Pledge of Allegiance (Part One)

EXPLORINGtheLATERAL

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America…

“I” will not be explained until part four. So, let’s examine what “pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America” means:

Let’s start with pledge.

PLEDGE or PAWN, contracts. These words seem indifferently used to convey the same idea. Story on Bailm. §286.

PAWN. A pledge. Vide Pledge.

A pledge is a contract.

ALLEGIANCE. The tie which binds the citizen to the government, in return for the protection  which the government affords him.

What is government?

“Govern” means control and “ment” means mental. (mind control and ego construction)

Flag. a piece of cloth or similar material, typically oblong or square, attachable by one edge to a pole or rope and used as the symbol or emblem of a country or institution or as a decoration during public festivities.

A flag is just a…

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Electron Dreams, The Psychosis Of Civilization and Ghosts In The Machine

But things are changing and have changed. So-called technological advances occur at incredibly rates in the race to discover a new explanation of a previous discovery or the race to prove that a centuries old discovery is true and verified by our perceived reality. Does that mean Heisenberg was wrong?

However, technology has allotted some conveniences. No longer are humans faced with the same worries of survival. We are well taken care of. You have only to type in a few words and at your fingertips is the information a data engine has gathered. But co-existence with this so-called leap of human evolution is the ancient practice of starvation, vulnerability to the elements, and covering up. Western Culture can have this pre-assembled and delivered to your door. That changes things. People become hooked into their environment in order to do anything. It is as if you have to know the way to work to get to work. But what happens when that environment is virtual and augmented? How does that affect neurons in the brain? What if you believe in that augmented universe, do you then believe that your life is dependent upon a screen?

Information comprises a culture, so when the information changes as does that culture. There is technology, so it is ridiculous to return to pre-microchip or something. Humans cannot return to the primitive era. It is somewhat difficult to believe that, is it not? What exactly would we do with everything? Would that not mean the industrial age was built to return to the primitive age? Recycling is already a problem and dumping garbage all over the earth already happens. Look at the streets in your town, litter everywhere!

The reality is the industrial era is over. It is the digital era now. And the digital age changes much rapidly than the industrial. From conception to execution in the digital age is mere seconds to months whereas the industrial age took years from concept to execution. But what is the cost? I do not know. I have not been around long enough on the planet.

The Sharing Economy. Why not share skills and expertise rather than create jobs for profit? Under the current economy, everyone becomes a corporate cabal, elsewise no one would have value (cost, price, money). If money is currency, is not the act of current (flow) more important than the object selected to represent that flow? See, symbols have replaced conscience. Therein lays the alienation and excommunication so many fear, so we fear what we have already become.

“Never underestimate the power of denial.” ~American Beauty

This is the psychosis of civilization. Self-denial. We deny that we dislike the current state of affairs, so we cast lots in hopes that our denial is unfounded. Yet, unhappiness and misery continue unabated. Now, we have reproduced ourselves into that which we wish to be: avatars, profile pictures, images on the screen, a permanent state of Hallowe’en, save midnight never arrives and we need never worry over the grand unmasking. Self-denial to an artificial intelligence downloading dreams forgetting that we are what is real. And the “line” between actuality and virtual actuality continues to fade. No longer do we pursue (or lament) the American Dream, it is the Electron Dream. We want to be ghosts in the machine.

 

Decentralization: The Psychic/Psychological Revolution

Who are the children of tomorrow? Who shall carry the baton of the future kite runners? Certainly not the all-encompassing, top-of-the-heap occupiers known only as the Elite.

Who are the new “They”?

No longer can the planet sustain this top-heavy critical mass leaning tower of power. Despite the insistence of the old oligarchic royal gentlemen’s club that power can be trademarked, patented, and copyrighted, free access tears down that Berlin Wall with bloody fingernails tapping upon backlit keys. Keylogging and not registration determines a new more diverse and dispersed absence of power.

1337 marks the beast. . .

Virtual Nebulae 0001*Image Credit (work used with permission through CC license)–
“Virtual Nebulae 0001” by Andrew Ostrovsky
“Sky city” by Luca G.

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QOTD Alvin Toffler

QOTD Alvin Toffler*Source

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Radical Openness

RADICAL OPENNESS – An anthem on the power of IDEAS created by Jason Silva at Therapy Studios.

Presented at TEDGlobal 2012

Inspired by the ideas of TED, Chris Anderson, Richard Dawkins, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Steven Johnson, Kevin Kelly, Ray Kurzweil, Imaginary Foundation and many others.

Dedicated to those who believe in IDEAS WORTH SPREADING!!

[quoted from the description box of the video on Vimeo]

Racism, Empathy and Understanding

Wonderful piece on understanding, sympathy and empathy for and of fellow human beings.

EXPLORINGtheLATERAL

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The Essence Of Living Free In The Digital Era: Beyond The Industrial Age

Light within all living beingsSpirit to me is synonymous with essence; animals can have spirituality. I have seen it with my own eyes. I have seen animals regard me, look directly into my eyes, and really see me; they can know me on levels humans cannot, like through smell. They can smell everywhere I have been and know whether I am native to the woods or not. They can detect pheromones, the chemistry of my essence. Am I in fear? Am I predator? Am I not predator but dangerous? Have they encountered me before? All this knowledge attained in a whiff. Our essence, our spirit, exudes without our bodies. We are Spirit, Essence. Our moods, our humors, our emotions emanate from within. It is why someone can be said to be glowing and why beauty is beyond the skin (although skin can be beautiful, but true beauty is more than the physical).

meeting the black wholeSuperpowers–Mental acuity can be another way to denote superpowers. Superpowers can make for, what is called, an evil person, but superpowers themselves have no direction (i.e., no intrinsic implication of good or bad, right or wrong), it is the spirit that possesses them (by possess, I don’t mean in the sense of possession in need of a priest, but in a filling of space, to occupy or influence). Superpowers are very real, though. They are what humans can attain. Today’s protrusion of superpowers can be seen in autistic savants (some famous ones are Daniel Tammet, Kim Peeks, and Temple Grandin), or prodigal genius, or in synesthetes, or in people who have had some kind of head injury or have epilepsy and can perform great feats of calculation or memory. See, I think that humans, in general, are capable of these kinds of feats.

What’s more, these are not feats of the mind; I think that these are ‘normal’ processes, well within the faculties of mind. We are only talking about a kind of comprehension (or maybe apprehension), just a kind of quintessential conversation, a matter of substantial concentration, are we not? Once humans are able to exorcise the mind of unnecessary anxieties, stresses, dis-eases (those habits and grooves of the outgoing society and culture, wherein grooves conceptualize the habits, as well-worn ruts in the synaptic connections, like ditches in grey matter), than we can again realize our full abilities.

SphinxThe internet can be looked at as hive mind/collective consciousness made explicit, like an emergent consciousness arising from the intangible infrastructure of the World Wide Web. I think wireless technology can be perceived as modeled of energy and spirituality. That is (for example) email, web pages, or radio stations transmitting and being received like spiritual messages. You just tune to the frequency and get or give what you need. This is how I see wireless technology. I think Tesla’s idea of wireless technology is the same, he was a man who knew electricity, and if we are just talking about the movement of electrons, then messages are conveyed every time an electron is stimulated. I mean, talking is the same as wireless technology on a certain level. Sound waves received and transmitted as vibrations. What is vibrating? I do not think any thing is vibrating; just that the act of Vibrate exists. It is like saying that there is no driver of the car; we are driver, car, wheel, etc. Therefore, is not wireless technology a kind of telepathy?  Just as television was/is a kind of telepathy, there is a communication with the mind, a sympathetic vibration, an equilibrium, a harmony.

This is what I am most like when in nature, a harmony. This is what I think humans have also lost. Not that humans can ever return to indigenous tribes, but that we can reconnect with our environment at a new point. This is the way I think human suffering can be selected out.

space timeA question emerges: how then do we make sure not to let (or continue to let) the use of technology become a substitute for real intimacy and human connection? To not escape into fear of our own minds and selves — which is what we sometimes run from when we lose ourselves in a screen and if we cringe from human contact and the vulnerability and uncertainty in being seen and experiencing with another? This is what disturbs me most about the internet or about such online “games” as Second Life. Second Life, even the name gives me shivers. It is as if life itself can be replicated (and I do not mean in the sense of reproduction because that is not a replication. There is no copy, not a cloning. A child is an independent being of its parents, not an exact copy), like Frankenstein’s monster, a horrible attempt at mimicry. So, Second Life takes over real life, to the point that real life pales in comparison. Well, online, you can be anything (like a permanent Hallowe’en, save there is no unmasking), a permanent anonymity (or the illusion thereof). Therefore, people take bigger risks, because it seems as if there is no risk at all. This is the mistake of the internet. I think it is because we do not really understand the internet, or the World Wide Web, as we do not really understand ourselves. So, we play with fire. We play with What before we know Why. We are like children, humans, in the universe. Just because we inhabit terra firma does not mean we know everything. I think we fear the uncertainty.

It seems that people are afraid of freedom, really to let go. It is like jumping off a cliff and free falling, except the cliff and the jump were an illusion. I think the part in The Matrix where Morpheus tells Neo to jump from one building to another symbolizes our fear of freedom well. The jump is freedom, jumping into the unknown. The unknown is not the dark abyss that Nietzsche wrote of (at least I do not agree), it can be, but that is in the eye of the beholder. The unknown, to me, is a release, a relief, peaceful. That fighting is unnecessary and that really things are quite simple (thank you Occam’s razor). All the way down to the essence of being, and in all directions simultaneously. This is what humans have forgotten in our ever-pursuit of more, further updates, the next greatest gadget, and the like. We must first remember that we are born free before we can accept that we are consciousness, embodied.

*Image Credits (all work used with permission through CC license)–
“Sphinx” by Eddi van W.
“meeting the black whole” by Eddi van W.
“space time” by Eddi van W.
“Light within all living beings” by Stefan Perneborg

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This Is Water

The stars were dancing just for me“That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

 I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think whatever you wish. But please don’t just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death. 

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

“This is water.”

“This is water.”

In 2005, author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. However, the resulting speech didn’t become widely known until 3 years later, after his tragic death. It is, without a doubt, some of the best life advice we’ve ever come across, and perhaps the most simple and elegant explanation of the real value of education. We made this video, built around an abridged version of the original audio recording, with the hopes that the core message of the speech could reach a wider audience who might not have otherwise been interested. However, we encourage everyone to seek out the full speech (because, in this case, the book is definitely better than the movie) ~The Glossary

*Image Credits (all work used with permission through CC license)–
“Hope for the planet” by Kevin Dooley
“The stars were dancing just for me” by Carl Jones

Defining Sustainability

“Our labor system is set up so that people must be employed in order to gain money to survive, while the actual contributions these occupations have to society are highly suspect, showing that jobs often exist just to keep people doing something in order to live and support the economic structure itself. This is a waste of human life.” ~from the video