Alliance for Wild Ethics

02008-08-02 | Environment, World, Writing

Alliance for Wild Ethics || The Perceptual Implications of Gaia || Copyright © David Abram
The entire range of living matter on Earth, from whales to viruses, and from oaks to algae, could be regarded as constituting a single living entity, capable of manipulating the Earth’s atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts

There are several essays (find more here) and a very good comparison of books with digital media and oral culture:

Literate culture (the layer of society implicitly informed by books, newspapers, and magazines) enables an exchange of tales and insights from diverse times and places. Reading is a wonderful kind of experience, yet it is necessarily abstract relative to our direct, sensory encounters in the immediacy of our locale. Indeed, by mingling notions drawn from divergent eras and cultures, literate discourse instills a useful distance, and detachment, from our immediate environment. In this sense, literate culture is inherently cosmopolitan.

Read on.

Language

02007-10-15 | Writing

Steven Pinker, Rebecca Goldstein interview | Salon Books
Obviously, much of our thinking is being filtered through language. But it’s always seemed to me that there has to be an awful lot of thinking that’s done prior to the acquisition of language. And I often have trouble translating my thoughts into language. I think about that a lot. It often seems to me that the thoughts are there and some words are flitting through my mind when I’m thinking. So there’s something very separate between thinking and language.

Also see this:

The strange emotional power of swearing – as well as the presence of linguistic taboos in all cultures – suggests that taboo words tap into deep and ancient parts of the brain.

Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace

02007-09-27 | World, Writing

Long Views » Blog Archive » All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
Instead all were treated to a reminder that our new future is represented overwhelmingly in the negative by our artists and poets. He points out that if we can only imagine an awful techno future, that that is what we will get.

So Saffo read the one piece he could find that depicts a world run by computers in a positive light. Amazingly it was written in 01967 by someone who was likely programming computers with punch cards.
(Via Long Now Blog)

The text can also be found on Saffo’s journal.

The Edge

02007-08-07 | Philosophy, Reading, Writing

Grey Lodge Occult Review :: Issue #14 :: Limitless Mind ::
All of life begins on the edge. The first cellular membranes began at the ocean’s edge, drying out and being covered with foam, cooling and warming. The edge is a place of opportunity, whether it be a seacoast or an airport.

There is a lot more interesting stuff at above link… Ah, the edge… Reminds me of this:

On the fringe is where everything exciting happens, never in the center. Cultures are like spinning circles. In the center they don’t move very much, that’s where the traditionalists live, the conservatives. Towards the rim is where the action is, that’s where the artists hang out. Life is a little more out of balance there and the spinning can make you dizzy. What is most exciting is that many of the culture circles overlap and if you can stay in a spot where several things overlap you can find new clouds of ideas. Ideas are not bound to any individual, they are bound to a time. Many people in that spot will come up with similar ideas. Sometimes this cloud of ideas forms a new circle and the center of it hardens and becomes a new tradition.