komodo

what if science and spirit are not reconcilable? it might be that splintering perception to focus on discrete particles and phenomena glares out the vision of a malleable monism. maybe once we assume god(s-esses-head-hood-etc) we cast a kind of plasma over things, blurring the edges. maybe it is a real dualism that represents a choice of how to make sense of experience - either break it into pieces that can be scrutinised or goggle at ones own entanglement in a vastless continuum. have cake yesterday, eat cake tomorrow, but never cake today

ahh mes ami, sorry to report that as mentioned in the last post on this topic, after initially showing interest and support the landowner has chosen to pursue a higher profit model of development. if i were remaining in WA i'd be actively involved in locating a new site for the same community model, but in a few weeks i'm heading to far north queensland for the foreseeable, so no longer directly involved. interested parties might want to contact norman erickson, who initiated the jarrahdale project, is involved with similar groups, and has a ongoing interest in developing sustainable equitable communities in WA, his email: loop AT iprimus.com.au best of luck to y'all, go for green

we arent totally identical with each other, occupying different space locations for starters. if we have opposing faith-manifestation goals or synchronicity-thread-actualisations-in-mind, which god-will-event wins out? i think this kind of thing would require a third party arbiter consciousness, ie. a god that isn't just diffused beingness but has its own goals and decision making apparatus, that sets up events in time according to the rules of some divine game we're born to play...

im being devils advocate a bit here, it's partly because i'm a sceptic but also because i think its an interesting area of ideas. what i meant about divine plan earlier was that if we can make reality just how we like through faith then what is that faith actually 'in'? in order for the future to be preset, eg. the verge collection that precisely matches ones wants being placed out the evening *before* one sets out for a walk and happens on the stuff, there is a fatality or plan at work. some intentional force (the wanter? god? an overmind?) that is not linear in time needs to be acting in order for this to occur.

i was having a chat with a couple of mates into the dawn last night, under a dusty white moon, and we talked a bit about the issues of sorry and compensation. here's some of my thoughts following that. it seems that the national mood is that what rudd's government is doing is commendable, but compensation is a mixed bag. the chase of it for me is that i'm really glad the formal apology was not coupled directly with cash. it seems to me that money would have dirtied the exchange, made it somehow less symbolic. while it might be seen as a ivory tower concern, the symbolism of it, not the on-the-ground proposals, seemed to me the point - that the hard defensive shell of old racist white australia is finally cracking, right where it's thickest at the top. maybe i'm just a romantic, but it seems like a real chance at a different vision of ourselves as australians, one less driven by denial, distraction and repression. wait and see if that chance is taken i guess. though i'm not into compensation for that reason, obviously real action is needed. i would love to see many of the mining dollars we dig up go into a new, large scale, federally funded armature for healing, care and equality, just not individual handouts. also... i really hope that i'm correct in thinking that dickheads like wilson tuckey (a WA pollie who refused to attend parliament for the apology speech) and those he represents are now seeming a little marginalised, and that their redneck attitudes are becoming unacceptable to most of the country.

ok from some of the posts above i get this impression that if synchronicity is in some way meaningful, it signals that there is a divine plan, is that correct? some kind of 'rightness' that we are supposed to be watching out for and trying to fit into?

hey haga, i recall we thrashed some of this out in the AI thread last year...! got to put in a couple of cents on this phrase, to back up my concerns that technological singularity, aside from being science fiction itself, is essentially thanatological, if unconsciously: the fact that you need to insert 'real space' (ie. phenomenal world where weather occurs, stars burn, people walk about, etc) data into a 'virtual space' (ie. symbolic computational space isolated from 'real space' by non-analogue I/O translation) in order for the virtual intelligence to manifest a non-programmatic impulse underlies what i see as a basic qualitative difference between biological and artificial 'intelligence' - that one is a section of the analogue continuity of the general cosmic life force, and one a discontinuous finite replica. i harped on about this a bit less succinctly (organic entity, chaos etc) in the AI thread, wherever thats got to...

...because its lighter, its safe to assume more critters are awake or stirring? that would mean the level of consciousness activity in the region copping full moonlight would be higher, which makes for a more vibrant night. so for night tripping, the vibrancy of the environs (esp. outdoors) would probably flux with the moon cycle.. so makes sense to party under full moon, with all the life-buzz of sleepless critters and bugs around..

..getting off topic i know but still, here's some more oddness to check out: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...21218_moon.html

my sister and cousin are both doctors who worked in emergency wards for some time and had told me about increases in admissions on full moon nights, but i followed up on your scepticism VM, browsing some research papers from different countries, and it does seem fairly conclusive there is no major statistical spike of full moon related medical 'drama'. however i suspect even something as simple as more lumens, and more drug fueled doofs, might increase the activity on the night, and subsequent risk of carnage/psychosis. will ask around more when i get the chance to. interestingly, amongst the research concluding the moon phase does not increase crisis, i did come across two odd conditions that may have moon related triggers... http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/1...journalCode=ijn http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=A...b7a226e15fe0b8b

hm im a bit rusty on this stuff but i did spend a few cold months in sheffield winter typing late nights on forums arguing at length with some hard nosed libertarians who were hooked on singularity. adherents like to map it out; when the exponential curve of technological progress approaches a vertical rate of acceleration (agglomerated from things like CPU flops and communication bandwidth) techno nirvana arrives - verticality. hardon. my thinking is that technological progress is not the same as evolution, for a number of reasons, some of which i've gone into in the old AI threads here. with regards to singularity, an illusion is being perpetrated that artificial, cobbled together machine systems can form a total, integrated, creative and sustainable system, when the opposite seems to hold to me- that the progress spike is a critical failure point (spikes have a down curve equal to the up curve...) a suicidal holocaust being enacted by humans on both ourselves and all the living systems of our earth, not a cosmic apotheosis, some holy grail of linear accomplishment. i know this is contrary to what you suggest hagakure, and maybe you can explain if you see it differently, but as i understand it, there is no ecosystem in the singularity, nature has no part to play in this metaphysics - organic life forms are like dinosaurs, outdated. i think this is a dangerous meme, and thinking analytically i suspect it arises out of a need to find a superior deity to mother nature as post rationale for otherwise indefensible resistance to deep ecological philosophy... 'father techne' as the dominant and ultimately triumphant force of progress... singularity as a male orgasm without the downspike... hm.

wow, i havent been on this forum for ages, saw this thread and it sounded interesting.. started reading at the first page and it was getting into some good stuff about the plausibility of xD beings and what they may be up to and etc... i go to the recent posts thinking 'great, this looks like a good discussion, i wonder what all the new talk is about', maybe i can learn something and contribute something... but no! argh! its ole brain fighting with dude about fighting about fighting about how large is ones head penis when one is fighting about fighting about nothing and who started this fight anyway?! elves shmelves. extradimensional beings dont wear silly hats. if you get hats, your subconscious is doing a reducing valve stunt on a phenomena with no handles you can grasp. i guess there always has to be some handles, plus they make more colourful stories that way, which is crucial to a good life, but unfortunately the real cosy, easy handles are where is where saps like kent get their reassurance from.. "oh its got THOSE handles, sweet, i can write this off as some jungian archetypal construction of the subconscious mind and still eat shit for breakfast". in cases of xD perception of sensual contact without a 4-dimensional interaction (ie. recordable, equally 'real' to not-vibrationally-altered-by-drugs-or-advanced-yoga people around you) the sensuality (i mean that literally) is mostly a constructed experience, from fragments of cognitive stuff that your brain digs up and plasters onto the deeply foreign xD territory that it is suddenly supposed to map for you. the more raw you can get with your mind, the more of the essential you perceive, ie. the less familiar it becomes. eventually i think these beings will come across as energy matrices of information and entity, an impression of 'other' intention and affective awareness (made up term, i'm meaning like the impact force of awareness in quantum colocation). whether or not you see rapacious crocodiles or cheesy leprechauns is the construct part, the feel of the other consciousness is the authentic part? actually i think i'd like people better if i could see past their stylized flesh puppetry and perceive raw matrices of energy (probably look a bit like an alex grey painting), and hear them as modulated gibberish that nonetheless transmits a wide band of soul knowledge and tricky little games, but no such luck, without the spice, its all pretty lumpy and chunky... low rez reality.

yeah a few years is the timeframe this will be taking place in! the going site has been put on hold due to landowners thoughts about taking substantial profit from the venture etc. but the core group remains engaged and there are new discussions underway with a number of residents, stakeholders, etc. based around the fremantle area. a wind turbine would be great on the right site, needs to be a good corridor etc. as for solar power, my going selection would have to be the MA-100: http://www.mhi.co.jp/power/e_a-si/contents/standard.html which is not particularly reflective and has the advantages of amorphous silicon technology (such as much lower embodied energy, and continuous power output at high operating temperatures which is a critical advantage over mono/polycrystalline panels on australian roofs) am also working on a straw bale project at the moment, based up north NSW in goonengerry, there is a lot of community action there lately with the onset of the community title system, which a number of the old multiple occupancy titles have applied for a transition to, and allows for better financing arrangements etc. i'm sure if any of you clever mob want to live in a community arrangement you will find plenty of opportunities out there

hi tassie you bring up a lot of different discussions there; solar cycles, extraterrestrial planets temperature, possible magnetic polar flip (doesnt effect rotational axis btw, eg. icecaps), fallout from nuclear testing, fusion reactions, and presumably the CERN project. kinda difficult to have all those discussions at once! but i hear what you're saying in that you feel CO2 pollution and it's effect on the earth's temperature isn't something we should be so worried about. i definitely don't agree with you though. we can do something about carbon pollution as individuals with our consumption patterns, so if we want less carbon pollution we should take direct action on that. same goes for nuclear research, if you want to shut it down, don't vote for pro-nuclear parties or work for industries that lobby for uranium. the point being that you take action not on one thing or the other, but on all those fronts simultaneously. also, the anti-carbon momentum that is getting going worldwide is a serious and thoughtful action to protect the environment, it requires a change in role from purely profit based exploitation to a grudging admission that we also are required to act as caretakers of terrestrial ecosystems. this is a cultural and conceptual revolution that helps in other fields too; when people start to realise that our actions and attitudes as a dominant globalised species on earth have serious consequences, that our appetites are exceeding our limits, and we can no longer stick our heads in the sand and pretend we can do as we please all the time.

if there's a reality to these experiences, not just a hallucination, then some kind of matter/energy that probably fits under the heading 'dark' at the moment.. if theyre like us, individual entities, they're energy-loaded vibrations i guess, gathered in a matrix of sufficient density to resist ambient noise/dispersion and have identity-over-time.