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Just got tipped off to BackPackIt in the latest edition of the Technology Review (MIT's killer tech mag), a free web based organizer that tracks your to-do lists, notes, links, and documents. I just set it up, and maybe, just maybe, I'll get a handle on all the madness swirling through this cerebral sea.

Rainy Days

Just got back from Highlands, NC from a week of rain, rain, rain. I guess it could of been worse; my plan was just to sit around and read anyways. I got through the rest of the David Hawkins book, which finished off splendidly, and also read a whole introductory computer textbook which was actually really interesting. The true geek in me is coming out! You know you're in for trouble when you have an inkling to use the command prompt instead of the GUI. I figured if I was going to really pursue the art of web design I should know a little bit more about networking and hardware in general--and now I do! Anways, desperately need to get back to Boulder. These family members of mine are driving me out of my mind! Three weeks is way too long, that's for sure.

Web Development

My recent dive into the blogosphere hasdramatically increased my interest in the art and aesthetics of web page design. I had never considered designing web pages as a possible outlet for creative expression, however, now I'm convinced its the art for me. I've been looking for a creative outlet for a while, but havn't been able to really connect with anything. I have a good feeling about this one because it takes advantage of propensity towards math and logic, and also my good sense of layout and placement. So, anyways today I bought the Creating Web Sites Bible, Second Edition at Borders, and I 'll attempt to piece through it for the next week or so while I'm in Hightlands, NC with the fam. Then it's back to Boulder! and another year at Hogwarts (aka Naropa). Another note, I found out today that the Republican platform actually calibrates almost 200 points higher on Hawkins' Scale of Consciousness than the Decmocratic platform. I guess thats what post-modernism and the mean green meme will do-go boomers!

Truth vs. Falsehood

I just received Truth vs. Falsehood by David R. Hawkins in the mail today (Damn I love Amazon.com. I swear its like magic; a few flick of fingers and the next thing you know there is a new book on your doorstep). This is his fourth book, and from the little I've read it is his best book yet. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Hawkins and his work, he is a long time scholar, psychiatrist, and spiritual teacher who is known for his work with kinesiological muscle testing and his claim that truth(anything subjective or objective) can be calibrated and thus known with a simple muscle test. I read all of his book this summer while I was at the Sivananda Yoga Ranch in upstate New York. I havn't yet gotten a chance to really practice the technique myself so I can't personally verify it, but from what I've read about the decades of well documented clinical research he has done as well as the research by dozens of other well respected professionals in the field of kinesiology, his claims seem to be quite accurate. If it is indeed true, the implications are nothing less than fantastical. The entire fourth book is devoted primarily to calibrations of everything and anything ranging from the mundane to the non-dual. The calibrations work by identifying a statement's level of truth on an arbitrary scale from 0-1000, where 200 is integrity, 500 is love, 600 is enlightenment, and 1000 is the level of an avatar (Krishna, Buddha, Jesus). Anyways, if you have any free time this is the book to read. Even if you remain skeptical about the validity of his claim, the brilliance of the work cognitively makes it more than worth the investemnt, and it is sure to shed further light on the emerging integral paradigm.

Integral Spirituality Essay

Just finished Wilber's Essay on Integral Spirituality posted on the new Integral Spiritual Center website. I was very pleased with its coherency and its capacity to adequately address the role of religion in the modern and post-modern world. His theory of the "conveyer belt" effect, states that religion is the only institution capable of moving people from the lower levels to the higher levels, as it is the only "institution allowed to sanction stages that humanity in its infancy and childhood passed through" because it is the only institution that has access to the repository of myths created during those times. While religion indeed seems to be the predominant institution with access to these lower stages, I can't help but feel that perhaps there is another.Though I can't well support this argument, my contention is that capitalism as an institution contains within it access to at least down to blue (possibly red) and up through yellow and turqoise. The economic institution itelf has gone through a number of different stages from physical capitalism, to industrial capitalism, to what some may now call "cognitive" capitalism. While the idea of capital continues to be further and further abstracted, the institution as a whole contains all of these levels within it. You can be at blue and be a capitalist, you can be at orange and be a capitalist, you can be at green and be a capitalist, and you can even be at turqoise and be capitalist with the relatively recent innovations in applying the P2P ethos to modern business practices. It seems then that the religion of "corporatism" then is likewise capable as an institution to move people along developmentally in certain lines, since it to has access to a repository of ideas, concepts, symbols, and morphogenetic fields that extend across developmental lines. I'm not sure if this theory really holds up, as I am really not that versed in economic theory and history. While I do believe Wilber is correct in his pereception of religion as a powerful mechanism for global change, my intuition tells me (or my unconscious belief structures won't let me accept) that there is only one approach of attack that can help people move up the levels, and thus help stabalize the threats to planetary survival.

Integral P2P

I recently read an article off of the World of Ken Wilber website about P2P in an integral framework. To say the least, I was very impressed and have found a subject that has linked many of my academic interests of the recent past, including: collective intelligence, integral economics/alternative economics, complementary currencies, social networking, and integral theory. Th3 author, Michel Bauwens, sent me a very nice email in response to my further inquiry about his paper. I was routed to some interesting sites (that most of the integral community may already be aware of), of which were: the IntegralVisioning website that contains, among other things, a archive of the P2P newsletter and a slew of articles pertaining to everything integral. Also there is a link to the newly developed Integral Encyclopedia and the P2P Foundation, which contains its own encyclopedia (both of which follow the format of the now famous wikipedia). Anyways, I hope to wiz through the P2P newsletter archive and the notes to the updated version of Michael's essay sometime soon.

Blog by E-mail

Being a relatively new blogger, I was completely unaware of the capability of publishing via email. This is a revolutionary idea. Why didn't I think of that. The reason I havn't been blogging was because of the annoyance of having to sign into blogger every time I wanted to make a post; but now, I can post while checking my gmail account and save myself the added annoyance of having to deal with the clunky blogger interface. Anyways, hopefully this will be the beginning of my true ascent into the blogosphere, instead of my premature half-ascent in May. Stay tuned!