"We can never go back to the game-dotted plains of archaic Africa. That’s gone — it’s all gone. The only way out is forward — it’s called a forward escape... It is a message of hope, without which I think people are going to be very challenged. Because things are going to get worse, apparently much worse. History is turning into a white-knuckle ride, for sure, and without the faith in some kind of transcendental phase transition, I think there’s a tendency to despair and to panic and to nihilism. And religion has failed...
I think that we are on the brink of the adventure for which we left the trees, and left the African plain. But it’s not a sure thing. It rests in our hands, as it always has. Remember, that in the last million years, nine times the ice has moved south from the poles, miles high, pushing before it our ancestors — people wrapped in skins, naked as jaybirds, marginal as can be, no antibiotics, no global weather forecasting, no nothin'. And they didn't drop the ball, they survived, they took care of their children and their elderly, they passed the skills and the technologies and the insights and the songs down the long stream of time. Can we do any less? We, who have in our hands the power to shape the planet for good or evil; we, who can communicate with each other globally in a moment. It would be a pretty sad commentary on the notion of cultural progress and intelligence if they could keep the faith, and we can't.
So it all went for this. It will all be made clear in the lifetime of most of us. So I ... invite you to keep the faith, invite you to explore the edges, and to make of yourself a vessel, a conduit for the world-transforming logos that is trying to speak to all of us, to create a sane and viable and celebratory world for our children — and their children."
This little sermon leaves me speechless and brings tears to my eyes. The words of the prophet McKenna make me want to emulate the fervor of the early apostles of Jesus or the companions of Mohammed and spread his message far and wide. We're all going to need religion soon enough — have you considered McKennaism?
Wonderful set of blogs you have. Thanks
ReplyDeleteBut what makes you disconnect the ideas between them?
Shouldn't any AI sentient singularity have some interaction with the physical unfolding of AGW? It kind of makes humans the destructive life parasite to any emerging singularity. Yes?
RPauli sent me a link to your blog(s). Wonderful! As I said to him, it's so refreshing to come upon someone who is thinking as opposed to merely consuming. I'm looking forward to reading more.
ReplyDeleteThank you both for your kind words. It's funny you mention that Richard, I was just writing a post about how I will be combining these two blogs from now on, but I'm still trying to decide what to call it -- I'll probably use psingularitarian.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteBasically I realized that "doomerism" and "Singularitarianism" are two sides of a coin that I keep flipping in my mind, and both are aspects of a huge spiritual crisis that I and many others are experiencing as we try to find a story about the future that makes sense in these rather apocalyptic times. I'll probably focus mostly on the psychology and spirituality of singularities, things like collective consciousness, powers of mind, methods of prediction and prophecy, Earth Changes, the Global Brain, psychonautics, etc.
I've really come under the influence of people like Terence McKenna, who seemed to understand both sides of the coin I'm flipping and to have a prophetic sense of how things are going to play out. Anyway, look for future posts on these and other topics and I hope we can start a discussion here instead of just a monologue. Thanks.