At that point, the Singularity holds, human beings and machines will so effortlessly and elegantly merge that poor health, the ravages of old age and even death itself will all be things of the past.
Some of Silicon Valley’s smartest and wealthiest people have embraced the Singularity. They believe that technology may be the only way to solve the world’s ills, while also allowing people to seize control of the evolutionary process. For those who haven’t noticed, the Valley’s most-celebrated company — Google — works daily on building a giant brain that harnesses the thinking power of humans in order to surpass the thinking power of humans.
Larry Page, Google’s other co-founder, helped set up Singularity University in 2008, and the company has supported it with more than $250,000 in donations. Some of Google’s earliest employees are, thanks to personal donations of $100,000 each, among the university’s “founding circle.” (Mr. Page did not respond to interview requests.)...
On a more millennialist and provocative note, the Singularity also offers a modern-day, quasi-religious answer to the Fountain of Youth by affirming the notion that, yes indeed, humans — or at least something derived from them — can have it all.
“We will transcend all of the limitations of our biology,” says Raymond Kurzweil, the inventor and businessman who is the Singularity’s most ubiquitous spokesman and boasts that he intends to live for hundreds of years and resurrect the dead, including his own father. “That is what it means to be human — to extend who we are.”
Good for the Times, I think they get my point:
“The Singularity is not the great vision for society that Lenin had or Milton Friedman might have,” says Andrew Orlowski, a British journalist who has written extensively on techno-utopianism. “It is rich people building a lifeboat and getting off the ship.”
Hey if you want to click on 'em go ahead; I have no problem accepting money from fundamentalist churches. I plan to donate 1/2 my revenues to a good Buddhist charity or my temple. Not that I've had any revenues yet, but that's my plan.
A Bally's fitness center closed way back in September of last year. That was a net benefit for me, as I convinced my wife to let me join the Lacamas Swim and Sport club, which has much better facilities than Bally's had anyway. I'm told it's owned by triathletes, so they kind of serious and non-corporate about how they do things.
But my wife was hoping the Bally's center would revert to another owner who would re-open it. Well, they did, kind of. They are becoming apparently "Kessid Church" and "Kessid Center," a part of Kessid Church.
"Kessid Church" had been meeting here, which looks a lot like their "vision" (a scheme is not a vision, as Leonard Cohen sang) of what "Kessid Church" or, uh "Kessid Center" should be.
What's truly fascinating to me is not that Yet Again Some Other Fundamentalist Cult has tried to open shop in my neighborhood (we Pacific Northwestern folk are among the most "unchurched" folk in the country, don't you know), but that unlike most cults, they absolutely refuse to disclose what they believe or practice, other than a couple of generalities:
At our core we hold two important ideals: Intimacy with God, and being “less than.” Our Kessid logo is symbolic of both these principles. The red line represents intimacy with God. Through His blood, we can receive pure forgiveness. The acceptance of Christ’s forgiveness allows us to become a part of His family. This is our direct line between God and us. It connects us to Him in a bond that can’t ever be broken. When we allow Christ to examine our souls we are revealed for what we really are, and both our beauty and brokenness are exposed. “True intimacy is not without Judgment, yet, it is just the opposite. It’s about being completely known scars and all, without loosing even one strand of beautiful” -Anonymous. Here we are forgiven and released!
Most importantly, we believe that intimacy with God comes before all forms of ministry. If we can always strive for intimacy with God, the outpouring will be Holy Spirit led and feed ministry of all kinds. The < in the “K” represents the “less than” sign. In everything we do we want to do it with a humble and quiet spirit. “It’s about being content to let others discover the layers of our talents without having to boast about them. It’s a lack of arrogance, not a lack of aggressiveness in the pursuit of achievement.” – Bruna Martinuzzi. Kessid wants to be a church who does ministry without applause. This means we can do amazing things through Christ for our church and community without having to tell people how great we are.
Oh, I left out one other bit before that:
We want to infect the community and existing organizations that help serve our area, with our time, talent, and resources.
I'm fascinated by this. These guys clearly have your typical fundamentalist background, but they feel compelled to soft - pedal it. They are, I think, outstanding communicators given their age - they're true believers you can be sure of that. Luckily they have a contact page!
So, uh, I plan on writing them with a few questions...
Why do you feel that you can't list your beliefs or Church lineage structure or heritage with any greater degree of specificity than you do on your website? Is your acceptance of that heritage so weak you are afraid people won't like it?
Seriously, though, you folks seem committed, and that might be a good thing, provided you're not fans of the Republican Party, or other right wing groups. How do we live together? I personally have no illusions that I can dissuade you from your belief system, though I would love to tell you what my practice is and how it helps beings. But with the world the way it is today, maybe your behavior is indicative of how we should proceed. You folks are Christians. I'm a Zen Buddhist. Many others are atheists, agnostics, and other paths. Isn't the stated path relatively unimportant? Shouldn't it be? Most likely we're all alone here, and no one's going to rescue us. How can we survive when we all think everyone else's belief system is bullshit? Shouldn't in such a case we merely proceed to get along forgetting such ideologies and "-isms?"
Heather Havrilesky's kind of got a point: the Sopranos made descent into darker and darker a new plot technique to explore in cable shows, but it seems unrelenting, irredeemable.
I think there's a narrative of change for the positive that will be introduced.
Maybe somebody on the Huff Post blog with LA connections should write a Buddhist themed "Breaking Bad to Better."
I can imagine the blowback the folks in Clearwater, FLA are going to do to the Times for this story...
Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.
Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.
But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave the Sea Org, setting off on a Kafkaesque journey that they said required them to sign false confessions about their personal lives and their work, pay the church thousands of dollars it said they owed for courses and counseling, and accept the consequences as their parents, siblings and friends who are church members cut off all communication with them...
The defectors say that the average Scientology member, known in the church as a public, is largely unaware of the abusive environment experienced by staff members. The church works hard to cultivate public members — especially celebrities like Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Nancy Cartwright (the voice of the cartoon scoundrel Bart Simpson) — whose money keeps it running...
Marty Rathbun, who was once Mr. Miscavige’s top lieutenant, is now one of the church’s top detractors. The churches used to be busy places where members socialized and invited curious visitors to give Scientology a try, he said, but now the church is installing touch-screen displays so it can introduce visitors to Scientology with little need for Scientologists on site.
“That’s the difference between the old Scientology and the new: the brave new Scientology is all these beautiful buildings and real estate and no people,” said Mr. Rathbun, who is among several former top executives quoted by The St. Petersburg Times in a series of articles last year about the church’s reported mistreatment of staff members.
This is a group that is clearly problematic, and if this group shuts down it would not be much of a loss to humanity.
The only thing that's less important to me, except for the schadenfreude factor, is the drama at the Washington Post over a recent Sally Quinn column (check out the comments - twenty years ago somebody like Quinn would have gotten away with such Marie Antoinnette-like detachment from society but now...)
Most people in the workaday world have no idea how much "power" "they" actually have in the workplace. Because of conditioning, and the encrusting of cultural mores and beliefs, it may be possible to forget that our original nature allows us to move wherever we need to in the world "as though it were our own playground."
Of course, pursuing this "power" for its own sake is a fool's game, and this "power" can only be effective when it is exercised consciously in harmony with Mind itself, in the midst of and with the cooperation of the myriad things. In the business world that means being mindful of all stakeholders's stakes, and mindfully approaching all conditions and situations with compassion, wisdom, and generosity whenever possible.
I've been rather busy at work, as posts from the past few days demonstrate, but because of a fortuitous confluence of my actions and thoughts and deeds, those around me, as well as I have had some benefits coming from all the hustle and bustle.
But part of those actions involved a redoubled effort and mindfulness in the workplace. And I can tell you that this pays dividends far beyond what you might possibly imagine.
Q. You tell business owners to forget about being likable. Is there something wrong with employees liking you?
A. You have to treat your people with respect. If they have a personal problem, you have to help them through it. You have to follow the law. But we also need to get things done as asked. The abandonment of that principle is a large factor in the failure of small businesses to achieve real profitability.
Q. Do business owners coddle their people too much?
A. The concept that if you love your employees they’ll perform is on the edge of insanity. It’s not that you want to hurt your employees, but you have a mission. You’re paid to produce results.
Q. Can your employees talk back to you or say, “Sorry, boss, but that’s a stupid idea?”
A. We actually did a survey around Christmas of their attitudes toward the company. Two-thirds of them thought the company was changing for the better. We let them write any comments they had. One guy that worked for me for 10 years wrote, “If I fell dead at my desk, George wouldn’t notice for two days.” Sure, we let them talk back. We like to listen, but you can only listen so much and then you have to make a choice.
Q. What’s your view of fear as a management tool?
A. Fear is the best motivator.
Q. Are you a tyrant?
A. I’m sure many people would view me as difficult. If I ask you to do something and you say, “Geez, I don’t have enough time to do that.” Well, maybe I don’t have enough time to sign your check this week.
I fully agree with the first point: Trying to curry likability is a disastrous way to run an organization. But the other points are absurd.
People will not do what they cannot do. Fear is well known to be the worst motivator, and the unconscious mind of the workplace will sabotage the tyrant every friggin' time. Fear is a motivator? Yeah, follow in the footsteps of Chainsaw Al, and see how far it gets you.
And if you don't take the time to really listen when you listen, instead of paying lip service to it, without judgment, or opinion forming or interruption, you're not really there.
Want super-duper free American management advice from a simple Buddhist layman?
Cloutier of course gets his money from people who want to pay him money to reassure themselves that their atavistic management methods are good for them, and no doubt will drive many people and companies to anguish over his advice.
Meanwhile, whatever the circumstances, you can create an island of quenched fires and still meet deadlines, get deliverables delivered, and help all advance further in life and career.
Over the past two generations, particularly among many college grads, the 20s have become a sort of netherworld between adolescence and adulthood. Job-switching is common, and with it, periods of voluntary, transitional unemployment. And as marriage and parenthood have receded farther into the future, the first years after college have become, arguably, more carefree. In this recession, the term funemployment has gained some currency among single 20-somethings, prompting a small raft of youth-culture stories in the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Weekly, on Gawker, and in other venues.
Most of the people interviewed in these stories seem merely to be trying to stay positive and make the best of a bad situation. They note that it’s a good time to reevaluate career choices; that since joblessness is now so common among their peers, it has lost much of its stigma; and that since they don’t have mortgages or kids, they have flexibility, and in this respect, they are lucky. All of this sounds sensible enough—it is intuitive to think that youth will be spared the worst of the recession’s scars.
But in fact a whole generation of young adults is likely to see its life chances permanently diminished by this recession. Lisa Kahn, an economist at Yale, has studied the impact of recessions on the lifetime earnings of young workers. In one recent study, she followed the career paths of white men who graduated from college between 1979 and 1989. She found that, all else equal, for every one-percentage-point increase in the national unemployment rate, the starting income of new graduates fell by as much as 7 percent; the unluckiest graduates of the decade, who emerged into the teeth of the 1981–82 recession, made roughly 25 percent less in their first year than graduates who stepped into boom times.
But what’s truly remarkable is the persistence of the earnings gap. Five, 10, 15 years after graduation, after untold promotions and career changes spanning booms and busts, the unlucky graduates never closed the gap. Seventeen years after graduation, those who had entered the workforce during inhospitable times were still earning 10 percent less on average than those who had emerged into a more bountiful climate. When you add up all the earnings losses over the years, Kahn says, it’s as if the lucky graduates had been given a gift of about $100,000, adjusted for inflation, immediately upon graduation—or, alternatively, as if the unlucky ones had been saddled with a debt of the same size.
When Kahn looked more closely at the unlucky graduates at mid-career, she found some surprising characteristics. They were significantly less likely to work in professional occupations or other prestigious spheres. And they clung more tightly to their jobs: average job tenure was unusually long. People who entered the workforce during the recession “didn’t switch jobs as much, and particularly for young workers, that’s how you increase wages,” Kahn told me. This behavior may have resulted from a lingering risk aversion, born of a tough start. But a lack of opportunities may have played a larger role, she said: when you’re forced to start work in a particularly low-level job or unsexy career, it’s easy for other employers to dismiss you as having low potential. Moving up, or moving on to something different and better, becomes more difficult...
Strong evidence suggests that people who don’t find solid roots in the job market within a year or two have a particularly hard time righting themselves. In part, that’s because many of them become different—and damaged—people. Krysia Mossakowski, a sociologist at the University of Miami, has found that in young adults, long bouts of unemployment provoke long-lasting changes in behavior and mental health. “Some people say, ‘Oh, well, they’re young, they’re in and out of the workforce, so unemployment shouldn’t matter much psychologically,’” Mossakowski told me. “But that isn’t true.”
Examining national longitudinal data, Mossakowski has found that people who were unemployed for long periods in their teens or early 20s are far more likely to develop a habit of heavy drinking (five or more drinks in one sitting) by the time they approach middle age. They are also more likely to develop depressive symptoms. Prior drinking behavior and psychological history do not explain these problems—they result from unemployment itself. And the problems are not limited to those who never find steady work; they show up quite strongly as well in people who are later working regularly.
"IGMFU" is a horrendous social policy, and clearly creates more suffering than a bit of all around social compassion.
And, reading further into the article, the culture of "everybody gets a prize" seems to have made many in American culture particularly resistant to being able to go it on their own.
That's frustrating to those who have to manage them, especially those of us who were "thrown into the pool to see if we could swim."
There's cruelty out of deep kindness and there's cruelty out of ignorant greed and hatred.
