An Autonomous Agent

exploring the noosphere

Category: philosophy (Page 3 of 5)

The Venus Project – Jacque Fresco

First, if you have never seen documentaries or talks about Jacque Fresco, you should definitely do so now. He is quite a visionary. I can’t believe he was 58 years old in 1974 when he was on Larry King. And now nearly 100 years old. What an extraordinary life!

Future By Design

Paradise or Oblivion

An insightful speech from Mr. Jacque Fresco has caused me to wonder about our society and its future. I think he identifies the issues, but I can we fix them?

With regards to a resource based economy, I think we should be careful with how much we change and how quickly. We don’t want to “throw out the baby with the bath water” as the saying goes. In other words, there are numerous highly productive structures which exist today, along with detrimental ones. There is much we can do to restructure various institutions to achieve many of the goals listed in the Venus Project. For example, there is nothing that requires corporations and governments to be hierarchically organized. That form of structure existed before I was born and even before my father. Why do we still follow it? I once read a book, suggested by John Bogle, called Servant Leadership, by Robert K. Greenleaf; in this book, Greenleaf puts forward ideas which reshape the structure of corporations and other institutions.

Anyway, just watch the talk and see what you think.

UPDATE: The Venus Project – The Choice is Ours

The Tao Is Silent – Raymond Smullyan

The Tao Is Silent, by Raymond Smullyan, has been a wonderful read. Insightful and witty to say the least. It’s a series of discourses on life, religion, culture, logic, and philosophy; I would recommend the book to anyone interested in these subjects. Once again I am surprised how long it took me to discover a wonderful author. I look forward to reading several of his other works.

Cosmic Apprentice: Dispatches from the Edges of Science – Dorion Sagan

Being a huge fan of Carl Sagan’s books, I was delightfully surprised when I found that his son, Dorion Sagan, is a prolific writer on the subjects of science, philosophy, and evolution. The first of his works which I decided to read is entitled Cosmic Apprentice: Dispatches from the Edges of Science. For a good review see Maria Popova’s review here. I loved reading the book and I look forward to reading more of Sagan’s writings.

Jason Silva Videos

Jason Silva creates some incredible philosophical videos. He is noted for reiterating Timothy Leary’s description of the computer and internet as the LSD of the 90’s. And his short clips are intended to be such a psychedelic experience. Really great; as most of them are based on many of the books and ideas posted in this blog. Be sure to watch his videos:

Jason Silva on Vimeo

Jason Silva on YouTube

Here is Jason Silva’s film rendition of the strange loop from Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach.

Inherited Consciousness?

After reading Edward O. Wilson‘s On Human Nature, several opinions and ideas formed; I think the spiritual and universal awareness/wisdom of humans follows a distribution function (perhaps Gaussian). In other words all humans are not born with the same potential to be aware of deeper concepts and principles. Some individuals are not able to comprehend universal ideas and principles of life; while others are deeply in tune with the essence of the universe. This awareness would seem to be genetic. I say that because there have been people in all cultures throughout history who have possessed such spiritual and universal wisdom. Also, no amount of cultural teaching will allow one to obtain such wisdom. We are simply born with a high potential or low potential and this expresses itself naturally.

Thus, there is not an object equally inherited by all humans which we could call a “soul” or consciousness. Individual humans are conscious or aware of the universe in varying degrees. This is related to the origin of consciousness. Was there an Adam, i.e. a first human who was conscious? Have organisms always been conscious to a certain degree, depending on various factors? Could we consider the universe itself conscious? Interesting ideas. I would suggest reading Douglas Hofstadter‘s book about strange loops and other books on consciousness here.

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