Friday, May 28, 2004

I was thinking earlier tonight, as I was lost in south city, about the scene, I think from Plotkins Shaman's Apprentice, or during one of his lectures, where he talks about some Amazonian gentlemen he was traveling with who were totally lost for several days, who went about the business of finding their way back to the the village perturbingly unperturbed.And then ate several pounds of meat each upon their return. I was also thinking about how I should say, and feel often, that I am simply the dispatcher to the SuperFriends, if I ever have to do an interview about making the company successful - it's one of the greatest challenges, and greatest rewards, working with all of the disparate talent and ability that surrounds me, to help surmount the most perplexing of problems, the most vexing of villians, not the least of which is the design denigration born of years of non-user centric focus, whether it's poorly written policy, unsustainable development, or crappy-ass car doors. 1:09:42 AM

It just dawned on me. That the real purpose of my whole business model is the ethics at its core. Not only do I want to prove that you can run a transparent and ethical business but that you can make more money with less work more sustainably when the entire focus is on what value you provide versus how much value you can extract from your clients as a result. That I can trick capitalism into a reversion, if you will, into a truly organic barter system - with money not just as a virtual exchange, but a real exchange, where it hasn't been warped into a commodity in and of itself in todays world - that you buy stuff that REALLY meets your need, whether that be for the basics, such as food, shelter and intimacy (sex as an offshoot), or pleasures, like art, sensual experiences of all varieties (sex as an offshoot), entertainment, connection with the transcendent, rather than stuff that's marketed so people can make profit on the fears of the basic limbic brain, rather than benefit from the creative energy and potential therein, for all people. Everything I think about the business flies in the face of what most people think about economics, but the same formula's don't apply, even the Schumacher or Galbraith, when you trade in the currency of good. Of course, even I know that that means, for the initial survival of the company in general, taking jobs to keep afloat, but even that seems more desirable when I think long term of what this has the potential to blossom into, especially capitalizing on the emergence, and my ability to translate the viability, of open source onto the small and medium size business market. To some degree, even with that, only the businesses that get the open source, value-based economy, will get the idea of implementing open source technology solutions, eventually opening them up to a network of open source oriented vendors and consumers, to the point that some communities would not be able to support anything that isn't oriented towards the betterment of the whole community - they just wouldn't use the monetary exchange unit to purchase those goods and services. It makes me wonder if capitalism is, indeed, a necessary part of the evolution of society, but that we are, at present, still struggling with the complete evolution of feudalism, if not through out and out oppresion, throught the oppression of ideology. We could still have our markets, our dollars, our yen, our euros, even the monetary markets, for a number of generations, but they would eventually all trade in the currency of good - which country is doing the most to ensure the future of humanity, which companies (most of what we think of as nonprofits today) are doing the most for the long term development of humanity (we'd probably still need some sheltered, old-school feudalism companies, just for those who weren't ready to evolve, whom we would view with both humor and the sort of questioning that higher evolution brings about, the consideration of which - likely, all of which this prediction depends upon, resulting in a reaffirmation of the belief that profit over people is not just a syllogism, when it comes to thinking of human progress, (one of my new favorite quotes, although I haven't had time to fully verify it's veracity, Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all." -- John Maynard Keynes), but a complete fallacy, based on fear and insecurity, at least as we move into future ages. I also think about the fact that, contrary to an earlier post, that we still have the potential to overcome our differences - the tribes are bigger and more complicated, but the ideas that divide us are still essentially the same - that certain groups of people pose a threat to our genetic survival, when the genes are not as important as the memes, the specific transmission, evolution, is not as important as the idea of progress, whether you call it evolution or ascention or enlightenment, "That which brings us closer to God," and it's realization. All of which is beginning to connect to the thoughts I had the other night, drifting off to sleep, as I was trying to focus on improving bloodflow to my injured foot, how all matter is is energy, and all energy is a form of matter, and other levels of reality I don't understand, and how, as beings evolve, they eventually translate skills of lucid dreaming applied to the real world into actually being able to shape events and things and matter. I had a vision of a being of pure light wandering in all and nothing simultaneously, blinking in and out between what appeared to be earth, and what I can only describe as limitless light, beyond seeing, sitting down in an apple orchard (great symbolism there, whether I just came up with the memory, or it was part of the dream) and shaping, out of nothingness, a ball of clay, and sending it off into the simuluniverse, and that we, as the pieces of godhead that were made manifest and sent off into the universe, are called back into that being. That makes a whole lotta sense to me in terms of our own evolution of ideas of heaven and hell, that the essence of hell is to invest in this planet as being the real deal, or seeing "god" as a punishing being, having sent us, as his essence, to just rot on this planet until we die and submissively come unto god head (which is also true, in a meta-metaphysical sense, and what, ironically, links particularly hateful aspects of Christianity, Judaism, Islam - and the other religions, I don't know enough about to say), with notions of heaven being a unity, a "return" to that reality through an enlightened compassionate state. That's another thing that seems to make more sense - that the compassion demonstrated by more enlightened inviduals is simply a symptom of seeing beyond the moment, into the infinite order, as well as a demonstrated call to a life of compassion, especially among those who, having realized and perhaps created or not created their own mud mandalas, have chose to stay behind, or come back, to in whatever brain state we're in, give us signposts of the way of the return. Damn, that cosmotheology even incorporates ideas of the demi-urge, for the truth is, that in that final act of completely selfless, self actualized act of creating, that being itself returns, or progresses even, I'm not sure which, into an even "higher" state of being, and continues to use that collective power to call us back. I also believe that there are planets who end up dying, stars that burn out, whatever the case is - that there is evil that wins, binding us to this plane with fear of the truly unknown. I'm also feeling defeated tonight, that in the worst storm I've ever experienced (watching that water shoot ten feet up out of the manhole on Bates is a sight that not Fsx master, nor computer generated affects will ever, ever be able to duplicate for me. And the water, when I stopped to drink of the fountain, tasted literally like shit. Actually, damned if I was getting out of that car, driving pointedly, right past St. Matthews Cemetary.), none of my own damn trees fell down - talking to my neighbor, Tom, on the cell phone, when he said holy shit as he was watching a huge tree falling down, I was so hoping it was my damn Avery Jones, Bill Simpson Dutch Elm, holding on after a lifetime that was long gone, but held up and hardened by the structure of lifes phyloem and xyloem tubes, sucking hard, and drinking deep, during both the dry times and the wet. At some point, I realize I'm going to have to chop it down - it's not going to fall by the hand of God, so who else, that the insurance inspectors wouldn't be wise to? But there's a part of me that so wishes I could risk building my dream two story, green house/study garage, and just leave that monster up, out of respect to the resilience. 12:07:28 AM