Kukulkan ("Plumed Serpent", "Feathered Serpent") - a Maya snake deity.
Evolution of futures studies - by Tuomo Kuosa (2010) (PDF)
The "A Bifurcation called 2016" video by Mihai Nadin provoked a #Comment on time:
Mihai Nadin's entertaining 'bifurcation' model/theory is somewhat related to Terence McKenna's "Timewave Zero". I find it peculiar, that in all such "models of accelerating time/change" the critical singularity event is predicted to happen ("accidentally / conveniently") presciently during the life-time (or end of life, akin to the christian "armageddon") of the person stating the theory. Temporarily is the ultimate magic trick: As scientifically/objectively hardly approachable, it firmly is in the domain of the political, subjective and comedic. Paul Virilio's essay "Speed And Politics" on "Dromology" is an interesting read in this context. Within infinity, the distance from contemporary complex "Theories of Change" to ancient "Book of Changes" (I Ching) , is the same as the square root of negative one: Imaginary.
Terence McKenna - Timewave Zero:
A far more pronounced example of the "acceleration fallacy" (almost bordering on the brute-force senseless & pointless speed-cult of Ray Kurzweil & co.) can be found in the following talk:
"Sense-Making in our Post AlphaGo World" - by John Seely Brown
Directional/Qualitative/Evolutionary views on temporarily are very wide spread. See the following on A.E.Whitehead's views:
"He then observes that the mark of higher forms of life is that they are actively engaged in modifying their environment, an activity which he theorizes is directed toward the three-fold goal of living, living well, and living better. In other words, Whitehead sees life as directed toward the purpose of increasing its own satisfaction. Without such a goal, he sees the rise of life as totally unintelligible.
"
The root of such "models of accelerating/progressing time/change" is essentially the illusive notion of the Afterlife (in Christianity, Islam, etc.), Enlightenment (in Buddhism, etc.) or more generally "the other" which "we are racing towards". It is truly peculiar, how this narrative tempted and confused thinkers across all ages, right up to the present day (the cult of optimization and objective functions in artificial intelligence, etc.). Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question" short story eloquently explores the nonsensical nature of of such narratives.
Interesting alternative perspective on temporarily ("non-directional", "static", etc.) can be found in Japanese Shintoism or Soto Zen, where practitioners do not actively seek Enlightenment, but rather seek to fully experience every moment; that is, to be acutely aware of every action in the here and now. As Zen Master Taisen Deshimaru once said, "Zazen has no object, it is purposeless, it only brings us back to ourselves." One doesn't need to worry about Satori. Or in other words: Stop trying to understand. There is nothing to compute. There is nothing to discover. This is it, here and now.
Finally, consider the following quote for a perhaps more relaxed and fun perspective on temporarily:
“In conclusion, there is no conclusion. Things will go on as they always have, getting weirder all the time.” ― Robert Anton Wilson
Art from "Huaca de la Luna" - A shrine built by the Moche people of northern Peru.
Text and Images from Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection:
"The Moche worldview blurred the boundaries between the cultural realm and the natural world. Humans with animal bodies, objects with human traits, or anthropomorphic creatures that combined features from multiple animals, were painted as warriors in combat. Supernatural battles took place under water, on land or in abstract arenas. Finally, several supernatural characters are repeated throughout Moche imagery, in Narrative Themes, as individuals, and in other contexts, such as hunting scenes. Clearly, the ability of human figures to move between the natural and cultural realms was an important organizing principle of the Moche world."
Anthropomorphic Wave
Anthropomorphic Urchin
Crab Deity
Crayfish Deity
Strombus Being
Ai Apaec/Wrinkle Face/the Fanged God
The Circulator God
Revolt of the Objects
The Creation of the Earth, from Popol Vuh - painting by Diego Rivera (1886 - 1957, Mexican painter, active Communist & husband of Frida Kahlo). (More info):
The "Revolt of the Objects" from the Moche site at Huaca de la Luna. A similar story of tools rising against their masters can be found in the Popol Vuh.
Rise and fall of the QiGong frenzy in China: when superstition and science collide - by Matteo Damiani (2014, china-underground)
"After the fall of the Gang of Four, Qigong represented an opportunity for China to find a cultural identity tested by the disastrous consequences of the Cultural Revolution that erased an entire cultural and relationships system. Looking for its own way to modernization, China took a shortcut to scientific progress by mixing weird science and superstition, with grotesque and devastating consequences in the long run."
Paranormal in China - by Wu Xianghong (1995, skepticalinquirer)
Excerpt: "At the same time, the research into Qi Gong was also booming. New ways of performing Qi Gong were found, such as projecting the Qi out of the sender’s body, through the air, and finally into the body of receivers. These methods were investigated with “scientific” apparatus, including infrared detectors and radiometers. It has been reported since 1984 that Qi Gong could activate the potential SA (“special ability”) in people. In 1985, Zhang Hongbao, a master of Qi Gong, proposed the theory of a “cosmic field”; that the energy accounting for both Qi Gong and SA were generated out of and transferred through the “cosmic field” and therefore Qi Gong and SA were unified. Zhang believed that everyone could get SA by training in Qi Gong and that those who had SA but did not know Qi Gong could be taught it. Henceforth, all those who were engaged in the paranormal named themselves “Master of Qi Gong.” Millions of people began to train in Qi Gong, including the youth. The main goal was usually not to heal diseases and improve health, but to get SA and be a “superman.”
#Book: Qigong Fever: Body, Science, & Utopia in China - by David A. Palmer (2007)
"In this absorbing and revealing book, David A. Palmer relies on a combination of historical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives to describe the spread of the qigong craze and its reflection of key trends that have shaped China since 1949, including the search for a national identity and an emphasis on the absolute authority of science. Qigong offered the promise of an all-powerful technology of the body rooted in the mysteries of Chinese culture. However, after 1995 the scientific underpinnings of qigong came under attack, its leaders were denounced as charlatans, and its networks of followers, notably Falungong, were suppressed as 'evil cults.'"
Zhang Hongbao (1954 - 2006, died in a vehicle "accident" in Arizona/USA) is a fascinating character, which makes the explosive power of Cult "PK-Politics" in communist china clear:
"In 1987, he founded Zhong Gong. Zhang gave two-week-long Qigong workshops which received national coverage in the People's Daily. Among the over a thousand people who participated were prominent academics such as the President of Beijing University, who were reportedly able to capture and emit Qi. Having won over the academic community, Zhang also gained acceptance within the China Academy of Science, and other sections of the scientific community. Furthermore, he became a media celebrity after one workshop was featured in a three-minute news segment on CCTV. He also gained credibility within the media and political elites. The movement claimed 34 million followers, 120,000 employees, 30 life cultivation bases, and 100,000 "branches" at its peak.
Zhong Gong Beliefs and teachings:
"Zhang developed a style of Qigong which was based on automation, physics, relativity, bionics, and with distinctive use of mechanical engineering jargon"
.
"Zhong Gong is based on the Qilin culture (麒麟文化) created by Zhang in 1987 which He (2000) states is "an obvious challenge to Marxism and the CCP's one-party rule". According to Zhang's 'spirit-matter dialectics', both spirit and matter both have objective existence and can transform into the other under certain circumstances. In 1992, based on the ancient theories of yin and yang, Zhang extrapolated his universal law of motion according to which all objects or matter can subdivide into 'Yin' or 'Yang', predicting anything or act which contravened it would bring eventual disaster. He asserted Marxist property right theory and the derived Communist Party aim to eliminate private property were in conflict with his laws. In 1993, Zhang advanced his theories of 'promotion-restriction-inhibition-transformation' derived from the Five elements. In 1998, Zhang put forward a moral code which he referred to as "eight virtues and eight calls".[4]
Cultural Context:
"However, Qi Gong staged a comeback in a different form after 1992, as a trend of thought instead of a practical movement. In this way it has much to do with the revival of the paranormal in traditional Chinese culture. The renaissance of traditional culture began in 1989, when the government found it useful as an ideological weapon to fight against Western-style liberalism. Moreover, it seemed to be a hopeful alternative to orthodox Marxism as an ideology to join people’s viewpoints with feelings.
In the 1990s, as China accepts the market system step by step, the public media plays more and more important roles in the spread of pseudoscience, and cases of pseudoscience increase in the area of business. The Chinese people haven’t developed the necessary skeptical view of advertising, and the lack of related laws provide cunning businessmen with an open field. Until November 1994 China didn’t have a law for truth in advertising. The public media abounded with fraudulent advertisements.
Related:
"Only a real hero can goes along with no sword on. In 1999, directed the first national political action protesting the national political persecution in CCP ruled Chinese history. In 1999, continental China experienced another Cultural Revolution. Just by one order from Jiang Zemin, almost a billion Chinese who practice meditation became the target for persecution.
This year, CCP government lay down complete blockade and rounded up Fa Lun Gong and Zhonggong for the kill.
The only difference in the ways CCP treated Fa Lun Gong and Zhonggong is, it only kills but doesn¡¯t talk about the kill to Zhonggong.
"
Declassified CIA report from 1990 about Qigong cult prosecution start.
Video: Jack Ma talks about Tai Chi Chuan and applying it into life and business.
#Comment: Jack Ma - the world's 20th Richest Person, chairman of Alibaba Group, Kung fu master - is frequently directly associated with prominent Chinese cult-type "Qigong" etc. spiritual movements and its leaders (that get banned by the government)
Documentary on Qigong in the 1990s in China:
"Qigong Documentary Overview by Francesco Garri Garripoli "
Here is a copy of the entire "Paranormal in China" article, for future backup:
Every evening in an open area furnished with several pine trees, I wander from the new library of our university. I see a group of old people, standing swaying, and rocking in time with the rhythm of Chinese classical music, coming out from a shabby loud speaker hanging from one of the branches. They are performing the Qi Gong, an ancient Chinese exercise, revived in the early 1980s, that supposedly advances one’s ability to gather and utilize the “energy” or “force” of the universe.
Now there are hundreds of types of Qi Gong: some only need meditation and others require body motion to music. They are popular among Chinese who wish to improve their health and cure their diseases. It is hard to say if anyone has restored his health by performing Qi Gong; while it is also hard to say if Qi Gong is completely ineffective if accompanied by orthodox treatment. Deep breathing, self-controlled meditation, and little movement, which are usually involved in performing Qi Gong, are not harmful.
The cult of Qi Gong, however, is not based on its effectiveness in health care. The “spirit balance” it gives and the quasi-religious mood involved in performing Qi Gong partly accounts for its popularity. Old people may perform it because they have no better ways to spend their time. Around 1985, Qi Gong began to closely connect with another cult—the cult of “special ability”—and each reinforced the popularity of the other.
The phenomenon of SA was first reported in 1978, when the political group headed by Mao’s widow lost its power, and Deng Xiaoping was reinstated and began to advocate the movement to “love, learn and utilize science” in China. This science movement quickly met the needs that the majority of Chinese, including some scholars had. They had forgotten what the rigorous demarcation line of empirical science was. In articles published in many scientific magazines and journals, the coming 21st century was portrayed as a utopian, entirely automated world. The research of UFOs and ETs was regarded as an advanced area of science. Scientific spirit was understood as “to doubt every idea you believe in and to believe in the raw materials you see with your eyes.” This attitude I’d like to name as the “materialist” view on science. (It is not even a Marxist view because Engels disagreed. He believed that observation should be guided by theory, and that idea was quite popular among the scientists and philosophers.)
It was in such a context that the public media reported finding some children who could identify human character by outward appearance—ear, forehead, and nose—and called it “special ability” (SA). The word “special” (Teyi in Chinese) means something a bit different from “paranormal,” the word my American colleagues prefer to use.
The “materialist” scientists believed that SA was not a transcendent phenomenon, but an empirical phenomenon outside of the existing scientific knowledge that could explain and predict; that it could be and should be studied by “scientific method.” In this way the existing laws and theories of scientific knowledge might be challenged and revised. Perhaps it is better to translate the concept of SA as “exceptional ability.”
Although there were some disagreements, the research into SA was booming. More cases were reported and the field expanded to include perception and PK—the ability to bend iron wire in a sealed test tube, or remove pills from a sealed bottle. At the same time, the research into Qi Gong was also booming. New ways of performing Qi Gong were found, such as projecting the Qi out of the sender’s body, through the air, and finally into the body of receivers. These methods were investigated with “scientific” apparatus, including infrared detectors and radiometers. It has been reported since 1984 that Qi Gong could activate the potential SA in people. In 1985, Zhang Hongbao, a master of Qi Gong, proposed the theory of a “cosmic field”; that the energy accounting for both Qi Gong and SA were generated out of and transferred through the “cosmic field” and therefore Qi Gong and SA were unified. Zhang believed that everyone could get SA by training in Qi Gong and that those who had SA but did not know Qi Gong could be taught it. Henceforth, all those who were engaged in the paranormal named themselves “Master of Qi Gong.” Millions of people began to train in Qi Gong, including the youth. The main goal was usually not to heal diseases and improve health, but to get SA and be a “superman.”
In 1987 and 1988, Yaniments by a group at Tsing Hua University were published in scientific journals that “verified” that Qi could be sent out over 2,000 kilometers to hit the targets—a polariscope and a reagent in a test tube—and change the direction of the polariscope axis and the molecular structure of the reagent. The scientific community was shocked by these results, and even more so when it was discovered that those who engaged in these experiments were only amateurs. The authorities at Tsing Hua University had failed to realize that the group represented the university.
Another creation of Yan Xin was the “Talk Show with Gong.” Hundreds, even thousands of people came to listen to his lecture and were induced by some unexplained forces to sway, quiver, sob, grin, sleep, and express other emotions at the lecture. Such induced emotions were believed to be good for health. The “Talk Show with Gong” was quite popular from that time on, and the recorded tapes of Yan’s lecture were claimed to carry the information of Qi Gong. They sold very well around the country.
Yan Xin attributed SA to Qi Gong. His theory was that the children who had SA were not talents but that there were some masters of Qi Gong sending Qi to them in secret. Yan also expanded the effectiveness of Qi Gong’s psychokinetic powers to include moving away tons of fish, changing the weather, and putting out a forest fire.
After 1988, Qi Gong became more influential. In 1990, a woman master of Qi Gong, Zhang Xiangyu, pushed its influence to a peak with her performance in Beijing. Millions of “pilgrims” gathered from several provinces to see her and caused great traffic jams. When Zhang waved her hand out of a window of the third floor of the hotel, the “pilgrims” in the street cheered. Zhang claimed that she could talk with extraterrestrial beings and was able to cure every disease. She treated her patients with methods similar to those of witchcraft and demanded large amounts of money from them. Many patients became ill under her treatment and some of them died. In August, Zhang was arrested and accused of cheating. The exposition of her swindle weakened the cult of Qi Gong. Zhang was convicted in 1993.
Soon after the arrest of Zhang Xiangyu, a conscientious master of Qi Gong, Sima Tu, told the truth about the various kinds of Qi Gong hoaxes. The prestige of Qi Gong dropped rapidly and became merely a sort of body exercise popular among old people, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article. However, Qi Gong staged a comeback in a different form after 1992, as a trend of thought instead of a practical movement. In this way it has much to do with the revival of the paranormal in traditional Chinese culture.
The renaissance of traditional culture began in 1989, when the government found it useful as an ideological weapon to fight against Western-style liberalism. Moreover, it seemed to be a hopeful alternative to orthodox Marxism as an ideology to join people’s viewpoints with feelings. The preference for traditional culture in literature, however, can be dated back to 1984. Then, some novelists announced they were able to “find the root for our literature” when they felt disillusioned by the importation of Western literature and art since 1978, as well as Marxism, which is also a western ideology. The announcement of finding the “root” is not a bad one.
When the government took part in the revival of traditional culture, things turned out to be worse, because the leadership of government was far from being scientific and rational. A manifest example was the “I Ching” craze beginning in 1989. An ancient classic about divination, the “I Ching” relates something of the philosophy, beliefs, customs, and mathematical ability of ancient China. But in the recent craze it was claimed to have the implications of modern physics, mathematics, astronomy, and computer science.
For example, it is said that G.W. Leibniz (1646 – 1716) got inspiration out of the Eight Diagrams to create the binary computer and had sent one of his machines to Emperor Kang Xi of the Ding Dynasty. This claim turns out to be completely false. The binary computer wasn’t created until 1941 (the Z-3 machine). What Leibniz created is the binary system, and he worked it out before he saw the Eight Diagrams.
While the cult of traditional culture led to pseudoscience in intellectual circles, it resulted in the revival of primitive superstition, such as fortune telling, astrology, physiognomy, and “I Ching,” ancestral worship, and magic among the masses with less education. They abounded in the broad rural areas, as did the Qi Gong in the cities. The official newspapers warned that “the superstition of feudal ideology is reviving in our countryside.”
From the standpoint of the official media, superstition refers to something more than we have mentioned above. It includes the spontaneous, disorganized minor religions in the rural areas. For instance, hundreds of pamphlets on Zen have been issued since 1990. Zen, as a specific religion originating in China and spreading over the Far East, was generated out of the mixture of Indian Buddhism and Chinese traditional thought. It had benefited from Taoism, Confucianism and other traditional Chinese teachings. Therefore Zen, as well as Taoism and other religious traditions, became popular with the revival of traditional culture. These traditions should be highly appreciated in themselves but the popular interpretation of them came to include the paranormal.
A typical case is the book The Decoding of Liuman’s Mysteries (Renlei Shenmi Xianxiang Poyi, 1992) by Ke Yuniu. In it, he announced that he had encoded all the mysteries in human history: Qi Gong, Yoga, SA, psychic phenomena, parapsychology, magic, soul, I Ching, Chinese medicine, Laozi and Dao De Jing, Zen, Sakyamulli and Buddhism, the Bible, Jesus and God!
Carefully read, one can uncover that Ke’s thoughts never transcend the ideas of the early sages, such as Laozi, Sakyamuni and Jesus. He borrows from Zen epistemology, makes use of Laozi in the ontology, believes Qi Gong as an alternative to physics, and he also contributes his own illogical methods of thinking.
In November 1994, Ke issued his new three volume book: Research Into Life. In this book he proposed few new ideas but described hundreds of “successful” experiments to verify the presence of SA. In general, Ke’s books are not worth being treated seriously; but their great influence on the social ideology is dangerous, and we need to deal with them.
The movement to “love, learn and utilize science” from the end of the 1970s unexpectedly helped the growth of pseudoscience. The above-mentioned “materialist” view of science was an important cause, another was that public education in science was led astray in this period. The masses were given “scientific knowledge” without the necessary explanation of how it was achieved. That no method was available for the masses to decide whether a claim was scientific made them turn to some “authoritative” source, for example, the public media, an administrative organ, or the “mystery authority” relating to the intelligence agencies and the military.
“Hongcheng Magic Liquid” is a case of “mystery authority.” Being an ordinary man in Northeast China without higher education, Wang Hongcheng, in the early 1980s, pretended to have created a sort of “liquid” of which two to three drops could change the structure of one liter of water to make it as combustible as petrol. Were his claim true the words “energy crisis” could be canceled from the dictionary eternally. The Chinese security and military departments paid much attention to the declared creation and funded Wang for further research. When it was shown to be obviously a fraud, Wang was thrown into prison. However, he became a legendary figure. Some people believed that Wang was persecuted because he refused to turn over his “secret” formula to the government, and that this was covered up.
When Wang was finally freed, many news reporters, worshippers, investors, and crooks gathered around him to hear about the “secret” formula. In 1992-1993, Wang was rather popular on the public media, and he set up a company to develop the “Hongcheng Magic Liquid.” Nothing happened in the end, of course.
Another case has more to do with the authority of administrative organs. It is the “W-Shape Ship Patent” belonging to Zhou Jinyu from South China. He was a young technician and announced his innovation in 1985. This was to put the propeller in the middle of a ship instead of at the stern and to give the whole ship a W-shape. Zhou claimed that he had discovered a new fluid theory, by which the W-shape innovation could improve the speed of ships by 200 to 300 percent, but he had never published a paper about his “theory.” Experiments performed by some experts indicated that a ship when applied with this innovation would lose 20 to 30 percent of its speed and risk turning over. However, Zhou managed to get a formal appraisal from the local administrative committee of science and technology. He succeeded in bypassing the patent bureaus, the local government, public media, and entrepreneurs, simply by waving the appraisal. A large amount of money was wasted in making W-shaped ships, because they couldn’t move at all. Zhou was awarded and honored by governments at different levels until he was exposed by thirty scientists in 1992.
In the 1990s, as China accepts the market system step by step, the public media plays more and more important roles in the spread of pseudoscience, and cases of pseudoscience increase in the area of business. The Chinese people haven’t developed the necessary skeptical view of advertising, and the lack of related laws provide cunning businessmen with an open field. Until November 1994 China didn’t have a law for truth in advertising. The public media abounded with fraudulent advertisements. One example was the “electronic adding-growth shoe pad.” This shoe pad was said to help short young men grow taller by stimulating specific parts of the sole of the foot.
Another case was the “electronic stutter-curing instrument,” which was only a micro-amplifier, to enable you to hear your own voice through an earphone attached.
Fraudulent advertisements have been reduced since the Law of Advertisements went into effect, but pseudoscientific businesses, especially in the field of medicine, haven’t been contained. First, an essential system to test the quality of new medicines has not been established. New medicines always have to “pass” a clinical test, but the necessary control group is usually neglected, or the it is not under rigorous control. For example, all the patients of the control group haven’t been given the same dose. Second, the effectiveness of Chinese medicines cannot be tested by orthodox procecare articles” insteading disease instead of caring for health.
The Chinese medicine and “health care articles” market has been full of various sorts of oral liquids. They all claimed to be able to reduce your white hair, or improve your memory, or strengthen your sexual ability. One of them is called “China Soft- Shelled Turtle Extract.” It is well known that female Chinese long-distance runners have continually been winning the championships in different races and often also win and as the runner-ups. It is also well known that all these female athletes are guided by the same coach, Ma Junren. Ma’s method in training is peculiar, but public opinion holds that he has a certain “secret formula.” In the West, reporters guess about the stimulant used. In China, people noted that Ma had his athletes drink the blood and fat of soft-shelled turtles everyday. A financial group in Chang Zhou announced that they had bought the “secret formula” from Ma and began to produce the extract. However, a group of reporters recently discovered that no turtles could be found on the production line.
Besides, Ma had sold his “secret formula” to another company for two million Juan (about $250,000). Turtle, of course, is not among the ingredients. This company is now selling a liquid named “Life Atomic Energy,” which is said to be produced according to Ma’s direction.
In my view, the most influential commodity and the first object that ought to be inquired about in the present China market is the so-called “Life-Spectrum Healing Instrument.” According to its creator, Zhou Lin, it can emit rays whose spectrum is similar to the emission spectrum of the human body. Thus it “adjusts the balance of the human body system.” This explanation for its mechanism is not clear. If its spectrum is really in accordance with the human’s emission spectrum, we can understand that the energy of the rays is subject to absorption by the body, that it will heat the tissue inside of body.
Perhaps it is a better physical healing method than the traditional hot compress, but this wouldn’t help us to understand how it could adjust the balance of the body system.
In fact, Zhou’s instrument hasn’t been strictly investigated. It is widely accepted primarily because it won the first prize in an international fair. The general underdevelopment of Chinese science and technology induces people to be convinced by the “authority” from any international organization.
On December 5, 1994, the State Council and the Committee of the CPC issued a proclamation to strengthen public education in science. In this proclamation it was recognized that “public education in science has been withering in recent years, at the same time activities of superstition and ignorance have been growing and antiscience and pseudoscience cases have frequently been happening. Therefore effective measures must be applied as soon as possible to strengthen public education of science. The level of public education in science and technology is an important sign of the national scientific accomplishment, and is a matter of overall importance relating to the promotion of the economy, the advancement of science, and the development of the society. We must pay attention and carry out the public education with consideration of a strategy to modernize our socialist country and to make our nation powerful and prosperous. Ignorance is never socialist nor is poverty.” It is planned to advocate education with the three aspects of science: scientific knowledge, scientific method, and scientific ideas. This proclamation greatly encourages the rationalists, and has formed a helpful context for attacking the paranormal. However, it is possible that such a government- guided movement would turn out to be politically oriented. If the paranormal was only suppressed by the political power, and if people were not to be persuaded reasonably to discard their irrational beliefs, the matter would be worse. In my view, political intervention is the most dangerous element of skepticism, and it could result in many more cases of paranormal claims.
Author: Wu Xianghong - a doctoral candidate in philosophy and science at Renmin University of China, Beijing.
"Electronics as E.S.P." - Marshall McLuhan in Explorations Magazine, Volume 8 (1957):
"Synesthesia, the new sin of the nineteenth century, roused as much misunderstanding as E.S.P. today. Extra sensory perception is normal perception. Today electronics are extra sensory, Gallup polls and motivation research are also. Therefore, people get all steamed up about E.S.P. as something for the future. It is already past and present."
MCLUHAN: Let me help you. Tribal man is tightly sealed in an integral collective awareness that transcends conventional boundaries of time and space. As such, the new society will be one mythic integration, a resonating world akin to the old tribal echo chamber where magic will live again: a world of ESP. The current interest of youth in astrology, clairvoyance and the occult is no coincidence. Electric technology, you see, does not require words any more than a digital computer requires numbers. Electricity makes possible--and not in the distant future, either--an amplification of human consciousness on a world scale, without any verbalization at all.
PLAYBOY: Are you talking about global telepathy?
MCLUHAN: Precisely. Already, computers offer the potential of instantaneous translation of any code or language into any other code or language. If a data feedback is possible through the computer, why not a feed-forward of thought whereby a world consciousness links into a world computer? Via the computer, we could logically proceed from translating languages to bypassing them entirely in favor of an integral cosmic unconsciousness somewhat similar to the collective unconscious envisioned by Bergson. The computer thus holds out the promise of a technologically engendered state of universal understanding and unity, a state of absorption in the logos that could knit mankind into one family and create a perpetuity of collective harmony and peace. This is the real use of the computer, not to expedite marketing or solve technical problems but to speed the process of discovery and orchestrate terrestrial--and eventually galactic--environments and energies. Psychic communal integration, made possible at last by the electronic media, could create the universality of consciousness foreseen by Dante when he predicted that men would continue as no more than broken fragments until they were unified into an inclusive consciousness. In a Christian sense, this is merely a new interpretation of the mystical body of Christ; and Christ, after all, is the ultimate extension of man.
PLAYBOY: Isn't this projection of an electronically induced world consciousness more mystical than technological?
MCLUHAN: Yes--as mystical as the most advanced theories of modern nuclear physics. Mysticism is just tomorrow's science dreamed today.
"Mere electric speed-up makes X-ray awareness natural." - Marshal McLuhan
Found via mycanvassesaresurrealist
"Narrative structure of One Thousand and One Nights"
"According to Wuxing (五行) theory, the structure of the cosmos mirrors the five phases. Each phase has a complex series of associations with different aspects of nature. In the ancient Chinese form of geomancy, known as Feng Shui, practitioners all based their art and system on wuxing. All of these phases are represented within the trigrams. Associated with these phases are colors, seasons & shapes; all of which are interacting with each other." - Wikipedia
Book (PDF): Fengshui in China: Geomantic Divination between state Orthodoxy & Popular Religion (2011) - by Ole Bruun (Professor Social Sciences & Business & Prof Global Political Sociology at University of Roskilde)
"For well over a century, Chinese fengshui, or "geomancy," has interested Western laymen and scholars. Today, hundreds of popular manuals claim to use its principles in their advice on how people can increase their wealth, happiness, longevity, and so on. This study is quite different, approaching fengshui from an academic angle. The focus is on its significance in China, but the recent history of its reinterpretation in the West is also depicted. The author argues that fengshui serves as an alternative tradition of cosmological knowledge, which is used to explain a range of everyday occurrences in rural areas, such as disease, mental disorders, accidents, and common mischief. The study includes a historical account of fengshui over the last 150 years augmented by the results of anthropological fieldwork on contemporary practices in two Chinese rural areas."
Excerpt from "The Illuminati Papers" - by Robert Anton Wilson (1977)
#Cryptocracy #Comedy #Politics #Military #Magic #Psychedelic #fnord
"Complexity favoured increasing control under a monopoly of priests and the confinement of knowledge to special classes" - Harold Innis, in "Empire and Communication" (1950)
Why didn't the government of India open Vault B of the Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Kerala?
"It works like magic." - Steve Jobs (2007, iPhone launch)
Abductive reasoning is a form of logical inference which starts with an observation or set of observations then seeks to find the simplest and most likely explanation for the observations. This process, unlike deductive reasoning, yields a plausible conclusion but does not positively verify it. Abductive conclusions are thus qualified as having a remnant of uncertainty or doubt, which is expressed in retreat terms such as "best available" or 'most likely.
Put differently, Abduction is drawing a conclusion using a heuristic that is likely, but not inevitable given some foreknowledge.e.g., I observe sheep in a field, and they appear white from my viewing angle, so sheep are white. Contrast with the deductive statement: "Some sheep are white on at least one side". To simplify and summaries: Deductive = Top down logic - Inductive = Bottom up logic - Abductive = What seems most probably?
The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) introduced abduction into modern logic. Over the years he called such inference hypothesis, abduction, presumption, and retroduction. He considered it a topic in logic as a normative field in philosophy, not in purely formal or mathematical logic, and eventually as a topic also in economics of research. (wikipedia)
In later years his view came to be:
Abductive Reasoning Links:
Related Approaches:
The following text from Noah Raford's "On design and the use of abductive reasoning" post, provides a good overview of recent history of Abductive methods in Design:
"The interest in the use of abductive, analogic and intuitive problem-solving has major roots in the “design studies” movement of the late 1960’s & 1970’s.
This movement started in the UK, primarily thanks to the work of Leslie Martin and Lionel March at the Cambridge Centre at the Cambridge School of Architecture. March and Martin were at the head of a generation of scholars seeking to systematise and understand how architects and designers thought about the world. This paralleled research into cybernetics & AI in the states by Herbert Simon, but for some reason it seems that there was a critical confluence of design thinkers in the UK at that time, and most of the literature around induction, abduction, etc. seems to come from this period.
The key ideas: The original intention of this group was to understand and document the design process. The hope was that if you understood how architects and designers perceived the world, you could replicate this in computer or expert-systems (and then do away with or “improve” the designer). Because replicability was one of the key goals, a natural sciences approach was taken to observing designers. A lot of controlled experiments were set up in laboratories to test “design problem solving”, most of which failed miserably. This led to a more ethnographic approach, including some of the first anthropological approaches to knowledge elicitation that I’ve ever seen.
What they found was that:
“Scientists adopt a problem-focused strategy and architects a solution-focused strategy.” (Lawson, 1979)
“The scientific method is a pattern of problem-solving behaviour employed in finding out the nature of what existis, whereas the design method is a pattern of behaviour employed in inventing things of value which do not yet exists. Science is analytic, design is constructive.” (Gregory, 1966)
This places a heavy emphasis on action, testing, and observation, in that order, and highlights the essentially creative nature of design. Nigel Cross, who is still teaching at the Open University, suggests that design is “a process of pattern-synthesis, when the solution is not simply ‘lying there in the data’ but has to be actively constructed by the designer’s own efforts.”. You can see how this relates to the notion of abduction. Peirce suggests that, “the whole fabric of our knowledge is one matted felt of pure hypothesis confirmed and refined by induction.” This is very similar to design. In other words,
“[Architects] learn about the nature of the problem largely as a result of trying out solutions, whereas the scientists set out specifically to study the problem.” (Lawson, 1980)
Schum notes that if Peirce is correct, “new ideas emerge as we combine, marshal or organize thoughts and evidence in different ways.” Because the design method is fundamentally exploratory, it is about hypothesis generation based on the most uncertain and sketchy forms of data. It uses both abductive and constructive reasoning to show “what might be”, instead of deductive reasoning to show “what is”." Read more..
In recent decades, Abductive Logic and Reasoning has been extensively studied in the context of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning research. A few links, old & new:
Related Ideas by Abductive Logic pioneer Charles Sanders Peirce, on Semiotics:
"The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise."
- Charles Sanders Peirce
Not a Poem: Not Logic, Not Prose and Not Really Poetry - by Rolf (2013)
BASED ON TRUE EVENTS: "I have been teaching Geometry this year,and trying my best to explain logic,deduction vs induction, and the ever present, always faulty, always useful, abductive “reasoning.”Without abductive reasoning, life itself would not be possible for humans. Induction and deduction? Entirely optional. Our car, (which only had 3 out 4 cyliders working) started to turn itself off, at apparently random intervals. There you’d be, changing lanes, in what you thought was a car,and poof no car, just a large metal box that looked like a car,with a seat belt, a driver’s seat, and a silent engine,rolling to a final velocity of zero. I drove the box / car to five dealerships in town,while searching for the best replacement for the box.I can now say, what others have noted before;
“Pure logic, when considering a car, (or any thing else other than numbers) does not exist.”
#KM #Philosophy #Science #ML #Creativity #Design #Complexity #Evolution #Magic
altered_statuses - "The internet's largest archive of the visual culture of global New Ages, esotericism and fringe religions." #Art #Magic #Culture
Taoist Magick - Walking Through Walls - by Lord Josh Allen
Brian Taylor to Adapt Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! as TV Show
The classic, genius, post-modern sci-fi satire, the Illuminatus! trilogy is slated to become a TV series. Given Hivemind's association with Amazon Prime & Netflix, one of these outlets is a likely bet. I have very mixed feelings about this, wait and see. In the meantime: Hail Eris! and..
Essay: Tasting the Forbidden Fruit of the Tree of Life - R.A.Wilson on Cabala (1981)
"Ritual is to the inner sciences what experiment is to the outer sciences.” - Tim Leary
A Zen Master was once asked, "What is Zen?" “Attention,” he replied. "Is that all?" asked the inquirer. "Attention,” the Zen Master repeated. "Won't you say anything else?" persisted the questioner. “Attention,” said the Master, one more time.
"The borders of our minds are ever shifting, and many minds can flow into one another; as it were, and create or reveal a single mind. . . our memories are part of one great memory; the memory of Nature herself.” - William Butler Yeats
In India, it is a tradition amongst certain Tantric sects to anoint their phallic lingam images with oil, milk, and sometimes semen. A similar tradition involving living statues and plaster busts exists in Western culture - at least on a literary level. E.T.A. Hoffman, Edgar Allen Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and Jules Verne amongst others, have reinterpreted the original myth of Pygmalion from Ovid; it can even be seen in the musical 'My Fair Lady'. This tradition fulfills an ancient human dream, that of bringing the dead back to life, either artificially or with the help of the gods of magic. Even today there are hints of it in cybernetics and genetic engineering. Inspired by the attempts of Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin to re-animate dead worms, the nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley wrote the novel 'Frankenstein: or the new Prometheus' which was published in 1818. More on the theme has been written more recently by authors such as Philip K. Dick (as in 'Blade Runner'), Alfred Bester, Stanislaw Lem and Pierre Klossowsky. In Switzerland in 1972, a drama based on the classical myth of Galatea appeared, expressing the eternal dream of a man for a woman who is wholly dedicated to him. In the play, which was a reworking of an 'Alpensaga' (Swiss mountain fairy tale), some farmers create a 'Sennentuntschi', an artificial woman grown in a bottle from a mixture of dung and cheese. Needless to say, Sennentuntschi soon frees herself from their attentions.
In Jewish mysticism, there is the legend of the Golem, which is ultimately based on Psalm 139 verse 16; the story is best known from the mediæval golem created by Rabbi Löw of Prague, as described in Gustav Meyrink's impressive novel The Golem (1915). Golems are reproductions of Adam, formed from the dust of the earth, and they go even further back in Jewish culture, as may be discovered in a commentary on the ancient Cabalistic text the Sefer Yetzirah, as expounded by the eminent scholar Gershom Scholem. The German author of occult and erotic potboilers H.H. Ewers added a sexual twist to the legend with his novel Alraune in 1911. Also in Germany, Paul Wegener directed a film of The Golem in 1915, the first in a series of German films such as Nosferatu, Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari and Dr. Mabuse which evoked a fascination for evil. Neo-Gnostics and secret societies in Germany and elsewhere got a lot of inspiration from fictional sources such as these - enough for them to devise their own 'Order Secrets'. The concept of the Homunculus, an alchemical mannikin produced in a bottle, was not foreign to Theodor Reuss, the O.T.O.'s founder. The prescribed reading-list for O.T.O. members included G. Herman's work called Genesis - das Gesetz der Zeugung (Genesis - the Law of Procreation) which describes the production of a being "who is realized through the odic power of materialization, and which as odic mist streams from the vulvae, and under the traditional uterine influence easily forms child-souls." The alchemist Paracelsus described his formula for creating a Homunculus using blood and semen, and this has been compared to the consecrated hosts of the Spermo-Gnostics. In 1914 Aleister Crowley wrote his Xth degree instruction De Homunculo Epistola in which he described the homunculus, even though he was less than enthusiastic about it. It is quite possible that he had been inspired by Somerset Maugham, who had published a novel called The Magician in 1907, whose villain Oliver Haddo is based on Crowley; in the novel Haddo manufactures a mad homunculus by devilish arts. Similarly, Crowley himself wrote a novel in 1917 (not published until 1929) called Moonchild, in which sex-magicians create a speaking homunculus with astrological enchantments.
"You are my Creator, but I am your Master — Obey!" - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Text is an excerpt from: "Nosferatu's Baby (Much Too Much) Too hot To Handle" - by Peter-R. Koenig
#Comment: It is rather comedic, that generations of highly educated elite men tried to make inanimate matter come alive through ever-evolving complex means. It seem obvious, that the driving psychological force behind such efforts, is a pathological jealousy of men towards women, resulting from the biological inability of males to give birth.
Consider the somewhat related insights, by Robert Anton Wilson: "Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still. - Genesis, p. 197