This just-found quote points at the reason why we must be careful, why even this blogger must be careful, to live the life and experience the world (wu-wei) and to just sample (and sometimes observe) the advance of technology (extropy) — for what technology (name one!) can more easily improve our lives than our own determination to, let’s say, just walk for an hour every day and breathe in the natural air? Henry David Thoreau said it best…

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys,
which distract our attention from serious things.
They are but improved means
to an unimproved end.

“When you are content to be simply
yourself and don’t compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.”
- Lao Tzu

• Sleep, passivity, rest — these are all things which are neglected due to a fear of Nothingness.
• Nothing is more fertile than Emptiness.
• It’s not ‘You can’t have Something for Nothing’, it’s ‘You can’t have Something without Nothing’.
• That which is void is precisely Form. And that which is form is precisely Void.

OPENING STATEMENTS

Technology needs a soul injection.
Who’s gonna pay the price?

Technology needs a soul installation.
Who’s gonna pay with their life?

If we’re gonna talk about planting chips into our brains,
then first we’d really better talk about who’s using who…
’cause to me it seems an awful lot like tech is using you.

QUERIES AND QUESTIONS

→ → → → → → → → ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒
Fast Forward and we can see our souls being diluted…
⇐ ⇐ ⇐ ⇐ ⇐ ⇐ ⇐ ⇐ ← ← ← ← ← ← ← ←
Which way are we really moving? Everything has been distorted.
↔ ↔ ↔ ↔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ↔ ↔ ↔ ↔

SUMMATION

I’ve heard technology referred to as the 7th Kingdom of Life, read a book called “What Technology Wants”, and it got me thinking that we’d better ask ourselves what we want.

Because even though inventions beg and beg and beg to be invented, we’re the ones that decide in the end how it will be. And just like, say, with an Empire or a Nation, with any Kingdom we must always ask whether it’s got any soul, or even one bit or strand of moral fiber at all. So, does it? — Is this kingdom not lacking in soul?

And this we must continue to ask, because the (empty) Kingdom will, lacking any noble purpose, crumble from trying too quickly to build itself up to greater heights. And if it is truly a Kingdom of Life, then we probably don’t want it to fall at all…

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
Perfection of divinity
is everyone’s duty
Perfection of divinity
is everyone’s duty
♫
Don’t waste your time
livin’ for the vanity
We are creatures of faith
victims of destiny
which we create
♫
Now we living on a higher vibration
’cause we take it to the heights of creation
Now we living on a higher vibration
but we take it to the heights of creation, yeah…

You know what I’m talking ’bout
don’t tell me no
Baby I could scream and shout
But I won’t
♫
Listen to me now
Now we livin’ on a higher vibration
Then we take it to the heights of creation
♫
Let me take you little higher
And then you take me little higher
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

Tao De Ching #17: Rulers

The best rulers are scarcely known by their subjects;
The next best are loved and praised;
The next are feared;
The next despised:
They have no faith in their people,
And their people become unfaithful to them.

When the best rulers achieve their purpose
Their subjects claim the achievement as their own.

Largely consistent with modern educational philosophy: The students are the center, more so, each student his or her own center. The teacher is a loving conductor, adviser, and commentator. Management is essential, but only up to a certain threshold; individual autonomy dies under the iron fist.

“Am I part of the cure, or am I part of the disease?”

Don’t Fear the Singularity

By Ran Prieur, 2005

“The Singularity” is the biggest idea in techno-utopianism. The word is derived from black hole science — it’s the point at the core where matter has contracted to zero volume and infinite density, beyond the laws of time and space, with gravity so strong that not even light can escape. They apply the word to the future to suggest that “progress” will take us to a place we can neither predict, nor understand, nor return from.

At least they have their metaphors right: that our recent direction of change is about contraction, not expansion, and leads inescapably to collapse and a new world. Their fatal pride is in thinking they’ll like it. Basically, they think computers are going to keep getting better faster, until they surpass biological life, and we’ll be able to “upload” our consciousness into immortal robots or virtual reality heaven. The engine of this fantasy is the “acceleration,” which supposedly includes and transcends biological evolution, and is built into reality itself, destined to go forward forever.

The weakest part of their mythology is the part they take for granted. If civilization is part of evolution, it’s not like birds getting wings — it’s like the extinction of the dinosaurs, a global catastrophe that prunes the biosphere down to the roots so it can try something different. Civilization has been a great evolutionary event for bacteria and rats, who are leaping forward through human attempts to kill them. But it hasn’t been good for humans. We can only guess how people lived in the stone age, but most primitive people observed in historical times enjoy greater health, happiness, political power, and ease of existence than all but the luckiest civilized people. Even medieval serfs worked fewer hours than modern people, at a slower pace, and passed less of their money up the hierarchy. Even our medical system, everyone’s favorite example of beneficial “progress,” has been steadily increasing in cost, while base human health — the ability to live and thrive in the absence of a medical system — has been steadily declining.

Conversely, the strongest part of their mythology is where they focus all their attention, with careful and sophisticated arguments that there are no technical limits to miniaturization or the speed of information transfer. This is a bit like Easter Islanders saying there is no physical limit to how big they can make their statues — and since the statues keep getting bigger, they must be an extension of evolution, and will keep getting bigger forever. Meanwhile the last trees are being cut down…

Read the rest of this entry »