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IntegralNaked uploaded a new video
(9 months ago)
www.IntegralLife.com
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Here Kevin Kelly shares one of hi...
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www.IntegralLife.com
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/tec...
Here Kevin Kelly shares one of his most powerful experiences. At the age of 27, he slept on the supposed spot where Jesus was crucified, and upon awakening had a powerful spiritual experience. Many people are aware of the fact that Kevin continues to be a devout Christian, which might defy some expectations of those who otherwise consider him extremely rational—trans-rational even—while pushing the vanguard of digital culture. In many contemporary thinkers' minds, spirituality is little more than a quaint vestige of antiquity, and once we transition from the mythic/traditionalist stage to the rational/scientific stage, there is no longer any room in the universe for God.
This, more than anything, has been the rallying call of the "New Atheist" movement of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and (to a lesser degree) Sam Harris. But it is important to note that it's not spirituality per se that the modern world should jettison, but the magical and mythical interpretations of spirituality that are transcended by the rational or postmodern mind. The present schism between modernity and spirituality does not need to exist, as long as we allow ourselves enough room to re-conceptualize what we mean by the word "spirituality."
While nobly trying to dislodge humanity from the monolithic tyranny of fundamentalism, many modern and post-modern thinkers have inadvertently thrown the baby out with the bath water. When Nietzsche accurately exclaimed "God is dead!" he wasn't actually talking about God Him/Herself, but the mythic conception of God, along with all the dogmatism, absolutism, and ethnocentrism that follows. While the mythic God was dying, the rational God was only just being born. Possiby stillborn, some might argue, but born nonetheless—with both a pluralistic God and an Integral God close on its heels.
This is one of the most extraordinary insights of recent years: while the universe (and our experience of the universe) is constantly evolving, so is our spirituality. It is a sad reality that spirituality remains such a confusing and controversial topic. How is it that religion has brought more liberation to more people than any other human endeavor, while simultaneously causing more pain and suffering than anything in human history? As mentioned, both individuals and cultures develop through increasing waves of subjective and intersubjective complexity, from archaic, to magic, to mythic, to rational, to pluralistic, to integral stages of consciousness and culture, with infinite room at the top for future stages of unfolding. This is the profound role religion can potentially serve in the 21st century—a sort of "conveyor belt" of consciousness, designed to facilitate growth through each stage of consciousness.
And this is an absolutely crucial point—you can taste God at any stage in your own psychological development, as these experiences are always available as ever-present states of consciousness. However, your interpretation of the experience will be largely determined by what stage of consciousness you have achieved. For example, a mythic/traditional person might interpret a spiritual experience as a revelation from a personal God intended solely for the chosen people, a rational/scientific person might interpret reason and mathematics itself as the language of a Deistic God (the great clockmaker in the sky), while a pluralistic/postmodern person might interpret his or her experience as emanating from Gaia and felt as a radical interconnectivity with the Great Web of Life. This is demonstrated in the graphic to the right, known as the Wilber/Combs matrix, which plots four different types of commonly-acknowledged spiritual states against seven evolutionary stages of consciousness, yielding at least 28 different kinds of spiritual experience. No wonder we are so confused!
About Kevin Kelly:
Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets 1 million visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/tec...
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IntegralNaked uploaded a new video
(9 months ago)
www.IntegralLife.com
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/tec...
Wired magazine's own "Senior...
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www.IntegralLife.com
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/tec...
Wired magazine's own "Senior Maverick" talks with Ken Wilber about some of the ideas behind Kevin's blog The Technium, which explores the various ways humanity defines and redefines itself through the interface of science, technology, culture, and consciousness.
As he describes in his blog, Technium is a word he coined "to designate the greater sphere of technology—one that goes beyond hardware to include culture, law, social institutions, and intellectual creations of all types. In short, the Technium is anything that springs from the human mind. It includes hard technology, but much else of human creation as well. I see this extended face of technology as a whole system with its own dynamics." The Technium exists at the interface between science, technology, culture, and consciousness, exploring the various ways humanity has defined and redefined itself through the ages. Within the Technium, technology is not regarded merely as the lifeless artifacts created by a particular species, but as a living matrix of innovation—the infusion of consciousness into inanimate matter, which in turn shapes our personal and cultural experience of the world.
The universe, we are told, is winding down. Nothing escapes the remorseless grasp of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics—and with each passing moment, our world, our solar system, indeed our entire galaxy slowly approaches its inevitable heat-death. But this is not the full story, for while the universe is winding down, it is also winding up, bringing forth new forms from old, adding new layers of complexity where there was once only an empty vacuum. It is what Alfred Whitehead called the "creative advance into novelty," referring to a distinct "tilt" of the universe toward more complexity, more significance, and more wholeness. From atoms, to molecules, to single-cell and multi-cellular organisms, to the reptilian brain, mammalian brain, and the human neocortex—the universe is abound with inexhaustible creativity, pushing deeper and wider towards its own limitless potential. Entropy and evolution: these two "arrows of time" exert their pull upon everything that ever is, was, and will be—one pulling us up toward the eternal light, the other pulling us down toward the infinite black....
About Kevin Kelly:
Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets 1 million visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.
About Ken Wilber:
Ken Wilber is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, and is the first philosopher-psychologist to have his Collected Works published while still alive. Wilber is an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development, which continues to gather momentum around the world. His many books, all of which are still in print, can be found at Amazon.com. Some of his more popular books include Integral Spirituality; No Boundary; Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; and the "everything" books: A Brief History of Everything (one of his largest selling books) and A Theory of Everything (probably the shortest introduction to his work). Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Institute, Inc. and the co-founder of Integral Life, Inc.
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/tec...
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IntegralNaked uploaded a new video
(9 months ago)
www.IntegralLife.com
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/spi...
In the second installation of thi...
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www.IntegralLife.com
For full description and free download, please visit:
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In the second installation of this extraordinary dialogue, Kevin Kelly and Ken Wilber discuss the nature of evolutionary emergence - the mysterious process by which new wholes manifest in the universe, each greater than the sum of their parts. They speak about humanity's role in this evolutionary process, especially in the creation of new types of intelligences: living, breathing, thinking machines.
The universe is evolving. From atoms to molecules, to simple single-cell organisms, to multi-cellular critters with increasingly complex nervous systems—evolution is a story of emergence, as new forms and new realities spring into being, new wholes that are themselves greater than the sum of their parts. But emergence is a mysterious affair, as noted by Mark Bedau, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed College: "Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic."
"For us, to actually be in the image of God we actually need to go to the next level, to do the next recursive loop, which is to create beings that will surprise us. And that's our job—our job is to surprise God." -Kevin Kelly
In this very special dialogue, Kevin Kelly and Ken Wilber discuss the spiritual implications of this mysterious process, what Kevin refers to as "up-creation." While humanity can be currently seen as the pinnacle of evolution in this corner of the universe, we are by no means the final word in this extraordinary story, and will one day be inevitably subsumed by something greater than ourselves—something that will undoubtedly emerge through us, while becoming something much more than us. Humanity represents a process of evolution becoming self-aware, which means that we are now actively participating with evolution, midwives to a future that simultaneously transcends and includes the entire human condition.
And believe it or not, it is happening right now as you are reading these words. Around the world, humanity is busy unlocking the secrets of evolution, while creating machines that are increasingly intelligent, adaptive, and conscious. As of now, these intelligences remain extremely limited and narrow, excelling at deductive tasks like math and chess, while lacking such hallmarks of human intelligence as language, humor, and tact. But as our technological progress continues to accelerate, machine intelligence becomes more and more sophisticated, and more and more capable of supporting conscious interiors—a consciousness vastly different than our own, but conscious nonetheless.
About Kevin Kelly:
Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets 1 million visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.
About Ken Wilber:
Ken Wilber is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, and is the first philosopher-psychologist to have his Collected Works published while still alive. Wilber is an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development, which continues to gather momentum around the world. His many books, all of which are still in print, can be found at Amazon.com. Some of his more popular books include Integral Spirituality; No Boundary; Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; and the "everything" books: A Brief History of Everything (one of his largest selling books) and A Theory of Everything (probably the shortest introduction to his work). Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Institute, Inc. and the co-founder of Integral Life, Inc.
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/spi...
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IntegralNaked uploaded a new video
(9 months ago)
www.IntegralLife.com
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/hum...
"Man discovers that he is no...
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www.IntegralLife.com
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/hum...
"Man discovers that he is nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself. The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and reflecting upon itself." Teilhard de Chardin
Wave upon wave of technological innovation are now crashing upon the shores of history—robotics, astronomy, interplanetary exploration, nanotechnology, optical computing, quantum computing, the Large Hadron Collider, and even the faintest hints of clean energy. Technologies like these are already having a wide-reaching effect upon the world, enhancing and augmenting our humanity in powerful ways, shaping our experiences, our relationships, and our understanding of the universe. Others, such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, stem cell therapy, nootropics, and genetic engineering—technologies like these do not merely enhance our humanity, they force us to discover what it means to be "human" in the first place. What was once the job of mystics, artists, and renegade philosophers has now been thrust into the spotlight of mainstream science, and the human race is given a unique opportunity, never before possible. We have the opportunity to consciously define ourselves for the very first time, to release ourselves from the bondage of habit, superstition, myth, materialism, and nihilism that have imprisoned our collective identity since the birth of man, and to pull every aspect of culture, experience, and history together into a single coherent vision of humanity.
The role of technology in this reconstruction of human identity is profound. On the one hand, technology helps us understand the human condition with much more clarity and resolution than every before possible—exponentially increasing our shared body of knowledge, exposing previously secluded cultures to the light of the 21st century, offering an extraordinary vantage of the full parade of human experience. Our technology has expanded human intelligence in ways that we could have never dreamed just decades ago, and is accelerating every day. And yet, for every major triumph of intelligence our technology has enabled, many of our conceptions of human intelligence are being slowly stripped away as A.I. learns to outperform humans at tasks we once thought only humans could do. Technology is not just enhancing our humanity; it is negating it as well—and together we spiral toward the worlds first collective species-wide identity crisis.
In order to even begin to make sense of this, we must take a truly comprehensive approach to the human condition, one that is able to pull all of our perspectives, all of our worldviews, and all of our methodologies together into a single coherent "theory of everything." This is the integrative impulse, an unquenchable drive to make sense of the full complexity of life, the universe, and everything, without ever leaving anything out—to find a way to integrate science, technology, spirituality, sexuality, psychology, ecology, business, politics, art, etc., into a single vision of humanity, without ever forgetting how much about the world and about ourselves we have yet to discover.
About Kevin Kelly:
Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets 1 million visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.
About Ken Wilber:
Ken Wilber is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, and is the first philosopher-psychologist to have his Collected Works published while still alive. Wilber is an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development, which continues to gather momentum around the world. His many books, all of which are still in print, can be found at Amazon.com. Some of his more popular books include Integral Spirituality; No Boundary; Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; and the "everything" books: A Brief History of Everything (one of his largest selling books) and A Theory of Everything (probably the shortest introduction to his work). Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Institute, Inc. and the co-founder of Integral Life, Inc.
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/hum...
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IntegralNaked uploaded a new video
(9 months ago)
www.IntegralLife.com
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/hum...
"Today, our machines are sti...
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www.IntegralLife.com
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/hum...
"Today, our machines are still simple creations, requiring the parental care and hovering attention of any newborn, hardly worthy of the word "intelligent." But within the next century they will mature into entities as complex as ourselves, and eventually into something transcending everything we know--in whom we can take pride when they refer to themselves as our descendants." -Hans Moravec
Hans Moravec is a famed research professor at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, who is widely regarded for his work on robotics, artificial intelligence, and the impact of technology upon our daily lives. In his groundbreaking book Mind Children, Moravec offers a summary of the implications of Moore's law (which holds that the computational power of the microchip doubles every 18 months or so), and comes to the conclusion that artificial intelligence will begin to outpace human intelligence sometime between 2030 and 2040. In this sense, we should view the emergence of these new forms of intelligence not merely as subservient tools for humanity, but as the children of humanity.
Of course, while this idea may have found one of its more elegant expressions through Moravec's work, the concept itself is hardly new, having been a staple of science fiction for decades, perhaps most famously in The Matrix and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series. But as the future pushes its way through the birth canal, relating our technology as the children of humanity becomes so much more than a worn-out sci-fi plot device—it speaks to the heart of the human identity itself, while informing our moral, aesthetic, and practical relationships with technology in just about every way.
By making this shift from the popular view of technology as either servants (R2D2), or executioners (Terminator) toward collectively being seen as the children of mankind, we begin to learn that attempts to control technology are more or less futile—technology, like any clever adolescent, will find a way to route around almost all forms of prohibition and punishment. And yet, we need to take the dangers of tomorrow's technology very seriously—the ability to self-replicate, for example, which is itself an intrinsic quality of any form of life, and will inevitably apply to tomorrow's "spiritual machines." But if we do not have the foresight to anticipate the natural shift to self-replication, and program in all the ethical and pragmatic considerations required to make sense of this natural ability, we find all sorts of world-ending "grey goo" scenarios, in which unregulated nano-machines consume all the matter on Earth while building an infinite number of copies of themselves. In order to prevent these nightmares from becoming reality, we must learn to guide the growth of technology, as we would guide the growth of our own children, preparing them for the harsh realities of the world.
About Kevin Kelly:
Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets 1 million visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.
About Ken Wilber:
Ken Wilber is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, and is the first philosopher-psychologist to have his Collected Works published while still alive. Wilber is an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development, which continues to gather momentum around the world. His many books, all of which are still in print, can be found at Amazon.com. Some of his more popular books include Integral Spirituality; No Boundary; Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; and the "everything" books: A Brief History of Everything (one of his largest selling books) and A Theory of Everything (probably the shortest introduction to his work). Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Institute, Inc. and the co-founder of Integral Life, Inc.
For full description and free download, please visit:
http://integrallife.com/editorial/hum...
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And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to thee.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
its all a myth
have fun being a slave to a god that doesnt exist