Mind is Moving

Well, I’m not going to get to sleep for awhile, so I should get this down.

First up, people completely underestimate how long political change takes.

But they also underestimate how close we are to the changes which have been coming for decades.

We’re now in the third or fourth generation of human beings who’ve grown up with the telecommunications revolution. We’re in the year 5 PG (Post-Google) – artificial intelligence, in the form of intelligence aggregation, is a reality. Continue reading “Long term political change.” »

On the sheet of diamond: it’s relevant because, frankly, it’s technology like this which is going to dig us out of our environmental hole. The materials technology behind solar panels, LEDs, wind turbines, lightweight cars – all of that stuff – is critical to our current environmental efforts. Better technologies will, eventually, lead to much lighter environmental impacts for a given standard of living.

How would our environmental impact change if it was possible to pull carbon out of the air directly into consumer goods made from diamonds? Continue reading “World Changing” »

You know if you’re willing to see The Creation as an ongoing process – to say that God’s alive, and well, and active, and generally not to buy into the whole God Is Dead thing… it’s a lot easier.

I had an insight today, I suppose it’s obvious. The most satisfying movies and plays, many of the best pictures, much of the greatest art… is realistic. It has the quality of compelling you to believe it on it’s own terms. I can’t remember the sanskrit term for “believing the world is real and not an illusion” but it’s that quality they’re striving for in realist art. Maya is just that: the divine artist makes a work which seems real, and the same process is still happening every time somebody makes a gritty movie which screams “reality reality reality.” Continue reading “World Creation” »

I’ve been meditating now for more than half of my lifetime.

Why? Probably over five thousand mat hours. Why this enormous investment in labor?

There’s a simple answer, and a complex one. Let’s take a metaphor: backyard astronomy.

Backyard astronomers often construct their own telescopes, grinding foot or two foot diameter mirrors to ten-thousandth-of-an-inch tolerances with home-built machines or by hand. It can take years of work to make a single instrument. Continue reading “Meditation and the Telescope” »