My Structure is the Antidote to Your Content

Remember that story about that guy named "Satan" who competed with that guy named "God" for his own kingdom? Well the story had nothing to say politically or morally. It was a valiant attempt to set the metaphysical/psychological record straight before it even got that crooked. Well now it's crooked as hell (pun intended), so here we go again...

• As Joseph Campbell auspiciously noted, the metaphysical realm is reflected from within.

• Therefore, "Satan" is the ego and "God" is consciousness, whereby consciousness exists within only the present moment, and the ego exists in exile from it. The entire Bible is a power-drunk misconstruction of this.
  

• The "Kingdom of God," furthermore, is where all of existence save for the ego resides, for the present moment and the "Kingdom of God" are one, and "Evil" is the entropic and inconsistent behavior of the ego.
  

So when the "Good Book" these curious stories are derived from also says something to the effect of 'those in Hell can see those in Heaven, but not the other way around,' it really just means that the dreamer cannot understand awakening the way the awakened can understand the dream.

This is where Christian mysticism and eastern mysticism share the same source.

I leave you with a common Christian scare tactic and its proper rebuttal:

• "Satan's greatest victory was convincing man he didn't exist."

• No; Satan's greatest victory was telling paranoid people "Satan's greatest victory was convincing man he didn't exist" because Satan's greatest victory was semantics.

Do You Ever Think About Thinking? That's Time-Travel.

Science fiction is any imagined future enabled by the scientific method. Before the scientific method, imagined futures necessarily involved mystical belief, for too few objective colors had been collectively known to paint that sort of intellectual image into popular culture.

The theoretical parameters of the technological singularity will dramatically thrust the parameters of scientific speculation into an entirely new dimension as well. It is no longer fruitful to wonder if it will be possible to end fossil-fuel dependence or explore distant heavenly bodies, because it is only a matter of time.

Speculation thereafter will be the Ouroboros of introspection and metaphysics that will require endless possibilities to incubate - endless possibilities brought about by utter, utter change.

Sloughing The Yesteryear Grinches

I had an interesting dialog on Onward Oregon's forums:

Klahowya (hello) Everyone,


My name is Collin Ferguson and I am with a new non-profit called Cascadia Commons. We are working towards a new and innovative approach to building a progressive movement in the Pacific Northwest, and that is ending the duplication of efforts amongst community service and charitable organizations in Cascadia. Cascadia Commons is forming what is called an "umbrella organization" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_organization) dedicated to bioregional sustainability. Our website is brand new, so it does not have all the necessary information, nevertheless, I encourage you to make regular visits as our organization matures (http://www.cascadiacommons.org).

The idea is to gather progressive organizations from Oregon, Washington, Idaho, British Columbia, and Alaska, and areas within the bioregion in the states of Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and Northern California, then bring all these organizations to one table, discuss strategies, and share financial and volunteer resources. The philosophy we adhere to is known as "bioregionalism", which is a very broad topic ranging between environmental efforts to socioeconomic efforts. There is a lot to discuss and like Onward Oregon, we are looking for ideas. We are very interested in working with Onward Oregon, as well as working with several similar organizations in the region.

If we truly want sustainability in our states and in the Pacific Northwest, if we want to mitigate the potential problems of Global Warming, then our efforts must also be efficient. I would like to discuss with all of you how we may best form this collective effort.


Kloshe nanitch (take care and stand guard),

Collin S. Ferguson
Cascadia Commons
Founding Member

to which I replied:

I have thought a lot about Cascadian autonomy lately because I have noticed a lot of good ideas not getting off the ground due to political hurdles thousands of miles away. It occurs to me that a spirit of autonomy could come about regardless of official boundaries and definitions through just the right amount of innovation. The federal government has the prerogative to withhold vital funding unless the centralized policy and ideology is adequately reflected in the constituency. Key to this innovation, however, is the knowledge that many fund raising options are not on the table, even though those fund raising options are themselves leverage to put other things on the table.

For example, how much money could Oregon save and/or raise by:

opting out of the drug war? No reasonable economist can argue with this.

forcing financial transparency on corporations that funnel massive amounts of the local economy into their out-of-state coffers? This gives irrefutable incentive for citizens to divest in the corporate stranglehold and reinvest in community.

supporting a local, digital, debit currency capable of bolstering the integrity of the middle class? This would guard against meaningless market speculation, which is how energy companies are holding the coastlines and Alaska ransom.

rapidly retooling for a carbon-neutral economy using in-state resources? This presents the opportunity to export an entire paradigm!

A lot of this may sound like zany Ron Paul talk but I think it's time to get serious about the abundant possibilities that cannot be ignored as well as opportunities to solve, whole cloth, the problems that came out of the 20th century.

and was responded with:

Gene,

You're on the ball.

Cascadia Commons is a 501 (c) 3, so unlike Onward Oregon, we cannot shape legislation, endorse campaigns or politicians, and we have to take a rather moderate approach to our efforts, i.e. we cannot make any bold political statements. But, this is why we want to have a loose association with a 501 (c) 4, so we can have a left hand and right hand type of movement.

Currently, Cascadia Commons is seeking to form what is called an "Umbrella" or "Coalition" corporation where its members are non-profit organizations. We will also have a general membership, but the emphasis is on 501 (c) 3 corporations joining our cause for bioregional sustainability. This way, we prevent the duplication of efforts and share financial and volunteer resources. Cascadia Commons is also seeking to join a larger umbrella called Community Prosper, which seeks to be a Web 3.0 networking site for Cascadians involved in the bioregional movement. They are partnered with a group called Community Way, which, and you'll be really happy to hear about this Gene, is seeking to establish a community credit trading system in Portland and Cascadia at large. It can be described as a modern bartering system. To learn more, please visit http://www.communityprosper.org. If the site is not up, check back in a couple of days. There will also be a soft beta launch of the Community Way program at the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland on July 27th, 2008. I encourage all of you to attend.

Now, back to Onward Oregon. I would really love to see Onward Oregon to establish an Onward Cascadia that is a coalition/umbrella 501 (c) 4 corporation representing all other 501 (c) 4's in the bioregion. I have a friend with the Earth Community Alliance (ECA) that might be interested in this process. The ECA is taking an active stance against the LNG pipeline proposal in Oregon, and I am sure many of the members of Onward Oregon are against this effort too. Forming a coalition of political groups in Cascadia would be extremely advantageous, because there is one thing that Cascadia has a lot of, and that is political action groups. There is so much duplication. So much competition for financial and volunteer resources. What if all these political groups were to work together seeking to champion the rights of their localities and the bioregion at large?


Sincerely,

Collin S. Ferguson

P.S. The end goal of course, is to create a model for democracy and sustainability that not only changes the Pacific Northwest, but also changes the United States, Canada, North America, the Earth, the Universe.

So basically we need to defrag the progressive movement in the Pacific Northwest because we know what we're doing and we're damn smart!

An Obsession with Big Toys and Shiny Logos

The Soviet Union collapsed because they over-extended their poor economics.
They spent all the money they needed to feed their proletariat on tanks, planes, and ships.
What is the point in fighting for someone who has starved to death?
After a dysfunctional revolution they now answer to a mob of washed-up KGB trolls.

We will collapse because we over-extend our poor ideology.
We spend all our attention on what we got right in the past so that we never get anything right in the future.
What is the point in fighting for private property when the property is fallow, radioactive, or foreclosed?
Who will we answer to? Another industrial stranglehold?

Wardriving From My Roof, Memes for the Masses

Part 1: "The Day-Trader Cashed Out, Sorry"

If longer life expectancies are destroying the nation's ability to socialize retirement benefits, obviously life expectancies should be incorporated into a stable equation capable of establishing an indefinite life expectancy for the socialized system itself.
Fundamentally, labor is leaving the workforce in demand of benefits faster than labor is entering the workforce capable of providing them.
If the gap can be replaced with the automated labor which comprises Kurzweil's anticipation of singularity, ensuring that no individual or net jobs are sacrificed, then not only is socialized retirement a possibility, but an inevitability which will coincide with much greater ones.

Part 2: "Mount Mandara - The Shortcut"

The sound of elders and youngsters pining for the day they die so as to escape the chains of life and live eternally in a place of meaningless ritual is the sound of elders and youngsters pining for the moment they land, but won't because the pilot has parachuted with all their cash.

My Consciousness is Gravity to Your House of Cards

What the guardians of a $70 trillion pool of money don't want you to know: if you built change and adaptation into everything, that money would be yours.
Here's how: that money is a hedge fund that gets dumped into by all the people who protect your assets and own your bosses - insurance companies and investors. The entire purpose of the pool is to exist, grow, and be owned by brutally competitive elites who have no interest in the rest of their generation, much less a future's.
If infrastructure where "human scale" in much the way Bruce Mau envisions a world designed around itself, as opposed to unconscious whims, the $70 trillion pool would grow stagnant and the gradually shifting identities responsible for it would begin to invest it once noting the drastic reduction in market risk due to long-term sustainability and middle-class solubility.
The investments would only have one place to go - the "human scale" market which by this time is beginning to swallow up the classes into a single, surging, and remarkably simple economy with an interest in only the present so as to last forever.
The potential for ideologues to eliminate the glimmer in their eyes will allow us all to know a greater glimmer which awaits in sublime silence.

The Macrocosm Reflected in the Microcosm

Self-awareness is what allowed Kurt Godel to discover his incompleteness theorems.
That is, he observed the assumptions that were involved in mathematical reasoning as they arose and recursively fed them back into the equation until he was concretely aware that completeness and consistency cannot share the same universe.
This obvious truth embodies the entire "right brain" of rational thought - all of mathematics and science reflects this truth but very little of it is placed in service of it.
Genes, through their structure and composition, are intimately tied to the rest of the universe in that they externalize entropy in exponentially-increasing efficiency and variety of method but are in fact just pieces of that universe.
This is where Godel comes in.
Anywhere time exists an equation is taking place. It is made up of infinitesimally simple completed equations and will comprise an infinitely complex equation that does not exist yet.
This equation, the ones that comprise it, and the one it is forming, cannot be any more complete and consistent simultaneously than the ones that drove Godel to insanity and eventually indirect suicide.
There। How's that for a theory of everything?

Net Neutrality - Literal and Figurative

Those opposed to net neutrality are opposed to such for a reason so simple as to negate any need for me to explain the ideology directly involved in it. Net neutrality as it still exists is the result of nature's ability to consistently maintain a dimension of absolute equanimity over any paradigm.

Take for example the world prior to industrialization. Though ignorance and fear ran rampant for centuries prior to this paradigm, naturalism and mysticism were the bastions of potential that kept us alive long enough to see, ironically, our next stage - ruthless reason. So while Hitler took science and turned it into a force of evil, a silent effort to invent universal networking bubbled up underneath. And now, in an era where so much is scientifically deterministic, we remain inexorably in contact with the unknown, the magical, the free, and the innocent through a very product of that unmerciful rationality - the internet.

Those opposed to net neutrality are opposed to such because the ideology they subscribe to is dramatically less sophisticated than the very world the information age is allowing to flower.

They are unaware of this, however, because it is symptomatic of why they oppose it.

BTW - Steve Jobs did drugs at Reed.

Roots and Sources

Debating the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution is like debating the "strengths and weaknesses" of mathematics. No one came up with it. It's just how stuff works. See here:

States exist. (Point)

States delineate, or experience. (Line)

States recursively delineate, leading to self-awareness. (Plane)

States evolve into new states. (Form, or new Point)

The universe is a mass of changing states in which beauty and purpose are synonymous, motivating evolution.

The lower dimensions of God's being are debating the existence of God. Remarkable!