NOVA & THE PASSENGERS OF SPACESHIP EARTH

[Michael Grove]

The single most important thing that I learnt, very early on in my life, was

that all science and scientists, have eventually been proved wrong in their

analysis and understanding of the evolutionary processes of life on

[y]our pale blue dot. If I were asked to recommend but ONE and ONLY ONE,

2 hour long piece of FILM/VIDEO, to be watched by every last one of the

passengers of Spaceship Earth, as the supreme example of our intimate

“connessione” with the workings of our planet on a year by year basis, it

would be NOVA’s Earth from Space. The three persons to have established

the most significant threads of understanding, throughout my three score

years and ten, are Carl Gustav Jung, William L. Shirer and Robert Pirsig.

Jung because of the “glue of life ”, Shirer because of the “facts of life” and

Pirsig for the “reality of life”. Kurzweil was just one of the many that I have

followed, since first deciding at grammar school that Jung espoused the

way that I should follow and that Freud was already yesterday’s man. I was

attracted to Kurzweil by his commitment to the concept of simulated

reality, whilst being unconvinced of his AI proposals - I was part of the

team who compiled the very first tome on AI in the UK, whose final draft

and first print run made absolutely no reference whatsoever to

visual/aural communication; subsequent to my extensive involvement in

the BBC Computer Literacy Project, the OUP's OED and their urgent need

to improve on their words and pictures educational books by way of

what transpired to be their Volcano Videodisc Project, as a pre-cursor to

the OED CD-ROM Project. As a left-handed, gemini, dyslexic artist, whose

guidance on the subject came from Leonardo da Vinci, the AI Tome was

total rubbish to me. I know of Karl Pribam but do not know him. My focus

on William Shirer’s masterpiece, took me along the warp thread of Graves,

Beck & Cowan, Ken Wilber then SDi + MESHWORKS and eventually to

Elza Maalouf and Said Dalwani, whose work I believe, has already been

acknowledged by Bernie Sanders. In parallel to all of this my soul-mate,

Linnie and friends from grammar school all took to the route of medicine

for a career and Linnie qualified as a Radiographer. Needless to say we have

established a joint fascination, with the entirety of ourselves, which as a

result of reading Pirsig’s epics, have involved us with the thinking of the

LILA squad, the Dalai Lama, neurobiology and more recently Daniel Keown’s

“Spark in the Machine” concepts, in parallel to our practice of Taijiquan;

and that the human body is an ecosystem in itself, being home to trillions of

microbes, and just like animals, plants and trees in the forest, the

different kinds of microbes in and on [y]our body interact with each other.  

.

[Michael Grove]

Here we are again all of these years later, [BE]ing encouraged to

believe that AI IS the next BIG THING so to speak when the

INTELLIGENCE that has brought US TO THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS

IS NOW proposing to CREATE an ARTIFICIAL VERSION of [IT]self !!!

[Michael Grove]

THE WISDOM of THE ZEN DOCTRINE of MIND

           ALL that I know about this TAO-at-centre multiple concentric    

           image is that it is based on the 5000 year old concept of the      

           I Ching and choosing the right TIME to ACT, utilising the

           concept of Trigrams that are made up of three lines and these

           can be unbroken (yang) or broken (yin). The lines signify the

           two basic forces of the of the physical world, masculine yang

           energy and the receptive, yielding , feminine yin energy. The

           wisdom of yang and the compassion of yin unite to produce

           an infinite number of outcomes. Think of the I Ching as China’s

           accumulated wisdom and philosophy encapsulated within a

           set of 64 linear symbols known as hexagrams.These lined

           symbols describe situations experienced by mankind working

           together with the forces of the universe. These forces are

           described by the Chinese as the interactions of teen ti ten,      

           or heaven, earth and mankind.     

  

           TODAY, WE SEE WAR CONDONED... IN the name of               

           the patriarchal gods of Allah, Jesus and Jehova. 

         The divine is not understood by these people

         as part of a circular pattern emulating nature,

         but it is now a linear theology of One shot.. either

         up to heaven [with optional virgins] or down      

           to hell - Kelly Bell


          NATURE is our religion, and the eternal cycle our holy book.

[Michael Grove]

   Perhaps the world’s most distinctive tree, ginkgo has remained

   stubbornly unchanged for more than two hundred million years.

   A living link to the age of dinosaurs, it survived the great ice ages

   as a relic in China, but it earned its reprieve when people first

   found it useful about a thousand years ago. Today ginkgo biloba

   [IS] beloved for the elegance of its leaves, prized for its edible nuts,

   and revered for its longevity.