Humanize the Earth!

Silo’s Message - The Book (VI. Sleep and Awakening)

I have read Silo’s Message many times, mostly in pieces. After a long time lapse, I continue publishing it here, in it’s entirely. The message is in 3 parts, The Book, The Experience and the Path. Today is chapter six of The Book.

VI. Sleep and Awakening
The fourth day.

1. I cannot take as real what I see in my dreams, nor what I see in semi-sleep, nor what I see when I am awake but in reverie.
2. I can take as real what I see when I am awake and without reveries. Here I am not speaking of what my senses register, since naive and dubious “data” can arrive from my external and internal senses as well as from my memory. Rather, I am speaking of the activities of my mind as they relate to the “data” being thought. What is valid is that when my mind is awake it “knows” and when it is asleep it “believes.” Only rarely do I perceive reality in a new way, and it is then that I realize that what I normally see resembles sleep or semi-sleep.

There is a real way of being awake, and it has led me to meditate profoundly on all that has been said so far. It has, moreover, opened the door for me to discover the meaning of all that exists.

see also: The Book (V. Intimation of Meaning)

Silo’s Message - The Book (V. Intimation of Meaning)

I have read Silo’s Message many times, mostly in pieces. I have decided to publish it here, in it’s entirely. The message is in 3 parts, The Book, The Experience and the Path. Today is chapter five of The Book.

V. Intimation of Meaning
The third day.

1. At times I have anticipated events that later took place.
2. At times I have grasped a distant thought.
3. At times I have described places I have never been.
4. At times I have recounted exactly what took place in my absence.
5. At times an immense joy has surprised me.
6. At times total comprehension has overwhelmed me.
7. At times a perfect communion with everything has filled me with ecstasy.
8. At times I have broken through my reveries and seen reality in a new way.
9. At times I have seen something for the first time yet recognized it as though I had seen it before.

…And all this has made me think. It is clear to me that without these experiences I could not have emerged from the non-meaning.

see also: The Book (IV. Dependence)

Silo’s Message - The Book (IV. Dependence)

I have read Silo’s Message many times, mostly in pieces. I have decided to publish it here, in it’s entirely, in serial form. The message is in 3 parts, The Book, The Experience and the Path. Today is chapter four of The Book.

IV. Dependence
The second day.

1. Nothing that I do, feel, or think depends on me.
2. I am mutable and depend on the action of my surroundings. When I want to change my environment or my “I,” it is my environment that ends up changing me. Then I seek the city or nature, social redemption or a new struggle in order to justify my existence. In every case it is my environment that leads me to choose one attitude or another. In this way, my interests and my surroundings leave me here.
3. I say, then, that it does not matter who or what decides. I say on these occasions that I have to live since I am in the situation of living. I say all this, but there is nothing that justifies it. I can make a decision, hesitate, or remain where I am. In any case, one thing is only provisionally better than another; ultimately there is no better or worse.
4. If someone tells me that those who do not eat die, I will answer that this is indeed so, and that, spurred by their needs, they are compelled to eat. But I will not add that the struggle to eat justifies one’s existence—nor will I say that this struggle is bad. I will simply say that all of this concerns an individual or collective fact related to the need for subsistence, but that it has no meaning in the moment that the last battle is lost.
5. I will say, moreover, that I feel solidarity with the struggle of the poor, the exploited, and the persecuted. I will say that I feel “fulfilled” in this identification, but I understand that these feelings do not justify anything.

see also: The Book (III. Non-Meaning)

Silo’s Message - The Book (III. Non-Meaning)

I have read Silo’s Message many times, mostly in pieces. I have decided to publish it here, in it’s entirely, in serial form. The message is in 3 parts, The Book, The Experience and the Path. Today is chapter three of The Book.

III. Non-Meaning
After many days I discovered this great paradox: Those who bore failure in their hearts were able to illuminate the final victory, while those who felt triumphant were left by the wayside like vegetation whose life is muted and diffuse. After many days, coming from the darkest of darkness, I arrived at the light, guided not by teachings but by meditation.
Thus, I told myself on the first day:

1. There is no meaning in life if everything ends with death.
2. All justification for actions, whether these actions are despicable or admirable, is always a new dream that leaves only emptiness ahead.
3. God is something uncertain.
4. Faith is something as variable as reason and dreams.
5. “What one should do” may be thoroughly discussed, but in the end there is nothing that definitively supports any position.
6. The “responsibility” of those who commit themselves to something is no greater than the responsibility of those who do not.
7. I move according to my interests, and this makes me neither a coward nor a hero.
8. “My interests” neither justify nor discredit anything.
9. “My reasons” are no better than the reasons of others, nor are they worse.
10. Cruelty horrifies me, but neither because of this nor in itself is it better or worse than kindness.
11. What I or others say today is of no value tomorrow.
12. To die is not better than to live or never to have been born, but neither is it worse.
13. I discovered, not through teachings but through experience and meditation, that there is no meaning in life if everything ends with death.

see also: The Book (II. Disposition to Comprehend)

Silo’s Message - The Book (II. Disposition to Comprehend)

I have read Silo’s Message many times, mostly in pieces. I have decided to publish it here, in it’s entirely, in serial form. Mostly so I could read it again bit by bit. The message is in 3 parts, The Book (published earlier as The Inner Look), The Experience (Eight ceremonies) and the Path. Today is day two.

II. Disposition to Comprehend

1. I know how you feel because I can experience your state, but you do not know how to experience the things I am speaking of. Therefore, if I speak to you without self-interest of that which makes the human being happy and free, it is worth your while to try to comprehend.
2. Do not think that you will arrive at understanding by arguing with me. You may argue if you believe that through opposition your understanding will become clearer, but it is not the appropriate path in this case.
3. If you ask me what attitude is appropriate, I will tell you that it is to meditate profoundly and without haste on what is explained here.
4. If you reply that you are busy with more urgent things, I will answer that since your wish is to sleep or to die, I will do nothing to oppose it.
5. Nor should you argue that you dislike my way of presenting things, for you do not criticize the peel when you like the fruit.
6. I state things in the way I consider appropriate, not as might be desired by those who aspire to things remote from inner truth.

see also: The Book (I. Meditation)

Silo’s Message - The Book (I. Meditation)

I have read Silo’s Message many times, mostly in pieces. I have decided to publish it here, in it’s entirely, in serial form. Mostly so I could read it again bit by bit. The message is in 3 parts, The Book (published earlier as The Inner Look), The Experience (Eight ceremonies) and the Path. Today we start with the first bit from the Book.

I. Meditation

1. Here it tells how the non-meaning of life can be converted into meaning and fulfillment.
2. Here are joy, love of the body, of nature, of humanity, and of the spirit.
3. Here sacrifices, feelings of guilt, and threats from the beyond are rejected.
4. Here the worldly is not opposed to the eternal.
5. Here it tells of the inner revelation at which all arrive who carefully meditate in humble search.

WikiSym 2007, day 1

I’m in Montreal, near the end of day 1 of WikiSym, waiting for the Wiki Film Festival

including a trailer for a documentary on Wikipedia, “Truth in Numbers“. Other screenings include initial footage from “The Wiki Way,” “OpenFrame” (a documentary on RecentChanges camp in 2006 that everyone should watch), and a relevant selection from my absolute favorite group of videographers … CommonCraft’s “Wikis in Plain English.”

During my wait (everyone else is off napping or quick early dinnering or something or other), I checked out Twitter, which I’d signed up for long ago, but never used because I didn’t understand it and it seemed annoying. I updated my status, saying that I was waiting for the film festival, and then was shortly “followed” by Kevin Makice who’s not here, but wants to know what’s happening. So I posted a new status about writing a blog post, this blog post. Feels strangely and confusingly recursive to write about this process.

Anyway, today. Actually, let’s start with yesterday. It was a really early morning in Portland, OR for an 8:10am flight to Chicago. The flight was delayed and we missed our connection. Which meant a 5 hour layover in Chicago, where I live. But the CTA is eliminating slow zones this weekend so isn’t running trains all the way downtown, and it seemed like more hassle than it was worth to leave, so Ward and I took a nap on the lawn outside the hotel and had a pretty good dinner to kill the time. We got to Montreal pretty late, especially given my role today as open space facilitator, which required setting up and such.

So I got up really early to find room 510d and get set up. And the hotel conference rooms all had names, not numbers. That’s strange, I thought. The hotel calendar doesn’t list us either. Why am I paying over $200/night to stay here again? Anyway, the person at the front desk suggested another place it might be, and I looked it up online, and sure enough, she was right. So off I went down the street, found the place, and it’s huge, seemingly stadium size. After a really long walk inside the place, I found our breakfast setup (I wanted to have the open space set up before having breakfast), but no one around and our room locked. Bummer. Within a minute or so the room was opened and I went to work arranging chairs and making posters and such. All of my internal work and deep breathing seemed to go out the window as I started succumbing to the stress of the whole thing. It wasn’t too bad internally, but I did wonder if this was worth doing (open space inside a traditional conference, where things just aren’t set up well for doing open space).

In any event, “Whenever it starts is the right time” and “Whoever comes is the right people”, but the 8am start time coming and going wasn’t a problem for me. Once we seemed to have a good number, we began, and people filtered in throughout the opening itself, and then the morning. As usual, all I had to do was sit down and shut up for people to quickly move to the center to post topics. The whole thing then self-organized, as it always does, as I went to get myself checked in for the conference itself. When I got back, conversations were well underway. Some of them even go documented throughout the day. Very cool!

One of the most interested conversations of the day that I was involved in was over lunch, with Alain Desilets and Mark Bernstein about locations for next year’s WikiSym, co-location, and some issues and opportunities around a possible co-location with WikiMania. This is purely hypothetical, so please no jumping to conclusions.  Lots of interesting ideas about the nature of academia and publishing, and expense of certain conferences versus what it can do for one’s career to publish there.

Not sure what else there is to say at this point, as it’s much too long already, and I’m tired, and the film festival is supposed to start in 10 minutes, so I’ll leave it there, and if you have questions, feel free to leave a comment or a trackback and I’ll see what I can do.

Change?

Joan Ogden interview in the Sun Magazine, August 2007 (not yet online):

When I was a little kid and would visit relatives in Georgia, I saw segregated washrooms and drinking fountains. … And when I was applying to college in the later 1960s, many schools didn’t admit women. … I believe that prejudices about race and sex are more basic to the human psyche than the attachment to driving a large car. So that gives me hope.

finally, a use for spam!

This website is set up so that anytime someone comments for the first time, I get an email asking me to approve posting it. The bulk of these comments are spam, that I mark as such, and you never see them. Annoying, to say the least. And yet today, this spam was actually useful! The spam comment was on this post: response to Tree’s Always in Open Space from October of 2005. Without using the word, in that post, I was talking about do-ocracy.

In my housing co-op, I want those most interested in gardening to do the gardening, and not worry about consulting with those that don’t care so much. Same with creating an organizing scheme for the basement. Hopefully everyone will participate in keeping things organized, but not everyone needs to create the scheme.

This is one of the reasons I feel I need to let go of my day job of 6 years. It’s not a do-ocracy. About two months before I wrote that post, I made my five year plan to leave the job. In June of 2006, I wrote about my five year plan again, though it had changed to a 3-4 year plan (with year 1 nearly finished). Here we are just a little over a year later, so just about to finish year 2, and my current thinking is that I’ll be done before the end of 2007. Anyway, interesting to look back and be reminded. Thanks spammer!

What do I believe is the purpose of my life?

This is my rough draft answer to this question from a personal work meeting today.  Maybe rough draft is best here.

The meaning of my life …

My purposes for being here are small.  My piece in a much larger vision is small.  I am here to play my small part in humanizing the earth.  To do this, I need to humanize myself.  I also am here to humanize those around me.  I’m here to learn to be more gentle.  I’m here to reduce my own violence towards myself and others.  Once I’ve reduced, it is my purpose to reduce it some more.  And again.

My purpose is to share with others that change is possible, it is to see the best in those others and invite them to see that best in themselves as well.

Small things.  Seeing the best in myself so that I can act toward others with … A gentleness.  A kindness.  A clarity about what I see as the
best in the them.