With these expectations in mind it is relatively easy to identify the distinct parts of Gaia’s emergent brain. The most ancient continuing system of organised coherent thoughts are those of the Han Chinese. These are deeply rooted.
These thoughts are reflected in both major philosophies of the region Taoism and Confucianism. It is strongly conservative and communal. It accepts that the “Way” (Tao) of the universe simply is. It understands that stability comes from the acceptance of this, the suppression of self-interest and the acting out of ones duty, to siblings, parents, family, community and state.
In the West a more chaotic form has evolved. Its origins are equally ancient but not so coherent in form but equally so in process. They come from the free thinking analytically rationality that epitomised ancient Greece. These thoughts are fragmented and incoherent in the sense that they are not based on a persistent vision of proper form but a continuing dialogue between thesis and antithesis from which emerges a view dominant for a time but never forming a final truth.
In the Western system such diverse thoughts are maintained by groups which are often international and intercultural. The most ancient holder of these still evident being the Catholic Church. Of course in modern times maintained alongside its worldview are those of the protestant reformation.
There are also great commercial enterprises that span the planet or parts of it and sustain a system of thought, culture, pertinent to their purpose, Unilever or Shell.. More recently there has arisen a number of viable organisations with moralistic purposes such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, the World Wild Life Fund.
These respectively project a view of proper human behaviour, the acceptability of an imprisonment and the treatment of prisoners, the care of the environment and the protection of species. Such organisations could be viewed as the developing embryonic conscience for the planet.
Nation states in the interests of their citizens, or their own power, project a particular worldview and win others over to it by propaganda, diplomatic missions etc. Free Trade is one such idea. This has been heavily advocated by such means and led to states acting together to set up the World Trade Organisation to advocate and effect it.
All the above can be seen as thought patterns in the evolving mind of the planet. To qualify they just have to interconnect human beings together to a common purpose and generate the resources to support them in pursuing it. However disparate fragments of thought do not constitute a brain.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Swing Dancing and Global Connection: Dance Movement and Life Long Learning
I have written before about the power and significance of dance.
Last weekend I went to the Merimbula Jazz Festival
http://merimbulajazz.asitis.net.au/
Merimbula is a pretty town on the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia. I had a ball.
Half the music I heard and danced to was Traditional Jazz the balance was Swing. The attendees were mainly in their late 60s or early 70s. They belonged to the generation that led the Traditional Jazz Revival. They were in their late teens after Rock and Roll and before the Rhythm and Blues of the Beatles and Stones.
Few in that generation of Australian’s dance to that music as many do in the UK using Skip Jive or Collegiate Shag in the USA. Virtually none dance in the styles appropriate to Swing, i. e. Jitterbug, Lindy Hop, West Coast Swing and Balboa. Nevertheless I managed to dance to my heart’s content from 11am till midnight five days in a row.
There were about half a dozen swing dancers at the festival. This was a pity given the volume and quality of the Swing music at the 5 available dance venues.
Swing was made new and big in the 30s and 40s by my father’s generation who are now in their 90s. Chick Webb, Benny Goodman, Glenn Millar, Artie Shaw, the Dorsey Brothers, etc played the music service men danced to in the last war. My dad a merchant seaman on the North Atlantic delighted in visiting New York and dancing to their music in the midst of war.
Some of this generation are still dancing. Frankie Manning now 91 was teaching in Sydney this year. Frankie first danced in the 20s in the Alhambra then the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem New York. Frankie with his partner Freda Washington are credited with the first air-step that forms the basis of modern jump jive.
Swing dancing is in the midst of a global revival. In Melbourne the average age is probably about 25. In the USA and the UK they tend to be a little older but not in Europe, Japan, China and Korea where they are nearly all very young.
This Swing dancing revival is truly Global. Dax one of the best US dancers lives and works in Osake, Japan’s great jazz city. Two great British dancers, Ryan Francois and his partner Jenny Thomas live dance and teach in the USA.
This represents a huge "meme" that stretches across the planet especially among the young. This generates connectivity and communication between humanity and the universe it occupies. This occurs at the deep subconscious level. This is not driven by the electromagentic forces that drive the sights, sounds, smells tastes and touch we more consciously respond to. Instead it is driven by the other major force in the universe of which we have awareness gravity.
75% of our brain’s activity is occupied with handling the balance and movement we need to survive. In this we are effectively interacting with the mass of our planet through the force of gravity. As children our brain grew fastest when we did this when learning to walk and move. As adults if we want to engage in life long learning new and unusual ways of moving are a most powerful stimulant. Dance can perform this function
When we dance we learn to communicate with each other using the force of gravity, the interaction between masses. This is not least that between our own bodies mass and that of the planet we live on. This is echoed by higher order interactions between the Earth and our Sun and between that and the stars in our Galaxy. It is good for one’s soul to dwell on this thought for through it in a real sense when we dance we truly do “Dance with the Stars”
Last weekend I went to the Merimbula Jazz Festival
http://merimbulajazz.asitis.net.au/
Merimbula is a pretty town on the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia. I had a ball.
Half the music I heard and danced to was Traditional Jazz the balance was Swing. The attendees were mainly in their late 60s or early 70s. They belonged to the generation that led the Traditional Jazz Revival. They were in their late teens after Rock and Roll and before the Rhythm and Blues of the Beatles and Stones.
Few in that generation of Australian’s dance to that music as many do in the UK using Skip Jive or Collegiate Shag in the USA. Virtually none dance in the styles appropriate to Swing, i. e. Jitterbug, Lindy Hop, West Coast Swing and Balboa. Nevertheless I managed to dance to my heart’s content from 11am till midnight five days in a row.
There were about half a dozen swing dancers at the festival. This was a pity given the volume and quality of the Swing music at the 5 available dance venues.
Swing was made new and big in the 30s and 40s by my father’s generation who are now in their 90s. Chick Webb, Benny Goodman, Glenn Millar, Artie Shaw, the Dorsey Brothers, etc played the music service men danced to in the last war. My dad a merchant seaman on the North Atlantic delighted in visiting New York and dancing to their music in the midst of war.
Some of this generation are still dancing. Frankie Manning now 91 was teaching in Sydney this year. Frankie first danced in the 20s in the Alhambra then the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem New York. Frankie with his partner Freda Washington are credited with the first air-step that forms the basis of modern jump jive.
Swing dancing is in the midst of a global revival. In Melbourne the average age is probably about 25. In the USA and the UK they tend to be a little older but not in Europe, Japan, China and Korea where they are nearly all very young.
This Swing dancing revival is truly Global. Dax one of the best US dancers lives and works in Osake, Japan’s great jazz city. Two great British dancers, Ryan Francois and his partner Jenny Thomas live dance and teach in the USA.
This represents a huge "meme" that stretches across the planet especially among the young. This generates connectivity and communication between humanity and the universe it occupies. This occurs at the deep subconscious level. This is not driven by the electromagentic forces that drive the sights, sounds, smells tastes and touch we more consciously respond to. Instead it is driven by the other major force in the universe of which we have awareness gravity.
75% of our brain’s activity is occupied with handling the balance and movement we need to survive. In this we are effectively interacting with the mass of our planet through the force of gravity. As children our brain grew fastest when we did this when learning to walk and move. As adults if we want to engage in life long learning new and unusual ways of moving are a most powerful stimulant. Dance can perform this function
When we dance we learn to communicate with each other using the force of gravity, the interaction between masses. This is not least that between our own bodies mass and that of the planet we live on. This is echoed by higher order interactions between the Earth and our Sun and between that and the stars in our Galaxy. It is good for one’s soul to dwell on this thought for through it in a real sense when we dance we truly do “Dance with the Stars”
The Purposes of Brains and Thoughts
Most of the activity our brains engage in modulate processes that enable us to exist and survive i.e. acquiring, transforming and excreting the substances we use to generate the energy that sustains us as living beings. We need to acquire and distribute oxygen around our bodies. The cardiovascular system does this breathing in air, separating out the oxygen that is then passed into the blood and pumped round our bodies by the heart. The brain keeps this process functioning throughout our lives ending by breathing out, carbon dioxide and the unused nitrogen remnant. The carbon dioxide being then inspired by plants and converted into the oxygen we breath to complete the cycle from Gaia’s perspective
Similarly our brain acts out a process that enables us to acquire food. We ingest this and the brain helps the body to automatically convert it into materials that we can use together with oxygen to create the energy needed for muscle to function. The unused ingested material is excreted out into the environment where it is re-cycled as water and nitrogenous material to be used as food for plants.
Without the cardiovascular and digestive systems we could not survive at all. Much of our spinal cord and lower brain is engaged in supporting the processes required to keep these in being and co-ordinated. However humans have additional capacities. We have the ability to move in co-ordination with others to acquire the food needed to survive and without the speech memory and planning we use to be very effective at this we would not be human.
Different parts of our brain have distinct roles in each of these activities. They represent successive needs in the evolution of living beings and to an extent exist in all animals. In reptiles the last two are little developed while in mammals one finds the sensing and co-ordination function developed though not necessarily the planning and thinking parts. The latter are only really well developed in man though apes and some whales have similar large areas of brain.
Our brain with that of other living things has evolved over eons and as evolution adapts to what exists the old is not destroyed or replaced but accommodated. In consequence the human nervous system has features shared with the nervous systems of all other animals. One might then expect the planet’s brain to evolve similarly with ancient parts driving basic functions, eating procreating, moving; later parts evolved to improve sensing and co-ordination; modern parts evolved to think and plan.
Similarly our brain acts out a process that enables us to acquire food. We ingest this and the brain helps the body to automatically convert it into materials that we can use together with oxygen to create the energy needed for muscle to function. The unused ingested material is excreted out into the environment where it is re-cycled as water and nitrogenous material to be used as food for plants.
Without the cardiovascular and digestive systems we could not survive at all. Much of our spinal cord and lower brain is engaged in supporting the processes required to keep these in being and co-ordinated. However humans have additional capacities. We have the ability to move in co-ordination with others to acquire the food needed to survive and without the speech memory and planning we use to be very effective at this we would not be human.
Different parts of our brain have distinct roles in each of these activities. They represent successive needs in the evolution of living beings and to an extent exist in all animals. In reptiles the last two are little developed while in mammals one finds the sensing and co-ordination function developed though not necessarily the planning and thinking parts. The latter are only really well developed in man though apes and some whales have similar large areas of brain.
Our brain with that of other living things has evolved over eons and as evolution adapts to what exists the old is not destroyed or replaced but accommodated. In consequence the human nervous system has features shared with the nervous systems of all other animals. One might then expect the planet’s brain to evolve similarly with ancient parts driving basic functions, eating procreating, moving; later parts evolved to improve sensing and co-ordination; modern parts evolved to think and plan.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Interview with Brian Hilton on the book he co-authored: "The Global Silk Road"
Interview
Dr Brian Hilton
The Global Silk Road:
Globalisation, Islam and the Creation and Distribution of Knowledge Using the INTERNET.
Dr Brian Hilton
The Global Silk Road:
Globalisation, Islam and the Creation and Distribution of Knowledge Using the INTERNET.
Interviewer: So what would you say your book is about
Brian: You could say our future but as I do not know that I write about the processes leading to it. This shift in perspective is vital. It empowers one to see, our thoughts and the world they create, in what, I believe, is their true intended light.
Interviewer: But surely your book deals with the impact of the Internet on the relationship between the East and the West. You even suggest Islam is a model reflecting how this can be effected.
Brian: Yes. I cover that. However this is only a current manifestation of the process I truly wish to draw attention to, “evolution” or more correctly “social evolution”, seen as an adaptive process. The East West Global Connection is not new. It is perennial. What is new is the means we have now to effect it.
The INTERNET only makes the process more evident. It does not create it. Globalization or adventurously “Universalization” just is. It is so. It is the truth. One can choose to see that or not. That is our right.
Those that choose to see, for example Lao Tzu 2500 years ago in the Tao Te Ching, provide us with means to see the significance of “The Way” for action. We all see what is sculpted. Some of us see the sculpting. We never see the sculptor. Lao Tzu called it “The Way”, Christ called it “The Way the Truth and the Light”, Mohammed, Buddha et al deal with such realities. We do not.
Instead we take the sculpted form such teachers start from and see that as indicative of the end we believe they wish for us. This is never on “The Way”. We should treat them, and what we see of their revelation, as temporary manifestation of the truth of the process. We never do yet it is only this that never changes. What it manifests always changes. This is what is constant. The form it creates is not. This is true also of the philosophies trying to help us see, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc. These provide pointers to The Way. They are signposts to and on “The Way” but not “The Way”. Fundamentalism thus denies the Universe and so God. Fundamentalism is the ultimate apostasy.
Interviewer: That is strong stuff. Why does the book dwell on business, or should I say enterprise, and networking?
Brian: As I said none of this is new . The only new thing is the speed and pace at which it occurs. This is significant. However “New Age People” and religious philosophers and environmentalists go on as to what we have to, should or ought to, do to save ourselves and our planet. This I believe is presumptive of the universe’s, or if you like God’s, purpose. We can only choose how to respond.
This is enterprise. This is not driven by imperatives, only interests, individual and collective. What currently motivates us determines the end never our perception of the end itself. Our purpose is to adapt to what the universe presented us with. This determines the future not ideals. The enterprising see this others do not.
The patterns of thought on the INTERNET that are significant are those that others support. These unsurprisingly are relationships, collective and personal, pleasure, survival, sex and the technology of the systems itself.
I checked before we started and the things that mattered to people on this planet with access to the Internet as tracked by “Technorati” in the hour we speak are:
Bush China ChristianityEducationFeedpath Firefox Haditha Dan Brown Da Vinci Codes Movies Religion Robert Langdon Tom Hanks Iran Iraq Microsoft MP3 Sex Soccer Web2 Wordpress World Cup Youtube………………………………………….
It is this that fascinates me. It is this we need to pay attention to if we wish to understand ourselves and our futures if we have one. The connections between blogsites and so people these tags represent are like patterns of connectivity in a huge brain that spans the planet
Interviewer: And that is all
Brian: Yes, if our interest is our common future, and that is never determined by what clever people feel we ought to bother about but what people actually choose to bother about that is what really matters. The former may influence the latter but not with any certainty.
This book is about what effects our collective thinking and so planetary consciousness. It is this that determines our future and if you look at the above it is our collective, spiritual reproductive, and recuperative interests that drive collective consciousness. This to me seems neither good or bad. It merely reflects what we are which is what the universe not other human beings expect. One religion is mentioned here but at an other hour it could be Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism and if I had searched in Arabic, Hindi or Chinese then it would probably have been one of these others.
Brian: You could say our future but as I do not know that I write about the processes leading to it. This shift in perspective is vital. It empowers one to see, our thoughts and the world they create, in what, I believe, is their true intended light.
Interviewer: But surely your book deals with the impact of the Internet on the relationship between the East and the West. You even suggest Islam is a model reflecting how this can be effected.
Brian: Yes. I cover that. However this is only a current manifestation of the process I truly wish to draw attention to, “evolution” or more correctly “social evolution”, seen as an adaptive process. The East West Global Connection is not new. It is perennial. What is new is the means we have now to effect it.
The INTERNET only makes the process more evident. It does not create it. Globalization or adventurously “Universalization” just is. It is so. It is the truth. One can choose to see that or not. That is our right.
Those that choose to see, for example Lao Tzu 2500 years ago in the Tao Te Ching, provide us with means to see the significance of “The Way” for action. We all see what is sculpted. Some of us see the sculpting. We never see the sculptor. Lao Tzu called it “The Way”, Christ called it “The Way the Truth and the Light”, Mohammed, Buddha et al deal with such realities. We do not.
Instead we take the sculpted form such teachers start from and see that as indicative of the end we believe they wish for us. This is never on “The Way”. We should treat them, and what we see of their revelation, as temporary manifestation of the truth of the process. We never do yet it is only this that never changes. What it manifests always changes. This is what is constant. The form it creates is not. This is true also of the philosophies trying to help us see, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc. These provide pointers to The Way. They are signposts to and on “The Way” but not “The Way”. Fundamentalism thus denies the Universe and so God. Fundamentalism is the ultimate apostasy.
Interviewer: That is strong stuff. Why does the book dwell on business, or should I say enterprise, and networking?
Brian: As I said none of this is new . The only new thing is the speed and pace at which it occurs. This is significant. However “New Age People” and religious philosophers and environmentalists go on as to what we have to, should or ought to, do to save ourselves and our planet. This I believe is presumptive of the universe’s, or if you like God’s, purpose. We can only choose how to respond.
This is enterprise. This is not driven by imperatives, only interests, individual and collective. What currently motivates us determines the end never our perception of the end itself. Our purpose is to adapt to what the universe presented us with. This determines the future not ideals. The enterprising see this others do not.
The patterns of thought on the INTERNET that are significant are those that others support. These unsurprisingly are relationships, collective and personal, pleasure, survival, sex and the technology of the systems itself.
I checked before we started and the things that mattered to people on this planet with access to the Internet as tracked by “Technorati” in the hour we speak are:
Bush China ChristianityEducationFeedpath Firefox Haditha Dan Brown Da Vinci Codes Movies Religion Robert Langdon Tom Hanks Iran Iraq Microsoft MP3 Sex Soccer Web2 Wordpress World Cup Youtube………………………………………….
It is this that fascinates me. It is this we need to pay attention to if we wish to understand ourselves and our futures if we have one. The connections between blogsites and so people these tags represent are like patterns of connectivity in a huge brain that spans the planet
Interviewer: And that is all
Brian: Yes, if our interest is our common future, and that is never determined by what clever people feel we ought to bother about but what people actually choose to bother about that is what really matters. The former may influence the latter but not with any certainty.
This book is about what effects our collective thinking and so planetary consciousness. It is this that determines our future and if you look at the above it is our collective, spiritual reproductive, and recuperative interests that drive collective consciousness. This to me seems neither good or bad. It merely reflects what we are which is what the universe not other human beings expect. One religion is mentioned here but at an other hour it could be Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism and if I had searched in Arabic, Hindi or Chinese then it would probably have been one of these others.
Our books point is that we should focus on the processes driving our connectivity to understand what will occur not the specific subject matter at any point. Connectivity is good as is diversity reproduction and joy and if these exist the universe is happy with us so why would we want anything else?
{Permission is given for this interview to be used as anyone taking it wishes}
Saturday, June 03, 2006
June is Here: Haditha May Have Gone as an Issue?
Fear and behaviour in combat is I am sure a strange thing.
I am 60. I have never been in real combat. I have been fired upon accidentally while working as a teacher in Sierra Leone. This was by spent bullets fired randomly in the air dring a riot not shots aimed deliberatly at me.
I choose to play a computer game called Battlefield II. I do so to learn a little of what all the young men and some young women I see in Internet cafes all around the world are doing and why.
I am banned from two sites for team killing. This was never ever deliberate just that in the simulated fear of close combat and in a firefight I fired too quickly, too often, and killed soldiers on my own side. Such carelessness deserves the punishemnet I received. It has also taught me how easy it is to do the wrong thing in the excitement and simulated fear of the intensity of the moment. I can imagine just a little what it must be like when in addition I would be fearing for my own life and that of my colleagues with no chance of pressing a button to come alive and start in combat again.
Soldiers do the wrong thing in the pressure of a moment but of course that is not really a strange thing and is ot the same as in the aftermath of a fierce firefight deliberately with revenge in your heart coldly and deliberately killing other soldiers never mind civilians in Haditha.
i have just seen a US military spokesman saying there was not truth in the allocation in the sam bulletin where I saw an interview with a US Marin eCorps deserter who said his sergeant had told him that they would cover for him if he accidentally killed a civilian and who had talked toa colleague who had lit a cigarette of the burning body of a an Iragi "combatent?" just killled in a firefight. I do not find it difficult to believe both therwsse stories.
I remember such macabre humour when I worked with mountain rescue teams in my youth. They would stick cigarettes in the mouth of corpses on the mountain ledge with them before starting to carry it down the mountain in the blizzard surrounding us.
To those who have never been faced with the intensity of real fear and the actuality of death in the moment such behaviour is difficult to comprehend but it is simply a way for heavily traumatised individuals to cope with their own fear and sustain a degreee if sanity in what is a horrendous and fearful situation.
It is also comprenhesible that after the immediate fear and trauma has subsided one might entertain thoughts of revenge for what one has been through and what your mates have just died from but such thoughts are not actions nor is it defensible that they become so.
In the midst of a firefight when you or your best buddy could die in the moment acting on such thoughts while wrong is comprehsible and so for me excusable but as deliberate acts after things have calmed down never. They may be thought about but ought never acted upon other than by the crazy and over traumatized who at the very least need hospitalized and maybe be desrving of execution.
However please remeber ones enemy always sees and believes things differently. We all use tales of attrocity as justification for our own attrocity. they never can or should be if we hope in the end to be human.
I am 60. I have never been in real combat. I have been fired upon accidentally while working as a teacher in Sierra Leone. This was by spent bullets fired randomly in the air dring a riot not shots aimed deliberatly at me.
I choose to play a computer game called Battlefield II. I do so to learn a little of what all the young men and some young women I see in Internet cafes all around the world are doing and why.
I am banned from two sites for team killing. This was never ever deliberate just that in the simulated fear of close combat and in a firefight I fired too quickly, too often, and killed soldiers on my own side. Such carelessness deserves the punishemnet I received. It has also taught me how easy it is to do the wrong thing in the excitement and simulated fear of the intensity of the moment. I can imagine just a little what it must be like when in addition I would be fearing for my own life and that of my colleagues with no chance of pressing a button to come alive and start in combat again.
Soldiers do the wrong thing in the pressure of a moment but of course that is not really a strange thing and is ot the same as in the aftermath of a fierce firefight deliberately with revenge in your heart coldly and deliberately killing other soldiers never mind civilians in Haditha.
i have just seen a US military spokesman saying there was not truth in the allocation in the sam bulletin where I saw an interview with a US Marin eCorps deserter who said his sergeant had told him that they would cover for him if he accidentally killed a civilian and who had talked toa colleague who had lit a cigarette of the burning body of a an Iragi "combatent?" just killled in a firefight. I do not find it difficult to believe both therwsse stories.
I remember such macabre humour when I worked with mountain rescue teams in my youth. They would stick cigarettes in the mouth of corpses on the mountain ledge with them before starting to carry it down the mountain in the blizzard surrounding us.
To those who have never been faced with the intensity of real fear and the actuality of death in the moment such behaviour is difficult to comprehend but it is simply a way for heavily traumatised individuals to cope with their own fear and sustain a degreee if sanity in what is a horrendous and fearful situation.
It is also comprenhesible that after the immediate fear and trauma has subsided one might entertain thoughts of revenge for what one has been through and what your mates have just died from but such thoughts are not actions nor is it defensible that they become so.
In the midst of a firefight when you or your best buddy could die in the moment acting on such thoughts while wrong is comprehsible and so for me excusable but as deliberate acts after things have calmed down never. They may be thought about but ought never acted upon other than by the crazy and over traumatized who at the very least need hospitalized and maybe be desrving of execution.
However please remeber ones enemy always sees and believes things differently. We all use tales of attrocity as justification for our own attrocity. they never can or should be if we hope in the end to be human.
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