We like to wrap ourselves in security blankets. We cling to things that make us feel ‘secure’; our jobs our homes our religions our identities, or should I say, our identifications? To identify with ‘something’ separates us from ‘something else’, and while some of these separations are more ‘real’ than others (our separate bodies compared to our separate possessions, or professions), all physical and energetic forms are inherently temporal, therefore unstable and hence any felt separation, or even any unity that is felt, is ever elusive, since both are concrete realities.

The experientialization of our reality, then, can be discerned by one or both of these realities, to ever-varying degrees. So the question then becomes; which discernment is better? A hollow question, I know, but I asked it that way on purpose, because I want you to think of what your gut reaction was. Betterment is subjective, and idealism can twist it to its own needs. I say all this merely to point to the importance of realizing the origins and bases of our own ideas of ‘better’.

I, for one, cannot imagine life without my separations. That is, of course, because ‘I’ am the one making that statement, and ‘I’ have to seperate ‘I’ from ‘you’ in order to make the statement.

I cannot imagine life without my security blankets. My anxieties and fears and percieved separation from society manifests itself as a protective barrier that protects me from much human interaction. ‘I’ seem to need them even though I don’t want them. ’I’ would feel exposed, rather than liberated.

All the while I yearn to throw the blankets off but they can be too heavy. I do lust after detachment… of pure, unadulterated freedom, of a life lived free from suffering, of living in the space of no attachments, no responsibility, no failures, no successes, no fear, no hate, no love, nothing. Everything.

Inspired in part by the book, ‘The Chalice and The Blade’ by Riane Eisler. This video is a collaborative effort between Ife Aziz (http://www.youtube.com/PepperMintLIfe) and Aaron Moritz made possible through the internet, which allowed us to reach out, empathize, and share ideas with one another. On many fronts, the fact that this video exists is a testament to the reality of what it puts forth; ultimately, a challenge to the theory that humans are hardwired for competition and aggression, rather than co-operation, and empathy.

The next step in our collective evolution:

http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com

http://www.thevenusproject.com

songs:
Saul Williams – Bloodletting
Bonobo – All In Forms
Pretty Lights – Still Rockin’
Dave Matthews Band – Grux
Dave Matthews Band – Shake Me Like a Monkey

How many times have you heard that the top 1% own half of the USA’s wealth? Some people would say that’s because they earned it, that you don’t get anything for free. And I guess they’re right, if you consider trading stocks, stock options, derivatives, futures, future derivatives, manipulating the market, winning, losing, betting; if you consider that ‘earning’ the money, then earn it they certainly did.

But did any of that trading, did any of those money exchanges produce anything of value, in any direct fashion that could not have been achieved to the same degree, or even more effectively, without the existence of high level money exchange and expansion? That’s right, expansion… these people aren’t just **cough** ‘earning’ money, they are creating it. Well, maybe not all of them, not directly, but through their transactions with banks, they feed the on-going fractional reserve lending and money creating policies that do create most of the money, hence causing most of the inflation.

So while these people continue to make more and more money, it becomes worth less and less, especially as they hoard it in bank accounts, or worse, continue the money creation cycle by investing it, essentially gambling, as I say so eloquently in the title. But hey, right now, while it’s still worth something, these people could, feasibly, use some of it to feed the entire world.

So why don’t they? Well, like I said the future is uncertain. Money is constantly devaluing, and when you’re a real hardcore gambler like these guys, you’re always thinking of the next big win. Maybe someday, when they have ‘enough’, they’ll retire, give a few bucks to charity and live a comfortable life. And this essential mentality, of me-first, of capitalism in general, is exactly why me and the people who work on Wall Street aren’t marching down to Africa together, and building desalinization plants or irrigation systems. Or fully automated aquaponic multi-level gardening facilities that can continuously churn out fresh vegetables and operate in almost any weather conditions. The people on Wall Street can’t — and won’t — stop gambling. They are addicts. Money is their heroine, and they will fight just as hard as a crack-head to get their next fix.

Or, to say the exact same thing in more ‘proper’ terms, the people on Wall Street are trying to earn a profit.

And feeding the planet is not profitable. So it doesn’t get done. And whether we’re talking state-sponsored corporatism or laissez-fares free markets, profit is king. It is that thought — that the pursuit of profit will ultimately lead people to actions for the greater social good, because people will only buy things that are good for them, in the end — that wonderful idea that has underpinned our whole society for hundreds of years, that has now shown itself to be completely false.

Look around you. Not just your neighborhood or your country, but at your planet. THIS is the invisible hand, and it does not push people to perform for the greater social good. It simply pushes them to participate in any action by which a profit can be made.

Do I need to provide a list of arena’s of environmental life-support where profit and human well-being are not mutually compatible, often even at odds with each other? Ok fine, industrial waste, animal farm waste, air and water pollution, dirty, scarce energy sources, the systematic destruction of forests, the ‘buying’ of people’s and countries farmland for corporate purposes, depriving them of even more food, air pollution, media-induced consumption creating pollution, planetary health risks associated with the production of nukes, the spraying of pesticides, the injection of growth hormones, the introduction of poorly tested GMO foods, the outright lies and propaganda from the big food corporations on what a ‘healthy’ diet is… anyways, I could go on but I think it’s pretty clear that this de-coupling of profit interests and human interests is quite pervasive.

And that’s why Bill Hicks’ vision of a better ride could never really happen, not exactly. We can’t spend our way out of this problem, as much as the notion might grab our imagination. The people with the money to save the world are crippled, mentally. They are addicted to their money and power, and every dead human is just an externality as far as the profiteer is concerned. The profiteer cannot save the world until they give up that identity. Until we help them understand that the profit motive is not a humane motive, and the invisible hand is pushing us off a cliff.

The more I learn about the structure of the human mind, about the technicalities of our thinking processes, the more I start to see consciousness as basically an illusion created by the electrical neural impulses in our brain. Basically, I’m reducing the human being to nothing more than an animated flesh and blood bag with a decent computer up top. I lack belief in a soul (this does not mean I don’t believe souls exist, but it does mean that I approach the world through that perspective), or any other ‘agent’ controlling our actions, besides our brains.

So then what makes each person different? Genetics, and Experience. Genetics shape our bodies, our physicality, our organs, our amazing machine of a body, including our brain, which comes into the world a wild neuronical firing mess. This is not to say certain parts of the brain are not genetically mapped for specific functions, but the way those functions manifest is cause by our experience of the world. As we make associations between pictures and sounds, feelings and outside stimuli, some neurological pathways are strengthened while others are weakened. Once we begin to differentiate ourselves from the world around us, the illusion of ‘I’ begins.

‘I’ make decisions. ‘I’ am typing this post on my blog. But what am ‘I’? Unlike many philosophers, ‘I’ think there is an answer to this. ‘I’ am the sum total output of all the informational data that has ever run through my (to a small degree) genetically unique brain, filtered by my current emotional state. This is an idea I read in a paper by Marvin Minsky that very much took hold in my mind. That emotions are nothing more than the suppression or encouragement of certain modes of thought caused by chemicals in our brain reacting to thoughts we have about external stimuli. I hope I didn’t lose anyone in that sentence there. But it makes sense. When we are experiencing the ‘love’ (getting romantic here) emotion, our tendency to think critically seems to lower, while our creative and passionate thinking may be working at high capacity.

So, if I state that ‘I’ am the sum total output of all the informational data that has ever run through my (to a small degree) genetically unique brain, filtered by my current emotional state, I am saying, basically, that all of my actions are determined by my environment. But this realization allows me the opportunity to change my environment. Whether, or rather I should say, to what extent, I do this is entirely dependent on my developed cognitive abilities to accomplish such a thing, and of course, by other outside factors.

So I guess what I’m saying is that we are who we are because of our lives. That’s what makes each of us special. Not a thing nobody can find called a soul. At least that’s what makes the most sense to me, right now. And just because I don’t believe we have a ‘will’ per se, I do believe that we have the ability to change the environment, and hence the ‘will’ of not only ourselves, but of others as well.

note: Just to be clear I am not speaking of any type of coercion or gross media-consumerism-type propaganda campaigns. I am speaking only of open discussion and free exchange of ideas. The more information our computer-brains are exposed to, the better computer conclusions they can reach. :)

The Infinit Yes is in full support of, but claims no support from the Zeitgeist Movement… or Martin Luthor King, Jr.

So I embraced my agnosticism, which by the time I graduated, had turned more into a quasi-spiritual pick and choose belief system when I got into mysticism and spirit guides and healing (note: not heavily into , I was just… browsing), and now my stance is basically… wait and see. But my intuition is that there is no afterlife.

The more ‘atheist’ I became, the more I began to feel free. There was no God watching and judging everything I do. I am the ultimate judge of myself. I am the only person with that power, truly. I once mentioned I was an atheist to a casual acquaintance and he said “…must be lonely sometimes.” I never looked at it that way. The only thing atheism has given me is less guilt, and a feeling of purpose.

I’ve been digging into Transhumanism for a while now, and I’ve become fairly persuaded by the evidence that we are developing technologies that will radically extend our lives (possibly until the end of the universe[or the beginning of the next one]). But lot’s of people like to say that this is nothing more than technologists wishful thinking, their own scientific version of religion, creating heaven on earth, rapture of the nerds some people have called it. And until I see the actual technologies working, on humans, I can’t have 100% confidence that they aren’t wrong. So what happens if I do die?

Well, I was an atheist (well, let’s say… 96% atheist. There’s always a chance the theists are right) before I stumbled upon transhumanism and my stance on death hasn’t changed much. If death is inevitable, then all that means is that this life is more precious. There is no garuntee, or even reason to think, that there is anything after this life. So make each moment count. And don’t worry about dying, because if you do die, you’ll either be starting on some great adventure, or you’ll be nothing, like before you were born.

Everything plastic or rubber is made of oil. Oil fuels our transport, our trade, our economy. Our entire civilization is based on the use of fossil fuels for both energy and materials.

There are ways to fix these problems, but since we’re barely even attempting to implement them, the problems associate with depleting oil are escalating.

9. Bio Engineering:

We’re learning so much about how our bodies function at such a fast rate, that the applications seem almost science fiction, like the recently developed ‘bionic eye’ for blind people, a small camera either implanted into the eye socket or word on glasses that wirelessly sends a signal to an implant behind your ear, which interfaces with your brain to produce an image (see video here). If we can replace an eye, why not a heart? Or a brain (after transferring the data, of course)?

We are experimenting with being able to switch genes on and off. We are learning to literally grow tissues, or even entire organs in a lab, and implant them. We are learning to reverse the biological processes of aging. We are on the brink of attaining an unprecedented amount of control over our biology and the biology of our descendants. This raises many questions that are unique to our times and deserve a lot of discussion.

8. The Emerging Global Police State:

International Bankers, largely based in and in control of the United States and the other central UN nations are quietly imposing new laws that restrict people’s freedoms ad create an environment of fear, which leads to submission. But people will only accept so much, sometimes all too many of their freedoms to be taken away before being pushed to the brink, but there always is a brink. And the confused, power-hungry, fear mongers are always pushing the limits.

The illusion of freedom and democracy that has enshrouded the western world is dissipating due to many of the other factors listed here.

7. Technological Unemployment:

It started when tractors replaced farm workers. Then the people who built the tractors were replaced by automated factories. So everyone moved to the service industry, but now we have ATM’s and automated restaurants and waiters and vending machines.

The fact, is that in any industry, the more we automate the work (ie; assign it to machines rather than humans), the more efficiently the work is done. Machines are stealing our jobs (and they’re better at them, too)!!!! That’s why we can’t keep people employed. There isn’t enough work for them to do, and since they can’t work, they can’t spend, so companies has to cut costs, fire more people, further diminish the purchasing power of the individual. You see the diminishing returns here. This type of loop cannot be sustained.

We’ve ignored this (shifted people to new industries) for almost 80 years, and it’s finally starting to catch up to us (there really isn’t much work left for us to do).

6. Between 10% and 20% of the World’s Population is Starving:

and the global wealth gap is widening, which will only increase this number. As Citibank stated in their leaked internal memo, while they have successfully achieved the accumulation of power through monetary means, government, unfortunately still remains a one person one vote power structure. This clearly shows the mindset of the super-wealthy, who could easily afford to feed everyone on the planet, but choose, instead, due to their conditioning, to allow people to starve, tacitly allowing millions of deaths every day.

I wonder how far they think they can push it, before people start to say enough is enough. I know I’m already saying it. And so are a lot of other people.

5. AI:

Many parts of the brain have been modeled. Neural networks have been simulated. We don’t yet have all the processing power and neural models available to ‘build a brain’, but the pieces are falling together, if you pay attention to the news in that area. Ray Kurzweil projects we will have human level machine intelligence by 2029.

If a robot has the ability to react, discuss, argue that it is conscious and can feel, who would we be to say that it doesn’t? What if it has had the memories of a loved one transferred into it? The philosophical and intellectual debate this poses over what it means to be ‘alive’ or ‘conscious’ has the ability to fundamentally alter our perspectives on what it means to be a human. If that’s not revolutionary I don’t know what is.

4. Environmental Crisis:

Whether global warming is man made or not, we need to take care of our planet and our environment holistically. Failure to do this will inevitably result in environmental catastrophe. When this happens, something big is going to need to change.

3. The Flopping Global Economy:

The world-wide debt balloon is bursting. There are signs of it everywhere, world leaders are meeting to discuss it, and coming up with no real answers, just empty targets that won’t be met, and wouldn’t help even if they were met. A market economy is based on growth, but we only have one planet. It and the amount of resources on it are not growing, so we can’t keep using them at an accelerated rate.

The fact is that we live in a global Ponzi scheme, an upsidedown pyramid that is about to tip one way or the other. We need an ‘economic’ system that is based on the holistic management of the entire earth, it’s life, and it’s resources.

2. Nanotechnology:

Nanotechnology brings the promise of being able to manipulate matter at the level of molecules. In Eric Drexler’s Engine’s of Creation, a seminal book on Nanotech, he describes nano-scale assemblers that would have the ability to arrange matter in any way (ie; make apple pie from thin air, simply by re arranging the molecules). How is the economy going to work when everyone can have any material possessions they want at only the cost of raw materials?

Nanotechnology also carries with it the promise of being able to upgrade our human bodies. More efficient neurons, better red blood cells, better internal defense systems for healing cuts and bruises.

Nanotechnology takes it’s cue from our own molecular machinery (cells and the like), yet allows us to manipulate and improve upon it. It will likely also function as a catalyst for both AI, and is intermingled with Bio Engineering, in my opinion.

1. The Internet, ie: The Freedom and Spread of Information:

Hey guess what everyone? The United States and every member of it’s empire and most of the rest of the world is living in a Police State (see #8). We are not free, not in action, not in the choice of our governments or money masters.

But we all know that. We haven’t all been tricked, and we’re telling each other about what’s happening. We’re working right in front of their faces to remove them from power. Until about ten years ago, they were very effective at controlling public opinion. We all thought what the TV told us to, we all thought what was on TV was real. Now we know it’s just reality television, a drama played out for our amusement and distraction.

How do we know? Because we’re making our own videos, we’re learning how to think from each other, rather than from a single source, and that is unfortunate for anyone who wants things to stay the same. The printing press caused a revolution due to it’s ability to spread information. The internet does this on a scale many orders of magnitude larger, so should we expect that the resulting revolution will also be on a scale many orders of magnitutde larger?

Any one of these things has the potential to start a monumental revolution, either of the mind, or of our external environment. The fact that they are all happening at the same time is why I feel confident in saying that something big is coming.

What should we do about it? Well, if you ask me, I like the direction of the Zeitgeist Movement. To me it seems like the most reasonable option we have left.

I walked about a block or two, in no particular direction trying to pick a song. I wanted to find something to tell me everything was going to be ok. And so I hit shuffle and Time To Pretend by MGMT came on and I had to laugh, though despitte the ironic title it was exactly the song I wanted to listen to.

I made my way around down some streets I’ve never walked on and I saw this in the pavement:

and I stopped, smiled, took a picture. My iPod was playing A Perfect Circle now. I took a few more steps and saw this:

and for a minute I wondered if I had come across them in the wrong order, but decided it worked either way. Then I thought about how I wished there was some way I could show these pictures, and this site, to whoever did this. Prove to them someone noticed. I’m sure they’d like that.

I turned a corner and immediately saw this:

and was really taken with the beauty created by the contrast between the clear glass and the trees green trees. This beautiful infusion of nature and human ingenuity. I swear to God half a block down I see this on someone’s lawn:

I don’t know why someone tied a bow around some little plant, but it was the icing on the cake. I was in a better mood now. I walked back around a little more and headed home. I snapped two more pictures:

The first one I just liked because I know whoever did it was just having some fun. And in my eyes, they made the sewer drain look better. More fun. I just liked the flag because it was torn, and all sad and shriveled looking. I’m not a big fan of what flags represent.

So I got back home and had forty minutes left on my youtube upload. After it was done, it still didn’t work properly, so I gave up, as we all should after trying three times. I can always do it later.

I’ve never understood the mentality of wanting to resurrect the past, because we as a species are constantly learning. Think of how many things that are possible now that weren’t possible in 1776. Shouldn’t we look towards the future instead of the past?

There is a lot of amazing insight in the US Constitution, and 1776 was a great triumph of freedom over all kinds of unruly controls, but maybe a small part of the reason that the US, Canada, the world, is in this position is because we all rely on these immutable documents, like constitutions, which then become enforced by laws. My point being that one immutable document is NEVER going to be able to lay down the rulebook of a perfect society. By saying we should go back to 1776 is to say that we should go back to what got us into this mess in the first place.

A lot has changed since 1776, when they said “All men are created equal” they meant all white males. We now understand that statement should read “All human people are to have equal rights and freedoms”, or something similar, since even the language “are created” assumes a religious pretense that may not be all inclusive. And if you take the non-religious meaning of creation we know we weren’t all created equally [doggy, missionary,etc]. sorry.). We’ve updated our understandings, and that’s why a constitution, any constitution, will eventually create a failed state.

Here in Canada, until 1913 (which interestingly, but maybe only coincidentally, coincides with the establishment of the US’s Federal Reserve bank) the Federal Government had the authority and the responsibility, to control and issue our money. They were given an unlimited supply of debt-free money with which to operate the country, thus eliminating the need for direct federal income tax. All they had to do was print it. And that’s what they did it for the first 46 years of our country. But, in 1913, our parliament passed an amendment to the Bank Act, without referendum, giving to the banking system the sole right to create money. And they charge interest. Since then our national debt has grown from being 463 million dollars to over 1 trillion dollars in 2009. In this case, our constitutional rights were subverted by underhanded legislation, but that happens all the time, in every country that operates a monetary based democracy the democratic principals will always be undermined by greed. That’s another understanding of ours that has been updated since 1776.

So I’m just asking people to keep in mind that if things get bad enough that there is some sort of armed revolution, like the one of 1776, (and I sincerely hope they don’t, but if they do get that bad… ) an answer isn’t going to be found in old constitutions and old documents. Dogmatic doctrines like constitutions and religious commandments never stand the test of time, this is why society after society fails, because they all think they have the answer. There is no one ANSWER, there is only a constant stream of possibilities from which we can pluck only some, but an ever growing amount, of answers.