Thursday, October 2, 2014
Thrive
I know I've already posted this, but with more visitors here there is certainly a chance that some of them have yet to view Thrive, and just to make my reservations clear, I wholeheartedly agree with nearly everything Gamble puts forward in the film except the part at the very end where he advocates Free-Market Capitalism as the solution. As an Anarchist I feel that any form of hierarchy is antithetical to actual freedom BUT if we're going to attempt a global, complex, interdependent social experiment then regulation, particularly with regards to preserving the bio-sphere, is absolutely critical. Corporate Capitalism is the problem. If we're going to attempt to survive the the present predicament, that of compounding crises, then Socialism is far-and-away more ideal than pretending that the "Invisible Hand" of the "Free Market" is going to pull us back from the brink. All Corporate Capitalism is presently doing is consolidating wealth and power into the hands of the few while the world burns. Socialism would address both the inequality gap and the absence of regulation that created the total nightmare we are presently living through. Industrial "Civilization" and its embodiment of Corporate Capitalism is a gross manifestation of our collective ego. If we are to survive NTE (Near-Term Extinction) dis-identifying with material wealth, power and "prestige" is pre-requisite.
It's grow-up-or-die time, right now we're behaving like collective two-year-olds.
More on Anarchism:
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2011/09/reading-excerpt-emma-goldman-on.html
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-practice-of-anarchy.html
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/10/in-praise-of-anarchy-part-ii.html
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/10/in-praise-of-anarchy-part-iii.html
FBI Whistleblower: Pentagon, CIA, NATO and MI6 Were Masterminds Behind 9/11
By Washington's Blog
Sept 11, 2014
Sept 11, 2014
“As Far As People Who Ran The Show, It Was The Highest Levels of NATO, the U.S., MI6, CIA And The Pentagon”
Sibel Edmonds has just released her fantastic spy thriller, The Lone Gladio(available on Amazon). Here’s our review, comparing it to the best of Clancy or Ludlum … but with a twist.
In the real world, Edmonds is a former FBI translator who translated terror-related communications for the FBI right after 9/11. In that capacity, she read communications between terrorists and other radicals.
Edmonds has been deemed credible by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, several senators (free subscription required), and a coalition of prominent conservative and liberal groups.
The ACLU described Edmonds as:
The most gagged person in the history of the United States of America.
Famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says that Edmonds possesses information “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”. He also says that the White House has ordered the press not to cover Edmonds:
I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to ‘How do we deal with Sibel [Edmonds]?
The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn’t get into the media. I think any outlet that thought of using her materials would go to to the government and they would be told “don’t touch this . . . .”
Even Paul Newman praises Edmonds, saying:
Sibel Edmonds would not let an intimidating FBI shut her mouth, and as a result, suffered grievous consequences, but she has persevered and we are better off for her sacrifices.
Edmonds is the founder and president of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, a group of high-level national intelligence and security officials.
To understand why Edmonds’ information is so explosive, we need a little background on “Operation Gladio.”
Sibel Edmonds has just released her fantastic spy thriller, The Lone Gladio(available on Amazon). Here’s our review, comparing it to the best of Clancy or Ludlum … but with a twist.
In the real world, Edmonds is a former FBI translator who translated terror-related communications for the FBI right after 9/11. In that capacity, she read communications between terrorists and other radicals.
Edmonds has been deemed credible by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, several senators (free subscription required), and a coalition of prominent conservative and liberal groups.
The ACLU described Edmonds as:
The most gagged person in the history of the United States of America.
Famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says that Edmonds possesses information “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”. He also says that the White House has ordered the press not to cover Edmonds:
I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to ‘How do we deal with Sibel [Edmonds]?The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn’t get into the media. I think any outlet that thought of using her materials would go to to the government and they would be told “don’t touch this . . . .”
Even Paul Newman praises Edmonds, saying:
Sibel Edmonds would not let an intimidating FBI shut her mouth, and as a result, suffered grievous consequences, but she has persevered and we are better off for her sacrifices.
Edmonds is the founder and president of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, a group of high-level national intelligence and security officials.
To understand why Edmonds’ information is so explosive, we need a little background on “Operation Gladio.”
Background: “Operation Gladio”
The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism.
As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security” (and see this)(Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred).
This was codenamed “Operation Gladio”. And watch this BBC special. And see this for the big picture background.
The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism.
As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security” (and see this)(Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred).
This was codenamed “Operation Gladio”. And watch this BBC special. And see this for the big picture background.
Operation Gladio Continues to this Day
Edmonds told Washington’s Blog that she wrote The Lone Gladio because the FBI classified 100% of her previous book, Classified Woman. When she found out that she doesn’t need to get pre-publication approval for “novels”, she decided to write a novel.
So Edmonds decided to write a work of fiction based on the real-life operation- ‘Operation Gladio B’ – as the context, and with fictional events and characters in the novel The Lone Gladio.
[WASHINGTON’S BLOG]: You’ve previously claimed that Gladio was not terminated with the fall of the Soviet Union, but has continued up until today … the so-called “Gladio B”.
[SIBEL EDMONDS]: Yes. The title “Gladio B” was given by the FBI, because we don’t know what they really call it.
NATO, MI6, MIT (the Turkish military and intelligence service), and the Pentagon, also some outside rogue elements connected with Gladio.
[WASHINGTON’S BLOG]: Did you see – when you were still with the FBI – source documents about this so-called “Gladio B”? In The Lone Gladio, you have a “fictitious” set of memos that have players from NATO, the U.S. State Department and high-level terrorists meeting together. Did you see documents like that when you were at FBI?
[SIBEL EDMONDS]: Yes. I reviewed over 5,000 documents. Not only from FBI’s Washington office. A lot of documents came from FBI’s Chicago office. The document were from the period 1996 through February 2002. There were written documents, and audio translated by FBI translators.
[WASHINGTON’S BLOG]: Were NATO personnel actually mentioned in some of the documents or transcripts you saw as being part of these Gladio B meetings?
[SIBEL EDMONDS]: A number of generals were involved. Both U.S. generals and British generals and other generals involved with NATO. And many recognizable, public names with the U.S. State Department.
Most of this involved people from and State Department and the CIA. These are at the top levels … you’re not going to get operative-level involved with this.
Edmonds explained that the State Department doesn’t just deploy “soft power”, but is involved in many “hard power” operations, often coordinating through well-known “Non-Governmental Organizations” (NGOs).
Specifically, Edmonds explained that numerous well-known NGOs – which claim to focus on development, birth control, women’s rights, fighting oppression and other “magnificent sounding” purposes or seemingly benign issues – act as covers for State Department operations. [Background.] She said that the State Department directly places operatives inside the NGOs.
As one example, Edmonds said that – during the late 90s and early 2000s – perhaps 30-40% of the people working for NGOs operated by George Soros were actually working for the U.S. State Department.
Edmonds also said that Osama Bin Laden – and several other members of his family – were working with U.S. agencies as part of Gladio B right up until 9/11. Edmonds notes that Bin Laden and his family members were helping the West set up terrorist groups in Chechnya up until 9/11.
Edmonds also said that the FBI failed to prosecute any of the criminal activities occurring in the United States as revealed by these documents.
Edmonds told Washington’s Blog that she wrote The Lone Gladio because the FBI classified 100% of her previous book, Classified Woman. When she found out that she doesn’t need to get pre-publication approval for “novels”, she decided to write a novel.
So Edmonds decided to write a work of fiction based on the real-life operation- ‘Operation Gladio B’ – as the context, and with fictional events and characters in the novel The Lone Gladio.
[WASHINGTON’S BLOG]: You’ve previously claimed that Gladio was not terminated with the fall of the Soviet Union, but has continued up until today … the so-called “Gladio B”.
[SIBEL EDMONDS]: Yes. The title “Gladio B” was given by the FBI, because we don’t know what they really call it.
NATO, MI6, MIT (the Turkish military and intelligence service), and the Pentagon, also some outside rogue elements connected with Gladio.
[WASHINGTON’S BLOG]: Did you see – when you were still with the FBI – source documents about this so-called “Gladio B”? In The Lone Gladio, you have a “fictitious” set of memos that have players from NATO, the U.S. State Department and high-level terrorists meeting together. Did you see documents like that when you were at FBI?
[SIBEL EDMONDS]: Yes. I reviewed over 5,000 documents. Not only from FBI’s Washington office. A lot of documents came from FBI’s Chicago office. The document were from the period 1996 through February 2002. There were written documents, and audio translated by FBI translators.
[WASHINGTON’S BLOG]: Were NATO personnel actually mentioned in some of the documents or transcripts you saw as being part of these Gladio B meetings?
[SIBEL EDMONDS]: A number of generals were involved. Both U.S. generals and British generals and other generals involved with NATO. And many recognizable, public names with the U.S. State Department.
Most of this involved people from and State Department and the CIA. These are at the top levels … you’re not going to get operative-level involved with this.
Edmonds explained that the State Department doesn’t just deploy “soft power”, but is involved in many “hard power” operations, often coordinating through well-known “Non-Governmental Organizations” (NGOs).
Specifically, Edmonds explained that numerous well-known NGOs – which claim to focus on development, birth control, women’s rights, fighting oppression and other “magnificent sounding” purposes or seemingly benign issues – act as covers for State Department operations. [Background.] She said that the State Department directly places operatives inside the NGOs.
As one example, Edmonds said that – during the late 90s and early 2000s – perhaps 30-40% of the people working for NGOs operated by George Soros were actually working for the U.S. State Department.
Edmonds also said that Osama Bin Laden – and several other members of his family – were working with U.S. agencies as part of Gladio B right up until 9/11. Edmonds notes that Bin Laden and his family members were helping the West set up terrorist groups in Chechnya up until 9/11.
Edmonds also said that the FBI failed to prosecute any of the criminal activities occurring in the United States as revealed by these documents.
9/11 Was Part of Gladio
Back to our interview …
[WASHINGTON’S BLOG]: In terms of 9/11, what’s your opinion about whether there werecountries involved, or whether it was rogue Gladio personnel?
[SIBEL EDMONDS]: You have to separate the pawns from the main players. There might have been elements involved within countries: for example Prince Bandar in Saudi Arabia, or Turkish people at the MIT.
But the people who ran the show at the top were NATO and Gladio. And Gladio was under the U.S. It was – and is – an operation under the U.S., for U.S. empire.
As far as people who ran the show, it was the highest levels of NATO, the U.S., MI6, CIA and the Pentagon.
Back to our interview …
[WASHINGTON’S BLOG]: In terms of 9/11, what’s your opinion about whether there werecountries involved, or whether it was rogue Gladio personnel?
[SIBEL EDMONDS]: You have to separate the pawns from the main players. There might have been elements involved within countries: for example Prince Bandar in Saudi Arabia, or Turkish people at the MIT.
But the people who ran the show at the top were NATO and Gladio. And Gladio was under the U.S. It was – and is – an operation under the U.S., for U.S. empire.
As far as people who ran the show, it was the highest levels of NATO, the U.S., MI6, CIA and the Pentagon.
The Goal: Control of Eurasia, Oil and Other Resources
Edmonds says that the entire focus of the U.S. and these related groups is to control the world’s resources, such as oil and gas pipelines in Eurasia.
She explained that many of the people in Eurasian region speak Turkic languages. For that reason, Turkey and its intelligence service – MIT – has been a major conduit for Gladio operations. And since a lot of the resources are in former Soviet countries, a lot of Gladio’s focus has been in those countries.
Postscript: Edmonds has previously stated that Bin Laden – and his number 2 Al Qaeda lieutenant – Ayman al-Zawahiri – worked with the U.S. government for 3 months AFTER 9/11 to coordinate destablization in the Caucus region.
And she previously told Washington’s Blog:
For the past 11 years I have been emphasizing that my State Secrets Privilege & Gag Orders had to do with the FBI files (covering period 1996-2002 February) oncovert-terrorist operations in Caucasus and Central Asia backed, managed and armed by US actors. These US-NATO directed operations in the region involved Bin-Laden and mainly Zawahiri …..
The FBI documents contained damning evidence (audio and written) collected between 1996-2002 tying these terror operations directly to the U.S. persons in the State Department/CIA and Pentagon. Also, how the State Department got Congress to grant huge amounts of funds to “front’ NGOs and businesses(mainly Turkish companies in US-listed/members of ATC) to funnel money to the terrorist cells in this region.
Edmonds says that the entire focus of the U.S. and these related groups is to control the world’s resources, such as oil and gas pipelines in Eurasia.
She explained that many of the people in Eurasian region speak Turkic languages. For that reason, Turkey and its intelligence service – MIT – has been a major conduit for Gladio operations. And since a lot of the resources are in former Soviet countries, a lot of Gladio’s focus has been in those countries.
Postscript: Edmonds has previously stated that Bin Laden – and his number 2 Al Qaeda lieutenant – Ayman al-Zawahiri – worked with the U.S. government for 3 months AFTER 9/11 to coordinate destablization in the Caucus region.
And she previously told Washington’s Blog:
For the past 11 years I have been emphasizing that my State Secrets Privilege & Gag Orders had to do with the FBI files (covering period 1996-2002 February) oncovert-terrorist operations in Caucasus and Central Asia backed, managed and armed by US actors. These US-NATO directed operations in the region involved Bin-Laden and mainly Zawahiri …..The FBI documents contained damning evidence (audio and written) collected between 1996-2002 tying these terror operations directly to the U.S. persons in the State Department/CIA and Pentagon. Also, how the State Department got Congress to grant huge amounts of funds to “front’ NGOs and businesses(mainly Turkish companies in US-listed/members of ATC) to funnel money to the terrorist cells in this region.
Nobel Committee Issues Statement Regretting Obama's Nobel Peace Prize
Just an FYI, this is absolutely not satire, The Nobel Peace Prize Committee seriously wants their prize back. Can't say that I blame them, you can view Mr. Barrack "Indefinite Detention and Mo Bomba's For Yo Mama" Obama's long laundry list of grave insults to Democracy here.
12 September 14
Statement from the Committee September 12, 2014
Capitalism Versus the Climate: Naomi Klein on the Need for a New Economic Paradigm
http://realitysandwich.com/223210/capitalism-vs-the-climate-naomi-klein-on-need-for-new-economic-paradigm/
Naomi Klein has a new book: This changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, and her thesis is nothing short of bold: we need a new economic model, and a transformative global movement to tackle the climate change crisis. Nothing short of that, she argues, will work, and the “neoliberal economic system” needs to be booted.
“We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis,” Klein writes. “We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe — and would benefit the vast majority — are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets.”
When Einstein Met Tagore
http://www.brainpickings.org/2012/04/27/when-einstein-met-tagore/
by Maria Popova
On July 14, 1930, Albert Einstein welcomed into his home on the outskirts of Berlin the Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. The two proceeded to have one of the most stimulating, intellectually riveting conversations in history, exploring the age-old friction between science and religion. Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore recounts the historic encounter, amidst a broader discussion of the intellectual renaissance that swept India in the early twentieth century, germinating a curious osmosis of Indian traditions and secular Western scientific doctrine.
by Maria Popova
Collision and convergence in Truth and Beauty at the intersection of science and spirituality.
On July 14, 1930, Albert Einstein welcomed into his home on the outskirts of Berlin the Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. The two proceeded to have one of the most stimulating, intellectually riveting conversations in history, exploring the age-old friction between science and religion. Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore recounts the historic encounter, amidst a broader discussion of the intellectual renaissance that swept India in the early twentieth century, germinating a curious osmosis of Indian traditions and secular Western scientific doctrine.
The following excerpt from one of Einstein and Tagore’s conversations dances between previously examined definitions of science, beauty, consciousness, andphilosophy in a masterful meditation on the most fundamental questions of human existence.
EINSTEIN: Do you believe in the Divine as isolated from the world?TAGORE: Not isolated. The infinite personality of Man comprehends the Universe. There cannot be anything that cannot be subsumed by the human personality, and this proves that the Truth of the Universe is human Truth.I have taken a scientific fact to explain this — Matter is composed of protons and electrons, with gaps between them; but matter may seem to be solid. Similarly humanity is composed of individuals, yet they have their interconnection of human relationship, which gives living unity to man’s world. The entire universe is linked up with us in a similar manner, it is a human universe. I have pursued this thought through art, literature and the religious consciousness of man.EINSTEIN: There are two different conceptions about the nature of the universe: (1) The world as a unity dependent on humanity. (2) The world as a reality independent of the human factor.TAGORE: When our universe is in harmony with Man, the eternal, we know it as Truth, we feel it as beauty.EINSTEIN: This is the purely human conception of the universe.TAGORE: There can be no other conception. This world is a human world — the scientific view of it is also that of the scientific man. There is some standard of reason and enjoyment which gives it Truth, the standard of the Eternal Man whose experiences are through our experiences.EINSTEIN: This is a realization of the human entity.TAGORE: Yes, one eternal entity. We have to realize it through our emotions and activities. We realized the Supreme Man who has no individual limitations through our limitations. Science is concerned with that which is not confined to individuals; it is the impersonal human world of Truths. Religion realizes these Truths and links them up with our deeper needs; our individual consciousness of Truth gains universal significance. Religion applies values to Truth, and we know this Truth as good through our own harmony with it.EINSTEIN: Truth, then, or Beauty is not independent of Man?TAGORE: No.EINSTEIN: If there would be no human beings any more, the Apollo of Belvedere would no longer be beautiful.TAGORE: No.EINSTEIN: I agree with regard to this conception of Beauty, but not with regard to Truth.TAGORE: Why not? Truth is realized through man.EINSTEIN: I cannot prove that my conception is right, but that is my religion.TAGORE: Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony which is in the Universal Being; Truth the perfect comprehension of the Universal Mind. We individuals approach it through our own mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experiences, through our illumined consciousness — how, otherwise, can we know Truth?EINSTEIN: I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man. Anyway, if there is a reality independent of man, there is also a Truth relative to this reality; and in the same way the negation of the first engenders a negation of the existence of the latter.TAGORE: Truth, which is one with the Universal Being, must essentially be human, otherwise whatever we individuals realize as true can never be called truth – at least the Truth which is described as scientific and which only can be reached through the process of logic, in other words, by an organ of thoughts which is human. According to Indian Philosophy there is Brahman, the absolute Truth, which cannot be conceived by the isolation of the individual mind or described by words but can only be realized by completely merging the individual in its infinity. But such a Truth cannot belong to Science. The nature of Truth which we are discussing is an appearance – that is to say, what appears to be true to the human mind and therefore is human, and may be called maya or illusion.EINSTEIN: So according to your conception, which may be the Indian conception, it is not the illusion of the individual, but of humanity as a whole.TAGORE: The species also belongs to a unity, to humanity. Therefore the entire human mind realizes Truth; the Indian or the European mind meet in a common realization.EINSTEIN: The word species is used in German for all human beings, as a matter of fact, even the apes and the frogs would belong to it.TAGORE: In science we go through the discipline of eliminating the personal limitations of our individual minds and thus reach that comprehension of Truth which is in the mind of the Universal Man.EINSTEIN: The problem begins whether Truth is independent of our consciousness.TAGORE: What we call truth lies in the rational harmony between the subjective and objective aspects of reality, both of which belong to the super-personal man.EINSTEIN: Even in our everyday life we feel compelled to ascribe a reality independent of man to the objects we use. We do this to connect the experiences of our senses in a reasonable way. For instance, if nobody is in this house, yet that table remains where it is.TAGORE: Yes, it remains outside the individual mind, but not the universal mind. The table which I perceive is perceptible by the same kind of consciousness which I possess.EINSTEIN: If nobody would be in the house the table would exist all the same — but this is already illegitimate from your point of view — because we cannot explain what it means that the table is there, independently of us.Our natural point of view in regard to the existence of truth apart from humanity cannot be explained or proved, but it is a belief which nobody can lack — no primitive beings even. We attribute to Truth a super-human objectivity; it is indispensable for us, this reality which is independent of our existence and our experience and our mind — though we cannot say what it means.TAGORE: Science has proved that the table as a solid object is an appearance and therefore that which the human mind perceives as a table would not exist if that mind were naught. At the same time it must be admitted that the fact, that the ultimate physical reality is nothing but a multitude of separate revolving centres of electric force, also belongs to the human mind.In the apprehension of Truth there is an eternal conflict between the universal human mind and the same mind confined in the individual. The perpetual process of reconciliation is being carried on in our science, philosophy, in our ethics. In any case, if there be any Truth absolutely unrelated to humanity then for us it is absolutely non-existing.It is not difficult to imagine a mind to which the sequence of things happens not in space but only in time like the sequence of notes in music. For such a mind such conception of reality is akin to the musical reality in which Pythagorean geometry can have no meaning. There is the reality of paper, infinitely different from the reality of literature. For the kind of mind possessed by the moth which eats that paper literature is absolutely non-existent, yet for Man’s mind literature has a greater value of Truth than the paper itself. In a similar manner if there be some Truth which has no sensuous or rational relation to the human mind, it will ever remain as nothing so long as we remain human beings.EINSTEIN: Then I am more religious than you are!TAGORE: My religion is in the reconciliation of the Super-personal Man, the universal human spirit, in my own individual being.
Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore is a sublime read in its entirety — highly recommended. Complement with Einstein’s letter to a little girl about science vs. religion.
Thanks, Natascha
Alan Watts - Buddhism
Related:
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2014/01/scientists-claim-that-quantum-theory.html
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2013/12/dean-radin-discusses-supernormal-with.html
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/12/philosophy-and-spiritualism-of-sri.html
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2011/12/sri-aurobindos-radical-social-vision.html
Global Brains & Singularities: Cadell Last & Michael Garfield Debate The Technopocalypse
http://realitysandwich.com/222819/global-brains-singularities-cadell-last-michael-garfield-debate-the-technopocalypse/
Cadell Last is an evolutionary anthropologist at the Global Brain Institute and producer of the PBS Digital Studios series The Advanced Apes. In our recent email correspondence we discussed the possibility that our entire planet is waking up as a single super-intelligent organism, dreams of a technological singularity, and the possible consequences – both light and dark – of such a transition, both for humankind and the entire biosphere…
MG: So tell me about this conference you attended! That seems like a good place to start.
CL: I spoke at the first Evolution, Complexity, & Cognition Global Brain Institute seminar on October 4th last year. The seminar was hosted by cyberneticist Dr. Francis Heylighen. The function of the seminar was to help the Global Brain Institute develop a clear research trajectory for cybernetic and Global Brain theory. My talk was focused on an attempt to merge evolutionary, anthropological, and cybernetic theory. I think the result is a theory of meta-system transitions that can explain the pattern, diffusion, and timing of human meta-system transitions, with perhaps important insights into the future of our system development and evolution.
MG: So let’s pretend I didn’t understand what you just said. How do you see evolution, anthropology, and cybernetics coming together into a general theory of emergence that explains the birth of a “Global Brain?” Can you go into more detail about what you mean by “meta-system transitions” – like, systems of systems?
CL: Well, first I want to say that anthropology is a the human science, and evolutionary anthropology is a diverse discipline focused on understanding the evolution of our order, genus, and species. For this reason, I feel like any theory of the Global Brain would be incomplete if it excluded the evidence gained from studying our evolutionary history. Despite this, I think contemporary analyses of our system evolution have been lacking in evolutionary anthropological insight. Now, one thing that evolutionary anthropology has failed to do is develop a systems approach to human evolution. So this is what I want to do. This is what I mean when I say that I want to merge or integrate evolutionary, anthropological, and cybernetic theory. Cybernetics is the study of systems and system-level complexity. Evolution is the study of change. Anthropology is the study of humans. So there is a natural merger that can occur here, at least in my opinion. From my preliminary research I think this is going to be a very useful theoretical tool.
In short, I think our system “behaves” in a very predictable and surprisingly simple way. I think we can easily build a systems-level theory of our evolution that provides us with a quite detailed and accurate prediction on how it will behave in the 21st century. Such an analysis could provide us with tremendous insight about what our lives will be like both individual and collectively in the coming decades. Basically, I think current analyses suggest a major meta-system transition is going to occur sometime in the 2040s, or maybe the 2050s. By meta-system transition I mean, a new system-order or complexity. This will include new energy, new information transfer mechanisms, and perhaps most exciting, new transportation systems.
MG: I’m interested in the same things, only from the perspectives of paleontology (specifically, paleoecology, and what we can learn about our world by studying the relationships between organisms and environments throughout Earth’s history), developmental psychology (especially, how it is that the evolution of social order and the development of individual psychological structure reflect one another), and general evolutionary dynamics (in particular, the study of emergence and under what conditions we find these “meta-system transitions”).
I gave a talk about this at Burning Man in 2011 entitled “Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality“, which is the term evolutionary biologists use to describe these epochal shifts from, say, single-celled to multicellular life. They seem to happen as a response to increasing environmental complexity, and the pressure of natural selection to form meta-organisms that function as a new single unit. We’re seeing something similar occur on many levels right now – not only with the “Global Brain,” but also with research into technological forms of telepathy that would allow combat units to communicate with one another so fluidly they might as well be a single “meta-person.”
The way these transitions happen seems to be governed by a strongly convergent set of rules – like how a wing is a wing is a wing, no matter what animals evolve them. They happen for the same reasons and take the same basic form, in spite of the differences in structure and other details. But what your unique confluence of interests suggests to me is that you see ways in which this particular evolutionary transition into the transhuman is going to be uniquely characterized by our humanity, that it will carry the unique signature of our own heritage and legacy as a species. So I’d love to hear more about how the emergence of a human-based Global Brain will be characterized by our humanity (as opposed, to, say, another world’s Global Brain created by super-smart squids).
CL: Fantastic points about structural similarity within the biological world. Of course, we are humans and this will be a Global Brain built by humans with the support of our information and communication technologies (ICT). I suspect that planets do follow a natural history towards a Global Brain, regardless of the physical vessel that intelligence happens to reside within (e.g., squids). It is an interesting question as to what types of phenotypic characteristics a species would need to have to start building a Global Brain. Some biologists, like E.O. Wilson, contend that high intelligence can’t emerge in an aquatic environment for example (so he would say that a Squid Global Brain would be impossible). I disagree; I wrote about this for Scientific American last year. I think we just don’t have enough evidence to know whether an aquatic equivalent of what we are doing now would be possible.
That being said, it appears as though, on the scales of paleontological/geological time scales, our planet was ready to burst with intelligence – and that this intelligence does not have to evolve in a specific terrestrial environment. Let’s pretend for a second that the human lineage never made it. Let’s say the Toba Supervolcano wiped us out 74,000 years ago, or something like that. Our planet is currently filled with species that, given a couple million years and the right adaptations (say an opposable appendage or two), could be on their way to high intelligence (e.g., dolphins, octopuses, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, corvids, bears, canines). These species are phylogenetically quite divergent; some of them are closely related to us, some of them are not. Some of them live in aquatic environments, and some live in terrestrial environments. Some of them can fly well; some of them can swim well; some of them can swing from trees well; and some of them can exist in the Arctic well. What they all have in common is a higher average encephalization quotient (EQ) than ever before in Earth history. Brains are bursting at the proverbial seams (again, on the scale of geologic time). So I should suspect that Global Brains could take several forms that would be unique to whatever species happened to win the “intelligence race,” even though the broad system-level similarity would be shared.
So what does this mean for a human-based Global Brain? Well, is it alright if I give a semi-cop-out response and say that it is unknowable? Let me explain my reasoning here. I think we can say a lot about the pathway towards a human Global Brain/meta-system transition/singularity, etc., but after that I feel as though “humanity” will be up for grabs. The framework I use to describe this is one comparing the biochemical pathway to the techno-cultural pathway. Everything that we currently experience via the biochemical pathway will be able to be replaced with a much more efficient and malleable techno-cultural equivalent. We will be able to say, what do we like about the human experience? And what don’t we like? Would we still like to sleep? Would we still like to defecate? Have biological sex? All of these things could technically be modified, enhanced, or eliminated altogether. I have my own hypotheses for what I think we’ll do to these fundamental aspects of the human experience on a system-level, but I think some of the details are unknowable.
Does that make sense?
MG: I’m still hoping we’ll find a Post-Squidularity civilization out there in the stars…
And I completely agree with your point that “humanity” as a concept, as a socially constructed category, will be up for grabs in the years to come. Greg Egan discussed this in his novel Distress, which was in some sense just reiterating for the science fiction crowd what postmodern thinkers like Donna Haraway and Katherine Hayles had already been saying for decades. Posthumanism, to distinguish that philosophical movement from Transhumanism, argues that what we call human is constantly being redefined – consider, for example, how recently it was that the average person finally came to accept people of different races as of equal standing in the species. Now we’re granting personhood to dolphins and talking about the rights of other animals to benefit from our intelligence-enhancing technologies, about creating an Interspecies Internet. Plenty of authors have made the point that what we consider a person nowadays would be person only in general body type, but psychologically unrecognizable, to people from any other era of our species.
And so, yeah, “humanity” will probably come to mean all kinds of wacky things – I know a bunch of people who are already camping in a proverbial line around the block for their new tentacles, gills, wings, computer backups, etc. But I seem to have a harder time than you do imagining that some watershed moment is ahead of us in time that marks an epochal break point into a radically different state of being than any previous radical shift. As far as I’m concerned, we’re already over the rainbow – it’s just become the new normal to us. And while I agree that the ratios of certain phenomena are clearly shifting, and we are bearing witness to an integration of disparate intelligences into a newly coherent planetary mind, I think it’s equally the case that bacteria created the first global communications network four billion years ago, and we’re just participating in a late-stage refinement of that ancient Global Brain.
Complexity researchers like Neil Theise speak compellingly about mind and experience as a phenomenon that goes “all the way down” the “evolutionary ladder” (pardon the archaic shorthand) – and the globe-encircling planetary bioplasm, the Last Universal Common Ancestor from which all modern life is descended, bears more than a passing resemblance to the World Wide Web. Identity was fluid back then, genes exchanged freely among microbes in a way that we’re seeing now with social media and the increasingly permeable membranes of human selfhood facilitated by electronic communications.
To me this evolutionary transition has more in common with similar transitions in the past than we would like to believe in our characteristically human hubris. Sweeping transformation and the establishment of new transcendental evolutionary arenas seems to be the norm, around here.
Anyway, I’m with you that this transition seems like an evolutionary (even a thermodynamic) inevitability. Where I lose the thread is when you take the argument that we see these same natural laws in place everywhere, that this pattern-recognition allows us to talk about an essentially transcendental superorganism waking up through us, and then to twist that and say somehow this same continuity is going to liberate us from having to take shits.
I mean, obviously, yes: everything is changing in our evolving mutual embrace with our technologies. But your vision of a hyperefficient, improved human seems too much like the same dangerous control fantasy we see causing so much trouble in allopathic medicine (“just prescribe your pain away” or “remove the problem with surgery” instead of recognizing the adaptive intelligence of depression or fever) or geoengineering (“let’s fill the atmosphere with metals” and damn the second-order consequences, instead of taking more long-term and sustainable approach to surfing the climate changes while reducing our interference with natural systems).
Not to come down too hard on you, here, but I tend to agree that any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from nature. True efficiency is in the familiar natural geometries of dissipative structures like gills and branches, not the austere grandeur of modern art and architecture.
Likewise, given evolution’s love for death, I think we may be able to redefine death (and excretion) – but even if nanobots are brushing our teeth and we shit a perfumed vapor, we’re still going to have these issues in one sense or another. Nothing that we have transcended, have we really left behind…
CL: I think we can find more points of agreement than disagreement, which is nice. I didn’t mean to trivialize transhumanism with my examples, it’s not all about hyperefficiency. What I was trying to communicate with those examples is the general trend towards ephemeralization. As the brilliant systems theorist Buckminster Fuller recognized back in the 1950s and 60s, the human system is in the process of doing more with less, until we can do everything with nothing. The physicist Stephen Wolfram emphasized a similar point at the Singularity Summit last year So in a sense, hyperefficiency should not only be a feature of the Global Brain, but a pre-requisite. We need to ensure that our self-organization and our distributed intelligence are maximized on a planetary scale, which is no small task. However, as Francis Heylighen outlined in his recent “Return to Eden” paper, we have the real technological pathways to achieve this in the near-term future. I feel like Peter Diamandis outlined a similar vision for these technological pathways in Abundance.
But after the hyper-efficiency is achieved, then all human minds are free to explore their true and full potential. Everyone will be able to spend their time how they actually want to spend it. When I was explaining this to a few people who had never truly considered the possibilities of Global Brain, I tried to get them to imagine a world in which every single human had the possibility to explore their intrinsic desires, without fear about where their next meal was coming from or whether they would have a roof over their head next month. In the Global Brain, I imagine a world in which ever single human can explore art, music, math, writing, science, athletics… whatever they truly want to do for a very long period of time. The technophilosopher Kevin Russell tried to capture this idea in an H+ magazine article about “immortal artists”. But we must also consider the possibility that new types of cultural expression, that may be unimaginable today, will also become possible. The Global Brain presents us with the possibility of forming higher level consciousness and explore information transfer systems that are as hard for us to imagine as understanding language would be to an australopithecine.
And so this is where I always emphasize that technological evolution always makes us more human, and not less. It is art, music, math, writing, etc. that make us human. That is what makes us different from other species, and yet so few of us get to explore these aspects of existence to our fullest potential. Often times we can’t due to practical constraints, due to the fact that our society is not efficient enough.
We cannot do everything with nothing yet.
I don’t see this type of thinking as encouraging some type of “control fantasy”. At the end of the day, we want to create a system that is in ecological symbiosis with the environment. We don’t want a Global Brain that controls the environment, we want a Global Brain that exists with the environment.
And in terms of fundamental properties of living systems (i..e, death, excretion), of course they will still be with us. I suspect that every consciousness must at one point end, and just because we can create hyper-efficient vessels for our consciousness, it certainly doesn’t mean that we can do away with metabolism. So we are in agreement. But we must also acknowledge that making our metabolism, and all other fundamental components of our being more efficient, provides us with the possibility to explore infinite opportunities. At least that’s my perspective.
MG: It’s a beautiful vision and one that I think is more accurate that most people currently accept…and for the sake of the world, I hope you’re right. But for the sake of a balanced conversation, I feel the need to also recognize the dialectic of history. If what we’re going through now is comparable to the emergence of eukaryotic cells from bacteria, or multicellular organisms from protists, then we can expect a period of intense conflict between worlds and structures (“tension” would be a euphemism). The kind of complex boundary zone between ages outlined by transhumanist author Ramez Naam in his fabulous novel, Nexus – one in which enhanced humans and posthuman AIs are regarded as “emerging risks” by nation states and repressed just like psychedelic substances and “disruptive” cryptocurrencies are today.
Even Heylighen, in the paper you mentioned, talks about a period of intense and difficult change on the way to the technological Eden he envisions – looking around us, the world is already in a state of constant cyber/economic/memetic warfare; there is a very all-bets-off transfer of power between governments and multinational corporations as described in Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen’s The New Digital Age. Douglas Rushkoff points out in Present Shock that the physical geography of Manhattan is “optimizing” to resemble a giant computer chip in order to process financial transactions happening faster than anyone can comprehend, according to algorithms that nobody understands. Evgeny Morozov has argued very eloquently about how the very same “rule by algorithm” that would enable the enlightened leadership by “machines of loving grace” effectively dismantles the democratic process and with it all of the enlightenment ideals that brought us to this point – replacing them with a “mother knows best” world in which not even the programmer priest-class really has any say in things anymore. As MIT researchers start to investigate consciousness as a state of matter and talk with straight faces about the brain as “computronium” that could be made more efficient by thirty-eight orders of magnitude, I get the impression they’ve never read Charles Stross’ visionary singularity novel Accelerando, in which posthumans devour Earth for processor power and reject humankind from the inner solar system as if we were an infection.
Regardless of what amazing things are going on across the event horizon, there’s little doubt that this lauded shift is stratifying income all over the world, decimating the biosphere, and reshaping the human being in the image of a computer. I’m all for Buddhist detachment and an acceptance of the eternal mutability of things – and I wonder if in fact a world pollinated by robotic bees isn’t somehow an improvement, my grief at our loss notwithstanding. After all, a brain learns by pruning its connections; extinctions are as natural as anything. The system learns and keeps going.
We came awake as a species in a very unusual set of circumstances on Earth, ecologically speaking. As suspicious as I may sound of these changes, I’m also wary of making conservation an ideology. Transformation is a given, here – on that I know we agree – and I think we also agree that the right thing to do is to move into whatever future as wisely and compassionately as possible. Whether that means granting dolphins personhood – or standing up for the rights of digital organisms – or defending the freedom to experiment on our own consciousness – I know you and I both see a more creative world coming. Creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin…so care and mindfulness are key to participating in the emergence of a healthy Global Brain. Given that cardiac tissue is also full of neurons, and generates a more powerful electromagnetic field than the brain, may whatever’s coming also be a healthy Global Heart.
Thanks for the conversation, Cadell. And see you on the other side…
CL: Thank you!
Thoughts? Feedback is welcome in the comments…
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