An obsession with material beauty is in many ways the natural consequence of an embodied psychological experience implicitly oriented by evolutionary momentum towards the possibility of self-reproduction. In this sense we should not be surprised that the most prevalent symbolic and overt (or corollary hidden, unconscious) forces in this all too human world are intrinsically […]
It remains an unrelenting mystery and enigmatic fact that this world of ours is exquisitely well-tuned for producing precisely the wrong kind of complexity. This is to say that the technological and geopolitical trajectory that humanity on the whole feels compelled to create, reproduce or cultivate is quite clearly one of least optimal solutions of […]
Science and technology cartwheel and careen past us in ways that few can convincingly argue are fully comprehended, defined or ever anything more than superficially controlled. This accelerating turbulence of complex sociotechnical recursion and self-validating necessity is a self-propagating compression wave of information, energy, technology and concepts. It ripples and oscillates like waves on a […]
“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory”. – Haruki Murakami. A talking cat – clearly an absurdity but in many ways no less absurd than that any of the mad parade of human civilisation and the shared confusion and beauty of this […]
Context: Listening for Extraterrestrial Blah Blah I doubt whether human beings are even a quarter of a percent as smart as we think we are. The indefinitely-extensible properties of logic and mathematics suggest that languages and intelligence on the higher end of the (Kardashev) scale are quite plausibly far too sophisticated for us to interpret […]
It is something of the core nature of narrative human consciousness that reflexively defines itself by and through difference and ontological separation from an Other or World that we perceive and process information in ways that obscure the bigger picture of competition, adversarialism and war. That gestalt information and energy-processing (i.e. computational) system of interpersonal […]
Love fascinates me. We might as easily substitute any other concept of similar ambiguity as indicated by the word “peace” or “unity” and “happiness” because, beyond any contingent or arbitrary agreement upon the structural or material facts and experiences these referential entities represent, they all exist in something of a Twilight Zone of unprovable truth. […]
Christmas Eve: a lonely walk around my neighbourhood where I captured these glorious sunflowers basking in the last rays of one of those long slow Summer’s afternoons that seem to sidestep evening and slide straight into night. It’s been a spectacularly difficult year for everyone and while I can’t see this changing at scale in […]
Context: The Future of Life Institute The endemic and omnipresent enlightened self-interest of human psychology is generally such that, while we may already and for the most part possess the technical and cognitive or linguistic and technological tools necessary to architect our own freedom and a shared, peaceful and sustainable future – we are so […]
The most beautiful people and cultures exist far beyond any simple experience of desire for material acquisition or cosmetic attractiveness; it is a little melancholy that an implicit loveliness that comes with knowledge and wisdom is hardly the most celebrated property of any human being in a world (like this) that endures endless tides of […]
How to alienate and enrage 99% of the world? Tell them that almost all of their contemporary cultural practices, beliefs, interests, hobbies and pastimes are shallow, superficial assertions of tribal identity that do little more than provide temporary comfort in an ultimately hostile, selfish and uncaring world. It is not that these cultural practices and […]
Context: Eradicating black rats on Palmyra Atoll uncovers eye-opening indirect effects A perspicacity and intelligence sufficient to the task of successfully and conscientiously managing our natural environment is quite positively anathema to administrative bureaucracies. There is in this a microcosm of a certain functional or instrumental narrowing of representation and behavioural engagement which institutional interdictions […]
Daedelus Kite 