[kj] (OT) gmail

[Brendan Quinn]

We must dream of promised lands and fields.

As far as we know, we are only limited by our imagination, in the long term.
The idea of a soul is less relevant once we've extended the human lifespan
perpetually, whether it's through regeneration, growing new bodies, moving
ourselves into the format of information or energy (which in fact we don't
know enough to know that that's not what we already are), or actually formed
some understanding of what time is and learned how to manipulate it.

This stuff might sound wac, but 100 years ago I'd have been laughed at
equally as hard if I talked about an interactive information network
spanning the world that can send sounds and pictures instantly, man walking
on the moon, or the amount of attention Paris Hilton gets.

And there's Arthur C Clarke's quote:

"My what shapely young buttocks you have, come and sit on my knee"

Oops

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Technology isn't a dirty word, it's the use it's been put to that has
tarnished its reputation.

Krishnamurti's logic is flawed. He's being black and white about something
he doesn't have enough information about. No one knows what the fuck the
universe is. What it's inside, if it's all there is, if we share the space
we inhabit with other dimensions we don't seem to interface with. We keep
looking at smaller and smaller scales and finding more and more STUFF. What
we look at seems to change just because we are looking at it. This shit is
weird, and KM wasn't in full understanding of the facts yet he made a play
that he knew if there was a soul or not. He made it a logical nonsense that
there was. I agree that it's inaccurate to act as if you know that there is,
meraly because you can't face the consequences that there's not...but that
still doesn't mean that there's isn't. "Lack of evidence is not evidence of
lack."

Hence I am a fan of Robert Anton Wilson's idea of Maybe Logic (not black and
white, yes no binary logic, but yes / no / maybe / indeterminate / yes AND
no / and several other states...), and general semantics, abolishing the is
word, as unwieldy as that...is.

Saying that the mind is self-limiting and can never transcend itself...

/general semantics mode ON: 

...doesn't sound right to me with the information that I have and the way I
am choosing to look at it. 

/general semantics mode off.

KM probably wasn't aware of the holographic model...the whole is contained
in each smallest part. DNA. Holograms. Energy / matter? Who knows. Although
maybe be was, because there are eastern philosophical corraloraies...

Krishnamurti didn't know either way....but spoke as though he did. I don't
either, but here are some thoughts I have had for a long time (I looked it
up and it looks like the idea has occurred to other people as well).

If you had a perfect information processing machine (computer), and were in
full understanding of the state of all the matter and energy in the universe
in one instant, not ongoing but just for one instant (yes I know it's a
rather large project and theoretically impossible for many reasons...but
maybe not if you allow the idea of multiple universes, however I
digress)...you could theoretically use that snapshot to reverse engineer the
historical position of every little bit of energy and matter that ever
was...right? So does that mean that information is ever lost...? Hrm. Maybe
it's just encrypted by the mildly large task of achieving omniscience in
order to restore it...(I'll let you know when I have the cipher ;)

So is it possible that at some stage, with the exponential increase of
information, that we'll get from where we are now (war, religion, reality
tv, Madonna, fast food, republicans) to what we refer to as 'God'
(omniscient omnipotent, older male Caucasian with beard, frowns on
masturbation, given to tantrums)...at which point we will be able to
extrapolate backwards, reverse engineer the time state of every bit of
matter and energy that ever was? And maybe not just read-only...maybe we
will be able to change it? Hrm...

How relevant is the idea of a soul then? Very much so because we can bring
everyone back if we so choose...i.e. we just created or found the human
'soul' (not that we'd be remotely human anymore by this point). The full
information state of the original being, and complete knowledge of their
entire life.

It's intellectually lazy to just say "we'll always be the same, it's how we
are." It's also a self fulfilling prophecy. Maybe all of the above is
balderdash, BUT...I don't have any evidence to the contrary, and I do have
evidence that level of information (as a percentage of total information in
the universe) is growing exponentially, and once AI takes off it will remove
the human mind as a limiting factor for the continued increase...so that
word 'never' becomes less relevant because either we have machines that
surpass us, and / or we use our technology and machines to surpass
ourselves...

How and who we are owes a hell of a lot to our technological progress (i.e.
what we've done with our minds). Why fall victim to the trap of denigrating
the mind because some others have used it for the wrong things...? 


-----Original Message-----
From: gathering-bounces at misera.net [mailto:gathering-bounces at misera.net] On
Behalf Of ade
Sent: Thursday, 20 November 2008 09:08
To: A list about all things Killing Joke (the band!)
Subject: Re: [kj] (OT) gmail

Cheers ears. You know, us humans don't half think a lot of ourselves, eh?
Just wishful thinking on our part...

-----Original Message-----
From: gathering-bounces at misera.net
[mailto:gathering-bounces at misera.net]On Behalf Of iPat
Sent: 19 November 2008 22:01
To: A list about all things Killing Joke (the band!)
Subject: Re: [kj] (OT) gmail


=== JKrishnamurti.org - Daily Quote ===

Is There Such a Thing as a Soul?

So to understand this question of death, we must be rid of fear, which
invents the various theories of afterlife or immortality or
reincarnation. So we say, those in the East say, that there is
reincarnation, there is a rebirth, a constant renewal going on and on
and on - the soul, the so-called soul. Now please listen carefully.

Is there such a thing? We like to think there is such a thing, because
it gives us pleasure, because that is something that we have set
beyond thought, beyond words, beyond; it is something eternal,
spiritual, that can never die, and so thought clings to it. But is
there such a thing, as a soul, which is something beyond time,
something beyond thought, something which is not invented by man,
something which is beyond the nature of man, something that is not put
together by the cunning mind? Because the mind sees such enormous
uncertainty, confusion, nothing permanent in life - nothing. Your
relationship to your wife, your husband, your job - nothing is
permanent. And so the mind invents a something which is permanent,
which it calls the soul. But since the mind can think about it,
thought can think about it; as thought can think about it, it is still
within the field of time - naturally. If I can think about something,
it is part of my thought. And my thought is the result of
 time, of experience, of knowledge. So, the soul is still within the
field of time...

So the idea of a continuity of a soul that will be reborn over and
over and over again has no meaning because it is the invention of a
mind that is frightened, of a mind that wants, that seeks a duration
through permanency, that wants certainty, because in that there is
hope.

The Book of Life - November 19

On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 9:56 PM, ade <ade at the-lab.zetnet.co.uk> wrote:

> They'll steal your soul !!!

>

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