Our Forgotten Future

Is there any validity in that movie once we realize who the engineers are? I would like to think all of the ideas in the movie were presented as a question, though while watching I could not help feeling I was being force fed cultish ideology. I was even more disturbed when I discovered who was giving me my lesson in quantum physics and consciousness. Not because I think Ramtha and her followers at the "school of enlightenment" dont have the right to their own opinion, but because they are peddling their ideas under false pretensions and editing the ideas of respected researchers to fit their intended message. Is that the idea behind creating your own reality? Making millions while peddling unsound, skewed information? Should the way to enlightenment and our future be available for absurd prices taught by recluse warriors from Atlantis? As T. Mckenna once said "you are the center of the mandala". So before we go listening to the teachings of ancient warriors being channeled through a blonde woman from Tacoma we should look in ourselves for truth and understanding and openly discuss and share our ideas in places like this. Which I love by the way, nice work.

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Augh, is that the voice of the ghost of a Hollywood starlet I hear or was that just old William S Burroughs up to his tricks again...? I loved the insights of what 2012 was showing me and I can’t wait to get it back from the freak [but, you are Blanch…] I lent it, so I can finish the final 1/3 of it, as I was just getting through the good, the really good, parts… Here are a few thoughts: We cannot address the concerns of the future because we do not know what they are or will be. We may only address what is in front of us now, because how we manage the concerns at hand, and yes, you got it, determine the concerns of the future. Simple enough right? Second: I think one minor error you make in your translation of “What the Bleep Do We Know” is that the emphasis is “physical” change. The core issue at the core of “What the Bleep” presents what I believe is AT THE CORE of our present concerns. This issue takes on many faces and can be translated or looked at from many perspectives, it is what we here in the west, in the economy and culture of the United States, recognize and identify mostly as “addiction”. Now, the issues and concerns at hand are always more complex and cannot be solely identified with a single term or in a single concern, so there is always a reaction when any one single identifier is exposed as “the” concern. So, the way to move forward, really, is “Think Globally, Act Locally”. Of course, we will struggle with this one to, as we should. Our struggle, though, is really a struggle of definition. Someone, anyone, give me $1,000,000 and I will DO a good job moving us forward. Remember, it the definitions of the identifiers within the concerns of a culture(s) that are the most likely to be debated and most likely to differ, but when you see what's at the end of your fork, you will either eat it, or won't. And even if this monitory request falls on deaf ears, I will still move forward, there is a way ahead. The concerns of the future will take, (hopefully) a lifetime. "Survive, That's the name of the game, honey." MEM

Personally, I don't know that I would consider "What the Bleep" a very effective tool of any kind. Not only was it put together by the charlatans at "Ramtha's School of Enlightenment," but it is factually inaccurate (many times over) and quite misleading in relation to quantum theory in general. I would recommend that anyone taken in by the film take a look at the Wikipedia critique:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Bleep_Do_We_Know!%3F

From what I've seen, the sheer weirdness of quantum theory is interesting enough on its own -- without the Ramthafication.

The territory between critical thinking and subjective experience is wobbly terrain. I was inspired by "What the Bleep" until the closing credits, when the credentials of the participants were revealed. I felt duped. The assumption I realized I had tacitly made while watching was that the speakers were, with few exception, scientists, and scientists of "the establishment" at that. The film subtly presents it's ideas as if they are coming from the scientific community, as if to triumphantly cry, "Look! Science is on board! It's real! It's real!" This false representation of an endorsement ultimately does a deep disservice to the harmony that can exist between science and spirituality. I agree with Daniel that there are "fragments of truth" in the film. I think those come from many of the participants, who are simply speaking from their perspective. Their messenger, the filmmakers, I hold accountable for co-opting some good ideas into a form that pretends to be more science than speculative philosophy. The result of which may be to introduce a novel way of perceiving to the uninitiated (to esoterica, entheogens, quantum theory, et.al.), but on the negative side confuses and distorts the line between fact and fancy at a time when rigor and clarity in that negotiation has never been more crucial.

Thanks for another interesting read, Mr. P. Like some of the others commenting here, the very financially successful channeler JZ Knight and the alleged being Ramtha, who she allegedly channels, do not score very high on my credibility meter. However, for me this association does not enitirely put the kibosh on the impact of the popular movie she helped bring into being. I think some of the content is valuable and meaningful, but it requires some separation of the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. However, I do take issue with one sentiment you express here. I have seen similar views expressed with increasing frequency, and I believe that most people who repeat such phrases don't really THINK about the accuracy of the statment, since that would make blaming us so much more tricky: "...the narcissism of the baby boomers and the 'Me Generation,' whose lifestyles have denuded the planet's rainforests and ripped big holes in the ozone layer." OK, on behalf of my (Boomer - born late '50s) generation I will own up to a certain degree of narcissism. But the hogwash about us being responsible for the current ecological state of our planet is exactly that. Hogwash. Boomers were the first generation in the 20th century to really make the concept of ecology and the idea of environmental conservation popular. Before the 1960s, this was not a very mainstream idea at all. By 1970 we had a nifty, green colored symbol that represented ecology; a kind of elliptical circle, horizontally bisected across the middle. This reminds us to keep environmental conservation in mind. It was often depicted in an American Flag format, with the ecology symbol where the stars would normally be. I used to have an embroidered patch with that symbol on my denim jacket. Got it in '73 or '74, as I recall. Boomers really trumpeted the call, for the first time in such large numbers, for scaling back and/or ending environmentally damaging practices. Many such practices had been going on since before the Enlightenment, and really kicked into high gear with the Industrial Revolution. MANY generations before 1946, which is when the first Boomers were born, the damage was already being done on a fairly large scale. So if you think that strip mining, the denuding of old growth forests, inventing "disposible" products, irresponsible chemical dumping, nuclear energy technology, overharvesting of natural resources of all kinds, the use of hydrocarbons, flourocarbons, freon, etc., began AFTER WWII with the Baby Boomers, or the even later Me Generation, well - all I have to say is "what the bleep do YOU know?" PLEASE do not help to perpetuate such a fallacious concept, for which me and mine get facefulls of bilious resentment from younger, angrier people. I'm weary of being blamed by ignorant parrots. Thanks in advance for your compliance.

                          
Thank you for making these important observations, Daniel.

 

Despite the fact that so many people are scrambling into one camp or another--from fundamental christians to fundamental atheists--I still find that the best camp to remain in is UNCERTAINTY. I see your point about Iraq, Afghanistan, and Darfur, but the VISION of an "apocalyptic future" and "a long, dark night of the soul" have been themes explored by man since the time John wrote out Revelations and Nietzsche wrote that "God is dead"...and probably even before.

 

I'm not so sure if the "naive positivity" that you level at the New Age faction is an altogether a fair assessment. It seems that the larger problem that man faces today is a mechanism of his own ego programming which appears to have a proclivity for automatic, robotic, negative responses (driven primary by intense programming for separate-self preservation and survival). Therefore, the slightest percepetion of threat to your identity or survival can provoke negative conclusions and out-of-control reactions. Naive has the connotation of being stupid and uninformed about reality. We've lived through thousands of years of entrainment in the 'left-brained,' extroverted, materialist viewpoint. These new systems are making claims that through the ADDITION of introverted, 'right-brain' engaging processes, we are actually approaching a more whole view of consciousness. However, instead of using NAIVE, I would use the term NOVICE positivity; we are only now developing the faculties for recognizing the LINK between the outer reality as we perceive it and our inner states. Nevertheless, when something goes wrong in the external world, 9/10 people find it logical to search for the solution in the external world.

 

However, it seems the new-age claims that many of the problems in the external world can be solved through strategic inner processes and methods. Now, what I feel is really missing from the new age is a sense rigid experimentation and testing. Annecdotal evidence is the centerpiece of almost every new-age process that I have examined; when are they going to realize that this doesn't cut it? It will take many years of experimentation and collectiong data before we can derive and sufficient modes of testing hypotheses regarding the real-world effects/results of positive thinking.

 

Many people are experimenting, just doing it in a disorganized way. I see this too in the drug-entheogenic culture; a group of disorganized psychonauts who ultimately enjoy the neat colors and cool sounds and strange thoughts, but ultimately bring back little knowledge or means for any kind of metaphysical growth due to the experience. Most, but not all. What I would love to do is study the results of many of the ancient (even contemporary) shamanic practices that employ consicousness-altering substaces a catalyst for spiritual growth and insight; they've been using them for hundreds of years so I would hope that maybe they have developed technologies or potions which actually induce intelligible gains from the psychedelic experence.

 

What we really need is "double blind" studies and other methods of verifiability (to borrow the term from Karl Popper--a philosopher that ever new-age visionary should read once again). We are testing out models, and at the end of the day, they are still models--some just work better than others. We need to have a lexicon of inner processes that actually produce the desired results in 50% or more of the tested cases.

 

We need to UNIFY our approaches and develop scientific tools for consciousness expansion. We need to recognize the "reality of the psyche" as being s conjoint actor within and without the mind. When I use terms like extraversion and introversion, I am paying homage to Jung's development of the terms and the schism that he recognized in these predominant attitudes and personality types. Jung noticed that 75% of the world tended to have an extroverted point of view--which seems to fit with the facts. The introverted methods have been marginalized, but there is still a large percentage of the population which hearkens toward intuition, metaprogramming, and the search for a meaningful identity in relation to the externally-driven (extroverted) mass consciousness. And yet, those disaffected folks who remain misunderstood by most of the world, ultimately turn totally against themselves or totally against the external world. This is not a solution.

 

The healthy psyche INDIVIDUATES (Jung's term) -- usually around midlife -- and begins to integrate the extroverted or introverted shadow selves into realm of consciousness. It seems that consciousness itself is geared towards forcing you out of your box.

 

I think you might be placing too much emphasis in "separate" egos relating to some kind of unknowable, unrecognizable, idyllic whole of "consciousness." The ego is not an outside construction looking in on consciousness, but a member of its contents, a subset, looking outward and relating a very selfish distorted picture of reality. Still, I'm more in the camp of embracing the ego, instead of completely rejecting it however. The ego seems like a pivotal interface for examining the relationship between inner identity and external reality. We need to figure out how to best utilize the ego for interacting with our consciousness. By the very act of rejecting and denying EVERY aspect of ego, don't you see how you are embracing the limited view of the universe that ego suggests and enslaves you with? Even Jung's concept of collective unconscious is somewhat irrational, somehow its a body of knowledge outside of every person and yet a part of each one. Speaking of which, the collective unconscious might therefore be another good place to start looking at the structure of consciousness? Jung often found it difficult to render the notions of "new-age mysticism" in the scientific jargon of the day. However, it appears with sciences like quantum physics, that the universe and reality are becomming more and more mystical and subjective all the time.

 

Count Alfred Korzybski published Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. in October 1933. In this volume he outlines a system of General Semantics which allows for a discussion of the relations between the key elements of perception, consciousness, and the scientific notions of reality. Korzybski realized thatperception and observation we're wholly subjective--evaluatons of the beings "whole nervous system"--and therefore subject to the specific, subjective paradigm which can be described by the structure and capabilities of the organisms nervous system--which is subject to change and alteration. What we perceive is often not what is (what Kant calls the 'ding an sich'--thing-in-itself), but what APPEARS to be so. Korzybski realized that much of what we claim about reality is literally INSANE conjectures based on making certain the wholly imperfect methods of perception. We often see the surface, cast word judments of our perception and moveon to the next superficial label. People like Benjamin Whorf and Timothy Leary were certainly influenced by Korzybski's theories and assertions (Leary's notion of the "reality tunnel" is almost a plagiarism of the Korzybskian model--more of an extension, really). Whorf realized how much language impacts our ability to create our picture of reality. If we haven't been exposed to the concept "blue" in association with the color, then we literally walking literally blind to things which are blue. It might have a color (a word concept they understand), but we don't know what color it is. Robert Anton Wilson claimed to read Science and Sanity once ayear for good measure. Did you know that William S. Burroughs was a student of Alfred Korzybski; and one can even look at Burrough's cut-up experiments as a kind of General Semantic poetry--offering bits and pieces of many perspectives to create truer sense of an "uncertain, multileveled picture of reality," instead of rock-solid prose from a godlike and reliable narrator of facts. But we walk around like god-like narrators describing the truth of our purely subjective realities all the time--like the hero of some effusive Victorian novel. What we perceive is not always what we get. And yet, much ofwhat Korzybski established in the 1930's is completely eschewed and forgotten by those who claim to be consciosness pioneers and visionaries of the day. A good simplication of general semantics can be found in the book "Drive Yourself Sane : Using the Uncommon Sense of General Semantics" by Susan and Bruce Kodish, PHDs. With chapters titled "Tentative forever," "Lateral Thinking," "Endless Complexities," and "The Process of Abstracting," you might get a sense for thefield that general semantic's approaches.

 

Korzybski's great line was "THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY." The word is never the thing-in-itself, but a mere representation, a sign-post, a symbol, pointing to the unknowable truth of the thing-in-itself.

 

I think you are correct Daniel in seeing many of the new age movements as "transitional expressions." Instead of looking forward though, I think we need to look back, recollect, re-open, and re-examine many of our viewpoints. It's time to dig up the entire history of "time-binding man", and "separate the wheat from the chaff." We need to learn what really works on the internal and external levels of reality in order for the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" to finally occur--for the outer to recognize the inner and vice versa so that a Marxist kind of dialectic can be achieved--ushering in an era where the transcendent totality of consciousnesss and its effects are observable, predictable, and repeatable.

 

When you make a comment like "unless the Law of Attraction can overcome the basic laws of physics," it sounds like the Law of Attraction is a lightweight thrown in the ring with the Mike-Tyson-"basic laws of physics." I think this might show just how embedded the material-external paradigm has become. And,by the way, the law of attraction isn't always true: just look at magnets ;)

 

I agree that compromises need to be made by all parties involved in the assessment and growing of human consciousness into a friendly future. Please give these newer, unpopular, internal methods some time to catch up with the thousands of years that the orthodoxy known as "physical universe." When organized methodologies arise for studying and appraising methods for dealing with consciousness, I will be quite grateful. In fact, seeing how much COULD go wrong in the world, I am almost convinced that some kind of miracle of intention and consciousness has already taken place in order to reach the world we have today--with all its troubles--essentially intact without a nuclear holocaust. Jumps and revolutions in consciousness/civilization are often sudden shift which can change everything. I'm rooting for the continuation of consciousness, and many (not all) of the new-age "personal growth" methods that I have personally experienced and grown from have shown me that there are other many levels to consciousness and a that a megalithic thing like consciousness is happening in a much more creative and dynamic way than we have ever imagined before the 21st century. The basic laws of physics are models that are being disproven as we speak. Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm optimistic that there are much larger games afoot, that there elements in consciousness which contain higher-order concepts and perceptions that are not immediately comprehensible to the brain, body, or even mind of mankind. It seems more likely than not.

 

Best wishes for expanded consciousness, 
Justin Karpel -- www.justinkarpel.com

Thank you for the conversation.
hats off to the mesmerizing acting and singing of Marlene Dietrich.

the question is asked: what does our future look like from this particular point in time?
i suppose it will look like the present...or perhaps worse, unless the present gets better...and how does the present get better?
Cheers.