Apologies to all, the last year has been a very busy one for us - so many projects and so little time.
Rather than let this page become yet another defunct blog in the forgotten google wastelands, we will start updating again soon (regularly, promise), starting with an article next week about patriarchal repression. There's a lot to cover (unsurpisingly) so this may be in a few parts...
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Friday, May 2, 2008
Albert Hofmann
We wish to extend our commiserations to the family of Albert Hofmann after his passing away on April the 29th 2008, at the age of 102.
Albert Hofmann was the discoverer of the compound LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) and thus was one of those who were responsible for the failed cultural revolution of the 60's. The story of the discovery of LSD has been told many times, but never better than by Hofmann himself.
We direct you to his seminal work, 'LSD: My problem child'.
Albert Hofmann is survived by three children, eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Hofmann was always surprised at the impact his discovery made, and was sometimes overwhelmed by the enthusiasm many people had for the compound. Hofmann himself believed that LSD was a potent tool with many potential applications in psychotherapy and analysis, and certainly not a toy with which to get 'high'. The medicinal applications of LSD continue to this day in Switzerland, thanks to sterling work by the MAPS and others.
One commonly held misconception regarding the discovery of LSD is that it was an accidental occurrence - this is not quite correct. LSD was synthesised as part of a project by Sandoz Laboratories (Hofmann's employers) to systematically investigate all possible analogues of Lysergic Acid Amide (LSA) - a naturally occurring chemical found in Ergot of Rye and Morning Glory seeds - and test them for biological effects,
The accident occurred when Hofmann accidentally ingested some LSD through his fingertips (No chemical was known at that time that would be active in such minute amounts). This was later followed by an intentional consumption, and the rest is history.
Albert Hofmann achieved many things in his lifetime, and he often felt that these had been overshadowed by LSD, so in closing, we will ask you to remember the Man, and not the Molecule.
Albert Hofmann
1906 - 2008
1906 - 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Money - The ultimate self-imposed limitation
Among the many aspects of our culture that we take for granted, the most ubiquitous is the current financial system. Few people realize that our fiscal system is not the sole method of economy, and though the present system is responsible for all of the economic problems and deficiencies that we now face, a substitute is never considered.
Our present economical method (which we shall call Method F for the sake of brevity.) is deeply flawed and ultimately doomed to obsolescence, along with all who rely upon it for their livelihood.
The flaws of Method F are numerous, but here we will just elucidate a few of the main culprits.
First and foremost is the fact that our monetary standard is based on a "precious" metal of little practical utility (other than niche electronic and plating applications) and artificial scarcity. There is nothing inherently valuable about gold*, and in a universe of infinite resources it is sheer folly to place value on a substance for rarity value alone.
The next major flaw of Method F is the system of centralised administration and control which can cause artificial poverty (which has nothing to do with a lack of real resources) and administrative problems that reduce nations to destitution. Were there any less people or resources the day after the 1929 Wall St crash compared to the day before? Clearly in real terms nothing had really changed, but due to artificial rareness or excess of a non-intrinsically valuable substance (money), millions were impoverished and growth was set back decades as a select few profited immensely from the ensuing chaos and begun a masterful domination of Method F which continues to this day.
Others also gained from this sorry situation - Hitler was able to rise to power from the ashes of the depression which consumed Germany by offering (and providing) solutions (some more final than others...) to Germany's myriad of economic problems, that were themselves very much a legacy of the first world war and the treaty of Versailles, which called for vast reparations from Germany.
The treaty of Versailles exasperated the global knock-on effects of the Wall St crash upon Germany and thereby create a situation where anyone could rise to power with the promise of rescuing Germany from the third world status that it had attained.
In the same vein, many of the pivotal moments of the 20th and 21st centuries can be traced to the omnipresent and insidious influence of Method F - It often creates power vacuums that are frequently filled by unsavoury dictators and/or irrational political systems.
The primary problem with the present socio-economic system however, is mainly conceptual - It is based on a closed system with limited resources, and therein lies the main barrier to its future continuation.
We live in a Universe of near limitless resources - even within our own solar system, there are thousands and thousands of years of available raw materials, and if used correctly this planet has renewable resources that will last as long as the earth itself. Though we tend not to bother, there is quite enough food on this planet to feed everyone, and every human being that dies of mere starvation is yet more blood on the hands of the disconcertingly small group of people that control the global economy (and by extension the world).
We need to start thinking of serious alternatives to this Method F, because clearly it has Failed in its aim of (we presume) sustaining stability, peace and prosperity. But what other systems are there?
One notorious and derided substitute is Communism - a socio-economic system with a shaky history, but which has not been fully explored vis a vis a disassociation from authoritarian and dominating government.
A key reason that neither capitalism or communism have been the success stories that their creators wanted them to be is that western political thought is suffering from a one-dimensional perspective upon socio-economics in that politics is seen to move on one axis only - from left to right.
We are of the belief that this is a limited world view that does not take into account many important variables.
We propose that this system of thought be replaced by one which more accurately represents the multi-dimensional nature of Human society, and here we give an example of how this may be done in a conceptual way. Try this yourselves - the important thing is not necessarily what the axes represent, but that there is more than one of them.
The Politikube
If, as stated above, Communism and Capitalism occupy opposite ends of a single axis, what else could be said to have a binary opposite within politics? In the diagram above, we have drawn three axes to represent the three-dimensional space which we are used to. Each axis consists of two binary opposites that are still inherently related and have a sliding scale of decreasing opposition between them. Here we have...
Capitalism/Communism
Patriarchal/Matriarchal
Authoritarian/Libertarian
...all set around the three axes of a cube. Rather than be set on a one-dimensional sliding scale, any political system can now be plotted in three dimensions by considering its relationship to all three axes.
This will clearly show that though two systems may be at the opposite extremes of, say, Authoritarianism and Libertarianism, there are still many ways in which they can be similar. For example they may both be very Patriarchal, male dominated societies or they may both be run in a Capitalistic fashion. Every socio-economic system occupies a point within this phase space, which can be denoted by a set of three coordinates when an arbitrary set of sequential numbers are applied to the scale of each axis.
By analysing present political frameworks, and plotting their position within the Politikube, it is possible to gain insight into the unused phase space of the cube and determine whether other permutations of this space may produce viable alternatives to Method F - For example most civilizations throughout history have been male-dominated affairs, and the matriarchal side of the cube has been mostly unutilised.
This system is not perfect, but it is an order of magnitude more accurate a representation than the worldview that predominates. The main thrust of this discussion is not to define how the world should be administrated, but rather to point out how it should not be (arguably an easier task).
In a later article, we shall discuss serious alternatives to Method F and the feasibility of their implementation. In the meantime, please experiment with the Politikube, explore its phase space and please let us know of any insights you may have.
*this may not be strictly true - this will be discussed further in a future article entitled "Monoatomic elements and Human potential"
postscript; We apologise for the long wait between posts - they will now revert to more regular installments.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Free Gary McKinnon!
Gary was indicted by a US court in November 2002, accused of "hacking" into over 90 US Military computer systems from here in the UK.
The unjust treatment of British citizens (and others) when facing the might of the US Military "justice" system, which practices detention without trial in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, and stands accused of making use of torture by allied regimes ("extraordinary rendition") is an ongoing scandal. It cannot be excused even by a "war on terror".
It seems only just that Gary should face any charges in a British court, and to serve any sentence, if he is found guilty, in a British prison.
[taken from http://freegary.org.uk/]
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The Subjective Mind, and How To Avoid It
Few things have caused more conflict in the history of Man, than the belief that ones own view of the world more accurately represents objective reality than another. The truth of the matter is that none of us (read: very few) have a worldview that does not depart from reality somewhere along the way.
Our egos demand that we make assumptions about the world - survival in the material world requires nothing less. Though it is ordinarily the most effective method of learning, you simply cannot learn everything experientially and remain alive long enough to utilize that knowledge.
You do not need to be run down by a car to know that it will be life threatening, you must take it on faith when your parents tell you to never run in the road. Some do not, of course, but then natural selection has to express itself in modern society somehow.
However, we clearly don't take everything on faith, and we are expected to find some things out for ourselves. (incidentally, finding a good balance between these two types of learning is the absolute key to good parenting) So this is where confusion sets in. What is the difference between something you must find out for yourself, and something you must trust other peoples opinion on?
The answer is, very little.
It is completely up to you whether you trust the judgements of others, or whether you would rather find out for yourself, but sooner or later we all come to a point in our lives where our perception of the world is coloured by not just our own assumption, but the assumptions of others, and of the opinions that they trusted, and so on into recursive infinity.
By the time it comes down to you, parts of your worldview may be on very shaky foundations indeed.
Which is absolutely fine and normal, providing that you are sufficiently open minded enough to adapt your prejudices, when they become incompatible with what your experience is telling you.
It is this inability (or unwillingness) to adapt subjective opinion that causes conflict, not the making of the assumption itself.
In a very real sense, none of us truly experience what could be called objective reality - What we experience is in fact a chemical simulation of reality constructed by the brain, based on external stimuli. Your mind creates what you see around you, and for reasons of expediency it does not not give you the full picture. instead, it makes programmed assumptions based upon what you have learned about the world in which you live.
It has been well noted that multiple eye witnesses to the same event will give largely varying accounts of the same thing, especially under stress. The mind acts as an incredibly powerful pattern analysis device, and routinely fills in the blanks in vision and experience to coincide with what it assumes is there. This can happen in a very obvious sense visually, but it is less obvious in the way that it effects concepts and philosophy. This does indeed have an effect on these areas of the mind, but it is harder to notice a gap in your philosophy than it is to notice a gap in your vision (something which is also easier to look at under calm objective conditions).
Pattern analysis incidentally is one of the main things which distinguishes the organic mind from the electronic, and is currently the primary challenge for artificial intelligence engineers. However, if you have read all of the above then you may notice that this would make computers far more fallible, and prone to human like mistakes - perhaps not the computer you want in air traffic control. Currently, computers are always right - any perceived faults are either mechanical (read: Human) errors, or programming (read: Human) errors. If they were capable of pattern analysis they would undoubtedly be more imaginative and easy to talk to, even reason with, but they would be also capable of fundamental errors based on assumptions that a current computer wouldn't even be able to make. This may mean that they would be a niche application at best and at worst, a curiosity.
But back to the point in hand, which is that we do not see the real world, but instead an electro-chemical simulation of it. It is possible to perceive the world in a way that is closer to what there is to see, and it involves dissolving the ego in such a way that your assumptions and opinions about the world are fundamentally weakened. There are many ways to reach this state, including contemplation, meditation, dancing, yoga, drumming, chanting, isolation tanks, entheogens, and just plain will.
Once your ego has been dissolved and rebuilt, it is never the same again. Though you may make further pre-judgements about the world, they will never be so strong as to preclude learning and adapting to new modes of thought.
One may ask why it is not desirable to permanently dissolve the ego, and though this has been touched on, we will expand. The state of ego loss, for those who have not experienced it, is unimaginably intense and divinely peaceful by turns, it is one of the most traumatic and also rewarding things that a mature human mind can undergo and can have more beneficial effect on the intellect that the most rigorous education.
However, for all these things, it is not a state of mind that can be sustained indefinitely. Though it may give you incredible insight and profound powers of perception, the priorities that you have in this state are not conducive to a healthy lifestyle or indeed a long life. As stated before, assumptions keep us alive - they prevent us from doing dangerous or antisocial things, from walking into the road to taking our clothes off in the park. The ego is a valuable part of the minds arsenal and is essential to our material well being - It should not have "bad" connotations to it any more than the memory, or identity.
It is not the egos existence as much as its resilience that causes problems. It is the inability to learn new modes of thinking that causes many of the problems that our society has, and flexible egos would mitigate much of these. The ego is a tool, and like any other tool, knowing how to use it is as much about knowing its limitations as it is about knowing its capabilities.
Our egos demand that we make assumptions about the world - survival in the material world requires nothing less. Though it is ordinarily the most effective method of learning, you simply cannot learn everything experientially and remain alive long enough to utilize that knowledge.
You do not need to be run down by a car to know that it will be life threatening, you must take it on faith when your parents tell you to never run in the road. Some do not, of course, but then natural selection has to express itself in modern society somehow.
However, we clearly don't take everything on faith, and we are expected to find some things out for ourselves. (incidentally, finding a good balance between these two types of learning is the absolute key to good parenting) So this is where confusion sets in. What is the difference between something you must find out for yourself, and something you must trust other peoples opinion on?
The answer is, very little.
It is completely up to you whether you trust the judgements of others, or whether you would rather find out for yourself, but sooner or later we all come to a point in our lives where our perception of the world is coloured by not just our own assumption, but the assumptions of others, and of the opinions that they trusted, and so on into recursive infinity.
By the time it comes down to you, parts of your worldview may be on very shaky foundations indeed.
Which is absolutely fine and normal, providing that you are sufficiently open minded enough to adapt your prejudices, when they become incompatible with what your experience is telling you.
It is this inability (or unwillingness) to adapt subjective opinion that causes conflict, not the making of the assumption itself.
In a very real sense, none of us truly experience what could be called objective reality - What we experience is in fact a chemical simulation of reality constructed by the brain, based on external stimuli. Your mind creates what you see around you, and for reasons of expediency it does not not give you the full picture. instead, it makes programmed assumptions based upon what you have learned about the world in which you live.
It has been well noted that multiple eye witnesses to the same event will give largely varying accounts of the same thing, especially under stress. The mind acts as an incredibly powerful pattern analysis device, and routinely fills in the blanks in vision and experience to coincide with what it assumes is there. This can happen in a very obvious sense visually, but it is less obvious in the way that it effects concepts and philosophy. This does indeed have an effect on these areas of the mind, but it is harder to notice a gap in your philosophy than it is to notice a gap in your vision (something which is also easier to look at under calm objective conditions).
Pattern analysis incidentally is one of the main things which distinguishes the organic mind from the electronic, and is currently the primary challenge for artificial intelligence engineers. However, if you have read all of the above then you may notice that this would make computers far more fallible, and prone to human like mistakes - perhaps not the computer you want in air traffic control. Currently, computers are always right - any perceived faults are either mechanical (read: Human) errors, or programming (read: Human) errors. If they were capable of pattern analysis they would undoubtedly be more imaginative and easy to talk to, even reason with, but they would be also capable of fundamental errors based on assumptions that a current computer wouldn't even be able to make. This may mean that they would be a niche application at best and at worst, a curiosity.
But back to the point in hand, which is that we do not see the real world, but instead an electro-chemical simulation of it. It is possible to perceive the world in a way that is closer to what there is to see, and it involves dissolving the ego in such a way that your assumptions and opinions about the world are fundamentally weakened. There are many ways to reach this state, including contemplation, meditation, dancing, yoga, drumming, chanting, isolation tanks, entheogens, and just plain will.
Once your ego has been dissolved and rebuilt, it is never the same again. Though you may make further pre-judgements about the world, they will never be so strong as to preclude learning and adapting to new modes of thought.
One may ask why it is not desirable to permanently dissolve the ego, and though this has been touched on, we will expand. The state of ego loss, for those who have not experienced it, is unimaginably intense and divinely peaceful by turns, it is one of the most traumatic and also rewarding things that a mature human mind can undergo and can have more beneficial effect on the intellect that the most rigorous education.
However, for all these things, it is not a state of mind that can be sustained indefinitely. Though it may give you incredible insight and profound powers of perception, the priorities that you have in this state are not conducive to a healthy lifestyle or indeed a long life. As stated before, assumptions keep us alive - they prevent us from doing dangerous or antisocial things, from walking into the road to taking our clothes off in the park. The ego is a valuable part of the minds arsenal and is essential to our material well being - It should not have "bad" connotations to it any more than the memory, or identity.
It is not the egos existence as much as its resilience that causes problems. It is the inability to learn new modes of thinking that causes many of the problems that our society has, and flexible egos would mitigate much of these. The ego is a tool, and like any other tool, knowing how to use it is as much about knowing its limitations as it is about knowing its capabilities.
Nosce Te Ipsum.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Good, Evil, and Objective Morality
Much is made of the distinction between Good and Evil - It is often held to be the ultimate dualistic pairing, often seen as a kind of objective universal force. All the galaxies know, apparently, the difference between (or the existence of) Good and Evil - as if it were some kind of cosmological constant, like the speed of light or absolute zero...
Society, it seems, is pretty sure about what is good and what is bad, and it never stops telling us which is which. And quite often individuals disagree, disregard and disobey (and just plain dis) the pre-judgments society has made as to what is acceptable or unacceptable, wrong or right, Good or Evil.
This is perfectly natural and "right" ("right" or "good" in the true sense being defined as whatever happens to be beneficial to the way you choose to live your life. At the time.) and certainly not some kind of societal flaw that needs to be fixed. A society that has no differing opinions on morality sounds, to the naive, like some kind of utopia*, but really the result is the opposite. A culture or society where there is no dissent as to the absolute morality can quickly descend into monstrous extremes, 1930's Germany being just one example of a situation where the opinion of the majority is later held to be horribly, horribly wrong.
Humans should not look to others too closely when it comes to setting their own moral limits - The individual is and should be the final arbiter of what is right or wrong. Follow blindly the ethics of others and you will soon find that you are at odds with yourself, that you are conflicting with your true nature.
Deep within ourselves, we know innately what feels right and what feels wrong, and we should not let any amount of preaching and proselytizing make us doubt our own ideas as to what is good and evil, because truly there is no such thing as a universal standard of good and evil. These are just words that we find it convenient to label things with, and they have no intrinsic value.
Good, Evil, and Objective Morality - None of these things truly exist except as concepts within our own minds, and we will conclude by venturing our own opinion that this is A Good Thing.
*For those of you who have not read it, Utopia by Thomas More is a book that describes a (fictional) journey to a distant land with a perfect social, legal, and political system. The name is derived from two Greek words - "ou" meaning not, and "topos" meaning place, the cumulative meaning being "No-place", thus implying that such an ideal society does not and can never exist.
Society, it seems, is pretty sure about what is good and what is bad, and it never stops telling us which is which. And quite often individuals disagree, disregard and disobey (and just plain dis) the pre-judgments society has made as to what is acceptable or unacceptable, wrong or right, Good or Evil.
This is perfectly natural and "right" ("right" or "good" in the true sense being defined as whatever happens to be beneficial to the way you choose to live your life. At the time.) and certainly not some kind of societal flaw that needs to be fixed. A society that has no differing opinions on morality sounds, to the naive, like some kind of utopia*, but really the result is the opposite. A culture or society where there is no dissent as to the absolute morality can quickly descend into monstrous extremes, 1930's Germany being just one example of a situation where the opinion of the majority is later held to be horribly, horribly wrong.
Humans should not look to others too closely when it comes to setting their own moral limits - The individual is and should be the final arbiter of what is right or wrong. Follow blindly the ethics of others and you will soon find that you are at odds with yourself, that you are conflicting with your true nature.
Deep within ourselves, we know innately what feels right and what feels wrong, and we should not let any amount of preaching and proselytizing make us doubt our own ideas as to what is good and evil, because truly there is no such thing as a universal standard of good and evil. These are just words that we find it convenient to label things with, and they have no intrinsic value.
Good, Evil, and Objective Morality - None of these things truly exist except as concepts within our own minds, and we will conclude by venturing our own opinion that this is A Good Thing.
*For those of you who have not read it, Utopia by Thomas More is a book that describes a (fictional) journey to a distant land with a perfect social, legal, and political system. The name is derived from two Greek words - "ou" meaning not, and "topos" meaning place, the cumulative meaning being "No-place", thus implying that such an ideal society does not and can never exist.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Destiny and Fate
We would like to explain the difference we perceive between fate and destiny - terms that most people hold synonymous but that we believe have fundamental distinctions.
Fate is something beyond your control, a future that you are drawn to inexorably. Fate is the negation of free will to an end that may or may not be to your benefit. Fate is like a hole, and once you fall down it, there is no turning back.
Destiny is a little more proactive. There is a future waiting for you, but it is not inevitable. Every step of the way you must make a conscious decision to continue on what comparatively may be best described as a path. Destiny is a path that you choose to walk down, and there are many crossroads for you to exercise your free will. A future is offered, but you have to make the choice to follow it for good or for bad.
Which term do you think best describes Humanity's present situation?
More importantly, which would you prefer?
Fate is something beyond your control, a future that you are drawn to inexorably. Fate is the negation of free will to an end that may or may not be to your benefit. Fate is like a hole, and once you fall down it, there is no turning back.
Destiny is a little more proactive. There is a future waiting for you, but it is not inevitable. Every step of the way you must make a conscious decision to continue on what comparatively may be best described as a path. Destiny is a path that you choose to walk down, and there are many crossroads for you to exercise your free will. A future is offered, but you have to make the choice to follow it for good or for bad.
Which term do you think best describes Humanity's present situation?
More importantly, which would you prefer?
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