The Future

Why does the future matter?





I got an email from one of the Integral operations that seems to be becoming more cult-like (including the creation of an "Integral community", which seems very tribal, almost like a regression to first tier, and an article and video "why Integral people should vote for Obama"). The question asked "why does the future matter?" I was going to write on it yesterday, but I was tired so I saved it for today.



As Ken says “The way you approach the present isn’t just determined by the way you approach the past, but by the way you approach the future. The richer conception of the future you have, the richer your life in the present becomes.” There is also audio that goes with the quote where Ken talks about different schools of futurism. What's really interesting is toward the end, after talking about how quickly technology is advancing, Ken asks the question "what problems do we want to solve first?" Do we want to advance technologically really fast and solve problems with world hunger and environmental degradation, or do we want to advance interiors first? Seeing as how most people's interiors are seriously lagging behind do we really want to have someone at level two or three (communist China or some two-bit dictator) acquiring technology to make nuclear weapons look like toys? Perhaps the imperative is to get the majority of people to a stage that recognises human rights before we develop computers that can enslave humanity or superplagues that can wipe us all out.



I don't know if Ken (or the Integral "community") would agree, but this seems like a clarion call to me. It rings out like a night watchman "don't let Iran get the bomb!" We are talking about a group of people who believe that the messiah won't come until they kill all the Jews; a group of people who believe dying in the cause of global domination is a one way ticket to a paradise filled with hookers. This is a group of people who tore down neighborhoods inside Tehran to make processional boulivards so when the messiah comes in their lifetimes his multitude of chariots could have enough room. The Iranian people have come on hands and knees three times begging US aid and support to overthrow the Mullahs and three times the US flipped them off while hundreds were murdered in the streets. These are dangerous, evil people and we cannot let them have control of the future. It is better to decapitate their regime now than wait for the Third World War after they get nukes.



At the same time I am reminded to seek guidance from A Course in Miracles. These are two passages from the urtext*:

Your instability and his weakness have resulted from bad karmic choices, and your relationship NOW is crucial for the future. (36)

[Edgar Cayce] did not realize that it is only what [the mind] is building NOW the really creates the future. The past, in itself, does not have the ability to do this. Whenever we move from one instant to the next, the previous one no longer exists. (78)

What we do now, our thoughts and actions, is what creates the future. As the original email asked "what future we are imagining for ourselves, for the integral movement, and for the impact of the integral vision on our shared future?" The future we imagine is the future we will act upon. The future is a reflection of the choices we make now, and we will not be able to escape the consequences of those choices.



So, what future are we imagining for ourselves and the integral movement? Anyone who is familiar with The Urban Mystic knows what I foresee for the future. I predicted the "Arab Spring," the NDAA and NDRP, and the behavioural modification viruses. So far all the predictions I made in 7 Days have come true, and there are only two left:



1. False flag terror attack on US soil. The Department of Homeland Security infects small government activists with the brain eating virus at the New Year's celebration in NYC to make them look like terrorists. The idea is to get the public to demand the government to crack down on small government people so it can take over all of our liberties. This event has not happened yet. ETA: 31 December 2012.



2. US military stages coup d'eta. The word gets out that the attack in NYC was staged by DHS, not a terror group, and in response factions in the US military loyal to their oath to uphold the Constitution and defend the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic attempt to decapitate the US government to root out the corruption once and for all. This event has not happened yet. ETA: February 2013.



I'm not happy that viruses that mimic the effects of antipsychotic drugs are really being considered (or already exist), or that the President has given himself the authority to execute any American citizen without due process simply by saying that person is a "terrorist." I don't want a military coup, but unfortunately that is the future I am invisioning. Let's face it, the world has really gone downhill fast since 9/11 (the eleventh anniversary is tomorrow) and I can't see a way out unless drastic measures are taken right away. We have to get the statists out of office and restore the authority of the Constitution as invisioned by the founders. If past is prelude, the future ain't looking too bright.



What am I foreseeing regarding Integral? Well, it's leaders are already pretty far left and they are largely endorsing the biggest statist in US history for president (someone whom I said in 2008 would be like four more terms of Bush when people cried McCain would be four more years of Bush. I was right.). Will more people reach second tier in the year ahead? Possibly. There's already been major forces stirring in the American psyche with the big successes of the Tea Party in 2010 and the less specacular results of the Occupy Wallstreet folks (I said they should have occupied Washington instead), as well as the huge groundswell in Ron Paul supporters, with even Mitt Romney saying he wants to audit the Fed due to overwhelming pressure from the Dr. Paul crowd. Things could start looking up in 2013, if we do what is needed to get America on track (by first not reelecting Obama, then forcing Romney to act more like Ron Paul), we could help the Iranian people (who are overwhelmingly pro-US and pro-West) get out from the yoke of their oppressive medieval leaders with a truly democratic Iranian Spring in 2013 (unlike the Arab Spring, that saw the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and now Syria).



What am I foreseeing for myself? That is none of your business.



Always love.









 *The unedited, original version of A Course in Miracles as released on the Internet. The Circle of Atonement says ""A Course in Miracles Urtext Manuscripts" is a printed version of the Urtext, the original typescript that was typed by Bill Thetford from Helen Schucman dictating her notes to him. It includes approximately 50,000 words that are not included in the familiar FIP version. The Urtext includes extensive discussions of the Bible, sex, possession, Freud and other topics which were edited out of other editions. There are over 2,400 footnotes to Bible references and variant ACIM readings."

The War Against Boys

Christina Hoff Sommers discusses the war against boys, feminism, and
gender equity at this University of Pennsylvania Law School event. I should note I have talked about this issue myself many times.


Runs 33 minutes.

Neil Armstrong In Memoriam

Neil Armstrong, Korean War veteran, test pilot, first man to walk on the Moon, has died from complications due to heart surgery. He was 82.


As the first of only twelve men to step foot on the Moon, Armstrong is a member of the most prestigeous group of humans in history. He lived his post-Apollo years semi-retired from public life, rarely granting interviews.


One of our greatest heroes, Neil Armstrong will dearly be missed.




Video of that one small step




CNN Biography of Armstrong

Robert Spencer Exposes CAIR

Robert Spencer exposes the connections between Islamist propaganda group CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) and major terrorist organizations (Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc.), and their designs on making any critical analysis of Islamic groups or people(including his speech and my synopsis) "hate speech" and illegal under United Nations law, in effect making the entire non-Muslim world dhimmi living under sharia law.



runs 28 minutes.

A Question About The Quran II

Here is the first part in this series, to refresh your memory.


The video runs 15 minutes. Below is my synopsis.




In 1972 a German scholar Gerd R. Puin was asked to investigate some manuscript fragments discovered in Sana'a, Yemen. What he found was fragments of the oldest Quran in existence. The text shows evidence of having been altered, with verses changed and rearranged, and missing diacritical marks permitting the existing words and verses to have a great many different meanings, not the one orthodox meaning found in the Quran today.


Another scholar, writing under the name Christoph Luxenberg, analysed the text of the Quran and discovered a great many loan words and passages that do not make sense in Arabic but make perfect sense when read in Syrio-Aramaic, the dominant language in Western Arabia and the Levant when the Quran was first written.


Together their work suggests that, far from being a single, monolithic text that has existed in its present form for over a thousand years, the Quran has, in fact, gone through revisions and significant alterations in meaning. The Quran may also have been pieced together over several generations from many different texts and may not have existed in its present form until long after Muhammad died.


We may never know the true origins of the text of the Quran (as with virtually any book from antiquity), but now people are asking questions. People are (slowly) giving the Quran the same treatment as the Bible and the Vedas and are performing critical scholarship of the text no one dare question.

The Truth About The Crusades with Robert Spencer

Dispells the myths that the Islamic empire was tolerant and multicultural and that the crusaders were proto-imperialistic evil bloodthirsty monsters who descended like a plague on the peace-loving Muslims (like some Monty Python documentaries on the subject will tell you).



Roughly 48 minutes.

Bugs Stay Bugs

Has anyone ever asked you, "If humans evolved from monkeys, then why do we still have monkeys?" Or maybe you have encountered this one: "If evolution happens, then why don't we ever see new species?" Such question are often asked by people who have no understanding of evolutionary processes and who may not even believe that such processes exist. The fact that anyone today, given the overwhelming evidence for biological evolution, would ask such questions is a depressing reflection of the poor quality of biological education in the United States.

[Introduction to Physical Anthropology, Tenth Edition, page 23]


My problems with the book are legion, but here's an interesting one relevant to this paragraph. The genus Homo appeared with Homo habilis, the oldest fossil of which, KNM ER 1813, is about 1.9 million years old. That means the genus Homo has been around for about 82,600 generations, during which time we went from this:




to this:


That's a significant change, and humans evolve slow, but bacteria evolve quickly (supposedly), which is why we see all this antibiotic resistance springing up (actually, those "super bugs" can only exist in modern super clean settings like hospitals; when put in a neutral environment they are easily outcompeted by their non-drug resistant counterparts).

Richard Lenski at Michigan State ran his famous long-term E. coli experiment that got him a spot at the National Academy of Sciences. In that time since the experiment started and his big discovery in 2008 his germs lived through 31,500 generations, not quite half the time it took to turn chimp-man into modern humans. E. coli is missing an enzyme called citrate permease, which would allow them to transport citrate trough their cell membrane in the presence of oxygen. The development of a gene, Cit+, necessary to transport citrate required the mutation seen at generation 31,500 and another mutation at generation 20,000. To this day (at least as of 2011) Lenski has not been specific about his Cit+ cells (even defensive and condescending when asked), but another study showed the existence of mutant E. coli that could perform the same trick did so by overexpression of an existing gene that allowed them to transport citrate in anaerobic conditions (citT). If Lenski's Cit+ cells are like the citT cells, then the only change was in the rate of gene expression, not the appearance of anything new.

In the same time it took Lenski's E. coli to (probably) alter the expression rate of a preexisting gene and develop the ability to digest citrate in aerobic coditions, under circumstances set up to pressure them to develop this change and food was given to them, Homo erectus had appeared and Homo habilis was gone. Erectus was significantly larger, had nearly doubled brain size, reduced sexual dimorphism, invented fire, likely had the ability for some form of speech, lived in the first hunter-gatherer societies, and spread out over most of Afro-Eurasia, and all under natural conditions, where there existed real competition, predators, and the reality of having to work for food.

Why don't we ever see new species then? We watch E. coli for now 50,000 generations under ideal conditions and essentially nothing happened, yet somehow there was a quantum leap in human evolution that no one was around to see. My question, then, is, if speciation happens why does it only happen when no one is looking? Better yet, why is speciation an experiment that can't be replicated?




ADDENDUM


Michael Behe paper (The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 85, No. 4, December 2010) critiquing Lenski's experiment.



Evolution News article on the Lenski experiment.