“The effect of concept-driven revolution is to explain old things in new ways. The effect of tool-driven revolution is to discover new things that have to be explained”
-- Freeman Dyson in his book "Imagined Worlds" (p. 50).
“It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.”
-- Eckhart Tolle
This has been something on my mind these last couple of days. What limits us from following our 'bliss' as Joseph Campbell called it? It feels as though many of us are dulled to being receptive to our own intuitions, which tell us what is wrong or right for us - and only us. At the same time, the culture of fear and scarcity abounds, and keeps us from joyously taking courageous risks.
The full quote from Joseph Campbell, which speaks so loudly for me right now is as follows:
“Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.”
I've been reading about something called epigenetic robotics - I couldn't resist seeing as the term combines two of my scientific fascinations.
But epigenetic robotics is not (really) anything to do with DNA (slight disappointment). Instead, it focusses on studying the mechanisms by which robots could be made to learn like children - i.e. lifelong and open-ended learning.
Imagining engineering a robot so that on leaving the factory, it is programmed ready to learn, adapt, and evolve, is mind-blowing. Just like a human, you would never get the same robot twice.
Perhaps more exciting still is the possibility to offer the robot learning of ethical codes and morals before anything else - just like the development of super-ego in children is built upon their grasping of what is 'right' and 'wrong'...
Could it help solve our fears around the existential risk of developing powerful A.I. which may in turn destroy us all?
Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist: it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your roadmap through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die."
-- John Taylor Gatto
I don't usually warm to teachings that house the word 'should'. But in a world where education has strayed so far from what it could serve for a person - to prepare them to fully enjoy and live their life, to make decisions that fit them, to be learning and able to self-teach throughout all of life - it seems acceptable to judge education as it stands now.
On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
-- Steward Brand
“True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”
-- Mortimer J. Adler
'There are things in life that can never be achieved by doing. Do not fill up your life with so many doings that you have no time left for not doing.'
"When engaging in a collaboration, you're saying, I don't know how to do this on my own. You're both saying that. You're co-failing, really. Which is the best way to start a partnership"
-- Ross McCammon
"[On technology:] A realm of intimate, personal power is developing -- power of the individual to conduct her own education, find her own inspiration, shape her own environment, and share her adventure with whoever is interested."
-- Steward Brand
Sometimes a picture or an exercise can completely change your outlook, or understanding, simply by the process of re-jiggling the concepts and outlooks you've got in your mind. Think of it like a metaphorical 'shake' of your marble jar.
Sometimes life seems really short, and other times it seems impossibly long. This chart, showing the average life week by week, all on a page for you, helped me grasp the concept that they are most definitely finite.
Those are your weeks and they’re all you’ve got.
"Transformationally motivated people are the growing edge of a great continuity of souls reaching back to the very earliest of times. We must never think of ourselves as alternative, far out, or disconnected. We are in fact the growing tip of the greatest tradition of both nature and history. Remember, the nature of nature is to transform. Those who tend toward transformation are nature personified. And in human history there has been a continuous and growing impulse toward the regeneration and transformation of humanity."
-- Barbara Marx Hubbard in her book Conscious Evolution (1998), p. 175
Fureai Kippu, in Japanese ふれあい切符, meaning literally "Caring Relationship Tickets" is a complementary social currency, based upon hours of volunteering service.
The basic unit is an hour of service to an elderly person. Sometimes seniors help each other and earn the credits, other times family members in other communities earn credits and transfer them to their parents who live elsewhere. These credits accumulate- users may keep them for when they become sick or elderly themselves, then use the credits in exchange for services. Alternatively, the users may transfer credits to someone else.
A surprising part of the project has been that the elderly tend to prefer the services provided by people paid in Fureai Kippu over those paid in yen. This was found to be due to the nature of the relationship and personal connection. To convert this community service to yen would seem to dilute the community ethic.
-- Wikipedia page "Fureai Kippu"
"We mind wander, by choice or by accident, because it produces tangible reward when measured against goals and aspirations that are personally meaningful.
Having to reread a line of text three times because our attention has drifted away matters very little if that attention shift has allowed us to access a key insight, a precious memory or make sense of a troubling event.
Pausing to reflect in the middle of telling a story is inconsequential if that pause allows us to retrieve a distant memory that makes the story more evocative and compelling.
Losing a couple of minutes because we drove past our off ramp is a minor inconvenience if the attention lapse allowed us to finally understand why the boss was so upset by something we said in last week’s meeting.
Arriving home from the store without the eggs that necessitated the trip is a mere annoyance when weighed against coming to a decision to ask for a raise, leave a job, or go back to school."
-- Excerpt from a scientific article on psychology (Frontiers of Psychology, 2013).
Definition: Hiraeth
(n.) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home that maybe never was; the nostaligia, the yearning, the grief for lost places of your past.
"There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by non-violent methods most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.
To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralises his work for peace. It destroys their own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of their own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful."
-- Thomas Merton, "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander"
The prefix 'eco' goes back to the Greek oikos and concerns the "whole house".
The word economy can be traced back to this same root.
The words ecology and economy are derived from the same root.
Transforming our current ego-system economy into an emerging eco-system economy means reconnecting economic thinking with its real root, which is the well-being of the whole house.
But while the whole house for the Greeks was something very local, today it also concerns the well-being of our global communities and planetary ecosystems...
"Ne te quaesiveris extra."
Translation: "Do not look outside of yourself."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
In his essay "Self-Reliance", Emerson makes the case for human beings to rely on themselves and their ideas. How often do we abandon an idea, or dream, allowing society's norms and ideals to dictate our thoughts? In some ways, the greatest contribution of the world's greatest thinkers -- "Moses, Plato and Milton" -- may not have been their ideas themselves, but their ability to recognize the grandeur of their own thought and to then share it with the world. Allow your ideas to emerge and develop because your ideas have the potential to become the "universal sense".
Related: check out ex-Google engineer's leadership programme Search Inside Yourself, recently brought to my attention, combining mindfulness, emotional intelligence and leadership abilities, wisdom & compassion. Coming to London next week!
"The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper"
-- Yates
Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from “The Danger of a Single Story”
