The Story of Fruit

What's up with fruit? Fruit is a healthy choice and loaded with vitamins and antioxidants, as well as fiber (key to weight loss because it is good for your metabolism, and a natural appetite suppressant. However, it still contains calories and carbohydrates, which is problematic if you are limiting carbohydrate intake generally to 100 grams per day (a common target), and the carbs you do eat should be mostly based on complex grains. So as long as you stay within your specified range…

ALSO, fruits are high in the fructose (which is the main reason people trying to lose weight remove it from their diet). But unlike glucose - the most common simple sugar that's sent to your muscles, brain, and other organs for them to use as energy - fructose is only processed by your liver. If your liver already has ample fats then too much fruit could tip that scale.

Soooo I don’t eat a truck load of fruit, but it’s definitely part of my diet. I do eat a lot of apples because they are high fiber, low calories a sweet tasting snack (for cravings)…

#EatSmart

From the Population Bomb to the Dominant Animal

October 10, 2008 lecture by Paul Ehrlich during the 2008 Reunion at Stanford University. Professor Ehrlich discusses the changes in the environmental situation forty years ago and today, telling how humanity took over the planet, and how it is now using its dominance to destroy its own life-support systems. He emphasizes the critical issues facing the world that got relatively no attention in the recent U.S presidential election.

Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Biological Sciences, Bing Professor of Population Studies and president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford, is an internationally prominent ecologist and evolutionist and the recipient of numerous national and international scientific awards.

The Psychology of Spirituality

The Psychology of Spirituality

by Dr. Stephen Diamond

Christmas is once more upon us, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Chanukkah too has started, celebrating a miraculous event occurring centuries before Christ (who, as a Jew, presumably celebrated Chanukkah) was born. Both--despite their commercialism--are prominent religious holidays in the Judeo-Christian tradition. So perhaps this is an apropos time of year to reflect here on the psychology of spirituality and religion.

Psychologically speaking, religion is conceived, created and perpetuated by virtually every culture throughout history to provide meaning, comfort and succor in the face of the stark, disturbing, anxiety-provoking existential facts of life: suffering, misfortune, meaninglessness, isolation, insecurity, disease, evil, loss, and ultimately, death. The impressive longevity, ubiquity and tenacity of religion in human affairs attests to its relative efficacy in this regard. Religion may be further understood as a means of seeking to acknowledge, comprehend and honor the "numinous" aspects of existence: fate; destiny; mystery; wonder, beauty or awe; the irrepressible powers of nature; the perception of some intelligent and loving grand design in the universe; the organic interrelatedness of all things; the insignificance and impermanence of the personal ego and transcendent immensity of the cosmic, transpersonal or spiritual realm beyond both ego and material reality; and the ineffable yet transformative subjective experience of oneness with the cosmos and its creator. Religion traditionally provides a container, language, symbolism, and structure for such archetypal spiritual experiences.

Read More Here: Psychology Today

DeLanda on Deleuze

Deleuze and the Open-ended Becoming of the World

by Manuel DeLanda

With the final mathematization of classical physics in the nineteenth century, a certain picture of the world emerged dominant, one in which clockwork determinism reigned supreme and time played no creative role, so that the future was effectively closed, completely given in the past. Although the set of equations with which Hamilton was able to unify all the different fields of classical physics (mechanics, optics, and the elementary theory of electromagnetism) did contain a variable for time, this variable played only an extrinsic role: once the equations were defined for a specific instant, both the past and the future were completely determined, and could be obtained mechanically by simply integrating the equations.

To be sure, this static, timeless picture of reality did not go unchallenged within science, since thermodynamics had already introduced an arrow of time which conflicted with the symmetric conception of classical mechanics, where the past and the future were interchangeable. Nevertheless, as the history of statistical mechanics makes it clear, much scientific effort has been spent in our century to reconcile time asymmetry at the level of large aggregates with the still accepted time symmetry at the level of individual interactions.

Thus, it would become the task of philosophers and social scientists to attempt to reconceptualize the world in order to give time and history a creative role, with the vision of an open future that this implies. Although there have been a variety of strategies to achieve this open future, here I would like to concentrate on two contrasting approaches. The first is perhaps best illustrated by the intellectual movement that is today known as "social constructivism", but which roots lie in linguistic and anthropological theories which go back to the turn of the century.

At the risk of oversimplifying, we may say that the core of this approach is a neo-Kantian theory of perception, in which individual experience is completely structured by the interplay of concepts and representations, but one in which Kant's transcendental concepts (of space and time) have been replaced by the conventional concepts of a given culture. The guiding image of this strategy may be said to be "each culture lives in its own world", an image central to many theoretical approaches in this century, from the cultural relativism of Margaret Mead and Franz Boas, to the linguistic relativism of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Worf, to the epistemological relativism of Thomas Khun's theory of scientific paradigms. Again, oversimplifying somewhat, the key idea in all these theories is one of "incommensurability" across worlds, each conceptual scheme constructing its own reality so that bridges between worlds are hard, if not impossible, to build.

More: Here

Quantifying Self

From WorldChanging:

Media Tracking and the Quantified Self
By Ethan Zuckerman

Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly have been documenting an emerging phenomenon they call “the quantified self“. The term refers to a set experiments that people are conducting – primarily on themselves – to understand their own bodies and behavior. In an article for The New York Times Magazine, Wolf details a range of these experiments. One engineer weans himself off coffee and compares his reported levels of concentration with and without caffeine. Others use sensors like the Zeo to track their sleep patterns, or the Fitbit to track physical activity. Some track what they eat and drink, how much they weigh, their emotional states.

Wolf acknowledges that some of the people profiled in the article sound obsessive and notes that people engaged in detailed self-tracking may be “outliers”. And he’s careful to offer testimonies from people who engaged in self-tracking and gave it up, feeling like the data they generated was relentless and remorseless. (As someone who’s had to engage in self-tracking of blood glucose levels as a type 1 diabetic for the past 25 years, “relentless and remorseless” are my words, not Wolf’s.) But he’s clearly a believer that tracking can be a tool for self-discovery, a way of learning what constitutes normal behavior for each of us, not just a tool for moving towards a goal, like increased fitness or better sleep.

The experiment in self-tracking that I’m considering is more about self knowledge than self improvement, though I’m finding it’s hard to separate the two. I’m looking for ways to monitor my personal information flow. I’d like to understand how I get information about the world – through television, the web, radio, email and the people I talk to. The hope is to use myself as a guinea pig, to see what’s possible as far as active and passive monitoring of information flows, in the hope of opening the experiment to a wider population.

Read More: Here

Chalmers on The Singularity

The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis
By David J. Chalmers

What happens when machines become more intelligent than humans? One view is that this event will be followed by an explosion to ever-greater levels of intelligence, as each generation of machines creates more intelligent machines in turn. This intelligence explosion is now often known as the “singularity”.

The basic argument here was set out by the statistician I.J. Good in his 1965 article "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine”:

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion”, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.

The key idea is that a machine that is more intelligent than humans will be better than humans at designing machines. So it will be capable of designing a machine more intelligent than the most intelligent machine that humans can design. So if it is itself designed by humans, it will be capable of designing a machine more intelligent than itself. By similar reasoning, this next machine will also be capable of designing a machine more intelligent than itself. If every machine in turn does what it is capable of, we should expect a sequence of ever more intelligent machines.

This intelligence explosion is sometimes combined with another idea, which we might call the “speed explosion”. The argument for a speed explosion starts from the familiar observation that computer processing speed doubles at regular intervals. Suppose that speed doubles every two years and will do so indefinitely. Now suppose that we have human-level artificial intelligence designing new processors. Then faster processing will lead to faster designers and an ever-faster design cycle, leading to a limit point soon afterwards.

Read More (PDF): Here

Reflections of an Integral Theory Student - Part 3

The “Crazy” Creative Ideas of an ONLINE Integral Theory Student at JFKU - Part 3 ©

By Giorgio Piacenza Cabrera

Accompanying my undertaking of Integral Theory courses online through JFK University, I experienced insights, questions, and variations on the usual themes touched in those courses. If you already are conversant with Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, you might find this collection of reflections intellectually provocative and productive.

On An Unrecognized But Crucial “SHADOW”…

For spiritual transformation, for becoming more Integral, its (validly I think) in vogue to work with our shadows, with repressed aspects from previous stages of individual development. Yet, by observing the modern and post modern biases within many in the Integral Community, I’ve come to see that there’s something wrong and forgotten in the theory of psychological developmentalism normally espoused. I call it the “Inter Stage ‘Content’ Shadow” (or ISCS for short).

Let’s see…It’s easier, less challenging to move from stage to stage holding on to 3rd person concepts than in 1st person experiential content. The content I’m writing about is also cultural-stage related. This content represents meaningful 1st person experiences and discoveries typical of each stage and, when moving to a higher or more inclusive stage, is quite often repressed, thus becoming a shadow, an “inter-stage content shadow.”

The negative or freedom limiting side of the conceptual framework of a previous stage is overcome and transcended in the higher, more conceptually inclusive stage but the specifics of the experiential content is quite often more easily dealt with by repressing it. The healthy transcendence and incorporation/inclusion of is easier first with 3rd person, more impersonal “it” concepts. Content is often included as a repressed shadow, a taboo, a no-no. In fact, this is why “psychical research” and related parapsychological, subtle. Alternative phenomena are suppressed within the scientific and post modern stages.

Being a participant in certain modern-post modern cultures that still hold on to pre modern traditions may assist (even conceptual and ethical Second Tier individuals) in including some of the actual experiential contents of pre-modern stages. An Integral individual that has a pervasive bias or distaste for the value of genuine spirit communication (characteristic of pre modern stages) may not be sufficiently Integral in 1st person terms. An individual that characterizes all miraculous phenomena of the Mythic-Amber stage as only serving a useful social function is not choosing to be as impartial and objective as a modern thinker ought to be because there simply are occasional phenomena that a prosaic scientific explanation cannot deal with. These individuals hold shadows and as long as they do, their Integral life projects will be incomplete (and maybe even dangerously so). By pretending to be the forefront guiding force in cultural stage development they could also perpetuate a form of forgetfulness of all of the creative manifestations of Spirit, a forgetfulness as evil in the long run as the political and human abuses committed by the Churches in times past. For instance we know that Amber churches burned spirit communicants at the stake.

Nonetheless, in spite of the errors, abuse, mistakes and other blindness of the Amber cultural stage, is there room in Integral Theory to recognize Second or Third Tier knowledge encoded by the highest intuitive Intellect in First Tier Myths and dogmas?

The same goes for Post Modern thinkers who –as Wilber rightly points out- are engaged in a reductionist, monological, flattening war against the ideals of order and wisdom of the Orange-Modern and the Amber stages. Maybe this kind of inter stage shadow, having lived so long, having been revived for so long under different kinds of prejudices, is a really serious problem that humanity needs to become aware of heal and transcend if there’s ever any hope of fulfilling the most Integral and loving human potential in the –hopefully- emerging “Integral Age” or thereafter.

As individuals entering the Integral Stage of understanding it would be indolence to pick and choose what we want to include of the experiential wisdom disclosed in previous stages, if we deny any genuine, firsthand experience of the specific contents. To be a truly healing force in the world (and also in the long run) we need to put an end to the bias against first person spiritual experiences of pre modern stages. We shouldn’t limit the Integral Vision to become accepted as soon as possible into the academic, political, scientific world by perpetuating a denial of vital aspects of the Cosmos’ ontological Exterior and Interior meaningful expressions that aren’t not just (as simplistically said) eternally pre-given ‘out there’ but in actual dynamic evolutionary and involutionary relation even with what Post Metaphysical Pluralism considers as ‘creating grooves’ in the emerging, evolutionary process (as with partialness seen from the bottom up and from the exteriors-inwards). The whole situation is far more complex and beautiful and vital for all sentients than the pathetic over simplifications orthodoxically generated in regards to the significant inter-realm relations that our elegant (and otherwise truly promising) “Integral Theory” accommodated in its structure.

On The “Three Eyes” of Knowledge…

Can the "Three Eyes of knowledge" be used to disclose knowledge objectively manifesting in the gross and subtle worlds? Can we use the “cogitatio Eye” (the eye of the flesh) in an expanded sense (not just as an “eye” of the physical body but as an “eye” of the exterior, objective quadratic aspects of the Subtle Body, its exterior envelope-body-vehicle of energy)? Can we use the Subtle Cogitatio Eye for disclosing the objective aspects of the Subtle Realm (even with Integral Methodological Pluralism)?

Quite often it seems that the Subtle World has been diminished or reduced to its interior emotional aspects in the general discussions. There’s a lot of truth to it since through feeling we also sense subtle energies (and proportionally more because a higher ontological realm possesses a greater degree of Interiority than Exteriority than a Gross Realm which is further “away” from the Source in a relative, apparent and contingent sense). Nevertheless, there’s also an objective (albeit more adaptable or less strictly patterned) exteriority in the Subtle ontological realm and this needs to be integrally acknowledged and even scientifically explored.

Also, since the “Meditatio” Eye (the Eye of the Mind) can be used to disclose the mathematical and lawful patterns behind the Gross Realm it can be used to better understand in an intelligible way the Subtle Realm and the Causal Realm. Then again, the “Contemplatio” Eye (the Eye of Contemplation) can be used to experience in a spiritual way the beauty and sweetness, the unity, love and wonder immanent and transcending each Realm.

As INTEGRAL experiencers, intellects; as individuals with (several) bodies, (several levels of) minds and one spirit, we must incorporate San Bonaventure’s traditional view into a more inclusive and higher integrated view to embrace all the levels of reality open to the possibility of functioning with our “three eyes” throughout the Kosmic spectrum. Not doing so is remaining in the shadows in spite of our intellectual and technological achievements and, in spite of the great theoretical and practical promises of Integral Theory as it stands now.

On Wilber 5...

Is “Wilber 5” a stage previous to a higher integration that once again will include more of the essential teachings behind the almost abandoned project of remembering the forgotten knowledge and bringing the Sophia Perennis/Perennial Philosophy back to humanity? Do certain (now “post Metaphysically” disdained) realities exist in actuality at their own ontological level but only potentially for us until we disclose them, while the way we disclose them and interpret them at a specific altitude then becomes a unique co-creation (perhaps a more Integral middle ground position between the suppositions behind a strict Post Metaphysical Myth of the Given Constructivism and absolutely independent pre-existence)? Again, what is not disclosed interpretatively under human methodology and within an altitude does it exist in actuality at its own level but only in a potential way for us?

Moreover, in a holonic Kosmos in which the polarity of part and whole interplays, we can deduce that other ontological levels are required if there are Interior-Exterior-Single and Plural aspects in every occasion or manifestation. Whether they are understood as static or dynamic, as 'eternally pre-given' or as evolving is another matter. There's also potentiality and explicitness between the interior and the exterior the single and the plural, thus involution and evolution can interplay.

What does exist if it is not disclosed by human methodology? How can Wilber 5 and AQAL integrate the experimentally and methodologically and collectively shared disclosures that –for instance- genuine Instrumental Transcommunication seems to elicit in relation to specifics about life conditions in the sub divisions within the Subtle Realm ?

I think that Ken Wilber has not been careful enough in his –otherwise- wholesome writings in relation to the highly important, emotionally charged, feared, avoided fanaticized-over and unavoidably integrally fundamental concept of “Metaphysics.” There’s a confusion between "Metaphysics" (as Aristotle's writings placed AFTER his writings on physics), "Metaphysics" (as related to experientiable contingent realms of existence that transcend the physical realm), “Metaphysics” as wild speculation about otherworldly things, and "Metaphysics" (as the study of ultimate rational causes and the study of the essential nature of things).

On States As Vehicles for Actualization…

Perhaps States also bring with them the possibility of knowing the wider relationships that exist between realms and can assist us in using the “three eyes of knowledge” more completely in order to disclose and simultaneously actualize into our concrete Gross experience and exterior patterns the Interior reality of more outwardly expressive, inclusive or subtler realms (regardless of the realm where our particular exterior or objective body is operating). States may also be Integral to the way in which the degree of ontological reality and the degree of externalized structures in these realities relate to each other across levels, or, in other words, how the fabric of creation is woven together… but this is a serious matter for further discussion later on.

On A New Kind of Lattice…

With a similar pattern as the one in the Wilber-Combs Lattice, I’m proposing a “lattice” for knowledge:

The 3 “eyes of knowledge” X 3 basic expressions of reality (Gross, Subtle and Causal) = 9 basic ways of acquiring knowledge about reality. This means that the “cogito” or the eye once limited to “the flesh” could be used for Gross exteriority, Subtle Exteriority and Causal Exteriority. This also means that the “meditatio” or “eye of the mind” could be used for understanding the information patterns associated with the Gross, the Subtle and the Causal. Finally, the “contemplatio” or “eye of Spirit” could be used to experience in first person the immanence of Spirit in the Gross (for instance as in nature mysticism), the Subtle and the Causal. Then, a complete non-dual integration in understanding would be possible by experiencing all “eyes” as elements of one Spirit, our highest Self that would simultaneously transcend every possible object of knowledge beyond the Causally-defined, Subtly-defined and Grossly-defined parameters of contingency.

A (Partial) Defense of AQAL Contingency

A (Partial) Defense of AQAL Contingency
by Chris Dierkes

According to Wilber, when Western Europe entered into the rational-modern stage, what we term The Enlightenment (itself a contingent enterprise), The West (contingently) chose to deny Spirit as a truth procedure, thereby repressing Spirit and sending Spirit underground, only to have it re-surface in the truth procedure of Science, creating a spiritually-charged Science (now scientism as an ideology). According to Wilber, this modern spiritually- supercharged Science proceeded to take over (“colonize”) the realms of Arts and Morals, leaving what Wilber terms flatland (or really scientistic-land). The world became dominated by the ideology of the market (“The Science of Economics”).

Now that account undoubtedly has a heavy idealistic flair (again recalling idealism does not mean optimism here but causality via consciousness). As per Daniel Anderson's writings, one can reject idealism wholesale in favor of materialism. As such, one would therefore (like Daniel has) criticize Wilber's narrative philosophical reconstruction on historical materialist grounds against Wilber's more idealistic position. I'm not a historical materialist, but I appreciate the consistency of that criticism nonetheless.

In contrast I find the notion of Michael's critique of Wilber's view as having a teleological necessity to be ultimately unfair to Wilber's actual work, as shown above. Again one may not accept his presuppositions of levels, the quadrants (especially including consciousness as a fundamental dimension of existence), but contingency is radically built into his philosophy. Most especially so in his (so-called Wilber-5), post-metaphysical work.

Read More Here: Beams and Struts

Integral Pluralism and Pattern Dynamics

Integral Pluralism and PatternDynamics™

By Tim Winton

I’ve just had an initial read of Sean Esbjörn-Hargens’s (2010) most recent article, “An Ontology of Climate Change”, due out in the next (Spring 2010) edition of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. I say initial read because I’m going to have to go over this more than a few times to take it all in. My blog post here is largely the process of unpacking Sean’s article, coming to terms with its implications for the field of Integral Theory and Praxis, and working through the relationship of my own work in Integral Theory and Integral Sustainability to the emergent space he has opened up.

There are some big theoretical moves enacted in this article- not the least of which is to bring the idea of “enactment” itself front and centre in integral discourse. To enact enactment, as it were. Sean also makes explicit, the hereto only weakly implied idea of Integral Ontological Pluralism (IOP) and connects it to the only slightly more strongly implied concept on Integral Epistemological Pluralism (IEP) through the only fully explicit pluralism currently widely articulated in Integral Theory, Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP). This is the familiar—at least to Integral Ecology geeks like me—who (epistemology) is enacting, how (methodology) are they enacting, and what (ontology) are they enacting format from Sean and Michael Zimmerman’s (2009) recent book, “Integral Ecology”.

Sean introduces this triad of pluralisms as explicitly included in “Integral Pluralism”, and with that signifier brings forth a meta-perspective on Integral itself. This is big move number one: in fact this is huge and, I think, hugely exciting— not just for its chutzpah (and I mean that in a most integral sense of the word)—but also for its practical usefulness in meeting the challenges of a complex world. Sean illustrates this through a chart showing how Integral Pluralism allows us to identify the multiple (but overlapping) objects called “climate change”.

Ontological pluralism brings to awareness the fact that when we are talking about climate change, we are not all of us talking about the same thing, even if we are not entirely talking about different things. That’s the “overlapping” bit- not just one thing, but not so many or so completely unrelated to an underlying “reality” that they are completely fragmented. I should say here that Sean does not limit Integral Pluralism to the above-mentioned three pluralisms, and this opens up a host of other possibilities for inclusion within the purview of an Integral meta-perspective. For instance, by the end of the article Sean has added Integral Theoretical Pluralism to the mix.

Now, along with multiple perspectives and multiple methodologies we recognize multiple ontologies, allowing us to multiply Integral comprehensiveness and inclusion by some number of factors. And, through that increased comprehensiveness, enact a more sophisticated view and response to the challenges we face. Sean uses some illuminating graphics to demonstrate Modern, Postmodern and Integral approaches to ontology that I found particularly interesting- especially in their relationship to my own graphically intense Integral offering called PatternDynamics™. (See Appendix 1) Before we get to that though, we need to check out big move number two, Integral Enactment Theory.

Read More: Here

Integral with the Planet

Brian Swimme on the Task of the Future:

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100 Incredible Lectures

100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists
By Sarah Russel
Unless you’re enrolled at a top university or are an elite member of the science and engineering inner circle, you’re probably left out of most of the exciting research explored by the world’s greatest scientists. But thanks to the Internet, and our list of 100 incredible lectures, you’ve now got access to the cutting edge theories and projects that are changing the world.

Read More: Here

Here are some our favorties:

Richard Dawkins on our "queer" universe: Listen to this talk from biologist Richard
Dawkins to consider the strangeness of our universe, and how there are so many
things out there we can’t comprehend.

Kary Mullis on what scientists do: Biochemist Kary Mullis references the 17th century as he talks about the nature of discovery and experimentation.

Lee Smolin on science and democracy: Physicist Lee Smolin discusses how democratic (or not) the scientific community it.

A Passion for Discovery: Peter Freund of the University of Chicago considers the
entanglement of physics experiments and their effect on the behavior of
scientists.

A New Age of Exploration: From Earth to Mars: This video isn’t just about space exploration: it’s about the new age of experimentation and research.

A New Kind of Science – Stephen Wolfram: Stephen Wolfram’s talk A New Kind of Science, credits simple computer experiments with challenging him to look at research in a new way.

WTC Lecture – collapse of WTC Buildings: Steven E. Jones discusses the collapse of the World Trade Towers from a physics perspective.

Machine Learning: Discover how machines "learn" due to statistical patterns, learning theory, adaptive control and more.

The Second Law and Energy: Listen to Steven Chu’s talk about thermodynamics.

Molecular Biology: Macromolecular Synthesis and Cellular Function: Qiang Zhou from Berkeley discusses new findings in DNA research.

Evolution of the Human Species: The discussion about evolution is still active. This lecture considers evolution from genetic and fossil records.

Craig Venter on DNA and the sea: Biodiversity and genomics scientist Craig Venter
talks about starting to writing the genetic code instead of just reading it.

How Bacteria Cause Disease: Warren Levinson explains how bacteria are transmitted.

The Origin of the Human Mind: Insights from Brain Imaging and
Evolution: Find out how the human mind continues to evolve.

Biological Principles of Swarm Intelligence: Guy Theraulaz discusses animal psychology and swarm intelligence.

Psychology, Sex and Evolution: This lecture combines psychology and
biology to find an answer to how preoccupied we are with sex.

Dynamics on and of Biological Networks: Case Studies on the Machinery of Life: Stefan Bornholdt discusses molecular networks in this lecture.

The Physical World: Topics in these lectures from The Open University include
quantum physics, Einstein, helicopter flight and more.

The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy: Nobel Prize-winning Charles H. Townes talks about what’s next in terms of deep galaxy exploration.

What is the simplest quantum field theory?: In this lecture, Freddy Cachazo brings forth ideas of simpler quantum field theories.

Stephen Hawking asks big questions about the universe: Stephen Hawking asks questions about the beginnings of the universe, where humans came from and more.

The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether and the Unification of Force: Anticipating a New Golden Age: Frank Wilczek introduces listeners to his new physics theory.

The Second Law and Cosmology: Max Tegmark asks questions about entropy, temperature and equilibrium when studying the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

David Deutsch on our place in the cosmos: Scientist David Deutsch urges the greater scientific community to seriously consider global warming.

Planet Water: Complexity and Organization in Earth Systems: Rafael Bras is credited with launching the science of hydrology and discusses water complexity here.

E.O. Wilson on saving life on Earth: Biologist E.O. Wilson entreats society to become more educated on natural life on Earth.

The U.S. Energy Crisis and the Role of New Nuclear Plants: Thomas A. Christopher considers the effects of nuclear plants on the energy and environmental crises.

CO2 beyond tomorrow: a fundamental approach: This panel featuring Helmut List aims to predict future CO2 emissions effects.

In Antarctica: The Global Warming: Sebastian Copeland explains how Antarctica is a microcosm for what will happen to the rest of the world due to global warming.

Climate change from the scientific point of view: Listen to a scientist’s view of what’s
going on in the development in climate change.

Saul Griffith on everyday inventions: Listen to inventor Saul Griffith discuss the importance and elegance of designing everyday materials.

Ray Kurzweil on how technology will transform us: Ray Kurzweil introduces the idea of a future populated with nanobots.

Technology and Social Responsibility: Larry Page and Sergey Brin hold technology projects, researchers and companies to a higher standard in this lecture.

Living with Catastrophic Terrorism: Can Science and Technology Make the U.S. Safer?: Lewis M. Branscomb is actually a public policy professor and co-chair at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, but this lecture takes on a critical debate about the importance of science and technology in government.

Juan Enriquez shares mindboggling science: Juan Enriquez explains how forward
thinking and science are going to pull us out of any crises or disasters.

Craig Venter is on the verge of creating synthetic life: Discover how synthetic
chromosomes may be in the future.

To upgrade is human: How can technology help human evolution? Gregory Stock
considers customized human babies and the future of adoption.

Helen Fisher studies the brain in love: If you’ve ever wondered about the physical
changes that the brain goes through when you’re in love, watch this lecture.

Science Education in the 21st Century: Using the Tools of Science to Teach Science:
Dr. Carl Wierman is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who comments on the future of science education.

Probability for Life Science: This mix of math and life science covers probability and beyond.

Psychology in Human-Computer Interaction: David Kieras considers human-computer interaction in this talk.

Renaissance Physicists: Steven Weinberg isn’t too optimistic about the future of science and discusses the characteristics that define a truly ambitious scientist.

Enjoy!

The Dark Side of the Sacred

The Dark Side of the Sacred
by Miriam Greenspan

Emotions live in the body. It is not enough simply to talk about them, to be a talking head. We need to focus our attention on emotions where they live. This willingness to be present allows the emotion to begin to shift of its own accord. An alchemy starts to happen — a process of transmutation from something hard and leaden to something precious and powerful, like gold.

This is a chaotic, nonlinear process, but I think it requires three basic skills: attending to, befriending, and surrendering to emotions in the body. Paying attention to or attending to our emotions is not the same as endless navel gazing and second-guessing ourselves. It is mindfulness of the body, an ability to listen to the body’s emotional language without judgment or suppression.

Befriending follows from focusing our attention and takes it a step further: it involves building our tolerance for distressing emotions. When I was giving birth to my first child, my midwife said something that has stood me in good stead ever since: “When you feel the contraction coming and you want to back away from it, move toward it instead.” The feeling in the body that we want to run away from — that’s precisely what we need to stay with. A simple way to do this is to locate the emotion in the body and breathe through it, without trying to change or end it.

The third skill, surrendering, is the spiritual part of this process. Surrendering to suffering is usually the last thing we want to do, but surrender is what brings the unexpected gifts of wisdom, compassion, and courage. Surrendering is about saying yes when we want to say no — the yes of acceptance. This is what really allows the alchemy to happen. We don’t “let go” of emotions; we let go of ego, and the emotions then let go themselves. This is “emotional flow.” When we let the dark emotions flow, something unexpected and unpredictable often occurs. Consciously experienced, the energy of these emotions flows toward healing and harmony. I’ve found that unimpeded grief transforms itself into heightened gratitude; that consciously experiencing fear expands our ability to feel joy; and that being mindful of despair — really entering into the dark night of the soul with the light of awareness — renews and deepens our faith.

MIRIAM GREENSPAN is the author of Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair. Miriam teaches on the alchemy of the dark emotions: a transformational process by which grief becomes gratitude, fear turns to joy, and despair opens a doorway to a more resilient life. Learn more about her work: Here – Also read a conversation between Miriam and a Jungian analyst here: Through A Glass Darkly .

Alan Watts - Death

More Here: Alan Watts

The Extended Mind

The Extended Mind

By Andy Clark & David Chalmers

Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? The question invites two standard replies. Some accept the demarcations of skin and skull, and say that what is outside the body is outside the mind. Others are impressed by arguments suggesting that the meaning of our words "just ain't in the head", and hold that this externalism about meaning carries over into an externalism about mind. We propose to pursue a third position. We advocate a very different sort of externalism: an active externalism, based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes...

While some mental states, such as experiences, may be determined internally, there are other cases in which external factors make a significant contribution. In particular, we will argue that beliefs can be constituted partly by features of the environment, when those features play the right sort of role in driving cognitive processes. If so, the mind extends into the world.

First, consider a normal case of belief embedded in memory. Inga hears from a friend that there is an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and decides to go see it. She thinks for a moment and recalls that the museum is on 53rd Street, so she walks to 53rd Street and goes into the museum. It seems clear that Inga believes that the museum is on 53rd Street, and that she believed this even before she consulted her memory. It was not previously an occurrent belief, but then neither are most of our beliefs. The belief was sitting somewhere in memory, waiting to be accessed.

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Integral Sociocultural Studies and Cultural Evolution

Towards a more integrative approach to the analysis of collective development and the possibility of an Integral egalitarianism.

By Mark Edwards

What I hope to show in the following [essay] is that the basic principles of Integral philosophy itself, when applied consistently to the issue of sociocultural evolution, raise some serious concerns regarding the assessment and ranking of cultures on global unidimensional scales of development, irrespective of how universal or cross-culturally valid those scales may be. I maintain that, if we apply the same developmental logic that Wilber has proposed for individual growth to the collective domains, then Integral philosophy should regard global assessment and ranking practices as invalid and unnecessary in many instances.

In addition to this, because Integral philosophy actually incorporates the valid perspectives of the transpersonal philosophies and Nondual revelations, it should be a voice for a type of Kosmic egalitarianism which, according to many scriptures and sacred teachings, has absolutely no place for the grading of evolutionary attainment, whether that be for individuals, cultures, or other collective forms.

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Cultural Psychology of the Self

Cultural Psychology of the Self
by William Harryman

Way back in my years as an undergraduate psych student, we were required to take a class called social psychology. At the time (1989 or so), this was the only field that I knew about that attempted to look at how social and cultural factors impacted and shaped human consciousness. Although it was only one class, it left a lasting impact in that since then I have tended to see human beings as embedded consciousnesses in physical and cultural contexts.

All of this is one of the many reasons integral psychology made a lot of sense to me when I first read about in Ken Wilber's early books (Up From Eden) and then in Integral Psychology itself.

In the past 10-20 years, there has a arisen a new field of psychology that borrows from evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, social psychology, and many other fields - Cultural Psychology.

One of the things I really like about this model, at least as exemplified in Cultural Psychology of the Self: Place, Morality and Art in Human Worlds by Ciaran Benson, is that he proposes that mind or Self is a construct built on the interaction of physiology and culture - Self is not separate from place, time, and interactions with other human beings.

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Chalmers on Consciousness

Consciousness and its Place in Nature

By David Chalmers

Consciousness fits uneasily into our conception of the natural world. On the most common conception of nature, the natural world is the physical world. But on the most common conception of consciousness, it is not easy to see how it could be part of the physical world. So it seems that to find a place for consciousness within the natural order, we must either revise our conception of consciousness, or revise our conception of nature.

In twentieth-century philosophy, this dilemma is posed most acutely in C. D. Broad's The Mind and its Place in Nature. The phenomena of mind, for Broad, are the phenomena of consciousness. The central problem is that of locating mind with respect to the physical world. Broad's exhaustive discussion of the problem culminates in a taxonomy of seventeen different views of the mental-physical relation. On Broad's taxonomy, a view might see the mental as nonexistent ("delusive"), as reducible, as emergent, or as a basic property of a substance (a "differentiating" attribute). The physical might be seen in one of the same four ways. (The seventeenth entry arises from Broad's division of the substance/substance view according to whether one substance or two is involved.)

At the end, three views are left standing: those on which mentality is an emergent characteristic of either a physical substance or a neutral substance, where in the latter case, the physical might be either emergent or delusive.

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Conspiracy Theorists Caught Cherry Picking Again

Climate deniers have been making a lot of noise about a set of stolen emails from one of the world's leading climate centers, The Universtiy of East Anglia.

The spin they're putting out is that the emails reveal what they always suspected, an evil global conspiracy. In the short video below a climate scientist debunks the so-called debunkers. But i'm sure the denialists and conspiracy will cherry-pick this as well.



From the director of the film below:

Now that the conspiracy theorists have blown off steam, it's time for a more sober analysis of those e-mails and what they mean. I can't go through all of them, there are far too many, and . So I've taken the two that seem to be getting conspiracy theorists most worked up -- Phil Jones's e-mail about "Mike's Nature trick" and Kevin Trenberth's e-mail about a "travesty." I'm glad to see that skeptic websites that cover the science understand what these e-mails actually mean. As you'll see, very few commentators who jumped on the conspiracy bandwagon even before reading the e-mails managed to get it right.

Colin McGinn on New Mysterianism

Colin McGinn is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. McGinn has also held major teaching positions at Oxford University and Rutgers University. Although McGinn has written dozens of articles in philosophical logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, he is best known for his work in the philosophy of mind.

Below is an interview with McGinn about competing theories of mind:

Encounters With Being and Event

Deleuze’s Encounter With Whitehead

By Steven Shaviro

In a short chapter of The Fold (1993) that constitutes his only extended discussion of Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze praises Whitehead for asking the question, “What Is an Event?” (76). Whitehead’s Process and Reality (1929/1978) marks only the third time – after the Stoics and Leibniz – that events move to the center of philosophical thought. Deleuze wrote less about Whitehead than he did about the other figures in his philosophical counter-canon: Lucretius, the Stoics, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Foucault.

But Whitehead is arguably as important to Deleuze as any of these other thinkers. It is only today, in the wake of Isabelle Stengers’ great book Penser avec Whitehead (2002), that it has become possible, for the first time, to measure the full extent of Deleuze’s encounter with Whitehead. My work here is deeply indebted to Stengers, as well as to James Williams (2005) and to Keith Robinson (2006), both of whom have written illuminatingly about Whitehead and Deleuze.

“What is an event?” is, of course, a quintessentially Deleuzian question. And Whitehead marks an important turning-point in the history of philosophy because he affirms that, in fact, everything is an event. The world, he says, is made of events, and nothing but events: happenings rather than things, verbs rather than nouns, processes rather than substances. Becoming is the deepest dimension of Being.

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