September Equinox Channelling

( falconscience )

*

When two opposites meet,

face to face, well, they

stick together, right/

When two opposites meet,

well,

the negative and the positive

cancels each other out;

therefore,

there is

One.

A single, whole

entity.

( peppylicious )

When two opposites are not aligned,

that is

( physicssjsu )

 

the negative and the positive are farthest apart,

well I guess it gets really cold;

I suspect that's when

Ice Ages

occur.

Or something like that.

* *

Imagine it this way:

that we are all

rolling around inside

a giant ball, well, but

it's really like a half ball,

because -- remember the

sphere 

is perfect,

and the only way 

a perfect object

which is a 

sphere

can see its own face

is to break

itself

in half.

( murrayhudson )

and when the half meets

the half 

again

face-on

it fits so perfectly,

( dailymail )

but

in the meantime,

it's rocking 

It feels like 

its going

in circles

because it has to

rock its own

demi-circumference

twice

before it settles back

together again.

( davidasharman ) 

* * *

Imagine that creation was
a perfect sphere breaking
apart
so it could see its own
face, and then
in order
for it
to be
united
again, it would have to
rock back and forth
(do its demi
circumference
twice)
beffore its halves could
meld
together
again
at their widest
points;
in their perfect
shape
for awhile. . .

For
we are born of the compulsion
to have a compulsion
to see what we look like
when we walk
through a door --

the compulsion to break
ourselves in half
and see
is the compulsion
to create,
to see in
the compulsion to duplicate and
replicate is
the very compulsion that
created all
of us.

That's the truth.
(To fully understand
some of this,
read some of my earlier stuff on that
follow the link to representation,
The Fall,
and
The Grid,
always the Grid.)

That's the truth.

* * 8 * *

Let me please explain
the syntax of the previous
sentence ---
hold on tight --
this is the syntax
for a sentence in the Age of the Grid,
when sentences need to be
Understood across Languages.
In the Age of the Grid
SYNTAX
takes more value over actual meanings of words,
because, if we could all agree
on certain SYNTAX PATTERNS,
then we could communicate
Across Languages,
even translate
in real
time---

Let me explain a little further:

Here is a sentence pattern for theAge
of the Grid:
(I'd call it the Definition Pattern):

The first half of the sentence would
be the term or concept you seek to define;
the second half
of the sentence would be
the definition.

The definition --
the second clause
(which by the way is also the dominant clause)
(The first, the term to be defined
would be subordinate,
because
the first element of the sentence would be a term known by all.
It would work as a symbol.
It would need no verb.

) ).

An example:
M&M's: a milk chocolatey mess that melts
in your mouth and not
in your hands.

A perfect definition,
a perfect
proclaimation
of what you're trying
to say to each other.

Yes, this is the syntax
of the soundbite,
the syntax
of the momentary
blink
this
is the syntax of the next
generation.

(second rule for the Definition Pattern):

The first (subordinate)
clause
is often an internationally known symbol,
like Ford, McDonalds,
or
M&M's

(centerfornewmedia )

That symbol goes in the first part of the message.

The second part of the sentence
summarizes the new message --
ie: the argument --
you want to deliver
about the first,
well-known symbol.
Thus, even as this is a definition,
it is also an argument
for a new way of looking at things.

(Advertising has taught us, too,
that these arguments change
as the needs of socity
change:



It's just the way of the world.)


~~~~mmmmmmm~~~~

A shortened, elliptical version of this Definition Pattern
is the Direct Assault Pattern,
where you don't even bother
with the
second,
dominant,
clause of explanation.
In the
DAP,
you simply take that
internationally known symbol
and mark whatever message you want
to make about it
right over its face:

(worldkarma)

This is a very direct
and
unfortunately often
brutal
way to deliver
a message.

And its a syntax that is already in use
for much of the rest
of the world.

Consider this:

( killercoke )

It's only America that hasn't figured out
that the new language
of the new Century
is already taken
root, is
already making meaning
and changing minds.
And you'd think that America would
have figured out
and learned to communicate
more tactfully,
after receiving the kind of message
they did
on a rather ill-fated September Day
some Nine Years Ago.

Attacking one's central imagery
clearly expresses
what the other culture
thinks
of that central imagery.

( cargolaw )




Yes,
we have to protect ourselves,
but
we don't have to kill them all.
They are
our brothers
They are
the lover
we need
when no one else understands
US.
They are our
polar opposites, the ones
we don't tell
the rest of our friends
we love.
They are our
alcoholic sisters,
bisexual brothers,
paranoic mothers,
all the nutty ones
the ones
the human race has shunned,
the ones we love.

( accidentalmysteries )

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So we have a choice
as the rocking sphere
swings inward
towards its magnetic
center:

a) to love the Other,
all of the
Others
who we really love
already
or b) to shun
them
completely,
even knowing
that the other
will always
be other and
honestly be
other
for US,
we who need them
to hold us together
so we might be
one.

(Astronomy Picture of the Day

2002Nov25 )

Living Off The Grid

If you take the time to read my wordy first entries on this blog, you'll see the story of my Grid message.  Some might say it was just a dream, but if it was just a dream, it was a very odd one. For the sake of those readers (if there are any) who don't want to read my earliest ramblings, the message I received in a dream was this: Jesus will come as the scholar in the four days of the Grid.   I woke up and wrote it in my journal.  Alongside of that sentence, I also wrote: The Age of the Grid?  Then I went back to sleep, hoping for more news.  I got none.

Five and a half years ago, right after receiving that message, I did a Google search on the term "The Age of the Grid," and it yielded only a couple pages, and they all were about Grid Computing.  Today, a Google search on especially the phrase the "Age of the Grid" will yield pages and pages.  The idea of The Grid is cliche now, and there are now even people talking about living off the Grid.

I fully understand why someone might want to live off the Grid.  A London Times story online points out that this is part of a compulsion to avoid surveillance.  There's actually an entire website called Offgrid.com 

It strikes me as both odd and ominous that in the short period of time between my receiving my dream-message, and the present day, the idea of The Grid has gone from being a fairly rarified geek notion to being part of the daily lexicon.

I imagine that someone reading about this message would be alarmed, if only for my sanity.  Fundamentalist Christians might ask: "what should we do to prepare for the Coming of Jesus?"  My answer to that is simple:  act likes he's coming today.

And that gets to the true reason for this posting.  For me, the most compelling question is when?  When are the Four Days of the Grid?  What are the Ages of the Grid, and when is the Fourth?  It appears, quite clearly, that we are currently well beyond the First Age of the Grid, if in fact people are considering living off of it.

Those who seek to live off of it seek to avoid surveillance.  They seek to be spared the tyranny of an Orwellian nightmare.  And I understand that fully.  But my question right now is: at what cost?

Any technology is a tool, and tools can be used for both good and not-so-good ends.  As I have said elsewhere, just as a hammer extends the capacity, limits, and strength of the hand, computers and the internet (which is the DNA of The Grid) is that technology that extends the capacity, limits, and strength of the human mind.  I'm not the only person to make this claim. 

One can both kill and build with a hammer, and so too is the case with the internet, and computers. 

But just because someone can kill with a hammer (indeed, here is a most disturbing video of some young men in the Ukraine killing someone with a hammer and a screwdriver.  Please do not follow this link if you have a weak stomach. I could not watch the whole video) does that mean we should start "living off the hammer"?  No, I'll bet even people who are living off the grid have hammers.  They may even have guns, which are far more lethal extensions of the arm, and the hand, and the fist, then a hammer.

Indeed, even Jesus used a hammer, if we are to believe the stories we've been told about him.

This is why I am disturbed that people would opt to live off of the Grid, when it's very likely that the Grid has as much potential to build something good as a hammer does.  It all depends on how you use it.

At its most basic level, the strength of The Grid is its ability to create a mass, communal mind that can work very quickly and collaboratively to produce some kind of meaningful end.  What's at risk, of course, is individuality.  What is to gain is the survival of humanity.

Let's consider two cases, one where the Grid was used for evil ends, and one for good ends.

The first case has almost become a cliche, that being the horrible incidents of 9/11/2001.  It continues to intrigue and boggle my mind that a relatively small group of terrorists was able to do something that no nation has been capable of doing: attack the United States on their home turf.  And how was that group able to do that?  They used The Grid.  They used the internet, telephones, and any number of other technologies that allowed them to produce a collaborative effort that far extended any one individual's abilities.  And frighteningly, they succeeded.

They will continue to succeed.  The U.S. government's attempts to pursue individual terrorists, and to frisk innocent passengers en masse come no where near touching the apparatus that binds a breed of terrorist who really doesn't care about individual fame.  Lone Christmas day bombers, or single men trying to light their shoes are decoys, designed to keep our attention away from a plot far greater than the attack on the Twin Towers that is no doubt being planned as I type, and is using the same technology to disseminate its messages.  When or where the next true attack will occur, I really don't know.  I am, after all, just a slowly aging diva with an overactive mind.

Efforts have been made to use this same networking power for positive ends, but they're not always as successful.  Still, those efforts are kind of wonderful in their own ways, hinting at the power this technology can hold for us.  Consider this:  a few years ago, I heard the story of a missing computer scientist, a man named Jim Gray.  He had taken his sailboat out onto the Pacific, and disappeared.

According to Wikipedia, Jim Gray "was an American computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1998 "for seminal contributions to database and transaction processing research and technical leadership in system implementation."  His colleagues decided to try to use the very technology he was so instrumental in developing to try to find him.  They initiated a search of the waters he was believed to be lost in, via the very accessible and user-friendly Amazon Mechanical Turk.  Again, I'll quote Wikipedia's definition of what the Mechanical Turk is:  "one of the suites of Amazon Web Services, a crowdsourcing marketplace that enables computer programs to co-ordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks which computers are unable to do."

The keywords in this definition are "co-ordinate the use of human intelligence."  Yes, therein lies the power of The Grid.

For a few weeks, anyone with a little extra time who was willing to subscribe to the Mechanical Turk could search a sector of the sea, presented through images captured via satellite, for anything that looked like an overturned boat or debris, or perhaps the actual boat itself.  Detailed instructions were given on what to look for.  I know, because I did a few myself, hoping that I might be the one to spot a sail, or an overturned hull, or some other little clue of what happened to the missing man.

No one found Jim Gray.  But part of his legacy is that his final search attempted to utilize the combined strengths of multiple human minds in a way that his own research helped to make possible. 

This story is both beautiful and absolutely misguided.  I was fascinated by it, because it allowed me to become part of a project that was bigger than myself, and that, ultimately, had very little to do with me.  However, it was designed, ultimately, to serve one man, and - if I remember correctly - there may have been a reward to the individual who found the spot where Jim met his fate.  Lovely idea; however, this is not, in the end, how this tool should be used.  The internet is not designed for the benefit of any one individual.  It is the most perfectly democratic medium and technology.  And in a perfect democracy, all men and women are created equal, and work together for the communal good. 

And that is how the internet - The Grid - can be used positively.

If people with good intentions - intentions fueled by the true teachings of a man named Jesus - were to use this tool for humane ends, Jesus would come again, and he would come again as The Scholar - the communal mind of humankind. 

But as of right now, it's true, the only efforts that have truly used the power of The Grid to successful ends are terrorists, misguided governments, and big business.  And ultimately, they're all one in the same, and they are not, by any stretch of the imagination, anything like a Jesus.  It is really up to us - and that includes those poor misguided individuals fumbling around, trying to light fires "off the grid" who fundamentally do have good intentions.  Living off the grid must be done in ways that also maintain grid-based communal cooperation, especially if the true intent of the off-gridders is to maintain human life on the planet.