Where's the conscious evolution of society?

I've been on this planet for nearly half a century, always curious about learning new things and connecting to people in all kind of life circumstances. I spend a significant amount of time exploring consciousness, and embarked on the challenging path to find out who and what I am.

Just like everyone and everything around us, I'm an expression of universal consciousness, a crystal in Indra's net. I learned that intentions have the power to change situations for the better, and also that intentions and actions can go into entirely different directions.

I agree with Douglas Adams, and consider the population of this planet as mostly harmless. I met some less harmless people, but much less of them roam the streets, offices, shopping centres, factories and homes than the average harmless human. The existence of violent, harmful people reminds the majority of the choice each of us can make in life: To strive for peaceful cooperation or to 'win' the competition among false egos.

Our current society shows little interest in raising self-determined, cooperative individuals capable of making their own choices. Education systems prefer obedient conformists, easily controllable by fear and victimisation. Once we get sufficiently inculcated with the big lie 'us vs them', we get numbed to our own nature.

If we allow ourself to let go of our cultural programming, it becomes easy to experience that "We're all in it together". The age of global communication shrunk our planet and raised awareness about the interconnectedness of the diverse cultures, and all life on Earth. We wake up the fact that the destruction of Amazon rain forests, overfishing, monoculture, pollution and war endanger the survival of our entire species. The war waged against nature will see nature as winner, while many species, including our own, will lose.

As every human came out of nature, giving our species a special status in it sounds utterly ridiculous. Everything changes, yet the scale of change imposed on this planet by humanity in the last century alone feels like 'modern civilisation' has pushed the self-destruct button. Modern society sacrifices human life, eco-systems and other species for the sake of the 'economic system'.

While our planet offers abundant resources to feed and shelter everyone to high standards, our economic system bases on the misconception of scarcity. Our economic system thrives on scarcity, and thus needs to creates it systematically. The idea of 'eternal growth' makes up the second elementary misconception of the economic system.

In essence, we could easily say that the economic system intents an eternal growth of scarcity for optimal performance. The meme of egalitarianism doesn't exist in economic theory, only winner and losers. The promise that everyone can win the economic game distracts from the embedded injustice in it.

The global economic system didn't develop organically or spontaneously. A cabal of interested parties spreads it around the globe, utilising genocide towards indigenous people where ever they find them. Societies outside the global economic paradigm mean no market opportunity, so stealing their land and killing them for profit means acting in the interest of 'shareholder values'.

The biggest promoters of the economic system belong to the minority of winners in it. They don't win because the play better, but because they can and do rig the game in their favour. The bank bailout in 2008 poses a brilliant example for this, which got copied plenty of times since then.

Sorry for bothering you with the 'economy'. Many people still believe that government shapes society and directs it, and has some control over banks and corporations. Modern governments have degenerated to mere PR agencies selling corporate interests disguised with empty promises or general fear mongering.

The Australian government spends about $3 billion for its unjust treatment of refugees in its offshore camps. This money comes from the taxpayer (mere individuals, mainly from the non-game rigging part of the population), and goes to multinational corporations like Serco and G4S, and to other corrupt governments.

Who wins, who loses this match of the economic game with the government as referee? The usual suspects. The old game of redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top grows scarcity among larger and larger parts of the population. Unprofitable human life can be warehoused for a profit, the economic system happily demonstrates its psychopathic nature.

Meanwhile, governments start more openly to defend corporate interests against the mandate of their population. The Queensland government considers 'environmental activism' a crime punishable more severe than owning an unregistered gun. Does it really act in the interest of its people?

Mandating governments to reign in corporations is like telling a dog what its owner should do. Politicians can't be held accountable even for crimes against humanity, which crudely hide beyond a veil of 'national security'. While governments act more and more paranoid and in secret, business secrets seem guarded even more.

The winners of economic game and their confederates in government act out of self-interest, and have taken environmental destruction to a threatening level. If society hangs on to the need to keep the current systems of economy and governance alive, despite them having failed to provide a fair share of the abundant bounty of our planet, then a collapse of civilisation, much worse than the fall of the Roman Empire, seems inevitable.

The oceans overfished, old growth forests cleared, coral reefs declining, increased weather extremes indicate that 'doing what's good for the economy' yields terrible consequences for life on this planet. The cleanup of the mess created by clinging to a system of destruction will keep humanity busy for a while.

We can co-inhabit this planet without sacrificing ethics or destroying our resources in the process. Many people have explored sustainable ways to generate energy, build houses, grow food, utilise water and deal with human waste.

We need a shift of consciousness. Do we want to continue to support a system which grows scarcity, or do we want a build a system which shares the abundance of this planet with everyone?

Conformity rulez

Most people would take the blue pill

and say it's a choice of free will.

Most people live a life based on lies,

even though it leads to their own demise.

Most people don't mind water spiced with fluoride,

No worries, mate, she'll be right 

Most people ignore chemtrails in the sky,

what can't exist, can't catch their eye.

Most people won't admit breaking any rule,

coz that's what they've learned in school.

Most people accept illicit government,

it's a scam too big to comprehend.

Most people won't show the bravery

to end the matrix of common slavery.

Bit for bit

Many people define 'consciousness' as nothing but the state they lose when they go to sleep, overdo substances or get severely injury by accident or violence. Somehow this negative definition suggests that we humans are either conscious or unconscious, which sounds to me like delusional, wishful thinking.

Psychologists would rather claim that we spend quite a limited time 'fully conscious', our sub-consciousness controlling the majority of our activities. Depending what you know or believe about your own subconsciousness, the idea of acting subconscious most of the time might induce quite a lot of fear.

Western societies don't value thinking about thinking and most forms of self-reflective activity very high. Although we all have a mind, only specialists are entitled and encouraged to figure out how these minds work. Yet in everyday business, our minds are mostly driven by our subconscious believes, and rationalise our behaviour after it happens.

The concepts explaining subconsciousness don't appeal too much to regular people, as they seem rather overly complex (Freud) or pretty far out (Jung). After all, all we need to do is to somehow 'soldier on', 'get on with our lives', 'make a living', 'function in the modern world', right?

Yet subconscious drives especially those unaware of it, or touchy to think about it. Education conditions us to 'mind our own business', and leave the business of the mind to dedicated specialists. This opens the door to easy manipulation, and maintains the state of learned helplessness most people suffer from.

So we can embrace the suggestion to be 'in control' of our own lives, only dependent sometimes to those who know ourselves better than we can ever do. If our experience contradicts the promises of 'experts', it can hardly be their fault, something must be wrong with us. And the experts can fix it - if not straight away, then not because they have other interests than our own best at heart, but surely because we're much wronger than we should be.

Any sort of logical system needs a solid foundation to reflect the reality of our own experience, otherwise it creates a life on its own. An idea or concept gone wild might provide us with entertainment, enjoyment, solace, yet it can hide the truth of our existence from us. Whenever we believe something without any personal evidence, we might get deluded into illusion about reality.

Humans are born to be curious, that's one of my personal believes I found plenty of evidence of. I think Truth fails to be described in words, it rather unveils itself in actions and artefacts of existence. When we observe objects falling towards the earth, very consistently, 'gravity' turns into one of those inexplicable truths. Birds and insects defy this principle, but that doesn't need to worry us, as they obviously do something to defy this principle - yet luckily, they land sometimes, and stop doing what they did, so we can investigate how they temporarily manage to counteract the attraction of our spaceship Earth.

The brothers Montgolfiere and the Wright brothers had to sustain through much ridicule for their idea that even humans could manage to defy gravity and float within the atmosphere. Luckily, the combination of astute observation and curiosity advanced technology a bit further, flicking a collective binary switch on - humans can fly, without any magic involved.

The oldest form of flight technology I know of didn't make any inventor famous though. A simple boomerang still manages not only to blow my mind, but those of many others as well. Newton's physics would have trouble describing its flight path, which might explain as well explain why the inventors of the Montgolfiere and the plane had to fight so much resistance.

'Modern' people know that planes exist, and maybe also that boomerangs fly in surprising ways. Most of us hardly know why and how, and wouldn't be able to construct or build either of them. It just doesn't give us a fright when we see them, our subconscious tells us it's possible and we don't need to worry.

We got used to the sun and stars staying in their orbits as well, continuous observation allowed to us to let go of the fear of the sky collapsing on us. Predictability became our friend, and science helped those curious to grasp bits of the why and how, and those less curious could rest in the solace that no magic was involved to make it happen.

The word 'magic' though does already unpredictable things to the minds of english speaking people, activating an essential binary switch in our subconsciousness. We tend to organise our experience around the concept of 'real' and 'illusionary', a imaginary binary concept shown as relatively irrelevant by quantum mechanics and buddhism.

The virus language (thanks Laurie Anderson) often creates binary concepts that defy our experience, while acting as cornerstones to our logic. Yet as social beings, we don't enter the world of our experience as blank slates, but informed by the ideas of our ancestors, transmitted by language and the culture we're born into.

The amount of 'bits' of information in any given sentence is potentially infinite, and neither sender nor receiver usually have any clue about much information is transmitted. If we take a popular way to construct a sentence expressing something meaningful, 'A is B', we already open the door to multiple interpretations.

'God is great'. Many people will not only find this sentence meaningful, but also containing Truth. On a semantic level, however, it turns into something with little to no value at all. I don't want to open a can of worms with discussing the terms 'God' and 'great', when I hear any sentence of the 'A is B' type the incompleteness flag of my subconsciousness gets raised.

Aristotle left humanity with some basic ideas about binary logic, we might consider him as one of the first computer scientists in history. Like all abstract concepts, Aristotelian logic simplifies reality in order to obtain 'higher' levels of knowledge. But when we mistake his map for the territory, we become susceptible to be remote controlled by anyone understanding the binary nature of our subconsciousness to create our analogue experience.

When we see an image on a TV or computer screen, we might be aware of the underlying binary construction of it, but depending on the quality of the image, we can happily immerse ourselves in the illusion created by it. Salvatore Dali elegantly demonstrated his understanding of human perception with images that change from a collection of random dots into 'meaningful' shapes in a distance, long before most people got hypnotised by the illusion of moving images composed of a random collection of dots.

Similarly we can stay oblivious to the binary nature of our subconsciousness, and enjoy the speed in which we can react without thinking. The ability the process information subconsciously at high speed definitely contributes to individual survival - faced with a wild animal, philosophical considerations warrant usually fast death.

In our 'civilised' times, life and death situation became luckily rare. In most parts of world, dangerous animals have been extinct, so technology exposes us to the biggest threats to our survival. However, while we live potentially the most sheltered life in known history, the idea of life-threatening situations seem to have increased exponentially.

According to Leary's 8-circuit model of human consciousness, the evaluation into 'save' and 'not save' constitutes an elementary switch in our subconsciousness. This evaluation usually happens neither rational nor objective, yet subconsciously based on our prior experience. If we made 'bad' experiences with approaching a dog, for example, in an early state of our life, we will most likely turn out be a 'cat' person, and when given a choice for a pet unlikely choose a dog.

While dogs can be dangerous in certain cases, most of them are quite harmless. Our subconscious programming, however, doesn't act rational, but automatic. Unless we use efficient methods to change it, it will retain any conditioning ever acquired. While this might sound somewhat overwhelming, it also offers with it the understanding that we might access much more 'information' than we can imagine in our wildest dreams.

Exactly there, in our dreams, we can find a glimpse of the opportunities inherent in our subconscious. A nearly perfect virtual reality happens while our body lays down sleeping, appearing as intensely real like our waking life. Our pineal gland emits DMT and we dance with the dream fairies. While millions of bits of sensual information travel through our nervous system, our attention focuses on a specific set of circumstances, and filters the rest. This 'rest' comprises a large part of the dream scenery.

Not everyone has memories of their dreams, yet we dream every night when we enter a REM (Rapid Eye Movement) phase in our sleep. Obviously, the 'input' to our dream awareness doesn't come from our senses. While the complexity of dreams worlds doesn't look like composed in a binary fashion, it just would need sufficient amount of binary data and high processing speeds. Billions of neuron, each of which might be just a binary switch or even something like a megabyte memory unit, with up to 10000 connections between each other, provide both - large memory area and processing speed.

The locus of individual memory items (engrams) has not been located. If we have a holographic memory, engrams potentially leave traces in a variety of different locations. The orientation of our attention brings memory back to awareness, not necessarily as precise recording of the events that happened, rather as current interpretation of the event itself. As we get mostly educated by permanent repetition, our episodical memory is in average quite prone to error regarding specific details. The same event seen by different people can yield description which tell entirely different stories.

In other words, each of us has a different binary pathway through the filters we acquired in our lifetime. Our reality tunnels, in Robert Anton Wilson's words, distort the space-time event we witness. Unless we understand and detect the patterns we use to generate our 'reality', we cannot de-activate the filters, although drugs might temporarily de-activate them. Opening the doors of perception doesn't provide you with super powers, and learning to shutting them at will is as important as the initial opening.

Yet we can learn to observe our thinking, to get to know the filters through which we create our reality. Don't expect to enter an unfiltered existence, just enjoy the shift of perspective whenever you flicked a binary switch of your subconscious that distorted your perception of reality.

Alien thoughts

This universe is one of the most amazing places,

it hosts an incredible abundance of different races,

joined in the ongoing game of evolution,

which creates in mankind so much confusion.

We're here to see what's there,

accepting that we're in it together,

longing to make everything better,

we're here to share and care.

We're doomed to be free,

free enough to choose slavery

or, with a little bit more bravery,

become what we're born to be.

If we give each other space,

things just fall into place.

Physiologists have long been in the habit of studying not the reactions of the whole organism but the reactions of isolated segments; the so-called reflexes. While it may seem justifiable to construct the reactions of the organism as a whole from the individual reflexes, such an attempt is in reality doomed to failure, since the reactions produced in an isolated element cannot be counted upon to occur when the same element is part of the whole, on account of the mutual inhibitions which the different parts of the organism produce upon each other when in organic connection; and it is, therefore, impossible to express the conduct of a whole animal as the algebraic sum of the reflexes of its isolated segments.... It would, therefore, be a misconception to speak of tropism as of reflexes, since tropisms are reactions of the organism as a whole, while reflexes are reactions of isolated segments. Reflexes and tropisms agree, however, in one respect, inasmuch as both are obviously of a purely physico-chemical character.

Australasia

I live in a country that speaks its own tongue,

I took it for English and got it all wrong.

The language here loves simplicity,

and thus creates its very own reality.

What should not be that can not be,

is at the heart of its simple philosophy.

If I close my eyes I can't see 

how hospitality turns into hostility.

The words have lost their shades of grey,

they merely point to one side of the melee.

In a world brimming of black and white,

the subtlety of life comes out of sight.

We always speak using reason and emotion,

which leads to many odd confusion.

Ten Commandments 2.0

1. 'You shall have no other gods before Me, God Mammon.' 
2. 'You shall not make for yourself a currency, or forge banknotes, or engage in barter systems, or any other money-free exchange of goods and services' 
3. 'You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain by wasting money for social causes, unless it improves your public image.' 
4. 'Remember 24/7 365 days a year, to keep it holy.' 
5. 'Honor your father and your mother, from whom you inherited your money.' 
6. 'You shall not murder, unless it's an alleged terrorist.' 
7. 'You shall not be caught committing adultery.' 
8. 'You shall not steal, unless it's taxpayers money.' 
9. 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour, unless he's an alleged terrorist.' 
10. 'You shall not be caught coveting your neighbour's house; you shall not be caught coveting your neighbour's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his car, nor his yacht, nor anything that is your neighbor's.'

A zen student once asked his teacher Ikkyu, a fifteenth century Zen master, to sum up the highest wisdom. The master responded to this enormous question with a single word scratched in the sand: "Attention."

The student wasn't satisfied and asked him to elaborate.  Ikkyu wrote: "Attention. Attention. Attention."

History repeating

In a sad revival of ancient prejudices, "France" and "Italy" started expelling Roma from "their" "territory". The idea of people living a rather nomadic life style in Europe seems to clash with a lot of ideas about government in general. However, the idea of forming a society with its own culture predated the historically modern idea of nations.

Being born in "Germany", I haven't encountered any 'gypsy' camp where I grew up. Not too surprising, as "Germany's" war against others under Hitler targeted Roma and Sinti even before they engaged into the genocide of Jewish people. Depending on the proximity of nation towards acting as a civilised nation, the horrific history of "Germany" under Hitler is reduced to the Jewish genocide. Homophobic countries ignore Hitler's war on homosexuals, others ignore the war on free-thinking artists, the war on handicapped people, the war on communists or the war on "gypies" (Zigeuner).

This simplistic view of the historically accepted times of "German" fascism might contribute to the "French" politicians showing dismay after some EU representative reminded the world publicly about the similarity the "French" governments activity and the Nazi strategy against this people. It became quite common for governments in the 21st century to rather engage in indirect killings than to this dirty job the same way "Germany" did it more than 70 years ago. Australia unilaterally breaches the UN conventions with its policies towards asylum seekers and their native population, France doesn't care to send Roma people into countries which intend to end the journey of this travelling people forever.

So, yes, while the Nazis had killing squads to deal with Sinti and Roma, the "French" don't kill them straight away. The just follow the narrow-minded strategy "Out of sight, out of mind", thereby perverting the ideas behind the United Nations declaration of human rights. However, comparing what "France" is doing to the Roma people right now has much more merits then "French" diplomats want to admit.

The Nazis created acceptance for their violent ways of treating other people as non-humans by targeting easy scapegoats. Without exposure to minority groups, the stories being told about them often originate from sources with an agenda. It requires a large amount of gullibility to believe what Hitler wrote about the Jews in Mein Kampf, to believe anything the "French" government accuses the entire people of Roma of, or to believe anything that "government sources" in the Western World say about "terrorists".

In a world without easy access to global travel and communication making people scared of "others" comes easy. In the 21st century individuals have access to an overwhelming diversity of opinions and facts, and no longer depend on "government" to tell them about right and wrong. Nationalism, the meme that extended empathy from immediate kinship to a larger community, has turned into a fatal disease of society already before this millennium, but developments like the "US" wars on non-befriended owners of valuable resources, or "Israel"'s war on the indigeneous people of the Middle East, or the allegations of some European governments that Roma cause a hike in crime rates demonstrate the popularity of the 'us versus them' meme that aim to prevent the emergence of global empathy.

Life doesn't need humans, yet humans need each other and biodiversity to survive. As humans, we cannot escape the laws of nature, but we can easily can create laws that pave the path of self-destruction. On an individual scale this means substance abuse, domestic violence, suicide and excessive risk tasking. Only larger scale, organisation like nation or multinational corporations can accumulate and use resources in a species endangering way. No invisible hand determines the fate of mankind, rather the combination of an ignorant populace and uncontrolled government.

Each living organism on this planet is an contemporary evolutionary winner, born into an environment that provides more than enough for survival. If there wasn't enough for everyone right here and now, those chosen by arbitrary governments not to deserve life wouldn't exist in first place. Anyone still repeating Adam Smith's mantra "There is not enough for everyone" lacks either intelligence or empathy, which disqualifies them from taking on responsibility for other people's life. However, history shows that no safeguards against stupid or evil leaders has been put in place, and that real existing "democracies" rather function similar to feudalistic societies.

As long as governments use "national security" as an excuse for institutionalised violence, humanity is light years away from justice, and wolfs remain the shepherds of the human race. As long as societies allow their leaders secrecy and special rules, humanity is doomed to repeat history until the extinction of humanity. I haven't lost my optimism yet, not everyone acta as harmful, inconsiderate, unempathic and unconscious as the parasites of society euphemistically called "politicians".

In a real sense all life inter-relates. A network of mutuality catches all human organisms, ties them in a single garment of history. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never stay in this moment until you stay in this moment, and you can never stay in this moment until I stay in this moment. This demonstrates the inter-related structure of reality.

The time-bound mode of consciousness is deeply embedded in the human psyche. But what we are doing here is part of a profound transformation that is taking place in the collective consciousness of the planet and beyond: the awakening of consciousness from the dream of matter, form and separation. The ending of time. We are breaking mind patterns that have dominated human life for eons. Mind patterns that have created unimaginable suffering on a vast scale. I am not using the word evil. It is more helpful to call it unconsciousness or insanity.

"The blind panopticon of Capital remains, after all, most vulnerable in the realm of 'magic' -- the manipulation of images to control events, hermetic 'action at a distance'."

PS: I-nigma might help with this enigma.

"What do you wish from me?" the master asked.

"I wish to be your student and become the finest karate student in the land." the boy replied. "How long must I study?"

"Ten years at leastI", replied the master.

"Ten years is a long time," said the boy. "What if I study twice as hard as all your other students?"

"Twenty years," replied the master.

"Twenty years! What if I practise day and night with all my effort?"

"Thirty years," was the masters reply.

"How is it that each time I say I will word harder, you tell me that it will take longer?" the boy asked.

"The answer is clear. When one eye is fixed on your destination, there is only one eye left with which to find to find the way."

23 skidoo

You know, five equals six,
which explains so many tricks.
Both born of two and three,
they get along merrily.

They join in eleven,
pretty close to heaven,
the game of one on one
which brings so much fun.

In a universe of unity
this is the holy trinity
of body, mind and soul
linked by pure rock'n'roll.

Know your ciphers, play them well,
get them wrong, and go to hell.

Before the Christian era, there existed two royal roads into the unconscious: religion (meaning group experience) and sex, and these two were commonly combined. With the establishment of the Christian Church, the road of sex was closed to traffic, and the road of religion was heavily policed. The Protestant Church, without opening the road of sex, gradually denatured the religious ceremonies until they offered little appeal to the unconscious. Today, the position has been substantially reversed: many people have abandoned the pursuit of religious experience, so that sex remains for them the only route to the unconscious. It is this which gives sex its disproportionate importance in our films, books and newspapers, and as a subject of gossip; this is why the perverted and anti-social manifestations today emerge as sexual crimes rather than in forms sanctioned by religion, such as flagellation. Always coupled with Eros we find Thanatos, for the penalty of failure to love and create is the irresistible need to hate and destroy.

G. Rattray Taylor

The universe wants to play. Those who refuse out of dry spiritual greed and choose pure contemplation forfeit their humanity - those who refuse out of dull anguish, those who hesitate, lose their chance of divinity - those who mold them themselves blind masks of ideas and thrash around seeking some proof of their own solidity end by seeing out of dead man's eyes.

... if your destination, or the steps you are going to take in the future, take up so much of your attention that they become more important to you than the step you are taking now, then you completely miss the journey's inner purpose, which has nothing to do where you are going or what you are doing, but everything to do with how. It has nothing to do with future but everything to do with the quality of your consciousness in this moment.

The master does his job and then stops. He understands that the Universe is forever out of control and that trying to dominate events goes against the current of the flow. Because he believes in himself, he doesn't try to convince others. Because he is content with himself, he doesn't need others' approval. Because he accepts himself, the whole world accepts him.

Spiritual and/or religious methods can be tested for their biological validity by the question: Can I bring my body with me? [...] The physical body, as metaphysics states, is the substantial portion of the rest of us and not "separate". The body remains the boundary or the crucible wherein the alchemical opus of your Life Work takes place. Instruction: Bring your body with you.

We are accustomed to use our eyes only with the memory of what other people before us have thought about the object we are looking at.

If you want to stride into the Infinite, move within the Finite in all directions.