Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.

	March 15, 2008

Saturday Links of the Week -- March 15, 2008 -- The Heavy Ideas Edition Image: Last Monday by SuperNova K, taken in January at UBC during a storm.  The Ghost in the Hologram: Back in 2005, my friend Joe Bageant was invited to be part of a conversation on "the condition of the world". The result was published in the long-running e-journal Swans (thanks to Jon Husband for the link). Teaser: Now with the approaching death of widespread yeoman textual literacy, and the advent of technology driven quantum experience among our species, it is understandable that folks of our type are frustrated, anxious and depressed over what is ahead. Certainly the lush, funky, sexy, organic planetary experience as we have known it through human history is ending. The progression of technology is geometric, self-squaring, and what we are now witnessing is sort of a Doppler shift in which human perceptive experience approaches warp speed. The man becomes the holographic man, then the ghost in the hologram animated by the very mechanism he created, grown complex and labyrinthine and self-manifesting through man himself. Unintelligent, soulless, but self-manifesting nevertheless. I think too many idealists in our neurological caste (artists, visionaries, pimps, heart burglars, whatever) cannot grasp that the masses, the majority of modernized technical humans, find the hologram just peachy. They are made for it because they were created by it. Holons in Holarchy: The Cell, organ, body, community, Gaia -- Elisabet Sahtouris provides a circles-within-circles model of the living universe and how its elements all co-conspire to optimize, continue and evolve life. It's too bad she gets sucked into the 'progress' myth (that evolution is moving 'forward' rather than just adaptation to change) and pays homage to the progress mythologists (spiral dynamics etc. -- ugh), because the rest of her model is brilliant. Thanks to Don Dwiggins for the link. Imagine Why The World is So Sad: An interesting video by a religious group suggests that there's not much point in getting angry or upset with people -- we're all struggling in a world of quiet desperation, and if we understood what others were struggling with, we'd go much easier on them, and save ourselves and them a lot of stress. Thanks to Mitch Ditkoff for the link. Dolphin Rescues Beached Whales: Humans had tried in vain for hours. It only took the dolphin a few minutes to communicate with and lead the whales to safety. Thanks to Cassandra for the link. 6:12:50 PM  trackback []  comment []

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