4th Brain Relating – Things to consider before we meld with the machine…
Community, and the machines we continue to develop to connect with it, allow us to willfully extend our individuality into a networking node, expanding our access to information, knowledge and services, and allowing our own value to be utilized for common benefit and evolution.
As such, it can be seen as our fourth brain, beyond brain stem, limbic system or neo-cortical functioning (physical/emotional/mental -> relational body/brain/intelligence).
We will eventually weave the web between human and machine even further and give rise to a new breed of humans – one, that will require fourth brain relational intelligence to maintain our individuality and to not get lost and fall into the Narcissus’ pond of our own creation.
Therefore it is of great interest to investigate new patterns of human relating that embrace and celebrate both the individual and the entirety of consciousness-capable beings before singularity occurs and machines begin to operate on current human behavior patterns.
Am working on preparing a talk on this topic. Been thinking a lot about community lately, and how the technology we have created for ourselves allows an unprecedented melding of minds, but how we should ensure that we have proper ways of relating in place before Singularity occurs. We have to step up so that the evolution of the machine is paralleled by the evolution of our consciousness.
Universe and You – The Joy of Relating
Below the slides and audio recording from a talk I gave the other day for Tiger Woman Club at c3: Center for Conscious Creativity.
Been thinking lots about relating lately. There seems to be a lot of confusion around distinctions of the universal principles of duality and gender, of the emotional “Like – Not Like”, dialectics, of the ever new experience of “I and Other”. Been looking at a quadropolar model as a means to transmute dualism creatively. Some of that in the video below. Enjoy!
Bobblehead
Was in Chicago for a whirlwind visit last weekend. Got to have the tremendous pleasure of officiating my friends’ wedding. Was the largest one I had done so far. Great fun all around, lovely people, and from the reviews I got, they enjoyed the ceremony (checked with grandmas, too)… One of the sweetest things was that the bride and groom gave away personalized bobbleheads to the wedding party. So, I got my first philip action figure…
In general, the Chicago visit was a tremendous experience. Got to see at least some of my wonderful friends there and revisit my life and the last six years since I had last been there. Recorded a monkday on the topic.
On religion…
Someone asked me about my religion the other day. Heard once that this is one of the topics you should always avoid when talking to people you don’t know – worse, I guess, to take a stance in public and put it on your blog… hmmm….
I am a big fan of religion. In Latin, religio means anything from “Religion” (in the sense it’s typically used), to superstition, all the way to – neutrally – belief system (BS). It is related to re-ligare and re-ligens.
Now what are those words about?
Launching consciouscreatives.net
We have several groups on the site for c3 already and will be constantly adding more. Feel free to join, participate or create your own groups around topics you are interested in!
c3: Center for Conscious Creativity has been one of my favorite projects for the last few years. One of the core beliefs of c3 is that we would not have a lot of the current issues in our world if people just did what they are here to do instead of buying into other people’s stories. We are about supporting individuals in their authentic self-expression through community, events, content and consulting services. c3 is an open source organization. We built our executive team around the eight chakra system and created groups on the site so that each member of the community can actively participate in shaping this organization.
It’s a project dear to my heart and it has been absolutely amazing so far. We received all kinds of wonderful responses already and I am psyched to see people signing up on the site and starting to collaborate already.
Hopefully, we will see you there, soon, too!
From Economy to Ecology
Fortunately, I have a pretty good information diet. 
Don’t read the news, don’t watch TV, don’t even listen to NPR. Do have google reader for RSS feeds that I am actually interested in (RSS feed for stuff I am sharing), but hardly any of them have anything to do with “news”. Now, strictly speaking “news” would only be something that is actually “new”. Perusing “news”-papers occasionally, it seems that there is a serious lack of real information provided. Given, names and dates change, but the games that are being played out and described have not changed much in many years.
The same old stories…
Just a couple of months ago my friend from Germany sent me a poem about the economy. I gave it the half-interested read and thought how “cute” it was that people were making poems about the mortgage crisis and how that will lead to more war machinery. Laughed out loud when I realized the poem was from the 1930s and written in Germany. Same old story – a bunch of people creating junk money and ripping off the “little man”. Back then it happened in Germany, this time it’s happening in the US.
What our world really needs are completely new stories. We know how to wage war, kill each other, rape each other, screw each other over. Super. Boring. Let’s do something new. Completely new. Let’s not even address our current global challenges. Let’s invent a future in which they don’t even exist.
Shift happens…
One big piece of that is the necessary shift from Economics to Ecology. Economics is the science of scarcity. It is a collection of games and rules around how to distribute a limited amount of resources. It is about how to split up the pie… From the getgo there is an assumption of scarcity and a bias toward anaylysis (from Greek cutting into pieces) vs. integration. There are limited resources, only one pie, and we need to figure out how to must “justly” cut it into pieces.
This is not what is really happening in nature. There is no pie. There is a beautiful fruit tree which needs watering, light, some love, and will provide plenty of fruit for everyone. There is human creativity which has solutions to problems we haven’t even encountered yet. There is abundance in all kinds of ingenuity, of which we have at best scratched the surface.
In an Ecology based model, there is no waste. Every single output becomes nutrient for another process. There is no lack. No need. No conflict. No unhealthy competition. It is a system based on each individual part doing what they came here to do and sharing that with each other.
Into the 21st century we go…
As we progress into the 21st century, we have a shot at shifting into an ecology based model – especially as the economics based world is collapsing (which seems like an appropriate teleological end-game for scarcity). The interesting part will be to see how the shift happens. For now, the assumption I am banking on is that we can begin to build ecological models, prototype them, and hence make economics-based thinking obsolete altogether.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – as Bucky Fuller put it…
God – Money – You
“What we once did ‘for the sake of God’ we now do for the sake of money…. This is what at present gives the highest feeling of power.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
For whose sake, shall we do anything then???
- You experience tremendous joy – you love doing what you are doing and you would do it for free if you could
- It uses your strengths – there is really no point in fighting your weaknesses. Focus on your strengths, outsource your weaknesses. In business, they call this focusing on core competency.
- It benefits others – we are not alone on this planet. Each of us has gifts that we are here to share with each other (even money, in its origin even before trading, came from gifting – think about that for a second).
- It sustains you – tricky one a bit. This is about making sure you set up proper value exchanges, so that when you benefit other people, something comes back to you to ensure you have all you need to continue.
- There are synchronicities – as my friend stosh likes to say: “universe isn’t talking to you, pal, but you better fucking listen“
Arts and Culture to stimulate Economic Development
Artists have always been the transformational engine of society. Even politicians seem to get that now as this recent document from the National Governors Assosiation shows.
If you wish to create, achieve, build anything, the very first thing that needs to be done is to imagine it. Without creative imagination, we would have never attempted to go around the earth in 80 days or less, go underneath the sea, have chairs in the sky…
Without the arts, we are blind. Without creative imagination all the engineers of the world would not know what to build. And this is not only true for physical objects, but also for ideas. Because of artists we can imagine different ways of relating to each other. Because of artists all across the world showing us their realities, we can now see ourselves as one human race across this planet.
And even more… Artist have always been about authentic self-expression (at least the ones that were actually making art and not trying to please their audience). Artists lead the way in showing that – in spite of prejudice and ridicule – it is worth living a life dedicated to one’s own creative energies and expression thereof.
As the materialist systems are collapsing – and with it the idea of a life spent in consumption -, the idea of a life spent in pursuit of creative expression is becoming more and more important. My friend Barry once said you can live your life as a consumer or as a producer.
Consumption is death. Once you consume something, it is gone. Production is life, giving existence to something that was not there before.
Economics is the science of scarcity, it is about how to distribute a limited amount of resources for consumption. This is a model that cannot survive any longer (the premise is fucked to begin with if you actually take a look at nature). We now are shifting into a model of ecology, where each member produces what they are here to produce – because they love to do so -, consume only what is required to produce, and where each product and any waste become immediate nutrients for other systems.
The latter model is actually sustainable – and if we wish to survive as a species on this planet, it might behoof us to adopt it sooner than later. Even the governors seem to get it on some level…
up in smoke: mon(k)day number 1
Okay… so today is day number 1. Sucks. arrrrgggghhhh… But I did it. One too many times. Nearly 14 years ago I told my dad I would quit smoking (that was the good news, the bad news my moving to the US). Since then, I have been out of integrity around it. Bunch of half-assed efforts, but they all came from discipline – from fear. And what better thing to do in the face of fear than rebel? And so I smoked even more…
Now it’s time for a new level of devotion to my life. Devotion comes from love and makes discipline look like childrens play. Let’s kick some monkeybutt! Day number 1 sees the premier of mon(k)day. Will keep you posted on how it goes.
Growing up in public sucks and is so wonderful at the same time… Ahhh nothing like committing to an unknown quantity of strangers…
I nearly joined the army today…
… because even they seem to start getting it… As I was in the midst of my daily facebook updating, relating, procrastinating, I saw this ad and laughed out loud. Spiritual leaders… crucial to the success of the mission… WOW… Seriously… I know the military doesn’t usually get particularly good rep, and personally, I think the fact that we are still killing each other on this planet in spite of obviously being one human race, is pretty pathetic. But there is also a different side to this to be honored.
Spiritual warriors have always been part of the human archetype all across this planet. Maasai, Samurai, Hashishin, Templars, King Arthur’s round, Native American warriors, we can discover them across the world. My friend Pamela surprised me years ago when she told me about her work teaching myth to the US Army. But it made sense…
In a way, soldiers today, whether they join the military because of social and financial reasons, to get a college education, international experience, or just to get the fuck out of whereever, soldiers are the few who today are upholding the idea of the pagan hero death, a death – and consequently life – spent in the pursuit of a worthy cause.
We find similar tendencies in firemen, policemen and others, but nowhere is it as apparent as in the military that you are signing up to be willing to die for a belief or system of believes (even if you get drafted and used as cannon fodder or join a different spiritual war without uniforms).
In order to be a soldier, you have to face death, your own, and the death you might be inflicting. This forces you to really appreciate life, your own, and the life you might be taking. While some eighteen year old kids might not get that when they sign the dotted line at the draft office, at some point in the career of a soldier this understanding will set it.
Many of the former soldiers I have met have confirmed this. Can think of two in particular (both medics, curiously enough), who I have met lately. Both of them have a passion for life and an appreciation for it that is infectious. Thinking of the two of them inspired me enough that I decided not to join the army in spite of their great ad on facebook. Instead, I will do some death yoga, remind myself to die after every breath, and focus on being a spiritual warrior of a different kind.
Twitter- Worry be gone! You can do it! Just this week! Check out http://monkday.com and feel better!
- Financial freedom does not come from having a certain amount of money, it comes from knowing that you will always have enough
- Let's add "know thy worth" to "know thy self" - just to spell it out
- Trying to be "normal" is the attempt to abdicate the responsibility for being an individual
- Trust your robot. Kick back. Adjust high-level programs and the rest will follow
- find out who REALLY won best actor at http://monkday.com
- If everyone focused on actively loving everyone around them, nobody would ever have to worry about not feeling loved...
- RT @samrosen: RT @newsweek How Different Cultures Shape the Brain http://bit.ly/cWBNXx --- how about activating all of it??
- RT @zenext: whatever you think you need permission for, consider that one of your gifts that deserves to be shared
- Just registered for CoLABoration 2010 event Program for the Future @techmuseum today http://colaboration2010.eventbrite.com pftf2010
- Posts by others I enjoyed reading
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- OK Go Rube Goldberg video: meet the makers!
- Going Global: Social Innovation
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- Go Cognitive guide to the brain
- The Anywhen Manifesto
- Moving things are fun…
- You Are Culture (Quote of the Week)
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- The Art Of Procrastination