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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❝ 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
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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❝ Society is broken. We can design our way to a better one.
In our interconnected world, self-interest and social-interest are rapidly becoming indistinguishable. If current negative trajectories remain, including growing climate destabilization, biodiversity loss, and economic inequality, an impending future of ecological collapse and societal destabilization will make ‘personal success’ virtually meaningless. Yet our broken social system incentivizes behavior that will only make our problems worse. If true human rights progress is to be achieved today, it is time we dig deeper―rethinking the very foundation of our social system.
In this engaging, important work, Peter Joseph, founder of the world’s largest grassroots social movement―The Zeitgeist Movement―draws from economics, history, philosophy, and modern public-health research to present a bold case for rethinking activism in the 21st century.
Arguing against the long-standing narrative of universal scarcity and other pervasive myths that defend the current state of affairs, The New Human Rights Movement illuminates the structural causes of poverty, social oppression, and the ongoing degradation of public health, and ultimately presents the case for an updated economic approach. Joseph explores the potential of this grand shift and how we can design our way to a world where the human family has become truly sustainable.
The New Human Rights Movement reveals the critical importance of a unified activism working to overcome the inherent injustice of our system. This book warns against what is in store if we continue to ignore the flaws of our socioeconomic approach, while also revealing the bright and expansive future possible if we succeed.
Will you join the movement? ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, The Zeitgeist Movement
Tags: 21st Century, Anti-Capitalism, Capitalism, Civilization, Computers & Society, Culture, Economics, Evolution, Futurism, History, Human Rights, Humanism, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Manifesto, Movement, Oppression, Peter Joseph, Philosophy, Post-Capitalism, Post-Scarcity, Poverty, Progress, Purpose, Revolution, Social Justice, Social Pathology, Society, Sociology, Technology, The Zeitgeist Movement, TZM
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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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❝ 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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❝ 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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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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Chris Hedges
The Wages of Rebellion:
The Moral Imperative of RevoltEthical Philosophy Book [2016]
“Revolutions come in waves and cycles. We are again riding the crest of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab Spring to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy movement. In Wages of Rebellion, Chris Hedges—who has chronicled the malaise and sickness of a society in terminal moral decline in his books Empire of Illusion and Death of the Liberal Class—investigates what social and psychological factors cause revolution, rebellion, and resistance. Drawing on an ambitious overview of prominent philosophers, historians, and literary figures he shows not only the harbingers of a coming crisis but also the nascent seeds of rebellion. Hedges’ message is clear: popular uprisings in the United States and around the world are inevitable in the face of environmental destruction and wealth polarization.
Focusing on the stories of rebels from around the world and throughout history, Hedges investigates what it takes to be a rebel in modern times. Utilizing the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, Hedges describes the motivation that guides the actions of rebels as “sublime madness” — the state of passion that causes the rebel to engage in an unavailing fight against overwhelmingly powerful and oppressive forces. For Hedges, resistance is carried out not for its success, but as a moral imperative that affirms life. Those who rise up against the odds will be those endowed with this “sublime madness.”
From South African activists who dedicated their lives to ending apartheid, to contemporary anti-fracking protests in Alberta, Canada, to whistleblowers in pursuit of transparency, Wages of Rebellion shows the cost of a life committed to speaking the truth and demanding justice. Hedges has penned an indispensable guide to rebellion.”
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Apocalypse, Capitalism, Chris Hedges, Civics, Economics, Ethics, History, Inequality, Philosophy, Rebellion, Revolt, Revolution
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❝ The Zeitgeist Movement Defined is the official representative text of the global, non-profit sustainability advocacy organization known as The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM). This tediously sourced and highly detailed work argues for a large-scale change in human culture, specifically in the context of economic practice. The dominant theme is that the current socioeconomic system governing the world at this time has severe structural flaws, born out of primitive economic and sociological assumptions originating in our early history, where the inherent severity of these flaws went largely unnoticed.
However, in the early 21st century, these problems have risen prominently, taking the consequential form of increasing social destabilization and ongoing environmental collapse. Yet, this text is not simply about explaining such problems and their root causality – It is also about posing concrete solutions, coupled with a new perspective on social/environmental sustainability and efficiency which, in concert with the tremendous possibility of modern technology and a phenomenon known as ephemeralization, reveals humanity’s current capacity to create an abundant, post-scarcity reality.
While largely misunderstood as being “utopian” or fantasy, this text walks through, step by step, the train of thought and technical industrial reordering needed to update our global society (and its values) to enable these profound new possibilities. While this text can be read strictly from a passive perspective, it was created also to be used as an awareness or activist tool. The Zeitgeist Movement, which has hundreds of chapters across dozens of countries and is perhaps the largest activist organization of its kind, hopes those interested in this direction will join the movement in global solidarity and assist in the culmination of this new social model, for the benefit of the whole of humanity. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Ben McLeish, Computers & Society, Counterculture, Culture, Cyberia, Evolution, Futurism, Humanism, Manifesto, Matt Berkowitz, Peter Joseph, Philosophy, Post-Scarcity, Technology, The Zeitgeist Movement
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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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❝ 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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❝ A provocative work by medical ethicist James Hughes, Citizen Cyborg argues that technologies pushing the boundaries of humanness can radically improve our quality of life if they are controlled democratically. Hughes challenges both the technophobia of Leon Kass and Francis Fukuyama and the unchecked enthusiasm of others for limitless human enhancement. He argues instead for a third way, “democratic transhumanism,” by asking the question destined to become a fundamental issue of the twenty-first century: How can we use new cybernetic and biomedical technologies to make life better for everyone? These technologies hold great promise, but they also pose profound challenges to our health, our culture, and our liberal democratic political system. By allowing humans to become more than human – “posthuman” or “transhuman” – the new technologies will require new answers for the enduring issues of liberty and the common good. What limits should we place on the freedom of people to control their own bodies? Who should own genes and other living things? Which technologies should be mandatory, which voluntary, and which forbidden? For answers to these challenges, Citizen Cyborg proposes a radical return to a faith in the resilience of our democratic institutions. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: A.I., Citizenship, Cyborgs, Democracy, Ethics, Evolution, Futurism, Healthcare, History, Humanity, James Hughes, Life, Medical Ethics, Medicine, Posthumanism, Science, Technology, Transhumanism, Universal Healthcare
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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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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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❝ Blending cutting-edge ideas with incisive spiritual insights, Evolutionaries is the first popular presentation of an emerging school of thought called “evolutionary spirituality.” Carter Phipps, the former executive editor of EnlightenNext magazine, asserts that evolution is not only a scientific but also a spiritual idea in a book whose message has the power to bring new meaning and purpose to life as we know it. Readers will be fascinated and enlightened by Evolutionaries, a book which Deepak Chopra, the world-renowned author of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes, Jesus, and Buddha, says “is going to help create a worldview that will influence our vision of the future direction of evolution and also our role in consciously participating in it. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Vlogs
Tags: Carter Phipps, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Enlightenment, Evolution, Evolutionaries, Globalism, Humanism, Mythology, Optimism, Philosophy, Potential, Progress, Science, Spirituality, Superorganism
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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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Wikipedia
Eisegesis
Literary Concept
“Eisegesis is the process of interpreting text in such a way as to introduce one’s own presuppositions, agendas or biases. It is commonly referred to as reading into the text.[1] It is often done to “prove” a pre-held point of concern, and to provide confirmation bias corresponding with the pre-held interpretation and any agendas supported by it.
Eisegesis is best understood when contrasted with exegesis. Exegesis is drawing out a text’s meaning in accordance with the author’s context and discoverable meaning. Eisegesis is when a reader imposes their interpretation of the text. Thus exegesis tends to be objective; and eisegesis, highly subjective.”
Read more on Wikipedia
Categories: Concepts, Literature
Tags: Bible Study, Eisegesis, Literature, Wikipedia
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❝ Now includes “The Life Inc. Guide to Reclaiming the Value You Create”
In Life Inc, award-winning writer Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. The resulting ideology, corporatism, has infiltrated all aspects of civics, commerce, and culture—from the founding of the first chartered monopoly to the branding of the self, from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking, from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of Facebook. Life Inc explains why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401(k) plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business. Most important, Rushkoff illuminates both how we’ve become disconnected from our world and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and, mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc shows us how to build a real and human-scaled society to take its place. ❞Categories: Books, Literature, Montages, Symposia
Tags: Capitalism, Corporatism, Corporatocracy, Corruption, Decommodification, Douglas Rushkoff, Evolution, Futurism, Humanism, Optimism, Technology
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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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❝ 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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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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Neonn Felicity Curations
📚 Lectures / Books 📚
YouTube Playlist
«Prev1/14Next»
Geo-Strategy#2: Christian Zionism and the Middle East Conflict
Geo-Strategy #8: The Iran Trap
Nazis Never Left — They Just Rebranded. Here’s How They Took Over Mainstream Politics
Michael Parenti "The Struggle for History" North Hollywood, California June 1994
Michael Parenti "Democratic Government vs. The State" Long Beach, California September 1991
Michael Parenti "Reflections on the Overthrow of Communism" Santa Rosa, California March 1996
A Spectre Haunting: China Miéville on the Communist Manifesto
Manifesting the Utopian Mind 🔮 Neonn Felicity 🔮 Lightning in a Bottle 2022
When Freedom Is Oppression: White Resistance To Federal Power w/ Jefferson Cowie | MR LIVE 1/30/23«Prev1/14Next»
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Civilization, Culture, Neonn Felicity Curations, Neonn YouTube Playlist, YouTube Playlists
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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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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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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
