this is a fascinating convo for me because we are looking at 3 different ways of sense making. First is within the illusion of co-created consensus reality, another is my purely subjective experience of “the One” or “the nous” and the third is some kind of validation or confirmation of “truth seeing.” Like a Buddhist teacher who confirms the enlightenment experience of a student which then gives it a sense of objective reality and we have consensus again. . Part of the challenge here is that the subjective experience of “True Reality” is numinous and by definition, unable to be communicated, therefore it’s ineffable. (And according to Plotinus, that is even calling it that is too limiting). We then have the fact that we are expected to walk this earth agreeing the sky is blue and the grass is green. The consensual makes our belonging and connection possible and, in my opinion, the most important reason to be here at all. I’ll conclude with this: I think I am under-valuing AI and the internet algorithms because I just see it as an extension of “The Spectacle” we have been already been born and existed within. The media keeps changing but it doesn’t feel as exponential to me as it seems to for you. It’s all been a ruse and we have been duped since we were born, and for me (Gen X), that means we were being indoctrinated before color TVs, never mind the internet! From the perspective that Reality is a hologram and simply protection of Mind, AI, the internet and splitting of reality into facts that are no longer objective, only increases diversity of realities (with a lower case r) and creates more possibility for our fantasy that we are separate entities experiencing a discreet consciousness.
People falsely assume that they are dependent on money, love, power, God, meaning, transcendence, etc. They react to the feeling of something missing rather than looking for the cause of that feeling. The cause is society distracting us away from the innate fulfilment of existence. This leaves us searching for substitutes. Yet anything found can be lost, so the search is futile.
Has Jamie given up on the idea of ethical cults? And he seems to be contradicting himself: first he said around 33:27 that cults have given up on fixing the problems of the world, and the more the world impinges on the possibility of current rapture, the more incentive there is for mass suicide, and then he actually advocates the same strategy towards the end, of giving up on fixing things and doing the Massada strategy. Did I misunderstand? Could it be that we have not been able to fix things because we've misdiagnosed the problem, blaming it on Protestantism and scientific materialism, whereas the problem might be more complex (involving these, but also some aspects of capitalism that dissolve individuals, families and tribes)? If these 2 were the root problems, they would easy to solve: don't believe protestant and scientific materialist ideology! Our dependence on global capitalism is harder to break.
I am not an expert in many of these topics but have a clue or two about Easter Orthodox Christianity since my (serbian) tribe is mostly of that faith. All the elements he lists that attract people to Orthodoxy are true, but surface level, and completely inadequate to describe this pull that traditionally non-orthodox feel. The pull is in living mystery of man-God relationship that is well kept within the lineage (good word Jamie) in the lineage of our holy fathers and mothers from the times of Christ to these very days, saints that have deep experience of God, true “spiritual scientists” that emptied their selves in prayers for the sake of all. No better text to understand that than Dostoyevsky’s character of Elder Zosima from Brother Karamazov. But these saint lived not just in times of old, but also now, among us in the west. Just go visit St John Maximovich in San Francisco (like Eugene Rose did) or St Sophrony in Essex, England, or St Ephraim in Arizona desert, or any of the monasteries of Mount Athos in Greece. Despite (always) present problems of the national Orthodox Churches and their internal politics, despite different extremist groups that seek some higher level justification for their actions in Church (but not the other way around) the pull of westerners to the Divine as revealed through Orthodox church is real, and much bigger than the “sample size of one (Paul Kingsnorth)”, and much deeper than tribal egoistic fervors. The pull is I think, what Jamie said in the Q&A, the encounter with the fullness of life as is, with all its beauty and its pains, but seen not through a frame of stochastic materialism, but fully embodied in communities and embedded within embracing and loving cosmos.
Interesting comment Ale made that we are now trapped in our own minds and in each others’ minds…. Haven’t we always been? Isn’t what we are experiencing a consensual reality that is co-created? Part of the enlightenment game or aspiration is based on a first hand experience outside of this co-creative “delusion,” to see beyond the mind, beyond the veil into a Reality that is fundamental. This is what philosophical Idealism is based upon and all form of religious mysticism. So nothing has really changed, it’s just now we are enmeshed in global consciousness and have AI adding content to the pool of consensus and boy, is it weird.
Good points! I think you're right, we're now trapped in each others' minds in a new way (mediated by the internet, which is in turn mediated by profit motives, billionaires, rogue AI entities and everything inbetween). Also an important point you make about the Enlightenment - I think it's essential that we have ways of knowing that take us beyond the delusions of our own mind and help us come to agreements on consensus reality - but not at the expense of the primacy of subjective reality. Plenty of religious traditions have tackled that question, but we need a new answer in our age of techno-mysticism...
Why is it not ‘face to face’, either hold up the phone and zoom the person infront of you, or agree we speak at the speed of light and not the dullness of broadcast or book. What is surreal is conversation is the most unsettling for the captured boomers, who ‘save themselves’ for appointment instead of walk among citizens and talk. When the self is *saved* it is a self silencing machine and can not do gestalt because it has always done ‘references’. All that is achieved is the guru of references, unable to shop for groceries because of popularism. The person at the side of the road can only see the madness of ambulance chasers and sermons, preachers and lectures. F.Landry called it leadersh!T which remains adult without accepting questions of children, that collapses the illusion we don’t pollute for a job, but insist its being dealt with. Jamie has yet to say…petro dollar. The self entitled are unable to participate freely with curiosity, because judgement was schooled to be scared of the world and its words, yet choose escape by any means necessary to individualism (until an emergency of *emergence*, that fixes stuff without excuses.)
We love you guys! Keep up the good work!!! ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
this is a fascinating convo for me because we are looking at 3 different ways of sense making. First is within the illusion of co-created consensus reality, another is my purely subjective experience of “the One” or “the nous” and the third is some kind of validation or confirmation of “truth seeing.” Like a Buddhist teacher who confirms the enlightenment experience of a student which then gives it a sense of objective reality and we have consensus again. .
Part of the challenge here is that the subjective experience of “True Reality” is numinous and by definition, unable to be communicated, therefore it’s ineffable. (And according to Plotinus, that is even calling it that is too limiting).
We then have the fact that we are expected to walk this earth agreeing the sky is blue and the grass is green. The consensual makes our belonging and connection possible and, in my opinion, the most important reason to be here at all.
I’ll conclude with this: I think I am under-valuing AI and the internet algorithms because I just see it as an extension of “The Spectacle” we have been already been born and existed within. The media keeps changing but it doesn’t feel as exponential to me as it seems to for you. It’s all been a ruse and we have been duped since we were born, and for me (Gen X), that means we were being indoctrinated before color TVs, never mind the internet!
From the perspective that Reality is a hologram and simply protection of Mind, AI, the internet and splitting of reality into facts that are no longer objective, only increases diversity of realities (with a lower case r) and creates more possibility for our fantasy that we are separate entities experiencing a discreet consciousness.
What an enriching conversation. I'm very happy about the Kainos launch. Thank you so much!
So beautiful thank you Ali
Such a beautiful conversation - thank you so much!
Thank you
One time a friend asked me What was the meaning of Life, and at that time I just said 'I don't really think about it, but Life is meaningful'
Wheal's final soliloquy smacked of nihilistic positivism.
People falsely assume that they are dependent on money, love, power, God, meaning, transcendence, etc. They react to the feeling of something missing rather than looking for the cause of that feeling. The cause is society distracting us away from the innate fulfilment of existence. This leaves us searching for substitutes. Yet anything found can be lost, so the search is futile.
Yay!
Has Jamie given up on the idea of ethical cults? And he seems to be contradicting himself: first he said around 33:27 that cults have given up on fixing the problems of the world, and the more the world impinges on the possibility of current rapture, the more incentive there is for mass suicide, and then he actually advocates the same strategy towards the end, of giving up on fixing things and doing the Massada strategy. Did I misunderstand? Could it be that we have not been able to fix things because we've misdiagnosed the problem, blaming it on Protestantism and scientific materialism, whereas the problem might be more complex (involving these, but also some aspects of capitalism that dissolve individuals, families and tribes)? If these 2 were the root problems, they would easy to solve: don't believe protestant and scientific materialist ideology! Our dependence on global capitalism is harder to break.
I am not an expert in many of these topics but have a clue or two about Easter Orthodox Christianity since my (serbian) tribe is mostly of that faith. All the elements he lists that attract people to Orthodoxy are true, but surface level, and completely inadequate to describe this pull that traditionally non-orthodox feel. The pull is in living mystery of man-God relationship that is well kept within the lineage (good word Jamie) in the lineage of our holy fathers and mothers from the times of Christ to these very days, saints that have deep experience of God, true “spiritual scientists” that emptied their selves in prayers for the sake of all. No better text to understand that than Dostoyevsky’s character of Elder Zosima from Brother Karamazov. But these saint lived not just in times of old, but also now, among us in the west. Just go visit St John Maximovich in San Francisco (like Eugene Rose did) or St Sophrony in Essex, England, or St Ephraim in Arizona desert, or any of the monasteries of Mount Athos in Greece.
Despite (always) present problems of the national Orthodox Churches and their internal politics, despite different extremist groups that seek some higher level justification for their actions in Church (but not the other way around) the pull of westerners to the Divine as revealed through Orthodox church is real, and much bigger than the “sample size of one (Paul Kingsnorth)”, and much deeper than tribal egoistic fervors. The pull is I think, what Jamie said in the Q&A, the encounter with the fullness of life as is, with all its beauty and its pains, but seen not through a frame of stochastic materialism, but fully embodied in communities and embedded within embracing and loving cosmos.
dots connecting - a recurring theme
Interesting comment Ale made that we are now trapped in our own minds and in each others’ minds…. Haven’t we always been? Isn’t what we are experiencing a consensual reality that is co-created?
Part of the enlightenment game or aspiration is based on a first hand experience outside of this co-creative “delusion,” to see beyond the mind, beyond the veil into a Reality that is fundamental. This is what philosophical Idealism is based upon and all form of religious mysticism.
So nothing has really changed, it’s just now we are enmeshed in global consciousness and have AI adding content to the pool of consensus and boy, is it weird.
Good points! I think you're right, we're now trapped in each others' minds in a new way (mediated by the internet, which is in turn mediated by profit motives, billionaires, rogue AI entities and everything inbetween). Also an important point you make about the Enlightenment - I think it's essential that we have ways of knowing that take us beyond the delusions of our own mind and help us come to agreements on consensus reality - but not at the expense of the primacy of subjective reality. Plenty of religious traditions have tackled that question, but we need a new answer in our age of techno-mysticism...
Why is it not ‘face to face’, either hold up the phone and zoom the person infront of you, or agree we speak at the speed of light and not the dullness of broadcast or book.
What is surreal is conversation is the most unsettling for the captured boomers, who ‘save themselves’ for appointment instead of walk among citizens and talk.
When the self is *saved* it is a self silencing machine and can not do gestalt because it has always done ‘references’.
All that is achieved is the guru of references, unable to shop for groceries because of popularism.
The person at the side of the road can only see the madness of ambulance chasers and sermons, preachers and lectures.
F.Landry called it leadersh!T which remains adult without accepting questions of children, that collapses the illusion we don’t pollute for a job, but insist its being dealt with.
Jamie has yet to say…petro dollar.
The self entitled are unable to participate freely with curiosity, because judgement was schooled to be scared of the world and its words, yet choose escape by any means necessary to individualism (until an emergency of *emergence*, that fixes stuff without excuses.)