A Simple Sketch of Common Sense

"The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling, is at the centre of true religion." - Albert Einstein

....At the centre of Faith.

Life & Purpose! ……………………………………The Ethiopian Perspective

A Simple Sketch of Common Sense

(First published on the ocasion of the Ethiopian Millenium Day)

The Purpose of Life for the modern man is to develop a condition of social harmony, where mankind can eventually achieve its higher objectives of Peace, High Culture, Perfection/Prosperity and a tolerant atmosphere of Faith in a human society, so that every Man-Woman can appreciate and enjoy a Harmonious Life.

- HARMONY in all aspects of Life – -Individual, social, cultural, natural or spiritual.

In every society at a definite time and space parallel to the natural reality of life, there is a social reality which is working its way through history. This social reality is different for every society and has to be perceived in its relation to the sum total of its intellectual leadership, whatever is available at the disposal of that society. The point is only whether one is aware of this reality and in a position to understand the moments and all the elements of harmony, emanating from the natural and social reality. And these moments and elements have to be appraised not in their differences but essentially in their unity and complex interactions to be capable of giving the necessary intellectual leadership, in the sense of all godly and human high virtues to keep life at its best quality for that society. If the sum total of the intellectual section of that society i.e. the elite, are not conscious of their social reality in all possible dimensions, like any position and moment of the harmony, they are also simply objects liable to be moved in any direction as the harmony of life finds it necessary. History has enough testimonies how the inherent necessity of harmony in nature has retaliated either in the nature of Man (revolutions, wars...etc) or on its account (natural catastrophes, destitution, hunger etc.) reminding Man to do something (science, culture...) about its condition. In such circumstances and above all, if the elite of that social reality are blindfolded by their sectional interests, irrespective of what they may think of themselves entertaining an illusion to have a firm command of their conditions, they are degraded to the level of the other objects of the social reality. They are not subjects with the intellectual capacity to determine and move the history of their society in a harmonious manner. It is in such situations, that societies are at their lowest levels of Collective Intelligence and would drift away into different calamities, human catastrophes of history, be it in the form of wars, internal conflicts, revolutions or human destitution and destruction. This is the case until the social reality re-establishes its harmony again, when the community at large would somehow function by picking its intellectual subject and pave the way to legitimate a new formation of the elite, eligible for that society at that context of history.

If this community does not maintain the harmony incorporating the high level of philosophical and intellectual capacity necessary for that society, this can also last only until the next phase of disharmony begins. This means to maintain the harmony, the elite i.e. the political class (the total sum of the elite from culture, politics, science and faith) should consistently give the necessary leadership taking into account all the necessary elements of a harmonious life in the nation, a modern nation which can fulfil all the requirements of stability and sovereignty and work for its people, in its sphere of influence towards the high objectives of mankind.

This is the basic consensus, which a nation today needs in order to guarantee an all round and acceptable existence of its members. An intellectual component of a society, which cannot stand up for this basic standard cannot claim to have the intellectual attribute it believes to have and is in effect a playing object of other nations and their leadership. Ethiopia has lost this capacity at least for the last forty years. This stretches deep into the middle period of Emperor Haile Selassie, until the different moments of disharmony began to emerge in search of a new intellectual leadership or political class; which failed until today. On the other hand, the Ethiopian people, are growing mature accepting the challenge of disharmony and showing their readiness to work for their harmonious destiny. However, the elite are still not capable of resolving their own disharmony to work out a functioning system with the people to come to the social harmony, which that society highly needs at the moment. The Ethiopian people are calling for a human progress and a genuine intellectual leadership which equals their readiness to change their miserable plight towards prosperity and a higher culture, which will bring about harmony and as a consequence the welfare of the society. What is the quintessence of life and what are the dimensions of this HARMONY?

To make a picture of the following Model of Harmony,

see more in

http://berhane-hilina.blogspot.com/

The following is an extract of a detailed paper elaborating the Model

The Quintessence of L I F E

There are four planes, which could represent the quintessence of life at a highly macro level:-

I. The social plane

1. State

2. Community

3. Family

II. The cultural plane

1. Laws

2. Ethics

3. Love

III. The Material plane

5. Mankind

6. Nature

7. The Universe

IV. The Spiritual plane

5. Conscience

6. Religion

7. Faith

The interfaces on the transcendental level (which are not points of discussion here) are

V. The Human plane (consisting of these four planes)

4. The Human Being & Hope

And

VI. The Absolute plane (consisting of all the planes)

8. The Absolute & Deliverance

There are eight Dimensions making the Backbone of these Planes

1. The State & Laws 5. Mankind & Conscience

2. Community & Ethics 6. Nature & Religion

3. Family & Love 7. The Universe & Faith

4. The Human Being & Hope 8. God, the Absolute & Deliverance

These Dimensions have their corresponding Axis:

1. Humanity (h) 5. Mass (m)

2. Intelligence/Consciousness (I) 6. Energy (E)

3. Quality of Music (q) 7. Light (c)

4. Destiny (D) 8. The Source (S)

The Purpose of Life is HARMONY within and between the four Planes of Life and achieving the corresponding Higher Objectives of Mankind:-

Peace, Culture, Perfection and Faith.

Higher objectives

Harmony is not a constant state of life where everything functions like a “Perpetuum Mobile”. Moreover it is not a phenomenon like a building out of similar bricks, with every bit of them fitting to each other and every section of life to be uniform to function like those parades of masses of people on big celebrations of former communist countries or sport opening ceremonies, to demonstrate in vain some sort of art. On the contrary, Man is by far beyond this state of intellectual abyss and with reason and logic reigning on the human mind today, the nature of harmony is the opposite, demanding diversity and even quantum complexity as its prerequisite to be real in life.

And above all, harmony is a state of existence highly embedded in the factor of time, reaching out for eternity and longing for infinity. Do we like to imagine where the limits of the universe are? Is the Mind ready to contemplate on how abstract the quantum dimension is, that holds us together or what the ultimate force behind all this matter, conscious or unconscious, visible, dark or whatever else could be?.... For instance just a newly discovered one galaxy, out of innumerable others, which is much bigger than our milky way, contains billions of stars…cosmologists speculate even on the existence of a multiple of similar universes like ours….etc. …etc.. Can we easily accommodate such facts in our minds? Therefore harmony is not a state of tranquillity and rest but full of all the moments and vectors of life conceived in space and time. Harmony is an art and state of equilibrium constituting and allowing the existence of all its elements at a time always moving towards a still higher purpose; which is again nothing other than harmony itself. With this in mind harmony is thus necessarily embedded in a fundamental of higher objectives, which could always be formulated for the various sections of harmony in particular or higher objectives inherently related to the four planes of life in general, which provide the big purpose of life its concrete nature.

These higher objectives are: PEACE, High CULTURE, PERFECTION and FAITH

I. Peace for the social plane

The concrete purpose of any state form (e.g. Democracy), the community and the family can be nothing less than peace. If we want to save ourselves from further calamities, wars, and all sorts of inhuman social conflicts, as witnessed in our recent history (WWII etc.), this higher objective can only be attained through an appropriate social justice and welfare. Otherwise, we are driving towards what a wise Ethiopian may call “Eyaweku Aleku” (“a conscious self destruction”) – another form of destruction. Irrespective of the insanity of the actors, in the name of “enduring freedom” or the promise of the “heaven beyond”, the “cultural conflict”, which is hovering today over the world around the question of “Atomic Energy and the dream or the nightmare of a religious National superiority” is not accidental and has its social ground and may be the forerunner of the next round of human destruction, if the human species fail to work for peace, social justice and welfare. There is no way that this round of destruction could be less inhuman than the recent past, which was more or less ideologically conditioned. How would it be like with an additional religious dimension?

II. Culture/ High culture for the cultural plane

Culture- High culture means human culture based on the high level of scientific progress with the respect of all human cultural background as diversified as it is today, historically handed over to the modern human from every section of the human species. Imagine a virtuoso classical music, which would caress all your senses***, which would move your loving heart, which will enhance the silence of your mind, which will inspire you with a transcendental vision, thereby elevating your passion and respect for life and the human. This can only be achieved by the genius, who is in a position to combine all variations of notes by means of a high musical intellect one can imagine of. Or imagine a nice field and steppes of flowers made up of only tulips in one geometrical form or the other, in comparison to that of a big garden with different forms of planes full of all the varieties of flowers existing today in nature - from the well known beautiful black red rose to a cactus flower etc. It does not require a special intellect to tell which would be appealing and delighting to the healthy mind, be it the artist or the layman. The same is true with Culture and High Culture, which can be a panorama of all cultures from all shades and corners of the human species at a definite time, without the slightest propensity of exclusiveness. Not exclusive but always working on the elevation of the human intellect towards the essential substance of the human mind – reason and logic, supported by some form of faith; Faith which as discussed below, is itself one of the higher objective of life too.

III. Perfection for the material plane

Mankind as a species, not only represented by its highest intellects, but also even by that of the common intellect, has the affinity for perfection and it lies in the nature of the human to be curious and always in the search for a higher knowledge. This may be, as protagonists of evolution may presume, due to the higher instincts of survival in the “highly aggressive state of nature”. Survival of the fittest for the human however, can be more easily realised through a higher intellect than through a tougher tentacle – the muscles. This is true, though history is also full of other facts on events which are contrary to reason and logic. In spite of all odds, this did not however prevent the human species to progress towards perfection. Every period of life has produced its jewels of humans, who have the courage and the intellect to develop science as far as their ages could manage, so that we would enjoy its fruits. Enjoy and develop all spheres of science, always critically appraised to go further towards perfection initiating a new scope. Science is always an open phenomena and remains so, as long as the human being manages to maintain its existence, and life; Life with a Purpose. In other words the higher objective of the material plane is perfection with the strong support of science; Science for the promotion of peace and human culture.

IV. Faith for the spiritual plane

Faith is strictly speaking a domain of the sovereign individual; the individual free of any constraints. It is not with a longing for the past or out of nostalgic sentiments, if it is suggested here to change the well known aphorism of the last Emperor; “Haymanot yegil new “ to “Imnet Yegil new”. “ Faith (not religion) belongs to the sphere of the individual”. This is true, if all the prerequisites of a high human culture with the necessary welfare and peace on the basis of reason and logic were available. But this is not the reality, though, given the scientific progress of today, combined with the available spiritual prerequisite, the abundant wealth could have been sufficient enough to entertain such a culture.. The higher insight hadn’t unfortunately made its way through the mind of every individual, that the source of pleasure does not lie in the accumulation of wealth but somewhere in the mind of the self for the bliss of knowledge (cf. Aristotle) or somewhere between heaven and earth or like Kafka would simply say over the surface and under the feet. But unfortunately we are still staggering on an earth – otherwise the beautiful earth – where one feels to be happy touching the barren sand of the moon and on the other side, a child on this same earth dies out of destitution by every tick of the minute; and the former could sleep at night silently, without being nagged by the slightest bit of conscience whatsoever. Because of all such hard facts, the necessity of the state for the social reality of today is apparent, be it for the administration of social and civil justice, and be it for the administration and distribution of wealth or controlling and monitoring of the latter with the help of the “magical market forces”. Likewise mankind is today full of all sorts of faiths and all kinds of religions. Whether or not with a highly genuine spiritual purpose or as a style of life, these spiritual instances attract and absorb the individuals or groups of mankind, since it lies in the nature of the human to be spiritually affiliated to this or that sect. As long as they are not instances of human manipulations, as unfortunately they indeed mostly are, these religions or faiths constituted in all forms of institutions could play a healthy social role. They can fulfil their social purposes in helping to elevate mankind, if not in the possible spiritual humbleness, at least, in the sense of human ethics and in its moral awareness. If we are lucky and the intellectual level of the society allows, this objective can more or less be fulfilled by the religions available today. And thanks god, ample humanist intellectuals have pleaded for religion not to meddle in the secular section of life. At least in the regions where enlightenment has succeeded, it is established, that the civil state should be free of any religious affiliation or attachment, which is the most optimal way of looking at it. The Faith posited here, as the high objective of the harmony of life, is but of a higher abstraction. This is, on the one hand the sum total of the philosophy of enlightenment and the belief that the human mind would be at its summit of intellectual abstraction capacity and would touch all godly virtues, when it is free of any institutions, dogmas and religions in their traditional interpretation of disciplining the life of the human. Without the inherent insight emanating from oneself, liberation of the self would not be materialized. This way of attitude can be manifested in all forms of intellectual devotion or system of belief, be it philosophy or religion. On the other side, there is the quintessence of the sum total of all institutionalised manifestations of religions, which could serve as instances of ethics and moral awareness, which are of spiritual nature but also secular enough to be in favour of life and in an indirect service of the state where they exist. Whether, those from the traditional religion politically liberated intellectuals like it or not, the form of faith whose moments stretch in the two directions mentioned is amply present in the social reality of today. And it is the quintessence of all these aspects of faith, which I concretely posit as a higher objective for the spiritual plane at large. This culminates ultimately in the Faith for life with the purpose of realising the other high objectives of mankind. Peace, perfection and culture, which in turn will lead us to the longed harmony in society and the intellectual individual mind at its highest level of intelligence based on reason and logic, which is again itself not devoid of faith for a still higher purpose; a higher purpose beyond human dimension, with which only the mind can and may prepare itself - if not endowed by nature and historical process in its substance, as some may be - a ready mind at least in the will,

The will for a healthy human conscience to live with once neighbour;

The will for a state of peaceful existence;

The will to learn and progress towards perfection;

The will to appreciate the development of human culture in its diversity and complexity;

And never the arrogance of superiority in an inhuman uniformity, negating the very nature of life or pseudo equality in a uniformity of life, for the purpose of manipulating man. Can you make out of a cactus tree a eucalyptus, or is it better and wiser to make their common soil fertile? The faith in Harmony is not a belief in uniformity like religions of this or that colour may propagate. On the contrary, it is a state of existence with diversity and complexity as its prerequisites. It is with this conception that Faith is presented as one of the four high objectives of life in harmony. Faith as the crème de la crème emanating out of the healthy human conscience, the non-dogmatic section of religion and the philosophical faith based on the intellect.

* * *

The Ethiopian perspective

I. Consensus on Peace as an objective of harmony

In the concert of the harmony of life, with the perspective of harmony is there for us, for the Ethiopian reality any light through the tunnel? Is the high objective peace just a dream? The great historical opportunity in 2005 seems to have elapsed, when all politically relevant actors could comply with the rules of the democratic play to share or reconcile fields of interest and spheres of political power to accept the challenge of the day and cope with the high-time task of the people. The minds of the big-actors are still staggering in disharmony incapable of managing the concert. Thereby on the one side, resorting to the simple, brutal and primitive method – brute force, which appeals to the substance of the small and backward intellect, on the other the state of an uncompromising political attitude, incapable of grasping the moment of history in its harmonious existence, showing the indicative low level of intelligence, not worthy of the peoples high level of social reality, ever witnessed in such a manner in the history of the Ethiopian state, to promote peace, prosperity, welfare and culture illuminated by a high level of faith of different colours. Sticking to their legacy of different origins, the elite have failed as a whole; be it in the underlying dogmatic attitude of the so called “revolutionary democracy”/”Abiotawi democracy”, which is a remnant of the obscuring dogmatic ideology of communism; or be it in a manifestation of the misplaced “zeraf-mentality”, which is today totally irrelevant, for the aspirations of the people with hundreds of flowers of cultures I mentioned above. And above all the insanity of the never ending dispute of the Eritrean - Ethiopian conflict, not to mention the material wealth consummated; for which over 70,000 people have sacrificed their lives, (an amount which only measures to the sacrifice during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in WW II) is beyond any form of rationality. Without this conflict, the amount of wealth consummated, could have given a basis of existence for the million of the victims of the hunger catastrophe of today. Instead, it has been an annual ritual to collect alms every Christmas for Ethiopia, a name, which is gradually in the west becoming a synonym for Hunger, scratching and piercing on the substance of the pride we used to entertain as Ethiopians. Given the common ethnic origin, the common cultural ground, the similar religious and historical background of the peoples involved in the conflict, I would say, this conflict has taken a paranoid dimension – and is a case for the psychiatrist or the exorcist.

Since the man of Ethiopia always likes to symbolize himself with the lion, (to please everybody) if I take the liberty of making an allegory, I always have a picture of several numbers of these “lions” fighting, scrambling, snatching and tormenting each other for a piece of flesh, which the warder of the national park has thrown for their nourishment on his monitoring tours. In the sphere of the humans, if you take and understand, this piece of flesh for a piece of knowledge and the warder for the source of knowledge, be it the political ideology, the religion or a genuine epistemology from every direction of heaven or earth — China and India -the eastern philosophy, the continent - the Greek philosophy or the Roman empire –or the philosophy and scientific inquiry from the island – the Empire or from the far West– the philosophy of constitutional democracy- across the Atlantic – from the Incas —etc…etc...Or for that matter even an indigenous origin of knowledge, whatever it may be -from the Aksumite Empire or the Geda system or the Wolamo kingdom or the Mehal Meda of Shewa – or the castles of Gonder - the source or the truth of this knowledge is immaterial and does not justify the negation of life. The point is that, knowledge is at the disposal of the human, to nourish the intellect, so that he could make his life convenient and worthy of the existence, but never and ever for organising a bloodbath or carnage like the wild lions in the national park. I am sure this is not at all in the sense of the initial originators of all these philosophies, ideologies, models, faiths and religions. If however, some of these ideologies, philosophies, economic models, religions or faiths are inherently in their nature made or rectified for the carnage, the conflicts, and the violence, they don’t deserve the attribute human and have to be discarded, not even in the warded national park, but to the animals in the jungle, where these laws of the jungle would reign. Under the perspective of harmony, we Ethiopians can no more afford any religious or political philosophy or political movement or liberation or freedom or national movement, which is counter to the philosophy of peace as a higher objective. I think we have had enough of it, in the events of the last 30 years, not to mention our 3000 years history. Be it the wealthy man, who adores the sanctity of private property or the philanthropist or the “communist” who sees all sources and solutions of conflicts in the appropriation of the latter, without peace his basic ground for existence will crack and break down. That piece of flesh, for which they have staged a carnage, will not be consumed by any of the indigenous ones but by another lion, a stronger one, which will again reign in the jungle; then you know the saying “Kanbesa mengaga”¹. But we want a human environment and peace. We must surpass this phase of the “Anbesaw”² psychological make-up to a sober intellectual outlook of the modern human-being and work in Ethiopia for the Peace of our people and mankind.

Is this high objective peace of the social plane really just a dream? We can remain optimist and let us put oil on the troubled waters of our volatile region. Let us hope that the state of reconciliation, which is today in the air at the dawn of our Millennium hold long enough to bring the first off springs of the social Harmony, which the Ethiopian people are for so long fond of. The economic policy, the philosophy of the social welfare and the education system, which are the ground work of a peaceful existence, are all negotiable and could be worked out, if the genuine good will for peace is the ultimate purpose of the social framework. If one deserves the attribute intellectual, for the beginning and as a prerequisite, it just needs the harmony in the individual mind, the consensus and the passion of the elite– the political class- for tolerance and peace at large, whose condition is under the Ethiopian reality, the freedom of culture.

II. Consensus on Culture as an objective of harmony

The high objective - culture in Ethiopia is so diversified that, instead of being an asset, it is either seen as a burden or it is used by the simple intellect as a pretext to call for uniformity, which is counter to harmony. The simple solution of the simple intellect – one man –one language- one nation- can only invite the disintegration of the Ethiopian state, where for good or bad, we were living together for centuries. No one, but the stronger lion, to continue with my allegory, would benefit from the modern version of “zemene mesafint.”³ But the agenda of the modern man, in order to have a substantial ground of existence for the coming centuries, can only be to join hands in the sense of “dir biabir anbesa Yasir”⁴ and develop the existing state, on the fundamental of humanism and tolerance. For this, the appropriate form of state is today nothing less than a full fledged constitutional democracy. To build up and develop such a state is of course a case for the high intellect and not for the “sima belew” ⁵of the simple uniform solution, where one or the other culture would dominate or the diverse cultures will be left “for themselves and by themselves”, liable for manipulation by the stronger group, like the segregating solution of the “Bantu” type in the apartheid system of former South Africa. Because of the fact that building a state, on the ground of cultural freedom constituting hundreds of cultures, is a case for the high-intellect, which are assets for the beauty of life – there is no reason to dismantle the state, the Ethiopian state. Whether we like it or not, with all its odds and ups, this existing state is handed over in this form to this generation. I think a common sense suffices to know that, after the revolting phase of the adolescence, the off-spring will take over the common house; the authoritarian father has built; even if he has built the house without the appropriate substance and construction material of the day; and even if this father has mistreated the members of his family. Abandoning the house for others and making the existence of oneself and one’s neighbours, precarious, is foolish, and even contrary to the self-interest of the concerned. . With this I am just indicating that it is meaningless to abandon the common state, or even to dwell much on the past and the injustice experienced, which no doubt is true for the majority of ethnic and national groups, unless it is necessary to illuminate the way for the future common state. What is the problem at looking in the future? The intellectuals of the different cultures in Ethiopia, if they don’t want to be an object of manipulation for the big “lions” of this world devoid of conscience, their interest can only be congruent with that of their corresponding people. The interest of any people, whether incorporated in one big state or disintegrated in hundreds of isolated mini-states, is cultural freedom and development, prosperity and peace for a worthy life. To take the service of the harmony-model: peace for a worthy life; Culture, faith and perfection (for prosperity). Turn it in every direction or put it in every dimension, all people have no other interest than these essentials of life. The point is how can you better achieve these essentials? Either in a common state, if history happened to grant you one – a state for several national groups and peoples or isolated to become the prey of stronger nations. Under the political philosophy of the world today, does it need a high intellect to grasp the better alternative?

Is it a dream or a nightmare to develop the Ethiopian state on the ground of cultural freedom? The –one man- one language – one nation solution of the simple intellect is the nightmare. The concert of the hundreds of cultures with the cultural freedom for a still further and higher humanist cultural development is a sweet dream for the optimist. There are several models of such states – federal states with one plus one or two languages solutions to promote the interaction between the cultures, administrations and the economic developments. This is the concrete nature of the high objective of culture in the harmony of life for the Ethiopian social reality – Cultural Freedom - a prerequisite for prosperity.

III. Consensus on perfection/prosperity as an objective of harmony

The High objective Perfection supported by Science, is nothing but prosperity in its real concrete nature. Prosperity for all Ethiopians seems really a far fetched dream. If we look back at the last 30 years and all the sacrifices made for it and all the bloodshed experienced in the name of dogmatic ideologies, with their solutions to achieve this, it is not so easy to remain optimist. Tilahun’s “Migibma moltual mech Amlak nesagn ….” ⁶ is the biggest lie ever made in the field of art, if the mass of the Ethiopian people were meant!

What is our problem? Doesn’t science have access to the Ethiopian mind? Ethiopians as soon as they leave their country, they are not less successful than an average person in their surroundings. Ethiopians are even in the average more intelligent than their companions in the field of academics. But as soon as they interact with each other there is always a problem. A paradox observed by several foreign Ethiopian experts too. A fact which made the Ethiopian elite throughout the past century a prey to alien forces with their ulterior motives. The one Ethiopian mind doesn’t let access to the mind of the other. Reason and logic, which are essential means of mutual understanding to solve problems are among Ethiopians not necessarily always accepted in that function. Irrespective of education or experience, I have the feeling that this medium plays a highly subordinate role in the abstraction and conception level of the Ethiopian mind (without going too far see for instance the frustrating breach within “Kinijit”/the CUD Leadership/ these days). There are always other values and system of judgements which subordinate this medium. Just to mention some mixes of these: Superstition, Religion, Faith, Genealogy, Astrology, social status, wealth etc... Along this line it has stuck up for instance specially in the areas of mythology; blocking all epistemological development in the sphere of cosmology and science etc. The infamous concept like “Mekegninet”⁷ or stuffs like “Yalteretere temenetere”⁸- “Sewn mamen kebro new”⁹ etc. (- these kind of attitudes are at least for those from the highlands, numerous) which run counter to mutual understanding and communication, are states of mind which are rather peculiar to Ethiopians. This way of mixing up conceptions may be true for social environments of other states as well, but I believe it is not as overwhelming as our Ethiopian reality. And without reason and logic there is no science. This is of course a case for social investigation, but for me it suffices, to make the assumption that this is due to the fact that Ethiopia and specially the Ethiopian intellectual has never had a genuine chance to reflect on its own and appropriate the spirit of enlightenment and intellectual freedom. I think it is not an accident that the progress of science and enlightenment in the history of mankind took place more or less simultaneously. Is the Ethiopian social reality resistant to Science and therefore our problem with Prosperity, with the consequence of remaining one of the poorest states in the world since almost a century?

The controversial social role of religion and the fact, that enlightenment didn’t still have access to the mind of the Ethiopian and especially to the intellectual is significant. The social reality of a community can somehow be measured, according to the harmony model (see hypothesis below), by the sum total of intelligence, which is a factor of humanity (humanitarian values) and quality of music in an exponential relation, expressing the development of culture in all its aspects. If the intellectual section of our society is so imprisoned by its social environment and social reality, that it has its problem with the medium of reason and logic, no wonder if the prosperity we are longing for remained a far fetched dream. And this is, in spite of some attempts made by different ideological models so far, which may have been sometimes subjectively genuine.

Given these social circumstances and state of minds, is it a dream to hope for prosperity, the high objective of harmony? The key to the problem is I think, like all our problems, the intellectual section – the elite- of the Ethiopian social reality. The Ethiopian intellectual has to make a genuine acquaintance with Enlightenment in all its facets. It has to make the medium of reason and logic its way of understanding life and the means of its social interactions and communications. If the Ethiopian elite can make it among other social realities, they can do it in their own social environment too. Once such communication, which is an essential factor for material development, not only on the surface of the Ethiopian mountains and valleys but also deep in the intrinsic structure of the minds, becomes a self evident medium of life, the curtain of ignorance will be torn down. If this replaces the tradition of scepticism, suspicion, fear and all sorts irrational and mythology dominated state of minds, the Ethiopian people will do miracles, and the immodest statement, we once used to make, that Ethiopia would be the breadbasket of Africa, may come true. With enlightenment breaking through the day of Ethiopia, we may then walk with our heads upright. Enlightenment is the essential substance of modern Faith in whatever forms it is manifested.

IV. Consensus on faith as an objective of harmony

Faith in Ethiopia is not a scarce property, if we consider the religious component only. The role and impact of the Ethiopian orthodox church in particular and the other big religion – Islam in the historical development of the Ethiopian state is not insignificant. And the Ethiopian people are also, though somewhat liberal in practice, more religious than secular. This is also true for the intellectual section. The most outstanding fact is that the two main religions in Ethiopia, with the exception of short periods have a long record of peaceful co-existence in the life experience of the people. (A state of affairs, which we by all means have to maintain further, dismissing all persuasions to the contrary). This is in spite of the dogmatic nature of every religion, which is exclusive in the promotion of ideas and values. But this dogmatism, not sensed by the victim, had, I think, until today, a big impact on the attitude of the protagonists of the new ideologies entertained by a substantial section of the active political elite. This may be one of the reasons, why Ethiopians were in the last 50 years, in their new appropriated political philosophies intolerant and unable for compromises in case of different opinions. This fact plus the inherent dogmatism, which ideologies have by themselves, was in the Ethiopian reality disastrous.

The other components of the spiritual plane in the harmony of life other than religion are conscience and faith by itself. Conscience had a significant social value in the period 50 years before, not only in the decision making of the sovereign individual but also in the administration of social affairs. The social role of religions in the sense of orienting the strong social groups to be accountable at least to their Gods, i.e. the “Feriha Igziabher”¹⁰ conscience, was socially helpful. This was especially valuable in view of the missing democratic and basic human rights. Faith, manifested in different forms of intellectual and philosophical conception of life was however, minute or insignificant. This reality in the form of an open philosophy has either not changed or faith in its philosophical touch is present solely as dogmatic as in the case of religions and as exclusive as the latter, missing the enlightenment role it could have played in the society. All philosophies, if interpreted by Ethiopians have always an affinity to dogmatism. This can be explained among others, similar to that of science mentioned above, through the fact that, the intellectual development of the elite in Ethiopia has taken place without making a genuine reflection of the enlightenment period, which was the basis of humanism. With the religious dogmatism and the authoritarian absolutist social background combined with a dogmatic ideology, this state of reality could hardly bring about the liberation of the mind of the new generation of intellectuals, who have in vain drafted now and then a better administration of the people. Instead, this has brought about a political culture, which is characterized by intolerance and the inability for compromise with the opponent, demanding a blind obedience from the proponent, in the end culminating in an obscuring system of belief, celebrating violence and contradictions instead of making the emphasis on the solutions of problems. This means in the harmony of the spiritual plane, the Ethiopian social reality was dominated by disharmony. The Relation between the conscience of mankind, religion and faith was messed up, so that the state of harmony was impossible, in the sense of the higher objective of faith. The main discrepancy was, as indicated above, in the philosophical attitude of the intellectual, which should have promoted the spiritual and material well-being of the society. The elite are responsible for this discrepancy, either in their inability of grasping the moments of the spiritual plane in the context of their three manifestations (conscience, religion and faith) or not understanding the social role of religion and some ethical values, like conscience, present in the social reality.

Is this high objective of faith, especially in the emphasis on its philosophical aspect achievable for the Ethiopian social reality? The key to the problem is, promoting this faith, by highlighting and incorporating the essence of enlightenment, with the purpose of liberating the mind of the elite from all forms of dogmatism, to make tolerance, reason and logic the essential medium for spiritual communication in particular; and to grasp its relations to the rest of the high objectives of the harmony at large.

It is working for these high objectives – Peace, Culture, Perfection and Faith – that the great purpose of harmony in life will be achieved in the Ethiopian reality too. Let us become optimists, though the reality of the day is not encouraging. The success depends on the enlightenment of the elite, especially in their ability for consensus on these high-objectives. Otherwise the spectre of discord and disharmony will reign further; and like in the last 40 years all the philosophies of intolerance of different origins, with their inability for compromises resorting always to violence – the simple solution of the low intellect- would prevail. This would however be only the case until again; the forces of harmony make their ways through life and succeed. Like all enlightened cultures, the Ethiopian people may also experience one day THAT LIGHT of Plato through the tunnel. Year 2005 is the witness and the beginning of this fortune.

Hope is a principle of Enlightenment!

May Harmony be the Logos of our Millennium!

***

The Eight Dimensions of Life in the individual……

(A footnote for members of the elite aspiring for leadership)

The five senses of the Human are shared by all other living creatures and the rest of nature. However, if the Human being aspires to be outstanding and sublime over nature, he has to make himself distinct from the rest of nature. This distinction can be attained if he is in possession of three more senses, in harmony with the eight dimensions of life. Above all, the command and the harmony of these eight dimensions are the features which could measure and qualify the integrity and character of a leadership in all sections of a society…….All Great leaders of Mankind, from wherever corner of the earth they originate, they have made HISTORY or NOT up to the point where they have failed to measure to these dimensions.

1. The Magnitude of the Intellect to Lead and Execute (The reflecting mind) >>>>State and Laws

2. The Tolerance and the Moral to Listen (Listening 1)>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>Community and Ethics

3. The Capacity to Console and Love (The loving heart) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Family and Love

4. The Endurance to Exist and Hope (Breathing/smelling 2)>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>The Human and hope

5. The Magnanimity to Embrace and Touch (Touching 3 )>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Mankind and Conscience

6. The Wisdom to Live, Enjoy and Share (Relishing/tasting 4 )>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Nature and Religion

7. The Energy and Insight to See and Inspire (Seeing 5)>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>The Universe and Faith

8. The Transcendental Vision to Forgive and Save (The visionary instinct)>>>>>The Absolute and Deliverance

¹ "out of the lion's jaw" ² "the lion's" ³ "the era of princes" ⁴ "a collection of threads can trap a lion" ⁵ 'a commander' ⁶ "God has not deprived me of enough food" ⁷ "mischief" ⁸ "if you don't suspect you will loose your head" ⁹ "trust a man after his burial" ¹⁰ respect for God

2

"The Function of Dysfunction"

On the verge of our Millennium, I believe Harmony and Disharmony is the dichotomy, which could at best represent the plight of Ethiopia for the whole last century….

What has this to do with Paul Osborn’s Play…and all the more given the fact that this is a “comedy”….Is it?

To read more:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=ddrrmfjx_3fs6d2jgv

From "The Harmony Model" to "The Flower of Life" II

Let the Geometry (and Mathematics) speak. Language is full of discontinuities.

From "The Harmony Model" to "The Flower of Life" ...I

Let the Geometry (and Mathematics) speak. Language is full of discontinuities.

http://www.sacred-geometry.com/index.html
http://www.sacred-geometry.com/bruce-rawles_sacred_geometry.html

The Journey from "The Harmony Model" to the Ultimate harmony ends up in the "The Flower of Life", which can be taken to be the symbol of "LIFE and CREATION" be it at the macro level or the the micro and the quantum dimension.

I still (still in my quest for knowledge) like my hypothesis:

Source <==> Harmony = Function (I,E) == Function (E,I) = Harmony <==> Destiny

http://berhane-hilina.blogspot.com/2007/11/purpose-of-l-i-f-e-quintessence-purpose.html
















































































1

The Flower of Life with Hemi-Sync - from LightSOURCE 2nd Edition DVD

http://www.sacred-geometry.com/The%20Flower%20of%20Life%20-%20LightSOURCE%20preview.html

1 Source: http://www.sacred-geometry.com/video_previews.html

http://www.halexandria.org/home.htm

An interesting Link.....I am not through in scanning the Link to make my opinion vis a vis its rationlity and background; nonetheless the tremendous web of its Informational Strength is impressing. I wonder if the "new science" is really scientific and in accordance with reality !

http://www.halexandria.org/home.htm

http://www.gnostics.com/halexandria.html

I like anyway, the synthesis, I went through...

http://www.halexandria.org/dward007.htm

"The Art of Hosting" ...And the Purpose of "HARMONY"

...Please spare some time for these People .....They may make "a difference"... as They call IT ...

I share their point on Harmony and like their mode of Reflection.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The 4-Fold Way

Video:
Toke Moller discusses the Four-Fold Way, including new insights gained during an Art of Hosting training in Nova Scotia in December 2007.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1155394240/bclid1149289691/bctid1504342141

Art of Hosting TV.net

http://www.leadernetwork.org/toke_moeller_december_05.htm

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1155394240

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The Harmony Model (H.B.) ... and evolving "Co-Intelligence"( Tom Alee)

"Demokratie und Wahrheit" / " Democracy and Truth"

You may be interested in the discourse...

At first I listened to his "lecture" on the Radio...Kultur Radio RBB, Fokus Politik (18.05.2008; 19:00-19:30....http://www.kulturradio.de/programm/programmdaten.jsp?noExport=true)

http://www.nida-ruemelin.de/docs/Antrittsvorlesung.pdf

http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:YOVIC20QffEJ:www.nida-ruemelin.de/docs/Antrittsvorlesung.pdf+Demokratie+und+Wahrheit&hl=de&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=de&client=firefox-a

I found it highly relevant and perhaps interesting for the Ethio-political-environment too. I looked for the text version in the internet ....The pdf formats are also available
If you want you can look into his home page too....He discusses a lot of interesting political and philosophical themes...

Among others, worth reading for our generation with a "leftist legacy".

http://www.nida-ruemelin.de/docs/marx.pdf

Extracts out of this Text:

................Keine Generation darf um des tatsächlichen oder nur vermeintlichen Wohles zukünftiger Generationen geopfert werden. Die Selbstachtung eines Individuums darf auch dann nicht in der politischen Praxis beschädigt werden, wenn diese Beschädigung den politischen Zielen, der Realisierung einer humanen Gesellschaft, förderlich wäre. Das Leben Unschuldiger darf auch dann nicht geopfert werden, wenn damit ein Menetekel für eine humanere Gesellschaft geschaffen, ja nicht einmal dann, wenn damit der Tod anderer Unschuldiger vermieden werden kann. Die absichtliche Tötung eines Unschuldigen bleibt ein Unrecht. Die konsequentialistische Rationalität, die Platon Frauen- und Kindergemeinschaften fordern ließ, die die Utopisten der frühen Neuzeit zu Befürwortern einer Erziehungs- und Nivellierungsdiktatur machte und die viele marxistische Programmatiker zu zynischen Machttechnikern werden ließ, führt zu einer Relativierung gerade derjenigen humanistischen Motive, die den ursprünglichen Impuls der politischen Praxis gaben und gerade dies ist für das Oeuvre von Karl Marx insgesamt in hohem Maße charakteristisch...............................


-----------
The Author was a cabinet member ( a minister for cultural affairs) under Kanzler Schröder. At the moment a Prof. for Philosophie etc. in Munich ( Uni.)

More from the author:

http://www.nida-ruemelin.de/schrift.html

--
For english readers I have only the following link:

http://books.google.de/books?id=bnDT3CNb_GMC&pg=PA717&lpg=PA717&dq=Democracy+and+truth++Ruemelin&source=web&ots=u0FS5LrjuV&sig=QKQB6DiGu81EbBWadrLZnqioK44&hl=de#PPA45,M1

Evolving Collective Intelligence

"Evolving Collective Intelligence"....1

I like this approach of visualizing "Evolving Collective Intelligence" (Tom Atlee)2 and found it fitting to "The Harmony Model" I promote. Please see here how it goes with the "Harmony Model".













1
http://www.communicationagents.com/tom_atlee/JTM%20Systm%20Intel.jpg

2 http://www.communicationagents.com/tom_atlee/2008/05/08/whole_system_learning_and_evolution_and_the_new_journalism.htm

"Harmonic Convergences"

http://www.starstuffs.com/physcon2/printer.html

I am always impressed by such contributions from the community of scholars, ...since I hear the sound and language of the expert telling me more about my "Hobby"..."The Harmony Model".

I = hq*q ; E = mc*c

H ==> Fx(I,E); A function of the variables I & E in the 8 dimensional model of Life
(E8!)


so it goes...(extracts out of the

http://www.starstuffs.com/physcon2/printer.html)


Harmonic Convergences:

We've also all heard in spiritual circles of the harmonic convergences and light grid activations, "time for the consciousness of mankind to make a quantum shift to the next level of experience". These shifts and activations are merely the harmonizing of those atomic pieces that make up the whole. The cosmic ocean, as its called throughout the world, generates cosmic waves of energy. The ocean consisting of our thoughts, feelings, emotions and intents, love, hate, anger etc. ride upon and make up, these waves, which in one way can be compared to the 'quantum foam'. The "Harmonic Convergence" is just not a new age trekkie term for the fun of merely saying it because it sounds cool. It is a real *quantum* event. We cannot discount that this is really happening on a level we can't physically-visibly see. According to physics principles, this affects every other single organism in the universe and on earth.

"..dropping polarity - no longer thinking in terms of good or bad, but seeing the wholeness and completion and perfection of life. It is a very definite mind, emotional and body response. The body response is the one where your body simply does not acknowledge good or bad, but sees that there is a higher purpose behind it all."
Drunvalo Melchizedek on dna changes and activation

We must remember our true multidimensional nature so "we" can merge into the multidimensional consciousness that is our innate heritage. All of the dimensions are ever present and functioning in and/or through our physical bodies and throughout the entire universe. Due to our dense vibrational rate (right now) we are not aware of them until we somehow remember and recall our multidimensional awareness.


***

Wishing the social harmony we highly need in our volatile corner of the world...Ethiopia

H.B.

Quantum update....E8

Interesting....The 8-dimensional model is all over in the scienctific community too...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xHw9zcCvRQ&eurl=http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12891

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/13-e-nste-n

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12891

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0711/0711.0770v1.pdf

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2630/26303901.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E8_(mathematics)

***
The Makro-version of the 8 dimensional "Harmony Model" I was playing with.......My Hobby ......see...Harmony-Model-with-waves-Presentation.... under

http://hilina.berhanu.googlepages.com/lifeandpurpose

From "The Holographic Universe"....towards Cosmology Update

..................

From "The Holographic Universe"(Michael Talbot)1....towards Cosmology Update

"Consciousness as a More Subtle Form of Matter......

1) THE HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE _Michael Talbot_

1) http://fusionanomaly.net/holographicuniverse.html

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7044753105944203252

Phenomenon unexplained?

A live demonstration of the relation of collective Intelligence to Energy...(Beyond mystics etc.) ...All sorts of thesis for possible explanations...for instance along the line of quantum dimension etc... are available in the science community too.

http://www.prosieben.de/show_comedy/next_uri_geller/live_act/artikel/49237/

No wonder that Ethiopia hasn't made a step forward in this context, since we are blocking against each other (the problem of the modern Elite), even at the lowest level, to come to a zero sum...Let alone the big issues of war and ethnical conflict....

More on the issue:

http://twm.co.nz/ind3.html

Beautiful Verses of Reality ...high up-to-date and deep in the Time!

Canticle for a Quantum Creation

In the beginning was the Void…(1)

© Tom Mahon 2004

(1) http://www.reconnecting.com/suppPublish Postlement.php

More ...from the same source... .... beautiful verses on Science "reconnecting" to ......."Faith" or call it whatever you like...the quintessence of Reality.

http://www.reconnecting.com/toc.php

Interesting!....Jaron Lanier's Bio

Have you come across a scientist who looks like this!
Scientists of the future centuries may look like him!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2001/dec/29/games.academicexperts

The Guardian Profile: Jaron Lanier

The virtual visionary

A young geek, he went to university at 14. He dropped out to work as a musician but made his name as a pioneer of virtual reality. A key philosopher of the computer age, he also sounds a warning note about the limits of technology. Oliver Burkeman reports

About this article

This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday December 29 2001 on p6 of the Review comment & features section. It was last updated at 12:02 on January 10 2002.


***

When he was 11 - before he became a goat farmer, and a midwife, the owner of the world's largest flute, and one of the most influential philosopher-scientists of the computer age - Jaron Lanier liked mucking about with electronics. In the rural backwaters of 1970s New Mexico, that was quite enough to mark him out as a dangerous oddball. "This was a seriously redneck place, a place that really hadn't been exposed to much," he says now. The Lanier family lived in the second poorest county in the United States. "There were diseases that just shouldn't still have existed in America. There were... deformities."

He vividly remembers the day he rigged an old oscilloscope up to a photographic enlarger lens to project wild, constantly changing shapes onto the walls of a darkened room. "I made a sort of haunted house, and I said to the other kids, 'Come on, come see my haunted house!'" He might as well have summoned the devil, such was the abject terror the light-show produced in his peers. "I was mortified," he says. "I had put so much effort into it and they were just too scared to watch."

More than three decades later, Lanier is still fashioning artificial worlds, but his stage is global now. You cannot buy a car, or fill it with petrol, or undergo certain kinds of surgery, or drill for oil, without benefiting in some respect from virtual reality, the phenomenon for which he is famed and, in certain circles, practically deified. He has a modest dinner-party definition of his work - "coming up with gadgets so that you can fake a person into thinking they're in an artificial place" - but few recent innovations have had such consequences.

"Virtual reality vividly demonstrates that our social contract with our own tools has brought us to a point where we have to decide fairly soon what it is we humans ought to become, because we are on the brink of having the power of creating any experience we desire," writes the historian of technology Howard Rheingold. "VR represents a kind of new contract between humans and computers, an arrangement that could grant us great power, and perhaps change us irrevocably in the process."

In the 1992 movie Lawnmower Man, based on the novel by Stephen King, a crazed scientist uses his slow-witted gardener as a guinea-pig for his virtual reality experiments, launching him into an alternative universe created by a computer and turning him into a hyperintelligent monster in the process. The film version of the megalomaniac inventor, tinkering with the very fabric of reality itself, is rumoured to be based on Lanier, who has a formidable academic reputation despite his lack of either a university job or a degree, and cult status in the computer world. It has even earned him - and he is particularly proud of this - a postage stamp commemorating his work, issued by the Micronesian island chain of Palau.

He combines it all with a professional career as a pianist and player of obscure and bizarre musical instruments, more than 700 of which clutter his downtown New York apartment. "He is this extraordinary person - gifted, generous and ethical," says his friend, the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin. "People ask why we don't have more renaissance people these days. Jaron shows that it is still possible."

And yet the portly, dreadlocked 41-year-old is far from happy with the state of the revolution he has spearheaded. As a computer scientist, he has spent his career pushing the transformative power of modern technology to its limits. But as a philosopher, he has been sounding a warning for the last two decades that seems, initially at least, spectacularly incongruous: the world, he says, is far too much in love with computers.

He is infuriated when neuroscientists like Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker characterise the human brain as nothing more than a complex computer. He wishes researchers did not spend millions of dollars in pursuit of "artificial intelligence" in the blithe certainty that there is nothing inimitably unique about human consciousness. And he has watched in disbelief as a succession of seemingly serious thinkers have declared there is no reason why a race of intelligent computers should not take over the world, possibly rather soon.

Lanier has always clung, instead, to the belief that technology must enhance human life and opportunities for human contact, not supplant them. "If we allow our self-congratulatory adoration of technology to distract us from our own contact with each other," he says, padding in stockinged feet around his apartment, "then somehow the original agenda has been lost."

He practices what he preaches, and in rock-star fashion. At a debate last month at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London, guest speakers were invited to stroke a supposedly intelligent robotic cat, designed at great expense by computer scientists at Sony. It was exactly the sort of saccharine expression of faith in the power of technology to rival the living world that Lanier cannot stand. "All I did was pick it up by its head, and it broke," he says.

ICA staff watched aghast as hundreds of research hours and thousands of dollars clattered to the tabletop. The damage was unintentional, Lanier swears, but he cannot help adding: "I had thought I might destroy the thing dramatically at the end of the talk... I hate the idea of artificial life, and I think that petting an artificial cat demeans us all." Over the ruined feline's remains, he gave what he describes as "an angry and passionate talk about the value of real life and the urgency of not confusing ourselves about it". ICA staff spoke of taking action against him. So far, none has materialised.

Lanier still isn't sure why his father and mother, Ellery and Lillian, chose to move from New York City to the Mesilla Valley, near the border with Mexico, shortly after the birth of their only child in May 1960. Maybe the surroundings, the arid sandscapes interspersed with sinister military research facilities - White Sands is a missile-testing range - appealed to Ellery, a writer for pulp science-fiction magazines with titles like Fantastic, Amazing and Astounding.

The job didn't pay all that much, but the family got by on the earnings of Lillian, a concert pianist who traded shares on Wall Street by telephone from her desert home. She died in a car crash when Jaron was nine.

"Honestly, you're not going to get me to talk about that," he says, although later he will attribute all his subsequent work to an attempt "to find the connection I lost". It was already an eccentric family; deprived of one of its breadwinners, it became markedly more so. "My father wasn't really the money person, and we ended up moving to a stretch of desert and living in tents. Eventually, we built a house, which he let me design." It was predictably unconventional, all spires and crystals, with a geodesic dome as its centrepiece.

The father and son who lived in the dome were "part of the local colour," recalls Alvy Ray Smith, the renowned pioneer of computer graphics, who grew up nearby, along with Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto, "whose backyard bristled with telescopes". Part of the Lanier home has since collapsed - "which is what happens when you let a kid design your house," says Lanier - but Ellery still lives in the structurally sound part. He works as a lecturer in psychology at New Mexico State University, having completed, in later life, a PhD on the links between body shape and personality.

Undistracted by friends - "friendship wasn't an option, really; it was a very tough, macho, difficult culture" - Lanier ploughed his way through high school and talked his way into NMSU, based in the city of Las Cruces. He was 14. The university was little more than a small-town college, its students dominated by local cowboys, but the state's weapons industry meant its science departments were anomalously packed with world-class minds.

There was a pioneering spirit among the computer scientists, too. The internet had already begun - there were around 30 computers - and during Lanier's second year the first personal computer, the Altair 8800, arrived on the market. Lanier was already gripped by the untapped communicative power of the pictures that computers could generate. "I was interested in the idea of why maths is hard," he says of his youthful research. "These strings of Greek symbols are sort of daunting, and I thought the whole idea of text on a page might be the wrong way of thinking about maths. What about visual representations in 3D?"

And so he became an early specimen of the computer geek, one of the thousands of bright but shy, socially awkward teenagers who would find in the burgeoning computer revolution a means to express themselves. He joined the advance guard of what the social commentator Jon Katz calls "an inconspicuous movement, attracting millions of intelligent, technologically aware, community-oriented, self-described outsiders, mesmerised by finding themselves in a club that will not only take them in, but puts them in charge".

For about two years, he learned to program computers, but only because his research required it. Programming bored him: more strings of symbols that seemed unnecessarily obfuscatory. He grew restless. "Then one day I met this guy with a goatee and a van and a beatnik-like ambience, and he said he went to an art school where he hung out with artists and poets. And I just knew I had to drop everything and go." And so, at around 16, he followed the goatee to Bard College, a bastion of privilege and pot-smoking on the bank of the Hudson River in upstate New York.

Lanier dropped out of Bard before the first year was up, disgusted with the elitism and the indolence. For a while, he eked out a living as a musician in New York, before returning to New Mexico. There, for about a year, he organised protests against the state's expanding nuclear power industry. "For us, it was a psychic stand-in for nuclear weapons," Lanier says. The TV stations had to provide balanced political viewpoints, so when the state announced a tax levy to subsidise the sector, he and some friends managed to force screenings of anti-nuclear advertisements along with the pro-nuclear ones. "We made our own ads, by consensus. It was an internet-like thing, in the sense of creating a tremendous amount of community. I'm sure the ads stunk, though."

He was in his early 20s and jobless in New Mexico; activism didn't pay, and he needed money. He kept goats, selling their milk and cheese, but the income was not enough. So he found work as an assistant midwife, helping indigent Mexican farmworkers deliver their babies. "And then, well, a baby was born right on the border, of uncertain nationality. The mother was schizophrenic and the father was in jail, and, I ended up taking care of it." For months, with one arm he bottle-fed a newborn girl while he programmed computers with the other.

"Finally the father got out of jail, and to say thank you, he gave me a car. It had been hit by a police bullet, but they'd put a bumper-sticker over the hole." (He last heard of the girl at the end of the 80s, when she was 10 years old, "and doing well".) The car was a rusty Dodge Dart with a makeshift ignition and no floor - "you saw the road going by through it" - but it was Lanier's ticket out. Driving so slowly that he was stopped by suspicious police in Arizona, he managed to make it to Silicon Valley.

It was the early 80s and the sprawling suburbs and office parks around Palo Alto, California, were pregnant with a sense of possibility. "They were, like, you can program that kind of computer? You've done this? Sure - you're totally employable! All of a sudden I was getting offers for jobs that paid beyond my wildest dreams. I was stunned." He quickly made a small fortune programming computer games, including the pioneering, graphically complex Moondust for the Commodore 64. But instead of replacing the car - or moving out of the garage in which he had taken up cut-price residence - he turned his tiny home into a workshop, and went back to tinkering with electronics.

"I walked into this thing - I'd never seen anything like it at all," recalls Steve Bryson, now a VR researcher at the North American Space Administration, who arrived in Lanier's garage when virtual reality technology was in its earliest stages. "It was feverish. A lot happened very quickly. I had long hair and wore pink shirts; we were pretty hippyish, and we were very, very excited about what we were doing."

The excitement spread beyond the garage. "People were coming from all over, and saying: 'what the hell is this thing?'" Lanier recalls. The "thing" slowly took solid form, and Lanier joined forces with a fellow maverick programmer, Thomas Zimmerman, who had designed a glove to be used as an input device. "That was when the coolness index just went through the roof," says Bryson. Within three years, a head-mounted display had been completed.

Despite its revolutionary potential, the nuts and bolts of the technology are fairly straightforward to describe. The user straps on a headset, through which images are projected onto each eye to create the illusion of three dimensions, and wears a glove which senses hand movements, enabling them to interact with what they see. More ambitiously, the team later developed the DataSuit, a full-body garment capable of sensing movements of the arms, legs, torso and feet. Combined with the internet, such gadgets will allow groups of people thousands of miles apart to interact in a virtual space their brains cannot distinguish from reality.

In September 1984, Lanier's groundbreaking work made the cover of Scientific American magazine, although it nearly didn't. Shortly before press time, a worried editor rang him demand to know what university or company was the young scientist affiliated to? None, Lanier replied. "Sir," said the editor, "at Scientific American we have a strict rule that states that an affiliation must be indicated after a contributor's name." Lanier grabbed a name out of thin air. "VPL Research," he blurted, thinking it would maybe stand for visual, or virtual, programming language. (He did not pause to consider any other possible meanings.) When the magazine was published, investors started calling, and the virtual company became a real one. Soon, it was supplying research labs around the world with virtual-reality equipment. Full VR systems sold for $225,000. At its height, VPL had annual sales of $6m.

His idiosyncratic public image - specifically, his dreadlocks - may have helped, but he insists that it was not cultivated. "I'm always finding people say that other people must think this or that [about my hair], but I rarely encounter anyone who thinks this thing," he says. "It just grew on me this way when I was a kid. It's nothing."

It was Lanier who christened the embryonic technology. "I don't even like it," he says of the term today. "It's a stupid term. But I thought it had a ring to it, and it sounded quirky enough, and right on the edge of being contradictory - but not quite - so that it would grab attention, and be a nice cute phrase. I was on a train in Italy some time later, and I had thought of a term that was much better than 'virtual reality'. But then there was some distraction with the ticket conductor and I never got it back."

The vast creative possibilities of virtual reality have made it, for many, a natural match with drug culture. "Virtual reality," observes the cultural anthropologist David Hess, "strikes me as a high-tech version of shamanism. The idea of producing controlled virtual worlds is as old as hallucinogenic trance voyages and vision quests." But Lanier disagrees vehemently. Harnessing technology to the power of the imagination, he argues, should be a way for its users to engage more, not to escape from engagement - a philosophy he applies to himself with rigour. "I've never used marijuana, and I haven't tasted alcohol since my bar mitzvah. I've even given up chocolate.

"If you run into somebody at a cocktail party now, they'll think of VR as an escapist medium, and I know why it happened. In the 1980s, Tim [Leary] made his liv ing on the speaking circuit and he got this idea that virtual reality would be a striking thing to talk about. At first glance, it does seem to have something to do with the psychedelic experience. But it's almost the logical opposite. You're not in retreat, you're not passive, you're not having an experience wash over you. You have to be intentional. You get tired. It's a waking state activity. It's not like taking drugs; it's like going on a hike. Or -" he pauses to construct a characteristically elaborate metaphor - "it's like going on a hike and being the sculptor of the mountain at the same time."

But Lanier's view of where this leads - to an enhancement of human communication, instead of to super-intelligent computers - baffles many proponents of artificial intelligence, Daniel Dennett among them. Is he saying, Dennett demands, that computers with human-like intelligence - or even more - are "something we couldn't develop, or shouldn't develop?" Neither, says Lanier: artificial intelligence is something we could never know, by definition, if we had attained it. "Despite these ridiculous tests we give our children, there is no measure for intelligence, and treating it as an engineering goal puts one in a very strange position," he says.

"You can measure speed. But if you want to engineer a device to maximise its beauty, you no longer have a measurement device. It becomes subjective. Artificial intelligence is like that. When you talk to a person, there's an element of faith on your part that there really is somebody at home." Proponents of AI, Lanier says, need to "justify why someone should show this good faith to a computer".

Alvy Ray Smith concurs. "I know that no scientist knows how to make a machine intelligent or conscious. I know many who believe it's possible, but that's different. That's religion. I don't mind people having the religion. I suppose I have it too. But to cross the line and claim it's a done deal is not good science."

This argument frustrates neuroscientists such as Dennett and Pinker, who tend to argue that the experience of human consciousness - the "feeling of what happens" - is a kind of error or illusion, or an accidental byproduct of the brain-computer's operation. Lanier likes to goad them. Several times, he has suggested in public that Dennett himself may actually be a flesh-covered robot, lacking any internal experience. "Although if he is a fleshy automaton, he's a very good-natured one."

Mesmerised by the technical and conceptual possibilities, Lanier paid little attention to the legal and commercial niceties of running a company. "I signed some stupid documents," he explains. In accepting financing from a French firm, Thomson- CSF, he staked his patents in virtual reality as collateral against a loan. So when, in the early 90s, VPL's fortunes began to tumble, his patents were lost in the fiasco that followed. Lanier blames the micromanagement of Thomson, which made a hostile takeover bid for the firm, and he now expresses a violent dislike of French bureaucrats. (After seven more years of legal wrangling, the patents are now owned by the software giant Sun Microsystems.)

At 32 Lanier was ousted from VPL, abandoned without payoff or patents. Towards the end of the period he married and two years later had a "difficult" divorce from, a woman named Deborah (he will not reveal anything else about her; she is "another person who leads a private life," he says). He has described the whole experience as a "big psychic blow". On his sacking from VPL, though, he says he feels no resentment. "It sounds so un-American to say this, but I'm so self-indulgent, I have these instruments, a pipe organ . . . how rich is one supposed to be? Maybe this is my lefty guilt, but it seems to me our sense of entitlement is exaggerated in this society. I can't imagine me, and the life I've had, feeling as if I'd been screwed."

And if his marriage and his business had both collapsed, that did not quite represent the totality of Lanier's life: for years, he has pursued a seemingly quite separate career as a professional musician. As a child in New Mexico, he had idolised Conlon Nancarrow, the American composer declared "prematurely anti-fascist" by the US government for fighting in Spain against Franco; Lanier travelled miles to visit the exile at his home in Mexico. Lanier's was not, really, a classical training; among its legacies is a method he devised for playing lightning-fast arpeggios on a piano keyboard after watching Nancarrow cut piano rolls to achieve the effect. Lanier does it manually, with a rolling movement involving the back of his hand that would make more conventionally educated pianists blanch.

As an experimental musician, he has worked with composers and musicians from Sean Lennon to Philip Glass, amassing a collection of extraordinary and vast instruments which clutter his TriBeCa apartment in New York. Among them is a triple-contra-bass recorder and a glass harmonica - the series of rotating glass cylinders invented by Benjamin Franklin which produce haunting harmonies when played with a finger wetted in vinegar. On September 11, the building - five blocks from Ground Zero - was evacuated, and a tap left running on a higher floor caused flooding damage; about 30 instruments were lost. But more are on the way: a Dutch craftsman is building Lanier the world's largest fully chromatic modern flute; it will be nearly five metres tall.

"He is unique, and he is a work in progress, which is the best posture for a creative person to take," says his friend John Brockman, the literary agent who also represents him and runs Edge.org, an online and real-life organisation which brings together thinkers from a broad range of disciplines for discussion and debate on grand, meaning-of-life questions. "Most people become adult and they die; this guy can process so many things at once. My favourite people are people you can't describe - it means something's going on. If you can describe it, it's dead." This is how Lanier thinks of himself, too. The two worlds are not quite discrete. In his performance work, Shards For Piano And Virtual World, Lanier's piano music generates fleeting, pulsating three-dimensional shapes on a screen - the kind that scared his young New Mexican neighbours. There is another connection, too. "The instrument collection is basically pure neurosis but I do think of instruments as having the best interfaces that have ever been designed," he says. "If there's any object in human experience that's a precedent for what a computer should be like, it's a musical instrument: a device where you can explore a huge range of possibilities through an interface that connects your mind and your body, allowing you to be emotionally authentic and expressive."

On May 9, 2000, in university laboratories in Chapel Hill in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and Lanier's lab in Armonk, New York, Lanier and his colleagues reached another significant landmark in the history of virtual reality. It was the first demonstration of "tele-immersion", the technology Lanier has been developing since the collapse of VPL. This time there are no goggles or wired-up gloves; the idea, instead, is that people at separate locations appear physically, three-dimensionally present to each other, in real space. A "sea of cameras" focussed on each participant captures their image from a multitude of perspectives and seeks to recreate them on three-dimensional displays. "Unlike the cartoonish virtual worlds I had worked with for many years, the remote people and places I was seeing were clearly derived from reality."

The project is in its early stages: the images of the three researchers, sitting at their respective desks, were clunky and blurred, and it was not quite possible to forget the screens from which their images were being projected. The initiative is closely linked to "Internet 2", a network currently costing $60m per year to develop, which will have the capacity to transmit the vast quantities of data that tele-immersion requires. But the possibilities are clear. Some of them make Lanier uncomfortable - if tele-immersion could eliminate the need for some forms of travel, for example, would that increase or reduce the potential for real human communication? - but he has to ignore the qualms. He has no option.

"This is our quest, as a civilisation," he says. "To answer the question: how do we save ourselves from ourselves without losing ourselves? I think there's a reasonable, educated guess that one part of the answer must involve some degree of channels of communication, of self-knowledge. And that's why I maintain my faith that research in new forms of media is ultimately for the good. I'm an advocate of human nature. I don't want us to abdicate our nature in favour of a technological agenda. And yet I'm advocating something that's quite flawed, and that's difficult, no question about it. I'm still finding my balance."

Life at a glance: Jaron Lanier

Born: May 3, 1960

Education: New Mexico State University, Las Cruces; Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

Marital status: Divorced.

Career: 1970s political activist and musical performer; early '80s computer programmer, Atari; '83 founder, VPL Research; '93 chief technical officer, Domain Simulations; '97 lead scientist, National Tele-Immersion Initiative.

Some landmarks: 1984 first commercial interface gloves; '87 commercially available head-mounted displays; '89 networked virtual world system; 2000, first demonstration of tele-immersion.

Some music: '98 Mirror/ Storm, symphony commissioned by St Paul Chamber Orchestra; '99 soundtrack for Three Seasons, award winner at Sundance festival; '00 Canons For Wroclaw and other pieces for the 1000th anniversary of its founding, Wroclaw, Poland.

• Printable version

http://www.jaronlanier.com/general.html

"The Edge of World's Knowledge"

Highly interesting subjects from qualified minds; like :

"'To be or not to be' remains the question"

The fact is that is "To be or not to be" is both a simple, perhaps the simplest, and a complex question, the hardest to sustain, let alone to ask. I ask it myself often — maybe as many times as five or six a week — and it is the asking, not any hope for an answer, that yields the most searing and immediate insight. I don't get it right every time, but when I do, I am thrown for a split second at the other side of being, the place where it begins.

But I can never retain that amazing feeling for long. What is required is a kind of radical pull-back of oneself from the most banal evidence of life and reality. Jean-Paul Sartre, after Shakespeare, was probably the thinker who framed the question best in his novels and philosophical treatises. The issue, however, is that this question is profoundly existential, not merely philosophical. It can be asked and should be by any living, thinking, sentient being, but cannot be answered.

There is huge energy and cognitive release to expect from it when it is properly framed. You have to somehow imagine that everything, absolutely everything has disappeared, or never was, that you have just happened upon your own circumstances by accident, the first accident of being. Another approach is to imagine sharply that anything that is, is a result of a warp, a blip in nothingness. It is not even a matter of finding out why or how, those demands are already far too elaborate. It is a crude, raw, brutal question followed by absolute, lightening speed amazement. And then the ordinary familiarity of all things known and named takes over, slipping your whole being into the stream of life, of being, with its attending problems and felicities. I feel strongly that there is a fundamental need for Shakespeare's question in every day life, but that is not what you and I were taught in school.

Derrick de Kerckhove is Director of the McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto and author of Connected Intelligence.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/paniker07/paniker07_index.html
http://www.edge.org/q2002/question.02_print.html#dennett
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/heisenberg07/heisenberg07_index.html

I would look into most of the contributions to give my mind a "hard time"

http://www.edge.org/

The Interface between Mystics and Physics !

Quantum Dimension and parallel Universes, i.e. Multiverse as interpreted by DAVID DEUTSCH !

"DAVID DEUTSCH'S research in quantum physics has been influential and highly acclaimed. His papers on quantum computation laid the foundations for that field, breaking new ground in the theory of computation as well as physics, and have triggered an explosion of research efforts worldwide. His work has revealed the importance of quantum effects in the physics of time travel, and he is an authority on the theory of parallel universes."....1

1
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/deutsch/deutsch_index.html

Parallel Universes!

http://video.goPublish Postogle.com/videoplay?docid=4183875433858020781

An Interesting Initiative!

http://www.lawoftime.org/GRI-FLT.swf

Time, Consciousnes, Quantum-dimension, and more

Some interesting Books and links...in matters of:


Time, Consciousnes, Quantum-dimension and More....


http://bodhitree.com/lectures.html

Specially, You may be interested in the following :-

* On Quantum Dimension

http://bodhitree.com/lectures/Wolf.html


* On the Law of Time

http://bodhitree.com/lectures/Arguelles.html


* On "Spirit medicine" (...some experience in Ethiopia...)

http://bodhitree.com/lectures/Wesselman.html

"GENA....Sinega" / Enlightened Christmas/

Taking into account that religion is becoming highly significant in contemporary politics, on the ocassion of our "Gena"... some enlightening "words" from the classical "Big" sources....


On the the relations of the state, "religion" and morality. Morality; collective or individual as an essential factor of freedom.



http://classicliberal.tripod.com/humboldt/lsa07.html


"The greater a man’s freedom, the more does he become dependent on himself, and well-disposed towards others. Now, nothing leads us so directly to Deity as benevolent love; and nothing renders the absence of a living belief in God so harmless as self-reliant power—self-sufficing and self-contained. Finally, the higher the feeling of power in man, and the more free and unimpeded its manifestation, the more willingly does he seek to discover some internal bond to lead and direct him; and thus he remains attached to morality, whether this bond is to him a feeling of reverence and love for the Divinity, or the earnest and recompense of his own self-consciousness."

(Wilhelm vo Humboldt (1792);Limits of State Action, Ch VII; Religion)1
1 http://classicliberal.tripod.com/humboldt/lsa07.html

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Beautiful Pictures

They make culture ..."we" make wars....Is this normal?!!

http://www.impactartists.com/Great_Artists/phoenix_productions.php?b=ia&l=eng&bt=15

The Relation of Music to Intellilgence according to Science (I)

http://berhane-hilina.blogspot.com/2007_11_12_archive.html