Saturday 14 February 2015

CryptoTown Day 25 - Slowin down for a quick update - EPIC BLOG POST

http://cryptotown.org
@CryptoTown 
/u/papersheepdog
Kickstarter: http://kck.st/1ul9X8g

The last video that I did (negative narratives) caused a chain reaction of discussions which have really helped to shape the project. The last two weeks I have been focusing on making some local connections and getting a better sense of what efforts and networks exist. At the same time I have reworked the cryptotown.org website into a live connection point for Barrie. The blog has been more for keeping track of online activity and it has been 12 hour days just to keep up with some online discussions and reworking the project. A recap of these discussions after a post:


A quick brief on where my work is at: /r/OpenMemetics is about cultural self-engineering and culture jamming. CryptoTown is a model for self-replicating abundance, where the profit motive fails to meet human needs. The Barrie Cybernetics Club (Unannounced) is a virtual club which includes itself and all other clubs or campaigns or individuals in an area who seek to replace competition with cooperation towards local abundance (broad definition).
I have been up to a lot in the local community trying to get a sense of the networks, movements, establishments etc and have found a great need for this kind of coordination. Its a bottoms up approach. I am looking for comments or suggestions, and especially participation! I mean, make it yours, copy it, do whatever in your own town!
Jam night!
  • Check out http://crytotown.org for an example of a cryptotown connection point for Barrie. My art gallery has moved to http://cryptotown.org/OpenMemetics.html.
  • Here is some more context, my blog which I haven't updated because the whole thing took a spin gearing up for a locally targeted campaign (cryptotown vs openmemetics|wagedelete).
From this post: Now when we take this same model of running sight backwards and we call it "experiencing the divine", implied in the Timaeus as seeking the properties of the demiurgos, and applied in theurgy, we see that when we do this, we are taking the logos of "overflowing grace" of pure divinity, and ritually embodying the demiurge by injecting consciousness into matter, like sunlight into the fermenting dung of the scarab beetle, we are transforming the lowest, vilest, "dead" thing with life. This is the key to happiness, manifestation etc IMO.
Omni cannot be strictly be defined. It is something that you know when you see it. It is the creative work of consciousness connecting through shared spaces. It is an expression of love and community. It is manifested through awareness and cooperation. The Open Source movement of modern times is a massive expression of Omni. The vast works of all kinds licensed under Creative Commons provide further example. These works enrich us all, and that is the reward.
Physical expressions of Omni represent radical achievements of collective consciousness. It is in these places that we take refuge from exploitation and come together in celebration of life. Omni is our temple, our connection to each other, our foundation. Dense concentrations of Omni such as the Omni Commons in Oakland represent a launch point for bringing consciousness back into every facet of our civilization as we upgrade to a foundation of equality: Civilization 2.0.
~
Companions, the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks -- those who write new values on new tablets. Companions, the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.
-Nietzsche

xpost r/OpenMemetics

I found that actually so much more interesting conversation comes up than I even have time to respond to. I will be working on the Barrie Cybernetics Club and engaging and connecting online communities this week. As you may know, my resources have been exhausted and I have to set a hard limit for this experiment. If I am not able to delete my wage, through the current campaign (5 days left) or the local focus campaign ending the first day of spring (Mar 20), I will be looking to occupy my time with a job to satisfy my recurring bills.






Here are some quick highlights from the last couple weeks of conversation (oldest to latest:

Playin around in the Lurkers' Corner. Getting that whole expression thing under control.

Tactical post made to show up near the top with a Noam Chomsky quote, just an example of showing up late to a post but still getting in there:
I think that this concentration on such topics as sports makes a certain degree of sense. The way the system is set up, there is virtually nothing people can do anyway, without a degree of organization that's far beyond anything that exists now, to influence the real world. They might as well live in a fantasy world, and that's in fact what they do. I'm sure they are using their common sense and intellectual skills, but in an area which has no meaning and probably thrives because it has no meaning, as a displacement from the serious problems which one cannot influence and affect because the power happens to lie elsewhere.
Current material and discussion - GeoTabs - Internet 2.0? Web of trust - peer based meta/data flow - serverless peer db sync

Some comments on why we cant just quit facebook
Check out the top comment and replies in the r/technology thread:
[–]iamtheliqor 1687 points 21 hours ago "In the last month, I simply stopped using Facebook. Something amazing happened. People phoned me, and we really caught up. My family was more in touch. My brother emailed me with updates. Friends popped into my place to say hi. It was, like, social."
I stopped using facebook and now no-one contacts me, ever.
I think this is the issue that I see with the whole angle of delete facebook. It may disconnect you further. Just because they made it such a shit-hole of an experience doesn't mean its not the best we have. Its ignorance in the way of moving to something better, or even to be putting appropriate amounts of capital towards development.
It's just not really a good option to abandon methods of connection, even if they suck, because there would be no further way to communicate and collaborate on something better. I think a more interesting angle here is that this whole privacy thing is completely over as far as private hierarchies go.
Article on Rune Soup - worth a read! Risk a Little More Light



I am also going to quote form this comment as it served as a sort of buildup for OpenMemetics:
Disown broadcast media straight away, for sure, but tools built on the internet are two-way, allowing unbounded convergence of cultural ideas. We are just using facebook wrong. We are using reddit wrong. We are using the blockchain wrong. Its because of greater ignorance. In general, for a network to function it requires participants, or to put it lightly, prosumers.

It is true that we need better tools, but we need to coordinate on getting better tools. Increased connectivity and participation, in any and all ways possible, will be preferred to abandoning the corrupted mess of social media. For this problem, I propose that we discuss the options for social media secured by blockchain technology, or other automated consensus protocols. We need to trust that vote counts are real, that activity cannot be censored without audit, that we are not exposed to hidden content filters, ETC.

Regarding the issue of cultural inertia I propose open source culture jamming aka /r/OpenMemetics aka real-time sci-fi cybernetics.

I am working on a wiki structure to capture interfaces of cultural contact, media protocols, memes, counter-memes and broad collaboration on memeplex structures such as ego, generational karma, deep politics, etc. It would also serve as a documentation point for trending memes where complex discussion and analysis may help to reveal its purpose, potential damage, and possible responses to reduce harm.

Perhaps a hashtag like #OpenMeme could begin to show up in discussions which are intended to take a meta approach. A link back to the master discussion could become a mechanism for quickly dealing with ideas that do not appear to be compatible with open collaborative awareness and civil abundance.
Osho: The Need for Dynamic Meditation (youtube)
Also, what do you guys think about Osho? (discussion)


Interview with James Kunstler by Morris Berman. The present situation in American re: global economic crisis and cultural response to it
+ some excerpts from my response:

I guess it's another great example of dualistic views which are resigned to supposedly non-absolute truths (negative narratives). The cultural hyperstition may be overwhelming. What came first, the game or the game theory? Its there so we should be aware of it. Will anyone ever know the full depth? Will we ever make a true statement about it? When is analysis of the current event finished so we can move on to the creative part?
~
"Western psychology is basically concerned with the abnormal, the pathological, with the man who has fallen down from the norm. Eastern psychology, tantra and yoga, consider man from the standpoint of the supernormal - of the one who has gone beyond the norm... The lowest has not been considered, only the highest. If you consider the highest your mind becomes an opening; you can grow because now you know higher reaches are possible. If you consider the lowest, no growth is possible. There is no challenge." Osho 
~
There is a perception that capitalism is a collection of dirty tricks to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. They were fine with capitalism, they just wanted to be running it. The poor are not against the system they are just embarrassed millionaires, waiting for their ship.

The US will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future. The US consists of spoiled brats. They believe that they should be part of the 1% and this is what the american dream is. “They call it the american dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” - George Carlin
I like the analysis, but my only interest in the above is the reactionary stance based in hyperstition. I think that expecting to go back to feudal age efficiencies and austerities is kinda bypassing a lot of technological innovation since those times, though I totally agree that its important to pull the lessons forward. Yes our culture could all collapse back to it but tech is a pervasive wild-card. It's everywhere. So I think that pre-capitalism cultures as they were are a bit romanticized and not thinking creatively about possibility, now.
 I also encountered a new term:

Cocreation - Because we all share the dream
We are shifting paradigms and replacing:
*owning/possessing with sharing/stewarding
*controlling with allowing
*competition with collaboration
*resentment, hate, anger with forgiveness
*individual with community
*me, me me me me me me and I I I I I I I with we
*local with global consciousness
*self rightousness with humility
*greed, money, possessions and material wealth with liberation
*breeding with conscious cocreation
*attachment with impermanence
Cocreation.ca
Without a vision the people will perish
Organizations spend such little time truly getting in touch with their vision. They spend even less time sharing their vision. A vision is about actually seeing a future that is hopeful. The more clearly we can see, the better equipped we will be able to recognize how our current actions move us in the direction of our vision or not. Life is about change, and this is no less true for organizations than it is for individuals. Change requires choices be made, otherwise we are simply victims of time passing on. There is no such thing as not making a decision or choice; not deciding something is deciding. So we need a reference point for making thoughtful decisions that will lead our organizations toward the desired future we want to create.

/r/OpenMemetics -> So, is this a subreddit to memetically engineer society?

/r/OpenMemetics -> Scientismist. Definition from Urban Dictionary. Exploring the industrial (western) mind, atheist , agnostic, rationalist, materialist, realist, literalist, klingons, or whateverists.

From this comment:

Let me know if you think that what I am getting at, might be along the lines of this key that you are talking about.
This is why the concept of deterritorialization is such an effective and powerful virus, itself a deterritorializing force—or is it merely a reterritorializing force, a brainwashing virus to make you doubt yourself and question your boundaries?
Simply the motive and the function! Look at any hierarchical (political) power based religion. Certainly there is a lot of reterritorialization going on. Look at Buddhism and you see what appears to be a strained minimalism! The dharma is like a guide, the words metaphors, and dropped upon experiencing of what truth behind them.
Life is a process and most of us had to go through the ego, or experience subjectivity and encounter it at the very least. The ego could be seen as the entire territory of repressed man, and its kinda tied into the whole name and form, identifying, concepts, structure, reality stuff.
I think that to glimpse emptyness, to see what it is to experience as a child, "smooth space," to drop the mind's commentary on experience and experience, is enough to understand this key, the pure deterritorialization, without reterritorialization.
/r/OpenMemetics -> Revolution: To go about the path of a circle. To replace violence with violence. - Excerpts from The Paradox Inherent in Any Slave Nation Revolution (xpost r/OpenMemetics)

Poking a hornet's nest
This was one example where I wish I had more time to discuss, but grab-n-go sometimes.

Manifesto of the Committee to Abolish Outer Space
from this comment:
"dominator societies vs. partnership societies"
To me this is exactly what the OP was getting at. The new frontier is ever required to sustain exponential growth (and exploitation). Behind the story we narrate for ourselves is the deep politics which actually holds everything together. Its competition involving deception and exploitation just like seen in nature. I think that's where the author appears to be pulling some motivation from. That this whole space thing is putting the rocket in front of the ship. If we somehow colonized mars, who is to say its inhabitants wouldn't consider us subjects of the martian empire and wage interplanetary resource wars when they find out earth has most of the deuterium? Or should we maintain our own tight imperial grip on all extraterrestrial settlements?
It helps us to look at ourselves from more of a bigger picture.
On a related note: this image works well in the comments section of your fellow scientismists who choose to spend their brian cycles worrying about our distant future in cosmos (source):



From this comment:
From this comment:
I realized that the ego itself is much like the watch and repeat style of education which produces it. The ego is a giant nest of social patterns, with its direct connections to existence repressed and mediated. The Ego Memeplex is very complex but ultimately contradictory. It is made to look as solid as possible but to realize its truth is for real to become the unreal, and for the unreal to become "real."
It is to realize that not only was the above just metaphor, an imprecise impression, filtered through patterns to find expression, but that all words, concepts, ideas, etc are just the same. There is no exact meaning of any of it because whatever assortment of reality we are describing, its just patterns overlayed by a unique mind with its own unique set of experiences.
Everything is unique, and everything is new. Emptyness, suññatā often refers to the not-self (Pāli: anatta, Sanskrit: anātman)[note 1] nature of the five aggregates of experience and the six sense spheres.
If I would say that the universe cannot be divided, I would be getting at the point that any distinction or discrimination between parts of it are going to be arbitrary, of the mind, and not "actual."
and nonviolent transcendence of existing world orders
The funny thing about dualistic views is that when we are divided and polarized to one side, the other can become almost completely invisible. This is the industrial mind. It clings so hard to the solidity, structure, and logic of the way that it believes that things definitely are (scientism)
So how would we tell the story of an order to be nonviolently "transcended?" I think we might find some answers developed in this post

So this comes back to unity. This and other words could be better developed in a supporting memeplex.
In the context of culture, unity means a society of peer based cooperation motivated by abundance. It means that everything is crowdsourced and open to participation to all. It's kind of like what's left of civil society. Perhaps it could be framed as a shift from political (hierarchical) exploitation to civil (network) cooperation. The network is self-converging consciousness, wilderness for the mind.
 That's it but feel free to creep my post history for more, or to participate in the latest discussion!






Breakin the ice with a Blue Dot action planning meeting (awesome group!)



Went to Unity Market after the meeting for Cypher Tuesdays. It was awesome. I might be able to post a short clip some time.

Some pics from the Barrie Amateur Radio club (been a member for a few years) meeting. Guest speaker Jeff Weber, Deputy Fire Chief of the City of Barrie, discussed with us the City of Barrie's emergency plans and the important role of the amateur radio operator in those plans.


Hold on, hold on, time out -- quick note. background. poster for school 2000-2009 quote:
When I get older, I will be stronger
They'll call me freedom
Just like a waving flag
- [unintelligible]
Thought that was cool. Also Jeff was extremely engaging. His attitude was one of cooperation and open awareness. Presentation was awesome. Much respect.


 Perhaps luck, or just fate that Shane has well established a place called Unity Market, which feels like a real community hub. A great example of collaboration to connect local artists with the greater climate change movement via David Suzuki's Blue Dot campaign.


A few other wonderful occasions which were not documented but this brings us up to date.
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