Turil
I am for youA self aware small world
A variety of studies and mathematics research suggests that the number of connections between one random individual human on this planet and another random human is no more than somewhere between 3 and 7. This is that classic idea of Six Degrees of Separation, for which Kevin Bacon and mathematician Paul Erdös were, separately, somewhat famous for. (Alas, I don’t think Bacon has an Erdös number, as you’re required to have authored an academic paper published in some accepted science journal to even have a chance…)
This means that the family tree of living human beings overlaps itself pretty tightly for a world so small that you probably know someone who knows someone who knows someone who lives in Zimbabwe and rides a bicycle to school.
Add this bit of serendipity to the fact that a large proportion of the human population has the ability to think at a fourth person perspective, for a systems thinking approach to viewing reality – where I can imagine what my friend’s friend’s friend thinks about the situation in the Gaza Strip – and with the majority of humans having at least third person perspective awareness – being able to think about what my friend’s friend on the other side of the planet is doing today – and you have a world where nearly every human is at least capable of being aware of how every other human (and many other people of other shapes and sizes and colors and material make-up) on the planet experiences life.
For those of us in the second half or so of the average human lifespan, over the age of 40, this means that we literally have the capacity to hold the entire world of humans in our minds at once, and not just in theory, but in practice as well, at a spiritual level of connection. And because of the internet, we can get a much more personal experience of what it’s like to be those individuals, including the folks in places that are very different from our own environment.
The Earth is literally becoming fully aware of itself.
The Earth is becoming conscious.
We might be not much more than a newborn, and not able to do much more than know what we want at a very basic level, and know a couple of things we enjoy at doing – making noise, looking at things, flailing around a lot, and discovering what our various parts can do – but we are emerging out of our fetal stage, finally…
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No matter who you are, or what you do, you fit in.
As I see it, reality is very likely to be what is essentially represented by Pascal’s pyramid: an increasingly complex pattern where individual elements continually divide and recombine, covering all the possible combinations.
The unique realities that each of us individual human consciousnesses experience is one circle of possibility, at an extremely detailed level of observation, while our own universe is itself a single circle of possibility on a much more general level of observation. And each species of Earthling is one single circle on a level of observation somewhere between the level of detail the universe as a whole is seen at and the level of detail an individual human, maple tree, or paramecium is seen at.
The more details we choose to separate reality into for observation, the more possibilities for variety we will see. This is why every single time we think we’ve sorted out what the smallest particle is, we find out that there are, in fact, more, even smaller parts. Every part can be observed to have elements that are more particle-like (structure, space, quantity, matter) and more wavelike (function, time, quality, energy), thus each part always has smaller parts of its own. So, the more detailed we observe reality, and ourselves, the more unique and diverse we realize everything must be. I may share somewhere around 99.9% of my genes with you, but after that, I’m just totally different! I’m even significantly different right now, on an atomic level, as compared to what I was when I wrote the previous sentence…
It seems that reality is all about the infinite exploration of possibility. If it’s possible, reality will create it. It might only last a tiny fraction of time in a tiny fraction of space, or it might last billions upon billions of eons and expand out over vast areas of space, relative to ourself, but if it can exist, it will. And that’s because, as we know from looking at the top of Pascal’s pyramid, the single element that encircles all of reality is defined by both the finite and linear radius, and by the infinite and non-linear π (pi).
Reality truly loves diversity, infinitely. And the further out we expand the radius of our awareness of reality, the more diversity we will encounter…
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You might also wish to see a previous post on Pascal’s triangle: Pascal’s Perspectives
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copyright laws, sharing, and freedom
I figure I’ll take this Blackout event to share my own practical and philosophical take on sharing, offering you all another perspective with which to talk to others who might be curious about what truly matters most when making decisions about who has the right to what when it comes to information, ideas, art and other intangible patterns of energy…
The question to ask, when making a decision about whether or not there should be laws and social support that either protect the right to freely share or prevent sharing of media, is:
Does this particular piece of media offer ideas that increase people’s physical, emotional, intellectual, and/or spiritual health? If so then the world will be a better place if it’s shared as widely as possible, and offered to everyone, unconditionally. If the media does not offer ideas that increase people’s health in any way, then it’s not important to share it with anyone.
The world needs everyone to be able to be their best, so that we can work together to solve our various problems more effectively, rather than constantly having to waste resources bickering against each other, and worrying about what the materially deficient of the world will do to the power and profit hoarders of the world, to try to regain some balance.
To ensure that the creators of good ideas and valuable media are supported in doing their pro-social work, we will set up easy to use voluntary contribution systems, where the creators can be offered money and other, more practical things that they need to be inspired to keep creating good stuff for the world.
Every website should have a donation button. Every creator of any sort should have a list of the things they are most in need of to do their best work, on a personal page somewhere, so that people can help them out directly. We can stop wasting money on public schools that pay administrators, teachers, and power-hungry unions regardless of whether or not the students are happy and learning what they most want to learn to achieve their greatest dreams, and start giving students and parents their portion of the school budget to use to thank the creators of the media they find most valuable to their learning.
And adults can be encouraged to consciously decide to spend their resources supporting only the media that they believe is most valuable, rather than being lazy and paying to let the mainstream profiteering corporation feed them whatever mind numbing crap they happen to have collected. Anyone who demands payment up front for their media is probably trying to scam you out of your money, and isn’t really expecting you to value it much. Those who offer their media for free, to anyone and everyone, has confidence that it’s going to be valuable to at least some, and believes that it’s better for the world to have their media spread. These are the people to look to for the best, most valuable ideas…
In short, the best things in life are free. Including ideas and the media that contain them. Support freedom of information, and support the creators of the best information, so that they can keep up the great work! :-)
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2012
This is it! The year it all changes. Maybe? Yes. Of course!
Self fulfilling prophesies of both endings of old ways and beginnings of new ways. Possibly predicted using curious knowledge of mathematical patterns, or possibly just coincidental, and/or possibly the placebo effect. One way or another it appears to be 2012 will be a grand tipping point in the life of the planet and all it’s Earthlings.
We will naturally find more of what we seek (because that’s the way the brain works), and what I seek is more and more people sharing their deepest truths of what they most want and what they are most enthusiastic about offering, more creative types helping people share these most valuable stories, more people choosing to focus on finding more sustainable, local, and enjoyable ways to get the things they need to be their best, and more people being more free.
And by free, I mean free in the sense of giving of themselves freely – expressing all their body’s overabundance of matter and energy in a plethora of creative and meaningful and rewarding ways that represents the highest qualities of the self, physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. By free, I mean unencumbered by rigid rules, laws, social standards that quantify life into limited and linear boxes. By free, I mean, open ended exchanges of resources that are more in the vein of respiration, with molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, and others from all over the universe briefly flowing into the body, the body taking only what it needs to flourish, and then exhaling out all the extra carbon dioxide and such into the rest of the universe, to be shared by anyone who happens to come along next who finds it useful…
In essence, I am looking to see a world of humans waking up to how to be an awesome part of the vast and wonderful system of nature that is our little blue-green planet on the Western spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Here’s to Freedom!
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focused awareness is the tip of the iceberg
There is new evidence in the study of human consciousness that suggests that the highest level of consciousness – that of the awareness of one’s own thoughts in relation to the external world – is the product of a network of regional hubs in the brain all talking to one another.
It might be useful to think of this consciousness process as being similar to the process of triangulation when searching for the source of a signal. One takes several different receivers, from very different areas, with each one showing the general direction of the signal (but not the distance it is from the receiver), and combines all the data to pinpoint a very precise location of the signal. In the human brain, we have several different kinds of “receivers” that collect certain kinds of information from the world (both inside the body and out). In higher conscious awareness, it’s very likely that each of these regions sends it’s most useful data up into the “cloud” where it gets combined together for a single, tip of the iceberg, sensory impression of “What’s up?”
Of course as with any attempt to pinpoint anything more complex than an actual pinpoint, there will always be more information that lies beneath the surface. The rest of the iceberg might not be consciously visible, but it’s there, and it’s really, really big. And that’s why what we’re conscious of is nothing compared to what we know on a deeper, unconscious, level. Conscious certainly does allow us many wonderful opportunities to play around with ideas, but it’s always important to be conscious of the fact that consciousness is limited, and that trusting “instinct” the body’s less conscious awareness and communication system, is often at least as valuable, especially in the case of navigating through a very complex environment where there might be many enormous obstacles that only the unconscious mind is aware of…
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world peas – blog action day 2011: food
The number one thing you can do to improve the world, far and above anything else in life, is to grow your own, and forage for, diversity of greens to eat every single day.
Seriously. Nothing else will have a huge an impact on the world as whether or not our brains are well nourished. And doing so in the most sustainable way, by harvesting them in your own community.
What is a green? The simple answer is that a green is the leafy green part of a plant.
Basil leaves, carrot tops, wood sorrel (the heart shaped leaves on the plant that looks like a shamrock), grass, purslane, curly dock, pea sprouts, and kale are just a few of the thousands of different greens that are exceptionally nourishing for the human body. Take a look at a list of the top most nutritious foods, as defined by the USDA’s nutritional data, at NutritionData.com (scroll down past the categories until you see Basil proudly holding the number one spot!).
The reason why harvesting your own organic local greens and eating them every single day is the most effective way to make a better world is because all of our behavior is governed by our brains. And when out brains are deficient in the nutrients that greens provide, they become low functioning, muddy, and slow, and then we can’t possibly solve any of our global or even personal problems well. Trying to work with others to create a more good, beautiful, true, and inspiring world without a well nourished brain would be like trying to climb a mountain while being totally covered in slippery mud. We’d just keep sliding backwards.
So, for our brains to work at peak problem solving ability, and to achieve our highest goals for ourselves and our world, we need those super green nutrients.
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democracy is just average, we want something better…
When you are working with the capacity for third person perspective, which nearly every human who’s matured past childhood has, at least to some extent, you are able to consider your own feelings about what you want, the feelings of your closest companion about what they want, and the general consensus about what the community around you wants.
This is great because you can really do a lot of complex analysis on possible options for what you do with yourself. You learn to tailor your actions so that they can best meet your needs, your companion’s needs, and the social norm of your environment. This makes you become a healthy contributor to the world, capable of joyful self-direction that also serves others.
But… as those of us who are a little older – nearing or past middle age for humans – know, the world is pretty diverse. Really, really diverse, in fact. As such, there really is no “social norm”. What the world is, on average, has very little to do with what goes on at any given time and place. That’s because the “average” is only a small slice of the vast curve that is all of life, with many less common things lying outside of the very center.
Once we’re able to see things from a fourth person perspective, we can see how important it is to further refine our awareness of the different kinds of cultures that exist in our world. With this more spiritual, post-logical, evolutionary way of considering things, we can see that just averaging the opinions of a large group of individuals, the way we tend to run things like elections in a democracy, is very likely going to lead to us missing out on some very important, and quite possibly crucial, information. With a fourth person perspective we can see that there will be smaller groups within the larger group, and that each smaller group has different needs and wants, based on their particular circumstances. If we don’t use an approach that allows each smaller group to be served individually, and just create policies that only serve what we’ve decided the average needs are, then most of what we end up doing will be a waste, and we’ll end up serving almost no one’s needs at all.
Which is why it’s time for our governments to grow up. It’s time for politics to get rid of a voting system that looks only at the average, and instead create a voting system that allows each smaller group, within the whole of the public, to clearly state their own priorities. Then we can more easily allocate the collective resources we have to where they are needed the most.
And to figure out how to best serve the needs of each group, we can again use the fourth person perspective as we research all the diverse ways that have been discovered for serving our needs, rather than trying to find some “average” solution that has a reasonable probability of not working in any particular situation.
In other words, rather than looking for a single, average approach to things, we can sort the different approaches we’ve created and discovered into categories of where and when they work best, and we can keep those options available in a database that is accessible to all, both in the government and outside, so that everyone always has the best information available for solving their particular group’s problems.
Imagine a government that honestly works to give you what you need most, regardless of whether or not it’s the same thing that others need…
Imagine that next time you go to vote in an election, you had the option of selecting any or all of the following:
I want the government to focus our collective resources on providing me with the best quality…
Inputs
□ Food
□ Water
□ Air
□ Warmth
□ Light
Outlets for expressing my excess
□ Solids
□ Gases
□ Liquids
□ Energy
Wouldn’t that represent your own interests far, far more effectively than any government election you’ve ever seen before in the past? And what would you vote for in this election? And would you want to see these options be further subdivided?
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