D-wave quantum computers are legit.

[Baile]

Originally Posted by 7luminaries

It all amounts to the same thing...a universal, primal male need to control the woman

Tell that to my ex. She burned me with a cigarette one time, and set fire to my belongings another, all because I said no when she wanted to hear yes. What's that 1960s cigarette ad campaign? Virginia Slims: You've come a long way Baby!

I'm back because I figured out why I bothered to post yesterday. I read then re-read a good portion of the last few pages. In all my years here, I have to say I have never had the experience I've had, reading this thread. I can't figure it out! My mind registers it as disconnected words and ideas floating about in some far-away nebula. I'd have to travel light years just to make some kind of sense of it.

So I went went back to Ground Zero. Mission Control. Lift Off. I read the first post, to get a sense of what the actual topic is. And oh I see now, someone is proposing a new religion. God and Christ becomes 0 and 1.

This morning I realized that's why I'm drifting in space here. You people are having a 0 and 1 dialogue. I relate to 0 and 1 analytical conceptualizing about as much as I relate to God and Christ. See, some time in the 1980s I had a depth-awareness revelation when introduced to the mystical tradition of the Middle Path.

You've got God and Christ on one side of the human-evolutionary lemniscate (religious belief/emotion). And 0 and 1 on the other end-loop (scientific theory/intellect). The Middle Path requires navigating the wild white-waters of these two belief-extremes. Paddle your kayak gently down the middle of the stream. And if you see churning water to one side or the other, you've fallen asleep and drifted too far.

And I had a revelation last night as well pondering all this; a revelation concerning the unfathomable, unthinkable, immeasurable, inconceivable and impossible reality of miraculous Spirit.

Hey Mr. Quantum Computer geek. Type in some 0s and 1s on your keyboard and conjure me up a GIANT GAS BALL, a million times the size of our planet, that warms air for hundreds of millions of miles, and that creates and sustains that other project I want you to get busy on: creating a conscious human being. And not just one prototype. I want an infinite assortment of sizes, types and levels of consciousness. Oh right, I forgot to mention: I don't want mindless zombies; make them self-aware.

Science can't touch Spirit with a 93 million-mile pole. And if they tried, whatever sorry and pathetic thing our best technology could possibly come up with, would bend and break around 4000 feet or so.

[7luminaries]

Originally Posted by Baile

Tell that to my ex. She burned me with a cigarette one time, and set fire to my belongings another, all because I said no when she wanted to hear yes. What's that 1960s cigarette ad campaign? Virginia Slims: You've come a long way Baby!

I'm back because I figured out why I bothered to post yesterday. I read then re-read a good portion of the last few pages. In all my years here, I have to say I have never had the experience I've had, reading this thread. I can't figure it out! My mind registers it as disconnected words and ideas floating about in some far-away nebula. I'd have to travel light years just to make some kind of sense of it.

So I went went back to Ground Zero. Mission Control. Lift Off. I read the first post, to get a sense of what the actual topic is. And oh I see now, someone is proposing a new religion. God and Christ becomes 0 and 1.

This morning I realized that's why I'm drifting in space here. You people are having a 0 and 1 dialogue. I relate to 0 and 1 analytical conceptualizing about as much as I relate to God and Christ. See, some time in the 1980s I had a depth-awareness revelation when introduced to the mystical tradition of the Middle Path.

You've got God and Christ on one side of the human-evolutionary lemniscate (religious belief/emotion). And 0 and 1 on the other end-loop (scientific theory/intellect). The Middle Path requires navigating the wild white-waters of these two belief-extremes. Paddle your kayak gently down the middle of the stream. And if you see churning water to one side or the other, you've fallen asleep and drifted too far.

And I had a revelation last night as well pondering all this; a revelation concerning the unfathomable, unthinkable, immeasurable, inconceivable and impossible reality of miraculous Spirit.

Hey Mr. Quantum Computer geek. Type in some 0s and 1s on your keyboard and conjure me up a GIANT GAS BALL, a million times the size of our planet, that warms air for hundreds of millions of miles, and that creates and sustains that other project I want you to get busy on: creating a conscious human being. And not just one prototype. I want an infinite assortment of sizes, types and levels of consciousness. Oh right, I forgot to mention: I don't want mindless zombies; make them self-aware.

Science can't touch Spirit with a 93 million-mile pole. And if they tried, whatever sorry and pathetic thing our best technology could possibly come up with, would bend and break around 4000 feet or so.

Baile, I think you do get the crux of it. The need or desire to or understand or to know in the deepest sense is at the core of what it is to be human, along with authentic love, compassion, and lovingkindness. This is a beautiful thing.

But when we fail to recognise our limitations and demand that the unknowable be reduced or broken down to some cosmic trace remnant that can be inferred or measured...then we've allowed the fear and loathing to define us. Likewise, when we turn our fear and loathing on all that which we cannot yet apprehend ("I hate mystery, I hate God", etc., "all MUST be known, controlled, and exploited by us at our very crude level of moral, ethical, and spiritual development"), then we've made the world a scapegoat for our own fear and loathing that belongs to no one else but us.

Equally, when we must possess and control, else beat and break, that which we desire here on earth (for men, meaning women, along with "stuff") ...then likewise we've allowed the fear and loathing to define us, to become us. And when we fear and loathe they who we desire, then we've turned other human beings into scapegoats for our own very personal fear and loathing.

I think you do get it ...though I would go easy on the name-calling, since everyone comes to their own appreciation of the transcendent in their own way...some from a much more concrete perspective. And sorry about your personal troubles...sounds like you're better off now

Peace & blessings
7L

[Baile]

Originally Posted by 7luminaries

I think you do get it ...though I would go easy on the name-calling

You mean Mr. Geek? That was directed at all those scientists sweating away programming 1 and 0 into their quantum PCs in an attempt to reveal the very nature of existence. I doubt they'll be reading this. And I know for sure I got it because I'm the one that wrote it. My world is really quite dull some would no doubt think. I have zero life questions I need answering. I get up. I love life. I go to bed. My kayak is in the ocean and I'm floating floating floating

[Baile]

0 life questions and 1 life objective (joy). I'm quantum apparently.

[7luminaries]

Originally Posted by Baile

0 life questions and 1 life objective (joy). I'm quantum apparently.

You got it

Peace & blessings
7L

[organic born]

Originally Posted by 7luminaries

Actually, the primal male fear I described is one referenced widely by sociobiogists. Although they tend to look for justification and thus to stress the need for men psychologically to be assured of or less anxious about the "legitimacy' of the offspring. Of course, that's arguably not the only or even primary reason...other ego-centred reasons are equally primary. Regardless, the (in)ability to possess, control, and solely dominate one's sexual outlets has been identified as a primal male fear, underscoring social control, social hierarchies, sexual control and the resulting female oppression and subjugation, and so forth.

Read the book "Sex at Dawn" by Christopher Ryan in order to update your impressions along these lines. Nothing is as settled as you're mentioning above. :)

Males and females are fairly close to the same size, which indicates that competition among and between the sexes was not a big issue. If the males were forever in competition with each other this would have favored the larger and more dominant genes, but this didn't happen. There are a whole host of issues that generally favor a more balanced and egalitarian stance when it comes to our breeding habits among smaller groups, which was the norm until historically recently. In fact most everything that Christoper covers, in terms of relationships between and among the sexes, are essentially paralleled in the general habits of the South American tribe that I mentioned.

There's been a rush to judgment among earlier researchers in order to validate the general mindset of our more recent cultural order. While the current and progressing science on such things suggest a much looser and far more flexible, and less neurotic, expression of or species earlier mating behaviour.

Seriously.. you're in need of updating on this issue. :)

[organic born]

Originally Posted by Gem

I think what humanity has been doing is progressively becoming more and more 'virtual'.

....

Yes. 'Reality' ever recedes as knowledge pursues it, and as knowledge strives to reach it, ironically, we become increasingly 'virtual' beings. Soon enough cyberspace will provide, not a virtual world, but an alternative reality, in the sense that what we consider to be 'the real world' is itself not 'real'.

Bingo! You captured the essence of this perfectly Gem! :)

There is a funny qualifier to this though... we are still in a body with a genetic memory, we still need to feed it with evolutionary-relevant foods, it's still important that our physical environment remains "natural" enough in order to sustain our natural body. So dream as we may we can't escape the fact that we're inhabiting a physical organism within a physical setting.

We are intimately entwined within an natural tether.
We can ignore this, but only to a point..

[7luminaries]

Originally Posted by organic born

Read the book "Sex at Dawn" by Christopher Ryan in order to update your impressions along these lines. Nothing is as settled as you're mentioning above. :)

Males and females are fairly close to the same size, which indicates that competition among and between the sexes was not a big issue. If the males were forever in competition with each other this would have favored the larger and more dominant genes, but this didn't happen. There are a whole host of issues that generally favor a more balanced and egalitarian stance when it comes to our breeding habits among smaller groups, which was the norm until historically recently. In fact most everything that Christoper covers, in terms of relationships between and among the sexes, are essentially paralleled in the general habits of the South American tribe that I mentioned.

There's been a rush to judgment among earlier researchers in order to validate the general mindset of our more recent cultural order. While the current and progressing science on such things suggest a much looser and far more flexible, and less neurotic, expression of or species earlier mating behaviour.

Seriously.. you're in need of updating on this issue. :)

Look, Organic, the fact is no one revisionist or alternative perspective has the sole license on the truth. Everyone has to make a name for themselves in their academic area (LOL) but only some of it will stand the test of time. There is always some truth in nearly any alternative perspective because humanity consists of the main and of the outliers, or whatever terms you prefer.

You've found a perspective and an author you prefer and one that suits how you need to or prefer to see things. On the other hand, I'm referencing the bulk of scholarship to date on this issue, across nearly every aspect of life which is experienced directly and observed directly (society, culture, history, economics, biology and social biology), including both at the individual, social and collective (species) level.

It is what it is, with local variation over time and place. I think loads of folks since time immemorial, including loads of historians, generals, spiritual leaders (mostly men), and progressive men (mostly) in the sciences and humanities have done a wonderful and critical job of educating and sharing their experiences and perspectives to date...and they have revealed both the vastness of our accomplishments as well as the vastness of the stratification and primal fears our human history has been built upon to date. Great truths have already been revealed, revised, reinterpreted and well-established -- the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly. It's for all of us to continue the work forward.

Researchers -- mainly men, in fact -- have quantified the social imbalance in our lives and its sources in primal fears of control and access to the goods (sexual and material) as the root, with gender being the most fundamental or primary (first occurring) in the axis of stratification, rooted in fear/control/discrimination/oppression of women by men for control of the sexual goods. Other axes also exist...based in material accumulation and control (root of class imbalance), ethnocentrism (root of race/ethnic imbalance). Etc. In different ways from the perspective of very different areas of life and science.

We owe all these men (and women) a huge debt...they have done their bit to raise up humanity every bit as much as the great spiritual leaders, and they too shown us more honestly who we really are, and just exactly where we lack authentic love, compassion, and justice. And just exactly where we need to apply it, to these exact places -- these axes of discrimination and power upon which we've existed up until now. We owe them our thanks, and our deepest respect and honour.

The depth and breadth of this nearly universal reality is present in nearly every area of life, of society, of culture, of our simple daily existence...as well as of most scholarship and research. The fact is our current reality, in nearly every culture worldwide, proves this. And a lone theory or culture here or there is more typically the exception that proves the rule.

I really don't see why you are so invested in railing against most of humanity's known, observed and recorded history, social structures, cultures, and experiences to date, though I'm certain you have your reasons. It's far better IMO if you stop trying to convince others of something that doesn't speak to them and simply accept that it's ok to agree to disagree. I have no issue with you believing whatever you like. But it simply doesn't jive well with the vast majority of humanity's lived and recorded experiences to date, so once again, I'll leave you to it

Peace & blessings,
7L

[organic born]

Originally Posted by 7luminaries

I really don't see why you are so invested in railing against most of humanity's known, observed and recorded history, social structures, cultures, and experiences to date, though I'm certain you have your reasons.

Not "railing", I'm clarifying. There are two types of evolution when it comes to mankind. The one is akin to what appears in the animal world and is focused specifically on biological need and expediency. The other is "cultural" evolution, which tends to move much more quickly, is far more fluid, and is based on the inclinations of the people involved. Biological evolution usually involves very few variables over time. While cultural evolution can and does change wildly and takes endlessly differing forms based on location and isolation.

Much of what you're referring to as "established" refers to the later (cultural) expression of evolution and what happened to be recorded over the last couple of thousand of years. And at that, this doesn't reflect the massive number of small groupings and indigenous peoples who didn't make themselves known in such a way that broadcasted their habits.

The more recent modern sciences are focused on what our biology tells us about the habits of those who predate the written record. And much of what's being learned suggests a much different picture than what I'm seeing you painting. The male female relationships were much more relaxed and not nearly as competitive as you chose to suggest.

This makes a difference. How we visualize where we came from affects how we feel about our present and to what our future options are. If we think that being dominated and being domineering is the deal then that's what we'll continue to visualize and expect. If instead we actually emerged from ancestors who were in better tuned to each others needs and sought to find balance in all things important then this is good to know as well.

Males competing within small groups has little to no long term survival value. Smaller groups are raised in relation to each other and are anchored in such a way that estrangement is not a thing. This is how we evolved 'biologically' as a species, so the inclination to respond to each other with this level of intimacy is still buried within our biological programing. Much of what you're referring to took place after agriculture took hold of our species and larger groupings became more common. Such agriculturally based cultures involved ownership of possessions and the standing of ones ground. So a lot of warping of our primary habits occurred as a result.

It's this warping of what's been culturally-stimulated that currently shapes much of what we're familiar with. This is not who we "are" this is who we've "become". And for most this leaves us as individuals within our species with a tactile feeling of loneliness. We've been trying to force one-on-one bondings in such a way that isolates individuals into wobbly relationships. Most bulk-cultures are contrived alliances where we're attempting to teach our children to adopt/adapt to the patterning that our patents embedded in us. And yet these cultures vary wildly depending upon location and fairly recent histories.

I have found it fascinating to realize that we are not tethered to such enforced ways of being and that our "natural" heritage offers us a much more integrated manor of interacting with each other.

In this regard we can learn from the indigenous peoples, who still carry with them the makings of our earlier heritage.

We are not stuck with the kind of world that encircles us today, we emerged from a much more integrative manor of being. Our species didn't make it through the last millions of years behaving in the ways that we're doing today. We never would have made it this far...

[7luminaries]

Organic, I get what you're saying but as far as what is and what has been to date, your viewpoint simply contradicts the bulk of humanity's known experiences, including those of premodern and indigenous cultures whose cultural and spiritual treasure troves are vast. As in fact, we've already gathered loads of 17th through 21st century evidence on loads of cultures that predate the written word , which includes the recent modern era.

Variation exists, that is true, but none of it overturns the fact that beyond the extended family (usually 25-30), competition has always existed between men for material goods and/or territory and/or brides (or, women of childbearing age). Saying that it isn't so doesn't make it so, particularly when you have no majority support for this perspective globally.

Now, I also get that you are consciously looking to reinterpret our history to something that it majority never was, to what never existed in the main for the bulk of human culture and society. I get that you think this would also serve as a blueprint for future, and that this is your purpose for trying to locate it in the past somewhere, and in some group.

IMO I don't see it's honest or true to deny the vast bulk of what is and what has been. It's dishonest and it denies the reality of what is and what has brought us here to this point. It denies the reality of who we are up to this point. We need to begin to make conscious choices, I agree, but it's more about accepting the reality of what is and deciding where we can and should and need to or desire to change.

So here's where the real discussion begins. Not in rewriting the past to something it never was en masse, in order to justify doing whatever it is you want to do now...but rather accepting the past as it is, and consciously taking different choices. In discussions of where we go from here, much of what you say is ideal about this semi-isolated primitive society wouldn't resonate with many others. I'm not saying a more collaborative approach amongst men wouldn't generally be positive in many areas of life where material goods or territory are involved.

However, that collaboration does not and can never extend to treating other human beings as collective goods, because that is slavery at its core, no matter your stated "rights", and we have rejected that concept. No one person or group has the right to treat another person or group as a collective good like money or food, however, so this collaborative approach cannot be applied to the objectification of people as goods or sexual goods. In those primitive societies where women have been accultured to multiple partners, it is nearly always so that the men will accept all the children out of possible paternity, rather than cast them out and favour others. It is for sheer survival, at the core. This is typically a mark of intensified male competition for sexual goods or power via blood hiearchies and numbers, and it generally indicates a lower level of power and status amongst women.

In my view and in the view of the majority here on earth, that situation is to be avoided at all costs. It is a violation of our human rights and we might as well be sex slaves or property. Women treating men in this same way would always be equally objectionable, and deeply so.

It's a matter of spiritual maturity and equanimity and loving others equally to the self (seeking the highest good of others equally to oneself). Ultimately, it's in no one's highest good to be intimately touched without the full and complete immersion and engagement of the heart and soul, and of the spirit as well as the body. It's in no one's highest good to be used or exploited, ever, even if "mutually agreed".

We are each responsible for our intent, thought, word, and deed toward others, regardless if others mutually agreed to use and exploit one another. As we walk our paths, we all come to deeper realisations and deeper levels of self-awareness. Women generally don't desire sex for its own sake...it is a channel for emotional and spiritual intimacy which is only right when we are loved authentically and within a context of meaningful commitment. This is broadly universal, just as is men's primal fear of cuckolding and betrayal/drive to control women. Certain aspects of the culture you mention, as portrayed, simply will not fly in a more spiritually and ethically advanced society. Where women do not have to fear for their lives or the lives of their children, and pimp themselves out to pacify men or gain protection.

This ideal society many of us seek does not yet exist -- either anywhere in our prehistory NOR in our recorded past, NOR in our present day. Oppression, exploitation, and even slavery (and sex slavery) have not yet been eradicated anywhere, but it's still the goal. Once aware, you can never go back home again. No matter how it's packaged or what it's purposed to be. Better to see it just as it was and as it currently is, and to know it as it is as deeply and as penetratingly as possible.

The fact is, both the past that truly was and the past you may have wished us to have are both deeply objectionable for many of us. As is the present, all round the globe. We can all see a lot of misalignment, prejudice, and exploitation built into our history and continuing to our present day. For many of us, both our past and our present are deeply misaligned with the truths of who we are at core. It's time to look to the future with open eyes but whilst keeping BOTH the good and the true (which is both good and bad) which we have learnt about ourselves to date...in order to better inform us going forward.

Peace & blessings,
7L