Google’s Next Big Project: Beat Death (via slashdot)
Google has created a new company, Calico, with a mighty task: beat back death, or at least ensure that people live in better health for longer. Calico will focus on health-related issues, specifically aging and related diseases. Art Levinson, the former…
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When I first read this news I was reading some of the response comments from "free market" types who where using this as a justification of why society needs gross inequality and billionaire plutocrats.
The argument is that without eccentric billionaires no one would go out on the limb to invest in these kind of "moonshots" and therefore the we all benefit from inequality and therefore should allow more of it rather than have government stop the rise of natural and productive inequality.
While the argument is absurd we do have to ask ourselves how we got into the situation where we have to sit around and wait from some plutocrats to decide to fund a good idea rather than using the unlimited credit creating power of a sovereign republican government which now apparently thinks it doesn't have enough money to even buy food for poor children?
What the hell happened to the general welfare?
What the hell happened to the general welfare?
The bottom line question is what happened to intelligence and sanity in the US. The whole country seems to value stupidity over intelligence and the crazy over sanity. This is especially freaking in that the US is the world's sole superpower with virtually unlimited destructive power. This does not bode to end well.
"What the hell happened to the general welfare?"
Read Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States".
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html
It's always been like this.
sept,
There can be no 'general welfare' if the leadership thinks "they are out of money"... this is a show-stopper right there imo.
This "run out of money" falsehood seems like the key foundation to all of this mess...
rsp,
In addition, those that deny the collective consciousness or "spirit" of a nation that is reflected in its culture, institutions and manifestation in the degree of civilization that it manifests also deny the very notion of "general welfare" and even "common defense." I
n asserting that individualism is the only reality in a group as an aggregate, they deny the relationship among individuals as elements in a system of nested subsystems, which constitutes the sociological reality of a nation as a society made up of a complex web of communities and affiliations.
When economists and policymakers do this, it destroys any relevance that their models and plans have to reality. These models don'r represent anything real. They are the product of delusional thinking and warped emotions.
The collective consciousness of society that based on individualism is essentially narcissistic and tends in the direction of megalomania on one hand and paranoia on the other. It is a dysfunctional society.
On collective Consciousness I
As I understand it, mind is the sixth or synthesising sense: its purpose to discriminate between a real conception of things and unreal conceptions. That is, image a true conception of that which Consciousness contacts. In a nutshell - mind allows the Consciousness to 'see' the physical world through the 'eye' of the physical brain and sense organs, interpreted through a conceptual veil of intellectual thought; hence understand what Nature actually is. This understanding is always evolving as veil after veil is lifted from the landscape.
Understanding the world humans have created for themselves within nature is something of a distraction to this more focused pursuit of understanding the environing physical universe in which we all appear, momentarily (in our current form), and within as a minute but unique part. Science is exceedingly progressive in utilising this sixth sense. Curiously, it is also blind to the nature and reality of the universal Energy that animates the universe (as the sixth sense is necessarily a transmission and registration mechanism - but not sufficient as a tool of Consciousness, in contacting this Energy).
Science also works with forces as known (the atom of matter having mysteriously precipitated - directed under some esoteric and economic compulsion to exhibit Law, inherent as radiation, magnetism, electricity, and evolution; vibration adaption repulsion friction, rotary and cyclic spiral motion leading ever upwards and onwards to composite, ever changing evolving forms (vehicles of consciousness). In the mini-universe of each atom manifest in triple aspect as neutrons protons and electrons, energy presides, over which foundation science, prudently, preferring knowledge over belief, permits only speculation. It is a wonderful mystery!
Eastern esotericism, on the other hand, has long held that humanity will evolve equipment that machinery can neither replicate nor supplant: organs, on corresponding planes paralleling the physical senses, allowing human Consciousness to at first 'feel', and subsequently 'see' (etc.) on the etheric, emotional and mental planes (thought and emotion having just as much embodied reality as Newton's apple!) whilst simultaneously extending vision to planes above. Consciousness is conceived as a seed putting forth its roots in the lower worlds as the human persona, and opening its flower in the higher worlds as the conscious Soul, under the beautiful Light of Spirit, in completion of human nature. Then humanity will know without doubt, that everything in this universe arises from an Ocean of Being of which each is an individual, composite, and functioning part. Of course, the story does not end there …..
Whilst science and its youngest progeny psychology have already provided much of the knowledge to allow Consciousness to understand a little of its vehicle, the human persona, which enables contact with the lower worlds (mental, emotional, etheric-physical), it says nothing of how Consciousness unfolds an understanding of itself in its own realm; or evolves to contact the higher planes, universal in the Eastern conception. Through psychology and sociology science begins to map out evolving relations between personas and their aggregates in communities. It is yet to posit Consciousness as the source of this evolution and Spirit above that as the creative, motivating Power. Consciousness is all about quality and qualities – basically it is Love-Wisdom, tempering and nurturing the lower mind. It too is conceived of as 'Light' 'Understanding' - hence Consciousness, Energy, Awareness are all synonymous terms. Consciousness develops a sense of values that lead ever to both a lower and higher reality!
On collective Consciousness II
Far below, and in a societal sense, the cloud of emotionally charged thought humans have created for themselves, exists as both veil and revealer of the real. It is both a medium of growth for the vehicles of Consciousness and the medium that obscures truth. Despairing as it is to watch the greed, selfishness and conflict in the personality life of the race, and ensuing emotional and mental turmoil, still personalities who have integrated the physical-emotional-mental apparatus are emerging; personalities with a creative grasp of their equipment rise to become ‘successful’ personas in some field of human activity; personalities dissatisfied in the futility of trying to fulfil the ‘I’ grasp for something deeper within, and sensing their unity with all others, use their equipment to work more selflessly for betterment of the human condition - and personalities who have had some contact with the inner reality of the human heart, lift their eyes towards the ancient path and Serve, despite the ridicule of those whose focus is entirely constrained to mind. Evolution is not flummoxed or still! Power drives it all: the ratio of human stupidity to this power is quite funny!!!
So, to get to the point: there is a power in human consciousness to be able to identify with all other forms of consciousness and awareness; certainly below its thresholds - and increasingly, through the power of feeling (which is an intensely focused avenue to knowledge far less explored than the avenue of mind and intellect) to that which is above.
Eastern esotericism notes wherever 'Spirit' strikes 'Matter', ’Consciousness’ (Light) is born. This view places consciousness within every atom, within every human as analogical atomic form, and higher within every systemic or cosmic atomic form. Consciousness is therefore a unity and universal - demonstrating in an evolutionary simple state in the single atom and in a more evolved state in the human, where in the physical body for example, the lesser Consciousnesses of the atoms, molecules, cells and organs are ‘collectively’ manifest as the physical city and physiology of the human body, under the greater Consciousness of the human soul.
I wanted to mention there have always been other ways of thinking of both individual and collective Consciousness!
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