Rocks Spikes and Rails

For physical training, as well as chi gung and internal martial arts training, I have always liked to do some resistance training. Normally I do a mix of body weight workout (which I often combine with a more physical yoga set) and some weights like kettle bells, (I enjoy swinging them around and keeping my body springy and all connected).

Recently I found a new type of very hardcore resistance and cardio workout. Moving big rocks.

I started learning about rocks from Steven Stone, a great Scottish rock man who is also a well trained wrestler. He got me into the physical sport aspect of the thing.

Of course you need something to do with them or its all a bit pointless. I would not have taken it much further than building nice walls, steps and the stone circle (using the nicer stones we find)], until recently when I was researching natural building options to live in (such as yurts or other eco homes).

I found that the cost of buying one of these eco-structures, relative to what you actually get, did not make sense to me. So I decided to see if I could build a livable space from stuff that was just lying around or growing out of the ground, and figure out how practical it actually was.

From living in a yurt, I liked the idea of circular living spaces, I also enjoy how you really feel all the nature around you because of the thin walls. But I have also like living in mud buildings because of the unique feeling and the heat retention of the mud walls.. So I wanted to come up with something modular, but that could be built optionally either way. Added to this I wanted a design where could plug these round spaces together with other round spaces, allowing you to choose the type of round 'feeling' you wanted in each room.

I also wanted something that could be made out of components and taken down again relatively easily without any leaving any impact on the land.

Instead of thinking of a house as walls and making rooms inside it, I thought of making various rooms, with the same basic structural components, but with the option of using different materials within this structure to create the feeling you liked. These could then be connected with external paths, rope bridges or tunnels. A sort of house where the house is really the nature around you, and the rooms are interconnected spaces that are all part of the nature rather than isolated from it.

Anways, that's the idea I am playing with. So right now to test it all out, I am building two prototype versions, one on stilts up in the trees and one slightly bigger one on the ground.

All of this got me a good reason to move some bigger stones again. I did not want to make any sort of concrete foundation. It feels nasty to do that in the nature here. But I am happy to drop some rocks on the ground in a circle or two.

If you are going to build without concrete, you are either going to have to get physical or have a machine do the heavy lifting for you. I did not want a machine driving around the area where I am putting these things, and its so much more fun to see if you can do it all yourself. The building on stilts is also on a steep hill for added complication, there is no way I could get a digger there even if I wanted to.

Here is a short video of me moving a rock or two and making a foundation.




Rolling some stones down the hill from where they were delivered, then moving them with rails to where the lower space is going to sit. Its about a 50m journey for each stone. Each is a good workout, sometimes i move them in batches.

You have to stay very present moving rocks or these things can break you very easily. Your body alignments have to be spot on when you lift or things in you pop. Also if the stone starts going to wrong way, you need to get out of there. Sometimes they really do have a life of their own… stone respect is a must.

But back to the training, it certainly changes your perspective.. When you live in a city and work on a PC, you work out to keep fit.. now I am discovering that I think the other way round, I need to plan when my body is rested and strong enough to move rocks again.. No longer does it make sense to wear out my body lifting weights when I could be move a rock and getting something real done. Its interesting and fun to have that physical reality based orientation appear in this way in my life.

How A Relationship Can Breathe

I found a feature of relationships that appears to be a sign they are working really well. I call it the breath of the relationship. I discovered that often people don't feel comfortable allowing a relationship to fully breathe and instead prefer to be with a stuck or dead relationship. When there is no breath there is no life, or more realistically, when the breath is limited, the life is limited.

What do I mean here?

For me there is a cycle to how a relationship flows and transforms, developing through phases in a cyclical fashion, each cycle beginning with a birth phase, proceeding with a consolidation and ending with a death phase. After the death, the cycle can restart. If this cycle is allowed to regularly progress through all its stages, then the relationship is alive and exciting, producing positive growth for everyone involved. A dead relationship is one that allows the people involved to stay the same and not grow and develop, so really a dead relationship can only be had by dead people. What I mean by dead people are those who have become numbed to the flow of life that runs through them, this numbness is supported by external stimulations which I call addictions. Addictions provide the numb person more of the ups and downs of the life that has been shut off. Addictions are often drama based, arguments and wars in relationships to me are a form of addiction to replace life (so are real wars for a whole society), and so are drugs, tv, work addiction and internet addictions.

People who want to stay dead (consciously or more often unconsciously) will not want to have a live relationship that breathes and will not be interested in any of this discussion. But for living people I think it is helpful to understand the living dead. Dead people are very attracted to living people, physically, emotionally and energetically. They are attracted and literally want to 'get' the energy of a living person. I believe this is why the vampire story is so prevalent in our culture. We live in a world of the undead, the 'living dead' person. While our society continues to educate kids into numbness, we will have a world full of living dead energy vampires looking for live force to feed on. It’s good to see how death can work next to life, especially if we are healing the dead parts of ourselves.

So how does this breathing work?

Two people meet and there is a strong attractive force between them. This force is created out of a yin yang polarity, the dynamic force of polarity between the intrinsic natures of each person in a couple. This force propels the couple forward in a growth driven motion. This is the birth phase, the fresh and exciting 'shared' discovery of new territory through reflection. (By reflection I mean seeing new/deeper aspects of oneself through experience with another who communicates it in some way, often non verbally).

After some period of time, which can be days, weeks or sometimes even months this territory becomes known and understood, and there is a consolidation period. The reflections are better understood and integrated with the support of the others presence. This consolidation can be wonderful if it is shared consciously, but in my experience it is often not for a key reason. The shared awareness of consolidation in a relationship brings with it the shared awareness of possible ending and this can bring up fear. To me it is this fear of ending that leads to relationship plateau or deadness in the relationship. It is because people fear the death of the relationship that the relationship becomes stuck and dead.

I found three places where I have seen things get stuck for different reasons:

1. Rushing the birth phase. Aiming to get to consolidation way too quickly.
2. Not admitting consolidation. The birth phase was really great and wanting it to just keep going.
3. Avoiding death. Not wanting to face and truly be with each other in the possible ending.

1. Fear of the birth seems to stem from the unknown newness, it is fear of the amount of raw energy that is coming up and moving inside one.  I have noticed this as a constant want to move to a place of security where we know we are 'together'. This security is often established with expected guarantees of in the form of ideas about seeing each other, 'being together' or some monogamy agreement etc.  To me these guarantees are never really what the fear is about deep down; they are simply ways to hide from it. Avoiding this creative birth energy is avoidance of being present in the here and now with someone. At the end of the day it is fear of one’s own sexual energy that drives a rush to 'tone it down' and be safe with someone.  If you are seeing this happening in someone you are relating to I would recommended you stay honest and true to what feels right for you, ie don’t provide any guarantees unless they feel absolutely true for you. If you do to 'make someone feel better' you are already manipulating your life, you have already entered into a lie. Lies are a good way to support deadness in a relationship and in you. More TV comes next.

2. Fear of consolidation I have already covered. I would recommend exploring it in whatever way is true for you. Most importantly keep aware of the hovering spectre of death! If you can talk and share it consciously, it can't move into the unconscious. Make it your friend, learn about it and come to know it as OK. (In fact you don't even need to talk about it if you are super aware of it in yourself, but sometimes it can really help another if they are not used to this level of presence in a relationship. And in any good relationship helping another is simply helping yourself.)

3. Avoiding death. I already covered; this seems to happen by getting stuck in the consolidation phase. How many drama addictions in relationship are really just about this avoidance, creating an energy dynamic to try and feel more alive, while death is creeping in all the time? If one or both of you are brave enough to consolidate consciously and not avoid the natural time for an ending, then death will come, and it can come strong and unpredictably. This death can be the most transformative and rejuvenating time for a relationship if you make it through, but to make it through you both need to be able to be present with the possibility of a real ending of the whole thing. (It can also help to individually clear in the practicalities of how this can happen, money, house living arrangements etc)

Unless you have experienced this directly yourself it’s hard to get across really how it feels. I have sometimes experienced this as often as every week. One moment a powerful wave of everything falling away comes through both of us. Its a bit of a shock sometimes. I call it a letgo, you just have to let go and ride it. I think the key is the ability for both of you to stay fully present with yourself on your own, while you are with the person you love, knowing absolutely it could be over. This can only happen if there is no game, done in truth and honesty of really being with the other, while letting them be free to go. The love and gratitude you can feel for each other often magnifies. Its like a reset button has been hit, let it reset fully in the death of letgo and discover what you both feel on the other side. Its a ride.

There are only two outcomes of this, a good clean ending or an instant new birth phase and the cycle beginning again on a whole new level.

This is the breathing cycle of relationships to me. I keep seeing this cycle in holographic ways in all aspects of life, it is the cycle of life; things come together and then move apart. These cycles happen in all sorts of ways in a relationship, big and small cycles all interweave the hologram, but the features remain the same. Let your own relationships breathe more and I reckon those relationships can be more alive.

The great relationships in my life are the ones where this cycle continues.  With no holding on, how long i don’t know, experienced as a fantastic surprise that a person continues to reappear to me. Well there is often some holding on, but I discover that holding in the consolidation, then grow and  release it as death rides through. I rediscover what was truly always there is me.

Implants And Our Evolution

It is looking fairly clear to me now that as a race we are heading for an interesting split in our evolutionary tree. I think we can predict a few interesting branches in our evolutionary timeline.

I had some fun with this one, but I think it can be quite a divisive subject, and it certainly will have very real political and cultural implications. Really even the discussion about GM food falls under the issue.

Who Wants to be Part Robot  

The first split will be defined on either side by those willing to be implanted with technology devices and those who do not want to be implanted.

This is an easy call right now, as those willing to be implanted is going a close subset of the community that presently spends most of their time plugged into mobile devices. This demographic is already in effect a partial implanted set, on a psychological level. The switch to permanent access for some will be seen as minor, it will be understood as simply an 'upgrade'.

The scifi term for a technically enhanced human is a cyborg, a cybernetic enhanced human. Scifi writers expected coming cyborg races to emerge through technology developments that would be based around physical enhancements, both in the field of medical repair (like the bionic man) and for enhanced performance eg for military means.

It is already clear that the military is skipping the cyborg step and taking the leap to full robotic armies. Robot soldiers are much easier to mass produce and faster to replace with new models, there are none of the issues of biological time for growth and training to deal with. Drones are in live field in many parts of the Middle East today, and two-legged and four-legged robot soldiers are in development to be seen on the battlefield within 5 or so years.

I believe the battlefield itself has been a computer game for a while already. It's only the 'execution on the ground' part that now remains to be fully automated, then the human is made redundant (except as the victim). I think now the most important military technology has become the code used to command and execute a cyber war. It is way more easy to hack into and take control of a robot army than to bother fighting it. Drones and missiles have already been overtaken by hacker groups and will be again. 

But back to us as a race. These developments are already having a massive effect on us. There will be no more jobs in manual labor over the coming few decades. All the talk you hear about unemployment is not going to change, and i expect there is going to be much much more of it. There is simply is no more 'work' at least in the sense of that old school manual stuff, left to do. 

Japan is well on the way to creating a fully robotic sub-class to pick up all the manual labor of their society. China, the world's manufacturing base, is also hot on the trail. While suffering workers shortages, many of the top manufacturing companies have already started aggressively moving to fully robotize their production lines.

"Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics manufacturerby revenue, is accelerating its automation drive and could deploy as many robots as workers at its China factories within three years, Guangzhou's 21st Century Economic Report says. "

The US on the other hand is aiming to compete with China taking an interesting tac for creating an even cheaper workforce by allowing prisons to now commercially hire out labor creating a new slavery system.

So us funny humans are left twiddling our thumbs and looking at screens. I am certain at least a chunk of us is going to take the cyborg route, and will upgrade to an implant version of their phone at some point.

NUIs 

Up until recently the cutting edge of computer 'user interfaces' or UI was the graphical user interfaces seen on phones, Apple and Microsoft devices. Graphical UI's (GUI's), originally mouse driven, have recently entered into a phase of rapid evolution, becoming more touch and gesture driven.

Touch interfaces are often augmented with gesture sensitive systems to drive command sets from the user. Taking a further step, technology already exists for both neurologically projecting a graphical image into a human brain, as well as neurologically reading commands from a user brain back into the computer. I call this type of human computer interface a NUI for 'Neurological User Interface'.

I believe NUI's will replace GUI's within the next 10 or so years.

(This technology has already been used, for example in fighter jets being piloted via such neuro connected systems. But these have already become redundant for military use as it is now dumb to put a pilot in a jet, when a jet can be replaced by a fleet of drones controlled by a far more advanced artificial intelligence computer system)

Evolutionary Branching

Technology based evolutionary branching of our society has already started and been detected in heavy computer or smartphone users..

"Use of hand-held technologies, such as mobile phones, GameBoysand computers, has caused a physical mutation in the under-25s, according to new research. The study, carried out in nine cities around the world, shows that the thumbs of the younger generation have overtaken their fingers as the hand's most muscled and dexterous digit."

"If you're over 30, you'll probably press a doorbell with yourindex finger, while anyone under 30 may well use their thumb."

The present set of smartphone junkies is in a full evolutionary shift, with real measurable changes happening right now. But I believe the point where this will kick in at an even greater level is when we start implanting NUI devices. From this point on, different human traits become more important and relevant to an implantee than to a non-implantee, this will strongly drive evolutionary change in different directions for the two branches of humans.

I call call the emerging race of NUI implantees NUIBorgs or just NUIBs.

However, there is a second evolutionary branch, that will overtake the NUIBs, that I find more exciting. The NUIBs will come from heavy use of neuro interface implants, but there is the possibility to interface with technology on a superior level to the neuro based interface. For me the next, more superior wave of technology after NUIs is Psychic or Psy level interfacing, enabling a technology skip of the primitive neural interfaces.

I define the difference between Neuro and Psy based interfaces as how deep the interface goes into ones intent. Neuro interfaces read and write to the areas of the brain relevant to motor or emotional response. Whereas Psy level interfacing goes much deeper to communicate on levels of intent.

Consciousness

Our science is struggling with the concept of non-local consciousness. Up until recently, science thought of consciousness as a 'local' phenomena that only existed 'in' the brain. But science is being assaulted by a barrage of data from diverse fields that all show this view to be inaccurate.

I will leave it to you to explore this, but in summary, it is now fairly clear that the 'neurological brain' is simply a receiving device for consciousness, not the source of consciousness. This opens up the 'technology' sphere to create all manner of devices including consciousness receivers, transponders, reflectors and transformers all of which I believe will come about as we begin to more tangibly grasp the science of consciousness (as opposed to the science of neurology) and put it to work.

At this point the NUIBs will have a potentially competing evolutionary line to theirs that can emerge from the group that are averse to implants. Humans that got neuro systems will have evolved themselves down a branch that can be superseded by the new emerging Psy human branch. Sure it 'may' be possible for NUIBs to shift to Psy based systems but this really depends how far down that evolutionary line they have gone. The main issue I see with the NUIB rout is one of continuing and increased desensitization from the connected requirement to heavy stimuli, eg bigger special effects, stronger sound effects. These take their toll on sensitivity.

Which is for you ?

The fact that consciousness is non-local means that communication can happen at a distance between human and device. No implant required.

I have heard some say this was one of the ancient technologies of Atlantis. I can't confirm that, but I can say from experience that crystals can be effected by consciousness and vice versa.

Also obviously our planet is crystalline in nature, it has a synergistic effect on us and us on it. This means we are on some level in communication with it, something many indigenous cultures are well aware of, as well as many wisdom traditions.

Modern westerners have become pretty numb to nature, but many seem to be able to make the consciousness leap when they take the right chemicals. I don't think you need the chemicals, but they can help some of us remember what is real and that's got to be a good thing.

Maybe you could call it 'evolution' when we get the hang of this, but really its just a new remembering of what we forgot.

Bitcoin and the Greatest Bank Run Ever

As mainstream society learns about Bitcoin and what it offers I seriously think we could be looking at the biggest bank run in human history.  The end of banking as the system of creating and controlling money.

When mainstreamers start to trust the Bitcoin block chain (the anonymous cryptographic peer to peer network that stores the bitcoin transactions) Why would there not be the biggest bank run the world has ever seen ?

Bitcoin has two risks to always be aware of 1. that the protocol could be compromised in some way , and 2. that you could loose your password.

But the longer it stays up, the trust will continue to grow. This trust will reach a point where it surpasses the trust that people have in banks and governments. That is the tipping point I am talking about.

I believe fiat currencies (debt based currencies backed by many governments) are in a slow dying process. I don't think they are a useful or valid concept in our modern world. The more you understand how they truly function, the more I think you would agree with me.

Bitcoin is forcing people to look at how money works. What people find when they look is not so pretty.

Fiat currencies are inflated unpredictably, the process known as debasement. The question is, why would anyone leave their value somewhere where it gets worth less and less over time though the debasement of printing more and more money ?

The answer is that they wont, as soon as they know there is a viable alternative its over.

Also the fact (that many are unaware of) that money in the traditional Fiat system has interest due on it, is an additional form of robbery from the people in the system. I call it a form of robbery as many don't know or understand that their value is being taken from them both by this means and by that of debasement.

Traditionally the only alternative to this Fiat system was gold. But gold can not be traded easily long distance and is heavy and physical, the banks had it their way in history.

I hope its obvious to you in this light that it is only a matter of time before we shift to better systems of value representation as a replacement to the current banking system.

Fiatleak is a fun site that in real time shows the worlds fiat money moving to Bitcoin.

Taking this further, as I covered in my infostate post it is my belief that over a longer period of time 'nations' of the future will be bounded not by borders but by the use of a common crypto currencies. The features of which will embody the policies that people have already agreed on by virtue of choosing those currency 'systems'. No need to vote for one, just start using the features and coin of the 'nation' or nations! that you agree with the thinking on.

Its going to be an exciting few years if this really gets going. As confidence continues drop in the fiat system and continues to grow in block chains,  the point will hit where everyone wants to get their hands on what ever is the leading set of virtual currencies, it will be a world wide phenomenon, not a local country based one.

It wont exactly be fair either.. the people who got in early will have a massive advantage. The present money system is hardly fair in this way either. But I do believe that the ability to choose which crypto currency you use, will over time start to balance this out. Add to this the understanding that wars are fought over the right to impose a currency on a society (because of the covert forms of taxation i covered that this enables), and you will better understand what I mean here.

There are some good alternatives to Bitcoin already appearing, I see these as the beginning pillars of new nations of the world. Here is a good list of next generation currencies by market cap in $ or BTC.

In the meantime I would urge everyone to at least understand how to use some crypto currency and ideally get some. The timing of when you get 'in' is a massive factor on how the new wealth will be distributed.

We are in the beginnings of the transfer of wealth into the new paradigm. One where I believe wars and inequality are much harder to exist simply because the monopoly on creating money (the thing of power that everyone used to fight over) is now gone.

My vulnerability

I am am so happy you are in my life
I feel like a baby wanting
I am so happy to feel you are there
Though I feel frighted and get lost in my fears
I live to share with you my joy
Yet I fall from the light into dark

My heart fills when I still find you there
I'l give you my heart whilst I laugh


...


Over the years I have been very harsh on myself about making mistakes, trying to be perfect in ones own eyes is such a drag, especially if you think you are quite good at it, and then you fall short. I don't want any more trying to be perfect about anything.

Instead I am learning to be perfect in whatever happens. How big can I screw up and be perfect ? Freedom and self love will dance a merry tune.

Internal Arts and Music

Today I filmed some of my training session so I could watch myself to see how my form was coming along.

The lighting was nice so I decided to edit it to some of my piano music.

I am like this bagua video, it fits with the music which always felt a very circular composition to me anyway, playing with the cross fades on the video edit was fun. The music is a part of a piece I wrote called 'someday'. One day I hope to do a high quality recording of the whole piece. On the technical side the circle walking is not properly grounded, so I need to redo that when I can keep the energy right down.



There was about 18 minutes of circle walking I edited down to 4 mins..

And for some weird movements, here is a 4x time sped-up version of me doing a short set of Gods Playing In The Clouds. There are some funny expressions popping out of me. There are two sections where I dropped it back to real speed so you could see the actual motion, but it took way too long to show more at that speed.

Bitcoin Has No Competitors ?

I am watching Bitcoin on a massive run passing the all time high and heading for $Half Billion value.. will the bubble burst, or will it hold up and become the new gold.

If you have read my other Bitcoin posts, you will know I believe that provided the network stays up against DOS attack, it is inevitable that Bitcoin (or a better featured competitor) will begin to replace gold. For me this is only a question of timing.

(In short the argument is simply on feature merit, Bitcoin offers massively better 'features' than gold, purity issues, portability, transfer-ability, security etc etc are all superior to gold, once you understand gold as money is simply because of its function as a global ledger. And to say replace is not even the right word. As Bitcoin like any truly disruptive innovation makes multiple things, gold and fiat money to name just a few, irrelevant)

Something I think people have not yet realized the implications of is that Bitcoin does not yet have a competitor.

Sure we all expect more bubbles which burst. But without a true competitor to Bitcoin, there is an inevitability here where more and more people simple 'get it'. I am certainly seeing more people who simply decide to hold their coins whatever the price does.

I dont regard old money systems as competitors. Remember fiat money emerged as need based evolution of bank notes provided in return for 'gold in storage' gold was not easy to move around and trade with in volume so banks issued notes for gold held in storage, over time those notes became accepted instead of the gold, so if you had a version of gold that you can trade with easily 'like Bitcoin' the whole thing is moot... Modern paper fiat money, that has a very week link to gold in the vault of a central bank is currently in what investors call 'the race to the bottom' where multiple countries try to devalue their currencies in an attempt to revive exports. This corrupt system is well past its sell by date now and many are looking for viable alternatives for both trade and value storage.

I also dont regard simple forks of Bitcoin as a competitor, to me these are simply still Bitcoin.

So regarding Bitcoin I simply cant see how people who have started using it will stop unless the block chain is nuked or there is a better technology alternative. Add to that the onward march of the deflationary supply and you have a perfect mix for some exciting times.

Its the Better technology alternative that interests me, as that it what we will be moving to next.

As I touched on earlier, the only real threat to the continual rise of usage, other than a proper 51% attack is performance degradation. This occurs from high growth rate use, or high use growth combined with use based Denial Of Service (DOS) attacks.  If the core team manage to optimize the architecture to handle 'block bloat' (unlimited growth in the block chain) and the related performance issues, this will all be a non issue. But this is what must be solved as a priority. And after this, what is next?

So for any competitor to get in there, it would need to address the DOS vulnerable performance issues first. Secondly the competitor would need to deliver a key differentiating feature if it were to overtake Bitcoin. To me this feature is simply pure anonymity.

Anonymity as required a feature
It has become clear to me watching the success of Satoshi Dice (SD) that the 'mixing' functionality it provides is a missing part of the Bitcoin architecture. Hence by virtue of market forces this 'mixing' functionality has been provided by an external developer in the form of SD.

SD is the most popular bitcoin gambling game by far. You roll the metaphorical 'Satoshi Dice' and see what return you get. For anyone who is unaware here are some details from the Satoshi Dice IPO prospectus from August 2012.

Key Statistics
• Over half of all global Bitcoin transactions are SatoshiDICE. Over a third of transactions that have ever occurred on the Bitcoin network are SatoshiDICE. The majority of mining fees ever paid are from SatoshiDICE.
• 6 out of the top 7 Bitcoin addresses are SatoshiDICE
• The site achieved 1,000,000 bets just four months after launch
• Averages over 9,200 bets totaling over 5,246 BTC in wagers daily
• Has generated over 78 BTC in average profits daily
• At historical average daily volumes, SatoshiDICE is expected to generate over 2,990 BTC per month in profit
• Volume of wagered BTC has not decreased even while BTC price has appreciated (volume has actually increased)
I dont know if this trend has continued since IPO but looking at the transactions on the block chain, SD is still very very common on there. SD (in my understanding) is providing the widely used function of 'mixing' and doing it better than anyone else (there are many other mixing services) (mixing is simply the ability to anonomise your transaction history on the block chain)

But the issue here is that since a) SD is identified as a key vital service and b)  SD is not elegantly architect-ed into the core bitcoin spec, it has the effect of adding to the DOS effect on the block chain itself. So its own use success contributes to the other key required issue of performance degradation.

It should be obvious now that this is not simply a 'performance issue' for the bitcoin architecture but a feature requirement.

If bitcoin does not do this in time, the place for a competitor to bitcoin is there.. A new blockchain currency will enter and it will replace Bitcoin unless Bitcoin manages to find a way to evolve into this itself.

london push hands

There is a good group of push handers in london coming together, i'm in the vid at the end getting pushed.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150433599537747&set=o.148529161916084&type=2&theater

The Presence of Honesty

Today I want to think about honesty and what that really means. Like the word love, I think it is used but abused in its real meaning.

We all like to think we are honest. But are we really?

I think we can be quite dishonest about honesty. I'll go so far as to say we are well practiced at being dishonest about honesty, in that we think we are honest when on investigation we are not.

Apart from the fact that Honesty is a plant in the mustard family, (with clusters of purple flowers and semitransparent, satiny pods) I'll go with the description in Wikipedia:

 "Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and denotes positive, virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness along with the absence of lying, cheating, or theft."

lets go with integrity, straightforwardness and the absence of lying as a simplified short form.

A great place to look at honesty or rather dishonesty, is around sexuality. This is where dishonesty is often most visibly played out. This cartoon is a good example of what I mean. But Sexuality is just a focus point,  the same dishonesty is occurring in other areas of life .

So why  is this the exception rather than the norm ? If people were honest, this would be pretty common, no ? and could you be this honest ? why not ?

Outside of the fulcrum of sexuality, this type of lying is happening every time you don't say or do what you feel in the present moment. In other words, the moment you avoid exactly what you feel, and say or do something unconnected to that truth, you have entered a state of dishonesty and are out of integrity with your real self.

Here are some common examples of this sort of lying that I am sure you see all the time:

- Buying gifts for birthdays or Christmas because its something you are supposed to do rather than feeling like it for a given person
- Finding someone attractive and hiding it
- Finding someone unattractive and hiding it
- Someone asks you how you are doing, and you say OK, when you are not
- Avoiding 'upsetting someone' - this is a big one. e.g Doing anything for someone else  because you think you 'should' when you don't feel like it. Or pretending to be interested in a conversation or person when they are simply boring you.

Going with the short definition, I hope all of these examples are clearly not honest, in  that they are not any of a) in integrity b) straightforwardness and c) with the absence of lying.

I think you will get from this already that adherence to our common social norms demands a fairly high level of dishonesty. I would go as far as to say being a 'normalized social creature' in the world demands you to be a compulsive liar. Add to this, the lying is policed by other members of society through shaming of anyone who 'comes out' as honest.

When dishonesty gets so well practiced and ingrained, you wont even know you are doing it. It reminds me of the native american phrase spoken of the invaders, 'white man speak with forked tongue...'

Shame and Truth

An important point I want to make is that how you feel in the present moment is an 'irrefutable truth'. There is no possibility of it being incorrect, none.  Sure it can change in the next moment, as long as that is true too.

The only way of dealing with this level of truth is through shaming someone for it.  And kids get it the worst, imagine how a kid would be shamed if they stated they were finding a teacher boring in class.

Obviously if a kid is yawning in the classroom, it is simply a true fact that the kid is bored, why is that made to be the child's problem ?

Making this in any way a child's issue is how we become trained in shame, our honest innocence as humanity is dehumanized. Only through shame training can we as a society be OK to maintain our existence as compulsive liars. (Parents are often complicit too, or they risk being shamed themselves)

Honesty is a state of innocence.

But we are learned to lie to avoid shame, instead of learning to admit to it, at the same time, we lie to maintain our shame. It is trained in from the beginning of schooling, it is our standard indoctrination.

Whats worse is kids are told not to lie while they are being taught to lie. This type of mixed message is the perfect way to destroy self esteem, building in a good heap of un worth of self, into the now forming 'self image' of a child.

You can link the amount of shame someone has with the amount of lying they do, and how much one feels to deserve to be 'who the really are'. Its obvious really, the least honest people will be those carrying the most shame.

Sadly I believe the extreme example of what I am talking about in relation to children seems to be a root of pedophilia, shame can reach such an extreme that it is acted out in some vain attempt to find purity

Also guilt and shame are linked. If someone has no shame, they simply can not 'feel' guilty. This I believe is the 'natrual' healthy state for a human being. Ie every human has a right to exist as who they are right here and right now. A clear antithesis for example with the christian doctrine of original sin.

If someone carries a lot of shame its easy to have them feel guilty for pretty much anything you want. Charities and religions play off this fact.

The example of this principal in action is do gooding. Any person or group that needs to be seen as doing or being good, is acting dishonestly (and will carry their own shame for doing so). Doing good needs no social sanction, wanting one (social sanction) proves you have no belief in your own action, you are acting against your true belief. Its dishonest.

The more I have understood this, the more I have seen it to be common in our world. A good word for the Dishonesty of honesty is Hypocrisy. Its a bigger word so I normally just go with lying.

It became clear to me that when this lying or hypocrisy becomes instituinalised, the institution itself that becomes the purpetrator. School is a good example of the perpetrator of our shame, but religions can often be more extreme. The most extreme example I can think of is how the Catholic church can state its acting for good while in reality is the worlds biggest known operational pedophile system.

The Presence of Honesty
I want to bring the discussion round to being present. As I covered in my love article (which is essentialy about honesty too)

You dont have a hope of being present while you are not being honest with how you feel (especially to anyone who is close to you). The two just dont go together. The moment you are honest with how you feel, bang you are present !

So being truly honest means being present, they are the same thing. Its why I called this post 'The Presence of Honesty' thats what its all about.

The presence of honesty, in this case ideally your own, will expose the hypocrisy of do gooding, and/or spirituality in yourself and who and what else you relate to. In this light you can see any teaching that supports acts of dishonesty in your feelings, while teaching its 'good', is simply hypocritical.

JC was big on this hypocrisy stuff, probably a good reason they strung him up.

"Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." (Matthew 6:1-6 RSV)

(actually i don't think its why they strung him up, I reckon its more because he went around telling people they were truly innocent. By saying 'your sins are forgiven' he absolved people of the shame and guilt that made them beholden to religions and control structures of the day. Its that that made his words dangerous)

I have had alot of fun with being honest over the years, it can take you to some very unexpected places and get some unexpected reactions. Sometimes the most honest thing for me to do when someone talks to me is to say nothing. That i found to be for me the most personally challenging, it's so counter cultural but so incredibly liberating to stay present and not have to make up words, when nothing feels true to be stated.

True honesty as opposed to hypoctical honesty which does not encompass your feelings is something I recommend if presence is an important goal for you.

And especially if health, happiness and longevity are things that matter to you, shame is not a good thing to be building up inside your body. If you went to school or church, I reckon its likely you have some to recognize and unlearn.

A final point on honesty in society that I think is relevant. While we continue to support our own dishonesty in ways I have outlined, I believe we will continue to support institutions such as Governments and Spiritual establishments that support hiding things from us.

I don't think asking 'them' to change before we are prepared to look at our own lie is honest in this regard.

Exist

Will you allow me to exist
Your eyes I please I know
Will you allow me to exist
When I know you want me close
Will you allow me to exist
When i burn so hot you melt
Will you allow me to exist
When I am, you are no more

Love and Spades

To "call a spade a spade" is to speak honestly and directly about a topic, to speak plainly - to describe something as it really is.

I wanted to think about the word love and what it means. I know about loving your food, your car or your new dress but I think passion for, or excitement are more appropriate in this context. I want to talk about love the ‘higher emotion’, as applied to relationships.

St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, defines love as "to will the good of another." Philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said that love is "to be delighted by the happiness of another."

I think of love as ‘wanting for another what they want for themselves’. I have heard this described as unconditional love, but surely this ‘unconditionallity’ is really what defines the grown up 'higher emotion' of love, as opposed to the needy love of a child.

Loving unconditionally is not just saying 'I love you' to get needs met. It’s the old phrase 'if you love someone, set them free', but in action rather than in concept. In action, means not doing it (setting someone free) because 'you think you should', but because that is the true expression of what you want for yourself and another person. That is simply real pure love.

So a good way to look at love is to consider its maturity in yourself. As maturity will show you the purity so to speak. The maturity is simply how much conditionality you need around love. I would go as far as saying that unless love is unconditional, its not really love at all, it is need and attachment being called love. I think its much better to call a spade a spade, as until you do, it's going to be hard to grow up.

I define an emotional adult as someone who naturally loves unconditionally. This can be turned on its head to say a healthy adult human is a natural expression of unconditional love.

A human who has conditionality around love is not yet fully emotionally mature, not yet an adult in love.

I think we live in a world ravaged by a rampant epidemic of neediness masked as love, but to add to it we are taught that the neediness is bad, and so we add another whole layer of emotional shame on top of the neediness.

This is denial, plain and simple. And the denial is self-policing, because of the stigma of appearing needy in others' eyes. The cycle of 'shame hiding neediness' fuels the epidemic. Children pretending to be adults, but really not able to fully walk yet.

So how do we pretend ?

Instead of being able to relate to someone in the present moment we project into the future and try and control that future. One of the main ways this projection is done is by using labels and contracts about relationships.

If I meet someone and concepts of monogamy, open relationships or polyamorous relationships are something that is relevant to them, I take it that they are living in a projected fantasy for security. The requiring of agreements and contracts before you can be in the present moment with someone is really just fear of the present moment.

If real growth is something that matters to you, the ability to be present is a good goal. I found this goal would both elude and delude me while I needed labels to project in the future about relating with others. But at the same time forcing yourself to be an adult when you are still a child is far more damaging.

When I have heard people talk about open or poly relationships these have often come across as masks for forms of power/control dynamics that can be just as present in monogamous relating. The most damaging things I have come across in relationships seem to occur when emotional children treat themselves or others as adults when really they need to treat themselves and others as children, and understand/admit what this really means for themselves on an emotional level. The moment you get this you are most rapidly becoming an adult and it's really why I wrote this piece.

If any of this makes any sense to you, here are some considerations to play with:

If you place yourself as a child in this context, and growing up is something you would want to consider,  is there shame around feeling/admitting yourself a child? Can you love that child? Do you really feel that shame is a healthy thing to maintain?

The best way to move beyond shame is to admit what is real about it, to yourself and others, this helps it to lose its charge and frees your binding to that emotional state.

Being present means moving out of fantasy into reality; I believe calling a spade a spade can be especially relevant and particularly dynamic in this process when it comes to love.

====================
Inspired by C

Someone who cares

played it today:



Its a straight improvisation I warmed up with a short blues below.

Bitcoin fear and Gold, trade in a post central bank world

As we continue to watch the worlds financial system implode, everyone is running their wealth back to gold. The good old fashioned way of storing your value.

Here is a good summary of things with gold, so i dont have to say any more on the subject. And this one is even better, but long.

Those who agree that the financial Ponzi scheme we use for commerce is ending, can know we are headed for a world where everyone who owns any value is sitting with these piles of gold or controls commodities.

Just like the good old days.

But as we are not in the good old days any more, we have a need to trade things globally, Gold just wont work for that, it is 'physical'.

So if you dont trust a bank or a FIAT currency to deal with your gold what will you do when you want to pay someone across the world for something ?

In days of yore, one would go to a bank and get a note for the gold you had in storage with them, then you could exchange that note with other banks across the ocean, this worked as the banks colluded to make this system work globally.

It is massively in the interest of banking that everyone store their gold in their vaults, then banks could take continuously more of all wealth as a tax on all transactions through interest and fees. This forms the basis of world trade, and makes banking is the most profitable business of them all.

Luckily for us, the banks have abused their power in the infrastructure provision role and functionally have been superseded by a technology that makes them irrelevant. (who could blame them, that sort of power corrupts anyone but the most enlightened)

This is a good article where someone suggests people build there own economy from the ground up. But he misses to point out that the some core required systems are already here.

The Bitcoin technology has clearly proven that you dont need a third party intermediary to perform a transfer of value. The ramifications of this fact seem to offer a shock to our present world, the reality is not yet sinking in because of some fear of change and attachment/investment in the present system.

As this is the first time in human history this has been possible, the concept offers something so new and astounding it has people acting very strange around it.

Bitcoin today functions as a divisive issue, people either love it or hate and deride it. In fact most of the press I see about Bitcoin seems to be aiming to find an angle to slam it, sadly side-lining any intelligent debate about what it really represents for humanity.

I think one who has any issue with bitcoin is simply one with a high level of investment in the old. The harder they come, the harder they fall or so they say. Why else would you have any emotional investment in Bitcoin being some bad thing (There are plenty worse things in the world to fuss about than yes another system of virtual cash)

Well its just a technology, bitcoin is simply a messenger, a bearer of news of what is possible. Dont shoot the messenger, the news is simply that you have more freedom than you thought, you can trade and a 3rd party is not required, no bank, no legal system, no government. You only need to figure out whether to trust the person you are dealing with, no one else needs to be in the chain and this is radical. (you also actually need to know about how your computer works so you can keep it secure, but the concept of 'personal' data and security is another whole fun subject)

So you don't need daddy any more. Ok I know there is some of that old Stockholm Syndrome kicking in, scared to be free of slave masters, but I like freedom.

So here is how we can trade in the future as the financial system gets even more ropey or collapses. (china is having a good go at replacing the dollar as the reserve currency, so alternatively we may just move over to them being the bankers of the world)

Say you have some gold or silver and you want to do a trade with someone, as long as they have a local way to exchange btc to gold, you agree a trade price in ounces of gold. Then using the current exchange rate of gold to bitcoin, make a bitcoin transfer and you are done. Local trading systems are already being set-up to make this easier.

Its fun to watch this story and see how close to reality it pans out. Over the coming years, you will be able to correlate the value bitcoins simply to the number of people who agree with the sentiment of this post. *If true free trade is what people as a whole want*, as I covered in Bitcoin subject and the Infostate, precious metals are simply a transition, but an important stabilising one, if the bitcoin network can stay up, it will only be a matter of transition time for precious metals to be replaced by bitcoin or its successor technology.
(lcovered in other posts on the global free democracy and the infostate model, i see successor digital currencies backed by social networks of skills unions emerging at some point)

This De Gaulle vid is fun, showing how even when there was a gold standard things were on the way to messed up.

And this is just too easy:

more chickens

pink chickens are in the air, pink chickens are in the air

we all stare

and why do we care

because they are in the air, just flying there

The Infostate And The Colour Of Money

In my post last year The State Is Dead, Roll On the Global Free Democracy I laid out a view of how I saw the end of the state and how states of the future are really simply social networks, each with their own 'local currency' or digital currency (dc).

I'll call these future 'Information States' infostates. The total value any infostate is instantly measurable as the value of its total dc in circulation.

In my other post The Media Continuum I also think about software based social networks as multi user online games.

Hence one way of thinking about infostates is as online games defined by a set of game rules or 'constitution' of interaction. The minimum constitution an open (one anyone can join and augment) infostate could have, would be defined simply by the operational protocol of the dc in use.

I realised one of these infostates already exists in the form of the bitcoin community itself. What is particularly exciting to me is that as i had thought, a state defined and operated in this way is highly evolutionary i.e. it is setup as a community or game system that encourages development and adaptation in a massive way, it makes traditional states look retarded in comparison.

Traditional states get their value in a combination of three basic ways:

1. Steal it from others through the use of warfare (or financial warfare eg international banking) Kleptocratic State
2. Sell natural resources found within their borders, that others value. Self Destructive State (as it is not replenish able, its gone for ever)
3. Create new value through 'entrepreneurship'. ie come up with something useful that others value. Creative State

1 and 2 are the stone age ways to go about things. 3. is where its at for any state to build a lasting future on. Though traditionally the problem with 3 is that when any state gets ahead with it, the other stone age states use some formulation of 1. to take it. And so goes the argument for armies.

So the bitcoin infostate has got 3. in spades, the community itself is setup on a more enlightened evolutionary game system by virtue of the constitution passed on to the community through the consensual use of the bitcoin system of value trade. (All i mean by evolutionary is a game system that sponsors and sets the stage for creation of functional new value. Or in more traditional speak encourages entrepreneurial spirit.)

It is exciting to watch the bitcoin community dynamically work, people who in effect, like the constitution (the game rules) just get on board (join the state) and start to put their skills to into it and get on and build cool things. All this then builds the value of the infostate as reflected in the dc value. I watched the bitcoin economy exchange value to dollars go from $1 Million to over $50 Million in a short time.

Enlightened rules bring enlightened players. Its a good model for a an infostate that wants to create.

The system is hot because it runs a virtuous cycle of positive creativity feedback, or what i like to call a positive equilibrium evolutionary system model. (I use 'positive equilibrium thermodynamics' as an understanding basis what life is, and life without evolution is mostly dead, or will be soon ;)

I like bitcoin because it reflects an enlightened mind-set around interaction within a social group of people. It represents a great opportunity for more enlightened/evolved society.

The real question is weather society is ready for the freedom offered by it.

So what is money ?

Money is a rule system for value exchange. In more game design language, it is the fundamental interaction model for the game. In society, the money system is a reflection of how people treat each other at a core level (interaction model) and hence how they see themselves (you can only ever really reference an external entity against yourself, hence what you do to others you do to your internal self image/self.)

In short the financial system is the primary reflection of a society interaction model. As money is exchanged for human time or life force, analysis of the operational systems around money of any society will tell you how primitive the state is and show you where the social pathologies lie. The systems that govern money current or 'currency' are literally the core energy systems that breath the life of that society.

People like to say gold is real money. Why ?

Gold has no serious industrial uses, its a good conductor but silver is even better. Gold has no real value in its use for anything other than as money. Unless you can exchange gold for something else, it will do nothing for you at all (other than cosmetic value).

So gold works as money because, a) it is scarce (there is not much of it about and you cant make it. You have to spend time finding it and digging it up b) It is distinctive. Its easy to know what it is and it can be easily identified for what it is. c) it does not corrode easily and deteriorate

Gold is simply an accounting system, price is set by demand for its use as a system of storing and exchanging value. Gold is the accounting system from the stone age that we use on Earth.

OK so gold is the real money, on top of gold we have created these things called FIAT money systems that are basically tools for how you steal assets (like gold and physical resources) en mass. Its why I like the term 'willing kleptocracy' for main stream society. FIAT money and warfare are pretty synonymous but that's another article. (War in various forms is what you would expect of a kleptocracy as a kleptocratic state would be value based on my 1. option. War is the way of the stone age state, especially one that has exhausted option 2. of self destruction.)

All the accounting features of gold are matched by bitcoins, (its scarce, hard to create out of thin air, easy to know what it is). Added to that you can send bitcoins to anyone over a wire and you can manage them easily in ways that you cant do with gold, eg break them into smaller pieces and not need to get out some scales to agree with someone else how much you have.

As an accounting system bitcoin is way better than gold. If gold is real money bitcoin is better real money. And if gold has value simply because of its technical features as an accounting system then obviously bitcoin will simply replace gold as a store of value over time. Why keep gold around with its weight and storage cost if you can have a useful alternative. The only value remaining for gold would be its cosmetic and small scale industrial value.

But bitcoin has value based on two things. 1. As the digital currency of a new infostate (reflects the core value of that state in relation to everything else). 2. As a real money system (accounting system that is better than gold that anyone can start using to store their value in). Over time you would expect the value of the bitcoin economy to tend to at least the value of all the gold.

So with the new ship infostate bitcoin floating on Earth we are left with the ancient issue of stone age war. What to do when you have all this good stuff and someone else doesn't like that.

Bitcoin has a defensive wall of the combined crypto computing power of all bitcoin miners, it is going to be tested. If someone can build a more powerful computer than the joint efforts of all bitcoin miners they can affect and mess with bitcoins transaction trail. So there is an arms race in this cyber world but its a race of compute power.

But the bitcoin network is already the worlds fastest crypto computer and growing. Its a pretty strong wall already but its going to need to be way stronger if bitcoin is going to last. The US spends trillions on war to help keep the dollar the worlds reserve currency. Bitcoin will become a threat to that game if it continues growing at its present rate.

I'm ok with with the concept of spending energy and CPU resources on bitcoin mining, you could call miners the defenders of the evolutionary infostate. They are the replacement for an army that traditionally would defend trade routes from robbers and other enemy countries wanting to plunder the trade.

Miners form the defensive wall around all trade in bitcoin with their CPU/GPU mining power. As bitcoin transaction fees are collected by miners who encode the transactions. A bitcoin transaction fee is a tip to the army of a new global republic.

If the wall stays up, war is a stone age thing. I prefer a defensive army that I can pay voluntarily. It is certainly better than traditional war.

-------------

I recently played some music for this art installation. Listening to the interview on little headphones I just played in the spaces and we got what we got in one take. It comes in about half way 4m or so through this vid of the 'making of'

Training History

I just made a new page about my Training History

Egypt severs internet connection amid growing unrest

link

A very interesting gauntlet for the govt to throw down.. over to you Egypt

Reality Is About to Explode

I thought I would write a fun article about subjective reality, even though groups of us sort of agree on just enough to be thinking reality is 'objective'... its just a temporal agreement.

============

Up until very recently our view of reality was defined by others, so others got to say and define what we look at as 'real'. I think this could be about to explode into many pieces.

Today this 'reality' is presented to us via the main stream media (MSM).

The interesting thing about the MSMis that it is consistent (this not what you would expect from a true accurate but diverse information source), MSM provides a 'consensus' view that pretty much agrees with itself. So even if objective reality were real, a true communications media would and should not operate in consensus mode.

The MSM 'news' as a consensus presentation fits into a doctrine, it presents a painted picture of the reality we reside in. These days in the west that doctrine is built around the ideal of a liberal consumerist world. This doctrine has an invisible deity I like to call consumer God or Con God. As most of the major media organizations report to owners within the same financial establishment, the Con God mantra is based around constant GDP growth based on  'Keep borrowing, Keep buying, everything will be ok'.

It just so happens that this doctrine and its associated behavior pattern destroys the ecosystem we live in. It increases consumer reliance on centralized power to provide food and shelter as the ecosystem degrades. Look at the financial drivers of health-care to better understand this process closeup.

Our Gods

For a few thousand years we had the Judeao Christian 'One God' or JC God as the arbiter of consensus. The JC God media establishment was run by churches. If you challenged this you were taken out. Some did and it was nasty, but we managed to get as far as expanding our thought to realizing that the earth was round and it was not in the center of the universe.


Since the two great world wars we have been in a mythology transition from the JC God to Con God.

With the rise of the western system of democracy, the thinkers of the day working for the owning class of society realized that a system of managing these 'free thinking democratic populations' was required otherwise 'who knows what the plebs would vote for'.

(a more recent term for this used by Noam Chomsky is 'The engineering of consent')

The solution to this was designed in the form of the consumer society, to make that work a dogma was devised to make the worker who delivered components into the machine a willing participant.

It was realized that both the media and educational establishments were required to be reformed to effectively support this new consensus dogma and both the funds and execution teams for this were put in place early in the 19th century.  (to better understand how this was done, this is an enlightening interview with the man who was chosen by congress to explore a part of this process)

The religion of Con God worked, it was superior to JC god and JC God now takes a small back seat in the mainstream reality that people live within.  (I wrote a post 'Why Consumerism wins' to play with why Con God works so well as superior viral myth to JC God).

Many today worship Con God. They operate as minions and components of the establishment that pays those that created and manage this system today, whilst the MSM plays the front man whose job it is to keep the myth intact and making sense.

One God

A few thousand years of JC God administration did a great job of fixing the ideas of a one god world into our collective brains.

It lynches on this thing 'consensus'.

One God, or monotheism is a powerful idea and I hope I can convey the impact it has on our present views, in respect to 'reality'.

One God is essentially the same idea as saying 'one world view' or 'reality is only this way',  just said in different words. It is also the same concept as 'consensus'

The idea of consensus then links in with 'this is how things are' or 'our way is right'.

The concept of anything at all 'being right' stems from this.

When you have many many myths/religions existing at once or you would realize that reality can not be 'consensus' the concept of 'being right' itself dissolves, right and wrong are simply relative concepts. But live in a world where everyone agrees with you and you may drop back into the thinking of being 'right' when you see something that challenges you.

I hope its obvious that nothing can truly be right or wrong in the abstract, only relativism's like 'Is this the *right* way to the chemist?'. can be answered truly in that 'yes that is the right way to the chemist'.

Nothing else is right or wrong, its just there, it just exists. And because it exists it is. Of course you can try to pretend its wrong in the absolute sense, but the moment you do this, you have entered a delusional state about reality. This is very common, especially around things we disagree with or that disturb us.

When one is right, another has to be wrong and a new entity is created, the one who decides.

Traditionally the one who decides was the priest in the church. You could go and ask them and get their opinion. Today in the Con God system, this process operates via the MSM, supported by the State, which in turn is validated and enabled by the noble establishment we call Science.

Science, Objective Reality and One God

Science is a product of our one god religions. Science and the scientific method itself could not exist with out the backdrop of one god.

How so ?

Our concept of Science relies on 'objective reality' to work, it is a fundamental requirement of the scientific method. Objective reality is the belief that everything 'out there' is consistent and the same for all beings that can experience it. Only then can an experiment reveal a result that can be tested and verified.

Science is built on consensus, that consensus can only form if there is already a consensus that objective reality is what forms the world we exist in.

Science has a pre supposition built in.

The scientific method (the way you take measurements and replicate these measurements to prove or disprove any given theory) could only emerge after a few thousand years of one god consensus being drilled into our collective brains. Only once there was enough bedrock of collective agreement on the nature of external reality (being the same for all under god) could something like Science take root.

If different parts of society believed in different realities then forget the scientific method, at least in terms of one based on an objective reality.

So contrary to what many believe, Science itself is another belief system. It has its own dogmatic requirements for it to hold. It just so happens that many years of religious indoctrination prepared society appropriately for a method of though like Science to work.

It is the inability of a person or scientist to see this obvious fact that makes science itself a dogma.

The Dogma of Science

The dogmatic root of science is the belief in objective reality. We must stress the world 'belief' here as this is all that it is. It forms a religious view that is so deep that many have a hard time going there and challenging it in their minds. Just like the heresies against JC God, even the consideration that objective reality is a fantasy concept is a heresy to the dogmatic view in science.

In a very practical example this the issue of has been glaring scientists in the face for nearly 100 years and most are still too scared to call a spade a spade.

Quantum Mechanics (QM), well known as the most successful scientific theory ever, makes a complete mess of the notion of objective reality. Simply put, QM maps out reality as a statistical time function, Ie what happens at any point in space-time is a probability. There are a few options for theories to get scientists out of this mess. Simplifying the debate somewhat, one is called 'wave function collapse' the other is called 'many worlds'. Wave function collapse says that the world is made real when the observer looks at it, while many worlds says that every world that can be created will be created. 

Neither of these really work to make our results of QM fit what we have pre programmed our minds for regarding the existence of an objective reality. 

It is not my understanding of true science to try and come up with something that fits a pre determined idea, this is normally called massaging the data.  The true scientist is one who challenges the old consensus and comes up with something that better describes what is being seen.

Right Wrong and The Dyadic Myth

So the concepts of One God, Science, Objective Reality and what I will call 'being right' are simply all different facets of the same thing.

These ideas are all really the same style of mythology. I will call that mythology the 'dyadic myth' its based on duals (relations of twos) :

- One God: One God creates the world: I experience it
- Science: One Reality exists: the Observer measures it
- Objective Reality: One Reality exists: observers of Reality experience it
- Being Right: Reality exists: My explanation of reality is correct.

(In my early blog posts, i called this dyadic myth 'the great divide')

The Dyadic Myth and Violence

Once you understand how all these facets are really the same core dyadic mythology. You can move to the next step of understanding how this dyadic myth is inherently violent.

Within any dyadic world view, be it Science, Politics or Religion. Who gets to decide who is right ?

Often it is the more powerful, who is the 'right', then 'rightness' is inflicted upon another who doesn't agree...

The journey to the one God was a bloody and violent affair at every step, from its inception to where we are today. The bible charts some of the early days of the dyadic story in its gory detail, tribes had to be mashed together by bloodshed to force one god 'consensus' view upon them. It then took the military might of Rome to force this 'rightness' or what was becoming called 'righteousness' on the entire empire under Rome.

There is only one way out of dyadic violence and that is to understand and accept reality as it is. As I said earlier, the moment you try to make anything that exists wrong in anything other than a true relative sense, you have entered a delusional state.

Since much of politics and Science is presented in this way. You can now better understand these all as forms of collective delusion. They have little to do with anything that is real.

Instead the dyadic myth whether you call it 'us and them' or 'might is right' or 'I know and you don’t' is simply an effective way to impose ones will upon another.

Dyadic mythology, any facet of it, is a justification for violence.

Where we are today

Our present Con God religio, administered by the State via government, operates very much under a dyadic delusion.

Dyadic myths are inherently violent and our state is no different.  One of the legal definitions of the State is 'The Monopoly On Violence'

This violence will always need a forum to play out in. Often this will take the from of wars, racism or more small scale family relational violence.

To see the delusion you just look it in the face. The religion of the state is thought of as if its some free choice, but there is no choice at all. Voting systems provide a unrealistic sense of freedom. There is no freedom, you can't say no to the state itself, whichever 'party act' is voted in and playing its game in government. If you don't pay taxes you get treated violently, and everyone involved will support this violence.

The claim we are a secular state (ie the state doesn’t care what religion you follow) is a lie. You are forced into state religion from birth and its illegal not to pay the religious donations in the form taxes. You can't in truth follow another mythology within the state, there is no secularism in this model. You can only follow religions that clearly are no threat to the State religio.

Reality Explodes

But State and dyadic dogmas aside, I want to get onto the matter at hand, namely the explosion of reality.

We have been living blind within a dyadic mythology for a long time now and the myth has been taken as real along with all its ramifications about there being one solid 'objective reality'.

As we are stretching and blinking in new sunlight, I want to touch on some ideas about what this could mean.

It all starts with meaninglessness, of the main stream media, and actually of everything else too.

• As the one reality Con God and MSM doctrine crumble, the MSM will dissolve and be relegated to its rightful place within the the media multi verse of Internet information (see media continuum article).
• The lines of everything will continue to get more and more blurred and I seriously expect some sort of psychological shock to hit us all. The truth of no objective reality and that of multiversal reality sinking home could be difficult for some to integrate themselves with.
• Those that still trust the MSM and think it somehow 'forms the world' will be the most challenged. What happens when this MSM view is repeatedly proven false ? This is well on the way. Those that have engaged and found multiple info sources on the net to discover their Mistrust the MSM are safe (luckily Mistrust in the MSM is now at record high). Those that do still trust the MSM will become more and more divorced from reality, at the same time they will still need to project the violence of their dyadic views somewhere. There will be a lot of desperate attempts to blame other groups and much devision for these people. 

We are hooked on a dyadic world view of a solid external reality. There is comfort in one right thing to believe in 'out there'. Consensus gives a very cosy sense of security. But this is an avoidance of our own inner fears. In order to maintain this feeling of security, any contrary view has to be looked at as a joke, a 'conspiracy theory'. Otherwise the solid and secure 'objective' 'one' reality msm doctrine explodes and takes the believer with it.

Well it is all exploding, and I think the only sane way to go is inward. Look at the violence inside and then it no longer needs to be projected via some dyadic myth onto another group, person or thing.

Reaching out into the mutiverse holding onto Con God will shatter you into fragments of other peoples ideas... Given enough time, at least you would find out you are not anyone else’s ideas.

Reality is a subjective experience, there is nothing 'out there'. You can decide what 'it' or anything means for you and it can work, because there is nothing out there except what you say is there.

"The only reality is that there is no reality".

I would say that anyone who 'tells' you 'its' something else is trying to have you.

So, am I ?

As the connectivity between  individuals across the planet increases exponentially, the dyadic control structures fall away, drowned by other facets of reality that minify ancient centralized one god objectivity into the multi-verse.

A huge amount of psychic and physical energy is being released that normally would move to a violent projection onto the 'other' in the dyad.

Ride the explosion inwards, I wonder if I will meet you there one day.

The Media Continuum

(this is from an article i wrote for 2009 GDC (Games Developers Conference) in the gamesindustry.biz journal, I will be updating it further when I get round to it)

I have always been fascinated by games, not just because they can be engaging, exciting and even beautiful, but also because they are simply the deepest form of computer-human interaction.

I spent the last 25 years building technology to support games. Along the way my contributions have included RenderMorphics' Reality Lab and the first few versions of Direct3D. I continue to find the space fascinating, and I believe our understanding and mastery of games will continue to give them an ever-larger role in media as a whole.

In this article I intend to show how all media types sit on a single continuum. This will let us view the media scene as one complete whole, and consider the game industry in relation to it. By providing some definitions and covering some of the key issues we can do a quick survey of where the wider media is today as well as considering some of the interesting changes that we will be dealing with in the near future.

A number of issues I touch on warrant articles in their own right but my aim here is to give an overview and so I have to touch on many things briefly and leave it to you to extrapolate some of the ideas. But the following few lines are the central concepts that I hope the rest of the article helps uncover

As more media distribution moves to the internet our 'concepts of different media' forms - and 'how we access them' - will continue to converge.

This ongoing merger of distribution, leaving us with one dominant network, will drive more integrated forms of content. This, along with the accessibility of further content is when the network then becomes the media itself.


(Content and Access become linked: This is traditionally very much the realm of games.)

Games, Content and Access are Linked

In a game, the control system (how you navigate the content) defines a large part of how the content in that game is crafted. Remember we are talking about content that is interactive, we are not just talking about a video, we are considering functionality and behaviour as content too (a control system that is part of an object that you 'intuitively' understand how to operate, a puzzle that needs solving to enter, someone to talk to who will allow access, a plane that you fly you somewhere, are all examples of interactive content that have specific control paradigms). So when you are talking about content with interactivity, the access to the content and the content itself are linked. It is this link between interaction and content that traditional media people struggle to understand, but it is what makes the experience of a game deep and engaging when done well.

The Media Continuum

A channel is understood as a content library delivered to a defined demographic over the internet. A channel can be a website, a casual game portal, an online movie library or an MMO. The more exclusive content that addresses the channel demographic well, the more users will stay with a channel. The media continuum is then simply the complete set of channels delivered to consumers over the Internet.

It's All a Game

In terms of technology, games for many years have required a combination of all media types: 2D and 3D animation, movies, music and real-time interaction. So technologically-speaking, games have already unified all content forms. Only the game development community really understands the complexities of how to design for and use technology to build quality interactive content.

Because games are superset of all media, you can view all traditional media as games with the some of the features cut out. Hence to really view all channels as part of a continuum we have to think about all channels as games, at least in technology and design terms, even if they don't look like typical games to most people.

A Standard Player

What breaks up the continuum today is the client-side software, tuner or box that receives the content. This 'continuum breaking' is not in the interest of consumers or content creators; hence my personal view that it is a matter of time, and standard-setting, before the receiver is unified, just as HTML unifies the web.

TV and film have both a standard linear form and linear playback; this makes it very easy for content to be developed. The form is now over 100 years old and it has become so well understood that all innovations are pushed into the nuances of the content itself. The game industry conversely is still evolving; the big drag factors on the industry are the lack of a standard for game content creation, and the lack of a standard playback format for creators to deliver to.

These challenges are due to the complex interactive nature of games and the rapid advances in 3D and CPU technology; but they are not insurmountable, especially as the hardware changes are now beginning to settle and are much better understood by developers. Over time more standardisation both in game development and in playback format will remove many of those drag factors that the game industry currently struggles against, freeing up more cash and creativity for the content itself.

Open and Closed Channels

Today many channels are 'closed', meaning that consumers can't add content. Open channels are where third parties can add or augment content on the channel. LittleBigPlanet, Second Life and YouTube are examples of open channels. Further support for business models for content creators in open channels will be another key step in the evolution of interactive content. The way open channels can work and are managed both in editorial and design terms is a critical space for further innovation and one that I can only touch on in this article. Sony's PlayStation Home is perhaps the first major foray into a managed open channel.

Game Consoles are Controllers

I anticipate that the game consoles will simply become content channels on the continuum; you will have Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft game channels just as you have the BBC, CNN and National Geographic. Console-exclusive content is like channel-exclusive TV. Each console defines a channel and within each 'console channel' we will see further channels. Channels within channels will be something we will see a lot more of, too. (eg lovefilm on PS3)

As innovation in chip hardware continues we are arriving at a standardised high-end 3D-capable CPU. We see this trend with the present generation of consoles, where the chip parts are bought from PC chip vendors. We are not far off a single multi-core, multi-GPU chip that lives in all boxes and delivers all the power we need.

(AMD Fusion is a great example but and all major CPU vendors are following, its going to get bloody for the chip vendors as prices for these chips drops fast due to competition. You wont be able to buy a screen that does not have this 3D and CPU power built into it in a few years.)

The box from each console vendor will simply be the 'key' or the 'tuner' for the online content directory.

The control system a console offers has become the only way to differentiate one box from its rivals, as the Wii controller does today. In the end the controller will be the only physical device required, as the processing power will already be embedded in devices such as TVs.

As we are talking 'game' and as 'the interaction and content are linked', the long view for any console channel is to become a bespoke controller connected with its respective bespoke online content library.

Consoles and Linear Video

The console channels will go on to support more video, demonstrated by Microsoft and Sony already supporting film distribution. So apart from exclusive interactive content, there is every likelihood games consoles will supplant other set-top boxes, provided they have access to the content catalogue. Game boxes can run the very highest quality games and they can run video but set-top boxes can only run video and very limited games. The console will consume the set-top box.

2D and 3D biz models

In the 2d presentation space, such as the web, money is made from advertising. 3D presentation adds one more level of 'immersion' to an experience, an advert has no place in that experience (This has been proven through experiences in the game industry where advertising in 3space has been tried and died)

In 3space the monetisation model is functionality, you have to deliver something of 'function' to get paid for it, like the real world. Basic examples of this working are items you pay to upgrade in games or the trading economy for items say in second life. But this is just the beginning of what is possible, the growth of app stores is an example of this direction. The full step I am talking about is apps that deliver concrete and abstract function in 3space worlds.

Casual Game Channels

Competing with the 'console channels' we have casual game channels. It is going to be interesting to watch how the battle between these develops, especially as console channels can easily support casual game channels within them.

The difference may well come down to the revenue model as, like TV, casual channels are mostly driven by revenue from advertising. Once you apply my above rule re 3space monetisation you realise the innovation here for the future of these would be a 3D casual MMO as an apps ecosystem. (second life skimmed past this absent a game model) (so if anyone wants to build one, get in touch)

Traditional Linear TV

If you accept for a moment that the channel changer is TV's interactive device, then you can think of the TV experience in game terms; ie you watch until you get bored, then you switch between a fixed set of linear channels. The game element here is the channel surfing itself.

With digital distribution you get TV on-demand; again the interaction model is the thing to watch. The interaction is all about navigating content: with access to near infinite content, how do you find what you really want and how engaging is the process? You can't effectively Google an image or a video unless you know a name upfront. YouTube is the current leader when it comes to presenting a menu for a massive open channel archive, but there is plenty of space to innovate.

What the games industry is uniquely well placed to do is to use its command of interactivity to transform the interface with content - bringing the best of gameplay technology to content surfing.

Online Worlds are Social Networks

Each online world is a channel in the continuum. Facebook and other social networks are online worlds with most game elements stripped away to leave the game solely about social interaction; social networks can 'score' you by social kudos and presentation alone eg how many 'friends' you collect or how well you present yourself to them.

Fantasy Online Worlds (FOWs) like World of Warcraft and Eve offer contexts for social experience by providing themes and story goals for the interaction.

Facebook's innovation is in referencing the real person rather than using a name handle. In this sense Facebook is more the real Second Life than Second Life is itself, which is arguably more a highly configurable chat and conferencing system rather than a game experience.

There is massive space for innovation in the 2d worlds such as facebook, infact facebook is open to being virally taken out by the first competitor that matches its present functional and adds a key innovation, of which there are many options, from privacy to configurable social hubs (managed by sub social groups) to financial incentives for users to join.

An exciting development will be the arrival of open channel 3space FOWs that allow third party developers to build components and add-ons. Facebook is doing this now with its apps but imagine these in 3space worlds, the critical issue is how these are regulated or commissioned by the channel owner (but its all really part of the game design in the world).

A tax on trading items within a world, or an equivalent economic engine, would enable a revenue stream for building new content so that a studio could pitch fully-featured items to an FOW owner. I believe this direction to be one of the most important avenues to the future of on line worlds and social networks.

Fantasy Online Worlds with embedded Linear TV

As a FOW creates a context for social interaction, traditional TV series, news programmes and even reality TV are ready to emerge from within the bigger FOWs. One could imagine a drama series covering the real story of a guild clan from the history of the game world. There is a guaranteed audience within that FOW community for that content while licensing that content more widely would offer the chance to win over both viewers and new users.

Serious games

Serious games don't sound like much fun. To me the term feels like an oxymoron. What we are talking about is games that have a serious purpose such as training and learning, but if they stop being fun they stop being games, and if they stop being fun users simply stop learning as fast.

I have an axiom when I think about games and that is: the more fun you are having in any game, the more information you are absorbing.

So I believe games can and will have a much bigger role as a learning tool in mainstream society provided we get over the mental barrier of thinking that having fun can't be about learning. Even games for training, like simulators, fit in this category. If they were more fun they would help the trainee learn more quickly.

Our education systems are struggling to engage kids today. Building fun games around what we want our kids to learn will not only be the education system of the future, but also form a key part of adult training and learning systems in all disciplines. Whenever it is purely about absorbing information or developing specific operational skills, game experiences are an ideal way to load up the information. As there is plenty of space to innovate in this space I set up Earthsim to create an online learning world and experiment with some of these ideas.

Film

Film will always have a place both in the cinema and because of the cinema. Cinema is both a social experience and an immersive experience that's almost impossible to recreate in your home. But as consoles and set-top boxes access their content online more, the video rental store is likely to disappear.

Clearly its a multi user closed game channel, but people think its TV

TV game shows like X-Factor are more game than traditional TV: their interaction is all about voting and managing community expectations over time. It's effectively a massively concurrent game experience. They can be seen as worlds with minimal interaction, just the vote. Combining this managed expectation voting experience with FOWs is also an open space for the future and one that has very interesting implications for the way that other aspects of life, such as democracy, work etc just connect a social network to this and off you go... but that again is another whole article.

To sum it all up -

As distribution moves to the internet we can be increasingly sure where everyone will be accessing their content.

For games to realise their full potential as a major or even a defining part of this continuum we must address the issues of how to reduce the hidden costs or drag factors in their development and how to get this content playing in a more standardised format. Only then can the interaction deployed as content into the future worlds complete on equal terms with linear TV and Film content.

With this in mind, having delivered the first few versions of Direct3D at Microsoft I left to set up Qube Software with the purpose of investigating these drag factors and look into a possible solution. We believe we have come up with an answer in the form of our Q Technology platform. Ultimately it will be for the industry to judge whether Q does indeed address these challenges.

As a content consumer I would certainly like the have a single receiver that allows me to channel hop between all online worlds, social nets and libraries of games just like a viewer going through TV channels. I believe that this is not only possible but it is where we are heading with the media continuum.

Finally, looking at all media forms as games can inform us about what can be added and what can be merged. Distribution over the internet makes access to all media an interactive experience. And over the longest term this means the content and the accessibility of further content actually become the media itself.