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laodan

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laodan is a guy from Milford, Pennsylvania, USA

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THE WAY THINGS ARE: The meaning of life is to be found in thinking about what is reality and the beauty of reality is to be found in our DNA's memorization of all forms that have been successfully retained along the four billion years of evolution of the principle of life on Gaia our earth. In the end what I mean to say is that beauty is something objective and what we call ugliness is then simply our unconscientious feel of something evolution did not retain.
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  • Singularity Summit 2007 | The Singularity Institute for...

    Rated Sep 21 2007 • 5 reviews • ai, ideas, reality, archive, change, consciousness • singinst.org

    Singularity Summit 2007 audio
    via KurzweilAi.net, in The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

    Audio for all talks and panel discussions at the recent Singularity Summit 2007 is now available free online and via iTunes podcast.

    Singularity Summit 2007 audio

    What they say about what's coming along our way... a great archive.




    9,209 views
    Singularity Summit 2007 | The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

  • How to Save the World

    Rated May 30 2006 • 1 review • ideas, worldviews • salon.com




    The Challenge of Building a Community
    What was in the past belongs to the past. There is just no point of going back. When societies change it is the result of the interaction between all the factors at work within those changing societies. It is never the will of man that brings fundamental societal change. That does not mean that individuals and groups can do nothing. They can indeed have a dream and surf it on the waves of the complexities of reality...
    in How to save the world by Dave Pollaerd
    """ We're starting to discover that the only effective way to make the world better is from the bottom up -- by creating or evolving self-sufficient communities. As we saw in New Orleans, and as we see with failed states and failed cities everywhere, top-down political and economic solutions don't work; when they change anything at all, they seem to make matters worse.
    But creating community is not easy. In Creating a Life Together Diana Leafe Christian describes some of the challenges of intentional communities -- finding members, creating honest consensus, resolving disputes, finding the right place to live, keeping it sustainable. This is tough work, and most intentional communities that do work are, well, rather pathetically small. It almost seems as if, as soon as you put more than a certain number of people into one interdependent group, you need hierarchy to keep things in order. Why might this be?
    ... In gatherer-hunter communities, there was lots of space for community members to get away from each other temporarily, and lots of space between communities. Evidence suggests that such communities or clans consisted of about 150 individuals (depending on the ecosystem) which operated via a 'fission/fusion' social system, where the group continually split up into smaller, constantly changing (likely to vary and optimize individual learning) 'foraging parties' or bands of 30-50, and then re-formed as a cohesive group. The theory is that 150 is the maximum number of individuals you can get to know well enough for meaningful social interaction, and beyond that the group starts to splinter into a more self-manageable size.
    ... Today we find ourselves born into societies that have no band, clan, or tribal cohesion. Instead, at the micro-level, we have substituted the nuclear family, much smaller than a band and too small to comprise a self-sufficient functional unit. And at the macro-level, we have substituted the state and corporation, hierarchical and multi-tiered constructs much larger than a tribe, and too large to function as an integral unit."""

    URL: The Challenge of Building a Community



    40 views
    How to Save the World

  • Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current...

    Rated May 03 2006 • 1 review • philosophy, politics, ideas • atimes.com


    A new weapon in the "war of ideas".
    in AsiaTimes by Ehsan Ahrari
    """ A global war of ideas is set to begin and Anglo-American dominance of international TV news about to end. With Al-Jazeera about to launch English international news coverage, and a global Islamic channel likely to follow, the US and Britain will have to compete hard to promote their version of reality and truth. """"

    URL: A new weapon in the "war of ideas".


    19 views
    Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

  • "The Great Conservative Crackup" by Jacob Heilbrunn

    Rated May 03 2006 • 1 review • philosophy, politics, ideas • washingtonmonthly.com


    The great conservative crackup
    Extremes are followed by their demise. This is one of the general principles of the working of reality. The "crackup" of the neo-cons' ideology should thus not come as a surprise. But what is really intriguing is the absence of ideas and ideals on the other side... There is a Chinese proverb that says something like: "an extreme is always defeated by the rising of its opposite, that's how harmony is re-emerging as the middle-ground". Where is the opposite of the neo-cons? Absent it seems! Could it be that the neo-cons are not by any means the extreme of the right and that, as such, it still has to emerge? I hope I'm wrong on this one....
    via arts&letters, in The Washington MOnthly by Jacob Heilbrunn
    """ This is all the more ironic since liberals have for several years been bemoaning their own lack of ideas and looking to the conservative movement's rise for inspiration. Who would have thought that, at the peak of the conservative movement's political success, its founding fathers would recoil from the Frankenstein's monster they created and end up as troubled heretics? """

    URL: The great conservative crackup


    12 views

  • Error Occurred While Processing Request

    Rated Mar 15 2006 • 1 review • philosophy, ideas • the-american-interest.com


    Levy / Fukuyama on Vegas
    Take some time for this good discussion you'll not regret it.
    via Urban Hermit in Metafilter in THe American Interest :
     """ Bernard-Henri Levy dukes it out with Francis Fukuyama over American virtues and vices, neoconservatives, religion, the future of American muscular internationalism, and the role of intellectuals in a free society. """

    URL: near the end of history on the edge of the desert?

    57 views
    Error Occurred While Processing Request

  • The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World

    Rated Jan 20 2006 • 4 reviews • politics, ideas, worldviews, postmodern • worldtrans.org

    In this postmodern world, cultural conflicts are becoming more dangerous than any time in history. A new model of coexistence is needed, based on man's transcending himself. By Vaclav Havel
    519 views
    The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World

  • Philosophy Collection

    Rated Nov 08 2005 • 11 reviews • philosophy, ideas • eserver.org

    Collection of canonical philosophic texts and links to scholarly philosophic organizations.
    6,117 views
    Philosophy Collection

  • Alchemical and hermetic emblems 1-20

    Rated Nov 08 2005 • 12 reviews • fine arts, images, ideas • levity.com

    Over 100 megabytes online of information on alchemy in all its facets. Divided into over 1300 sections and providing tens of thousands of pages of text, over 2000 images, over 200 complete alchemical texts, extensive bibliographical material on the pri
    37K views
    Alchemical and hermetic emblems 1-20

  • Harry Frankfurts "On Bullshit"

    Rated Nov 05 2005 • 105 reviews • philosophy, ideas • archive.org

    One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.
    191K views
    Harry Frankfurts

  • Postmodernism and Its Critics

    Rated Nov 04 2005 • 50 reviews • philosophy, postmodern, art, ideas, worldviews • ua.edu

    Logically postmodernism literally means â€oeafter modernity. It refers to the incipient or actual dissolution of those social forms associated with modernity"
    122K views
    Postmodernism and Its Critics