability to change the world. With constraints, surely, but those morph and change and expand as you learn how to manifest your creative aspect, your "inner god".
The powerful titans astride today's world are mostly very small souls wiggling the levers of Darth's exoskeleton, exhaling pure evil in the name of greed from his blackened carapace, steering the great ships of capital for their vampire overlords, who prefer to stay below decks until the cover of night avails.
To the degenerate masters, the Baron Harkonnen's, we are all Paul Atreides or his little spice-eyed sister once we turn inward and come to grips with the real source of our power.
But aren't we oh-so-nihilistically alone there?
Hardly. The collective sense we have of our origins is misrepresented by those with agendas as the source, a relatively easy job once you've got a clear handle on the hot-button issues. Look at the monkey!
The soul turned inward -- which is actually outward -- are facing the actual physical power coupling with the source radiating away within. It is also not maintaining the proper level of attentiveness to the center, whose illusions quickly fall away. There is no going back. Down the rabbit hole with you. Here's your red pill. Ride that golden dragon. Between the infinite literary and cultural metaphors there exists an inner space from which radiates the true source of our collective power. However, forming the dichotomy at the apex of our discussion, it manifests as individual life.
This dichotomy and the attendant scalar issues are overwhelming for the center-facing soul, weakened psychically by the stream of inverted power flowing over him and stunting his being. Beyond the cacophony, actors infinitely more subtle weaken the body and soul: industrialization of the food supply, large-scale airborne spraying operations the world over, nuclear and chemical evil strapping our souls to withered bodies now barely strong enough to even harbor their resident soul.
The inward-facing soul, strength and will gathered, acts individually and without the consent of, or constraint from, the center. But as a manifest entity of the true power source in between they are now capable of independent action. On the road toward a true sense of a collective good that somehow just FEELS right. Serving oneself and yet still able to serve the common good. This is Campbell's hero of a thousand faces. It's us. All of us. Every damned one.
Here's where the rubber meets the road:
Independent action multiplied by millions of individuals operating from the inward source. The Buddhic source. The one Jesus was on about in various cribbed Eastern forms before the centralizers got their hands on the mythology. Etc, ad infinitum, and so on.
These days, I've become awfully pragmatic. For the sake of making wise decisions, I must remain aware of the dystopian course. At once, if I wish to truly wage a battle with those who are working tirelessly to bring it about, I have to face away from the pulsing evil enveloping the center and focus my energies on ways I can enable my individual power to counteract their influence first and foremost in my own life.
From there, as one develops an adeptness at not letting the center draw your eye for too long (step one: turn off the television), it gets ever-easier to lean a shoulder into a course counter to the inverted aims of the center.
That's my personal version of "How To Set About Changing the World".
The methods will differ widely from person-to-person-to-person, and culture-to-culture, and so on. But the basic action at the core of every journey of self-discovery completed delivers the human soul to the same destination.
I'm getting dirty on an old farm. Re-learning traditional skills. Healthier than I've probably ever been in my forty chronological years (traditional nutrition is the answer to most illness, including most cancers, and not very complicated).
This is my course, my way as an earth-oriented soul, to save some nearly lost knowledge and skill sets for future generataions. It's alsoo my way to find a psychic balance point in a highly polarized world so I can remain undistracted by the seductive songs of the "sun-worshippers"...
# # #
Brilliant! Hope grows where fear doth think itself king! When miraculix talks about facing out by facing in, it's not just a trippy song by Hawkwind about cosmic inner/outer exploration, it's a doorway, a map with which you can navigate the journey. It certainly seems that the overlords have the upper hand at this late date--a further recitation of the evils imperiling us is unnecessary, probably even counter-productive at this point. And yet, even when we can see doom approaching with our naked, fearful eye, hope still springs eternal, for which you need no special lexicon, Dan. It's enough to know that there is a kern, a central, essential golden heart in each of us that is far more powerful than we've been led to believe.
The dark furnace needs to be constantly fed because it consumes far more than it "produces." Fear is merely debilitating, while love is empowering. Even though miraculix sounds like he still keeps a wary eye on the nightmare world, his focus is the sustaining world of earth and wood and stone that gives him far more energy and life in return for his investment than he probably realizes.
Thought experiment. Contrast the following situations:
a.) You're sitting in your armchair, clutching at your heart in hopelessness and rage as the Leader announces fresh cruelties. Your life force shrinks at the paralyzing thought of "what's next?"
b.) You're helping a friend fix something broken. Mending fences, literally or figuratively. Or, even better, you're helping an old lady carry her groceries and you give her some precious moments of your time and attention when she starts to talk about the past (old people tend to live far more in their memories than in the present tense, and when you give them your attention, it lights up the dark rooms in those halls of mirrors, giving them new life.) Damned if you don't feel better, about yourself and the world. Hope really does spring eternal if given half a chance.
Now, extrapolate your position on these two paths: where will you be in five years if you stay on one or the other of them? It's an easy, obvious choice, and yet circumstances always seem to conspire to keep you in the regulation straight-jacket. The answer? Circumnavigate your circumstances. You have a wonderful opportunity, Dan, with this land in your stewardship, even though it might seem more of a problem than anything else at the moment. In the continuum of the eco-village model, you could put yourself anywhere between resting and repairing yourself in a cacoon of self-sufficiency on one end and becoming active in the alternative farming network on the other. In Wisconsin, the organic milk producers have organized to fight off the encroachments of agribusiness with remarkable success. There are also many smaller groups carving out niches for themselves, making a living, healing the over-burdened soil and themselves. I'll try to dig up some of these links for you, but start with the two little movies at the bottom of the habitat & environment page here. In the one, Earthship, you'll see how people live completely off the grid, while in the other they're building a lasting community.
(My apologies, folks, for the continuing state of construction on these pages--I'm working in difficult conditions and teaching myself html at the same time, so bear with me. Keep that energy pulsing. Hey, Oak: what do you do with them once you've spotted one? Or is it more a question of what it does to you?)
Yes you are. I think we all are, knowingly or otherwise; it's just that most people would prefer not to be. Ever try googling "fnord"? What it does to the google template scares most folks right off the search...
Dan...
I hope IC's follow-on thoughts were helpful, and your comment/request regarding the use of referential hyperlinks embedded in the text is fully understood. I also find them useful and without question they accelerate an individual's ability to research key points in a web-based format.
At once, while they are a practical convention, they are also in some ways a distraction from the linear nature of a written text. I played with my first computer at a tender age, a curious engineer manning the helm in my family, and yet my official learning phase -- and most of what's followed until recent years -- was conducted in the same "old school" fashion:
1) Read physical text. (keep key reference materials handy)
2) Note unfamiliar terms and ideas; look-up as necessary.
3) When local reference sources will not suffice, read on, if possible. If not, frame and note the questions and on the next library visit do the homework.
Yes, I agree it's MUCH slower and less convenient than web-based hyperlinks, but that was simply the way the world was wired back in the mid-1970's & 80's).
Today, by design, those old study habits are directly reflected in the method of cross-referencing via hyperlinks, with the addition of the "instant gratification" factor now possible with the savvy application of HTML. Admittedly, links are often quite helpful functionally and the time-saving aspect has served me as well as anyone.
At the same time, the "hyper-" in hyperlink seems to add a degree of hurry and rush to the whole process of study. The pace of the technology itself adversely affects many otherwise sane friends. E-mail creates "compulsive responders" who are offended when you don't reply quickly enough to their communications. Speed is not conducive to digestion or rumination. There are times when ideas in full flower only clarify themselves in moments between the reading and research, while walking or riding your bicycle to the library, for example.
Many a glorious treatise on the simple joys of walking, as a means of both travel and meditation, were added to the lexicon in the centuries preceding our own, and they resonate within my soul -- and millions of others -- even today.
So, while I agree that my sunday morning musings would be much more practical fully-loaded with proper hyperlinks addressing fellows like Fuller (Buckminster) & Fort (of Fortean fame), or semi-esoteric terms such as 'pranayama', I also realize the multitudes preceding us didn't have hyperlinks either. Yet they learned in their own linear way. In the same way, I wandered off the reservation, tentatively picking my way through the dark forests of mis- and disinformation over the years, to reach my current position/frame of reference. Take your time, pour yourself an appropriate studying beverage, and tuck into the manifold mysteries awaiting us all when we finally open up to them. Don't worry, we'll wait.
Writing for me is an unhurried act, minus the negative pressures of chores and responsibilities, even when the respite is only temporary:
I was sitting upstairs at the laptop sipping a first cup of sunday coffee when inspiration tip-toed into the room. Two cups later, once the muse had had its way with me, I took a (too) quick gander for typos and posted my circuitous-but-connective ramble through a personal cosmos.
Adding links requires an additional layer of work at that point, and I was ready to get up and go outside, as the sun was shining and the birds were singing merrily and it was not a time to be sitting indoors gazing at a laptop and adding nuggets of code to my pseudo-literary riffing.
What it boils down to is this:
Though I fully understand the value added by the use of snazzy links, my essay style is highly linear in the creation. Yes, it is also slower to acquire and does require more patience and consideration on the reader's part, which I don't necessarily think is always a bad thing.
For the sake of reaching the widest possible circle of readers, I will try to invest my future works here with more direct links to reference items, but I must also wonder aloud how difficult it is to click 'new page' and head for your favorite search engine with whatever the author has posited that leaves you scratching your chin. That's what I do. Just like the old days. All that's changed is the trip to the library.
Hyperlinks also have limitations, as what resides on the other end may quickly deliver the tangential definition or perspective, but in no way guarantees the reader's ability to understand it in the desired context. That responsibility lives with the author and the writing -- and the burden of desire and the ultimate responsibility in learning lies with and within each student.
Learning any language requires a certain amount of individual legwork. In fact, I'm of the strong opinion that by leaving certain acts of discovery in the hands of the learner, you increase and enhance intrinsic qualities of the learning experience. The serious pursue what they are compelled to understand.
"Epiphany by hyperlink" just doesn't carry much swing weight for me, having had no choice but to learn the "old way", which is also how I learned my way around computers in the pre-hyper days. For me, they are a convenience with limitations, as I prefer to vet information sources before giving them much tonnage.
Your concern for not having leaned on the proper materials in your more formal education is misplaced. What we speak of here also resides there, hidden among the unexplained variables and theoretical inconsistencies scattered throughout the holy realm of modern science. Fuller is as good a place to start as any. Sacred geometry applied to practical engineering. Gotta love it. Your own personal rabbit warren can only expand outward from there.
Here's hoping this wee essay on "how precocious forty-year-old farts study" reaches you in the right way, as it is meant to be demonstrative rather than instructive. I'm sure the site's function will grow as time permits, including the availability of quick-reference links. I'll add such weight to my postings as I can, but footnoting was always a distration to me while pouring it all out onto the page.
# # #
Welcome back, Robert, and thanks for the lovely story. I still haven't done anything with your fascinating accounts of your dad's life, mostly because I was hoping you would put them together for me one day. I have a few as yet open sections of this slowly growing project, and there might well be room for such accounts. I remember a beautiful essay you wrote once at ICH on his dousing proclivities, for example. I've been giving a deal of thought to the science & religion page recently, thinking how in the world I could refine my focus, but this "ghost story" of yours reminds me of the controversy surrounding Rupert Sheldrake and might fit in there somewhere.
Sheldrake is not the fraud that the scientific orthodoxy claims; his perspective is simply too alien for the diehard materialists to assimilate. The funny thing about the materialists is that they still cling to their cracked framework, knowing full well that materialism is limited, while human consciousness is not. Even Susan Blackmore, rational Darwinist and author of the groundbreaking The Meme Machine, gropes intuitively at the ineffable; certainly an irrational response which must irritate her good friend Richard Dawkins ( The Selfish Gene, the God Delusion). Dawkins is himself betrayed by his own eloquence and seems to (reluctantly) concede that we are more than the sum of our parts, or, in his idiom, the soulless randomness of natural selection. Of course we're reading purpose and meaning into existence, but this does not mean that they're less true for it.
Come back again, Robert, and be so good as to bring us some more treats.
Dan,
Keep the faith. I, too, know something about diminished circumstances and physical limitations, and please believe me when I say that your mind is the only real strength you have in the end anyway. That and that ineffable, ghostly...oh, yeah, soul-thing. Hope to have more for you soon...
A few ideas for tomorrow today. First off, beautiful name, nice image and source for focus.
I think you should do what you already do well, that is, provide links and commentary on how that link may tie into a larger story or outlook. Ask questions and see if the larger community might be stimulated to examine some particular question more closely.
Take Tim Bolan and his battle with quackbusters for instance. He figures that only 9% of health dollars go to the patient. Don’t know about the numbers but, considering that a large percentage of his subscriber base is health professionals, it is safe to assume that many people (in the know) know that the system is truly dysfunctional. He is a person, who like you, intends to see tomorrow today. And a Republican to boot. He is also involved with interesting legal goings on that illustrates how rationality can stand up to intimidation and coercion.
http://www.bolenreport.net/index.htm
I am enjoying this blog because your attitude is so positive and forward-looking. At first I thought you were going off in to a pedagogical rant (I like those too.) and I was put in mind of Joseph Chilton Pearce and his theories about fetal brain development.
Without getting in to that, I will leave you a more general quote from him that I think is pertinent.
"For this reason, I am the arch-optimist of all. I think these discoveries, the implications, are terribly exciting. Of course, our whole cosmology will shift dramatically when we realize what I call the "holographic heart." But, you see, at the very time we're moving into a period of total chaos and collapse, this other incredible thing is simply gathering. I think of Ilya Prigogine's comments that so long as a system is stable, or at an equilibrium, you can't change it, but as it moves toward disequilibrium and falls into chaos then the slightest bit of coherent energy can bring it into a new structure. What you find in Waldorf families, and people who read Wild Duck Review, and others, may seem small, but they will be the islands of coherent energy which then bring about the organized, entrained energy for a new situation. I think it will happen very rapidly."
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/JCP98.html
Sounder,
Thanks--you're right, that's exactly where I should be going. I just have to manage my time better, which, as you know, isn't a simple matter at all. Maybe staying away a little more from RI's enticing conversations would help in this, but it grabs me everytime. Still, I'll try to follow your advice (I'm also trying to link some scientist-types and some writers into this new web, which is also part of the same sort of effort...)
Danover,
Thanks to you, too. (But what are you doing scaring me like that by looking so much like me in your MySpace photo?! I had to jump back from the screen shrieking, "Ye gads!" or somesuch.) I will follow that ratical lead--I think I've been there before--and, lastly, I dug the swamp vision thing. Yours?
No, not mine. I can't believe I left the name off. Now I have to hunt it up again and correct the oversight. I found it here:
http://www.earthrites.org
The society and art section only allows member comments so I post here. arborsculpture:
http://www.arborsmith.com/world_tour.html
Finally made it over here from the strange waters of RI.
On the topic of children's imagination here is perhaps a slightly different offering than what IC's original post had in mind: the movie Tideland by Terry Gilliam. It is based on the book of the same name by Mitch Cullin.
Here is Mr. Gilliam himself introducing the film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRcvDaw0WB4&mode=related&search=
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