Getting Out There

Today is yet another day to do "The Work"

What do I mean by The Work?

When I use this term, I’m talking about all activity in which I (or any of us) engage. We are doing the work of weaving history. We are spinning the thread that creates a tapestry of being. We are setting the trimtabs to steer our species’ culture into the future. We are the ancestors of all who come after.

So, let’s take stock of where we are. Recently, I drilled into my inventory:

It was the 250th Anniversary of the “Lee Resolution” being adopted by the Second Continental Congress. In the essay, though, I was turned inward while describing those who have influenced me over the past many years.

As I got up this morning, I was thinking of the motivations of my friend, Sebastian Thrun, for his work as a robotics scientists. It comes up often for me when I see a Waymo vehicle driving on our streets here in DC. You see, when he was young, he lost a friend who was in a fatal car crash. This motivated Sebastian to dedicating himself to making cars safer and he realized that self-driving cars could avoid human errors. An advertisement that I saw for Waymo mentioned that it is 10 times safer than a human driver. I am not surprised.

The Work has to be centered in realizing the goals of what I call “radical utilitarianism” about which I write in detail with some inconsistency woven in. Essentially, I want us all to think of how interconnected we are with all life on this planet. I want us to think about how we can achieve the best results for all life on the planet too. I’m convinced that if we have an articulate set of principles to follow, we are well positioned to achieve this for future generations, not only of humans, but of all species of life with which we are spinning around the sun.

I believe too that we may be here to enable our technology to transcend biology, in terms of helping the cosmos become conscious of itself. Last night, I had a dream that symbolized this. In my work, I had responsibilty for rainbows. I created them through my actions. Everything was very finely tuned. This takes me back to the days in which I was having a few beers with Sebastian, his then-wife Petra, and my fellow German Department graduate students at Hemingway’s Cafe (which is soon to close, sadly.)

During those days, I would walk back and forth from the Cathedral of Learning where I taught German in the Nationality Rooms. I’d see how every step I made along the way, every action, had an impact on everything else. I remember attending to my breath. I remember sitting in my studio apartment on the 8th floor of the Wellington on Melwood Avenue. I’d watch the passing show from up there. My fans would blow the air out as I sat reading The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker for my linguistics class. That was during the summer of 1996, just ahead of the election that gave Bill Clinton his second term. I was building my first Web site, hand-coding it on the University of Pittsburgh’s infrastructure. It’s still to be found on archive.org. I’ve left a mark. We’re all leaving our marks. How consciously though? That’s my question.

Yesterday, I took you on a voyage through the Pleroma as it served up tunes via the YouTube. At the moment, here’s what is coming up:

The main lyric is “No One Wins - It’s a War of Man” - and that is true. We have been at war throughout the years from Desert Shield and Desert Storm in which my generation fought. We need to grow out of this.

Yesterday, I was listening to the jets racing around overhead from down in “The Bunker” as I call this 1904 flat at S Street and 21st NW in Washington, DC. I thought about how much money of the taxpayers was going into this. Some time after midnight, I heard the fireworks briefly as I woke up just enough to confirm that this indeed was what I was hearing. Lynn and I had watched the PBS show from Williamsburg, VA which was diverse, to say the least. I hope it’s good for the local economy. I saw more than a few acquaintances there.

My life has taken me far afield from Williamsburg. During my tenure in Copenhagen, Denmark, I was considered for a position at Siemens in Milan and actually got the offer. That indirectly led to a connection with this artist.

She, like so many, receives my anima projection. I understand this so well from the inside. I hope that more than a few of you will watch it since it is a cinematic experience.

Lived experience is what it is all about, overall. We only know what we perceive. Our senses can deceive us. My sense still is that we need to continue to do the work of time binding and build ourselves out of the quandry in which we appear to be. What do I mean? Well, it’s pretty simple. We should be inventorying our issues and mitigating them through the appropriate use of the technology at our fingertips. I see people out in the world doing this but, the way we have been programmed, it seems we focus too much on what it will do for us individually, versus what will build a future our descendents will thank us for 700 years from now….and more!

The short space of time that our country has been here, we have done much. Much of it can be viewed as reprehensible. I saw that last night on the stage in front of the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg, Virginia. I also saw us coming together to celebrate our ability to overcome our negatives and accentuate our positives.

We may be beset by demons. We are also surrounded by Angels. To that end, tune into this talk with Sophy Burnham:

She is a delight and the author of the best-selling Book of Angels.

There are so many angels in my life. Many are doing great work in the world:

Living next door to the Embassy of Moldova led to a connection with David A. Andelman, for example.

Being observant at festivals led me to a connection with Jay Blakesberg:

Sometimes these are rough around the edges, but you know? It’s all about conversations. We learn when we listen deeply to each other.

More to come, to be sure. For now, let me leave you with this that just got served up from the Pleroma:

Onward!

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