Book thoughts...

I was in a meeting earlier today and we found ourselves talking about the future of the book in all of its possible forms. I have several shelves at home covered with books that I never even read, but the aesthetics of the whole thing sets my mind at ease as I ponder all of the knowledge contained therein.

But my computer has been acting up a little bit. And my old Ipod won't hold a charge. And as the days go on, more and more little technological impurities find themselves in the various things that plug into the wall in order to work.

But those books are still there...

It's not like there's some sort of equivalent to a harddrive crash for books. You won't be reading a book and then find that you can't turn the page past page 167, or the white page turn blue, or random scenes of porn just start popping up all over the page. Maybe it's possible, but not likely.

There is something pure about the words on the page. Only fire can wipe the data. Or maybe a lot of water. Or lightening. But power surges? You're fine.

-Dennis Edmons

Xmas and the eating of America

The falls in Portland are crazy. They start off cold and wet, and as soon as we settle into the next year of rain, we'll inevitably get a day or so of beautiful weather. It's nice. However, it makes the Christmas decoration past time no longer defined by the traditional calendar. You don't wait until Thanksgiving before you put up your exterior lights, instead you do it when you can. In my little suburban neighborhood, people know us because we live near this house that goes overboard with the decorations. And I'm not over-exaggerating, either. I don't know how they found all this stuff, but they put these huge, air-filled characters for every single holiday. And I mean every single damn one of them. From the flag waving bear for July 4th to the inflatable turkey to the Shamrock bear (I'm not lying) to the big bunny for Easter, they really love their holidays.
Anywho, the people around us have started upping their game a little bit to show their support (only on Halloween and Christmas, though. We're not crazy). And today, a beautiful and rare Autumn day, two of my neighbors are putting up their lights. Now, old me would've said that it's crazy to do this, damn the weather. I mean, there is still a long time before Christmas. But, even with the ecological reasons, I like it.
Christmas is so much and so little: the birth of a savior, the most magical day of the year for a lot of kids, the corporate necessity, a time to "have" to go home and visit with friends and family. It's extremely multi-dimensional.
Couple that with my intense fascination with all things cultural and social, and bring it fast and early; I love the holidays. So guys, open up the minds, try not to be too cynical, and have a merry holiday season. Already. In mid November.


-Dennis Edmons

dealing with the options of a worldcentric religion

I've been thinking a lot lately about religion. Let me tell you a little bit about my own:

Born, bred, and raised Baptist, I didn't question it (IT) until I was about 16. I saw some horribly racist and closed-minded things in youth group that made me stop and think.
And then it happened.
I went on a personal journey through scientific reductionism, seeing all of life around me as a product of biological and chemical energies, which led me to a state of depression. Later, I found solace in the teachings of Robert Monroe, a self-described astral traveller, but in the end was left unfulfilled with the lack of morality in a scientific approach to spirit. Soon afterward, I grasped for anything, which led me to the intriguing field of demonology and ghost hunting. My fears and hopes were soon realized when I was temporarily possessed, and back on the journey I went. I found myself working in a bar under the tutelage of a Philosophy Master's student who introduced me to Ken Wilber and Spiral Dynamics, and I was hooked. I went on a multi-year journey of categorizing and labelling those around me, but it left me so disconnected with my fellow travellers, I left that trip for "higher" ground. I found what I was looking for in experiential gnosis through Salvia and Gnostic teachings. However, I also inadvertently joined a couple of cults, so I quit that shit ASAP. Now, I'm a spiritual maverick and moderate, constantly looking for some new thing that brings together the finer points of Christianity and spiritual fulfillment from gnostic experience. If religion is a tool of evolution, I can't wait for the next avenue to present itself. If it's a tool of GOD, it's interesting to see how all of the different religions fit together. If it's a biological impulse to vilify our seeming inconsequential relationship with the immensity of the Kosmos, then bring on the worm food. I'll see you at the clinic.


-Dennis Edmons

color coding of Americans

White, black, red, blue, redcoat, browncoat, it seems like we like to put some sort of easily definable color coding on each one of our categorized groups of cultures. Perhaps it's an American thing; I don't know. I do know that it could be dangerous to us as a people to section ourselves off from one another in order to easily identify our friends. But the more I thought about it, the more it seems to be a natural outgrowth of our ever expanding group consciousness. Think about it. Don Beck and his Spiral Dynamics easily put people into several groups based on their unfolding levels of evolutionary psychology. At first this seems to be destructive to us as a people. However, by doing so, we are able to see the strengths and weaknesses of each other and how we can relate to and rely on each other for specific reasons. If you are some sort of quasi-Darwinian purist, this is basically some form of natural selection stage where diversification of the species is readily needed in order to properly network and divide our energies to more effectively tackle certain goals. I like to think of myself as a reformed Darwinian, now struggling with spiritual humanist tendencies, but see the diversification and categorization, not as a preordained step in evolution, but as a natural occurrence in the chaotic and methodical unfolding of spirit in ourselves. While this does not necessarily facilitate throwing the Bible out the window or condemning Darwin to a fiery stake in the town's center, it does serve a purpose in the networked interwebbed reality that we are all dealing with. Just a thought.

-Dennis Edmons

This is supposed to show the "birth" of a new McDonalds somewhere. Personally, I think it's proof that Ronald has been sleeping around. What would make this better, though, is to show the little baby in a manger.

-Dennis Edmons

motion sensors and touchpads...

wiimotes and iphones.  the future is at hand.

i saw this thing the other day where you can move within a computer's virtual environment without actually manipulating a controller or mouse.  the product itself is pretty handy for people without the use of their hands or fingers or anything like that, but i'm more interested in the implications for the future.

whenever you watch something cyberpunk or whatever, you see people getting a plug in the base of the back of the neck that they use to interface within a virtual environment.  personally, it seems to me that this is a much more accessible way for people to start dropping out of reality and into their own collective virtual world.  

imagine logging into your mmo of choice (or a version of facebook or myspace that has a graphic interface [second life]) and being able to move without moving your real hands.  the implications are huge.  no complicated surgery is needed, no injection of wifi nanobots, just a little hat with sensors.

this immediately causes concern for those of us worried that remote controlled robots and cybernetic slaves will one day run the world.  i can see some kind of rich genius, intent on world domination, sitting at his desk while his controlled slaves put down a rebellion of humans on the streets of chicago.  but like anything, it's a tool.  here's hoping that we don't kill ourselves like we did in the matrix.

-dennis edmons

the erosion of geography

I notice more and more people inexorably drawn to these little handheld devices.  They walk around, heads down, clicking away, while the trees overhead droop with loneliness.  The sun is no longer a companion, instead it has become an enemy to glare-less youtube feeds and instant messages.  I pity those people as I play with my ipod touch and text.

This is to say that I am the sinless judge upon those around me.  I am not subject to their petty desires; I am above and beyond them.  

But then when I get home, I notice something.  Friends from long ago, separated over the years by vast stretches of this country are all together again in amorphous, nebulous virtual spaces.  We chat and share pictures, reminisce about the good old days, and marvel at what Great Father Time had done to our tight asses and smooth faces.  No longer do I begrudge the passing of eras, I now have the power to reverse the damages of time and geography.

Which is beautiful and dark.

My friend lives in a little plot of land, sandwiched between two other fenced plots, and he sees the faces of his neighbors as I see the wall of this office.  There is no space there, either.  

Is that what we've chosen to become as a people?  Living in smaller and smaller tracts of bank-owned land, building 8 foot walls of cedar to maintain a semblance of privacy between those around us?  All the while we hold desperately to those connections from the past, thanking the gods for the ability to banish the space between us...

It's enough to make you stop and think.

-Dennis Edmons

a little late, but still...

So we can all agree that Michael Phelps is a grade A badass. That’s fine. It has actually been entertaining for me to go to work and be able to communicate with the other humans about a sports related subject without pretending to care. Because I really do.
But I noticed something the other night. After my fourth conversation with bar guests about him, I realized that two people referred to him as a machine and two others called him an animal. I’ve personally called him both without realizing the underlying implications of those opposite associations.
Face it. On the one hand you have an animal, a beast that hits the water and propels itself to the other side of the pool with instinctual fervor. And on the other hand, you have a machine, fulfilling its primary function which would be to move its parts in a manner to reach the other side in the shortest path possible. They are seemingly the embodiment of two very different things.
But are they really?
They both are non-thinking things. We can debate whether or not animals are truly thinking things or not, but for all intents and purposes, they are instinctual, not contemplative. The same with machines. They do not think about the shortest or quickest path, they merely plunge into the water in accordance with their programming.
Also, if you talk to an athlete who can perform to that level, they often speak of that non-thinking place where they go when they are in intense competition, that Zen like space of doing. Maybe that’s what we mean when we say that he’s an animal or a machine.
If you think about it, it’s pretty cool that these are the people on the international stage for all to see. These are the ones that find that Zen space. They are the ones that transcend the non-doing reality that so many of us humans are trapped in. We think, they do. And we applaud them for it and daydream that we are in their non-thinking shoes.

-Dennis Edmons

weddings and funerals...

Funerals and Weddings…

 

            Back in the day (and currently for some people), we used to have family reunions.  A chance for the extended fam to get together and talk about the good days, play some horseshoes, and eat some hotdogs and potato salad.  That trend is starting to fade. 

            Nowadays we’re all too busy with our own shit to bother with a get-together at some pavilion in a state park somewhere.  We go  about our little sheltered lives in our own little pods of reality, texting and facebooking, no longer constrained by geography.  But it comes at a price.

            Funerals used to be these things where everyone got together and mourned the loss of a loved one.  Reverent, sincere, people silently walked around the funeral home and paid their respects to the other family members still breathing.  Older members of the family were there as pillars to some as-yet-realized stability or continuity.  

            Today, they are our new reunions.  We see people we haven’t seen in person in years.  We catch up, talk about the good days, marvel at how quickly the little ones are growing, hug a little longer than normal, and exchange current contact info.  But the old ones there see it as irreverent, ungodly.

            My grandmother is particularly disgusted with the current state of funerals.  She says that people are too loud, too happy.  But she’s really stumbled onto something.  It seems to me that we need that community, that family.  And when there are no more summer picnics, no more volleyball or badminton tournaments, we have to fill that void somehow.  We need those connections to be strong, stable.

            The same could be said for weddings. 

            I’ve seen weddings from when I was a kid – these big, weighty dissertation-esque rants about the powerful god blessing the union and whatnot.  But now they’ve begun to get shorter and shorter, more personalized.  The reception, while it’s always been a party, now seem to be the focal point for many of the younger couples that are getting married.  Fried pickles?  Check.  Delicious desserts?  Check.  Ample room for these two families to merge?  Check.

            It’s a beautiful thing to witness.  And it gives me hope for the future.  We need more weddings and funerals to keep our families together and changing.  We need those moments where we celebrate a life lived or lives merging.  We need each other.  Because no matter how much we feel like it, we are not alone.

 

-Dennis Edmons