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…
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Twitter- Great advice on using your time rather than spending it - http://t.co/NsuxFB99
- Get some sleep. Your brain needs to defragment http://t.co/FT6j6yes
- Like #TED talks? Here's a list: http://t.co/hppq21xw
- It's not hard to be happy http://t.co/FdFLztX7
- Disney and Vaginas. Who would have thought? http://t.co/SZrFVE9n
- I'm going to "Meet the Angels" Rooftop Lounge Mixer presented by TCA. http://t.co/N0DQrHKB via @goplanana.
- RT @museumofrobots: Museum of Robots Daily is out! http://t.co/612LqpIq ▸ robots, robots, robots!
- Finding time to innovate http://t.co/jhZNXDSr
- Slice of brain anyone? Google maps for brains... delicious brains... http://t.co/MIVFcffq
- Scanning in 3D http://t.co/3ujHHDEO
- Posts by others I enjoyed reading
- The Silliness of Busyness
- Remaining human: A Buddhist perspective on Occupy Wall Street
- The Fringes Disagree But Science And Religion Do Mix
- Five Tips to Break Through Your Filter(s)
- Reminders from the world
- Tattoo 2.0
- Violin made with a 3D printer
- Realtime Face Substitution softwear
- On The Creating And Sharing Of Awe
- Unautomate Your Money
- 5 Ways To Turn Fear Into Fuel
- Become a God of Learning Your Trade
- A Young Artist's Guide to Playing for Keeps, Pt. 15
- Twelfth century orgasmic brain heat
- Projecting meaning
- AGI and the Emerging Peer-to-Peer Economy: Ben Goertzel Interviews AI Researcher Mohamad Tarifi
- The Future of Brain Workouts
- Breaking Free From Consumerist Chains
- Data is the new Oil: must-read PDF by the World Economic Forum
- TED: JR's TED Prize wish: Use art to turn the world inside out - JR (2011)