Jason: Chasing after material needs and wants has been a driving force for humans for our entire history, and nanotech may be able to almost completely satiate those needs and wants.
Cory Patrick: Satiate desire by means of more and more sensation, more and more materialistic excitements? I would think that such a cause would produce an effect contrary to satiation. Satisfaction - How naïve it is to think that it can be attained through sensual experience. The gnawing hole of emptiness and ones fear of negation can only become greater and greater as one gains more and more luxury.
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Jason: I didn't say general satisfaction would be reached, I said that maybe material needs and wants could be satiated, that is a different and much more limited thing.
Yes, but what I’m saying is that material needs and wants can be satiated with the skills and technology we already have.
It’s the emotional maturity of humanity that is problematic - the skills and technology are already there. We just don’t have the balance and inner peace to wield them.
You suggested that humans need to be genetically modified in order to be supremely rational - - and perhaps that very suggestion is what triggered me to be a bit defensive and aggressive.
The transformation of a human being from an emotional/irrational/shallow force to a quiet/rational/profound force now is what I value.
When I hear a fellow like yourself claim that transforming/ enlightening humanity can only happen by getting some scientists to do a little tweak here and a little tweak there…..well……I suppose it undermines what I prefer to happen.
And so I suppose,
perhaps it is me who is irrational.
With my perspective the way it was, and still kind of is – I find it despicable that someone would put aside the task of transformation/enlightenment, in favor of hoping a scientist will do it for him one day.
Anyway, the fact is nano-tech is coming whether I like it or not – so it futile to rage against it, and it doesn’t hurt to look at some positive implications. But I still stand by much of what I’ve said.
I am not succombing to the hope that there is nothing we can do until some people smarter than us can fix us with their exciting technology.
Jason: Most Westerners have enough water to drink continuously for every waking moment, but most don't, and one reason is because their thirst is quenched after a while.
Most westerners have enough water to drink continuously, but must don’t?
(I suppose the ‘most don’t’, are the non-westerners? )
And the reason why people have lots of water is because their thirst is quenched after a while? And the reason why people don’t have lots of water is because their thirst doesn’t get quenched after a while?
I think those are some poorly founded conclusions Jason – I do see what your getting at, but I think we can do better.
I think the west has lots of water because there is lots of vegetation. Forests create rain.
However, Westerners are cutting down more and more forest and cities are becoming bigger and bigger. Cities are like deserts in that they fail to cool, absorb, and trap moisture, unlike forests.
Just walk through your average industrial park in the summer…
The heat is so intense that you can see the waves rising from the pavement distorting your vision all around you, rather than some narrow strip of highway. The wind blowing against your face is hot air. It’s terrible.
The west may have a lot of water – but at the rate the west is moving – we are going to have some major water supply problems - I think parts of America already are having such problems, and I know for a fact that in the country I live in - Canada - Ontario is having water supply problems.
Their annual average temperature is record breaking almost every year now. Agriculture systems that have worked and evolved for the past 100yrs are now blundering and struggling due to the scarcity of water and the compensatory evolution of 'pests'.
Meanwhile, as the west is being forced to learn some lessons about ecology and biology the hard way - more intelligent activist type people have succeeded at greening deserts overseas –and thus dramatically increasing the average rainfall – or even creating rainfall period in formely desertified and foresaken areas.
Increase or establish trees, you increase or establish water supply.
Do a search on - - -- -- - Greening the desert – Geoff Lawton
Or/and
Greening the desert – Fukuoka
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When you cut down a forest, you are reducing or totally eliminating your available drinking water.
Jason: Scarcity may also tend to breed hoarding and overinduldgence. I remember I saw a documentary where a captive monkey had been mistreated and underfed since he was born. He was rescued and put in a nicer environment with plenty of food, but unlike the other monkeys there, he started hoarding food and overinduldging at every meal.
Yes, that sounds about right. But don’t you think the west is guilty of hoarding and overindulgence? Don’t you think the west is ‘creating’ scarcity in other parts of the world? I would say so. I mean, Africans aren’t even allowed to grow their own food.
They are limited to working in tobacco and cotton fields – U.S. owned businesses. The scantly wages they earn can be spent of food – food imported by the U.S!
J: I do see that there could be very dangerous and negative things to come from it though, and I hope it turns out for the best.
C: Yes, man often resorts to hope when his better sense tells him to refrain. Hope is for the deluded. Follow your better instincts Jason, and put aside those silly hopes.
Jason: The future is unknown, applying your will to reality with a certain future goal in mind is what I call hope. Going to sit down on a chair requires hope - hope that the chair doesn't dissapear before you sit on it, due to some random glitch in the fabric of material reality.
No, you see, there is a difference between awareness and paranoid introspection.
I just deal with the facts – and therefore hope is not necessary.
When I go to sit down into the chair I don’t fear that it’s going to disappear due to some glitch in reality – nor do I ever want such “one too many viewings of the matrixâ€-type thoughts to plague me ;)
I am aware that, in certain circumstances, sitting in a chair will make things run more smoothly, efficiently, naturally and comfortably – so I go to sit down.
Perhaps I notice that the chair I’m about to sit in is very, very old or poor quality and the back is starting to break off.
In this situation I don’t lean on the back and hope for the best!
I get a new chair, or I make sure I don’t lean back on it.
Awareness is what I emphasize - not hope.
Hope is only for those who are caught up in the vanity, morbidity, paranoia and the futility of introspection.
Awareness is simply dealing with problems as they arise – awareness is having
long-term vision, with great yet simple rationality.
Nanotech is a possible future, so what does that leave me with? The hope that it is used in a way that agrees with my values. Why do you pursue permaculture? Is it not because you hope it will lead to a certain outcome sometime in the future?
First of all – permaculture is just a word, a concept - a mere label. I am not caught up in the word permaculture - I am simply a proponent of ‘doing it yourself’, and being wise/intelligent. Optimizing relationships, energy, beholding greater and greater complexity – yet simplifying, build it yourself, fix it yourself, grow it yourself, learn, learn, learn.
Be an individual, be whole, don’t be a slave to people who don’t care about you, but instead care only about their self-aggrandizing narcissistic agenda
What I am a proponent of is not an idealistic fancy.
It is a practical thing that is right here, right now. It begins with a very small task and grows.
Whereas an ideal exists in the future as a fanciful image.
Understand the difference between ‘awareness of what is factual in the present moment’ and a mere ideal.
An ideal is divided from the present moment and it dilutes and makes the present moment shallow.
Perhaps your hope for what nano-technology can do for you and humanity is not much different from the Christians who have hope for what Jesus can do for them.
Be careful you don’t make nano-technology into your savior Jason!
Christians curtail and limit their potential and level of responsibility (and thus their level of freedom) by inventing an ideal, a savior, a heaven.
Likewise, I think you might be diluting your potential by having not only hopes in nano-technology, but hope period.
With your insistence that we need genetic engineering to overcome our base tendencies, well I’d say it really sounds like you’ve replaced Jesus with nano-technology.
Jason: I think we may disagree about the particulars of how technology has been used irresponsibly, so where does that leave absolute responsibility?
Well, do you agree that to be irresponsible is to be irrational?
You see, to me, I see rationality, responsibility, wisdom, and morality as one whole.
Do you?
I don’t see dogmatic codes pushed by evangelical Christians as having anything to do with morals, or being ‘moral’. I see them as just plain deluded, irrational, unwise.
I just watched a documentary last night called ‘fish can’t fly’. The premise of the documentary involved a dozen interviewees who talked about their experiences growing up gay in very strong Christian communities.
They were told that their homo-sexuality was a sin. To be gay meant that you were possessed by demons and had to be exorcised.
And so they were put through ‘ex-gay’ consultations via a group called the ex-gay ministry.
Each member had to pay thousands and thousands of dollars in order to go through the necessary steps to become straight.
I’ll let you guess about whether or not the ex-gay ministries succeeded in their quest to turn the gay people straight……… ;)
Overall, a great documentary.
Jason: Isn't the source of responsibility a specific, and limited brain?
Responsibility, like anything, has no one source, it is simply the
quality of the brains relationship to environment, to history, to education, to facts, to awareness, to introspection, to fear, to food, to money, to women, to members of the community, to other brains, etc, etc. Responsibility is a relationship – whereas a specific particular thing such as a brain doesn’t exist by itself.
There is no such thing as one isolated particular thing that has it’s own source. Our brains ability to label and fragment reality into abstractions makes it seem that way – but the truth is that
it is all one – and
it has no particular beginning or ending. Beginnings and endings are born out intellectual limitation and bewilderment. However, such abstractions are useful when socializing in our culture which is necessarily relative.
To simplify, I say that wisdom is synonymous with responsibility.
There are responsible, intelligent relationships, and there are irresponsible and unintelligent relationships.
The quality of specific, limited brains is revealed through the expression of the collective, which I say is all there is.
It is the relationship the limited specific brains have with others and the environment itself that is real. In this regard, the container and the constituent within the container are equally the source – one is no more vital than the other. They are one whole.
Jason: Do you think a specific and limited brain is an absolute?
I think that it’s absolutely true that a specific and limited brain is specific and limited.
Jason: I live my life often trying to assert my idea of responsibility, I do this believing that my brain creates this idea of what responsibility is, and that my brain has been formed by numerous factors such as upbringing, nutrition, genetics etc.
Responsibility/wisdom is not an idea – it’s a fact. It’s just like homo-sexuality.
Someone’s sexuality is a fact – it’s not an invented idea.
However, if someone doesn’t like their sexuality because their parents or society doesn’t like it, they may adopt ideas and invent ideals that put them in conflict.
A war emerges between what one is(what one dislikes) and what one should be(what one likes).
Likewise, one maybe uncomfortable with facing up to what being responsible(wise) actually means, factually – and so they invent some mere ideas of responsibility that they like more.
So one becomes divided (one becomes conflicted). There is what I am now, and there is what I should be, or what I would like to be ‘then’.
The etymological root meaning of the word ‘individual’ is:
to be undivided, whole
Jason: Other brains have different ideas of what responsibility is, and I sometimes try to overpower other people's version of responsibility with my version because it creates a more positive situation for me. That's reality as far as I am concerned.
Yes, it seems like that is what we, as humans, have been selected to do – dominate, submit, assimilate, unify, simplify.
If I encounter someone who is being more rational than me, I respect him and, if i'm strong that day, I actually submit to his insistence and logic, because I see what he is saying is correct, true, and thus good. I become more united with him.
Sometimes I encounter someone who is being less rational than me, and I gently, skillfully, or sometimes harshly (depending on the feeling of what is necessary) dominate him.
He submits to my will, or he doesn’t depending on how much he loves truth.
Sometimes I encounter someone who sees things very close to how I see things.
We usually work together, perhaps there is the occasional disagreement – sometimes I submit, sometimes he does.
The urge to be united and whole is the primary drive.
Jason: I certainly care about myself, but I am not humanity. I am an individual, humanity is a collection of individuals, therefore I am not the same thing as humanity. I don't care about most of the individuals who make up humanity as much as I care about myself, most of humanity is just an abstract idea to me. How do you equate yourself with humanity?
I don’t see ‘the self’ as a real thing. I see that I am literally everything. I see that choice is an illusion. I see that nothing inherently exists. I see that I am the whole.
Jason: Ok, instead of what your "motive" is, what is your "goal" in seeking to remove those base qualities?
I guess you could say I am just sick of base qualities.
I love clarity, learning, fearlessness, insight. Base qualities interfere with what I love.
So, with me, there is no discipline really. There is only an understanding of what is true and what isn’t.
If you understand what is true, than that understanding has its own discipline. A discipline that is free of suppression and control.
One lives without resistance, with passion.
Jason: So are you selfish or not? Are your permaculture plans selfish?
Nobody is selfish or unselfish. People are just stupid(dishonest) and wise(honest) to various degrees.
Nobody really has a self to be ‘ish’ about.
It’s just an illusion.
Throughout the population you are going to find ‘qualities’ of intelligence revealed by studying relationships.
There will be highly un-intelligent groups/patterns, and there will be more intelligent groups/patterns.
There is only the pattern that the collective expresses by means of cooperation and competition with itself.
Amongst groups, different individuals will be playing different roles.
Each individual is the result of other individual’s actions both dead and living, and those other individuals were/are likewise caused to be what they are.
Each is also the ‘cause’ of those living and of those who will one day live.
There are many other causal factors beyond the activity of human beings, obviously.
So to ask me whether or not I am selfish is a wrong question.
Instead a better question might be:
Cory, are you wise? Are you honest? Are you a high quality human being?
I would say I am as good as the people I depend on and work with on a daily basis. I am not stupid. But I am not a perfectly enlightenened individual.
I am emotional, I have fears, I tend to be a bit addicted or pulled into a groove of introspection, I sometimes fantasize about getting in contact with old friends, I sometimes deeply fear getting in contact with old friends, I get lonely, depressed, I am not at all consistently super witty and comfortable in my own skin, I am sometimes funny, I am sometimes very sullen and withdrawn, I am sometimes out-going and pleasant to be around, I feel hatred, I feel lust, I look at girls asses and breasts..............I somtimes write posts that are too long ;)
Jason: I meant I don't subscribe to the position that leisure must be deserved or earned in order for it to be morally right.
Yes, but leisure that is earned in any other way except by putting the energy/work in yourself in order to get it, can only lead to the exploitation of other people, which I say is unwise.
And to be unwise is to be irrational, and to be irrational is to be immoral and irresponsible.
Cory: Keep in mind, I am not saying that one cannot enjoy their hard work. Ideally man’s work should be more important than his mere leisure/amusement. But humanity is stupid. We make our work a drudgery and mundane affair, and then we make our leisure a superfical shallow hedonistic affair.
Jason: I agree with that, but how is cleaning toilets or sorting ballbearings all day everyday not going to be drudgery?
I say that cars and most toilets aren’t necessary. Composting toilets really are a joy to take care of because you make use of all of that excess sawdust at the nearby mill, and you participate in the wholesome act of ensuring every ounce of your bodily wastes go back to where they came from, enriching your soil, and ensuring and enhancing the health of the future vegetables you grow. (and if you just became a bit squeemish after realizing what I’m emphasizing – well, I laugh whole-heartedly)
Jason: Most people don't get to pick what type of work they do on a day to day basis, and if you're doing work you don't want to be doing it can be hard for it not to be experienced as drudgery. Do you have a plan that gets rid of these problems? Homesteading?
Yes, Homesteading and intentional communities are key.
Perhaps one could be a hermit.
I’m not sure if one can be totally self-sufficient without a decent inheritance – it would require a very carefully designed system if one was to live totally alone and survive to the degree that one has the leisure for contemplation.
I think most of us have no choice to be dependent on each other and we need to learn to work together intelligently.
I think one generally needs to be working within a system of people where everyone does different things, yet roles/jobs can be traded - people should have the freedom while they are young to take a break from old work to learn new work.
Perhaps a lot of peoples leisure time is spent doing superficial and shallow things because they are all worn out from their eight hour a day drudgery and don't have the energy or passion left to do anything more?
Yes, that is definitely part of it.
Jason: Or perhaps most people are really just consumers, not creators, so they really are unwilling or incapable of doing anything more significant.
I think most people have a tremendous sense of inferiority, and sometimes envy and jealousy – and this gets in the way. Mans potential to love mankind as himself is not realized because his education and personal experiences have trained him to think he is too inferior. Man is very inwardly wounded, very hurt.
He is envious of qualities in other people and he can’t get his eyes off others. He doesn’t know how to act unless he compares and imitates.
So he has a very hard time doing anything other than what he is told or what others are doing (absurdly he derives a sense of pride and superiority from his obedience and imitation) – and when he has leisure he sedates himself with the most readily available sensations –TV, drug, cheap low-brow comedy, sex, violence, food, mere intellectual amusement.
Jason: Specialization is a killer, I don't want to be locked into a narrow predetermined job, I want to follow my passion, interest and curiosity. Do you have any ideas about how we could move away from specialization?
Well, becoming proficient in a task is necessary – the key question to ask is – what relationship does my skill have with not only my other skills, but with the skills of other people?
You have to be concerned about how your skills fit into the big picture. You also have to ask whether or not the good that you derive from you skill depends on the misery of others.
The second step is asking:
What is the relationship between skills for survival and wisdom?
Then I must ask:
Do I know what wisdom even is?
With wisdom, perhaps I will be able to discriminate and discern the critical skills.
And I will abide in wisdom, rather than escape from my anxiety into unnecessary activity.
Really, it is loving wisdom and living for wisdom that is necessary.
If you truly understand what that is, what it implies, then perhaps one will effortlessly know what to do.
Do I know what wisdom is? No, not completely. I am reading over Nietzsche carefully – seeing how much of what he says is different from what I have come to think, what Lau-tsu, Buddha, QRS say……..I’m reading more contemporary stuff. I’m studying myself inwardly.
J: You sound like you're laying down the ground rules for another original sin, it's like the puritan work ethic all over again. I could do without another chrisitianoid guilt-trip.
C: Then do without it. I’m not going to fret over your disagreement with me.
Jason: Don't you wish to convert people to your way of living? If so, wouldn't failure to convert someone negatively effect you?
I do, but I also don’t fight against reality. I point toward the direction I am looking at - if they shun it, well, then I keep moving, I keep doing my thing.
There’s no point in arguing, wrestling, controlling.
Jason: You originally said you've paid the price for being spoiled as a child and so have your parents, then when I ask you what paying the price entails you say that paying the price is having profound knowledge. The way it sounds, it seems like you are saying that being spoilt or affluent gave you profound knowledge. I doubt that's what you think though.
Extreme environmental conditions yield either harrowingly shallow individuals, or harrowingly profound individuals.
I have been, and perhaps
am both.
My parents paid the price for their carelessness when I would throw parties in their house and damage it, indulge in drug use, barely pass my exams, disrespect them, and hate them.
I wouldn’t of did that if they communicated with me respectfully, if they truly respected and love themselves.
They actually subtly and unwittingly encouraged the very behavior they were appalled and bewildered by.
Then, after I became sufficiently disillusioned and pained by the mediocrity I had become, I had become very driven to be deep, wise and intelligent.
This led to some ruthless confrontations. On many occasions I have pointed out to my parents their stupidity and hypocrisy quite brutally – making my mother cry and my father fly into a rage.
I have toned it down quite a bit over the past year.
It seems most of my anger has been exorcised.
I guess you could say that by being spoiled as a child and subtly abused (my mother, after abnormally censuring me and over-protecting me for 15 years would one day comment:
Cory, you must be ‘behind’ in your ‘mental development’……my friend at work has a son who is interested in ‘clothes’, unlike you.)
Perhaps (if i had the self awareness) I should have said –
“yeah, and that’s because he is openly interested in girls –
something that you have traumatized me about being. (my mother would make me feel very ashamed, embarrassed and frightened about having anything to do with girls)
Not too long after this stupid comment by my mother - my father would say in response to my sister’s commenting about how well behaved I was –
“oh, I think we’re going to see Cory go through a bad phase, we’re going to see him be badâ€
I found this to be a really weird comment.
It frightened me, because at school it seemed everyone was doing ‘bad’ things that I didn’t want to do or didnt see the point in doing.
I guess he was encouraging me to be something because he thought that I would be stronger for it – but I don’t think he understood the implication of what he was subtly encouraging.
My parents were encouraging me to participate in the 'race to the bottom'.
I had no interest in doing anything ‘bad’ – but after my mother and father made these comments……….well……..I whole-heartedly dedicated myself to being bad – to being 'cool', to being what I feared.
This was all happening at a time when my anxiety about who I was at a very painful peak. So my parents instilled a lot of fear and confusion in me.
They didn’t raise me to be a confident person – because they themselves weren’t confident people.
Probably due to their own low sense of self esteem and confusion - I found that they were subtly prodding me to be more ‘bad’ and to be interested in ‘cool’.
I got hip on all the cool clothes, started listening to rap, started swearing, I got my self a skanky girl-friend, started fucking, starting drinking, started going to dances, started making the ‘right’ friendships, started doing drugs.
Then I remember one day, I was on one of our last family camping trips. I had been working at being ‘cool’ and bad for about 2 years……and…….I kind of developed a split personality.
I didn’t know how to behave with family, younger children, or in front of my parents anymore.
I was just constantly in a state of shame, anxiety, arrogance, angst, awkwardness and embarrassment.
We were waiting in a line of cars to get into the camp ground (probably 15 of us, family and friends of the family with their kids)
We got out of the cars and sat in the grass.
I kind of hid behind a pair of sun-glasses and stood aloof from the younger kids who I would have normally played with and interacted with in some wacky way.
Later, I overheard my parents talking secretly in their tent with disdain in their voices: “Notice how Cory is Mr. Cool now†“yeah†my dad said laughing cynically.
They were making fun of me, they dissaproved of me.
So I hated them even more – because I was only struggling to do what they had prodded me to do.
Reading this, you may say: “Cory, you were just a way too oversensitive and unintelligent kid, quit blaming your parentsâ€
I’m not blaming my parents. My parents were ‘involuntarily’ simply stupid, poorly informed people. They had kids. The first one was me. My mother pampered me to a highly, highly abnormal degree.
She would rock me to sleep and sing very sad folk songs to me until I was almost 4 years old.
She says whenever she would play certain songs I would start sobbing in response to the song and cling to her tightly – and the next night I would ask to hear the songs that made me cry again.
I was like a drug addict.
She said she cried in panic sometimes when she acknowledged it was 4 am and I wasn’t going to let her go to bed - but she didn’t know what to do because I would start crying whenever she put me in my room by myself.
We were slaves to each other, both miserable.
Until I was about 7 years old I would sneak into their bed at night.
Eventually they locked the door on me and I had to come to terms with a more stark reality - - - - - But a better one!
One I should have had access to 6 years previous.
Some of the best psychologists of late talk about the importance of not comforting a baby when it is crying for no reason.
If a baby is crying, check its diaper, make sure its not hungry, investigate any ‘physical reasons’ why the baby is crying.
If everything is fine and the baby appears to be crying solely because it is inwardly - anguished/conflicted LEAVE IT.
The baby will work things out in a short period of time and will soon be quiet.
But if you constantly dote on the baby, if you try and soothe the baby, dramatize its tiny little suffering, smother it in sentiments and rocking – it will become an addict.
And when an addict is without his drug, he is distressed, crying.
Even if a toddler falls down and gets a scrape on its knee - tend to the wound, put on a bandage - - -but don’t make a big deal out of it - - don’t rock the baby incessantly and dramatize the whole thing – when you do that you are abusing/over-stimulating the babies emotional system.
If you want to bring balanced and rational human beings into this world, don’t allow your self to succumb to the pleasure of over dramatizing events – positive or negative.
My sister didn’t have to go through all this crap because my sister wasn’t a planned pregnancy, she was an accident, and they were wore out by me.
Besides, being 'bad' and 'cool' was, for her, a natural inclination. She didn’t need to be coerced.
They didn’t put as much effort into her mainly because a great deal of their spirit had been broken by their misguided attention on me, or better by their past ignorance.
The first born is often the most tragic because he or she ends up being a windbreaker.
The second born usually rides behind the older sibling, enjoying the benefits of not being handled so desperately and excessively.
Jason: one thing I have explored is that perhaps the law of unintended consequences comes into play. Our inhereted upbringing was created in a much more organic and evolutionary. Is it possible that reason cannot take into account the sheer complexity of all the interacting aspects of life? Thus there could be unintended consequences of making changes in upbrining and society, which reason cannot accurately deduce. The more organic and evolutionary formation of society and culture is self-regulating just as the evolved organism is, continously adapting at the local level to changing circumstances and pressures in a way that rigid, simple and universally applied laws and methods could not.
I do see what you mean here, and, well, we’ll have to wait and see – we’ll have to not be so quick to condemn.
However, that wont stop me from putting together an interpretation and discussing and debating with people based on that interpretation.
I’m just going to try and not get too rigid and resistant to a further evolution of my interpretation, or transformation of it, or a necessary total destruction of it –
interpretations/beliefs/conclusions often prevent growth –
however, acknowledging facts, distinguishing facts from mere opinion/ideal in an important skill.
So anyway - maybe its egotistical and vain to be so confessional and autobiographical. But there it is.
It was sloppy to say my parents are paying the price for
what they did . Ignorance is bliss couldnt be a better description for my parents these days. They are overall happy people.
I for the most part, am not.
Niether of us really choose to be what we are.
Life just is.
