Each time you visit this page, you’ll find a different randomized selection of brilliant Evolutionary Literature to expand your heart, mind, and soul.
♥ Enjoy & Evolve ♥
🠗 🧙🏽♂️ randomized 🧙🏽♂️ 🠗
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Douglas Rushkoff
Media Virus:
Hidden Agendas in Popular CultureMedia Theory Book [1998]
❝ The most virulent viruses today are composed of information. In this information-driven age, the easiest way to manipulate the culture is through the media. A hip and caustically humorous McLuhan for the ’90s, culture watcher Douglas Rushkoff now offers a fascinating expose of media manipulation in today’s age of instant information. ❞
Categories: Books, Interviews, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Conspiracy, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Douglas Rushkoff, Evolution, Evolutionaries, Hidden Agendas, Humanism, Media Theory, Mythology, Optimism, Popular Culture, Potential, Progress, Propaganda, Viral Media
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Timothy Leary
Find the Others…
Quote
“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”
A great article about this quote by Jordan Bates
More quotes from Timothy Leary on Goodreads
Categories: Literature, Quotes
Tags: Dr. Timothy Leary, Find the Others, Goodreads, Nonconformity, Weirdness
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Ray Kurzweil
The Singularity Is Near:
When Humans Transcend BiologyFuturist Philosophy Book [2005]
❝ The great inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil is one of the best-known and most controversial advocates for the role of machines in the future of humanity. In his latest book, he envisions an event—the “”singularity””—in which technological change becomes so rapid and so profound that our bodies and brains will merge with our machines.
The Singularity Is Near portrays what life will be like after this event— a human- machine civilization where our experiences shift from real reality to virtual reality and where our intelligence becomes nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful. In practical terms, this means that human aging and pollution will be reversed; world hunger will be solved; our bodies and environment transformed by nanotechnology to overcome the limitations of biology, including death; and virtually any physical product can be created from information alone. The Singularity Is Near also considers the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes, and is certain to be one of the most widely discussed and provocative books of 2005. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Vlogs
Tags: A.I., Biology, Evolution, Futurism, Intelligence Explosion, Posthumanism, Ray Kurzweil, Singularity, Transcendence, Transhumanism
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Marshall McLuhan
Understanding Media:
The Extensions of ManMedia Theory Book [1964]
❝ When first published, Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media made history with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and life in the twentieth century. This edition of McLuhan’s best-known book both enhances its accessibility to a general audience and provides the full critical apparatus necessary for scholars. In Terrence Gordon’s own words, “McLuhan is in full flight already in the introduction, challenging us to plunge with him into what he calls ‘the creative process of knowing.’” Much to the chagrin of his contemporary critics McLuhan’s preference was for a prose style that explored rather than explained. Probes, or aphorisms, were an indispensable tool with which he sought to prompt and prod the reader into an “understanding of how media operates” and to provoke reflection.
In the 1960s McLuhan s theories aroused both wrath and admiration. It is intriguing to speculate what he might have to say 40 years later on subjects to which he devoted whole chapters such as Television, The Telephone, Weapons, Housing and Money. Today few would dispute that mass media have indeed decentralized modern living and turned the world into a global village. ❞
Categories: Books, Interviews, Literature, Symposia, Vlogs
Tags: Cyborgs, Democracy, Evolution, History, Humanity, Life, Marshall McLuhan, Media, Technology
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❝ The term Cosmism was introduced by Tsiolokovsky and other Russian Cosmists around 1900. Goertzel’s “Cosmist Manifesto” gives it new life and a new twist for the 21st century. Cosmism, as Goertzel presents it, is a practical philosophy for the posthuman era. Rooted in Western and Eastern philosophy as well as modern technology and science, it is a way of understanding ourselves and our universe that makes sense now, and will keep on making sense as advanced technology exerts its transformative impact as the future unfolds. Among the many topics considered are AI, nanotechnology, uploading, immortality, psychedelics, meditation, future social structures, psi phenomena, alien and cetacean intelligence and the Singularity. The Cosmist perspective is shown to make plain old common sense of even the wildest future possibilities. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: A.I., Apocalypse, Ben Goertzel, Computers & Society, Cosmism, Counterculture, Culture, Evolution, Futurism, Humanism, Manifesto, Nanotechnology, Philosophy, Posthuman Age, Posthumanism, Practical Philosophy, Psychedelics, Singularity, Technology, Uploading
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❝ From the author of the bestselling “Art and Physics” comes a new book with breathtaking implications. Making remarkable connections across a wide range of subjects, including neurology, anthropology, history, and religion, “Leonard Shlain” argues that the development of alphabetic literacy itself reinforced the human brain’s left hemisphere — linear, abstract, predominantly masculine — at the expense of its right — holistic, concrete, visual, feminine. “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess” charts the connection between alphabetic literacy and monotheism; patriarchy and misogyny, and tracks the correlations between the rise and fall of literacy and the status of women in society, mythology, and religion. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Alphabet, Ancient History, Anthropology, Art, Culture, Evolution, Goddess, History, Leonard Shlain, Literacy, Media Theory, Neuroscience, Patriarchy, Psychology, Religion, Technology, Type, Writing
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Douglas Rushkoff
Open Source Democracy
Social Philosophy Lecture [2008]
Computers & Society, NYU. Following is the foreword, by Douglas Alexander, to Rushkoff’s paper on the same topic:
“The internet has become an integral part of our lives because it is interactive. That means people are senders of information, rather than simply passive receivers of ‘old’ media. Most importantly of all, we can talk to each other without gatekeepers or editors. This offers exciting possibilities for new social networks, which are enabled – but not determined – by digital technology.
In the software industry, the open source movement emphasises collective cooperation over private ownership. This radical idea may provide the biggest challenge to the dominance of Microsoft. Open source enthusiasts have found a more efficient way of working by pooling their knowledge to encourage innovation.
All this is happening at a time when participation in mainstream electoral politics is declining in many Western countries, including the US and Britain. Our democracies are increasingly resembling old media, with fewer real opportunities for interaction.
What, asks Douglas Rushkoff in this original essay for Demos, would happen if the ‘source code’ of our democratic systems was opened up to the people they are meant to serve? ‘An open source model for participatory, bottom-up and emergent policy will force us to confront the issues of our time,’ he answers.
That’s a profound thought at a time when governments are recognising the limits of centralised political institutions. The open source community recognises that solutions to problems emerge from the interaction and participation of lots of people, not by central planning.
Rushkoff challenges us all to participate in the redesign of political institutions in a way which enables new solutions to social problems to emerge as the result of millions interactions. In this way, online communication may indeed be able to change offline politics.”
Categories: Essays, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Civilization, Computers & Society, Culture, Democracy, Douglas Rushkoff, Evolution, Futurism, Humanity, NYU, Open Source, Technology
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R. Buckminster Fuller
Critical Path
Civilizational Evolution Book [1982]
❝ R. Buckminster Fuller is regarded as one of the most important figures of the 20th century, renowned for his achievements as an inventor, designer, architect, philosopher, mathematician, and dogged individualist. Perhaps best remembered for the Geodesic Dome and the term “Spaceship Earth,” his work and his writings have had a profound impact on modern life and thought.
Critical Path is Fuller’s master work–the summing up of a lifetime’s thought and concern–as urgent and relevant as it was upon its first publication in 1981. Critical Path details how humanity found itself in its current situation–at the limits of the planet’s natural resources and facing political, economic, environmental, and ethical crises.
The crowning achievement of an extraordinary career, Critical Path offers the reader the excitement of understanding the essential dilemmas of our time and how responsible citizens can rise to meet this ultimate challenge to our future. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature
Tags: Apocalypse, Awakening, Buckminster Fuller, Counterculture, Culture, Evolution, History, Humanism, Imagination, Media Theory, Progress, Spaceship Earth, Technology
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Douglas Rushkoff
Coercion:
Why We Listen to What “They” SaySociology Book [2000]
❝ Noted media pundit and author of Playing the Future Douglas Rushkoff gives a devastating critique of the influence techniques behind our culture of rampant consumerism. With a skilled analysis of how experts in the fields of marketing, advertising, retail atmospherics, and hand-selling attempt to take away our ability to make rational decisions, Rushkoff delivers a bracing account of media ecology today, consumerism in America, and why we buy what we buy, helping us recognize when we’re being treated like consumers instead of human beings. ❞
Categories: Books, Interviews, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Advertising, Capitalism, Coercion, Cyber Culture, Democracy, Douglas Rushkoff, Freedom, History, Liberty, Marketing, Media, Networks, Propaganda, Psyche-Warfare, Technology, The Internet, The Market
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Douglas Rushkoff
Cyberia:
Life in the Trenches of HyperspaceCyberculture Media Theory Book [1994]
❝ In a vivid journalistic portrait of the underground trendsetters of the 1990s, Rushkoff ventures headlong into cyberspace–the weird and unmapped terrain of hackers, smart drugs, virtual reality, cyberliterature, and technoshamans ❞
Categories: Books, Interviews, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Computers & Society, Counterculture, Culture, Cyberia, Douglas Rushkoff, Evolution, Futurism, Humanism, Hyperspace, Journalism, Manifesto, Philosophy, Psychedelics, Technology
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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
The Communist Manifesto
Political Philosophy Pamphlet [1848]
This has got to be the most misunderstood document in the world. People talk so much shit without having any idea what they’re talking about. This isn’t even a book; it’s less than 50 pages long. Do yourself a favor & print it out & pin it up in your bathroom so you don’t forget. Be a part of history fam. Don’t sleep on this.
“The Communist Manifesto was conceived as an outline of the basic beliefs of the Communist movement. The authors believed that the European Powers were universally afraid of the nascent movement, and were condemning as “communist,” people or activities that did not actually conform to what the Communists believed. This Manifesto, then, became a manual for their beliefs. In it we find Marx and Engel’s rehearsal of the idea that Capital has stolen away the work of the artisan and peasant by building up factories to produce goods cheaply. The efficiency of Capital depends, then, on the wage laborers who staff the factories and how little they will accept in order to have work. This concentrates power and money in a Bourgeois class that profits from the disunity of workers (Proletarians), who only receive a subsistence wage. If workers unite in a class struggle against the bourgeois, using riot and strikes as weapons, they will eventually overthrow the bourgeois and replace them as a ruling class. Communists further believe in and lay out a system of reforms to transform into a classless, stateless society, thus distinguishing themselves from various flavors of Socialism, which would be content to have workers remain the ruling class after the revolution. The Manifesto caused a huge amount of discussion for its support for a forcible overthrow of the existing politics and society. (Summary by Mark F. Smith)”
Categories: Audio-Only, Audiobooks, Essays, Literature, Pamphlets
Tags: 1800s, Anti-Capitalism, Capitalism, Communism, Copyleft, Economics, Friedrich Engels, History, Karl Marx, Marxism, marxists.org, Philosophy, Political Economy, Politics, Socialism, The Profit Motive
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❝ The New York Times bestselling “manifesto for the future that is grounded in practical solutions addressing the world’s most pressing concerns: overpopulation, food, water, energy, education, health care and freedom” (The Wall Street Journal).
“Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing—fast.
In Abundance, space entrepreneur turned innovation pioneer Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler document how progress in artificial intelligence, robotics, digital manufacturing synthetic biology, and other exponentially growing technologies will enable us to make greater gains in the next two decades than we have in the previous 200 years. We will soon have the ability to meet and exceed the basic needs of every person on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp.
Breaking down human needs by category—water, food, energy, healthcare, education, freedom—Diamandis and Kotler introduce us to innovators and industry captains making tremendous strides in each area. “Not only is Abundance a riveting page-turner…but it’s a book that gives us a future worth fighting for. And even more than that, it shows us our place in that fight” (The Christian Science Monitor). ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Talks, TED
Tags: A.I., Abundance, Evolution, Futurism, Nanotechnology, Optimism, Peter H. Diamandis, Post-Scarcity, Singularity, Technology, Utopia
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❝ Does the science of evolution really prove that life, humanity, and the universe as a whole are meaningless accidents? On the contrary, as science has shown how everything in the universe is subject to evolution, including matter, life, and human culture, these very facts reveal that the process of evolution is unmistakably progressive. And, as Steve McIntosh demonstrates, when we come to see how evolution progresses, this reveals evolution’s purpose-to grow toward ever-widening realizations of beauty, truth, and goodness. McIntosh argues that the purpose of evolution is not intelligently designed or otherwise externally controlled; rather, its purpose is being creatively and originally discerned through the choices of the evolutionary creatures themselves. Without relying on spiritual authorities, the author shows how the scientific story of our origins is actually a profound and sacred teaching compatible with many forms of contemporary spirituality. Evolution’s Purpose: An Integral Interpretation of the Scientific Story of Our Origins presents a fresh and compelling view of evolutionary science and philosophy, and shows how a deeper understanding of evolution itself can lead directly to a more evolved world. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Creativity, Evolution, History, Humanity, Integral, Life, New Age, Origins, Purpose, Science, Spirituality
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Steven Pearlstein
Can American Capitalism Survive?
Politics & Prose Book Lecture [2018]
Epic lecture on the false tenets of neoliberalism, summerized well by the book’s subtitle: “Why Greed is Not Good, Opportunity is Not Equal, & Fairness won’t Make Us Poor.” An absolutely brilliant dismantling of capitalist ideology, a must-see.. ♥ Neonn
“Pearlstein’s chronicle of the last few decades of democratic capitalism documents that the “greed is good” era has left out major tenets of Adam Smith’s vision. Instead of fostering the social capital ensuring that benefits reach all socio-economic strata, the system has suffered increasing income disparity, causing many to lose faith in the free market economy. Pearlstein, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and the Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University, gives a succinct and clear diagnosis of capitalism’s malaise and offers practical steps for healing it, including a guaranteed minimum income paired with universal national service, tax incentives for companies to share profits with workers, ending class segregation in public education, and restoring competition to markets.”
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Capitalism, Culture, Economics, Ideology, Neoliberalism, politics & prose, Socialism, Society, Steven Pearlstein
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❝ In Evolutionary Enlightenment, Andrew Cohen redefines spiritual awakening for our contemporary world—a world characterized by exponential change and an ever-expanding appreciation for the processes of evolution. Cohen’s message is simple, yet profound: Life is evolution, and enlightenment is about waking up to this fundamentally creative impulse as your own deepest, most authentic self. Through five tenets for living an enlightened life, Cohen will empower you to wholeheartedly participate in the process of change as your own spiritual practice. Evolutionary Enlightenment not only makes deep sense of life today; it will show you how to play an active role in shaping the world of tomorrow. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Andrew Cohen, Awakening, Enlightenment, Evolution, Freedom, Liberty, Spirituality
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❝ It is a well-established fact that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. The Spirit Level, based on thirty years of research, takes this truth a step further. One common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members. Further, more unequal societies are bad for everyone within them-the rich and middle class as well as the poor.
The remarkable data assembled in The Spirit Level exposes stark differences, not only among the nations of the first world but even within America’s fifty states. Almost every modern social problem-poor health, violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness-is more likely to occur in a less-equal society.
Renowned researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett lay bare the contradictions between material success and social failure in the developed world. But they do not merely tell us what’s wrong. They offer a way toward a new political outlook, shifting from self-interested consumerism to a friendlier, more sustainable society. ❞Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Capitalism, Decommodification, Equality, Evolution, Humanism, Inequality, Kate Pickett, Optimism, Public Health, Richard Wilkinson, Society, Spirituality, The Zeitgeist Movement
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❝ For millennia, great thinkers have contemplated the meaning and purpose of human existence; but while most assumed that humanity was the end point of creation or the pinnacle of evolution, Ted Chu makes the provocative claim that the human race may in fact be a means rather than an end–that humankind will give rise to evolutionary successors. In this wide-ranging and authoritative work, Chu reexamines the question of human purpose in light of the extraordinary developments of science and technology. Arguing that a deep understanding of our place in the universe is required to navigate the magnitude of the choices that lie ahead, he surveys human wisdom from both East and West, traces the evolutionary trajectory that has led to this point, and explores the potentials emerging on the scientific frontier. The book addresses the legitimate fears and concerns of “playing God” but embraces the possibility of transcending biological forms and becoming or creating entirely new life-forms. ❞
Categories: Books, Interviews, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Computers & Society, Culture, Cyberia, Evolution, Futurism, Humanism, Manifesto, Nikola Danaylov, Philosophy, Post-Scarcity, Posthuman Age, Posthumanism, Purpose, Singularity 1-on-1, Technology, Ted Chu, Transhumanism
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❝ In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet, as legal star Michelle Alexander reveals, today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination―employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service―are suddenly legal. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Awakening, Civil Rights, Colorblindness, Counterculture, Crime, Culture, Drug War, Evolution, Fascism, History, Humanism, Justice, Mass Incarceration, Michelle Alexander, Prison-Industrial Complex, Progress, Racism, The 60s, The New Jim Crow
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Erik Davis
TechGnosis:
Myth, Magic, & Mysticism in the Age of InformationMedia Theory Book [1998]
❝ How does our fascination with technology intersect with the religious imagination? In TechGnosis—a cult classic now updated and reissued with a new afterword—Erik Davis argues that while the realms of the digital and the spiritual may seem worlds apart, esoteric and religious impulses have in fact always permeated (and sometimes inspired) technological communication. Davis uncovers startling connections between such seemingly disparate topics as electricity and alchemy; online roleplaying games and religious and occult practices; virtual reality and gnostic mythology; programming languages and Kabbalah. The final chapters address the apocalyptic dreams that haunt technology, providing vital historical context as well as new ways to think about a future defined by the mutant intermingling of mind and machine, nightmare and fantasy. ❞
Categories: Books, Interviews, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Animism, Apocalypse, Awakening, Counterculture, Culture, Entheogens, Erik Davis, Evolution, Gnosis, History, Humanism, Imagination, Internet, Jason Silva, Kabbalah, Magic, Media Theory, Mysticism, Mythology, New Age, Progress, Psychedelics, Religion, Technology, The 60s, Virtual Reality
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“Between 1929 and 1941, the Communist Party organized and led a radical, militantly antiracist movement in Alabama — the center of Party activity in the Depression South. Hammer and Hoe documents the efforts of the Alabama Communist Party and its allies to secure racial, economic, and political reforms. Sensitive to the complexities of gender, race, culture and class without compromising the political narrative, Robin Kelley illustrates one of the most unique and least understood radical movements in American history.
The Alabama Communist Party was built from scratch by working people who had no Euro-American radical political tradition. It was composed largely of poor blacks, most of whom were semiliterate and devoutly religious, but it also attracted a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, iconoclastic youth, and renegade liberals. Kelley shows that the cultural identities of these people from Alabama’s farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the development of the Party. The result was a remarkably resilient movement forged in a racist world that had little tolerance for radicals.
In the South race pervaded virtually every aspect of Communist activity. And because the Party’s call for voting rights, racial equality, equal wages for women, and land for landless farmers represented a fundamental challenge to the society and economy of the South, it is not surprising that Party organizers faced a constant wave of violence.
Kelley’s analysis ranges broadly, examining such topics as the Party’s challenge to black middle-class leadership; the social, ideological, and cultural roots of black working-class radicalism; Communist efforts to build alliances with Southern liberals; and the emergence of a left-wing, interracial youth movement. He closes with a discussion of the Alabama Communist Party’s demise and its legacy for future civil rights activism.”
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: 1930s, Activism, Alabama, America, Bashkar Sunkara, Communism, Culture, Economics, Fascism, History, Jacobin, Nostalgia, Organizing, Racial Justice, Racism, Robin D.G. Kelley, Slavery, Socialism, The Great Depression
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Ram Dass
Be Here Now
Psychedelic Philosophy Book [1971]
❝ A Lama Foundation Book. Describes one man’s transformation upon his acceptance of the principles of Yoga and gives a modern restatement of the importance of the spiritual side of man’s nature. Illustrated. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Vlogs
Tags: Awakening, Be Here Now, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Energy, Enlightenment, Evolution, Humanism, Mythology, Optimism, Philosophy, Potential, Progress, Ram Dass, Spirituality, Taoism, Wisdom
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Dr. Timothy Leary
The Politics of Ecstasy
Psychedelic Philosophy Book [1968]
❝ (Excerpt) In addition, there were the politics that plagued our ecstatic enterprises themselves, no matter how we twisted and squirmed to escape it. Many a commune, demonstration, or love-in wrecked on the twin shoals of property and control. Then, too, there were the political fires kindled by the friction of latter-day ecstasy cults rubbing up against the stiff hide of the old iguana-brained Establishment.
It is an understatement to write that Timothy Leary was privy to this stormy marriage of the mundane and the rapturous. Simultaneously observer and participant, Dr. Leary analyzed events around him even as he helped make them happen. Boundlessly energetic, keenly insightful, he was uniquely qualified to work both sides of Heisenberg Street. Imagine him studiously taking notes even as he skated on one foot along the vibrating rim of an indole ring. ❞Categories: Books, Literature
Tags: Counterculture, Democracy, Dr. Timothy Leary, Drug War, Drugs, Ecstasy, Entheogens, Evolution, History, Humanity, Life, Media, Politics, Psychedelics, Religion, Technology, The 60s
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Neonn Felicity Curations
📚 Lectures / Books 📚
YouTube Playlist
«Prev1/14Next»A Spectre Haunting: China Miéville on the Communist ManifestoManifesting the Utopian Mind 🔮 Neonn Felicity 🔮 Lightning in a Bottle 2022When Freedom Is Oppression: White Resistance To Federal Power w/ Jefferson Cowie | MR LIVE 1/30/23The Anatomy of Religion: Religion After DarwinEverything We Think We Know About Early Human History is Wrong | David Wengrow on DownstreamHow Sex, Drugs, and Ancient Humans Affect Today’s Politics with Chris RyanDavid Brin on "So you want to make gods. Now why would that bother anybody?"Geopolitics and Religion in the 21st CenturyThe Great Delusion with Professor John Mearsheimer«Prev1/14Next»Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Civilization, Culture, Neonn Felicity Curations, Neonn YouTube Playlist, YouTube Playlists
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❝ The author of The Book of Questions claims that humankind and technology have merged into a new global entity, a living extension of humankind acting through a complex system of computers and offering a promise of ever-greater prosperity. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Talks, TED
Tags: Evolution, Futurism, Globalism, Gregory Stock, Humanism, Machines, Metaman, Mythology, Optimism, Philosophy, Spirituality, Superorganism, Transhumanism
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❝ In the early 1960s, computers haunted the American popular imagination. Bleak tools of the cold war, they embodied the rigid organization and mechanical conformity that made the military-industrial complex possible. But by the 1990s—and the dawn of the Internet—computers started to represent a very different kind of world: a collaborative and digital utopia modeled on the communal ideals of the hippies who so vehemently rebelled against the cold war establishment in the first place.
From Counterculture to Cyberculture is the first book to explore this extraordinary and ironic transformation. Fred Turner here traces the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay–area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award–winning Whole Earth Catalog, the computer conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of the wildly successful Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers.
Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, this fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think. ❞Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Awakening, Bay Area, Counterculture, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Cyberculture, Cybernetics, Evolution, Fred Turner, History, Humanism, Optimism, Progress, Silicon Valley, Stuart Brand, The 60s, Utopia, Utopianism, Whole Earth Network