mindfulness

 The liberal democratic story, with free will and the individual in focus may not work any more. As Yuval Harari points our will is guided by our desires and we cannot choose our desires. In the future AI will now us more than we know ourselves. We already get information and advertises on the net that are there because of our interests or  what we googled on before or what we had bought.  AI can be a far more dangerous technology in the future were we can be hacked by companies or dictators. A new big story may be produced slowly and from many sources.  It may hopefully not be superstitious but grounded in science.  It may be aware of that we are dependent on mother earth, nature and other people.  Or a more dark story will be that technology will save us, for instance by travelling to other planets or by never living forever with the help of computers.  Anyway we cannot look back. Harari meditates every day and goes every year for long vipassana retr...

 For instance life and knowledge.  Some bacteria has lived  on earth for more than 3 billion years. They divide and lives on and on and on.  Well more complex life forms have been her for a long time too - even if humans have not...  Knowledge is in fact very resilient - as long as there are books or internet or storytelling  An example from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18:                                                  So long as man can breathe, or eyes can see                                                      So long lives this, and gives life too thee This information from Shakespeare has been around for hundreds of years ...

  There Comes If you do not fight it---if you look, just look, steadily, upon it, there comes a moment when you cannot do it, if it is evil; if good, a moment when you cannot not. This are words by Simone Weil, from a Christian viewpoint, but it could have be written from a practitioner of meditation (she was interested i Mahayana Buddhism too. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it We must continually suspend the work of the imagination in filling the void within ourselves." "In no matter what circumstances, if the imagination is stopped from pouring itself out, we have a void (the poor in spirit). In no matter what circumstances... imagination can fill the void. This is why the average human beings can become prisoners, slaves, prostitutes, and pass thru no matter what suffering without being purified. The test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams. We...

 The era of mankind.  Clive Hamilton writes about it in his book Defiant Earth. The Fate of Humans in Anthropocene. Hamilton is a professor of public Ethics in Canberra.  He means that  humans have modified the processes on Earth so radically that it has changed the nature forces that regulates the Earth development and forced it to an new geological epoch.  We have to think of what to do to slow down the changes, as climate change. But we have to adapt to what is already there and will affect the Earth in many thousands of years. Can we repair what we have done?  In the end of the book he concludes that only politics can do something about the threats that Anthropocene puts in front of us. We cannot do it individually. Maybe the struggle that will come is the only way to learn how to live in solidarity with the Earth. He means that it is really important that mankind will survive. We are the only creature on the planet that is intelligent and can understan...

  Some music comes as a surprise.  As the time for ready for it, even if we didn't know it. In my search for positive things for the future this album is for sure in that  category.  It combines three music styles and makes it to one and to something new.  So it may be music for the future.  Someone has said that the music in the far future will be landscapes of sound.  (if you listen to then Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir you may understand what he meant.) But here I speak mainly about the Album "Promises" by Floating points, Pharaoh Sanders and London Symphony Orchestra. Its a mix of electronic music, jazz and classical music and it works. The title of the album also looks at the future with light eyes.  It may not be so dark as it sometimes seems.  We have some time to stop climate change. And if we can avoid a nuclear war and trouble with AI, we can can look forward to some progress on the Earth. As we live in Anth...

 Well, we don't know why we are here, Maybe there is no "why"  it may just be random. But we don't know either.  We are the only animals here to wonder about those things. So why not give it a try....  In quantum physics there is room for randomness, so everything is not determined (as Einstein thought).  In our days it seems that we human can decide a lot of what is going on at the Earth,  For good and for worse we are living in Anthropocene, the era of humans.  We have change the surface of the Earth so much so its not wrong to call it a new geological era.  But its also the era of Internet.  In Taiwan Audrey Tang works for the government as digital minister and as a programmer to make the the democracy work.  I think its adequate to see her (she is a transgender) as an example for a new and positive thing for our age; A way to manage in a non competitive way. And a way to make democracy stronger by letting many stories flourish. ...

  Now is the time for artists like Arlo parks. It's just a question of time, as art is in progress, maybe like all things.  Phenomena like Donald Trump is in decay.  That's a way of life we cannot afford us to ask for anymore.  We just to keep our eyes open for the new things and they will open up like flowers in front of us.  What it means? Maybe listen to the young girls and what they have to say, what they have to give to the world.  There may be no agenda, no revolution, just the decay of the old.  And what is the old - maybe the white man as conquer of the world.  Maybe another to look at Mother Nature, maybe another to look at love and gender, maybe a more mindful way to live.  But you better ask people like Arlo Parks.  Here - live at KEXP at Home;  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQHmIt9OVGU An here in another video