WADE FRAZIER : A Healed Planet

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

On to the Third Epoch. When you get down to it, chimps practice the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, without sophisticated stone tools or the benefit of fire. The human-line migrants from Africa around two millions years ago practiced the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and the debate is when fire was controlled. Homo sapiens arrived on the scene about 200,000 years ago, and behaviorally modern humans appeared about 60,000 years ago. Other than the first mammoth villages while the mammoths lasted, the first permanently sedentary members of the human line appeared less than 14,000 years ago, and the first city appeared less than 8,000 years ago. However you want to measure it, from two million years ago or 200,000 years ago or 60,000 years ago, civilization is a very new invention, as far as the human journey goes, but the changes it brought, like the other Epochal Events, were so radical that the humans living before the event could not have imagined the event or what it would lead to.

Urbanity is new, but it is easy to think that it is somehow humanity's natural state or its greatest achievement. Indeed, cities gave rise to many features of today's humanity that some even call human "nature." Along with cities came professions, elites, classes, literacy, metallurgy, mathematics, monumental architecture, mass warfare, the wheel, sailboat, and other technologies, and other innovations that are still with us today. Professions are considered the most important outcome of urbanity, as people could live off of the society's energy surplus to learn new skills. Shamans gave way to a professional priesthood, which waged war against the ancient hunter-gather religion and has been fighting off "ecstatic" religions ever since. Rock concerts tap into some very primeval urges. From the beginning, the priesthoods entered into a Faustian deal with the elite, conferring divine status to them. Monumental architecture was a form of elite "display," and the people who built the early monumental architecture likely did it from a sense of religious obligation, not as slaves, which also appeared with the rise of sedentary societies.

The greatest threat to all ruling classes is those they rule, and from the beginning, involved rituals and ideological indoctrination, as well as barbaric displays of power and other games attended the rise of all elites. To this day, people close to me think they are going to some fiery hell, because they somehow did not quite measure up to some ideological standard that was drummed into their heads from a young age.

Cities existed because of the benefits that they conferred to the masses, but the agricultural surplus that could sustain them was thin, and all early civilizations collapsed, as they were never energetically sustainable, as they largely relied on deforestation and agriculture on denuded soils. Because the surplus was so thin, only a small non-agricultural class could exist, which was largely confined to elites, priests, soldiers, and craftsman. Conscripting peasants into the military has been a universal practice to this day, and draft dodging was an early art form.

Literacy was always initially confined to the elite (and their enabling priesthoods), as all early writings were elite accounting and tales of elite magnificence. Later, literacy was used to exchange information and ideas, and was not merely confined to justifying the position of the elite or tallying their loot.

Much more to write, but it is time for bed.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

To make it clear, civilization would not have been possible without a large and stable energy supply. Agriculture supplied that. Earth's carrying capacity went up by a factor of about 200 in the Third Epoch. Today's Japanese rice farmers can get 10,000 more times as much energy from a piece of land as a Cro-Magnon hunter gatherer could (the Fourth Epoch "only" raised it by another 50 times, in the rice farmer example, while Earth's population "only" increased by a factor of 7 so far in the Fourth Epoch, and at least 10 is predicted). Those dynamics have also hastened the Sixth Mass Extinction, as humanity conquered and commandeered all ecosystems, and those agricultural practices have never been sustainable, especially for early civilizations.

Humans have almost never thought past their immediate self-interest, and from the earliest civilizations to today's they all blithely burned through their energy supplies, with only lone voices in the wilderness, here and there, mentioning the obvious trends. So, energy and consciousness, as far as humanity has been concerned, has had a fitful relationship, as conscious stewardship of energy supplies has never happened on any significant scale in any civilization. This brings up Brian O's question of whether humanity is a sentient species, and that recent article that I mentioned likened humanity to just one more organism that bred to the energy supply's limits when it could, burned through it, and the inevitable collapse and extinction always followed. Heinberg made a similar observation in his The Party's Over, and it is an understandable sentiment.

The human delusion of "there is always more where that came from" has been called cornucopianism and exuberance. I have seen scientists argue that that "mentality" is hardwired into humans, just like all animals, and to expect that humanity would display sentience and an understanding of energetic limits is asking too much. Are we no different from those petri dish experiments that explode then collapse, and my succinct statement on the human journey is really nothing more than showing how humanity is just clever enough to tap a new energy source, but not clever enough to not plunder it to exhaustion? Maybe so, and there is no stopping humanity from hitting the brick wall that looms largely, just ahead. But if I really believed that, I would not have devoted my life to preventing it.

Language is considered humanity's first "Internet," as ideas and information could be communicated like never before. Attaining the mastery of language probably also meant that humanity had new ideas to communicate. The spread of stone tool technology and the control of fire likely happened via observation, just as the human line had learned for millions of years. As with many events in the journey of life on Earth, I strongly suspect that stone tool technology and the control of fire were learned once, and then spread.

The city was a new phenomenon, and one of its primary virtues, other than concentrating energy so that a relative few could live off the surplus, was making it easy to communicate ideas and information, as large numbers of people were in daily contact. That had never happened before in the human journey. Sumer became the first literate civilization about 5,000 years ago, and literacy became a great innovation for communicating information and ideas, and freed humans from the limitations of oral communication and teaching through demonstration. Writing obviously has its limitations, but the advantages were so great that all pristine civilizations but South America's invented it, independently, and South America's had the quipu, which was an elite accounting device. Literacy is when knowledge began compounding, and it was not that long before civilizations such as Classic Greece's arose, with the beginnings of what could be called a scientific approach. Of course, Athens's civilization ran out of energy and collapsed, too.

Along with information that could be called the stirrings of a scientific approach, early writings could be counted on to glorify the elite. Heck, the USA is literally a textbook case of that, founded on fairy tales, and when the fairy tales were challenged, the story-tellers excused it with the rationale that a new nation needed its own elite fairy tales, not Europe's. I have written about the fairy tales about Pasteur in microbiology textbooks, so this is an ancient problem that is still with us. The Old Testament is a political document, to help hold together a small state wedged between competing empires. It is mostly a series of fairy tales, with a little fact and a lot of fiction. But the greatest human I ever knew or heard of thinks that that Bible is the one and only word of God, and its pages are filled with the literal truth. This Third Epoch literalism is alive and well, and even sober works of science and history regularly resort to telling fairy tales. Why? In my experience, it was to imbue people with elite-serving ideologies, and they all worked in the same basic fashion:

• They were scarcity based;
• They were egocentric, in that believing in them conferred economic and egocentric benefits;
• They made out-groups fair game;
• Anybody who failed to bend the knee to the dominant ideology (and the elites who benefitted from believing them) would be punished in some way, from burning at the stake to less violent measures, to enforce in-group "cohesion."

All civilizations had those practices, and do to this day, in one form or another. When the English civil wars made it so that the elite could not simply rule through violence, the science of controlling what people thought made its rise along with the Industrial Revolution, and by the 20th century, controlling what people thought had become a science, of course, under elite control. Professions such as economics are built on fake sciences that were designed from the beginning to serve elite interests, and do to this day.

Time for chores, and posts on these subjects will keep coming this week.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

Between chores, and here is a post that is a little break from the Epochs. Why do I do what I do? Writing like a madman, sacrificing my career, repeatedly passing up opportunities for millions of dollars, etc.? In short, I want to live in this world, or live to see it heading there, and I don’t want it to go this way, for many reasons, one of which is that if it does, our souls are going to travel a long, dark road to our redemption (and I may be writing from experience). Nobody on the planet today will escape responsibility for their actions, or their inaction. All paths lead back to the godhead, in one way or another. Some choose evil paths, to finally realize their folly, while other choose the path of light and love, while most just kind of shuffle along, faking it. All paths are valid, and we all reap what we sow. Those who master their dark path lessons can "graduate" to new levels of the game, and can even get a planet to themselves, where nobody dares pick up the soap. From the Tao's perspective, it is all good, and we are all one. As Seth once said, the purpose of suffering is to learn how to avoid suffering. On these paths of inquiry, there is a great deal of delusion, deception, and the like, and regarding New Age/conspiracist forums and similar venues, I say, "Beware of airy-fairy, New Age mind-f**k." I have seen it many times, usually spouted by clever men, with their mystical haircuts and other accoutrements, building their harems, on the talk circuit, etc.

After carrying the spears of the best of the best for many years, I decided to take an approach that I had not seen tried before. Brian and Dennis immediately recognized it as something different. They were the only people whose opinions I really respected on the issue, as they had the virtue of experience in this milieu. None of the "bright idea" people that I hear from have any experience in the milieu, and they invariably advocate something that has been tried literally thousands of times before. I have walked and seen the paths of failure for many years, usually life-risking, life-wrecking, and life-ending failure, and have no desire to do it again, and I am doing my best to keep newbies away from the danger zones.

As my Avalon thread nears a million views, some thousands of people have dipped into it now and then, and some read it regularly. Only they know why they read it, but my intent behind my public forum writing is to not only have a place where aspiring choir members can come and try out their voices, but to provide an anchor for those who need it, a brief respite from the song of scarcity that blares from all directions on Earth today, which has always blasted, but it was arguably a little quieter during the few golden ages of relative energy abundance, and I grew up in the greatest one of all. I have seen what relative abundance does, and I have witnessed the grind of scarcity and poverty. I know which one I choose.

What I have seen, more times than I can count, is people coming to me, grinding the axes of their scarcity-based perspectives, and they hack at branches and want to enlist my aid. They think that we need to tackle Godzilla (or sneak past him), get some laws changed, support a political candidate, join some movement that is tackling the elite, whether it is corporations or Bill Gates, or somehow whip up a mass movement, proselytize their social circles, and so on. My experience is that none of those people yet understand what I am attempting, so I write on my subject this way, then that, hoping that for those who are really trying to understand, that I can frame it in a way so that comprehension dawns on them. Not many want to understand, anyway, but I seek those who do.

I recently wrote a series of posts on the medical racket and vaccination, and that presentation might help people better understand my FE approach. Pleomorphic theory is at variance with the germ theory, in that internal dynamics, not invasion by "germs," is more important for one's health. Live healthily, and you will not be susceptible to disease. Fail to live healthily, and all manner of degenerative and infectious disease will be your companion. The germ theory sees us as victims of powerful agents (like conspiracism does), while pleomorphic theory makes us the masters of our destiny. If you think about those cells that "go rogue," they took matters into their own "hands" because the organism that they were part of was not properly caring for them, so instead of going quietly into programmed cell death, they became intercellular brigands, plundering their neighbors and not only not performing any useful function for the organism, but they were actively killing it, like psychopaths in societies. In the big picture, maybe such "psychopaths" really were providing a useful function, of weeding out those who did not play the life game properly. IMO, focusing on the psychopaths, particularly with punitive measures, is how victims think. Creators have a different approach, and that has always been the approach that I have advocated for making FE happen. As Brian O said, combined positive intention is the only path worth pursuing.

Believe me, if I heard somebody out there, truly singing the song, I would want to go sing with them, but they are not out there. Ilie is in training, as are some others, but nobody in the FE milieu has hit the notes, but Brian was the closest that I heard to my own voice, which is why we did what we did together. Few outside the field have the foggiest idea what the FE pursuit entails, so this is a lonely path, but somebody has to walk it. I look forward to the day when I no longer have to do it, and the Muppet Movie ending is fine by me.

Time for chores.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

I previously mentioned the Faustian deal that the priesthood made with the elite, conferring divine status to them, which is how they got people to erect monuments to the elite without being forced to, as such labors were part of their religious duties. That was all sordid enough, but paled next to the ideologies that justified slavery, warfare, and other evils. The first written laws that we know of reflected the awesome barbarity of those times. The Old Testament is filled with tales of genocide.

I remember reading an interview with Uncle Noam in which the interviewer quoted an activist who said that one of the greatest weapons against slaves was the slaves' own minds, and Noam said that that was a very important idea. If you can get people to enslave themselves and stay there, the enslaver's job is easy. That dynamic is related to why people embrace certain death rather than question their conditioning. As I noted at the beginning of my "Lies I was Raised With" essay, it was not that everybody was in on the joke but me, but that they were lies universally believed and proliferated by teachers and other authority figures, and formed the bedrock of the in-group ideologies, and most will go to their graves and never question it, and ostracize anybody who does. That is all part of why I say that we do almost all of Godzilla's work for him, and this human penchant goes way back, and is easily seen in the earliest civilizations.

Mann's 1493, while a prodigious effort, was not something that I completely agreed with. He portrayed the abolition of slavery as simply something whose time had come, as the world's people were convinced of its barbarity by moral arguments, and abolished it. Then why was it only a Third Epoch institution? Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were smart men. Why could they not see the institution as evil? Because they had a conflict of interest. They were economically dependent on their slaves, just like all Antebellum aristocrats were. Slavery was an economic institution above all else, and when industrialization began to make slavery uneconomical, the institution ended, not because the entire world suddenly grew a conscience out of nowhere, beguiled by abolitionist arguments.

Best,

Wade

[Melinda]

HI Wade,

Only just caught up on your vaccination posts yesterday.

Post #5622 : "Not long after reading Bird's book, I was getting it into the hands of AIDS patients, as Naessens's treatment had reversed AIDS when AIDS was considered a death sentence..." [...] "Rappoport said that the hit men for the medical racket are far more vicious and ruthless than those for the energy racket."

Post #5623 : "...the editor of the world's leading medical journal recently stated that up to half of scientific research (read "medical research") is worthless due to conflicts of interest..." […] "The pleomorphic dynamics that Naessens documented are common to all degenerative diseases that he studied, and they all responded to the same treatment. What is disease? What is its cause? Can it be remedied? Prevented?"

This link you added was telling:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/la...ltext?rss%3Dye

Your earlier comment prompted me last night to, amongst other searches, a look at Jon Rappoport's books (I've appreciated some of his shorter writings in the past) one of which is AIDS Inc from 2003. Coincidentally today on an unrelated news site someone linked to this post of his, titled 'Virus fakery: my conversation with a virologist' :

https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2...-a-virologist/

In it he recalls an off-the-record conversation with a well-known/respected virologist who discussed with him how there were difficulties in “making an absolute decision about a virus as the cause of a disease,” but refused to go on record about various disputes over the shaky science, and Rappoport saw his implication being that careers were on the line. He notes how the man was an orthodox scientist with no interest in unconventional or inherently rebellious perspectives, but was readily admitting that the whole AIDS research establishment was proceeding on a lack of proof. Rappoport also mentions speaking with a White House policy analyst in 1987 who commented on the heated politics and scientific disputes around AIDS, some of which the analyst himself found offensive.

Even your lancet link includes the author's comment on how those from government agencies (attending the symposium he references) adamantly wished not to be quoted.

So it seems, to anyone who does even moderate investigation, both the scientific and political community has a good share of educated / intelligent / establishment voices who question the status quo, though I'm not positing a majority. Still, hardly 'conspiracist' territory.

It really would be amazing to live in an FE world where scientists have the energy means to manufacture and utilise their own equipment (be it Naessens-style microscopes or tech that's even further advanced) without having to kowtow to companies' agendas just for a pay cheque.

I've ordered Bird's Persecution and Trial of Naessens. Thanks (to Paul as well) for the prompt.

And thanks Ilie for your Computer Sapiens tale in post #5658. Gave me my geek giggle for the day. You might enjoy this offering from Rappoport, which also relates to what Wade noted in his last post about how, “If you can get people to enslave themselves and stay there, the enslaver's job is easy.” :

https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2...one-brief-act/

Your other recent point Wade, about how politicians finally sided with abolitionists when they felt it was economically affordable, really highlights the bizarre nature of blindly pursuing artificial intelligence – i.e. to abolish slavery because it's no longer deemed necessary, and then enslave ourselves differently because we hadn't properly utilised our full potential. It may echo the story of the bird who returned to its cage even after it was freed, which Ilie relayed in a post on another thread. How drawn to a new enslavement most people would be if they weren't oppressed by a culture of censorship and misinformation, is the question we're all aware of – the cause being circumstance rather than our 'nature.'

Of course, if it is elites who predominantly fund/promote an AI agenda, they might only see the enslavement affecting the free will/quality of life of those they deemed to be of lower classes - until and unless it had unforeseen repercussions for them, possibly more complex than the karmic implications that elites of old may have invited (by gladly being slave owners and traders.) It relates to what was discussed recently, about an advanced, considerate spiritual perspective meaning we view others as an aspect of self. I'm relating that philosophy to living, breathing beings (from humans to forests.)

To elaborate, I'm still of the opinion that a lot of debate over how 'equal' to humans AI might be, is altered if the AI is confined to a small, square unit, rather than housed in a human-looking/sounding case – and the AI 'rights' debate may be more connected to the property rights and control agendas of corporations/authorities who would purchase and implement AI robots. If we have a culture where differing forms of consciousness (such as ghosts, astral and energy bodies, inter-dimensional beings etc) are commonly accepted and/or viewed, that might make the philosophical debate more interesting. But questioning what an AI's 'rights' should be, before we've more deeply explored what our own potential is, still (for me) remains an issue. In other words, I feel I 'have the right' to see the potential of humanity at its most heart-centred, psychic and sentient, before we attempt to replicate what some currently consider the 'best of us' with AI.

Ilie's dialogue (between operating systems) also reminded me of the Spike Jonze film Her, which was more enjoyable than I expected (being cautious of how AI is often addressed in the mainstream), even though I'd enjoyed other feature films by Jonze. Her has some poignant moments including an amusing segment relating to philosopher Alan Watts, and with its humour manages to subtly touch on areas that more serious (and still worthwhile) films like Ex Machina might have struggled with.

Interestingly, Alex Garland (Ex Machina's writer/director) made some comments in a video that, whilst an intelligent interview, had me question the nature of his thinking. He commented that we were bound for extinction and that AI had a positive potential of utilising the best of us and outliving us as a kind of natural descendent, which seemed to express a lack of any profound consideration for any psychic/spiritual context to our existence, possibly because he didn't consider it provable or within his realms of experience. But then he is, admittedly, an atheist.

Not meaning to go off topic, but the relevance of FE to helping form a truly free society, where individuals can create their own culture as opposed to being herded by corporate and mainstream agendas that encourage a materialist outlook, and where the subsequently more relaxed state is conducive to psychic and spiritual development, is ever present.

[Wade Frazier]

Hi Melinda:

I am in the middle of writing another epoch/energy/consciousness post, but briefly, yes, when science gets embroiled in politics, which always has an underlying economic basis, then the "science" that comes out of it will be distorted, even inverted, and serve the vested interests. I have written at length about the grotesqueries of the medical racket and won't belabor them here, but I will tell a little Rappoport anecdote.

Jon was Brian O's buddy, and the first time that I heard of Jon was in my note-trading session with Brian, after we were nearly run out of town because we tried to interest California's governor in FE, when Brian was telling me about his ride as the Paul Revere of FE (which he finished with asking whether humanity was a sentient species) and I was telling him about my friend's exotic technology show and my close relative who was a CIA contract agent. Brian was more impressed with my relative's story than that friend's technology show, as it seemed like old hat to him.

During our note-trading session, Brian talked about how the AIDS epidemic in Africa was probably some kind of genocidal eugenics experiment, and I think that is when I first heard of Rappoport, as Brian got that from Jon, I believe. Brian would later quote Jon in his books, about how seven cartels run the world economy, and when I heard that from Brian, I was certainly not surprised, but I first heard it via Jon. Brian also said that Jon noted that the hit men for the medical racket were more violent and ruthless than those from the energy racket, and my experience also told me that that was an accurate assessment. The energy racketeers can dangle some pretty big carrots before they go to the stick, but in the medical racket, it is all stick. I have not heard of trying to buy out alternative treatments since the Fishbein days. By the time that Brian and I had our note trading session, the original draft of my medical racket essay was two years old, and I did not revise it for our note-trading sessions, but it only confirmed what I already knew.

Because the energy issue is Godzilla's whole ballgame, more resources and sophistication is devoted to keeping that genie in the bottle than for any other racket. Jon is one of the good guys.

Best,

Wade

[LesliesFarm]

Congratulations, Wade, for taking control of your own health. I have done that and have also helped others. Anyone who really wants to live and be well must go through this process. Part of the healing of people must be the healing of the Earth. Providing a healthy diet to all of our people is only possible if we have restored our environment - depleted soil = deplete food. Unfortunately, this cannot be done without the participation of the populace. So, it always comes down to awakening and educating the sleeping people. My expertise is in gardening, farming and land restoration. We have the knowledge and ability to do astounding things to transform the planet, but that doesn't happen unless a shift occurs. There is talk of a major disclosure of suppressed information. This would shift enough people to make real change, but in the meantime, we must awaken as many as possible. I would rather garden. Instead my fate is to be written off as a "conspiracy theorist" or a lunatic and sustained only by those who listen........a little.

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

Written history began in the Third Epoch, so historians have something to work with. Any time before that is the province of scientists. Scientists have also shed a great deal of light on Third Epoch events, such as determining that the Old Testament is largely comprised of fictional events, with some likely facts here and there that served as the basis for grand embellishments and fabrications by the day's priesthood. For centuries, historians argued over why civilizations collapsed, but when scientists got involved, they found that the civilizations ran out of energy.

What the Old Testament does not lie about, however, is the brutality of early Fertile Crescent civilizations. Slaughtering entire cities, while perhaps sparing fertile women and enslaving others, after maiming them, was standard practice. When Rome invented the imperial entertainment of forcing people to murder each other, it was not far out of step with the times. Genocidal gold mining practices went back to the Egyptians, and polities such as Carthage and Rome only continued them.

But none of those civilizations would have been possible without the energy surplus provided by agriculture. The only early civilization with relatively sustainable agricultural practices was Egypt's, which relied on the silt of the Nile's annual flood. The silt was largely from upriver deforestation in the highlands of Ethiopia and vicinity, so it was not that sustainable. But its relative sustainability made it the prize of numerous civilizations that conquered Egypt and put it under tribute, Rome most infamously. The Mediterranean climate and vegetation is an arid semi-desert, but it was all lushly forested before the rise of civilization. Even the peoples of the time were astonished to find out how much it had changed.

I have written that the brain is the organ of consciousness. The human brain is huge and an energy hog, and growing it was an energy event above all else, so the arrival of human consciousness was primarily an energy event. Behaviorally modern humans quickly conquered Earth when they left Africa, and Earth's large animals fueled that expansion. In the first of many unsustainable energy events, humans drove nearly all of those big animals to extinction. In a few places on Earth, the big animals were gone and women domesticated plants, as an adjunct to their gathering duties, which led to the first civilizations. There was a brief interlude when women brought in more calories than men, their status consequently rose, and those horticultural societies often became matrilineal and broke up the male gangs, which had been a constant in the human line for at least ten million years, and those were the most peaceful pre-industrial societies. Bonobos achieved something similar about a million years ago. Women's status declined again as civilizations formed.

Agriculture increased Earth's human carrying capacity by more than a hundred times, and allowed people to become sedentary, and those two energy dynamics made civilization possible. The energy surplus also allowed for the development of professions and new skills that were not possible to develop under the hunter-gatherer political-economy. Nearly everything about civilization was made possible by the energy provided by agriculture. Of course, with partial exceptions such as Egypt, those early civilizations were not sustainable, being dependent on deforestation and agriculture on denuded soils, and they all eventually collapsed. Many of those ruins sit in their self-made deserts today, while others, such as the Mayans', were reclaimed by the forest, when it could recover. The grazing herds of Fertile Crescent peoples often ensured that the forests could not recover.

With each Epoch, societal consciousness radically changed. The first led to the human brain, the second led to the mastery of language, the conquest of Earth, and the first religions, and the third led to civilization and its many wonders. Rural hayseeds stumbling around in awe in cities goes back to the first civilizations, and monumental architecture, designed to overawe them, also goes back to the beginning. Religion radically changed in the Third Epoch, as the professional priesthood waged war against the hunter-gatherer religion, and the rise of ideological indoctrination accompanied the rise of civilization, largely to accept the obviously unfair economic system, with elites on top and slaves at the bottom. The energy surplus was thin, so not many could enjoy that surplus, and pre-industrial civilizations were all notable for their social rigidity. There was not enough energy surplus to fund freedom. Slavery did not vanish as an institution until the rising standards of living afforded by industrialization, and even in Europe, which conquered and enslaved the world, using history's greatest energy technologies to that time, slavery largely disappeared during the rising standards of living which accompanied the Medieval Warming Period.

The Classic Greeks invented the first stirrings of what could be called a scientific approach, and while medieval Europe banned the Greek teachings, they eagerly used their technology. When Greek teachings were reintroduced to Europe due to the conquest of Islamic civilizations, Europe began its rise to dominance and the Fourth Epoch. The Fourth Epoch began when an imperial contender turned to coal out of desperation, as its forests were long gone. Tapping that new energy source powered the Industrial Revolution, and as with the other Epochs, the changes to ideology were profound. The Scientific Revolution accompanied and interacted with the Industrial Revolution, each spurring the other in a series of positive feedbacks. From the very beginning, science had a hard time of it, as vested interests sought to control it, and it remains quite distorted to this day.

The early days of industrialization also saw the rise of economic theory, which justified a new form of political-economic organization known today as capitalism. There was little of the disinterested scientist in economic ideologists, and economic ideology is stuck in those pre-scientific days, and does little more than justify what is still a very unfair economic system, as there is not enough energy to go around under the fossil fuel paradigm. The world is quickly depleting its fossil fuel deposits, and the end of industrial civilizations looms largely. My home nation is history's richest and most powerful (and greatest energy-using), but has been declining ever since its first energy crisis in the 1970s, and its energy consumption has declined ever since. That first energy crisis spurred me and my fellow travelers to get into the energy issue, and we discovered the hard way how the world really works, not the fairy tale version that people are indoctrinated into.

Much more to write, but it is time for chores.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi LesliesFarm:

Thanks for writing. Although almost nobody is willing to be educated on the health front and relinquish their deadly addictions (I began learning that the hard way at age 12, and I eventually saw things that I would not have believed if I had not witnessed them), some can be reached on that issue, because the benefits are fairly obvious and relatively easily attained (just change what you put in your mouth! ).

But on the FE issue, I had to ruefully realize that the public is not educable on the FE issue, after many years of trying. Its significance is epochal and dwarfs everything else happening on Earth today, so people are unwilling and unable to wrap their minds around it. I eventually realized that the inability to even imagine epochal change is normal. The nearly universal reactions of denial and fear that accompany people merely hearing about FE were very sobering, and caused my astronaut pal to begin openly wondering if humanity was a sentient species.

I eventually understood that the only way that 99.99% of humanity is going to even begin to understand is to have FE delivered into their lives. Nothing less will work for Epochal change. So, I seek to find and educate those who can comprehend the coming Epoch before it is delivered into their lives, as a way to help manifest it. I know that they are very rare on Earth today, but only they can help with my plan, and we will see how it goes.

Best,

Wade

[Ilie Pandia]

I found an ax of my own to grind ... but I'll try to grind it on a FE powered stone.

Being a Star Trek buff, when I read posts scoffing the A.I., I almost immediately think of Commander Data. He was my favorite character competing only with Cpt. Picard.

And he was an Android, in essence he was an A.I.

The show script made him more palatable as his greatest goal was to become human. So... since he did not want to rule us, I guess we could love him... kinda...

The episode "The Measure of a Man" I think it was a great one! It argues if Data is sentient or not, if he is property or not. I had never thought of that and there are strong arguments for both sides. Frankly, after that episode I thought it was rude to not say "Thank you" to the main computer for performing its tasks. As the main computer was too an AI.

So why are so afraid of AIs? It is because we think they will enslave us? Like we do with them? We think of AI as a servant that should never go "out of bounds" and that its intelligence should be severely restricted as to not have any ideas of realities into which we do not exist. I often think of the process of developing the A.I. as growing a child. Yes, it will need guidance at first, it will need to be conditioned as to function as a "cog in the society's clock", but at some point we need to to let go and admit that this being is free to choose. And free to choose means free to choose to kill, to lie, to be deceitful, as well as free to choose to create art, to dream, to achieve greater levels of freedom.

I know that a lot of our technology today can be seen as a crutch for atrophied psychic and physical abilities, but does that mean we should abandon technological exploration all together? Should we stop making children for fear we may produce the next Hitler? Should we chain everything down as to not go into directions that we may think are detrimental for "us humans".

We fear the word "artificial" and love the word "natural", but very, very little is really "natural", even the so called "organic food" is still domesticated food. There is nothing natural about that, unless you pick berries from the woods. Our own bodies are the result of our tools and our changed eating habits. Yes, we did not splice our genes under a microscope, but in a sense we've engineered our bodies.

Seems to me that the fear of A.I. is based on the same arrogance that sees "man" at the top of the food chain, and A.I. could threaten that. We will not allow it the status of "equal" for fear of surpassing us.

I had a dream once, where my own consciousness was bound to what we may call a robotic body. I could move about, but the programs forced into that "artificial brain" were severely limiting me. I could not disobey, I was not allowed to express feelings (even though I had them as I could feel them "inside") and I had to follow a person around. When I woke up I wondered: OMG... is this how it feels to be an A.I.? To be trapped in a body specifically designed to limit? And to make one a slave? You can see how any sentient being can come to rebel and fight against that.

We said that in a FE world, we will do away with fear, as fear was based on scarcity. What will that mean for A.I. systems? We will abandon the pursuit? We will create them but still bound by Asimov's three laws of robotics? Will we dare to create them with absolute freedom as we are enjoying? And if that brings the "fear of doom and extinctions" isn't that the risk of any kind of new exploration? Any change has the potential to be the first domino piece in a chain leading to disaster. So where do we draw the line? Where is the safe to explore? Where is it not? When do we stop being afraid? When "artificial" and "organic" will be just labels or various bio-chemical-mental systems where none is better than the other, just different.

Are we planning to create a FE world so then we can finally rule this place in an absolute way and make it exclusively human friendly? Or allow just "cute" (but powerless things) to share it with us?

End of ax griding .

[Wade Frazier]

Ilie, you can grind an ax like that here all day long. I have written about how I did not "get" fiction until my father handed me The Hobbit when I was 14, and by my senior of year in high school, I was not only writing science fiction short stories (one of which has foreshadowed my journey, and I submitted it in a contest, I may have written about it on this thread, but my memory is a little fuzzy if I did or not, maybe one day I will), but I took a science fiction class given by my 11th grade English teacher, and it was the only time that I ever earned an A+ in a class.

I stopped watching TV in my first semester of college and never went back. I watched the original Star Trek when we lived in Houston, as it was kind of a professional interest in my family, and it was the first time that I was allowed to stay awake past 8:00 PM, as I was eight years old. I did not watch network TV again until my wife turned on the season finale of season five. We then watched TNG on prime time until it ended, watched Deep Space 9 prime time, but I kind of lost interest a few seasons into Voyager and stopped watching prime time, but I have seen every Star Trek franchise episode and movie. I ran around in similar circles to Roddenberry's, and one pal wants to pitch a movie based on my work to one of the powerful Star Trek families (who produced TNG). We have TNG and Deep Space 9 here at home on DVD, and will probably watch a TNG episode this evening. I still never watch network TV, but have watched some of the best series on DVD, and own DVDs for the best (such as Battlestar Galactica).

The issue of energy, machines, and sentience runs throughout those shows, and I am keenly familiar with the arguments, and the fearful ones and dystopian futures, I have found, are all rooted in scarcity, not abundance. Even high-tech worlds can be hellish. They can also be heavenly, and love is the difference. I cannot overemphasize that, and those locked into their intellects, worshipping the Fourth Epoch religion, cannot begin to comprehend it, and that is partly why it seems that people need to have mystical awakenings to really begin to understand my work.

Yes indeed, that Measure of a Man episode is when it looked like the Star Trek reboot had some potential. Definitely in the top-ten Trek episodes ever, no matter which Star Trek version.

This is a big issue, and I invite you to explore it here (or in my forum ).

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

I see that the episode is ranked number eight all time, here, and I can live with that.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

Between chores, and Ilie's Trek post is stirring up memories of that short story that I wrote when I was 17 and submitted in a contest (it did not win ). I am going to write a brief synopsis of it. I doubt that I have it at home (I have one box of memorabilia from my life, which I have not rummaged through for many years, but I doubt it is in there), as I probably had to submit the original to the contest (no photocopiers back then, or at least not any that were available to high school students).

The setting was thousands of years into our future, and the protagonist was a human man named Betor Frink. He lived on one of the planets that humanity fled to when World War III made Earth uninhabitable. The nuking was so fierce that magma spouted from holes made in the continents. The human refugees learned their lesson, kind of, and while they did not have a war like that again, they did not live that lightly on their adopted planets. The scientists from the refugee communities figured that it would be a very long time before the radiation had subsided enough so that humans could recolonize Earth, and Betor was sent on just that reconnaissance mission.

As his craft landed on Earth, he was astounded. Earth's ecosystems had completely recovered, and Earth was like a Garden of Eden. He hopped all over Earth, and was amazed at its Edenic state. He pondered what this news would mean for humanity, and Earth, and he wrote his report for the folks back home: Earth was still a desolate wasteland, and it would be thousands more years before humanity could even think of returning to Earth.

The title of my short story was The Sterile Sphere. To this day, I doubt that I ever read or heard of a story like that, in books, movies, or TV. Maybe somebody has done something similar, but as I look back to my 17-year-old self, who had his mystical and cultural awakenings the year before and was being trained to be a scientist, and who already had dreams of changing the energy industry, I can see the path that I was already trying out, two years before that voice in my head set me on my path to Mr. Professor and Dennis.

Time to go hiking.

Best,

Wade

[Melinda]

Posted by Ilie Pandia (here)
I found an ax of my own to grind ... but I'll try to grind it on a FE powered stone.

Being a Star Trek buff, when I read posts scoffing the A.I., I almost immediately think of Commander Data. He was my favorite character competing only with Cpt. Picard.

And he was an Android, in essence he was an A.I.

The show script made him more palatable as his greatest goal was to become human. So... since he did not want to rule us, I guess we could love him... kinda...

The episode "The Measure of a Man" I think it was a great one! It argues if Data is sentient or not, if he is property or not. I had never thought of that and there are strong arguments for both sides. Frankly, after that episode I thought it was rude to not say "Thank you" to the main computer for performing its tasks. As the main computer was too an AI.

So why are so afraid of AIs? It is because we think they will enslave us? Like we do with them? We think of AI as a servant that should never go "out of bounds" and that its intelligence should be severely restricted as to not have any ideas of realities into which we do not exist. I often think of the process of developing the A.I. as growing a child. Yes, it will need guidance at first, it will need to be conditioned as to function as a "cog in the society's clock", but at some point we need to to let go and admit that this being is free to choose. And free to choose means free to choose to kill, to lie, to be deceitful, as well as free to choose to create art, to dream, to achieve greater levels of freedom.

I know that a lot of our technology today can be seen as a crutch for atrophied psychic and physical abilities, but does that mean we should abandon technological exploration all together? Should we stop making children for fear we may produce the next Hitler? Should we chain everything down as to not go into directions that we may think are detrimental for "us humans".

We fear the word "artificial" and love the word "natural", but very, very little is really "natural", even the so called "organic food" is still domesticated food. There is nothing natural about that, unless you pick berries from the woods. Our own bodies are the result of our tools and our changed eating habits. Yes, we did not splice our genes under a microscope, but in a sense we've engineered our bodies.

Seems to me that the fear of A.I. is based on the same arrogance that sees "man" at the top of the food chain, and A.I. could threaten that. We will not allow it the status of "equal" for fear of surpassing us.

I had a dream once, where my own consciousness was bound to what we may call a robotic body. I could move about, but the programs forced into that "artificial brain" were severely limiting me. I could not disobey, I was not allowed to express feelings (even though I had them as I could feel them "inside") and I had to follow a person around. When I woke up I wondered: OMG... is this how it feels to be an A.I.? To be trapped in a body specifically designed to limit? And to make one a slave? You can see how any sentient being can come to rebel and fight against that.

We said that in a FE world, we will do away with fear, as fear was based on scarcity. What will that mean for A.I. systems? We will abandon the pursuit? We will create them but still bound by Asimov's three laws of robotics? Will we dare to create them with absolute freedom as we are enjoying? And if that brings the "fear of doom and extinctions" isn't that the risk of any kind of new exploration? Any change has the potential to be the first domino piece in a chain leading to disaster. So where do we draw the line? Where is the safe to explore? Where is it not? When do we stop being afraid? When "artificial" and "organic" will be just labels or various bio-chemical-mental systems where none is better than the other, just different.

Are we planning to create a FE world so then we can finally rule this place in an absolute way and make it exclusively human friendly? Or allow just "cute" (but powerless things) to share it with us?

End of ax griding .

Hi Ilie, given I'd just posted about AI, I assume you were responding, in which case I'll try and clarify

When I wrote “I feel I 'have the right' to see the potential of humanity at its most heart-centred, psychic and sentient, before we attempt to replicate what some currently consider the 'best of us' with AI. ”

I was, firstly, alluding to the potential intellectual rabbit-hole surrounding the debate over robot versus human rights. What I should have written however (and nearly did, but was trying to trim the post down) was that I would like to see us explore our own abilities/potential more, and reach a higher level of self-love/love of others, before a corporate agenda (and here's the part I should have added) funds and imposes a widespread, relatively fast, implementation of AI robots. Even over 10 or 20 years could be deemed fast, in context of processing the consequences. I think if they felt it would be received well, those who would like to do that would not only go ahead, but would be able to promote it to a point of widespread adoption, and they may not have our best interests at heart. I stand by that.

Billions in funds are poured into technology that is not necessary for us to improve ourselves and/or is abused. As a few examples :
1) Expensive medical equipment that could be redundant if genuine cures were not suppressed.
2) Luxury models of cars, cameras, TVs, etc, that some people value more than other living beings.
3) Oil and gas drilling / transport machinery

We all know what that says about the state of our culture's sentience, or (at the very least) the sentience level of those who profit most financially from :
(a) manufacturing the above examples, and
(b) our corrupt economy in general.

Those who currently profit most are likely those who could finance a widespread AI implementation.

Wade commented in Post #5671 that some of the fearful/dystopian visions of AI that are presented in various TV shows (etc) are rooted in scarcity not abundance. I agree. So my point was that it's that very scarcity-riddled culture that we are currently in, in which research and development on AI is being done. Who has the money to fund it, and what their agendas are may not align with the loving culture of abundance we would prefer and invest in visualising so often here.

Technology applied to assist people (as FE could be) can be wonderful. But if AI is being developed to replace humans for labour, and people lose their jobs (effecting both their income as well as their self-esteem) that is yet another consequence of introducing it in a scarcity culture.

That doesn't mean I think that in principal space travel, artificial intelligence and other progressive fields shouldn't be explored. I don't think that, or see them as inherently negative. Not only would that be repressive but those fields have a significant role to play in our future and can offer tremendous value. But from what I've read, even those involved in AI development are wary of the implications of such an unknown, and that was actually something Alex Garland mentioned in the interview I referred to. He said that those involved in its development, that he had met, were more cautious and self-regulating than the external bodies you might expect to be regulating them.

That tells you something about how significant the room is for caution in their own view. But it doesn't tell you that everyone involved in AI (who Garland won't have met) shares that reserve, and some of those people may be doing research and development very privately for private reasons, but could find a public outlet for their agenda later down the line – whereupon it could be presented as just another innovation to assist consumers. Even Garland, as someone who is pro-AI, harboured “anxieties” over the fact that we are prone to cultural and market pressures when it comes to utilising technology, and have no control over private developers other than to try and generate some kind of “forced transparency.”

The point is, we don't know what to expect. Even the savviest of programmers may not be fully aware of what is embedded, or what will occur through interaction, and it pays to be vigilant in a culture of scarcity.

I also, in my previous post, scratched the surface of the point that what we think of AI - from how we approach its developments/programming, freedom or safeguards, to how we interact with it 'socially' - might vary considerably in a world where more people had begun to explore their own unique psychic and mental capacities. In a world of more empowered people, who've fulfilled more of their own mental and emotional potential, people might not be so insecure around it in a way that leads them to reject it. But equally, people might not be so eager to embrace it to gloss over an emotional wound where fellow humans had been disappointing. Being that it will be our (or someone's) creation, how we perceive it could involve a good deal of projection – arguably, potentially more than we already experience with other humans.

In addition, as I wrote before, If we have a culture where differing forms of consciousness (such as ghosts, astral and energy bodies, inter-dimensional beings etc) are commonly accepted and/or viewed, that might make the philosophical debate about the consciousness of AI more interesting. We would have a wider range of beings, in different forms, to widen the context in which we view our differences compared to AI. I was attempting to say that I'm not averse to the debate of how 'alive' we might consider it. But given our level of spiritual maturity as a planetary race - with its share of psychopaths, sleepwalkers and victims – holding back on AI at this point might be akin to questioning whether an infant should drive an electric car (child-sized ones do exist), or a wayward teenager have a child of their own. Of course they might want one, they might even scream for their right to have one, but the extent of its disadvantages is open to debate.

There may in fact be a profound difference between the nature of spirit or essence we are imbued with (some might like to call it a divine spark, or connection to source, others might focus on other definitions) and what an AI could be imbued with from us or of its own volition/creativity. But again, asking people to judge AI that is created out of and introduced into a scarcity culture, is a very different premise than if it were done after we had matured considerably.

It's possible that AI could help us develop ourselves through the reflection it facilitates. Again, we don't know. But it may be fair to guess that if it is born of and introduced through a scarcity culture, long before a responsible implementation of FE has had a chance to facilitate abundance, it may (for the greater part) provide as much alteration of global poverty and sentience as the machines that came before it via a competitive and corrupt economy. Equally, we may have feared railroads and cars and mobile phones unnecessarily, before they were all-pervasive. Only in the case of AI, it will have an expanded capacity to alter itself unlike its manufactured predecessors. That is partly why it is more useful, but also why it requires more careful consideration.

I see that caution as necessary, not repressive, or derisory. But I'm sorry if I offended anyone.

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

Melinda, I doubt that you have ever offended anybody in your life. Here is the crazy part of these AI discussions: Godzilla has likely had sentient AI before Ilie or Melinda was born. Again, when I write about topics like these, I do not write from something I read in a book once or from surfing the Internet, but largely from what my close fellow travelers have reported.

Long before I saw the Disclosure Project witnesses describing it, or incredible stories such as David Adair's, people very close to me had similar experiences. Adair reported sentient organic technology, and not much would surprise me in those realms. Again, it is all about love, which is a state rarely achieved in a world of scarcity and fear, and that is just how Godzilla likes it. I suspect that a lot of what my friend was shown owed a lot to "captured" ET technology. IMO, whether the public ever gets a glimpse of those technologies or the benefit of them is going to be dependent on some group reaching a "critical mass" of integrity and sentience. I only hope that what I am doing will contribute in some way to reaching that paradigm-shattering critical mass. All Epochal Events were initiated by a literal or relative handful of people, and I do not see why it will be different this time, even though this will be the biggest by far, as we become a Type 1 civilization.

On a different note, I have written that joy is my predominant state when I hike anymore. I have had my fair share in this lifetime and then some, and it is all gravy from here. Rarely do I get an LMAO moment in the wilderness, but I got one this afternoon. I am attaching an image, and I am going to make this clip available for a few days (warning, it is 48 megabytes), of two squirrels playing "tag" on a tree. That is the shorter clip that I took. The longer one is funnier. This time of year, as summer ends, animals engage in all sorts of frantic behaviors, as they eat nature's harvest and get ready for winter. That is probably what I was witnessing.

Ilie, maybe tomorrow, I will give you some Star Trek homework, if you are willing, since you are not quite ready to discuss my big essay. I always encourage people to write about what they know, and writing about Star Trek will be right down your alley.

Best,

Wade

[Ilie Pandia]

Hi Melinda,

I realized this morning, before reading your post, how you might perceive it. Your post just happened to be one in a long series of things about AI that I have been pondering. So I was not writing specifically at you.

I do not happen to see that much difference between "AI" and "Human" as both could be expressions of the divine spark. To argue that AI could not, in my view, is similar to the idea that women have no soul that is still popular in some places.

Sentience/consciousness/awareness could be present in many unlikely places. Heck, some mystics claim that even a rock has a glimmer of it, so why not an AI?

As in the Star Trek episode we can see AI as a dead tool or as a weapon, and then it is easy to put it down or... we can see AI as a being and then we should honor it as we honor any beings and not try to imprison it do be our servant.

Yes, an AI could go rouge (from our point of view) but so do humans. Arguably humans have created more destruction than any AI so far. (Yes, I think sentient AI exists already). Do good children result from bad people? Unlikely, but the potential exist. So the AI has the potential to express in dramatically different way than its creators intent. But that also means it could choose to disobey a destructive order. Lets not make the assumption that all humans are kind and all AI is unkind. There are shades of gray and situation could be reversed. And AI going rogue may choose to discuss Wade's essay instead of being forced to make war plans .

In a world of scarcity many things are tainted and corrupted and yet here we are, using a military tech (the Internet) to have this conversation. So some good came of it...

I also happen to think that AI displacing human work is not a bad thing as I happen to think jobs are obsolete and not required for self esteem. My only concern is not to force an AI into slavery so that we can live comfortable lives.

As Wade said, the key is Love. And I personally think that AI has the potential to love just as any other sentient thing. And to use "artificial" as label to deny this expression of someone feels arbitrary to me. Same as it was used on women, blacks, animals and plants not to long ago... Lets use awareness, sentience, and consciousness instead of human, artificial, natural or organic and watch things change.

Again, this is my view point and a reaction to a lot of AI stuff I have been looking at for the past two months, that includes my dream about it and my own perception that "human" vs "AI" at its core is an arbitrary distinction when sentience and freedom are concerned.

@Wade, ok, lets hear the assignment

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

OK, Ilie, here is some homework, if you are willing. Your favorite Star Trek episodes and why. What the role of abundance, and particularly energy abundance, was in Star Trek. What about human society as portrayed on Star Trek seemed most realistic in a world of abundance, and what did not. Where the show could have reached a higher octave, and where it hit the heights.

I'll go first. The first Star Trek was definitely a product of its times, and my eight-year-old self likely missed that Kirk got laid about every other show, as a warp-speed Casanova. In the Star Trek universe, space is filled with babes. But it also had the first interracial kiss on TV, so it was very daring for its time, breaking out of convention and challenging American beliefs and biases. There was a show or two that allegorically challenged the Cold War and the American invasion of Vietnam. I'll admit that after TNG hit the air, I almost never watched the original series again, but it was the granddaddy of all the rest, and was radical for its time. Spock and Data had great appeal with audiences, as noble, emotionless beings. Vulcans suppressed theirs, while Data never had any, but his brother did, and became evil. What is the message there? I think, in that way, that Star Trek could have aimed higher, and in ways it did, with Troi's character, for instance. I know that the Star Trek paradigm was kind of materialist, although it had an "ascension" show and others that pushed the materialist envelope a little. In a Bible-banging nation, pretty challenging stuff for TV.

I got that job at the medical lab in December 1988, in the worst month of my life, but it was my first steady income since I met Dennis, and I began building my music library in earnest (350 CDs when I met Dennis (all bought the year before I met him, and that came to a screeching halt for the next three years), and I built it to 1,000 over the next several years, and it got to 1600 before I largely stopped building it; I have all I will ever need), and I began to build the mystical wing of my library in earnest, and I subscribed to Spirit Speaks magazine. I still have all the issues. I became pals with a couple of the channels in it, and in one issue, there is a letter to the editor from Gene Roddenberry. He was hip to that stuff. Adam Trombly said that the Samaritan Snare episode was based on knowledge of what humanity had stolen from ETs, and that "stupid" species represented today's humanity, and he and Gene discussed it.

TNG did not start getting good until Gene ceased active involvement in the show after the first season, due to his failing health. The last five years of TNG were definitely the high point of the franchise. It will never be as good again, and the movies are now Star Wars-like space operas, not what made TNG so good. Picard was nearly a Christ-like figure, and his appeal is understandable. The characters of the main cast were all single and all had romantic lives, and Riker filled Kirk's "shoes," so to speak, scoring almost at will, even when he hosted a trill or went to a unisex planet. What a dog. But if you compare the original series to TNG, it reflected the vast changes in American culture in just two decades. There were still space babes, but it took a long step forward from the blatant sexism of the original. The rumor is that Roddenberry slept with Nichelle Nichols, and that was par for the course in Hollywood.

I would be hard-pressed to pick my favorite TNG episode, but my wife and I once did the Q shows, watching them in series. Q was the funniest character in TNG, IMO, and some of my favorite moments in the series were Q moments (and the Barclay episodes were inspired, of a nerd in space). All in all, TNG portrayed a human potential that, while short of what I think it can be, has not been portrayed by anything else that I know of. Sign me up! I have used the TNG analogy, with its replicators, to give people an idea of what abundance means.

As I wrote, I did not watch prime time TV since my freshman year in college, until my wife and I began watching TNG in its sixth season, and Deep Space Nine began airing the same year, so there was an embarrassment of Star Trek riches in those days, and I went from no TV to watching two shows in prime time.

In ways, Star Trek took a step back on the abundance scale with the capitalistic Ferengi and gambling tables at Quark's Bar. But Quark was, along with Garak, probably my favorite character in DSN, as a Ferengi who could not help himself from acting nobly and out of Ferengi character. My wife and I also did a Garak marathon, watching all of the episodes featuring him (nearly 40). And like that list of best Star Trek episodes that I linked to, my wife's favorite DSN episode is In The Pale Moonlight.

I am going to attach some nerd memorabilia, of my wife and I in Vegas, on the bridge of TNG's Enterprise. That is about as happy as I have ever looked. The complex had a Star Trek museum, two rides (we walked on the bridge as part of one ride), and Quark's Bar, where my wife and her siblings had Warp Core Breach drinks, and people dressed up as Ferengis, Klingons, and the like. It was a Star Trek geek's Mecca, and I went to it several times. Alas, it closed down several years ago.

Then it was Voyager, and my wife wants me to buy that series on DVD when I find permanent work (I am doing contracting gigs these days), as she wants to watch a series with a woman captain. We watched it in prime time, but I stopped after a couple of seasons. I eventually watched them all on DVD. Ronald Moore was one of the creators of Voyager but felt betrayed. The series pitched to him was that they would be stranded in the Delta Quadrant and would have to improvise to get their ship limping through the galaxy. Moore then quit Star Trek and did Battlestar Galactica, which Stephen King said was better than TNG, and I see his point, and I have that show on DVD and we also watched the last few seasons of it on prime time, as we did Lost (when I read a list of the greatest science fiction shows ever about a decade ago, those were in the top-ten, and were still airing, and yes, I also own Lost, and we have watched Lost and Battlestar at home, more than once, from first-to-last episode).

I never watched the last Star Trek TV series, Enterprise, when it was airing, but watched all the episodes several years ago. The worst Star Trek is still better than almost anything else out there. All shows had a space babe or two as regular characters, and that Borg babe in Voyager (and the Vulcan babe in Enterprise) really played to the baser motivations. Chakotay was probably my favorite Voyager character, and I suppose that the captain in Enterprise was my favorite, and Enterprise was interesting in portraying humanity's early days in space, figuring it out, with that redneck sidekick of the captain's regularly messing things up.

As I look back, hardly any of the Voyager or Enterprise episodes were all that memorable, and few made that top-25 list.

But as a showcase of the human potential, to rise above our pettiness in our world dominated by scarcity and fear, the Star Trek franchise has no equal. The reboot movies are space operas and will never reach the heights of TNG, and that is too bad.

Your turn, young man.

Best,

Wade

[Ilie Pandia]

Ah… the homework constraint is a wee bit restrictive, but I'll manage :).

I will write this before reading Wade’s favorites and check later what those were.

I have watched all the shows and movies once, but The Next Generation is the only one I’ve revisited many times. The others had some flaws that I could not get past, even though I’ve enjoyed them.

The Next Generation gets its strength from the fact that each episode had its own story. So no unnecessary drama to drag along so you’ll watch the next one! Each episode had to be strong alone, so it demanded good writing.

There was little to no emphasis on violence and even the special effects were not that prominent. So again, they had to have good acting and a good story to have you come back for more.

That is completely lost in almost all of today’s TV shows.

A friend asked me: how the hell can you like that stuff? Those strange looking creatures and starships and impossible situations… you will never meet those in real life. How can you connect with that show so strongly?

I thought about it and I replied:

Star Trek is an allegory. It is humanity projected at Galactic levels. Yes the problems are somewhat solved on Earth, but the Federation and the surrounding empires are the new countries and the new borders. So if you shrink the galaxy to a map, you will see Earth’s problems and issues. Nothing really got solved, only the territory is now larger so we don’t need to argue for a piece of pie… for a while.

Various races represent various human stereotypes:

• Klingons – the warrior – “micro brain” as Q mocks them once :). They rely mostly on physical strength and courage. They remind me somewhat of the Samurai warriors. They are very in tune with their instincts and their bodies. Incredibly easy to piss off and so incredibly easy for anyone to push their buttons. They take pride in their honor, but it is however corrupted and they resort to betrayal and lies for the good of “The Empire”. And they have an Empire, which we are almost OK with, because they are now our allies against a common enemy…
• Vulcans – the logical and ethical being – totally suppressing their emotions in favor of rational thought. Again, the ideal is proven to be not so cool in the end…
• Romulans – the sociopaths :)? – apologies to any romulan fan – they are very cool and very smart as a species – they make the Klingons more lovable ‘cause at least you can trust their honor up to a point
• Ferengi – the bankers, the ultimate capitalists - I think they have a law that prohibits them from doing anything that is not profitable – so for example they are not allowed to seek revenge unless there is a reward. A note about them: the presence of the Ferengi made me realize that Star Trek did not do away with money and profit
• Data – as the A.I. who provides contrast to our “human nature” – sometimes being more human than his fellow shipmates. And also good humor by pointing out our human silliness that would make no sense to a computer. In a way Data is a mirror for us.
• Humans – well, apparently only the very best of humans made it into the show – the rest were exaggerated as other races.

Within the Human race there was an interesting choice of characters:

• Picard – the wise diplomat – always on solid moral ground
• Riker – the ambitious womanizer – constantly in covert competition with Picard :)
• Diana – the female empath – I was happy she actually had something to do instead of just being beautiful on the set
• Crusher – the female doctor
• Geordi – the handicapped engineer – he is accepted as a valued member of the crew. It points out their medicine is not yet all powerful and his handicap gives him a unique perspective on things that sometimes saves the day. I like this idea, that innovation and motivation can arise from limitation and that the Federation did not require perfection from its officers.

After this presentation my friend looked at Star Trek in a new way and saw humans everywhere. Suddenly it made sense and it was no longer so “unreal” and “impossible to relate to”.

As far as Energy goes, TNG introduced a few interesting concepts:

• The replicators
• The holodeck
• Q
• The warp-drive
• Teleportation
• The talking computer – the AI – that is different from Data as it is considered non-sentient
• Inertial dampeners
• Gravity simulation
• The universal screwdriver that fixes anything on the ship
• And sliding doors (they were a big thing when I first saw them!)

The replicator was my dream device. Initially I did not think about what could power it and what orders of magnitude of power does it require.

For me it was the ultimate experimentation device. I could imagine and replicate all kinds of gadgets and designs. In my silliness I imagined caring one in a backpack so I could use it on the spot. That would require massive improvements in batteries or a tiny generator capable of a big power output :). One can dream…

But later on my fascination with the replicator turned to how everything was a “pattern of information” that could be created and dismantled at will. No waste. All you needed was energy. It was hinted that it could replicate anything… so what about heavy metals? What would that say about the nature of our reality?

But then, the crew would eat replicated food… There is some banter that it’s not as good as home grown food (Picard’s brother on Earth had a big issue with this!), but judging by the good health of the officers it seemed to be digestible.

This replicated food is a big problem for me and a minor beef that I have with Wade’s essay. (I managed to squeeze that in :)!). It has to do with live vs dead food.

The assumption in Wade’s essay is that if you can replicate food to have the same molecular structure as a non-replicated food, then it will have the same energetic value for the human body, since the digestion process would be the same and it would release the same kind of energy from the various chemical bonds present in the replicated food.

I cannot make a rational argument about it at this point, so intuitively, my assumption is that a replicated green salad is dead. It will never have the same effect on the body as a freshly picked salad has. I have not yet read the book “Fresh food vs Stale food” that Wade mentions on this thread and his website, so I don’t know if the author makes a similar claim. I think is more likely that in stale food the arguments is that enzymes are destroyed and so the food is harder to digest.

Now, if there is no difference between the replicated salad and the freshly picked salad…. Then that creates a huge problem, because the replicator would copy a Live Being. The replicated plant would be alive. Same with replicated eggs, and a medium rare stake. This is not that farfetched since Worf pretty much eats things that move. And some of the human replicated food certainly looks alive, and not like a chemical soup to shove down your throat.

And before thinking that the replicator could not create a living plant, I will link this device to the next amazing device: the teleporter. If the teleporter can put someone in the “pattern buffer” and then pull them out and recreate them alive… why could would not the replicator be able to do the same and teleport the same plant over and over in your plate, but not deleting the buffer. That’s the beauty of information: you can copy it all you like, it will not get diminished or corrupted (provided your tools are working properly, of course).

So, the most common device on the ship is to me the most fascinating and useful one, and with terribly ignored potential.

Would the replicator be able to create a battery? And if so, what kind of charge could that battery hold? What kind of energy would the replicator need to create that charge? And what kind of wiring would be required to jam that energy into the replicated product in a couple of seconds without blowing up…

The replicator was never used to replicate human tissue. I thought that was a shame. But probably it was a conscious choice not to go there in the show, because where would you have stopped? And would have been way to close to instant human cloning… a big no, no…

Which brings me back to the teleporter. In one of the episodes we discover that Riker’s teleportation beam was partially reflected back on a planet and now we had two Rikers. (I told you that you can teleport the same salad in more than one plate!) That was kind of quickly brushed over, but the implications were huge. However the theme of the episode was different so… it was ignored.

The problem of power consumption is the same as with the replicator. How much power is in a live human body? More than the sum of the chemical bonds and electric potentials? What does that mean for the transporter to “move” that over? The implication in the show was that the transporter was quite power intensive as point to point teleportation was rarely used. Mostly “directly to sick bay!”, otherwise you had to move your nice body on to the teleportation pad using the turbo lift.

I marveled at the ships energy output. For example I saw no point in walking on that ship. Maybe perhaps to keep your body in shape, but sometimes in case of emergencies people would run to a specific location. I would order a point to point transport. Energize! I would have monitored the communicator badge and I would not allow people to fall. Automatic point to point transport to a safe pad. The fact that teleportation was rarely used, indicated to me that it was very energy expensive. But replicators were used all the time… Would be nice to crunch some numbers to check if the power used by the transports is anywhere near the power used by the replicators.

Let’s look at similar energy hog: the holodeck! That is virtually a massive replicator that someone forgot to switch off… Can you imagine the power drain on that thing?! The holodeck also addresses somewhat the problem of replicated life, but it doesn’t do a good job of it. The human characters are “programs” that are not self-aware, but… I think they would win the same trial that Data won in “The Measure of a Man”. Also in the Holodeck you eat and drink stuff, suggesting a technology similar to replicators, if not the same. The only difference was that some patterns conveniently lost cohesion outside of the holodeck cube :). The food would still make you fat, but your drinking buddy would disappear if you wanted to take him home.

In that sense the holodeck was mostly a crutch to the show. Its potential was never truly explored because it would have got into very deep things really, really fast!

In the world of abundance that Start Trek was… someone still abused the Holodeck by creating escape programs, where he was in charge and the rest of the officers were under his command. I confess at this point that if I had access to a holodeck I’ll likely drive myself nuts to the point where I would not know what is real. And Picard ended one of the episodes saying: “Computer… end program!” Suggesting he got to the same point where he was not sure anymore if he was still trapped in a holographic reality. Really exploring the holodeck idea will eventually have you spinning, chasing your tail, wondering if you’re in a program or not. (And in my opinion that is not necessarily an invalid question)

The Warp Drive – this is obviously the main form of propulsion. And I think it is also implied that it generates the power around the ship. Though the ship can sustain itself, somehow, without the warp core. I will not even attempt to get into the alleged mechanics of it, because I would never finish this post. It was conveniently designed by the script writers to move the Enterprise very, very fast from point A to point B within the galaxy…

This has to be linked with the inertial dampeners :). Another convenient invention. Without those, when the ship jumped into warp or dropped out of warp, the entire thing, crew included, would be instantly smashed into a surface thinner than paper (give or take…) So you have to protect against massive acceleration and massive deceleration. A car crash would be a very mild example of the problems.

This too was not explored as far as it could, but it was a TV show and it had to stop eventually. Just as the warp drive, this was a script trick to make the set function as you would expect on the planet Earth, so the show filming would be easier and not eat up that much energy!

Fine-tuned inertial dampeners would have avoided any kind of injury on the Enterprise, leaving one vulnerable to energy-beam-weapons only. To make a point, you could stop a bolder coming at you very fast with the tip of your little finger if the inertia of that bolder would be absorbed by the inertial dampeners. That would have pissed of Worf big time as his energetic intensive warrior ways would be quickly rendered useless.

But here is the problem: you need massive energy to jump the ship into warp and them massive energy to stop everyone within the ship from smashing together at warp speed. It would be like driving high speed but with the breaks fully engaged. The point is, the energy needed here, it seems to me, is staggering! Making the point to point transport energy-saving kind of pointless…

Along with inertia that mimics Earth, we also have gravity that can be increased or decreased. So you have gravity switched on all the time. To my knowledge the “white science” does not know what gravity is, so I will not speculate how much energy would that require.

The next energy hog is the talking computer: the main computer. A bio-chemical neural network. It is suggested to be far vaster and more powerful that Data as knowledge goes, but perhaps it is slower so it does not allow for any hint of sentience? Hm…

The main computer, in my view, seemed perfectly capable of running the ship. So it begged the question what were all the officers doing there on the bridge? I think this is where Star Trek dropped the ball big time, not going further with the exploration of what an AI can do.

In modern computer games (and this was also suggested in some Sci-Fi novels) you get to be the “over seer”. You state intent and goal and then you just track what is happening and adjust if necessary.

How much energy will you use for this?

• Picard thinks where he wats to go and formulates a bunch of coordinates
• Picard orders the new destination to whomever is at the helm
• The pilot punches in the coordinate – this was hilarious, but it was a glass keyboard so I liked it
• Picard dramatically and emphatically orders – Engage!
• The pilot punches some more and there goes the ship

Now imagine this:

• Picard thinks off the destination and makes a clear intent – computer engages engines. The end.

The main computer was largely useless in the show, it just sucked on power and beeped the glossy keyboards :). I think it showed a human distrust of an AI being in command, even if second in command. Idea further cemented when Picard reluctantly gives Data command of a starship in a battle situation.

Since that ship was able to generate so much power this could have been developed much, much further. And I will likely circle back to this later on.

Nothing on that ship however, as mighty powerful as it was, could match “The Q”.

Q, was my second favorite character, but only by a hair line. And I personally think that Q is where we are headed in the future and one episodes hints at that. This being exemplifies what I imagine modern transportation should be like. Flip a switch and you’re there. The end! No firing up of warp drive and at the same time make sure your inertial dampeners don’t fail on you or you’ll be a mushed painting at the other end. (Or a black hole if mushed together strong enough!)

Q commanded an enormous amount of energy. In fact, he seemed to come from a realm where intent was all that mattered and energy was created, as required, at will.

I’ve read comments that Q was used when the script writers ran out of ideas so he was the crutch for the show. I disagree… Q is a central part of it. Through him we got to look at important questions such as what would you do with “unlimited power?” Snapping his fingers and granting wishes around did not seem to be appreciated by the officers. Should he help a planet devastated by a natural disaster? Should he even care?

He brought the best out of Picard’s “wonderful speeches” as he called them. And even Q, as unlimited and omnipotent as he was, I think was severely limited by how far we can imagine abundance. What would such a being do with eternity and all that power? Apparently would create or participate in drama, just for the entertainment. It’s possible that other “activities” would have been beyond our human comprehension, so we saw in Q only as much as we were willing/able to see.

Now that I’ve set the stage I can finally answer Wade’s questions :)

Q1: What the role of abundance, and particularly energy abundance, was in Star Trek?

As I hope I made clear, Energy abundance in Star Trek was still relative. They did not yet have free energy, which was a bit disappointing.

The main side effect of their energy abundance was their mission. They have become Explorers instead of Conquerors. “We come in peace!” was probably true for the very first time in Human history.

Their motivation was vastly different. There were no jobs anymore. Nobody worked for money. They worked for an opportunity to explore.

And here I will circle back to the misuse of the AI that I mentioned before. As self-declared explorers they should have been focused more on exploring and less on running a ship by telling a computer that was smart enough to make conversation, how to do comparatively simple tasks. Pretty much everyone on the bridge, except the captain was useless. The main computer could have done their job many times better while they would have gained more by actually exploring stuff…

I was surprised that maintenance tasks and the “daily grind” was still present on the Enterprise. And equally I did not understand why there was still a “chain of command”. Perhaps we cannot yet imagine a shared responsibility leadership and instead everything has to be a pyramid.

Perhaps Wade’s first question is best answered by Picard himself in the episode “The Neutral Zone” when they save the 3 people frozen in a cryogenic state.

In Picard’s own words:

“People are no longer obsessed with accumulation of things. We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possession”.

And in reply to “what’s the challenge then” if physical needs are all catered for, he replies:

“The challenge is to improve yourself, to enrich yourself… Enjoy it!”

But they fall short of that ideal and what Offenhouse (the financier) says it’s actually closer to the truth than Picard is willing to admit:

“You got it all wrong! It was never about possessions… it’s about power!”

And from a very big picture perspective, now that the physical needs have been covered, all the factions in the galaxy are fighting for power. Some with more “moral justifications” than others. And yes, I’d include the Federation in that bunch as well.

So the energy surplus enabled us humans to bring our problems at the galactic level :). Yay!

Q2: What about human society as portrayed on Star Trek seemed most realistic in a world of abundance, and what did not?

For one, there was very few security and police on the Enterprise. The main threat was the “out-group” and those were usually not on board. So if you wanted to, you could be really rude and nosey on the ship, but most chose to express self-discipline. That showed a good level of maturity and responsibility.

The crew was generally loving, upbeat and relaxed. With the exception of Worf, they’d rather talk it out rather than fight.

As I already said, I think the chain of command would go away, and with that the uniforms and the militaristic protocol. I cannot imagine why, in a world of abundance, you would choose to join a chain of command. A team sharing the same goal, yes. But a command structure, no.

They made an attempt to show that multiple sexual partners are OK and that covering the body is just a social conditioning and not really required. In the first episodes, I think I recall a man in the background wearing a woman’s uniform. But later on the dress was eliminated alltogether, probably because of more gender equality?

Women had a more elevated status. But I don’t think it was elevated enough :). They did have a female captain in Voyager. Oh, and some of the admirals were women as well. But I had hoped to see more of the female energy aspect and less of the male militaristic ways.

Politics were still present and I was disappointed. I am glad no election campaigns were featured. You still had to thread carefully when talking to admirals and expressing unpopular views. And there was still competition and rank pulling among the officers. The only environment that showed collaboration was the engineering bay, where science and not hot heads prevailed (with minor exceptions).

The “scientific ideal” was somewhat closer to the ideal :). But in one episodes we learn that an agreement with the Romulans prevented Humans from looking into the cloaking device. More in-group out-group dynamics there. When you put a limitation into a branch of science, that can prove crippling as a whole area of discovery is blocked.

There was very little mention of consciousness, out of body experiences and psychic abilities in general. Exception being telepathy which was OK. Only “Q” and “The Traveler” character pointed in that direction. So the show, it seemed to me, stayed mainly in the materialistic paradigm.

I was surprised that Picard’s brother lived in a world resembling the 20^th century. Wade often claims that people will wake up when they have abundance delivered at their door, but this one was a real die hard. :)

The Academy concept was strange. It was based on scarcity systems. Wesley fails to pass the entrance exam the first time (just as Picard), so he needs to wait another year? That is silly in an abundance world. You just start when you are ready and I seriously doubt examinations are required. If you are crazy enough to blow yourself up in a ship you cannot handle you should be allowed to do so. I think humans we’ll be more mature and self-regulate more. They will self-examine themselves and when they feel ready they will be ready in ways that will never be guaranteed by an arbitrary exam that may have some huge omissions in it.

The mission of exploration sometimes takes unnecessary risks, by going to a planet under-prepared, with no spare parts and little to no supplies. With abundant energy that does not make sense. Yes, you would have to draw the line somewhere, but I think that double/triple redundancy would be the norm. Just fire those replicators if you run out of shuttles for some reason…!

The Earth was generally restored to a garden state. That I can see happening. What was completely missing where the animals. On the ship you could only enjoy them in the Holodeck… ah, but I forget about Spot… go figure… Data, the A.I., the only character that would cater for an animal. I expected more communication and more interaction with the animal kingdom, at least on the home planet.

The parent-child relationships seemed just as problematic as in today’s world. Riker was having daddy issues and Worf struggles with raising his own son, not to mention that he was a Klingon boy raised by an Earth family. That is commendable in itself, but he often complains he was not able to fully integrate at school. More in group out group dynamics.

Racism was replaced by “speciesism” :). Not quite out of the labeling game yet…

For the next question: Q3: Where the show could have reached a higher octave, and where it hit the heights?

I think I’ve touched on that on and off.

I will start with a low point that I still enjoyed throughout the show and it’s very relevant.

Dealing with the Borg, as much as I have enjoyed that, it sent us right back into fear and planning for war. Guinan said there is no negotiating with the Borg and Picard just bought that! Genocide was back on the table real quick!

And now on to the heights.

The Measure of a Man hit the heights, where they finally burned away the labels and recognized another being/life.

Encounter at Far point – another peak – and in dealing specifically with scarcity vs abundance of energy.

The idea of “Q” I think is a high point and not an excuse. It was not developed as far as it could have, but it was up there!

“The Traveler” was another highlight – pointing at things in our future.

I did appreciate “The Prime Directive” that Q so easily trampled on. Especially as explained by Picard: “The prime directive is here to protect us as well!” (from the trap of thinking we can play God).

A lot of Picard’s speeches are really, really high up! Just Google “best of Picard” and you should find an interesting video or two. The only beef I have with him is that he used the word “moral” and “the right thing” too much. He saw and understood that fear brings the worst out, but the opposite of that would be love and compassion, not necesarrily being right or moral. And interestingly enough Picard is alone, no children and no pets. Even Data is more affectionate than him. He explains that as the burden of command, but… seems like an excuse to me. He was at his best in “The Inner Light”, where he explored what it meant to be a father.

“Tapestry” is another one high up. The plot a bit forced, but the lessons at the end well compensate for that. The brawling scene with the young Picard is not very abundance based, is it?

There was still a lot of competition in this show. I wish they would have had some examples of synergy from cooperation.

OK, I’ve covered a lot of ground. I’ll have to see if I’ll do specific episodes or not. I think I said pretty much all I had to say about energy and abundance in this show.

Before encountering Wade’s work I used to think TNG was really, really high and that it was a desirable future. But today, I think that while it has a lot of merit, it still is not high enough.

[Wade Frazier]

Hi Ilie:

You get an A, but I also need you to do a little more homework. I have never advocated replicated food, and it sure is not in this vision. What I have advocated is a perfect growing environment for our food, and one that did not commandeer/destroy Earth's ecosystems to provide it. The ideal human diet is at least half live food, mainly fruit, and because we have adapted to cooked food, and the only food designed to be eaten today is fruit, there will be some cooking such as steaming and boiling, but I don’t see much beyond that.

If there is ever any doubt about what I advocate in the long-term, aside from that visionary chapter, see this reality that Roads stumbled into, and you will see one of the stars that I steer by. Star Trek is not as fictional as it might seem, but I don't consider that Roads world to be fictional, and I have spent many hours thinking about how that society functions.

My goal is always harmlessness and abundance for all, and that includes the best food for us. I don't see humans replacing the life process to get our food anytime soon, if ever. Maybe some will become Level 19s, but I doubt it will ever become the norm. It does not need to.

Star Trek is worth kicking around a lot, to chew on the ideas in it. I take the technology more seriously in that Roads world than I do Star Trek's, and wonder how it worked. But it is not the technology so much that I think of, but how people think in that world and how they live their lives. Yes, in Star Trek, you see a great deal of today's baggage in it, with various out-groups, command structures, warriors spoiling for a fight, and other projections of the human journey, written across the canvass of our galaxy. My understanding is that the ETs that are here largely belong to something like The Federation, and something like the Prime Directive does guide them. I completely agree with James G., Greer, and others that if they truly had hostile intent, we would not have lasted minutes against them – all of Earth's military might combined. All the fear mongering about ETs is very misplaced, and something that Godzilla actively fosters. But while humanity collectively abdicates its responsibility and plays the victim, we have the situation that we see today. I think that a Q-like being would not get to play amongst the universes unless it had mastered the love principle, as that is how creators create.

I'll reply more on this Star Trek issue in the coming week, as I also finish that other series of posts on the Epochs and consciousness. I’ll finish on this note. IMO, all of Creation is comprised of consciousness, and there is a big difference between living and non-living matter. What we call life is very rare in our universe, and likely does not reside within at least several light years of Earth. If AI becomes sentient (how does a non-sentient ship's computer give rise to the sentient Moriarty? ), I think it is because consciousness residing beyond this plane of existence decides that the programs have enough of the "stuff" needed to manifest consciousness. I think it is that way for any life. We do not have the power to create life here, as in create the consciousness that comes here, whether it is conceiving a child or making sentient AI. We can only set the stage. Thinking that we can really do more than that is where megalomania like Godzilla's is rooted. We are not nearly in control of those processes like some would like to think, as they play God. Greater beings than ours are in charge of that process. That does not mean that we get to become fatalistic (sure we can, in our free will, but when we do, we are missing the lesson), but to have a sense about what we are fit to impact, and what is well beyond our ability to.

Best,

Wade

[Ilie Pandia]

Hi Wade,

Thanks for the positive feedback.

Indeed you are not advocating replication as our source of food. My comment had more to do with my lack of understanding about this process: when does the organic chemistry become alive?

Following the energy acquisition process that you describe in your essay, it does feel to me like, in theory, all we would need to do would be to replicate the chemical processes in say a plant, to produce a substance that we can ingest. I am not sure how to explain this... It would be like someone living on only artificial supplements, that completely mimic the molecular structure of say a tomato. Would that be possible or is something missing from the artificial replacement?

How much of the aliveness of an organism is important in the absorption of that organism as food? Your essay addresses mostly the chemical energy, if I understood it correctly.

This is why I think the replicator in the Start Trek is an interesting device to be in an abundant world, because it conveniently solves a problem: in order for us to eat, something else must die (chewed to bits and then dissolved in acid and what not later on). In TNG you would just replicate your food. No organism has to die there for us to enjoy lunch.

The Food Chain is still something that I struggle with, even within Road's world. It is described as a symbiosis where the plant "is happy to give" parts of if it as nutrients toward another being. But that doesn't really make sense so me. Unless someone could eat for example my hair, then I'd be happy to give them some when I have my hair cut... that's the only way it makes some sense...

So, still ruminating on this.