#im ready to live our truth fully…. its like feeling the sun on my face for the first time

[lanafemme]

hmm also been going through lots of interesting stuff as an alter so im thinking of updating my pinned at some point…. been doing a lot of integrating and healing but not sure yet how it will all shake out with my “presentation” and “personality.” but honestly the most freeing result of this is that i finally dont CARE as much about my individual presentation. i dont care about what i look like inner world (major major accomplishment for me). i dont care as much about internal age (also good because i am less stuck in time wrt my trauma). and i am still my own part but i feel… more grounded and at peace and even happy to have the life that we have. to embody myself…. its hard to put into words. but i never knew id get to this point after everything ive been through, not caring as much about this stuff is setting down a massive burden for me

[jokkaber]

The tale of flass: this is a story I improvised on the spot when my friend asked me to tell her a story to cheer her up. I'm quite proud of it.

OK, so there's a frog.

And it's just hangin out, doing its thing, as frogs do.

And he decides "yo"

"yo i want to be higher up than I am currently able to access with my mainly aquatic body."

So what he does is he goes and talks to a duck, because he knows that ducks can fly.

And he goes up to a particularly glossy mallard and he's like

"ay bro, can you carry me up to the treetops?"

And the mallard(by the name of craigory) be like

"bruh sorry but idk if I can like carry you that high up I ain't no BOFP, man"

And our boi the frog (by the name of flass)

Be like

"ay bruh what's a BOFP"

And craigory, the sassy cunt that he is, looks him in the eye and says, I shit you not here, he straight up looks our boi flass right in the eye and he says

(Are you ready to hear what this sassy dick waffle says to our boi flass?)

This bitch no cap be like straight up

"bird of fuckin prey"

And see now flass, the tru gangsta that he is takes it on the head cus he ain't finna let this bitch be openly disrespectin him.

So flass says to craigory

"can you tell me where I can find a bird of fuckin prey then so that I can ask them to take me up to the treetops?"

Now craigory (WHAT a cunt this man is) looks at flass, this little frog in front of him and has the unmitigated fucking audacity to say to our boi flass

If a bird of fuckin prey sees you then it will surely eat you instantly. I caution you, sir, do not throw away your life"

And flass, the Absolute Don that he is, turns away from this lil bitch craigory and says "then I will die in the pursuit of fulfillment." and if that ain't the heaviest shit you've ever heard then bruh idek what to say to u, the dudes soul is dressed like an 80s action hero.

So flass hops away in slowmo and eats a fly midair just to flex.

And he hops away to find a lil sparrow. And the sparrow is just vibin and gettin straight blazed and flass hops up, takes a deep sniff and nods in approval for the kush was good and therefore the sparrow was surely a woman of taste and culture. And a sparrow of such taste and culture must surely be a sparrow of some great education.

Now our man Flass hops up to this sparrow and he says

"ay bruh, how's it hangin"

And the sparrow looks at her bead curtain and says "yeah bruh it's hangin good. I only put it up last week and it's already weathering rly nicely" and flass saw that it was so and he nodded in agreement.

Now flass sits his fine froggy ass down in front of this sparrow and he says

"bruh I wanna get up to the treetops bc I feel unfulfilled being confined to ground level. I asked that cunty dick weed craigory to take me up there but the pussy said he couldn't carry me and I'd need like a bird of fuckin prey so I thought of you. Your a bird of fuckin prey right? We eat the same things too so I thought you might be an absolute bro and carry me up to the treetop sometime"

Now this sparrow looks at flass and she sees that he rly means all he's saying and then she looks at herself, about the same size as him and she says to him "bruh sorry but im literally too small to carry your fine ass anywhere. You'd need something bigger than me like a crow"

Yh nah she ain't gonna be able to carry him up there. But what she does is she looks him in the eye and she says

"OK so like I know where you can find a crow who could take you up there but I'm pretty sure he's not gonna do it for free"

And Flass says to this sparrow (by the name of velvet)

"bro if I can pay I will. This is all I need to die happy"

So velvet looks at flass and she sees how his soul is dressed with the leather jacket and the stubble and guns and big sunglasses and she thinks woah this dude is a straight up 80s movie badass ain't nothing gonna change his mind so she says "bro just hang out with me till I'm sober then ill take you to the crow."

And flass says

"nah bruh I gotta get going. Gotta see them treetops"

And velvet says

"bro I have Mario kart"

And flass says

"bro I'm in"

So flass hangs out and chills with velvet and they smoke and play Mariokart and then he sleeps over. Then in the morning when they're both sober again velvets like

"OK bruh lets get you to that crow so we can talk to him"

So velvet takes flass to the recent corpse of a dead buffalo, where there's a crow scoffing down some meat and the crow looks around and sees them and clacks its beak menacingly.

Now both flass and velvet know that this crow with this clackety beak of his could easily kill both of them.

It is a truth of which they are both acutely aware.

So now this crow(by the name of glowstick) looks at these two lil Bois and thinks yo these 2 got something to say. So he says

"yo you 2 got something to say?"

So velvet gives flass a nudge to go talk to this dude so flass hops real cool up to velvet and he says

"OK bro so here's the deaio. Here's the sich. Here's the case file. The writing on the wall. The drink in the cup. The tea. I feel rly unfulfilled at fuckin ground lvl bc I can't get up these fuckin trees. So I went to that cunt graigory who sent me to this glorious bitch velvet who got me high then hung out with me till we were sober and then brought me here so I could talk to you so like could you just fly me up above them there treetops real quick? If I do then Im pretty sure i can die happy"

Right so glowstick looks this absolute Chad up and down and thinks for a moment and says

"OK so ill be willing to fly you up there and carry you around for a bit but it'll cost ya"

And flass takes a step forward, looks glowstick in the eye and says "whatever your price is bro I'll pay it"

Now seeing that flass isn't gonna be shaken easily he sits down on the carcass, fixes this fine-ass froggy fella with one eye, clacks his beak a couple more times and leans forward:

"I'll take you up there and I'll fly you around for a while until sundown. But once night falls I get to eat you"

Now flass obviously isn't too keen on this deal but the way he sees it it's the best deal he's gonna get cus he really needs to get up there into the sky. So he hops back over to velvet and hugs her.

"bro you've been a good friend so far. You wanna come hang out until sunset?"

So velvet hugs him back bc this is her bro and he's gonna go live his dream until he dies so she's like

"yeah bro ill come hang out till sunset but I'm not gonna stick around to watch you get eaten ok?"

And flass is like

"cool, I'm good with that"

So now he hops back over to glowstick who's taking this completely serious. He's gonna hold up his end of the bargain and he's gonna earn that muthafuckin meal. So he holds oup his claws and grabs flass and spreads his wings

And takes flight.

Now remember, flass is fully used to jumping high and far but the experience of going up and staying up is completely new to him. Glowstick claws are carefully but firmly holding him so that he doesn't slip or fall and get hurt. He sees the tops of the trees and the blue sky with the sun overhead and he spreads his arms like wings and laughs, pretending he himself is flying.

As the day wears on the joy doesn't lessen until the sun dips to the horizon. Glowstick takes flass to the top of a tree to watch the sunset and velvet lands next to them and they all huddle together in the final moments of daylight.

When the sun is gone velvet turns to flass and bumps his head, tenderly, with hers. He, of course returns the gesture to the truest friend he's known in his short life before she turns and flits away.

Now flass turns to glowstick and says

"bro. Thank you for bringing me up here. I was right, having experienced the freedom and joy of living my dream and flying I can say truthfully that dying now wont be so bad. I've just got one last request bro. Make it quick. I wanna go out on a high note."

Glowstick nods his head at this brave lil frog and says

"lil bruh you've earned my respect with your courage. I'm still gonna eat you because that's nature and also the terms of our deal but I will give you the death you want.

And I will tell your story to everyone I meet who needs to hear it,and I will tell them to pass it on so that, even after you die here, your legacy and your 80s action hero soul will live on forever."

So flass stands proud and strong and closes his eyes and remembers how it felt to fly, to rush through the air and to go up and stay up. He remembers the feeling of watching a sunset with his best friend. He remembers all this and more and he finds that he is smiling. He settles into this warm bliss and breathes in.

In the days, months, weeks and years that follow this day the tale of flass and his courage and dedication to fulfillment even in the face of his death spread through the forest to the rivers, the plains, the seas and all the way to other, much different forests across those seas. Faithfully told by velvet and glowstick and embellished from there with each telling until those who told it and heard it almost felt that warm bliss, that feeling of unbridled joy at finding your dream has become reality. They could swear they see, in the corner of their eye if they have one, a faint smile. Like one you might find on the face of a particularly happy frog who had just watched his first and last sunset with his best friend and the crow who had made this possible. And his legacy inspires hundreds of thousands of creatures to follow their dreams however small.

Somewhere, thanks to the story of flass, a primate is tending to a small piece of burning wood, Feeding it dry leaves and twigs to keep it alight, in hopes of warming a cave so that it and its family may not just survive, but be comfortable through the next winter and many after.

the little dude brought a wave of joy across the world. He triggered the discovery of fire. He taught glowstick about nobility in the face of death. He lives on in the stories told of him and the dreams realised in his memory.

As long as there is someone or something pursuing a dream then flass will never be dead.

[transhumanitynet]

The Future You That You Least Suspect

The other night my teenage boys asked me what was on my mind (likely looking for material to make fun of me. Just kidding, they’re thoughtful kids).

Instead of trying to “kid proof” my thoughts or rush the conversation, I wrote them this letter. First, to explain that I’m consumed by how we think about and where we look for answers to the biggest questions of our time (listed below), and second, to propose an alternative way of finding answers (hint: I found inspiration in an amoeba).

How are we going to address climate change before it creates global chaos?

What jobs will be available for my kids when they finish school? What should they study?

Over the next few decades, how will we re-train ourselves fast enough — again and again — to remain employed and useful as technology becomes more capable?

Can the human race cooperate well enough to solve our biggest problems or will the future simply overwhelm us?

Most importantly, where do we look to find answers to these questions?

Hopefully I didn’t ruin the possibility that my kids will ever again ask me what’s on my mind 🙂

##

Boys,

There is an old joke where a man is looking for his keys under a street light. Another person walks by and inquires, “Sir, are you certain you lost your keys here?”

“No” the man replies, “I lost them across the street.”

Confused, the stranger says, “Then why are you looking here?”

The man responded, “The light is much brighter here!”

Credit

This comic is as humorous as it is true. All too often, we each do this when we’re trying to solve something. It’s where our brains naturally take us first.

Our imaginations are constrained to the familiar (under the light), so we have a hard time finding answers to difficult questions and problems because the answers often lie in the unknown (or in the comic above, the darkness). Staying in the light is natural, easy, and intuitive, but this limits our discovery potential.

I. How to look in the dark?

History can give us some hints about how others found interesting things in the dark. For example, we discovered that:

the sun is the center of our planetary swarm

the earth is round

the physical world is a bunch of tiny, uncertain pieces governed by quantum physics

Before these became accepted truths, they were very difficult to imagine. This is part because they are non-obvious and also counter-intuitive to our everyday experience.

It’s also because we can’t know what is not known, which means we’re blind to what is yet to be discovered. Don’t believe me? Try to think of something you don’t already know. It’s impossible! That is, until you know it, and then it’s obvious.

Going back to the 5th question, how and where can we look today to find new unknowns (the dark) that help us solve our biggest problems? Where are today’s insights that are equivalent to the sun is the center of our planetary swarm?

I think the most exciting and consequential place to explore is not looking outside ourselves, but looking inside; in our own minds. This is where I see the most fruitful answers to the questions about your future and mine.

What if the next reality busting revolution happened to our very reality and consciousness? And if that happened, could the future of being human be entirely unrecognizable from our vantage point today? I hope so, because the answers to our challenges don’t appear under the lights we have turned on so far.

You’re probably thinking, c’mon Dad, this is crazy talk.

Well, it’s happened before.

II. Thanks Homo Erectus, We’ll Take it From Here

Our ancestor Homo erectus lived two million years ago and wasn’t equipped with our kinds of languages, abstractions, or technology. Homo erectus was possibly an inflexible learner as evidenced by the fact that they made the same axe for over 1 million years.

Imagine trying to explain to Homo erectus a complex phenomena of our modern day society, such as the stock market. You’d have to explain capitalism, economics, math, money, computers, and corporations — after extensive language training and the inevitable discussion of new axe design possibilities (of course, trying not to offend).

The supporting technological, cultural, and legal layers that enable the stock market to exist are the engines and evidence of our prosperity. It’s taken us thousands of years to develop this collective intellectual complexity. The point is, our brains are incredibly capable of evolving and adapting to new and more complicated things.

That our cognition evolved from Homo erectus demonstrates that we have radically evolved before.

III. Amoeba, You’re So Smart!

A few months ago, Japanese researchers demonstrated that an amoeba, a single-celled organism, was able to find near optimal solutions to the following question:

Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route a salesperson could take that visits each city only once and returns to the origin city? (image credit)

This is known as the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), and classified as an NP-hard problem because the time needed to solve it grows exponentially as the number of cities increases.

Humans can come up with near optimal solutions using various heuristics and computers can execute algorithms to solve the problem using their processing power.

However, what’s unique is that Masashi Aono and his team demonstrated that the amoeba’s solution to the TSP is completely different than the way humans or computers have traditionally solved it.

That’s right, this amoeba is flexing on us.

(Note: it’s worth reading about the clever way they set up the experiment to allow the amoeba to solve the problem.)

This got me thinking: when we’re confronted with a problem, we use the tools at our disposal. For example, we can think, do math, or program a computer to solve it.

Professor Aono found a different tool for problem solving: a single-celled organism.

I know what you’re thinking, can the amoeba do my homework or take tests for me? It’s a good question!

Also, kudos to Aono and his team for searching in the dark — this experiment is non-obvious.

IV. Why Am I Telling You About Amoebas?

I strongly believe that we need a major cognitive revolution if we are to solve the global challenges we face. Our species evolved before and we can do it again, but we can’t wait a million years; we must accelerate this evolution.

What I’m saying is very hard to understand and imagine, because it’s in the dark. But bare with me.

The amoeba gives me hope because it didn’t evolve to solve the TSP. We augmented it with technology to accomplish something pretty amazing. Similarly, we haven’t evolved to deal with cooperating on a global scale, battle an invisible gas that warms our planet or retraining our brains every few years as AI takes over more of our work. How can we augment our own minds to allow us to take on these challenges?

Imagine a scenario where you are dressed head-to-toe in haptics (think Ready Player One) that allow you to experience and understand things by feeling changes in vibrations, temperature, and pressure.

Also imagine that you have a brain interface capable of both reading out neural activity and “writing” to your brain — meaning that certain communications can be sent directly into to your brain — the kind of stuff I’m building at Kernel.

Let’s call this a mind/body/machine interface (MBMI). It would basically wire you up to be like the amoeba in the experiment.

Now, what if you were given certain problems, such as the TSP, that your conscious and subconscious mind started working to solve? Imagine that instead of “thinking” about the problem, you just let your brain figure things out on it’s own — like riding a bike.

Would you come up with novel solutions not previously identified by any other person, computer or amoeba?

If we actually had the technology to reimagine how our brains work, over time, I bet that we’d get really good at it and be surprised with all the new things we can do and come up with. To be clear, this is not just “getting smarter” by today’s standards, this is about using our brains in entirely new ways.

Maybe that means that your school today would be in the museum of the future.

People would likely use these MBMIs to invent and discover, solve disagreements, create new art and music, learn new skills, improve themselves in surprising ways and dozens of other things we can’t imagine now.

When thinking about the possibilities, hundreds of questions come to my mind. For example, could we:

minimize many of our less desirable proclivities, individually and collectively?

become more wise as a species?

come up with original solutions to climate change and other pressing problems?

accelerate the speed someone learns (i.e. you get a new kind of PhD at age 12 versus the average of 31 today)

I wonder, is this what you will do at your job in 20 years? Would your mind change so much that it would be hard to recognize your 15 year old self?

Ultimately, for our own survival, we are in a race against time. We need to identify the problems that pose the greatest risks and respond fast enough so that we avoid a zombie apocalypse situation. The most important variable to avoid that: we need to be able to adapt fast enough.

I’m sure at this moment you’re thinking, woah, Dad, calm down!!

V. Your New Job — Being Really Weird (in a good way)

You’re right in wondering what jobs computers will take — if not all of them. They’ll do the boring things that adults do to make money, except far better and for far less money. But imagine a scenario where AI relieves you of 75% of your current day-to-day responsibilities, and is much better at doing those things than you. (I imagined what this world could look like)

A lot has been written, even movies made, about this scenario (e.g.Wall-E). If this happened, would you play fully immersive video games all day? Or live a life of pleasure and be work-free? Certainly possible, although those are linear extrapolations of what we are familiar with today — meaning that’s simply taking what we know today and mapping it into the future. The same thing as looking in the light.

What if millions or even billions of people could build careers by exploring new frontiers of reality and consciousness powered by MBMIs? These types of “weird” thought exercises may be breadcrumbs that extend the considerations we’re willing to make when thinking about our collective cognitive future.

These may be the starter tools that empower us to become Old Worldexplorers setting out for the New World, and journeying on the most exciting and consequential endeavor in human history — an expedition, inward, to discover ourselves.

Dad

  orginally posted here:

https://medium.com/future-literacy/the-future-you-that-you-least-suspect-18cf63bd0061 

The Future You That You Least Suspect was originally published on transhumanity.net