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The link to Americ's SoundCloud (It's wonderful to hear his voice)

https://soundcloud.com/americ

Friday, March 15, 2024

Being a Philosopher-at-Large

From time to time, I feel that I'm really a "philosopher-at-large". It's one of my jobs in this life. I reflect on things. I am not a writer, but more a speaker. That's why I use audio so much. That which appears real to me is often unspeakable and un-writable. The best I can do is sing or write a spontaneous poem. So here I am - reflecting on myself, in public, about this occupation of philosopher-at-large. Thankful for so many people who keep visiting this philosopher-at-large blog over all these years. You keep me going.

Time Monster


In the end, we get swallowed up by the time monster. Easy to think that time is not real. Time is personified by clocks, chimes, bell towers, time stamps, a side bar on computer screens, and much more. The price of life is time. But beyond time is eternity. People in jail are said to be "serving time". The events and stages between conception and death are the "story of our lives". Stories happen in time, like movies and novels. Life implies death; death implies life.

Monday, February 19, 2024

Stardust and lightening

We are stardust; we are lightning. --Joni Mitchell*

When I was a child in the first and second grade, a little girl named Sherry would play with me. She was an outcast. She had wild unkempt golden hair, and talked very softly. Other kids made fun of me for even talking with her. One day she brought a little book with a picture of a star. She said, “We come from there.”
We come from the stars, the very substance of our bodies is stardust condensed from the heavens. We are in the heavens already; someone else on some other star system could be looking our way. We are sparks from a central fire, a whole universe, forged by the power of that fire.

* From her song, “Woodstock

Eternity’s Carpet


Time …
always lost
moment to moment
facing past
turning into
no time
hold on,
no way
step into
time
gliding on eternity’s carpet

~americ





Monday, January 15, 2024

The link to Americ's SoundCloud (It's wonderful to hear his voice)

https://soundcloud.com/americ

Walt Whitman - "Go Directly to the Creation" - Americ and Walts' Prediction for our future


Wonderful lines from Walt Whitman's preface to his 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass:

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . . The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured. . . . others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation.

"Time Poverty" Published in 2016 - Reposted now in 2024...per usual you were right Americ.

 We live in a technological world, where every eighteen months the power of computers doubles. But at the same time we live in a cultural world where expectations rise to meet the expanding possibilities of technology. So that as fast as we create new ways to save time, we find new desires to chip it away and distract ourselves even more.
If I was a wise man like Lao Tzu, Buddha, Jesus, or Krishna, I would not know, or even understand, what time poverty is. But I am not. I'm just an ordinary human being, with ordinary problems, faced with schedules, deadlines, bank accounts that rise and fall, and there is, all too often, this pressing sense of there not being enough time, not enough time to do all the things that need to be done. I can scramble around with different strategies to manage that time, so that the lists become prioritized, and I'm supposed to know what to do first and next. And yet no matter how much I try to manage that time, new variables, new events, happen continuously to disrupt that.

For me, not being wise, to rise above time is to ignore it for a while, and try to enter the space of what I refer to as eternity. For at all points in time, if I focus deeply enough into this particular single present moment, then I'm arrived, I have arrived, I am exactly where I should be at this particular instant. I'm fully present here, not having to be anywhere else, so that gripping sense of not having enough time fades away into the eternal moment. That is the way time poverty is transcended, by going right into time, through time, into what is timeless.



Friday, December 08, 2023

My Ally is the Force 8/26/16

Thank you Professor. (Haku edit on 12/8/23: We need this more than ever)


Stars and Atoms


We quest for knowledge of stars and atoms, forgetting the knowledge of Life and soul; and, recklessly subduing the earth and each other. It’s time for a new alliance of humans, earth, and cosmos; and humble submission to the Source of all-that-is. 

Stardust

During my first year of elementary school, a little girl named Sherry often met me on the playground. She was an outcast with wild unkempt golden hair who talked in slow whispers. The kids made fun of me for talking with her. One day she brought a little book with a picture of a star. She said, “We come from there.” Yes, the substance of our bodies is stardust condensed from the heavens. We are in the heavens; someone in another solar system could be looking our way.

The First Miracle


The First Miracle is that the universe exists. Second, is that there’s consciousness. Third that there is self-reflective, self-referring awareness. Fourth, that there is cosmic or transcendental consciousness.  

Thursday, September 14, 2023

On Becoming a "Philosopher-at-Large"

A long time ago, I was gifted with a personal rubber stamp imprinted with my name, job title, address and phone number.  The job title was "Philosopher at Large". 

During my high school years, I began to study Philosophy. I took a special elective English class that used readings from an anthology of deeply meaningful texts titled Preface to Philosophy: Book of Readings. It was like "doing science" without equipment, except with our minds and life experiences. It awakened a fire in my mind that lives to this day. My destiny as a "philosopher at large" started unfolding.

I began college assuming I would get a degree in a science such as biology or physics. But it did not go that way. Instead, I graduated with a couple of degrees in philosophy.

It was sad moment, as an undergraduate intending to stay in biology, when I realized it was not my field. I visited the office of the Dean for the school.  He suggested majoring in a field that I found enjoyable and easy. I said it would be philosophy. He said,  "We need more philosophers than doctors and research scientists". He explained that we are creating difficult ethical problems as science and medical technology advances. So, I gladly transferred to philosophy.  A truly appropriate decision. It has lead to a life with many amazing adventures. 

Years upon years spent



Years upon years spent
regaining paradise lost
You and I become
here-now
Home at last


Sunday, August 20, 2023

Old Men

Walking this early morning. Birds singing. I imagined great men turning very old in rest homes - with their minds slow and often confused. Their worldly powers gone. Many just lost. A few shining with the light of love in their eyes. Oh! What a surrender, a giving up - being weak meek and older and dropping away worldly powers and fame. Nothing remaining except treasures stored in the soul. Most will be so poor - with lives spent in achievements. A few learned harmony and wisdom along the way: going into the light with the greatest letting go, in love. May I become so fortunate. True humble greatness.

Stars


Stars are openings of light in the night of life

I had a “girlfriend” in the first grade. She was an outcast like myself. She had golden hair, my hair was dark brown. She always looked dreamy and spaced out. Kids made fun of her. She carried a little book that began with a picture of a star. She said, “We came from there”. Looking back, I now feel that she knew something important.
Indeed, we do come from the stars. The elements that support life where not there at the beginning of the Universe; but had to be “cooked” in the vaults of earlier stars that created heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen. These stars exploded and later new stars came into being that already had these elements build upon. So we come from second, third, and perhaps fourth generation stars. We are star stuff.
We can’t be certain about what happened way back when it all began. The best we can come up is theory and poetry. So we say, “God created …” not really knowing what God is, because it is all beyond our deep understanding. Just go into deep silence and stillness several times a day, to feel for the source of all that is.

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

What sound will the universe make When it dies?


What sound will the universe make
When it dies?
Will it crumble and crack,
Or let out a sigh?

Will it summon tears tragic?
Or at peace with the matter
Sit silent in thought
Or exude cosmic laughter?

How will we know if
The universe bursts?
Are we its sole conscience
Bound to one tiny earth?

These things
These things
The coyote sings
In the deep of the meadow
So lonely for spring

Will we ever know if
There's none left to wonder?
When atoms shake naked
Under skies torn asunder

How will we know when
The sage is withholding?
In the deep of the meadow
A flower unfolding




-Rich Pauloo

Ancient Agora

How do we reconcile all of the events which are going on in the world right now?

Silence. Stillness. Serenity.
It isn't passive. 
It isn't selfish. 
It isn't easy.

Join us?

Send your poems, stories, artwork, articles, ramblings and anything else:

Hakudesu0@gmail.com

We are a community. 
We are always growing together. 
We are always listening.

Technological Singularity (Americ knew what would happen) ChatGPT

Singularity, The. The Techno-Rapture. A black hole in the Extropian worldview whose gravity is so intense that no light can be shed on what lies beyond it.
From "Godling's Glossary" by David Victor de Transend


Vernor Vinge's (Math Department, San Diego State University) classic essay on the Singularity argues for a future global machine “intelligence” that transcends humanity – "the last invention". In 1993, Professor Vinge wrote:
The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur):
  • There may be developed computers that are "awake" and superhumanly intelligent. (To date, there has been much controversy as to whether we can create human equivalence in a machine. But if the answer is "yes, we can", then there is little doubt that beings more intelligent can be constructed shortly thereafter.)
  • Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.
  • Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.
Ray Kurzweil brought discussion of the technological singularity through his book The Singularity is Near. Webcast of Kurzweil and others at MIT in 2006:

http://web.mit.edu/webcast/csail/2006/mit-csail-kurzweil-32123-30nov2006-220k.ram

What is our future? Are we totally wedded to our own creation - computer technology?