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- CommentAuthorsushil_yadav
- CommentTimeJul 22nd 2006 edited
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment
Dear Group Members,
I want to share my article with you. This is about the link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues. The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.
Thank you,
Sushil Yadav
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.
Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
Subject : Environment can never be saved as long as cities exist.
Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.
If there are no gaps there is no emotion.
Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.
When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.
There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.
People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.
Emotion ends.
Man becomes machine.
A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.
FAST VISUALS /WORDS MAKE SLOW EMOTIONS EXTINCT.
SCIENTIFIC /INDUSTRIAL /FINANCIAL THINKING DESTROYS EMOTIONAL CIRCUITS.
A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY CANNOT FEEL PAIN / REMORSE / EMPATHY.
A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY WILL ALWAYS BE CRUEL TO ANIMALS/ TREES/ AIR/ WATER/ LAND AND TO ITSELF.
Since the article is too long I was unable to post the full article here. To read the complete article please follow any of these links :
PlanetSave
FreeInfoSociety
ePhilosopher
Corrupt
ForeignPolicy
sushil_yadav -
Most agreeable. Before I found this most particular place, I was happily letting go of that mad language torrent that masquerades as thought, perhaps I was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The first three steps in the yogic/buddhist tradition ( as an old hippie I've spent a lot of time studying every thing except my native catholicism), are right action, speech and thought....perhaps someone can help me work out the order in which to practice them...that is where do we start? If the longest journey starts with one step, what the hell is it?
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The man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present instant of his flight; he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future; he is wrenched from the continuity of time … in other words, he is in a state of ecstasy; in that state he is unaware of his age, his wife, his children, his worries, and so he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear...
Ah... existential angst at the perception of time; its innate qualities; the merging with moments. I once mourned the loss of 'slower' times. It's as if all matters which surround us in the modern realm breed forth their own meaning as they so tend to destroy themselves. Where once meaning was maturation in mankind, in culture, now entire universes of symbolism are handed to us in every instant of our existence. Our idols are soft drink advertisements, minor celebrities and songs in a hit parade which avalanches weekly. Their substance in and of themselves is non-existent for now only the idea of the image, the symbol of culture, the simulacra of identity exist. Plato's higher realm of forms has somehow broken through its metaphysical divide and flows with us now, here. So many forms, so little identity.Milan Kundera - Slowness 
To me though this is all chicken egg stuff. So the human realm multiplicates now so wildly that the minds who manifest it are powerless to understand it. Ha, even understanding itself becomes irrelevant if what you are attempting to meditate on has changed the next time you look. The only identity left is one of a mass conglomerate 'culture'. A pulsing Queen spewing near identical forms, their evolution continues as the Queen stays in stasis still. But what if, just for the sake of the chicken and egg, what if we are mourning the wrong thing? Perhaps this fractal reality we now partially perceive is the chrysalis stage in a mass mutation. Perhaps humanity should not separate itself from the entity which now metamorphosises. Perhaps our brains just aren't up to the job anymore.
The human realm, in all its intricacies, has started to outgrow the human mind. Computers accelerate our world into the future whilst we stay stock still; our Stone Age identities incapable of accepting the change which will inevitably come. The single human mind is not capable of positing the entire world anymore, but what's wrong with this? Humans outshine the animals because we multitask and specialise; our cultures are an obvious outcome of this, a multiple billion humans all working to their own minor heartbeats as the monstrous pulse of the Queen echoes over our heads, largely unnoticed.
I mourn nothing, but my ability to apprehend what it is I am mourning - surely an existential crisis if ever I've seen one, but one I'll not cry over. Some see the chicken whilst some see the egg. A deep fried chicken and a nice fresh egg set to hatch.
If only we knew how to incubate the fucking thing... -
To hatch the World Egg
I just had a go at using this terrifying technology and looked up 'world egg' on that wikipedia thing, interesting. Feels too easy to me but I'm sure I'm only being cantankerous.
Anyone remember the japanese tv series 'Monkey'?... born from an egg on a mountain top...
I remember it being shown as a childrens show on the oz ABC around '80-'81...the delight of seeing oz youth introduced to Mahayana Buddhism without the godbotherers having a clue! -
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CommentAuthortransdimensionalrock
- CommentTimeAug 1st 2006
A lot of people think evolution stopped at us growing thumbs, the physically noticible evolution of the biological human being the only place where evolution can occur, but this is untrue.
Once the body evolved the mind followed suit, and once the mind evolved concepts and ideas evolved also. Conceptual and idealistic evolution gave us self reflective consiousness which allowed us to create industry and gain bulk resources so specialist cells (intellectual types) can continue evolving ideas, and an idea which came about was a conceptual device which could "think" for us and solve problems, the computer.
Now that the computer is here it has taken over evolution at a much larger magnitude, as example see the very device we are using now, the internet was created over half a century and connects all of us. So now that the computer has taken over rapid evolution for us are we obsolete ? No, I believe we need to better the interface between the human mind and the machine, combine the human brain with the speed of computer processors. Right now the human brain operates at 100hz, whereas the average computer processor can run at 4-5ghz+ , if our brains processing ability could be bumped up to that of the processor our perception of time could be greatly slowed down, allowing for us to squeeze much more thinking into a smaller proportion of time.
But does it stop there ? what if we give up and just become part of the machine ? would that be so bad ? Some have the image of the star trek borg as the negative example of what it would be like, but imagine having a miniture computer in your mind. Imagine being able to google questions to answers from your mind and since it would have wireless connectivity, be able to get that question routed through others mental servers and get an answer. Imagine having a logical Artifical Intelligence to consult with in your own internal dialogue, to bounce ideas off, or even if you felt lonely. Imagine being able to download ebooks directly to your brain and not have to worry about spilling caffienated beverages on the pages of a real book. Imagine being able to chat with anyone anywhere who had the same "cyberbrain", we would be in essence a mental collective hive mind.
To me it sounds like a beautiful idea,
I kind of went off into rambling there but I guess the crux of it is stop worrying and learn to love and embrace the machine, I do. -
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Stephen Donaldson's books have a pill full of nanotech you buy from a Dick Smith franchise. Upon swallowing the pill, your brain is upgraded and connected to a web just like the one you describe....I want one.
Greg Egan (everyone read him now!) has us recycling our bodies, downloading ourselves into vast living reservoirs, then uploading ourselves into any sort of body we want...bring it on! -
I once watched a particularly cheesey episode of The Outer Limits set in a 'human-connected-to-the-web' future world.
There was this one guy whose hippocampus was shrunken or something and so he couldn't have the implant to connect to the net, he was treated like he had a disability, just because he sat and read things. BUT DON'T FRET! In the end a digital virus started making people evil and only our hero could save them. The final part of the story saw protagonist web-less boy teaching the equally web-less world how to read again once they had been disconnected.
A parable for our times? ;-)
Give me onboard ebooks anytime... ANYTIME! It has always frustrated me how much there is to read out there. On the other side of this though just imagine living amongst a people who all knew exactly the same things (implant humanity), who could all read each others' minds (telepathy/WiFi humanity) and who had the potential to process what you were thinking before your brain had had the chance to think it anyway (5.5Ghz+ humanity)...
Boring is too small a word for that.
Perhaps we should encourage specialisation to a much larger degree than we do now. Once a child has spent a designated time learning 'the old fashioned way' they would be given the choice of ten possible career paths which best suited their brain type. After making their choice a series of uploads would begin, a period of time allowed between each one for the 'information' to become 'knowledge'. At any point the student could change their mind and go on a different career path. Contentedness would arise, without infinite knowledge clogging the way.
I love trying to finish a level on Super Mario Land and getting frustrated after umpteen tries. I then sleep on the matter and 9 times out of 10 the next time I pick up the game I finish the level first time. Sleep, dreams, are needed for progress, for knowledge aquisition. What would the upgraded equivalent of that be I wonder?
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