A word from Tagore

“India’s best ideas have come where man was in communion with trees and rivers and lakes, away from the crowds. The peace of the forest has helped the intellectual evolution of man. The culture of the forest has fueled the culture of Indian society. The culture that has arisen from the forest has been influenced by the diverse processes of renewal of life, which are always at play in the forest, varying from species to species, from season to season, in sight and sound and smell. The unifying principle of life in diversity, of democratic pluralism, thus became the principle of Indian civilization.”

- Rabindranath Tagore, infamous unschool-er, and inspiration to start Schumacher College.

The friendship shared with those who share a vision

I am recently returned from a series of transformational gatherings in New Zealand, where I had the privilege and joy of dreaming, playing and planning with a bunch of world-wide change-makers. All different ages, and from a huge range of spectrums, we collided for 5 days. Among us were space scientists, technology activists, Singularity University teachers, radical self-love and intersectionality poets, consciousness gurus, farm innovators, food innovators, alternative education specialists, organisational innovators... the list goes on.

Over the 5 days, a new space beyond the ordinary mechanics of bringing a group of people together began to emerge. People would start to finish each others' sentences -- and beyond that, speak to each others' thoughts before anyone had even spoken. In circles, I felt a great ease noticing thoughts or realisations bubble up in my mind, only to have someone else do the sharing for me! Ideas of new collaborations and projects were coming to people, as if from the land. The collective intelligence of the group began to emerge, and with that, the self-organising, swarming, stigmergy behaviour that is associated with it. It was remarkable.

I'm very aware of what a huge privilege it is to be able to have the time, funds, and just general - privilege - to be attending such events on the other side of the world. It makes it feel even more imperative that the time is spent wisely, and productively, while also leaving time to just "be" and allow whatever needs to emerge between us to do so. And also has a certain responsibility that comes with it to think: how do we best serve the greater whole by our gathering together like this?

Apart from the inspiration we all received from spending time amongst other dreamers, story-weavers, innovators and doers (and on a piece of land that has magical qualities of its own), I got to experience something I haven't felt renewed in a while -- the relationship and space that forms between two or more of you, when you share a vision and see each other (truly 'see' each other) in your abilities and commitment to work towards achieving it. It's a flavour of love that I'd like to find the word for. A platonic but electric love for the possibility you hold between you.

And it's also more than that. It's a totally different kind of commitment to each other, and each other's personal growth and transformation. Because you each know that your collective ability to act and deliver on that vision and work depends on all of your potential to be the best version of yourselves. It's a commitment to building each other up, and unlocking the potential in the parts and the whole.

As I sat down to write today, I was directed by a few clues to the website of the Co-Intelligence Institute, where I found this recurring quotation by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
 

"There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfilment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe."


This certainly comes close to describing the communion I spoke of... and touches on a large part. But some of it is also seeing the possibility of what is possible in the eyes of the other, and the feeling of commitment to do the work.

It's tough that many of us are flung around the globe... But I have a feeling we'll meet soon again, and by training that 'recognition' muscle, I am already noticing the quality of my relationships, both new and old, as I recognise what is possible in that person's evolution, our evolution together, and the evolution of the collective human race.
 

 

Google's interlingua

Incase you missed this: earlier this year, Google's translation services was changed to a machine learning system, and invented its very own language in the process.

Google has done something quite impressive behind the scenes - it's switched its translation system from "phrase based translation" to "Google Neural Machine Translation" (GNMT).

"Phrase based translation" is essentially the equivalent of translating word-by-word - like you thumbing through a Lonely planet dictionary, but super fast. It's limited by its vocabulary, and has no understanding of linguistic structures. It maps words and phrases from one language to another.

GNMT, on the other hand, got smart. It is able to learn from the people that use it. It can transfer the "translation knowledge" from language to language, and so able to translate phrases and languages it may never have seen before.

What's more, when Google engineers looked under the 'bonnet' of the system, they found something pretty amazing: it had created its own language termed "interlingua" - as the most efficient way to solve the problem of translation.

The system encodes the patterning behind the semantics of the language, instead of memorising phrase-to-phrase translations.

Tuesday morning #TechForHumanity geek-out. What does this say about the way our own brains codify and translate languages...

 

Quakers and the New Story

Profound changes in our understanding of matter and of the earth offer an opportunity to heal the largely unconscious, dangerous Western estrangement from the earth. Within the “New Story” our deepest spiritual aspirations and many central Christian insights can find a vast, full expression enabling us to embrace a deep belonging within the Earth community, and a caring, loving relationship with our home.

—Mary Coelho

Finding truth in paradox... The poem "IF" by Rudyard Kipling

IF you can keep your head when all about you

  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

  But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,        5

  Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated don’t give way to hating,

  And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

 

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

  If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,        10

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

  And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

  Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,        15

  And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

  And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

  And never breathe a word about your loss;        20

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

  To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

  Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,        25

  Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

  If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

  With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,        30

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

  And—which is more—you’ll be a (wo)Man, my son!

"[Current] economics is a form of brain damage"

It's funny how economics puts 'value' on things.

If a non-Earth human came to our world and saw humanity, perhaps they would estimate the 'price' of one of us to be around £3. This is the approximate value of the carbon, water, air, chalk - and trace minerals like zinc, phosphorus and iron that make up our bodies.

This is essentially what economists do to rainforests when they make estimates of the value of the wood- and decide whether or not to clearcut the forest.

One day we will look back on this in disbelief that we could be so narrow sighted and ignorant.

How do you put value on relationships? How do you estimate the net 'worth' of climate regulating networks of living beings? Or roots that protect the soil, and converse with underground fungi? How can you put a price on the life of an ancient being, itself home to many, and its worth far beyond the weight of its wood? 

Radical relationships: from symbioses to community

"If we wanted to survive the ecological and social crisis which we have caused, we would have to engage in radically new and dramatic community enterprises."

-- Lynn Margulis

Lynn Margulis is one of my all-time scientific role models and has greatly influenced my way of thinking - both scientific and outside of science. Her major work was in cell evolution and the events that led to the appearance of eukaryotic cell (a cell with a nucleus - as opposed to cells without a nucleus, such as bacteria) 4 billion years ago. Fifty years ago, she argued that it was thanks to a special kind of very intimate biological relationship, and was at first was ignored or ridiculed by the scientific community. She imagined that these internal organelles - such as chloroplasts, mitochondria - arose from a symbiotic origin: i.e. by associations of different kinds of bacteria, being engulfed by the then existent proto-cells. Symbiosis in cell evolution is now considered one of the great scientific breakthroughs.

It is profound to me, that Margulis commented on the radically new kinds of relationships that will be necessary to survive our current crises. It was thanks to the new way of co-existing of two previously 'separate' organisms, fusing to become one, that gave rise to the stepping stone towards the next level of evolution. Mitochondria paved the way for aerobic life, and later, multi-cellular organisms. Chloroplasts... Well, without photosynthetic organisms to convert the sun's energy into chemical bonds, none of us would be around, and Popeye wouldn't have his spinach.

Perhaps it is the same kind of revolutionary thinking behind that discovery and radical co-existing that led to that jump in development that we need in order to reimagine how we live on this planet together... And ultimately, survive on to the next evolutionary 'jump'. But what could these new ways of relating, co-existing and co-habiting look like? And what is the synergy that may come out of that new, currently unfathomable way of living?

 

Living

“It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.”

-- Eckhart Tolle

This has been something on my mind these last couple of days. What limits us from following our 'bliss' as Joseph Campbell called it? It feels as though many of us are dulled to being receptive to our own intuitions, which tell us what is wrong or right for us - and only us. At the same time, the culture of fear and scarcity abounds, and keeps us from joyously taking courageous risks.

The full quote from Joseph Campbell, which speaks so loudly for me right now is as follows:

“Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.” 

Epigenetic robotics

I've been reading about something called epigenetic robotics - I couldn't resist seeing as the term combines two of my scientific fascinations. 

But epigenetic robotics is not (really) anything to do with DNA (slight disappointment). Instead, it focusses on studying the mechanisms by which robots could be made to learn like children - i.e. lifelong and open-ended learning. 

Imagining engineering a robot so that on leaving the factory, it is programmed ready to learn, adapt, and evolve, is mind-blowing. Just like a human, you would never get the same robot twice.

Perhaps more exciting still is the possibility to offer the robot learning of ethical codes and morals before anything else - just like the development of super-ego in children is built upon their grasping of what is 'right' and 'wrong'...

Could it help solve our fears around the existential risk of developing powerful A.I. which may in turn destroy us all?

Whatever an education is

Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist: it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your roadmap through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die."

-- John Taylor Gatto

I don't usually warm to teachings that house the word 'should'.  But in a world where education has strayed so far from what it could serve for a person - to prepare them to fully enjoy and live their life, to make decisions that fit them, to be learning and able to self-teach throughout all of life - it seems acceptable to judge education as it stands now.

All of your weeks, on a page

 

Sometimes a picture or an exercise can completely change your outlook, or understanding, simply by the process of re-jiggling the concepts and outlooks you've got in your mind. Think of it like a metaphorical 'shake' of your marble jar.

Sometimes life seems really short, and other times it seems impossibly long. This chart, showing the average life week by week, all on a page for you, helped me grasp the concept that they are most definitely finite.

Those are your weeks and they’re all you’ve got.