I remember reading a book, “The Weapon Shops of Isher”. the weapons could not be fired as an act of aggression, they could only be fired in self defense. They worked as a deterrent to war, and against violent crime. It upset the balance of power. I wonder what would help with equality among humans? I wonder what would bring balance to us all? I found some sites that discuss the different views of raising our awareness of Loving, Kind Beings. We are dealing with a shift in economics, a change in our natural environment, resource allocation, a large number of people with little resources, and all those and more are increasing in intensity. We have a fascination with the different inventions brought by technology. We have changed the lives of many using concepts developed out of economics. We have helped people with our understanding of biology and other sciences. A lot of this has happened because we have discovered how to use fossil fuel energy. What we have failed to do is learn, over and over, how to treat each other with respect and dignity. The Wisdom of ancient times is difficult to learn new by each individual as [...]
Looking in the mirror, he noticed the wrinkles around his eyes, reminding him of a river journey with a friend, laughing for days and seeing white wrinkles amid the tan lines. Today, my face is tan and rounded somewhat, perhaps from the beard, going gray around the edges. There is that combination of youth and age that defies our usual indication of time in a body. A smile is often present and there is something about brown eyes that can tighten into a focus when speaking directly to someone. My niece was at a family reunion that I did not attend and she told me my grandmother’s last name meant bent willow, which I find interesting. There is a northern European look about me, heavy set and I think short, or stout might fit. Am I pleasant to look at? Only when I am fun to be around. But my portrait is not that, it is in my song: I’m a child of the desert, hot burning sand And a friend to the buzzard circling the bleaching bones of a man I spent my contemplation under a pinyon tree And a nut fell down and hit me and that’s what [...]
It is night here. I had a dream that I was listening to music at a concert and the music finished. It had been instrumental music with drums and percussion and other sounds that I can’t remember. A musician spoke, saying the concert was over and that he had not said much with words because the music spoke for them. It has been over an hour since that experience and I am awake, still. My mind is overactive, running through a range of thoughts that I can usually avoid in daylight. i think about being unemployed until I can “officially” retire. I think about my part in what we have done to our environment and our world. I think of the worry and fear that permeates our existence, and how much of that is our own doing, our own actions, that we followed so easily. I think of the anger and rage that I see in so many places in the different media, and how easy it is to step into that state of mind. I think that Loving Kindness is a means to overcome all that I find to be negative in my world. In my dreams, I have [...]
Mark Twain
The sage, story teller, poets, historians and journalists among others may be the newest victim of technology. I just read an article where technology is used to write stories. Not only does the software exist, it is being used.
The science fiction of a few decades ago is rapidly closing in on us. We wonder why there are no good paying middle class jobs in existence. Who needs paper pushers when someone can write software to do the job, mechanical limbs to execute tasks and fail safe systems to prevent error and downtime?
I can see it now. A robot inspired and written headline, The Human Being is Now Obsolete.
Wait till the legal profession, judges and accountants are replaced by machines. The capability is there now. Then there are politicians and civil servants who could be replaced. What about preachers?
Just think, with machines without souls, there are no temptations. No more scandals or other deviations.
Are we going too far?
Methinks yes.
We really don’t have a choice given we’re in a global economy, competing against what amounts to slave labor. The combination of US workers’ salary demands and “required” working conditions means we have to eliminate as many of them as possible in order to stay even marginally competitive.
Hi jonolan;
I vicious downward spiral, as our economy is largely a consumer driven one, and who will be able to afford to buy when they are existing on food stamps and government largesse, when the government’s revenues aren’t close to what they spend.
I have always maintained that one of the biggest if not the biggest problems coming to the surface confronting mankind and the last 30 years are proving it.
It is not that technology in and of itself is bad, a human being with nothing to do and with no money can be a destructive force if there are enough of them.
In a way I agree with you that we’re now paying for a couple of generations of foolishness. I just think that foolishness was the “keeping up with Joneses” hyper-consumerism that drove a bloated economy based upon fictions.
The dream is over because the wake up call has rung. Like you though, I think a lot people are going to wake up on the wrong side of bed.
I would respond to the comments because this topic has held my interest for years, but I have been spellbound by the things people do with technology. The writer might become obsolete, but the imagination stretches far beyond the machine, even when humans do things with machines, I don’t think the machines can be as innovative and creative. John Cage and others began pushing the rules of music. John Cage used the Chinese I Ching as a basis for shifting to different motifs in some of his works. Phillip K. Dick used the I Ching as he wrote “The Man in the High Castle” which I want to reread. John Oswald has taken bits of recorded material and using a machine, altered the content into something different.
I get a sense that to go beyond our strait-jacket constraints that we have so easily worn, we have to push the barriers that we have established by becoming simple consumers, and that will require some serious artistry. We need to change our Myths, and think about the world differently. The speculative fiction of my younger days defined our world by using different planets, aliens, and strange notions. The Tree of Life, a movie, takes the narrative in a new direction, adding images and cosmologies to the story. I have a two CD version of a Grateful Dead song, “Dark Star” which uses thirty years of live material, creating something new. I have a John Cage CD that is a series of anecdotes, each a certain length of time, while, in an other room, David Tudor is playing a piano piece, with lengthy rests, and neither listens to the other while it happens. These ideas of art are ways to counteract the stupidity of thinking that our machines are more creative than we are, although most people are content to live with popular music, watch predictable stories on our media, believe things because we are told, and fear what quantum physics tells us about the world smaller than a pin point.