The time you put into reading this isn't free

Chris Anderson’s follow up to his revolutionary The Long Tail (2006, Hyperion) has me reminded of Thomas Friedman for geeks. Stuff that people younger than 25 get naturally but that CEOs and VCs can read and say, “wow, that internets is so amazing!”

Free (2009, Hyperion) sets out to cover new ground in describing the economics of Free but ends up merely relaying interesting case studies and taking a “Gee Whiz” approach to the topic. Anderson states early in the book, “An economy had emerged around Free before the economic model that could describe it” (p.4) And that’s why I’m so disappointed. The Free economy has been well established for the entirety of human history through indigenous societies before Chris Anderson put it all into this singular book. That’s not to say the book isn’t entertaining or that it isn’t a valuable place to read about the history of Free, merely that Anderson’s brillance which shined through in The Long Tail fails to show up in Free with any groundbreaking predictions or observations.

I learned a few things from this book, “the annual deflation rate of the digital world is 50%” (p. 13) and that King Gilette could sell so many razors because he was willing to give them away.  However, from one King to another, Anderson is completely oblivious (as are most neo-classical economists) to the role of energy in the economy. M. King Hubbert’s theory of peak oil production fails to get a single mention and that’s surprising given that the economy derived from cheap oil is the operating system enabling our ability to trade privacy for the Google server farms that eat massive loads of energy to provide us with free word processing and email storage.  Anderson devotes almost two whole pages to the environmental cost of Free (p.226) by addressing the Tragedy of the Commons and stating that “simple economics” has the ability to incorporate the negative externalities ensuring that, “wasting bits will not have the environmental cost of wasting atoms .” The digital economics that Anderson spells out can only last as long as we have inexpensive oil and natural gas running the entire infrastructure of globalization. Semiconductors might represent the triumph of brains over brawn or the, “overthrow of matter in the economy.” (p.83) but if we don’t have the energy to mine coal or buy a barrel of oil for less than $150 USD then I’m sure we’ll be concerned with many other investment strategies than talking about a post-scarcity economy online.

I received  the greatest excitement out of this book when Anderson began addressing Lewis Hyde’s concept of the Gift Economy (p.183) and applying it to interactions on the web. We do a lot of the things we do online because it allows us to contribute in a meaningful way to a community, since all our real-world communities have died in the throes of suburban isolation and dispassionate consumerism. However, many of the actions Anderson assigns to a Gift Economy, like the writing of Amazon and IMDB reviews could equally be chalked up to ego. So I would recommend that you read Free if you’ve got the time, but time isn’t free.

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Post tags: economics, technology

The Shock Doctrine Short Film
by redblog

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Post tags: economy, video

Even though I’m sufficiently aware of the information behind Peak Oil and the oil age’s connection to rapid global population growth, I found Hartmann’s summary of this topic to be one of the best introductions available. Representing the world as varying forms of ancient sunlight is a powerful analogy that can introduce even the most encapsulated thinkers to holistic systems thinking. It reminded me of the idea that innovation can either be built on success of the past or borrowed from the future. Hartmann provides all the facts and figures necessary to demonstrate that the majority of our current lifestyle is dependent on the ancient sunlight of the past, stored in dense forms like oil and coal. Our depletion of this resource has borrowed even the most basic support systems from the future.

Yet, how can we be in a situation that is so dire yet everything looks so good? (Even though a lot of this has changed since Hartmann updated the book in 2004, because in 2009/2010 things are starting to look quite bad.) Ancient Sunlight explains that our modern industrial civilization is living off its startup capital, like a company that is building a lavish office without pushing a sustainable business model. We are blind to problems underlying economic systems and infrastructure because we don’t have to as long as we are growing, much like the enthusiasm behind a ponzi scheme before it falls apart. The severity of this situation cannot be iterated enough. An example is in human slavery, the dense form of energy we have now gives us access to hundreds of energy slaves that can drive our cars and light our houses, without this it would take many humans to do equivalent work. Coupled with collapses in biodiversity, water shortages, widespread desertification because of climate changes, and massive cutbacks in forest cover are presenting our species with a decade of significant change afoot.

Analyzing how we got here is a useful way to build a model for the future. By looking at historical examples of global cultures Ancient Sunlight draws a distinction between Younger Cultures and Older Cultures. Hartmann explains how younger cultures are warlike, agressive and obsessed with superiority while older cultures are filled with respect, integration and conservation. A poignant example is how the two cultures handle diversity, younger cultures seeking integration and dissolution of ” the other” while older cultures respect and encourage individual expressions of a cultural identity.

The younger culture is a culture of control, gaining power through its current incarnations with the powerful drugs of television and general entertainment, just two of the things that completely disconnect us from our natural environment and our birthright as humans. Hartmann provides an all encompassing look at the stories we tell ourselves about our culture, i.e. that we are separate from the world, that it is our destiny to subdue the world, get yours before anyone else can. Constrast these examples with the older culture stories, i.e that we are part of the world, that we must cooperate with the rest of nature.

Much of this comes from our view that natives were lazy and stupid, falsehoods that are overturned by even a cursory study of the accounts from ethnographers, whether of brilliant pharmacological solutions to illness in the Amazon or of the technology of the !Kung tribes which allowed them to work less than 20 hours a week. Cooperation is revealed as the basis for a new paradigm, a better society encompassed by this statement from Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Ultimately Hartmann concludes that our private practices of raising awareness and informing ourselves of these problems can lead to an empowered group ready to provide leadership as our industrial civilization loses its control. After practicing years of meditation myself, I couldn’t agree more on a better way to start. Quiet time for reflection has led me to immense personal and universal truths. After reading The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight I can see this practice has done the same for Hartmann.

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Post tags: economic growth, economy, humanity, peak oil, technological program

The Vanishing of a Species?

While I’ve read many books on the problems facing humanity, Geologist Dr. Peter Greetner’s The Vanishing of  a Species? was a unique experience. Published posthumously by his son Nick, The Vanishing of a Species? is a look at the problems of the mid to late 1970s that ironically we still face almost forty years later.  In dealing with the destructive nature of our actions as human beings, Greetner summarizes problems facing our species and clearly states that without a revolution in the human approach to problems, we are headed for a massive culling in population and maybe even extinction. Not exactly cheerful stuff. I’m still far from convinced that humanity will perish from the Earth, however I’m not too optimistic about civilization.

This book is quite valuable because of the approach Dr. Greetner took to academic culture and its role in the current crises. Beginning with a recap of C.P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures”, the fundamental lecture that defined the problems with modern education’s division of  the humanities and the sciences, Greetner builds off this foundation by addressing issues within the North American educational model.  His recommendations are relevant to today’s academic society and his critiques are still pertinent. Core to Greetner’s commentary on education is that the focus on specialization causes and exacerbates modern challenges. Because our predicaments are largely a result of lacking awareness,  few ever gain a broad perspective because they lack an all-encompassing education. Academics are largely unwilling to debate the relevance of their work and this lack of dialogue is reducing the effectiveness of university research. In essence, it all starts with the role of the individual students in the university system failing to understand that being “educated” is more a state of mind than the result of receiving a piece of paper after four or more years of academic study. I was particularly receptive to Greetner’s comments on engineers, “Engineers…are asked to only complete a few outside options in order to gradate. That the concept does not work is amply demonstrated by the thousands of university graduates in North America whose interest in anything beyond their specialty and sports is virtually nil.” The focus on specialization is not only intellectually lazy but has become dangerous.

Much of the book reads like an angry blog, bordering between rant and enlightenment, each chapter only a few pages long. The reason for the frustration is clear however, even today Greetner’s approaches have been ignored and we suffer because of it. Regardless of the overall tone, I had a hard time putting this book down, it was immensely entertaining… at least as entertaining as books about the extinction of humanity can be.

Greetner’s manuscripts were published, as his son stated, without touching his Father’s original words. This is where the book meets its major downfall. The chapter on women in society is not only offensive but undermines the conversation started by the book. The chapter on China is completely outdated. While the inclusion of  these sections provide a complete portrait of Greetner’s views they ultimately linger like a bad aftertaste.

I’m afraid we may never see Greetner’s revolution in human thought before civilization falls apart but even as things unravel, books like The Vanishing of a Species? are an important contribution to our heritage as a species. By knowing that even in 1970s people were seriously considering the effects of over-reliance on oil, peak access to energy and environmental depletion we have an invaluable legacy for generations of the future. I hear Dr. Greetner loud and clear when he’s telling us that he saw the problems we’re only now recognizing and tried to raise awareness of them through his teaching and writings.  Acknowledging these problems now may be as Charles Eisenstein says in Ascent of Humanity, like a drunk’s moments of clarity on the way down, but at the least we can create a legacy our  future society can build upon.

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Post tags: humanity, modern education

Indra's Net by Robin Robertson

Self-transformation is the most important challenge we face as humans. The growing complexity of modern crises require a new breed of human thinking that few are willing to embrace.  Because of these challenges, I was intrigued by the idea of Dr. Robin Robertson’s Indra’s Net, combining the mathematics of chaos theory and the mythological language of alchemy to serve as models for an individual transformational path. Few embark on this path and many who do are bogged down by approaches that are too often steeped with pseudoscience or empty metaphors. In walking my own path, I’ve tried to focus on readings that pay special attention to the development of the higher self while avoiding the language of  “self-help” or scientific concepts evoked with little understanding. Much of the mystique surrounding our modern perception of alchemy is primarily because we view alchemy as a primitive ill-informed version of chemistry. By dispelling this myth early on in Indra’s Net, Robertson removed my concerns that his book would be innocuous commentary on the human condition decorated with fanciful mysticism. Even Isaac Newton, who viewed the scientific world as one of absolutes, used alchemical models to reveal the dynamic processes defining our world. Alchemy has always been a process of transforming Man, a constant process of refining the individual to reveal the “golden” potential, not transforming Pb into Au. While alchemy was an ancient method of modeling the dynamics of the human condition, chaos theory is the modern equivalent of modeling dynamic realities. When combined, alchemy and chaos math reveal many nuances critical to our growth as we seek to express our authentic human nature. The use of  mythological symbols are highly relevant because they represent the mechanisms of the unconscious as much now as they did in the past.

I was particularly struck by Robertson’s description of the uroboros, the deeply ingrained archetype of the snake eating its own tail, to represent the process of feeding back information into the individual for a constant transformational process. The uroboros represents that the end is contained within the beginning, all too often we transform over a lifetime to find our inner child looking right back at us in the mirror. Additionally, when examining feedback as a model for transformation we see that there is no short way to subtend the process, we must work over the same issues a a deeper and deeper level.  By seeking to transcend our current broken state we fail to probe the depths of human existence. Trying to amputate the dark sides of our nature we are like a rope that continually cuts its end off, the rope gets shorter and shorter, and as a human we become shallower and shallower. The full spectrum of human existence must be appreciated in its entire context.

the uroboros

In addition to feedback, Indra’s Net adapts emergence onto the path of personal challenge. Striving to adapt our lives to specific equations for success is a common focus for modern humans. Go to college + get a job + gain skills = make more and more money. Yet at some undetermined point everything can, and usually does change without any specific reason. Building a network of probability through interactions with an external world only increases the opportunity for our inner self to emerge at a spontaneous point. If we think life will continue down a pre-determined route, ignoring the little dissatisfaction accumulating underneath, they eventually emerge into a devastating climax. This manifests commonly as the stereotypical midlife crisis in American culture but we all undergo many such crises (but at smaller magnitudes) on a frequent basis.

I was impressed with Robertson’s writing and the succinctness of his message, at 147 pages Indra’s Net covers all its bases but doesn’t drone on unnecessarily like many books in the genre of self-work. At a time when many in the US have opportunities to re-evaluate their presence at 40+ hour a week jobs where making money means doing something with little fulfillment, Indra’s Net can provide the tools for recognizing the inner self.

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Post tags: humanity, transformation

Stanislov Grof's first book

Maybe we have to be born with an interest in the origin of consciousness, where it resides and how it operates, I’m one of those people. No explanation garnered by science, religion, mystics, or from indigenous wisdom has ever fully approximated what I’ve seen in the world. Transpersonal psychologist Stanislov Grof’s first book, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research (Dutton, 1976) reveals many fascinating accounts relayed from his personal experience while conducting hundreds of LSD sessions with patients. Grof offers his comments on what the trends of these experiences hint at, frankly admitting in the epilogue that such outlandish comments will draw harsh commentary from peers, but is wise in saying that omitting them will only continue the retardation of humanity’s ability to understand the final frontier: the human mind.

Grof discovered from working with patients suffering particular neuroses that a condensed experience brought about by ingesting a few hundred micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide can induce profound healing experiences allowing people to transcend even lifelong problems. Many of the accounts are quite gruesome as Grof is working with some particularly psychotic people, he spares no details and I felt my gut wrench as descriptions of rapes, abuse, war scenes poured from the pages. However hard these accounts were to read, it was the very ability to relive these experiences (sometimes even from the perspective of others at the scene) that allowed the patients to ultimately improve.

The description of the power and capabilities of this condensed experience (COEX) framework  makes up a large portion of the book. Grof notes that these highly symbolic psychodynamic experiences consist of material originating in the human unconscious. However, time after time, Grof wondered about the accuracy of  the scenes and situations described by his patients reliving these condensed experiences. In those cases where he could follow up, he did so and confirmed that sometimes the details were quite exact.  For example, a patient named Dana described a traumatic event that occurred when she around 12 months of age. Dana drew elaborate images of the room she was in at that time, including the patterns of embroideries. Grof independently followed up with Dana’s mother and learned that the mother found Dana’s description bristling with accuracy. The room was described almost photographically by Dana and was, “unquestionable because of the very unusual character of the furniture and some of the objects involved.”  There was no way Dana could have known this because before Dana was two years old, the family moved  and the house was condemned, torn down and the furniture and objects weren’t retained. There were no photographs of the room and the mother didn’t recall ever mentioning anything from that room to Dana.

Another interesting observation Grof passes on is that repeated LSD sessions almost always led to the patient reliving his or her birth and various trauma associated with the birthing process. Patients would describe thoughts, feelings, and toxins that were passed to them by their mother while in the womb and in rare cases described exact scenarios their mother faced.  Grof is highly skeptical (as I think we all should be) that the perinatal experience can pass on such a multitude of information to the eventual individual, forming the bases for neuroses and locking in patterns of life however there is a significant amount of evidence that (at the least) should amplify the significance of a birth.

The transpersonal, mystical and multidimensional experiences  patients faced with quite regularity after reliving a birth experience were highly interesting. Grof breaks these phenomena into multiple categories: ancestral experiences, collective and racial experiences, past incarnation experiences, procognition/time travel, out of body experiences, ego transcendence, space travels, telepathy, animal/plant/planetary/extraplanetary consciousness, encounters with extradimensional intelligences/entities, intuitive understandings of universal symbols and consciousness of the universal mind. He then proceeds by laying out accounts describing these particular scenarios. The final two chapters which include these accounts are sometimes shocking but thoroughly mind blowing. One example: the ability for a patient to assume specific advanced yogic poses despite not even knowing what yoga is. To summarize these experiences would be to completely strip them of any comprehension so its best to watch Grof’s videos on YouTube. I was continually amazed by the ability of patients to describe complex mythological sequences from obscure religions (ex. ahura mazda v ahriman from Zoroastrianism) or when patients described traumatic experiences from their parent’s early childhood they had no way of knowing (but that Grof could confirm through follow-up with parents). Reading over these accounts seems to point to some sort of collective mind, encoded in our DNA or accessible in altered states of consciousness, something like the morphic fields Dr. Rupert Sheldrake has been working on. Equally amazing were the detailed accounts of alternate universes and the beings within.

Realms of the Human Unconscious indicates that the human mind is not only our most powerful asset but also our most underused asset as we rarely develop it. Perhaps consciousness is like a radio station we’ve tuned into for the time being, by modifying the receptors in our brains we can temporarily turn the dial on the radio hardware, allowing us to pick up a different signal. As Grof states early in the book, “It does not seem inappropriate and exaggerated to compare their [psychoactive drugs] potential significance for psychiatry and psychology to that of the microscope for medicine or the telescope for astronomy.” I find it deplorable that society has been unable to build much on Grof’s work in the last 33 years and this inability to accept responsibility for our unconscious is clearly leading to global complexity our current technology can no longer handle.

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Post tags: brain chemistry, human beings, neurology, psychology

David Grann's account of the legendary explorer Fawcett

As my parents read aloud the story of Arctic explorer Ernest Shackelton on his disastrous journey to the Antarctic during my childhood, I was forever biased towards the world of adventure. A vivid imagination in my little head recreated the peril those men faced in the cold and hopeless situations and that peril became the definition by which I must judge any adventure story, especially one about a British guy charging off into the unknown. I carried all this imagery into The Lost City of Z, New Yorker Contributor David Grann’s first book. Grann’s resume of writing for the New Yorker has him uniquely prepared to retell the life of legendary explorer Percy Fawcett and his eventual disappearance in the Amazon Jungle. Writing on topics as far ranging as giant squid hunts and the political world can load any man with the ammo for storytelling. This diversity of interests and the ability to weave a story shows through in the pages of The Lost City of Z.

Bitten by the same bug that caused so many to follow in Fawcett’s doomed footsteps, Grann sets off to retrace the journey of a final expedition that riveted the world… the quest for the lost headquarters of an ancient civilization centered in an unexplored Amazon. Fortunately, Grann avoids inserting himself too often in the story, detracting from the excitement of Fawcett’s life. Percy Fawcett needs no embellishment, the details of his life are adapted and construed to make fictional adventurers entertaining.

From Percy Fawcett’s beginnings as an explorer to his early mind bending quests to map the border of Bolivia and Brazil, every quest is told in gritty detail. The terrors of the Amazon came in many forms, like the electric eels (puraque) that send 650 volts through their victims where, “one shock is sufficient to paralyze and drown a man-but the way of the puraque is to repeat the shocks to make sure of its victim.” or the piranhas that, “will rend and devour alive any wounded man or beast; for blood in the water excites them to madness.” Malaria, Fawcett’s breakneck pace, starvation, infection of wounds, mosquitoes, violent natives were  just a few of the ways the Amazon killed off expedition members. The inhumanity of the landscape led many to think that no civilization could survive on such harsh terrains, but Fawcett thought otherwise. Over his many expeditions from 1906 to his final expedition in 1925 he pieced together the clues that led him to believe an ancient civilization was based somewhere in the Amazon and that he was destined to find it. Fawcett was a rebel in many forms: he fought notions that “unsophisticated non-whites” could build a civilization in the Amazon and he worked with Madame Blavatsky as she formed the early Theosophical Society rebelling against the spiritual oppression of the time. Fawcett had a tremendous respect for the native Amazonians, they were masters of the local environment. When an expeditioner was struck with maggots, “The Echojas would make a curious whistling noise with their tongues, and at once the grub’s head would issue from the blowhole… the Indian would give the sore a quick squeeze and the invader was ejected.” Other fascinating accounts include how the Indians would make noises to draw monkeys out of the trees that were quickly subdued for a fast meal. I’m thinking this was like a native version of McDonalds.

My favorite parts of the book are the excerpts from Fawcett’s journals and those of his expedition members like an accompanying naturalist that wrote, “my body mass of bumps from insect bits, wrist and hands swollen from bits of tiny gnats. 2 nights with almost no sleep-simply terrible… my shoes have been soaked since starting…worst ticks so far…my first experience with flesh and carrion-eating bees.”

Or when Fawcett wrote, “The animals staggered forward, out of breath, their noses bleeding from a lack of oxygen… ‘a mule’s load would often knock the animal screaming over the precipices,’ “

Ultimately though, it was all about the final expedition that captivated the world and ending with Fawcett’s disappearance along with his son. A mystery which was never solved. Grann recounts all the various theories and the available evidence adding his own experience with the Kalapalo tribe. After meeting with the Kalapalo tribes, Grann learns that they passed down an oral history about Fawcett. This oral tradition said that Fawcett and his party had stayed at their village and then left, heading towards “fierce Indians”  the Kalapalos warned them of. The Kalapalo people eventually saw Fawcett’s nightly campfire disappear. Fawcett often walked into arrow fire from vicious tribes to offer gifts of peace, but perhaps in this scenario he was finally conquered. Ironically, recent work from archeologists in the area have begun to reveal evidence for networks of roads and oral histories a city that could be the Lost City of Z Fawcett so desperately hoped to find.

David Grann’s account of Fawcett’s struggles and disappearance brought back all the childhood excitement of Shackelton’s adventures and that’s all I need in a great historical account of an expedition.

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Post tags: adventure, explorers, history

restructuring society based on science

Like the current era, the United States of the mid-70’s and early 80’s were tinged with a new batch of thinkers making strong cases for the reorganization of society. Interestingly, this period corresponds to the time when the United States peaked in domestic oil production. Economic growth slowed to a crawl and people were considering social alternatives before the aggressive economic policies and financial deregulation of the 80’s and 90’s led to the creation of financial accumulation instead of growth in wealth, distracting those seriously considering alternatives to economic growth and the industrial production/consumer infrastructure that had defined modernism in the period after World War II. Fritjof Capra’s The Turning Point falls into the aforementioned category of ideas that were ripe at the time they were published and then pushed by the wayside when rampant domestic economic growth supported by global tolerance of the US Dollar allowed massive trade deficits to accumulate, creating the illusion of prosperity.

Now that the economic illusion of the last three decades has started to fade, The Turning Point was an eerie read.  Capra’s commentary on a number of trends for a future where humanity adhered to the outdated paradigm of prosperity only from growth, a biomedical paradigm centered on eradicating microorganisms and a science based on specialization and determinism are revealing themselves in the headlines. Dr. Capra, a theoretical physicist by training and practice, was wise to integrate a holistic view of humanity and to offer an alternative for society that perhaps we’ve only now wizened enough to appreciate. Key to his thesis is the idea that our world,  our governments and our scientists operate as if the deterministic paradigm of the Enlightenment period hasn’t changed. Ignoring the reality of relativity, quantum mechanics, chaos theory, biology and modern science has crippled society from the truth of the natural world. We’ve forgotten that nature does not guarantee our existence! In providing an all encompassing critique of society, Capra does not seek to denigrate the colleagues in other fields but merely to offer a well reasoned and referenced approach to modernizing the way we choose to organize our species.

Starting by providing the background of why we need to change, essentially the problem statement, Capra states the  crises of society and defines the importance of the Chinese concept of wu wei, the idea that we must refrain from action contrary to nature. As Chuang Tzu says, “Nonaction does not mean doing nothing and keeping silent. Let everything be allowed to do what it naturally does, so that its nature will be satisfied.”

“In all these fields the limitations of the classical, Cartesian world view are now becoming apparent. To transcend the classical models, scientists will have to go beyond the mechanistic and reductionist approach as we have done in physics, and develop holistic and ecological views. Although their theories will need to be consistent with those of modern physics, the concepts of physics will generally not be appropriate as a model for the other sciences… Scientists will not need to be reluctant to adopt a holistic framework for fear of being unscientific. Modern physics can show them that such a framework is not only scientific but is in agreement with the most advanced scientific theories of physical reality.” (p. 49)

Capra continues by describing a history of the old world view, the mechanistic reductionist approach that has led to our current predicament. The history of our materialistic success and the limits to our knowledge of the world is retraced through Copernicus, Descartes, Bacon and Newton. This approach has led to a world where, in the words of R.D. Laing as quoted by Capra, “Out go sight, sound, taste, touch and smell and along with them has since gone aesthetics and ethical sensibility, values, quality, form; all feelings, motives, intentions, soul, consciousness, spirit. Experience as such is cast out of the realm of scientific discourse.” (p.55)

The Turning Point then follows the development of the new physics that started in 1905 when Einstein published his papers on the photoelectric effect and the theory of General Relativity. The photoelectric effect winning the 1921 Nobel Prize and laying the groundwork for quantum mechanics, leading to Heisenberg’s discovery of the Uncertainty Principle, an actual physical concept that there are limits to knowledge. Later, Schrodinger’s work in demonstrating the electrons and protons that we visualize as balls on a pool table are actually probability clouds, that the foundation of reality is a probability. This work led to John Bell’s discovery that our physical reality is subject to non-local phenomena… that the measurement of the spin of a particle in one location will change the spin of a particle in another location, the “spooky action at a distance” that is beginning to make our world look more like one envisioned by the alchemists (well… maybe alchemists like Isaac Newton). And now we’ve discovered that these non-local connections may be responsible for many basic actions in biology like memory and even consciousness.

While physicists were busy revolutionizing our outlook on the fundamentals of the universe, the mechanistic paradigm of the past had already taken hold on the methods of every other field. Our biologists had taken a mechanistic view of life. From a biology textbook quoted by Capra, “One of the acid tests of understanding an object is the ability to put it together from its component parts. ” (Capra p. 102) An approach that ironically is quite opposed to the study of life. We’ve now realized that the mapping of the human genome has yielded many beautiful computer models but little else. The biomedical model which concentrates on the mechanisms of smaller and smaller fragments of the body has yielded an approach that views disease as, “the malfunctioning of biological organisms which are studied from the point of view of cellular and molecular biology; the doctor’s role is to intervene, either physically or chemically, to correct the malfunctioning of a specific mechanism.” (p.123) The ingestion of many chemicals and execution of complicated surgeries has resulted in ever rising health care costs, and while saving many lives has primarily served as an excuse for lifestyles that run counter to human nature. “We prefer to talk about our children’s hyperactivity or learning disability rather than examine the inadequacy of our schools; we prefer to be told that we suffer from hypertension rather than change our over-competitive business world; we accept ever increasing rates of cancer rather than investigate how the chemical industry poisons our food to increase its profits.” (p.163)

In psychology, Capra advocated that the rational approach of Freudian analysis would need to be transcended to explore the subtler aspects of the human psyche. The incorporation of altered states of consciousness into mainstream psychological studies could yield insights into our human predicament. I’d like to summarize more here but this is a dense critique of many psychologists.

Capra’s exception to economics is that we’ve mechanistically reduced people into rational actors, using our education systems to produce a standardized robot class with predictable consumer society that ignores collective values and the psychological need for community. Key to this chapter is the point that the advantages won by the worker in the modern world is generally to the detriment of workers and citizens in the developing world… the great sleight of hand trick made possible by technology and economy. The automation of daily life through complex technologies reduces employment and centers on a capital based approach which is highly inflationary, an economic reality that can be seen by looking at charts of US Dollar inflation over the last hundred years. This section is the most important of the entire book and highly relevant to our current situation.

Capra then follows these critiques with answers for each field through a systems view of life that incorporates feedbacks and recognition of evolution through cooperation. A health model that acknowledges holistic principles and a psychology grown from Jung can provide a basis for this new society. Tackling energy, Capra explains the physics and the economics behind our immediate need for a solar economy.

I’ve tried to summarize all 419 pages but so much has slipped through the cracks. While it is easy to view the predicaments of the current global situation, Capra’s writings aren’t the least bit outdated and a specifically resonant with its solutions. If you are disheartened by the problems of overpopulation, energy crises, etc… (the list can go on forever) do yourself a favor and read the solutions Capra advocates in The Turning Point.

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Post tags: humanity, optimism, society

Dark Lore volume 1 is the first entry in a fascinating series

I’ve always been the sort of person that sought out the books on Bigfoot, UFOs or Terrence McKenna before reading through The Kite Runner or various Grisham novels (you know… the mainstream stuff). Something about the weird and strange, no matter how implausible,  has always appealed to me. Partially this interest has developed from personal experiences with UFO sightings and other bizarre things outside normal explanations for reality. But the primary reason for my fascination is that deep inside I feel there is far more to be experienced than most people ever know. Cracks in the official explanations for reality show through on the fringes of society. We dull ourselves down through constant exposure to culture, but several hundred years ago we would have been thankful for visitations from our ancestors or discussions with plants. As the intelligence officer Major Murphy told Dr. Jacques Vallee on p.74 of Messengers of Deception regarding the failure for science to incorporate the price of information , “[In science] Suppose I gave you 95% of the data concerning a phenomenon. You’re happy because you know 95% of the data. I know that this is the cheap part of the information. I still need the other 5% but I will have to pay a much higher price to get it!”  Dark Lore is about that other 5%.

Dark Lore Volume 1 is the first of a now four volume series containing articles from the leading writers of fringe science. Edited by Greg Taylor, creator of the alternative news site The Daily Grail. In Dark Lore Volume 1, Greg has enlisted some of my favorite authors: Paul Devereux, Mitch Horowitz, John Higgs, Nick Redfern, Adam Gorightly Daniel Pinchbeck, Michael Prescott and Loren Coleman. If you follow the fields of heretical thought you’ll be familiar with these names. I would recommend this book as an antidote to someone that has been exposed to mostly bland explanations of reality.

I enjoyed all the essays in the book but I’ll provide a quick summary of the ones that really stood out, denoting my absolute favorites.

Michael Prescott analyzed how an obsession with the paranormal can drive people insane citing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one of the most notable examples of a man driven mad by the etheric. Greg Taylor’s essay on the common audible experiences across various border phenomena was truly fascinating. Why do people reporting alien abductions, near death experiences, psychedelic experiences, OBEs, etc… all report similar sounds triggering the altered state of consciousness? Robert M. Schoch’s description of being a rogue Egyptologist was disheartening, why do academics reject  so much quantitative and archeological evidence towards an alternative approach to Egyptian history? Daniel Pinchbeck’s piece provided a fantastic history of Terrence and Dennis McKenna’s ingestion of psychedelic mushrooms and their contribution to the Timewave Zero phenomena and the 2012 hype. Susan B. Martinez challenged typical explanations of literary inspiration by relaying paranormal experiences from authors like Wilde, Poe, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Woolf, Tennison and more. Loren Coleman provided a coherent look at how any information about Bigfoot gets blown out of proportion by the mainstream media. John Higgs provided one of my favorite essays from the book, looking at similarities between Aliester Crowley and Dr. Timothy Leary. Michael E. Tymn recounted the fascinating encounters of linguist professor Neville Whymant with a medium that channeled ancient Chinese claiming to be the spirit of Confucius. Mitch Horowitz penned an entertaining history of Ouija in America. The Emperor laid out evidence that connects many Bigfoot experiences with UFOs (much more convincing than you might think). Mike Jay discussed the ritual use of psychedelic substances in ancient Peru using archeological evidence. My favorite essay was from Michael Grosso who provided some fascinating studies and personal accounts of how the moment of death points towards an afterlife (this one is worth the price of the book alone). To close out the collection, Adam Gorightly discussed the ritual magicians of the late 1800s/early 1900s and how their experiences parallel the beings contacted in UFO experiences… did they let something in?

Overall, the entire collection was incredibly strong. If you want to be bombarded with a world you never knew existed… or if you want to expand your knowledge of the unknown I would highly recommend this collection. I’ll look forward to the time when I can pick up Dark Lore Volume 2.

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: border phenomena, fringe science, mysterious

Politics and the Occult by Gary Lachman

“The larger the mass in movement, the stronger the effect of irrational impulses, the more powerfully the soul’s innermost currents begin to roar… the instinctive forces are reinforced under the influence of comrades striving for the the same good.” – Rudolf Bode

The occult and its societies have dropped away from accepted scientific method and society starting with the advent of Cartesian dualism and its influx throughout modern history signified by the Enlightenment, separating superstition and the spiritual from the material. Yet, while this occlusion of the spiritual grew there have been many behind the scenes of political movements that either secretly or openly engaged with the spirit world. Esoteric historian Gary Lachman has pieced together a comprehensive survey of the modern intertwining of the occult and the political  in his latest book, Politics and the Occult.

Lachman begins his recounting of occult political influence by recounting the mysteries of the Rosicrucians and the many with influence over kings, queens and monarchical society that identified with Rosicrucian ideas. When the pamphlets from the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross hit Germany in 1614, it began the modern concept of the secret society, a group that may be in or outside of the nation’s government aiming to have political influence and espousing illuminated politics. Illuminated politics being a political approach that has a religious complexion and obeys a transcendental scale of values.

Perhaps the most historically notorious connections between the occult and politics are through the legacy of the Masons. The primary vitriol against the Freemasons being inspired by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion published in Russia in 1905 which has since been debunked but remains the fuel for many right wing hate groups to this day. Linking the Freemasons to the Jews and communism, the Protocols inspired people from Hitler to American Conspiracy Theorist James Shelby Downard. Perhaps the most obvious links between the Freemasons and political systems are through their symbolisms in the Great Seal of the United States and on the US currency. But more subtle links between the US and Freemasonry may have existed, Lachman discusses that  many European Freemasons saw the concepts of brotherhood, tolerance and the rights of man becoming real, Freemasonic generals chose to take special care that the US became independent from Britain.

The occult groups most feared and invoked by conspiracy theorists like William Cooper (who is responsible for much of the conspiracy theory mindset of the last 20 years), focus on a coming New World Order enacted through the political influence of a swath of secret societies but none more responsible than the Illuminati. The Illuminati were founded in Germany on May 1st, 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, a law professor who aimed to accelerate the adoption of Enlightenment ideals like science and atheism. What made the society strange were the means to its end, the use of occultism, religious belief and hierarchy to reach these goals. Weishaupt networked this group through various Masonic lodges in Europe aiming to remove princes and nations from the face of the earth so that, “the human race should attain its highest perfection, the capacity to judge itself.” Eventually the society collapsed after Masonic lodges distanced themselves from Weishaupt’s aims after Bavaria made all secret societies illegal in 1784.

I found the most fascinating part of the book to be the discussion of 19th-century occultist Saint-Yves d’Alveydre. After claiming to partake in astral travel to learn the secrets of Agartha, a secret city at the center of the earth, Saint Yves developed the concept of synarchy, the opposite of anarchy, the establishment of complete and total government, a government that functioned like the human body that divided its people to function like the human body. Saint-Yves’ visions were detailed in his published work but were immediately retracted after their publication. He kept one copy and the printer secretly held another. Why he destroyed them we may never know. Speculation may lead you to think that he revealed a secret world before the inhabitants wanted him to.

Growing from the concept of synarchy came Rudolph Steiner’s Threefoldness, the idea that since human bodies are composed of feeling, thinking and willing. Feeling being the breathing, circulation and heartbeat; Willing consisting of the metabolism and the limbs; Thinking being the head and nerve communications. The goal being the production of free individuals that were in a society supporting spiritual growth.

When most think occult politics, they think the overblown claims of Nazi Occultism and the Thule Society. To name a few, stories of Nazi mystic and dark rituals inspired the video game series Castle Wolfenstein and the comic book hero Hellboy. Some claims go so far to say that the entire Hitler led atrocities were undertaken to produce mass blood sacrifices that would open portals to other dark dimensions, dimensions which UFOs and the grey aliens emerged from. Lachman debunks these fantastical claims by laying down the actual (and much less colorful) history of the Thule society. The most surprising dark revelation for me had nothing to do with Nazi’s, it was that shamanistic scholar Eliade was connected with political violence in his home country of Romania.

Lachman closes the book with some of his own thoughts on “illuminated politics” in the current years. His concerns about American Fascism are not overblown or misplaced. When the majority of a country is expecting a rapture or deliverance from above, its desires could be easily manipulated by overzealous demagogues. With an economic downturn in the US looking more prolonged by the day, most signs of recovery ignore the masses of unemployed. When a society is desperate it may look to any alternative that combines religion with political solutions. The far-right is continually laughable but has gained eerie power as exemplified by the recent resignation of Obama’s Green Jobs Adviser Van Jones and the backlash against Obama’s school address. Combine these concerns with Jacques Vallée’s warnings of a UFO cult becoming a major religion and the next 20 years could be very interesting.

So now, I’m excited to read more about the occult influences on society and specifically on the United States… which is timely because after reading Mitch Horowitz’s essay on Ouija I discovered he just wrote a book on the Occult in America! Hooray!

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: history, occult, politics