Gnosticism & Hermeneutics

Yesterday I had a decisive epiphany listening to an interview of Jay Weidner that I not only could spend the rest of my life researching Gnosticism and Hermeneutics but that I likely will. The motivation is the seemingly unending nature of the task, it's widespread connections with most of what I am interested in and most importantly its indiscriminate approach to exploration of all that is interesting and related to conciousness. It's probably a little late in the day to pick up an interest in such a topic but I've yet to hear an authority on the subject come close to boring. Here's a little sample of on the Ouroboros above and a podcast video of one of the pre-eminent experts in the world John Lash. My only regret is not discovering this fascinating subject earlier.

The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon swallowing its own tail and forming a circle. It has been used to represent many things over the ages, but it most generally symbolizes ideas of cyclicality, unity, or infinity. The ouroboros has been important in religious and mythological symbolism, but has also been frequently used in alchemical illustrations. More recently, it has been interpreted by psychoanalysts, such as Carl Jung, as having an archetypical significance to the human psyche.

The Ouroboros is one of the oldest mystical symbols in the world. The serpent or dragon appears in Aztec, Norse, Middle East, and Native American mythologies, as well as in Ancient Greek, Gnostic, Christian, Hindu and West African cultures.

Plato described a self-eating, circular being as the first living thing in the universe—an immortal, perfectly constructed animal.

Then & Now

 

Love this temporal examination of photography. More over here.

Are Brands Frightened Of The Future?

This ties into my Cosmic Capitalism post where I assert that capitalism and brands seemingly don't believe in the future. This prompts the question 'How can we believe in capitalism if it no longer believes in itself? '.

More of "Future Ford" over at But Does It Float

Space Time

So much is dependant on the velocity and vectors of space time as we perceive it. I was reading about meditation increasing the clock cycle of the brain and thus slowing time down ( I may have that the wrong way round) which is an insight into conciousness.

Creativity

I'm totally behind this initiative though I would point out that real creativity is disruptive to the process of unmitigated wealth creation. The primary reason for the deplorable state of education in both the UK and the States is that it serves the State poorly to have independent, educated and free thinking creative individuals. There's no money in it.

Cairo

More over at Boing Boing.

Egypt

Mubarak is gone. Well done the people of Egypt. What an inspiration and what courage in the face of State terrorist tactics.

Mubarak's successor Omar Suleiman is known as the CIA's man in Cairo, and is reported to have personally tortured Mamdouh Habib an Egyptian born, Australian citizen. Habib was seized at the request of the CIA in October 2001, and while detained (for extraordinary rendition) in Pakistan, was suspended from a hook and electrocuted repeatedly before being handed over to the CIA in Egypt. 

In his memoir My Story: The Tale of A Terrorist Who Wasn't, Habib was repeatedly electrocuted, immersed in water to his nostrils and beaten. His fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks. At one point, his interrogator slapped him so hard his blindfold was dislodged revealing the identity of his tormentor. Omar Suleiman.

Frustrated that Habib was not providing useful information or confessing to involvement in terrorism, Suleiman ordered a guard to murder a shackled prisoner in front of Habib, which he did with a vicious karate kick. In April 2002, after five months in Egypt, Habib was rendered to American custody at Bagram prison in Afghanistan - and then transported to Guantanamo. On January 11, 2005, the day before he was scheduled to be charged, Dana Priest, the Pulitzer prize winning journalist of the Washington Post published an exposé about Habib’s torture. The US government immediately announced that he would not be charged and would be repatriated to Australia.

It was Suleiman who in 2005, vowed to stop the elections in Gaza in order to prevent Hamas from gaining control. Here he is talking to Shimon Peres of Israel.

More recently it was Suleiman who, wishing Gaza to go 'hungry' but not 'starve', blocked a final agreement for the Gaza Peace Flotilla to take sanctuary in Egyptian El-Arish. Turkish intelligence prevailed, though regrettably in vain. The IDF boarded and seized the flotilla's chance to ever take refuge 74 kilometres away.

Full article over at Al Jazeera

Malcolm Gladwell

More over here

Steve Jobs First TV Appearance

Anybody else think he and Piers Fawkes look eerily like each other in this video? More details about this video over at Salon.

Hermaphroditism

Very pleased to see that my hot tip of January 2008 Joy Island, is back in Beijing (after a spell at St. Martin's I think) and is being picked up by Neocha on her latest exhibition at Yang's Gallery in Beijing called Hermaphroditism.

Ancient Aliens

Over the weekend I kicked back and watched the entire series of Ancient Aliens. Irrespective of whether the evidence is conclusive or inconclusive it's some of the best and most interesting video content I've seen period. The episode below is an hour and a half of freshly uploaded video so unless you've seen it on TV it's probably new to you too. 


I've been pursuing a couple of key themes lately on quantum mechanics and mysticism, and there's a lot of barmy stuff out there but History.Com here have churned out some of the finest produced material I've come across. I've always had trouble switching off and relaxing but I spent a lot of enjoyable hours learning more than I ever expected.


In Particular (for me) my attention has narrowed in on the Sumerian culture who may possibly be even more interesting than the Egyptians; if anything could ever possibly be more interesting than the Egyptians given the pivotal role in contemporary and ancient world history. (Watch that space closely as it unfolds)

Cosmic Capitalism

 

If survival of the species is a worthwhile game-plan then application of logic can't be harmful.

My thoughts are we have three options:

1. Laissez faire Corporatism/Capitalism/Scientific Materialism

There's enough history to argue that we are no more in control of our destiny, then there is evidence of why we exist in the vastness of the universe, apparently alone. Most of our discoveries are more a case of accidents then purpose-driven discovery, and so the solution is let it unfold without a plan. I have a deep conviction about transition of energy after death and don't fear dying, but it strikes me as odd that those who are least predisposed to this kind of thinking, are most unlikely to openly and vocally champion Capitalism's course of action. If one doesn't believe in life after death why hand over to those who are living?

2. Harmony

This option requires a more immediate and locally self-sufficient discussion on managed population decline. In 50 years with one-family-one-child policies, as China has already shown, we could be in a position to conclude what that harmony means. How the resources are intelligently shared, how much untouched nature is to be contiguous with humans and how to rewire corporations to wean them off addiction to profits.

3. Cosmic Capitalism

The picture of the Chanel logo on the moon was the first visualization that made sense to me.

It never occurred to me until recently that capitalism could be the solution to our problem. Not the mutant strain we are working. Currently capitalism is a shoe scraping cripple for unbiquitous wealth creation. It's the HIV of abundance, a malignant tumor on our collective hope for a better tomorrow. 

What explains the absence of truly awesome visionary branding, selling futures of cosmic   promises with travel or luxury brands (for example) vying with each other right now to brand the lunar surface as a terrestrially inspired vision. I'm talking about a celebration of firm conviction in cosmic capitalism, physically investing in the wealth needed to enable us to eject ourselves from the orbit of an uninhabitable Earth, and leaving behind a spent womb and bruised uterus ready for metamorphic change? A Goodbye-Earth lunar-branding experience, celebrating escape from orbit, and out of this solar system and onto the next.

With capitalism that has vision such as this I can roll with the costs of what is left behind. But the capitalism we have. It has no balls. It's a parasite. It has no future.

What say you? 

Doug Rushkoff & Social Media

As per Jon's advice I played around with the settings on the embed code (it's hard work and the width is 1020 if you're using blogger) and as it's such a far reaching thought piece on social media and the internet I'm reposting it. I still haven't figured out how to stop the autoplay so if somebody knows how to do that I'd appreciate some feedback.

Unsettled (Updated Political Position on Zionism)

Both Israel and Gaza are two places that I intend to visit as soon as I can, as I regret not taking the chance a while back. This Louis Theroux documentary is fresh out on Youtube and as per the usual format of Theroux's affable questions in the face of extremists, it makes for compelling viewing. 

I appreciate that the subjects are all characterised as Ultra Zionists but it's evident they have the full backing of the Israeli State. Even though, and this isn't too well known, the State of Israel is one of the most atheist/agnostic countries in the world and that the peaceful yet campaigning intellectual elite live in Israel unlike the AIPAC nutters in the States manipulating legislation through lobbying backed by sheer force of disposable dollars.

Perhaps unexpectedly, I am a Zionist. I might have said something different around the Balfour Declaration but as it's a done deal it's insane to suggest anything other than that Israel has a right to exist. 

Not however, at the expense of others.

I cannot in good conscience remain pro Zionist any longer. The last bombing by Israel of Gaza with F-16 jets murdering 500 people including 50 children destroyed the Zionist project. It is doomed to fail and our task now it to figure out how the Palestinians and the peace loving Israelis can find a two state solution (or one if they wish) without the psychos who currently run Israel anywhere near the levers of power. I've been patient. Maybe too patient. Not any more. Brand Israel does not deserve to be a part of the future. When the landlines have been agreed on I want a name that doesn't make me feel nauseous to  be applied. A rebranding if you like - Charles March 2013

Groupon

Even before I heard about this execution this morning, I saw a tweet in my stream from the agency Crispin Porter Bogusky congratulating the work that went into it and thought immediately that it sounded like the self congratulatory pep talk of adland that probably wouldn't reflect the quality of the ad. I was disappointingly right.

It was then followed with a flurry of tweets on Groupon's poor taste. I used to like CPB when Alex Bogusky was there as I think he understood the nature of controversial attention securing comms, though it seems since he left standards have plummeted and in many ways this whole ad is a short allegory for the wealth of the United States which is built on the exploitation and suffering of others round the world.

Things People Don't Say About Advertising

Isn't it ironic that advertising hasn't picked up on the growing satire of reckless growth advertising in social media? More over here.

Zizek on Egypt

Zizek saves his most explosive logic till the end in relation to Israel's hand wringing over Egypt. He asks that since the decline of suicide bombings in Israel over the last five years has increased the velocity of stolen land off the Palestinians, has Israel tacitly proved that terror is the only language it respects?

Heat Wave

The problem with the sun as it was once put to me is that nobody can put a meter on it and bill us. Which is why renewable energy is not about the science. It's about us and what we think is more important. Money today or survival tomorrow. There is an interesting side discussion here about the accessibility of young people to potentially shocking technology in the future but again it's less about the technology and more about why do we not trust our children with danger. Maybe it's because we let the Pentagon get first access to any scientific discoveries we make. How can we weaponize space (as is being done) and then lecture about good and evil? More on the "Death Ray" below over here.

Cult Buddhism?

Interesting photojournalism article in Foreign Policy on Wat Dhammakaya in Thailand. Worth a look for the extraordinary photography.

Open Source DNA (LSD & Francis Crick)

I had no idea how Byzantine and Machiavellian the plot for discovery of the double helix structure of DNA was. This is a must see. Regrettably for spoon-fed Nanny United States TV documentaries, the crucial 'visionary' moment of Francis Crick's use of LSD, where the structure revealed itself to him (built on Rosalind Franklin's shared contribution) is not mentioned. The important fact can only be alluded to at the end where Crick talks briefly about the mysteries of space and time, though it's well know he devoted the rest of his career to dreams.

What would make the story really incredible would be if anybody confirmed that it was Linus Pauling's son who gave them the LSD while working with Watson and Crick even though his twice awarded Nobel prize winning father was flat out competing with them on the other side of the Atlantic. That would be symmetry to the narrative that would make Rosalind's reluctant partner Maurice Wilkins at Kings College the rightful father of open source scientific discovery as it was he who believwed most in sharing information.

Just look at Linus' son in this documentary and ask yourself. Is this the kind of West Coast rebellious son of a Chemist, who in the late 50's could have dropped acid, and might have introduced it to the Cambridge genius of Crick thereby unwittingly working against his father who put him there in the first place? * Ahem. 

*(Pure speculation on my part)

Update: The original video was removed so a "related" video has been posted instead.

Fail Whale

Via failwhale

Is This A Meme?

Answers over at ....

Marko Rodin - Vortex Mathmatics (Toroidal Power)

I thought about this for two days before posting it. I was just looking for a logical explanation why sacred geometry seems to be so compelling. I'm a person who takes an interest in Mandelbrot Sets and those Mandalas I was referring to earlier; Marko Rodin explained in the first few minutes of this four hour presentation. A lot of you might feel uncomfortable with the anti materialist science rhetoric which if that's the case then just stick to the math, that he confidently delivers upon. 

However for a discovery that he refuses to commercialise and wishes to be an open source gift for sustainable energy development I think that anti materialist science stance is an act of nobility and truth. Give it a couple of minutes if you can. What I could understand the first time round watching this blew my temporal lobe. 

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist was much more useful for me the second time round than the first. It compelled me to drill down into topics I don't really have enough time for till cloning is on the table but the result of that work was happily fruitful and in some ways releases some spare tick over capacity I'd probably cordoned off subconsciously when asking that really boring question. Who am I?

I still ask of course but some of the chronology has been taken off my shoulders.

I learned that the producer of Zeitgeist relented to the inquisition for his full name and gave the interview above. He's got two things going for him. He's young and he's rapaciously clever. I only know that because I was getting hammered and laid in bars at his age. I'm a late bloomer. He works in advertising sometimes so I thought that was interesting. 

His name is Peter.

Sean Dorrance Kelly & The Sacred

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sean Dorrance Kelly
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> Video Archive

Sean is a philosphy professor at Harvard. He's cut from fresher cloth than the usual backwash though his sporting analogies are distinctly U.S thematic and about to be as evolutionarily crucial as the appendix. That doesn't mean they don't matter. It just means it doesn't count. Still worth viewing for asking a great question.

What Did My Dimethyltryptamine Experience Look Like

My first instinct when looking at this graphic was 'holy shit' is that a Harmaline graphic? It looks more molecular and without the geometric lines of the Mandala (see below) through a 5-MeO-dimethyltryptamine or Dimethyltryptamine entheogen concave lens (I don't fully know the difference, but I've read up on it enough to attempt to at least theorize).

But no it's not quite the Mandala above. It's more the Wired article about a 3D nano X-Ray of a virus protein.... Which isn't totally out of the game, though what caught my eye was the line by Stanford University Physicist Martin Seibert:  “Growing one of these crystals can be worth a Nobel”. Here's the DMT Molecule.

The intellectual model of my DMT experience during the short duration that lasted minutes not hours is not easy to condense. It was so extraordinary it took me three days to remember the bare essentials and six months to assimilate the shreds of information I could recollect. Above is a tiny hint of the colour and geometric palette I don't mind using as a speck of suggestion.  It doesn't come close to the intensity of colour experienced or the suspension of time and dare I say it, non three dimensional space. It's an entheogenic experience and not to be taken lightly. 

I've not had the courage to try it again after over a year since my one and only experiment. The journey was transdimensional but coming back to the reality on this level took ten minutes or so. It was brutal, coming round and back to 3 dimensionality. I thought I'd gone insane. Cognitively it was like living in a Bugs Bunny cartoon running backwards. Emotionally it was as psychology battering as I imagine say male on male rape to be. Couple that with the paranoia of a SWAT team of psychic entities swooping in to arrest me and frankly I was OK to take the strait jacket and be carted off to the comfort and security of a padded cell.

However, I came back with a saucer full of secrets that changed everything. I was shown things. I don't know who was doing the showing.

I would do things differently if I go back. Set and setting. Lower dose. Meditation beforehand. I would pray to the Universe 'please be gentle on me'.

I'll write up the actual experience shortly. I've been wanting to do it for a long time. All I've talked about here is colour and geometry. There's a lot of depth and breadth across many subjects in the 20 or so minutes I was dimensionally elsewhere. A long time according to the DMT testimonies on the net but still incredibly short compared to Ayahuasca or Psilocybin.

Counterculture

I like counterculture. The assumption we can draw from it is, as Terence McKenna asserted,   culture is not your friend. I blogged earlier about the counterculture nature of Stanford computing in the sixties though I still need to elaborate a lot more on the Mother of all demos as that's the fascinating output of the experiment, and one that remains with us today. The mouse in your hand for example.

I'm not a huge Stewart Brand disciple. Maybe it was the presentation I saw by an ex planner in San Francisco a couple of years back that was a bit too worthy. I'm also not entirely in accord with Stewart Brand's apparent submission to materialistic science. However he's a good guy and has a written an interesting piece and it's too good an opportunity to let a great Marshall McLuhan quote go by from that text.

JI: The last chapter of Whole Earth Discipline is on statecraft. You start it with the Marshall McLuhan quote: ‘After Sputnik there is no nature, only art’. What significance does that statement have in relation to the responsibilities of governance and policymaking?

SB: It’s probably the most radical comment he ever made. Sputnik was shorthand for acting at a planetary scale. We consequently bear a completely different relation to everything on Earth and can no longer treat it, meaning nature, as existing independent of our own artifice – our own purposeful intentions.

Via Preoccupations

Was Mona Lisa a Ladyboy?

Full article in The Telegraph in case you also missed yesterday's article on Thai transsexual airline cabin staff now being employed. 

Is The Telegraph becoming poly-sexual or something?

Is the Thai Prime Minister a British Subject?

American Symbology

This is an excellent (and academically authoritative) history on American symbology. I had no idea of the full extent of mystical symbolism in the setting up of the American Republic and if you can forgive the melodramatic title of the video you're in for educational treat.

Just Say Know

The Swanson Pyramid Of Greatness

The Rapture

I was having a chat on Sunday with AJay in New Delhi. Well he thinks five hours is more than a chat but later on I had yet another lovely time for a couple of hours with a good friend in Baghdad.

They were both forced to listen to my "three options for the species thinking" but only because it sounds so preposterous that I wanted some feedback, and good feedback it was. I'll be posting my "brave new capitalism post on that topic as soon as the time strikes right - I never know when that will be in advance. 

I know, I know. 

You can't wait can you? 

If it helps alleviate the anticipation then you might enjoy knowing that the meat of the idea was so disconcerting that Rob Campbell didn't want to read it when the inspiration struck and I emailed him. On reflection though, that was good of him to ignore me  because a) It would have scared him off b) It looks very bonkers as a raw idea and c) it's still just plain scary now I've applied some sandpaper to it. *winks at Rob*

OK, moving on because I know time is limited, I wanted to pick up that I was sharing some thoughts on eschatology (end of the world) language when I stumbled as I couldn't remember the exact word. 


I'd been explaining an article I read in terms of the self fulfilling biblical nature of Israeli archaeologists tunnelling away under Jerusalem's Old City Wall in close proximity to the third holiest mosque of Islam, the Al Aqsa mosque and of course the Temple Mount too which is considered the third holiest site in Judaism. If it weren't for the hostility between the faiths this is a subject I'd feel happy to study till the end of my days but it's just a bit too raw to be useful in this day and age.


It struck me that there's no better way of fulfilling prophecy than to either pick or respond to a fight over who owns what, at what time, and where or when, it's been articulated in scriptures. What makes that whole outcome really weird is that nobody knows if the future has been predicted or whether we are writing the future; to use Nike vernacular.

The word finally came to me. The Rapture. It's one of those provocative words because if we look at the nutty Christian fundamentalists in the US. Well they would LOVE shit to go down in Jerusalem because that fulfils their biblical end of the argument and to this end are quite happy to fight tooth and nail for the Israelis on any issue, at any time and at any cost. Which kind of leaves the door open for American backed hostility towards Muslims in the Holy Land and beyond.

I've added the Jungian art above because it fits nicely with my Baghdad learnings on evolutionary psychology, plus it looks kind of Holy Landy like, it is red (and thus progressive) and squeezes neatly into the end part of this post, where I thought if I waffle on enough at the beginning, the nutters will get bored and leave without misunderstanding my words about a Jungian analysis of UFO's. 

Basically I caught this rather interesting Youtube clip shortly after reading the Temple Mount piece and though 'that's kind of interesting' and 'somewhat coincidental'. I still have barely any idea what the video shows but if I use the Jungian approach then I ask myself, not 'what is it?' but instead the much more useful question 'what is its effect?'. 


Take a look for yourself what was filmed. Sure its a ball of light. But its behaviour is loaded with context.

And so I leave you with the final reason for posting this nonsense which is that I came across a second video of the same event just now, and while it doesn't capture the vertical action above, it is close enough for me to say finally and definitively. I DON"T KNOW.

Thank You.

Government Is Not Your Friend

Extraordinary footage turning up on Youtube.

Disconnect to Connect

The Thai advertising for DTAC, a local mobile network carrier (with strong Scandinavian shareholding) is making waves in China for its Disconnect to Connect brand advertising.

Scale

Crimes Against Humanity

Chomsky On Egypt

Don't Make Me Over

"When Dionne Warwick played the Olympia in Paris in '66 the house orchestra felt Burt Bacharach's music was too complicated for them. So Warwick who had studied to become a music teacher before she became a star taught the orchestra the songs. Here the orchestra at one point is losing it but Dionne doesn't skip a beat. One of the greatest song stylists of all time."

"I've seen Dionne a couple dozen times through the years and wether it was at Carnegie Hall or Radio City Music Hall, at certain points she would deliberately put the microphone down below her waist and then hit some spellbinding note and the folks in the back row could still hear it. She's not doing much of that any more but if you were lucky enough to have been there when she did it was something to behold. Great musician and greatest vocalist."

Singaporean Advertising

From & Via