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In a recent article in The Economist, futurist Paul Saffo claims humanity’s overdue for a new god. He points out that throughout history, great new religions took shape during times characterized by uncertainty and social unrest, combined with an ability to spread compelling new ideas and world views virally.
And here we are today, he says, equipped with the Web as our communication channel, and a cultural climate bubbling with that same potential for something new to emerge. The article ends there, with only an image of worshippers gathered around an iPad to suggest where we might be placing our faith next.
It was just a prompt, but it’s made me wonder.. is this where we’re headed? Will the next “great” mythology be a story about how technology is going to save us? And can we do better?
If a new zeitgeist were to capture the minds of billions, what might it look like?
Externalizing our saviors, whether in personified gods or computerized devices, is a convenient way to bring us hope when we feel powerless or misdirected, but it can also relieve us of the burden of taking responsibility for our actions or inactions.
Perhaps it’s time to advance our collective story.
We continue to grow more connected, more informed, more intelligent, and more dangerous. Many are aware that the fictions being thrown around about how the world works are just that – fictions. Things are not working all that optimally, and that reality is only thinly veiled. We see the shift underway – with some trying to reveal “truth” by making information free, allowing open communication across borders, and giving people the tools to decide for themselves what’s what and how they want to live and participate. Opposing that effort, as has always been the case, are the ones terrified to lose control.
But how much longer can we continue this charade? It’s clear that our environments and economies are interwoven. We impact each other more and more every day, and our commonalities become apparent just as quickly as our differences. We must be nearing a tipping point.
Can we find a common ground? Can we put the games aside and be honest about things, perhaps agree upon some baseline for sustainability and thrivability on the planet? Can we wake up to our own potential to change the way things are and shape the way they can become?
Or or ideologies too entrenched? Are those in power too enchanted by their own stories to even attempt a reality that could be better for us all?
And while we watch those bigger forces biding time and maintaining illusions, we are given the option to become the change agents – to influence, inspire, and lead ourselves into a brighter future.
Will we act?
Or just pray?
openintelligence said:
As the Hopi say, ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for.’
Venessa Miemis said:
i love that poem
Philippe Verstichel said:
Could we say that the Hopi are to US humanity what the Greeks are to European mankind ?
About ‘We are the Ones’, here is a great piece of writing : http://bit.ly/ic69VY , out of which I can’t resist but quoting:
‘Hopi wisdom says: “You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour. Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.” It goes on to tell us to consider our living, doing, relationships, relations, water and our gardens. Hopi wisdom tells us to speak our Truth. It cautions us not to look outside ourselves for a leader. ‘
The question to me is: What is ‘ourselves’ ?
J. Brel (Belgian singer) once said (free translation): “I believe God, it is men and they do not know it”
Jan Wyllie (OPEN INTEL) said:
Thank you, Philippe, for the beautiful link.
Since I began to apply “We are the ones we have been waiting for” to myself- and-all-our-relations (Aho. Mitakuye Oyasin … http://www.healthynewage.com/mitakuyeoyasin.html), I found a whole woodland t0 protect and to collaborate with. The work of coppicing and thinning is hard physically, but is always joyful, as well as a bit dangerous, to keep me on my toes. The thing about all-our-relations is that if we can protect their-our living space, they might be able to grow back if the toxic tide of industrial civilisation were to turn. It is their natural inclination. And working with and for all-our-relations also motivates me to attack the disease from within by using our intelligence gathering and analysis techniques to help the humans understand the consequences of their actions on the world which is our common heritage and home.
Philippe Verstichel said:
Thank you. Nice reminder you seem to be a living example demonstrating that man can be both humble and humbled !
mason said:
There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.
CoCreatr said:
Wow, you are inviting lively dialog with this, hopefully FUNdamental rather than fundamentalist.
Humor aside, reality is what we agree on. So we can be the change agents and we are, no?
If we put the ego games and other nonsense behind us, do we actually need common ground? If so, why? Is it not enough if each of us effect change in their local area, among friends near and far?
More questions than answers. If there is anything I know about god, it is that I am sure s/he is not an old man with a beard, watching us from some heavenly window. And what he/she is, is best left to the individual to research .
So it may well be, humanity’s next god: hey, that’s us!
George Pór said:
> Is it not enough if each of us effect change in their local area, among friends near and far?
It would be enough only if we would want to leave evolution to its own devices, which may turn humanity into one of the many aborted evolutionary experiments. Instead:
we can choose to leave blind evolution behind,
and use the current confluence of culture shits on the planet
for opening the journey to conscious, intentional evolution
Thank you Bernd for asking that essential question that millions ask today.
May this exchange contribute to finding some answers.
Venessa Miemis said:
i guess being capable of putting the ego games and other nonsense behind us is the common ground. but many do not want to let it go.
Scott Nesler said:
The Humanity of Problem Solving
Why take the time to methodically describe a problem? Why seek the advice of others to clarify a working solution? The answer is within the human spirit to be heard and understood.
Life expectancy is 67.2 years in a humanity of 6.8 billion. Let’s say within one’s lifetime 3 problems fester for resolution. Let’s then cut a little off life expectancy for maturity and degradation to come up with 51 years to express knowledge. 51 divided by 3 is 17. 17 years to describe a coherent solution to a perplexing problem. If everyone did their part 400 million coherent points of view would be described on a yearly basis.
“What a crazy notion, you could only hope to get a small percentage of participation!” I disagree, but .25% still leaves 1 million points of view per year.
“A fraction of the populace can produce an intelligent point of view!” I agree, but suggest the fraction approaches 1. Even if the remaining 1/2 percent is capable, that leaves 5,000 quality solutions added to a repository of knowledge on a yearly basis. That’s 13 refined expressions of intelligence, from a humanity of thought, to read on a daily basis. 13 intelligent opinions is the daily equivalent of the number absorbed from a media of a few thousand privileged individuals.
6.8 billion people! 67.2 years per existence! Oh, the potential for knowledge, understanding, and humanity!
George Pór said:
I like the numbers although they may not add up to the sum hoped for; 1 million points of view per year, would not add up to the collective imagination, inspiration, wisdom, and will, needed to guide us through the coming turbulent decades.
Venessa Miemis said:
i’d be happy with hearing 13 intelligent opinions a day
Jeff Mowatt said:
Vanessa, You’ll find that one of the key points in the 1996 white paper for people-centered economic development was that the then dawning inforamtion age offered the opportunity for a new economic paradigm to be replicated in local communities on a global basis.
Sharing information was put into practice, by publishing the paper in synopsis on the web free to use. All of our papers and project plans have since been made public. Here are the final paragraphs of that synopsis:
“Top-notch education is leaving the confines of physical campus and four walls. A student in remote Zaire, given an Internet connection, can become a Duke-educated Master of Business Administration, while remaining mostly in his or her home village to the village’s benefit. The prospect of such decentralized localization of education and economic activity allows a great deal of autonomy, freedom and self-determinism in the village’s own character and identity. It need not be a risk to cultural heritage and integrity to benefit economically; the means by which such benefit will occur, how local citizens can have food, shelter, health care, and a basic sustaining human standard of existence can be determined at the local village level and then communicated at the regional, national, and global level simultaneously at virtually no cost via the Internet and a web site. It is this basic level of human sustenance, coupled with self-sustaining enterprise to provide this basic level of support, that I refer to as sustainable development — which is just another way of saying “people-centered” economic development.
“The P-CED “type” of firm demonstrates how a for-profit enterprise can be created and operated for the benefit of those who need the profits, and who will not have access to financial markets otherwise. In effect, those in poverty would benefit much as if they were actual stockholders in the enterprise. Networking with business development organizations enables the poor to develop their own business enterprises. Microcredit, or microfinance, organizations have proven to be very effective tools in fostering small business development in cash-starved locations. A very successful loan program in the US, Good Work, Inc., has operated in Durham, North Carolina since 1992, with the aim of providing loans and microloans in amounts from $500 to $10,000 to people who would not be able to find money otherwise. Business planning and management training are provided to applicants to ensure loan viability and business success. Good Work reports a business survival rate of more than ninety percent.
“Clearly, profits can be used very effectively in ways other than traditional investment and profit outcomes. Moreover, this is not charity, it is business–good business. One P-CED firm could be expected to spin off dozens of new firms and businesses, all of which create new jobs and all of which operate under traditional free-enterprise practices. That is, if a spin-off business were to profit a million dollars a year, the owners can bank the money for themselves and their stockholders as is the normal practice. There is nothing wrong with individuals becoming wealthy. It is only when wealth begins to concentrate in the hands of a relative few at the expense of billions of others who are denied even a small share of finite wealth that trouble starts and physical, human suffering begins. It does not have to be this way. Massive greed and consequent massive human misery and suffering do not have to be accepted as a givens, unavoidable, intractable, irresolvable. Just changing the way business is done, if only by a few companies, can change the flow of wealth, ease and eliminate poverty, and leave us all with something better to worry about. Basic human needs such as food and shelter are fundamental human rights; there are more than enough resources available to go around–if we can just figure out how to share. It cannot be “Me first, mine first”; rather, “Me, too” is more the order of the day.”
Venessa Miemis said:
and 15 years later, we’re still calling for the same thing. are we making progress?
Jeff Mowatt said:
Yes, progress has been made but as someone here just pointed out, egos present a great obstacle. In a blog from last year, I’d reflected on some of the impact of this concepts of an economic model where people are central and not considered disposable.
http://socialbusiness.socialgo.com/magazine/read/you-me-we-ethics-and-people-centered-economics_5.html
Even today, one may find those that present these concepts as if some future possibility, on the talking circuit, while presumably unaware that its already happening.
George Por said:
Thank you, Venessa for your clarity and courage to “upgrade” Time’s Man of the Year to Humanity’s Next God. “You,” as in “all of us,” it is.
We may find that you in the younity that connects us all, before division and separation, as well as in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega point. It’s where we are emerging from and into, in a new level of manifestation.
Paul Saffo’s important reminder about the “times characterized by uncertainty and social unrest, combined with an ability to spread compelling new ideas and world views virally” is very timely, indeed. There is an emergent great story that can discover itself only when it is told and enacted by billions.
I think it is the story of Emergence that’s played on all stages of society, where new wholes, new qualities come into being from unsuspecting parts.
It is also played, although under different names, at all memetic altitudes; experienced by all according to their value system. (The evolutionary Spiral is a good metaphor and mapping tool for Emergence.)
Venessa, you wrote: “We impact each other more and more every day, and our commonalities become apparent just as quickly as our differences. We must be nearing a tipping point.”
Yes, and something still separates us from it, and that’s the movements of emergence awakening to their collective consciousness.
Individual mental models, inspirations, and collections of knowledge contributing to the creation of a better world, are abundant and multiplying, as we speak. What is missing is our collective sensing organs and processes for meaning making, growing a collective intelligence at increasing scale, and deepening our collective wisdom.
I know, it may be easier said than done. But once we truly understand the need for collective sensing organs and processes, nothing can prevent us from presencing (discovering/co-creating) them.
If any of the above makes any sense to you and other readers of these notes, let’s see what we can do about it together.
Openworld said:
Venessa,
If you get a chance, I think you might find the first chapters in “An American Idol” by Robert Loewenberg – a book on Emerson’s aim to transcend history and conflate the finite with the infinite – to be a rewarding read.
Best,
Mark
Edward Harran said:
“The next Buddha will be a collective: spiritual expression in the peer to peer era. By Michel Bauwens”
http://p2pfoundation.net/Next_Buddha_Will_Be_A_Collective
Happy NY2011 V. Bring on the #yellow 2nd Tier world!
Muchos Besos
Eddie
Scott Lewis said:
“Will the next “great” mythology be a story about how technology is going to save us?”
not likely. maybe the one after the next “great” mythology. 😉
“And can we do better?”
better than the last mythology? mythology all looks good after 1000 years. :-p
“If a new zeitgeist were to capture the minds of billions, what might it look like?”
Good question. Probably similar to previous ones. What did the last zeitgeist look like?
“Perhaps it’s time to advance our collective story.”
Absolutely, but we can’t all talk at once or no one will listen to it.
“But how much longer can we continue this charade?”
Teehee… When did it start? I think we can carry on forever, or close enough.
“Can we find a common ground?”
I think CoCreator has a good point. The Earth is our common ground. We don’t need to find it, just find ourselves on it. 🙂
“Can we put the games aside and be honest about things, perhaps agree upon some baseline for sustainability and thrivability on the planet?”
I don’t see why the games can’t be honest, or at least more honest. Putting games aside is a mistake. It’s a gambit for non-game players to rig the game to “their” advantage. The game is where we set the rules. Also, it’s important to make the liars and greedy assholes to feel like their playing too, so it can’t be too honest, or you end up trying to eliminate each other. Elimination is a game we’ve played too many times. (This game CAN be put aside!)
“Are those in power too enchanted by their own stories to even attempt a reality that could be better for us all?”
I love this question. Enchanted power stories. People caught in them won’t see outside their own part, thus the enchantment. Writing new ones is hard. Piercing existing ones and getting enchanted people on your side, when you’re selling an unenchanted solution is even harder. I think the answer lies in the next generation of enchanted stories. We are ripening and working towards that now, but it takes time to build a good epic.
“We continue to grow more connected, more informed, more intelligent, and more dangerous. ”
Do we? Maybe some of us do, but really are we all where you are at? My experience points to a majority of people growing disconnected, less informed, less intelligent, and more passive. It is a panacea for change. Eventually the mob becomes so fickle that their impatience will cause breakdowns in civility. Until the protests and violence starts nothing will be galvanized to change and change will continue to be a counter intuitive “innovate process” for organizations that have little understanding of themselves.
“Will we act? Or just pray?”
I pray that many people will act and that incompetence will step aside without killing to many people unnecessarily. I act in accordance with my prayer. So I guess, I’ll do both, thought I don’t know why I’m talking to myself, so much. 😀
CoCreatr said:
Welcome all in the new year, we made it so far. Growing and learning together. Boosting the emergence of our evolutionary spiral by sharing coherent solutions. May I invite you to a treat I savored today, slow food for the mind.
Dr. Tae — Building A New Culture Of Teaching and Learning http://vimeo.com/5513063 via @xianrenaud @johnccarver #cpchat #edreform
Pingback: What separates us from the tipping point | Co-Evolving with You
poetpiet said:
just had a relixjiz expurience. JUST kidding!
No, just kidding .. but i did watch themoneyfix and found the clip of context delivery not exactly sacrificed but certainly hampered and halted in favor of cut-up style emphasis, reinforcement and repetition of beginners arguments.
Around the 37th minute Michael Albert gets to put in some spunky lines about money misshapen so as to stimulate friction and strife, social subordination that piles social strata high. Money as a whip to ‘stratoverify’. That’s not a quote by the way.
quote???
MA using a wider tone-range than the others too i noticed. Most of them are familiar to me. His words get echoed by Lietaer a few minutes later.
sword VS word .. or .. sword AND word?
Is there a periodicity in this dia(klixklekxc)lectic?
wapengekletter (din of combat) AND/OR wettengeletter (writing of law).
allow me a circumscriptive approach to putting interest charges in perspective, both charging interest as well as charging charging interest with institutional immiseration and subjection (themoneyfix amounts to that).
There is a film about Gesell called ‘the spirit of money’ which is a very different execution of expressing the nevertheless very similar mindset, it documents the practice of demurrhage (opposite of interest charges but not gone into by Alan et al) with historical footage.
My foray through economics began with a study of this most famous local money from the interbellum era which Alan and helpers may have mentioned but quite fleetingly if at all.
Here’s a piece of context that supplements Sathouris et al, that is, it explains prehistoric precursoring and on coursing of currents as prototypical currencies.
the germanic tribes – in the sign of the cross – cicle 4 part 2
Clovis, following an already over 700 year old example struck a bridge between christians and pagans, first crissy cross crhuncher meets, matches and becomes mates w first christian roman emperor Constantine all those centuries prior to him.
Clovis of course was borderline lowland belgian, tribes best positioned and blessed with plenny of opportunity to observe the difference between land below flood water’s lines – periodically fed water laden with glacial milk. Over time changing its fertility quite noticeably compared to what lay only slightly higher. they turned that difference into a craft, a profession, even a god … Clovis put an end to all of that and reversed the direction described. Efforts by julius hensel, john hamaker, yours truly, theseercentre.org.uk (prolly not directly inspired by me), etcetera (i hope) notwithstanding.
Neglected and forgotten, only petrified reminders and infamous outliers like yours truly remain to try jostle memories, unstick blogjams. Fresh dust administration, libation and sprinkling was no longer a money-modeling ritual — bringing ‘hi to low’ land mechanics into purview of puny descendants and borderline scavengers, us and conversely employing us, .. feeding us humans into a larger older eco-networking amongst minerals and that other most venerable ancestor of ancestors, their cousins the wetter oxides, just to mention the weightier actors in this drama — and pretty soon re- and perversion set in: symbol steerage peerage stirring pollution, the precipitates of a sickened ‘tude’ into the mix.
Confirmation of WI Thompson’s point regarding the power flavor sequences and relay transfer: christian/celtic/pagan (with my hero Cernunnos, the coin spiller, the all flow, from water to blood, sweat and other secretions framing coin of the realm -rockpowder- spiller) with seat in aachen (most famous statue of Cernunnos the stagman hagman sha(g)man in Reims a car’s hour away), then rosicrucians with main seat in london, next masonic flavor secret ‘concock.. eh .. -ductors’ rule from washington.
Bullets OR coins?
Well, possibly, but alas, more often coins AND bullets with more comprehensive currencies like mineral powders left out of the picture and downtrodden altogether but i will let that to me most important theme rest for now.
Bombs AND males kissing?
Or can one abort the former commiting the latter? Present trends are out to prevent that.
Scarcity imposed struggle for existence is a vision of musical chair gamery that weeds out the slightly less agile, it ranks a ripeness curve that leaves the not yet agile enough to withstand being seated on a chair ‘unbehelligt’ and to try another day.
Scarcity is not always only a sign of greed but may as often be one of cultural rustiness with a lack and dearth of innovation and/or sustainable garden (and perma)cultural rusticity.
Usury VS scarcity? themoneyfix conflates them.
Can we really not find a balancing and if need be leveraging pivot between efficiency and love?
Efficiency can never mean distributed sufficiency?
Efficiency somehow conjures the sickrawfaces that cost cozy, cute and wholesome lovemaking their rights to be?
Efficiency never is, nor is ever seen or sensed as (a synonym for) cozy, cute and wholesome lovemaking?
According to themoneyfix maker Alan Rosenblith and folks he searches out, like T Greco, it is nothing but a vs, not an is, as or and affair.
Funny (? .. well, better to say, paradoxically) enough, the most readily readible Beckerath is parked at Tom Greco’s place, who sides with Alan.
My version has a barriere. One must run a gauntlet of commercial pop-ups packing lies of the kind a free provider serves up (surf’s up, another gambler lets fly. Oh, it’s just another lie belying and camouflaging content here). If, nevertheless, you care to try, my version has rewardingly wild colours:
http://poetpiet.tripod.com/guest_appearances/intro_to_currency_issues.htm
I, unlike Greco though, DO agree with Ulrich von Beckerath’s take on interest. My problem with it is that the measures explained to make gold unproblematic do not go nearly far enough. No matter how good those measures, basically replacing its dependable weight with dependable contract/commitment, trust and confidence, he remains mum about the side-effects of mining and refining that sort of substance, quite apart of the uses it is put to.
Then again, i could plausibly argue that getting rid of a problem is superior and prior to formulating it and that his measures would not only reduce the pollution in his gold standard days indirectly by way of as good as completetly obviating use and evacuating need for it. Either way, gold needs to stay out and be replaced with more accurate information basically. The happy amalgamation of statecraft, insurance and local money, a 3 tier thingk like.
Interest need not necessarily be a driver of rapaciousness, even if it seems the executioner of it. It is and gets that way only under money regimes of that type. Given we can outgrow and outlive that scourge i submit interest is a measure of efficiency gains and innovation stimulus, simple growth and profit, reserves and spare parts in store, ongoing free lunch provision by way of photosynthetic processes, etcetera, registering and affording all sorts of run-up and run-down delay, certainly not evil perse.
As a surplus for instance, it can drive philantropy better than the colder and more often incomprehending looks and takes a venturer and/or inventor soliciting funds from a banker might get. It lifts, levitates and brevitates much likke love itself. Look up Shakespeare on usury.
Interest is not the problem, the obscured and hidden cause inhumane, shameful, nefarious and destructive, domination ‘serving’ purposes towards which the initial money creating loans/debts get put are (the problem).
‘Better believe it’ is not an expression that fits a gift-economy but a dreadfull threats filled one.
Number symbols and sequences as symbolized pliers placebos and stopgo as well as gap motion put the squeeze on us by way of their as deceitful as forceful if not coercive suggestion to adopt beliefs conform to their make belief. They snap to at a nip clip beat we must stay ahead of.
Time to stop the make believe and begin to make leaf be.
“Abundance Extinguishes Money”
Oh nooooos, it’s an epidemic … dumb hippies .. this one can’t seem to dig his head out of various crutches long enough to stop following a stampeding herd … well, that is not quite true, .. he IS a forest defender of the first hour … responsible for limbering folks up enough to do ‘give a fuck’ (about) fucking for forests gigs
http://hermetic.blog.com/2010/12/03/abundance-extinguishes-money/
“Money, trade, barter and bargaining are artefacts of unnecessary contrived scarcity”
By the way, this post seems to substitute for any sort of news provision about the floods in Queensland where he lives. As long as his hillpools don’t wash out? A whitey in aboriginal territory, an ‘occupist’ as much if not more than 99% of americans and other Ozzies are.
mason said:
What would we be now kids if we were called the insects of the sea
If we were all aquatic arthropods whatever would we be
If we’d gone through a complex larval stage and formed a bony hide
& if we ranged from microscopic size right up to 12 feet wide
Whatever would we be • Answer me anyone
We’d be an old crustacean would we • We’d be a crustacean
What would we be now kids if we had dirty walls of landlord green
If we had fifteen sets of pay TV and one pinball machine
And an arrival and departure board and fifty plastic chairs
A hari krishna guy and two bag ladies picnicking on the stairs
Whatever would we be • Answer me anyone
We’d be an old bus station would we • We’d be a bus station
What would be be now kids if we were yellow, red, white, striped, or pink
And if our fragrance was a lot like cloves, or so some people think
And if our Latin name was Dianthus Caryophyllus
And when our blooms were measured they could reach 10 centimeters plus
Whatever would we be • Answer me anyone
We’d be a big carnation would we • We’d be a big carnation
What would we be now kids if we had formed a fellowship of sorts
To save the lobster who would wear a flower stapled to his shorts
And who would crawl beneath the transit center thru the pipes and wires
And who would lie there smelling like a clove, three feet below the tires
We’d be the foundation • To save the crustacean
Wearing a carnation • Under the bus station
Track Nine:
WHATEVER WOULD WE BE
©1992 L&P Berryman
Jonathan Brown said:
Interesting post – as always. You strike me as the type of young person that gives me hope that at least some people are THINKING and DOING – so keep up the good work there.
I didn’t read the Economist article, but have also thought that current religion and the (dogmatic) earth-bound institutions they have spawned are rapidly losing relevancy. I was raised as a Baptist Christian (oh, the sect divisions – a warning signs of corruption) . Not finding that it answered my questions or even that questioning was an acceptable part of faith – I searched.
I still haven’t found the ultimate answer, and don’t know that I will – but something I’ve found illuminating is the work of Jiddu Krishnamurti – a modern(ish) philosopher who ponders questions of :
1. what is the purpose / meaning of life?
2. what is the role of education, really?
3. what is the value of relationship / commitment?
This is decidedly not a religion, is not organized, and never wants to be organized. His philosophy is one that really puts the emphasis on the individual and what an individual must do for him or herself to achieve a full life. Sounds crazy, but one of his points is that all stress comes from the (man made) concept of time – influencing your thinking (worrying, grieving, remembering or feeling guilty about the past which you cannot change or the future which hasn’t happened yet) and that happiness and joy are really the absence of time. Examples of things that bring me joy – listening to music, romantic love, my latest ‘a-ha’ moment- don’t have a time element to them. Anyhow, an interesting and related read for you if you’re comfortable examining your existing faith.
Cheers,
Venessa Miemis said:
i love krishnamurti. he’s definitely been an influence on my life philosophy. am actually in the middle of Flight of the Eagle right now.
Du4 said:
I give you…. RELIGIMON: humanity’s first, dreamt-for and self-fabricated POP GOD: http://img411.imageshack.us/i/religimon.jpg/sr=1
(Religimon appeared in Mark Millar’s final run on THE AUTHORITY for Wildstorm Comics. Brilliant idea.)
Venessa Miemis said:
omg, i want one!!!!!! do they have a keychain version? and a bumper sticker? and one from my cereal box?????
*crossing fingers*
oooo, i hope i hope i hope…….
mason said:
you all are the gods you deserve. i ain’t jealous of the way you’re living.
http://tinyurl.com/2f5gs37
Philippe Verstichel said:
Atheist a dying breed … Of course !
A very interesting paper was published about ‘homo-rligiosus’ and commented here: http://bit.ly/gOE50o (In German, many of Venessa’s followers do understabd Goethe’s language ..).
The original paper can be found here: Rowthorn, R.: Religion, fertility and genes: a dual inheritance model. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society B 10.1098/rspb.2010.2504, 2010
An “English” blog is also talking on the same subject: http://bit.ly/hlWnlh, that one could be part of Venessa’s blog roll ?
Good day !
Jan Wyllie (OPEN INTEL) said:
If this thesis is true, one cannot help but wonder whether the resulting over population of the planet and the wholesale destruction of nature will be an evolutionary advantage for humanity. Wouldn’t it be ironic if religion was a major factor in the extinction of our species (not to mention all the others).
Philippe Verstichel said:
Besides the obvious irony, Matlhus is once again not far away …
Interestingly, André Malraux (famous French writer) is credited with the following sentence: “Le XXIème siècle sera religieux ou ne sera pas” (“The XXIst century will be religious or will not be”). What an omen !
Amen.
Arjuna said:
Vanessa, great question. My prediction is that external stimulation (over mediaed psyches) reaches fever pitch, as a civilisation we’ll become more internal. Witness rise and rise of Eastern religions, or the perfume their philosophies spread throughout the world right now and external Gods have a short half-life.
Of course, there still will external manifestations of these but the internal consequences of communicating with an amalgam of the old ones become much more rich. Which poses the question – has there ever been an external reality?
Mark Robertson said:
Love this topic, Venessa.
N Frye and J Campbell applied the Jungian study of archetypes to contend that there are archetypes in the human soul. Campbell went so far as to say there is only “one true story”–the hero’s journey. This is comparative religion meets comparative mythology–Yogananda meets Joyce meets Chesterton meets Tolkien meets George Lucas.
Assuming information loses value (as Daniel Pink contends), storytelling will become the new currency of shared meaning (cf. shows like The Moth and This American Life).
My hope (to wit: prayer) is that more people share their stories w/vulnerability–an exodus from a data-based society of the LOGOS-demi god. HOMER was a angel-tongued mouth-piece for the shared stories of the Ancient Greeks. He was not a god–he was a poet.
Prediction: the next great mythology will be someone who can articulate the jubilance and threnodies of the post-information age, name it, and weave the threads of the modern human soul.
We or not the human collective continues to “slouch toward Bethlehem,” but the story must be retold. And well.
“Follow your bliss.” J Campbell
Venessa Miemis said:
great comment!!
i find myself enjoying the role of curator and storyteller more each day 🙂
piet pretteketet said:
‘curator’ occurs once in Peter Krapp’s 248 page book called:
Deja-Vu-Aberrations-of-Cultural-Memory (here it is at scribd)
page 191, chapter 5: Unforgiven: Toward an Ethics of Forgetting
Before long, this turned into a new paradigm that amounts to averting
aesthetics and arguing that “visual culture” finally escapes the regime of
criticism and becomes a matter of imitating certain cultural effects, as
Greenberg had foreseen. It follows, then, to take him up on another of his
imperious hints: “self-evidently, all kitsch is academic,” he indicates,
“and conversely, all that is academic is kitsch.” This codependent
character will have become manifest in the academic reception of Warhol.
His art, in its reification, is an exact return, by way of apparent parody, of
what Greenberg’s commodified notion of kitsch vilifies: only here, kitsch
is not a truth but a method of production, or more precisely, of marketing.
Indeed Warhol’s project addresses and performs the imitation of effects.
After Warhol, talent that cannot sell itself turns up as a curiosity in the
consignment shop, among the formerly coveted melancholic objects that
blend into the displays like trees into Echo’s forest, silently reflective. For
it is exactly the unrepeatability of the Warholian déjà vu effect that makes
his career inimitable.
Certainly a generalization and emptying out of the “concept”
of the uncanny has taken place, leading, for instance, to such
self-consciously “academic” art projects as Mike Kelly’s
curatorial comments in “Playing with Dead Things,” The
Uncanny (Arnhem: Sonsbeek, 1993).
Venessa Miemis said:
culture is commodified and sold back to the people, who lap it up and imitate, so it can be packaged and echoed again and sold back, over and over, further abstracting from the thing. where is the “actual” culture?
hold on, let me grab my adorno…
piet pretteketet said:
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2011/01/curation_is_the.html
+66
Jerilyn said:
Vraiment intéressant, je pense que ce post devrait intéresser une pote
jeffmowatt said:
Reminded of this today, I reflect that it began in the months that both my colleague and I were fighting serious illness. He lost the fight in Ukraine where an activist from Maidan who he’s worked alongside, shared his last thoughts:
“The author of breakthru report “Death camps for children” Terry Hallman suddenly died of grave disease on Aug 18 2011. On his death bed he was speaking only of his mission – rescuing of these unlucky kids. His dream was to get them new homes filled with care and love. His quest would be continued as he wished.”
15 years earlier he’d warned Clinton of the risk of an economic paradigm where money was imagined into existence. he warned of the risk of uprisongs and just before he died, we’d see the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street erupt globally.
He may have been a prophet for “people over profit”
“Economics, and indeed human civilization, can only be measured and calibrated in terms of human beings. Everything in economics has to be adjusted for people, first, and abandoning the illusory numerical analyses that inevitably put numbers ahead of people, capitalism ahead of democracy, and degradation ahead of compassion.
“Each of us who have a choice can choose what we want to do to help or not. It is free-will, our choice, as human beings.”
.
Salina said:
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