A simple meditation which is more than it seems

The bare recipe: stand at various points in the National Arboretum and say to yourself:

“I/we am life waking up.” More detail: in places full of life and energy all over the world, from the Amazon jungle to churches to the Museum of the Future in Rio de Janeiro, I have worked to really tune in to the web of people and energy and ideas. Often, when I feel fully connected, I then articulate a sentence or a few key sentences, connected to a kind of powerful energy, and let them resonate through me and beyond, echoing as I  can. Sentences constructed very carefully, accompanied by highly controlled thoughts, because the slightest distortion or dishonesty or wrong context could be bad.

Here in DC, amidst a complex maelstrom of thoughts and goals and obstacles to deal with, it is easy to get disoriented. To control that, and keep from losing his balance, Obama would often say: “If we DO THAT (or don’t do this), it’s not who we are.” But who are we? Our deepest sense of identity is really basic to our sense of balance and what we really do. I remember when we visited some small secluded waterfalls in Ilha Bella in Brazil, how we could progressively become more and more in tune with the life around us, at more and more levels, culminating in a deep echoing of the resolution: “I am life.” And yes, one part of that is an intellectual determination not to neglect a truthful, skeptical but serious analysis of what we should and could do about deeper issues of climate change. But more obvious issues of war and peace and proper use of technology will also affect the life around us.

In a way, this is a follow up to my new paper “The Phenomenon of Man, Revised” forthcoming in Cosmos and History.

This photo was taken on Saturday, after an incredibly intense week involving neural networks, Amazon and other issues. We needed a break on Saturday, and my body needed some exercise for the sake of health. All week, I struggled to stay “in the zone,” a kind of intense conscious focus which in some ways is a step up from simpler states like Samadhi or cosmic consciousness. So Saturday I said: “OK, let me be in the zone, on our physical biological reality for a change.” Levitin has a great book, The Organized Mind, which talks about the need for balance: the need to focus intensely, to SHIFT focus in a conscious way, and to have times of more relaxed and broader receptivity. So there are times to be intensely in the zone with one’s physical body and with the life around.

On Saturday, doing this, I started by repeating what I had ended with on Ilha bella (Brazil): “I am life.” But all those plants… nice… but… more my identity, I next thought: “OK, let’s make it, I am conscious life.” But no, not’s just throw out those plants or less conscious animals. So that leads to “waking up”, which unites us all more, and better reflects the (revised) noosphere picture. I or we? Since it isn’t spoken words, it is easy enough to just combine the words “I” and “we” into one word.

Some meditators would ask: “What about your breathing?” Well, I did breathe as I was doing this. There is a kind of natural resonance between different aspects of our being, such that physical breathing CAN be coupled to flows of qi, but only if one is relaxed enough or natural enough to hold on to that natural resonance. Formal ritualistic stuff tends to break that connection, and end in stiff empty gestures of no value. That happens with all kinds of meditation and ritual. Really “being there” in a forest comes naturally, but I still remember hiking in the White Mountains when I was young, occasionally seeing strange adults who looked as out place as a jerky robot in… a place of intense biological activity.

Two years ago, in Nepal, I ran across a woman very active in hard core progressive politics in her country, but also deeply connected to yoga and spiritual activities. She asked: ”How can I reconcile these parallel lives, when most of the people I work with back home are such very tough skeptics?” My suggestion: try to get meetings where people sing “We are the earth,” and really mean it, and really feel it. (With good musicians?) Mean it not just as a fashion statement but as a deep, real, truthful and loving commitment, with all of the questions and complexity and dialogue it calls for.  

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Yesterday, after I posted the message above, the Alabama legislature passed the worst abortion bill since Roe v Wade.
In my (rather well-considered) view, that is one of the very most destructive examples of fake news in recent years. Yesterday I posted another example: https://www.facebook.com/paul.werbos/posts/2427888847241518
As I posted that, I thought of yet another example, the many florid imaginative theories out there about the history, nature and future of machine learning. There is so much fake news out there that it is hard to know where to begin.

When I was young, I remember historians telling us the importance of primary sources, of not just trusting the histories written hundreds of years later "written by the victors." I kind of assumed that this was less of an issue now, when there is so much information around and when so many people have worked so hard to find the truth about history. But now, direct experience tells me the opposite. Again and again, all over the world, I have learned from primary sources that the stories we tell each other in all the developed world are often.. rather different from reality. A kind of fake news.

Why does fake news spread so easily? It is a deep and general problem, though I will go back to the right to life movement as an example... after some general thoughts:

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To the bionoetics group I wrote:

There are certain pervasive aspects of human mass psychology which really, seriously depress me, and make me wonder what hope there is for this species to stay alive.

One which I discussed on another list was "fake news." That came up in discussion of Easter Island, for which people are very deeply attached to made up stories which persist even though we now know they are false. Fake news was a serious problem long before Russian hackers entered the scene.

But another is what I think of as "reactive thinking," where communities reject reality but have no substitute.

I have not been dogmatic about believing in realism. My paper in Activitas states that I attribute 1/3 probability each to two very well defined forms of realism 

(Einsteinian realism and Fock space realism), but I do also attribute 1/3 to "ultraweirdism," and even give most attention there to the idea of cosmic mind Idealism (CMI), which you seem to be alluding to.

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Today I would add.. confusion of symbol with reality is also one of the major general causes. That first jarred me back around 1969, when stories first started appearing in the press about a possible issue with CO2. One day a TV news piece would say that CO2 problems could cause vast problems, and the next day people would declare serious energy and practical can-do response by picking up old cans from the side of the road. Picking up cans was a way to signal solidarity with the environment, but what does it do for CO2? If people project the idea that this is THE way to respond, that i is a solution, that's very sad. A kind of dress up game? Likewise, calling the antiabortion movement "prolife" is the same kind of thing, but much much worse. (I see cartoons of people saying "We believe in the  Bible. And in the Bible Jesus tells how important it is to stone women..." Or, for the H2S threat from climate, "The  Bible tells us that God would never let destroy us with fire and brimstone... So MANY forms of fake news..!). 

Fake news is not new, and crude overreactions which make the problem worse are not new either. It is a very serious intellectual issue how it would be possible to design communication systems which at least reduce the problem, without trying to impose specific views of specific rulers on the world. At times, in discussing computer networks, i have said: "We need brains AND an immune system to have much chance of survival." Some things need to be complex, while things which get hard-wired need to be "simple". (Simple like general relativity...)

And it helps morale when it has a lot of ups and downs lately, as news goes up and down.

One big downer this morning: France24 announced Zuckerberg made a promise to Macron that he will be more strict in future.

one unacceptable post, and that person is banned forever. Since I HAD one unacceptable post (banned because I agreed with MBS over erdogan on one point, and provided citations), I suppose I must plan for future radio silence. Also Whats App: priv ate converstaions which are politically unacceptable will be banned, and if they cannot be monitored, stopped anyway.