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

My third contribution to TZM Music Project, now retitled (to my great pleasure) Zeit Tunes!

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. :)

I want to think faster, I want to remember everything I do and be able to call it up in no time at all. I want to be able to do seven things at once and still have some spare brain power to multiply 24,567 by 678,903. Our current brain-computer interface technology is messy, big, and inefficient… implanting a chip in your brain. I don’t want to implant a chip in my brain, but the fact that we can do it (brain computer interface) is really a stunning achievement.

But what I’m interested in putting into my brain, (well… i’m not in line for testing or anything… when and if they work all the bugs out, of course) nano-bots, are not so invasive. There’s no surgery, just computer guided super-neurons that intermingle with and (again I use the word) upgrade our brains.

I think it’s important to point out that the terminology ‘nano-bots’ really misrepresents what this technology is. Once we get down to the molecular level, these ‘nano-bots’ are made of the same atoms as the organic molecular machinery that symbiotically work together to form our bodies. It’s not like I’ll have micro-sized robots in my head, this is more like a redesign of the neuron. A more efficient design.

But then I got to thinking that perhaps how fast time moves will be directly affected when, or if, we are able to increase the speed of our minds. I was bored this morning and watching some video’s on youtube explaining Einstein’s theory of relativity. It was nothing I didn’t already know, but it really drove home the fact how ‘fast’ time ‘moves’ is all based on perspective and perception. “Time flies when you’re having fun,” they say, it also speeds up and slows down depending on how fast you are moving through space. So time is anything but fixed, especially when it comes to how we perceive it.

If, for example,  it only takes you 5 seconds to count to 1000 when an unaltered human would take about 500 seconds (made up numers), does it still ‘feel’ like five hundred seconds to you, even though any clock will say only five seconds has passed? How will we perceive the amount of time that has passed? And if we are continually improving and upgrading our brains to go faster and faster, will time continue to ‘slow down’ in this way? Could the advent of these technologies literally mean the end of ‘time’, at least, as we know it? Some great new understanding of how what time is and how it works (or even what it is, for that matter).

This whole idea of a radical shift in time perception is almost incomprehensible. However, we do have a basis for comprehending it, as we already have some control over our perception of time. Spend an hour watching your favorite show and compare it to spending an hour staring at your computer mouse. Which one takes longer? From your perspective? Under the influence of certain psychoactive chemicals (be safe now!!!), you can sometimes experience quite radical shifts in time perception.

Experiencing time from different perspectives could give us new ways to study and understand what time is… I can’t even speculate on the ramifications… time travel?  Stopping time?  I know there is much research into time going on already, especially in the quantum physics world.

This is all speculation, really just an attempt to imagine the future, an attempt at greater understanding. But knowing that we have such wonderful mysteries to unpuzzle fills me with elation. The great conundrum of the unknown. That’s one thing religion can’t offer, the unknown. Religion is all about knowing, stripping the ability to wonder away from people. Wherever a non-theist sees remarkable unknowns to probe and study, a theist sees God. I have to say I kinda feel bad for them.

Time, and it’s passing is one of the most fascinating unknowns, in my opinion. It is often referred to as another dimension, or the fourth dimension, which makes sense, in a way. We often refer to spacetime, because the two are inextricably linked, though we all know there is some fundamental difference in how we experience the two. You have to move through time in order to move through any of the three spacial dimensions. However, it seems to me that there is something fundamental about our understanding of time that is missing. And that’s great. I wonder how long it will take us to figure it out.

This is my new year. The middle of the summer is my birthday, and it used to be the divider between grades, so this time of year has always felt that way to me. This has always been my new year.

From tomorrow until next Monday I’ll have barely any cellphone service, definitely no internet access, and probably some chemicals flowing through my system, though I’ll admit, I’m not really the type of person who ‘parties’ very hard. This ‘retreat’ gives me the most of both socialization (there are people everywhere, friends, friends of friends, stranger friends) and contemplation, because inside the solitude of my tent, and even with the distant beat of four or five different stages at nearly 24 hours of the day, my mind is rarely so calm and clear.

Shambhala is a vibrant, and I’ll admit, sometimes overwhelming display of the human spirit. People there are rarely afraid to talk to strangers, they’ll make eye contact, we don’t know what it is, but when we’re there, we all understand it (anyone who’s ever done mushrooms or acid knows that feeling…), even if that understanding is sometimes fleeting, forever striving for it allows each new experience to teach me something. And shambhala is an experience I look forward to every year.

peace. be back on monday :)

and while I’m away don’t be scared to share any of these video’s and posts with your friends.

That snapshot taken an hour after I posted this tweet:

Strangely does not include any tweets that didn’t occur between 4 and 5 hours ago (except mine, in tiny writing, which only appears because it’s MY tweet, not as a search result). Nor does it include any tweets posted by people who had anything intelligent to say, or didn’t have 420 in their name…

And they say they “can’t bring up any older tweets”, but mine is not old. It’s new. Just strange.

Could be a coincidence, Twitter’s servers are constantly going down all over the place. It’s really unreliable sometimes, but this seems strange to me. Anyways, could be a lot of things (tech glitch, maybe nobody is using that hash tag… whatever), just thought it was interesting, and as my post title says, ironic.

I truly believe that right now, we can’t exist without our physical bodies because the information in our brains (biological computers) can’t be copied. Not yet. But that’s really all we are, information. Memories, emotions, patterns of behaviour. Once we can access that information, interface with our computers, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to back up that information. Perhaps ‘run the program’ in one of billions of possible digital environments, we can literally create new world to explore. Extend the existence of our ‘selves’ past where our physical body can take us. Not through magic, but using technology. Not through some unknowable greatness, but through our own ingenuity.

Even through all the war and genocide rampaging across our planet, I can’t help but be humbled by the people who plunge on, continuing to discover new things, adding to the growing base of human knowledge. And once people can stop wasting their times at jobs manufactured to sustain a dying system, they’ll be able to collaborate on ideas and to create and study without the disgusting restrictions put on researchers by patents, and on artists by copyrights. The speed at which we would flourish could be astounding.

He wrote this amazing essay, as “Mr. X” (having to hide his name for fear of committing public and career suicide), about his own personal marijuana use and he even mentions that it helped with some of his scientific insights.
link to his essay

Here are a few video’s from youtube, if you’re like me, and are too young to remember him being on TV, and don’t know who I’m talking about.

-oh wow I just finished watched this one again as I searched for it on youtube. all the shit that we do to each other… i don’t know, this video just puts things into perspective.

-Carl on his PBS show ‘Cosmo’s’ explaining the fourth dimension.