The Differences Between Us..... is there really?
‘In everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ – Jesus/Christianity: Matthew 7:12
‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour’ – Talmud, Judaism, Hillel, Shibbath 31a
‘Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others that which you wish for yourself’ – Mohammed/Islam: Hadith
‘This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you’ – Hinduism: Mahabharata 5:1517
‘If thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbour that which thou choosest for thyself’ – Baha’i/Zoroastrianism, Shayast-Na-Shayast 13.29
‘Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful’ – Buddha/Buddhism, Udana-Varga 5.18
‘Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself’ – Confucius/Confucianism: Analects 15.23
Friday, August 25, 2006
Thursday, August 24, 2006
The New Measure of Man
This is worth considering:
‘There is no epoch in history that seems to us as it must have to the people who lived through it. What we live through, in any age, is the effect on us of mass emotions and of social conditions from which it is almost impossible to detach ourselves. Often the mass emotions are those which seem the noblest, best and most beautiful. And yet, inside a year, five years, a decade, five decades, people will be asking, “How could they have believed that?”’ Doris Lessing from Prisons We Choose To Live Inside
Also....
'we are not just an accidental anomaly, the microscopic caprice of a tiny particle whirling in the endless depths of the universe. Instead, we are mysteriously connected to the universe, we are mirrored in it, just as the entire evolution of the universe is mirrored in us...The moment it begins to appear that we are deeply connected to the entire universe, science returns…in a roundabout way, to man and offers him his lost integrity. It does so by anchoring him once more in the cosmos’
Vaclav Havel – ‘The New Measure of Man’
‘There is no epoch in history that seems to us as it must have to the people who lived through it. What we live through, in any age, is the effect on us of mass emotions and of social conditions from which it is almost impossible to detach ourselves. Often the mass emotions are those which seem the noblest, best and most beautiful. And yet, inside a year, five years, a decade, five decades, people will be asking, “How could they have believed that?”’ Doris Lessing from Prisons We Choose To Live Inside
Also....
'we are not just an accidental anomaly, the microscopic caprice of a tiny particle whirling in the endless depths of the universe. Instead, we are mysteriously connected to the universe, we are mirrored in it, just as the entire evolution of the universe is mirrored in us...The moment it begins to appear that we are deeply connected to the entire universe, science returns…in a roundabout way, to man and offers him his lost integrity. It does so by anchoring him once more in the cosmos’
Vaclav Havel – ‘The New Measure of Man’
Monday, August 21, 2006
The Millennium Project
The Millennium Project--a global participatory think tank--has released its 10th annual State of the Future report.
'The report distills the collective intelligence of over 2,000 leading scientists, futurists, scholars, and policy advisors who work for governments, corporations, non-governmental organizations, universities, and international organizations.
Among its findings:
Dramatic increases in collective human-machine intelligence are possible within 25 years. It is also possible that within the same time frame single individuals acting alone might create and use weapons of mass destruction.
Just as computer code is written to create many kinds of software, genetic code will be written to create many varieties of life, including those that make hydrogen from plants.
25 million are likely to die if avian flu mutates for human-to-human transmission.
The 2006 State of the Future comes in two parts: a 125-page print executive summary and a 5,400-page CD. The CD contains all the research behind the print edition, plus the Millennium Project's 10 years of cumulative research and methods.'
'The report distills the collective intelligence of over 2,000 leading scientists, futurists, scholars, and policy advisors who work for governments, corporations, non-governmental organizations, universities, and international organizations.
Among its findings:
Dramatic increases in collective human-machine intelligence are possible within 25 years. It is also possible that within the same time frame single individuals acting alone might create and use weapons of mass destruction.
Just as computer code is written to create many kinds of software, genetic code will be written to create many varieties of life, including those that make hydrogen from plants.
25 million are likely to die if avian flu mutates for human-to-human transmission.
The 2006 State of the Future comes in two parts: a 125-page print executive summary and a 5,400-page CD. The CD contains all the research behind the print edition, plus the Millennium Project's 10 years of cumulative research and methods.'
Friday, August 18, 2006
Academia & Sufism
Once again, the two approaches meet. Similar to how Ibn Arabi came face to face with the scholars of his time centuries before: now Ibn Arabi is deconstructed through Derrida.
Seeker After Truth has an interesting post titled 'Sufism and Deconstruction: The Honesty of the Perplexed' which features a relatively recent book called 'Sufism and Deconstruction':
"Neither Ibn ‘Arabi nor Derrida seem to be afraid of bewilderment – or, for that matter, bewildering. Whether it is the constantly ‘exploding semantic horizons’ of the disseminating text,3 or the guidance which means being ‘guided to bewilderment’,4 the ‘acceptance of incoherentncoherence’5 or the God Who is everywhere and nowhere, both Derrida and Ibn ‘Arabi part with a philosophical and Koranic tradition which sees confusion synonymous with error, failure, untruth and sin."
Well... prepare to be confused!
Seeker After Truth has an interesting post titled 'Sufism and Deconstruction: The Honesty of the Perplexed' which features a relatively recent book called 'Sufism and Deconstruction':
"Neither Ibn ‘Arabi nor Derrida seem to be afraid of bewilderment – or, for that matter, bewildering. Whether it is the constantly ‘exploding semantic horizons’ of the disseminating text,3 or the guidance which means being ‘guided to bewilderment’,4 the ‘acceptance of incoherentncoherence’5 or the God Who is everywhere and nowhere, both Derrida and Ibn ‘Arabi part with a philosophical and Koranic tradition which sees confusion synonymous with error, failure, untruth and sin."
Well... prepare to be confused!
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
The Illuminati and the Scientific Conspiracy
Phil Collins (no, not the singer/drummer/part-time actor!) is a Christian conspiracist who thinks the Bush administration is part of the ancient, global oligarchical conspiracy to establish socialist world government. He writes at conspiracyarchive.com and is author of The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship you can listen here for a podcast
If a conspiracy takes your fancy!
If a conspiracy takes your fancy!
Futurism Without Gadgets
Jamais Cascio from the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies has recorded a spoken version of his Futurismic column, “Futurism Without Gadgets” - worth a listen.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Back-up DNA
The Alliance to Rescue Civilization advocates a backup for humanity by way of a station on the Moon replete with DNA samples of all life on Earth, as well as a compendium of all human knowledge:
"It would be run by people who, through fertility treatments and frozen human eggs and sperm, could serve as a new Adam and Eve in addition to their role as a new Noah.
Organizers: Robert Shapiro, professor emeritus and senior research scientist in biochemistry at New York University; Ray Erikson, who runs an aerospace development firm in Boston; Steven M. Wolfe, a Congressional aide who drafted and helped pass the Space Settlement Act of 1988, which mandated that NASA plan a shift from space exploration to space colonization, and was executive director of the Congressional Space Caucus; and author William E. Burrows, director of the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program at N.Y.U."
Life After Earth: Imagining Survival Beyond This Terra Firma
"It would be run by people who, through fertility treatments and frozen human eggs and sperm, could serve as a new Adam and Eve in addition to their role as a new Noah.
Organizers: Robert Shapiro, professor emeritus and senior research scientist in biochemistry at New York University; Ray Erikson, who runs an aerospace development firm in Boston; Steven M. Wolfe, a Congressional aide who drafted and helped pass the Space Settlement Act of 1988, which mandated that NASA plan a shift from space exploration to space colonization, and was executive director of the Congressional Space Caucus; and author William E. Burrows, director of the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program at N.Y.U."
Life After Earth: Imagining Survival Beyond This Terra Firma
Taking a Quantum leap
Alot of chatter and talk is going on in research circles about quantum computing - and what it means for the evolution of information - and thus for 'humanity'. One article - 'Quantum leap' - cites the following scenario:
"Having your brain surrounded by a thin band of ultrasonic transducers controlled by hypersmart quantum computers, all linked up to a global network with infinite bandwidth, means that any sense can be stimulated in any way. You can be made to see, hear, touch, taste, or smell anything.
Getting instructions back from the brain - mind-reading computers, in other words - is harder but not impossible (neuroscientists have already developed communication devices for the disabled that read brain waves).
Wolf anticipates that within 20 years, instead of cellphone conversations we will have "network-enabled telepathy." Imagine you're on a busy street, and a small percentage of the people in the crowd around you have decided to let their headbands transmit their field of vision - you could literally see around corners. A vehicle could be driven by thought. Dreams could be recorded and passed around online as easily as we share photos on Flickr."
And yet Sony has already filed a patent earlier this year for ultrasonic technology that will beam videogames into our brains - is this really the other side of the technology?
Telepathy does not require ubiquitous informational technologies - our spirits are quantum too... always have been. Remember, the quantum world still exists within laws of a physical universe - we dont have to...
Why not a quantum leap in ourselves first...
"Having your brain surrounded by a thin band of ultrasonic transducers controlled by hypersmart quantum computers, all linked up to a global network with infinite bandwidth, means that any sense can be stimulated in any way. You can be made to see, hear, touch, taste, or smell anything.
Getting instructions back from the brain - mind-reading computers, in other words - is harder but not impossible (neuroscientists have already developed communication devices for the disabled that read brain waves).
Wolf anticipates that within 20 years, instead of cellphone conversations we will have "network-enabled telepathy." Imagine you're on a busy street, and a small percentage of the people in the crowd around you have decided to let their headbands transmit their field of vision - you could literally see around corners. A vehicle could be driven by thought. Dreams could be recorded and passed around online as easily as we share photos on Flickr."
And yet Sony has already filed a patent earlier this year for ultrasonic technology that will beam videogames into our brains - is this really the other side of the technology?
Telepathy does not require ubiquitous informational technologies - our spirits are quantum too... always have been. Remember, the quantum world still exists within laws of a physical universe - we dont have to...
Why not a quantum leap in ourselves first...
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