Why hasn’t the dream of having a robot at home to do your chores become a reality yet? With three decades of research expertise in the field, roboticist Ken Goldberg sheds light on the clumsy truth about robots — and what it will take to build more dexterous machines to work in a warehouse or help out at home.
–Judith L. Herman, M.D., in her book Trauma and RecoveryI
Judith Lewis Herman (born 1942) is an American psychiatrist, researcher, teacher, and author who has focused on the understanding and treatment of incest and traumatic stress. Wikipedia
A.I. tools like ChatGPT seem to think, speak, and create like humans. But what are they really doing? From cancer cures to Terminator-style takeovers, leading experts explore what A.I. can – and can’t – do today, and what lies ahead.
The Lord of Pleasure is a welcome card in any reading, bringing in a sense of harmony and balance. Existing relationships broaden and deepen, giving an extended sense of contentment and satisfaction.It’s important to recognise, with this card, that its influence extends only to established relationships – those which already have a history of their own. It will come up in a reading to indicate major steps forward, strengthened commitment, marriage, recovery after trial.Mostly, it will relate to intimate relationships because of a strong link to contentment within sexual partnerships. Sometimes, the Lord of Pleasure will appear to mark the point at which a previously purely romantic relationship extends to become a sexual one as well. Because of this influence, there are also several connotations of creativity and fertility.We have tended, in recent times, to lose sight of the true higher interpretation of the word ‘pleasure’, and that sometimes leads to misunderstanding about the Six of Cups. The card is not so much about the act of sex, but rather about the wealth of emotional contentment that can arise from being in a fulfilled sexual relationship. Good sexual experience is one of the greatest acknowledgements of our physical state. It adds richness to our understanding of ourselves as humans.
My body is a gift, enabling me to ground my spiritual journey within the illusion of time and space. It is neither my ultimate reality nor my true identity. I use the body as it was meant to be used – as a vessel through which to express my love.
I protect my body from the assaults of modernity – from thoughts of chaos to the contaminants of the physical environment. I do so by infusing my body with the light of the divine, seeing with my inner eye the spirit of God as it pours into my every cell.
Dear God, I dedicate to You my body. Pour into it Your spirit. Protect it from the forces of fear And use it for Your purposes. Turn my body into a holy thing. And so it is. Amen
Within and across species, relationships are essential to surviving and thriving. Complex social arrangements between trees and fungi sustain forests, individual bees and ants cannot feed themselves, beavers work in groups of up to 10 to build their dams, and bald eagles mate for life. Crocodiles and orcas engage in coordinated hunting strategies reminiscent of those practiced by early humans.
Humans have speedballed the power of relationships. Physically we are weak, slow, and fragile, with mediocre senses and absurdly long infancies. Yet, thanks to our superpower of cooperation, we’ve dominated our environment and become the apex of apex predators. There are more birds in captivity than birds in the wild. (Hint: chicken.) In aggregate, humans outweigh all the wild mammals on planet Earth — and our domesticated livestock outweigh both groups combined. I just read the last sentence and hope, if there’s an afterlife, that judgment is not part of the process, as the cruelty we levy on animals is staggering. But that’s another post.
We are wired to seek and sustain relationships and cannot survive without them. The future of the human race won’t turn on space travel or climate tech, but on our ability to attach to others. A sense that we matter, that we can call on and be called upon by others to ease burdens and celebrate joy.
A study of Romanian orphanages, where babies received adequate nutrition but were deprived of affection, found they had smaller brains and reduced cognitive function. Videos of the “still face experiment” show how intensely babies crave not just affection, but also social connection with their parents. Among adults in the U.S., social isolation increases the risk of premature death by 29% — more than smoking 15 cigarettes per day. In sum, loneliness kills.
Friendship Pays
Friendship is an economic accelerant. The economist Raj Chetty found that for people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, having wealthier friends “is the single strongest predictor of upward mobility.” Unemployed people who volunteer are 27% more likely to find work than those who do not, aided by the “social capital” (economist-speak for “friends”) they accumulate through volunteering. Regions with greater civic engagement are more resistant to economic slowdowns, and communities to which the residents have a strong emotional attachment see higher rates of GDP growth. The flip side? The CDC estimates that loneliness costs the U.S. economy $406 billion a year — more than the combined GDP of Vermont, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, South Dakota, and Rhode Island.
Politics of Loneliness
The political manifestation of weakening relationships is extremism. In the 2016 election, extreme candidates on both the left and right drew outsized support from disaffected, isolated voters. And there are more such voters than ever: A study during that election concluded: “Americans’ core [social] networks are significantly smaller and more politically homogeneous than at any other period.” Extremism is incompatible with legislative and judicial processes — witness the dysfunction in Congress and the rapidly eroding credibility of the Supreme Court — and can lead to violence.
Radical.ai
As social networks shrink, anxiety and polarization rise, and we become soft targets for bad actors and self-inflicted harms. Scams targeting lonely people are the go-to tactic for con artists. This month, former National Guardsman Jack Teixeira pled guilty to leaking military secrets over Discord. Teixera was showing off for his online friends — he only got caught because some of those “friends” circulated what he’d shared, drawing the attention of reporters at the New York Times. Teixeira’s motivations were personal, not political, and that’s what is so ominous — an adversary doesn’t need to find anti-American citizens, but lonely Americans seeking social status.
The military is justifiably concerned about a wave of lonely recruits betraying their country, and it’s relatively well positioned to monitor contacts. However, vulnerable people also work at nodes of critical infrastructure — power plants, data centers, hospitals, water treatment plants. It’s cinematic to worry about AI attacking humans, but a more likely threat is that humans will use AI to attack other humans. Well-intended companion bots like Replika have millions of users, but their privacy and security protocols are suspect. With the tech getting better and cheaper, it’s likely that Putin, Xi, and Biden have programs under development to produce bots that can establish deep relationships with lonely soldiers and technicians — and weaponize them.
Think of it as a consumer marketing funnel, but at the bottom is an act of terror vs. buying Nespresso pods. Using public records, a spy agency or terror group identifies thousands of people in sensitive posts, reaches out with AI girlfriends or boyfriends, and tests what activities (e.g., sharing articles and experiences, engaging in joint pursuits, sexual messages that feel personalized, etc.) move the target further down the path. Then, monitoring millions of signals per second (“turn on your webcam, I want to see you”) the AI identifies windows of opportunity (when the target seems especially tired, paranoid, angry, etc.) and activates (coaxing them to share a password so the bot can access a computer at work, not inspect a certain container, turn off the drone defense system, etc.). It’s a centuries-old espionage strategy, but, executed with AI avatars and tech, it can be done with a reach and scale that could radicalize hundreds, maybe thousands. Fallow cells of people in highly sensitive roles on warships, in nuclear power plants, or at ports could be waiting for activation.
007.ai
It’s not an Ian Fleming book, but reality. The KGB allegedly had a school to train female agents in the art of sexpionage. Islamic terrorists have been radicalizing Americans for years: The 2009 Fort Hood shooter, who killed 13 people, was an “isolated, lonely man” who “had difficulty making friends” and needed only minimal encouragement from a radical cleric (over email) to nudge him into terrorism. The 2015 San Bernardino shooters, who killed 13 in the name of Islam, were radicalized online. All that’s new is the power to do this at near-infinite scale. An army of highly intelligent, unsleeping agents who/that shift personalities and modalities at the speed of compute. And an ever-increasing population of people who lack the robust real-world social networks to inoculate them against online manipulation. Such as the troubled young man who broke into Windsor Castle armed with a crossbow in 2021, intending to kill the queen — after being encouraged by his Replika AI girlfriend.
Prevention
There’s nothing pithy or revelatory about the solution. We need to advocate for programs (after-school groups, athletic leagues, affordable education, public places, paid nonprofit work, national service, vocational training). And also, money — more of it. More economic support (e.g., a negative tax rate) that levels up young people who’ve seen their share of wealth leak to older Americans through a set of policies designed by old people elected by older people.
Every population segment has its vulnerabilities to loneliness and weaponized AI, but young men are ground zero. Young men need more friends. And older men need to take responsibility for getting more involved in their lives. The abundance of single-parent homes, a dearth of male teachers in primary school, and technology firms that invest billions in keeping kids sequestered from in-person friendships mean millions of boys are being raised with almost no male contact or relationships.
The single point of failure for a young man is when he loses a male role model. Boys need men, full stop. In my view, the ultimate expression of masculinity is to become irrationally passionate about the well-being of a young person who you are not biologically related to. But not enough of us are there for them and fighting for the resources they need. We are failing our brothers, sons, neighbors, and country. Being a man means making better men. We have adversaries, but our real enemy is loneliness.
Prof Marketing, NYU Stern • Host, CNN+ • Pivot, Prof G Podcasts • Bestselling author, The Four, The Algebra of Happiness, Post Corona • profgalloway.com
It was a decade ago that I met Richard Feynman when I happened to be casually spending some time at a library. My reason for being there was to peacefully watch the rain behind the comfort of one of the library windows. The library was indeed a perfect location for this purpose of mine, and as the rain began to subside, my eyes wandered over the book which I had selected purely for the sake of its beautiful cover and title. As I quickly skimmed over its pages, I noticed a particularly interesting sentence at the bottom of one page: “I have to understand the world, you see.”
That was a rare moment where I found myself saying “aha” as I was ecstatic with this remarkable discovery. In my excitement, I had wished to order a round of tea for all of the patrons of the library and endlessly speak to them about the book which I held in my hands and its author, Richard Feynman.
I, unfortunately, met Richard Feynman later than I would’ve liked, as no one had mentioned him to me until that point. That is why I wished to close this metaphorical gap by reading all of his works that I could get my hands on, as well as watching all documentaries pertaining to him and interviews with him. I wanted to see the world through his eyes.
Even today, whenever my life’s joy takes a slight dip, I turn back and take yet another look at Feynman’s comments on life in order to regain my felicity. Yes, it’s his ability to put the utmost passion, zeal, and excitement into mentioning even the simplest things in life which revive me, probably since emotions are contagious.
Feynman had the rare and unique ability to take a very different look at seemingly even the most basic of things, such as, at times, the hundreds or thousands of flowers we pass by on the road. As an example of this, during a joint interview with one of his friends who is an artist on the BBC program titled “Horizon,” it is possible to look at his comments and really understand his perspective:
“I have a friend who’s an artist that has sometimes taken a view of which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say, ‘Look how beautiful it is,’ and I’ll agree. Then he says, ‘I, as an artist, can see how beautiful this is, but you, as a scientist, take this all apart, and it becomes a dull thing,’ And I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and me, too, I believe. I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have beauty. I mean, it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in flowers evolved to attract insects to pollinate them is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery, and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.”
Furthermore, I had once encountered a cute animation by the creative designer Fraser Davidson, who had used his amazing art to embellish Feynman’s words, which were already of extremely high quality and elegance. Simply put, it was stunningly beautiful, and I humbly extend my congratulations to him.
All physicists who produce something of benefit for mankind are special individuals. However, Richard Feynman can be said to hold a place even more special than that of physicists.
This can be solely attributed to the sense of humor he possessed as well as his eccentric nature. It wasn’t difficult to notice that he used his expansive intelligence to simply have fun. Yes, Feynman dabbled in physics purely for the sake of entertainment. He had decided to go down this route in a bid to come out of the state of depression he had fallen into following the passing of his wife, Arline Greenbaum, where he found himself no longer able to enjoy life. He describes how he came to this decision on page 157 of his book titled Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman:
– So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out, and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.
Left: Richard and Arline | Right: Richard Feynman and Arline Greenbaum at the Albuquerque Sanatorium | Source: Sotheby’s
This decision was a turning point for him as he became a man who was able to use physics to understand the world and put what he understood into terms that enabled those around him to understand it as well. That is why when he discovered this ability, he spectacularly expressed it by saying: “If we have understood the essence of something, we can explain it on all levels.”
Feynman identified himself as a man who was generally curious about anything and everything. His father had taught him to harbor a positive curiosity towards his environment. When strolling through a park one day, his father pointed out a bird and said:
“See that bird? What kind of bird is that? It’s Spencer’s warbler. Well, in Italian, it’s a Chutto Lapittida. In Portuguese, it’s a Bom da Peida. In Chinese, it’s a Chung-long-tah, in Japanese, it’s a Katano Tekeda. You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing — that’s what counts.”
That is why Richard Feynman wasn’t speaking nonsense when he stated that he must understand the world around him. For example, when sitting at a cafeteria for lunch, he notices some children throwing around a plate and finds himself enjoying the physics related to it. The operations he made that day would get him interested in quantum mechanics again. Furthermore, he would later receive a Nobel prize for his work in quantum mechanics. In one of his interviews, Feynman recalls that day as follows:
“When I was eating lunch, some kids threw a blue medallion on the plate of the Cornell sign in the cafeteria. When the plate came down, it wobbled , nd the blue thing went around like this. And I wondered what the relation was between the tubes. I was just playing. So I played around with the equations of motion of the rotating these, and I kept continuing to play with it. This rotation led me to a similar problem of the rotation of the spin of an electron according to Dirac’s equation. And that just led me back into quantum electrodynamics. Everything just poured out.”
Richard Feynman had incredible ideas about the life we live. The assumptions he would make for the future in everyday life would later become true. At his There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom lecture at the American Physical Society in Pasadena,he would talk about some of his predictions. For example, he would say the following about how the computers of his time were too large and that they needed to be made smaller:
“I don’t know how to do this on a small scale in a practical way, but I do know that computing machines are very large; they fill rooms. Why can’t we make them very small, make them of little wires, little elements — and by little, I mean little? For instance, the wires should be 10 or 100 atoms in diameter, and the circuits should be a few thousand angstroms across.”
Everybody who has analyzed the logical theory of computers has come to the conclusion that the possibilities of computers are very interesting — if they could be made to be more complicated by several orders of magnitude. If they had millions of times as many elements, they could make judgments. They would have time to calculate what is the best way to make the calculation that they are about to make. They could select the method of analysis which, from their experience, is better than the one that we would give to them. And in many other ways, they would have new qualitative features.
If I look at your face, I immediately recognize that I have seen it before. (Actually, my friends will say I have chosen an unfortunate example here for the subject of this illustration. At least I recognize that it is a man and not an apple.) Yet there is no machine that, with that speed, can take a picture of a face and say even that it is a man; and much less that it is the same man that you showed it before — unless it is exactly the same picture.
If the face is changed; if I am closer to the face; if I am further from the face; if the light changes — I recognize it anyway. Now, this little computer I carry in my head is easily able to do that. The computers that we build are not able to do that. The number of elements in this bone box of mine is enormously greater than the number of elements in our “wonderful” computers. But our mechanical computers are too big; the elements in this box are microscopic. I want to make some that are submicroscopic.
If we wanted to make a computer that had all these marvelous extra qualitative abilities, we would have to make it, perhaps, the size of the Pentagon. This has several disadvantages. First, it requires too much material; there may not be enough germanium in the world for all the transistors which would have to be put into this enormous thing.
There is also the problem of heat generation and power consumption; TVA would be needed to run the computer. But an even more practical difficulty is that the computer would be limited to a certain speed. Because of its large size, there is finite time required to get the information from one place to another. The information cannot go any faster than the speed of light — so, ultimately, when our computers get faster and faster and more and more elaborate, we will have to make them smaller and smaller.
But there is plenty of room to make them smaller. There is nothing that I can see in the physical laws that say computer elements cannot be made enormously smaller than they are now. In fact, there may be certain advantages.
At one point in his talk, he mentioned how computers needed to distinguish people in a photograph. Years later, this process would be coined and achieved under the name “Digital Image Processing.”
Many of Feynman’s talks and the lessons he gave are incredibly valuable. He had a special knack for teaching, making him an incredible physics teacher. His approach to physics and his teaching style was mesmerizing. For many, he was able to picture incredibly complex physical occurrences in a manner that anyone could understand. He seemed to have made it his duty to explain the most complicated of subjects.
Richard Feynman teaching at Cornell University. | Source: BBVA OpenMind
For example, in his latest book, “Feynman’s Lost Lesson,” he describes the complex orbit that planets take using Euclidean Geometry. When you consider that Euclidean Geometry is taught in middle school, it is clear the scale of Feynman’s achievement. When explaining how magnets attract each other, for example, you can see that he is describing the universe’s mechanics in a simplified manner. For another example, you can see how he can explain how a fire is formed in the video below.
“The atoms like each other to different degrees. Oxygen, for instance, in the air, would like to be next to carbon, and if they get near to each other, they snap together. If they’re not too close, though, they repel, and they go apart, so they don’t know that they could snap together.
It’s just as if you had a ball, it was trying to climb a hill, and there was a hole it could go into, like a volcano hole, a deep one. It’s rolling along, it doesn’t go down in the deep hole because if it starts to climb the hill and then rolls away again. But if you make it go fast enough, it will fall into the hole.
And so, if you set something like wood and oxygen, there’s carbon in the wood from the tree, and the oxygen comes and hits it, the carbon, but not hard enough, it just goes away again, the air is always coming, nothing is happening.
If you can get it faster by heating it up somehow, somewhere, or somehow, get it started, a few of them come fast, they go over the top, so to speak, they come close enough to the carbon and snap-in, and that gives a lot of jiggly motion, which might hit some other atoms, making those go faster, so they can climb up and bump against other carbon atoms, and they jiggle, and they make them others jiggle, and you get a terrible catastrophe, which is one after the other all these things are going faster and faster and snapping in and the whole thing is changing. That catastrophe is a fire.
It’s just a way of looking at it, and these are happening, they’re perpetual, once they get started, it keeps on going, the heat makes the other atoms capable of reaching to make more heat, to make other atoms and so on. So this terrible snapping is producing a lot of jiggling, and if I put, with all that activity of the atoms there and I put a cup of coffee over that massive wood, that’s going this, it’s going to get a lot of jiggling. So that’s what the heat of the fire is. And then, of course, if; you see this is what happens when you start it like it just goes on and on
Wonder where, how they get started, why is that the wood has been sitting around all this time with the oxygen all this time, and it didn’t do this earlier or something? Where did I get this from? Well, it came from a tree. And the substance of the tree is carbon, and where did that come from? That comes from the air, and it’s carbon dioxide from the air.
People look at trees, and they think it comes out of the ground. The plants grow out of the ground. But if you ask where the substance comes from? You find out where does it come from, and trees come out of the air? They surely come out of the — no, they come out of the air.
The carbon dioxide in the air goes into the tree, and that changes it, kicking out the oxygen, pushing the oxygen away from the carbon, and leaving the carbon substance with water. Water comes out of the ground, you see, only how that getting there came out of the air, didn’t it? It came down from the sky. So, in fact, most of the tree, almost all of the tree, is out of the ground. I’m sorry, it’s out of the air. There’s a little bit from the ground, some minerals, and so forth.
Now, of course, I told you the oxygen, and we know that oxygen and carbon stick together very tight. How is it that the tree is so smart as to manage to take the carbon dioxide, which is the carbon and oxygen nicely combined, and undo that so easily? Ah, life. Life has some mysterious force.
No, the sun is shining, and this is sunlight that comes down and knocks this oxygen away from the carbon, so it takes sunlight to get the plant to work. And so the sun, all the time, is doing the work of separating the oxygen away from the carbon, the oxygen is some kind of terrible by-product, which it spits back into the air and leave in the carbon and water and stuff to make the substance of the tree. And then we take the substance of the tree and stick it in the fireplace. All the oxygen made by these trees and all the carbon would much prefer to be close together again.
Next question, how is the sun so jiggly, so hot? I got to stop somewhere. I leave you something to imagine.”
All of his lessons were recorded very intricately because not everyone could technically take them. Therefore, there had to be a way for his classes to reach everyone. It is possible to find many of his lessons online today, whether in audio or video format. Caltech University actually organized a dedicated website for all of its lectures. You can find them at Feynman Lectures — Caltech. Many of those lectures have been written down and turned into a three-book series called “The Feynman Lectures on Physics.” I recommend them to anyone who enjoys physics.
The Feynman Lectures on Physics | See the reviews on Amazon.
Richard Feynman was closely interested in whether or not his students were learning. He not only wanted his students to learn but for all students to learn. For example, shortly after deciding to become a guest teacher in Brazil to teach others his knowledge, he started learning Portuguese. That is because he thought that a student could best learn in their mother tongue. This was a beautiful approach. His not knowing Portuguese wasn’t a con for him. Furthermore, he didn’t have to relearn Physics lessons in Portuguese. However, he was a teacher that genuinely cared about his students’ education and one that gave them the necessary respect.
Feynman’s only addition to the Brazilian education system wasn’t his lectures either. During his one-year stay, he started to observe and note the fundamental setbacks of the education system in the country. For example, to the observation that, although students in Brazil start learning Physics at a much younger age, there are fewer famous Brazilian physicists, he concluded:
By flipping the pages at random, putting my finger in, and reading the sentences on that page, I can show you what’s the matter — how it’s not science but memorizing in every circumstance. Therefore I am brave enough to flip through the pages now, in front of this audience, to put my finger in, to read, and to show you. So I did it. I stuck my finger in, and I started to read: “Triboluminescence. Triboluminescence is the light emitted when crystals are crushed.” I said, “And there, have you got science? No! You have only told what a word means in terms of other words. You haven’t said anything about nature — what crystals produce light when you crush them, why they produce light. Did you see any students go home and try it? He can’t. “But if, instead, you were to write, ‘When you take a lump of sugar and crush it with a pair of pliers in the dark, you can see a bluish flash. Some other crystals do that too. Nobody knows why. The phenomenon is called “triboluminescence.” ‘Then someone will go home and try it. Then there’s an experience of nature.”
For other educators to also be able to implement these observations, he summarized his experiences into seven items:
• Don’t just teach your students to read. • Teach them to question what they read and what they study. • Teach them to doubt. • Teach them to think. • Teach them to make mistakes and learn from them. • Teach them how to understand something. • Teach them how to teach others.
When Feynman’s supernatural observational skills combined with his great problem-solving ability, there were very rational outcomes. For example, when he craved something sweet one day, he came up with a brilliant solution to the ever-lingering question of “What should I eat” by deciding to only eat chocolate ice cream as dessert for the rest of his life. While Feynman’s solution might not be suitable for everyone, it is a brilliant solution when you look further.
In 1978, when the surrounding area of his forest house in Altadena experienced a fire, he insured his home for flood protection. This action of his puzzled others as there was no river near his house. However, in 1979, the area experienced heavy rains, and many houses experienced flood damage resulting from landslides. His incredible physics knowledge and observational skills helped him take the necessary precautions.
He would also give insightful advice to those he would meet. When Pulitzer Prize winner Herman Wouk decided to write a book about World War II, he wanted to interview Richard Feynman. That was because Richard Feynman was a part of the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. At the end of their discussion, when Feynman found that Wouk was a devout man, he told Wouk that to understand this world, he should learn Calculus as it was, “The Language that God Speaks.” This was no simple piece of advice as Feynman didn’t undermine Wouk’s devoutness but instead used a persuasion method that Wouk would be open to. Following Feynman’s advice, Herman Wouk would later enroll in a high school to learn Calculus. He would then go on to write “The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion.”
In summary, Richard Feynman was a great man. However, the reason why he is so vital, in my opinion, has nothing to do with his Nobel prize or his having lectured at the largest of universities. Feynman’s view on the world, his endless curiosity, his understanding of himself and living his life accordingly, his brainstorming to understand things and spreading that to others around him, his wits, and especially his disregard for ideas that many people would die on a hill for make him such a great scientist.
Furthermore, even though he was so passionate about physics, his ability to keep his emotions under control made him a great person. The letter he wrote exactly 16 months after losing his first love Arline Greenbaum matches the wordplay and aesthetic that famous poets like Honore de Balzac and Voltaire wrote to their lovers.
October 17, 1946
D’Arline,
I adore you, sweetheart.
I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.
It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.
But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.
I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures.
When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.
I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I — I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.
My darling wife, I do adore you.
I love my wife. My wife is dead.
Rich.
PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.
I want to end this piece with this piece of advice he gave to all of humankind:
Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.
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She had me on her Witch School podcast recently. Here’s the link.
A summary of our conversation: We discuss ecocide, holding each other tight, the duality of the moment, abiding in paradox, finding the ways that life moves toward life, daddy witchcraft, adoring our stories, arguing with people who want nothing but transcendence, celebrating the privilege of being in this miraculous and mysterious mode, recording dreams as a child, Feral Paradise University, and cultivating a state of ecstatic altered awareness as a way of life.
adrienne and me
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ECSTATIC STUDY GUIDE: Strategies for cultivating a chronic, low-key, blissful union with everything
1. Nothing primes your ecstatic skill better than invoking and expressing thanks.
Would you like to make yourself smarter and more beautiful? Are you interested in increasing your capacity for ecstasy and improving your health?
Consider the possibility of celebrating regular Gratitude Fests. During these orgies of appreciation, you could confer praise and respect on the creatures, both human and otherwise, that have played key roles in inspiring you to become yourself. You would devote yourself to invoking and expressing thanks.
Who teaches and helps you? Who sees you for who you really are? Who nudges you in the direction of your fuller destiny and awakens you to your signature truths? Who loves you brilliantly?
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2. Jungian analyst Arnold Mindell explores the relationship between mind and body. He thinks you can achieve optimal physical health if you’re devoted to shedding outworn self-images.
In his book The Shaman’s Body, he says, “You have one central lesson to learn—to continuously drop all your rigid identities. Personal history may be your greatest danger.”
Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us, agrees. Raised as a boy, she later became a woman, but ultimately renounced gender altogether. “I love being without an identity,” she says. “It gives me a lot of room to play around.”
What identities would be healthy, even ecstatic, for you to lose? Describe the fun you’d have if you were free of them.
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3. One of my favorite memories is gazing into my daughter Zoe’s face just moments after her complicated birth. She had been through a heroic ordeal that scared the hell out of me, and yet she looked calm, beatific, and amused.
“She’s part-Buddha and part-elf,” I thought to myself as I held her in my arms.
Gazing back at me, her shiny face blended two states I had never before witnessed together in anyone, let alone in an infant: elegant compassion and playful serenity.
This revelation imprinted me like a blood oath and has informed my life and my work ever since.
Do you have a comparable memory? A time when a key to your destiny was suddenly laid bare? A turning point when you got a gift that has fueled your quest for years?
Revisit that breakthrough. Then ask life for another one.
4. My old philosophy professor Norman O. Brown would periodically interrupt his lectures, tilt his head upward as if tuning in to the whisper of some heavenly voice, and announce in a puckish tone, “It’s time for your irregular reminder: We’re already living after the end of the world. No need to fret anymore.”
The implication was that the worst had already happened. We had lost much of the cultural riches that had given humans meaning for centuries. All that was going to be taken from us had already been taken.
On the bright side, that meant we were utterly free to reinvent ourselves. Living amidst the emptiness, we had nowhere to go but up. What remained was alienating, but it was also fresh.
Working from the hypothesis that you’re living after the end of the world, what are you free to do that you weren’t able to do before? Who are you free to be?
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5. Many people sincerely think that they will be called before God to account for themselves on Judgment Day.
If you yourself have held that belief, you can stop worrying about it. The fact is, according to a survey of over 800 dissident bodhisattvas, urban witch doctors, sacred agents, and undercover geniuses, that you are called before “God” on Judgment Day on a regular basis.
Since you still exist, you have apparently passed every test so far. “God” obviously keeps finding you worthy.
You shouldn’t get overconfident, of course. But maybe from now on you can assume that although there may be a world of pressure on you, that pressure is natural, merciful, and exactly what you need.
Try this experiment: For seven days, see what it feels like to be secure in your knowledge that you have passed the tests of Judgment Day many, many times.
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6. Writing on Salon.com, Scott Rosenberg recalled how in his youth he loved to play the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.
“You’d have to choose not one but two ‘alignments’ for your character,” he mused. “Good and evil, of course, but also ‘law’ and ‘chaos.’ And among the people I ran with, ‘chaotic/good’ was the thing to be, because it let you trust other people and still have fun.”
Try out the “chaotic/good” approach for the character you play in your actual life.
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7. The water you drink is three billion years old, give or take five million years. The stuff your body is made of is at least 10 billion years old, probably older, and has been as far away as 100,000 light-years from where it is right now.
The air you breathe has, in the course of its travels, been literally everywhere on the planet, and has slipped in and out of the lungs of almost every human being who has ever lived.
Would you act differently if you had a visceral sense of these facts? What unprecedented behavior might you express?
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8. We tried to get our manifesto Bigger, Better, More Original Sins excerpted in Taboo Busters, a zine published by American expatriates in Berlin.
Unfortunately, the editors didn’t like the spin we put on the subject of taboos. They’re fixated on depraved vices and sickening violations and contrived rejections of conventional values: smuggled photos of dead celebrities lying in morgues, for instance; paintings of religious scenes that use the artist’s blood or other bodily fluids; hospital scenes of Iraqi children with gangrenous stumps where their limbs once were; performance artists who do Marquis de Sade imitations.
Our approach is different. We’re connoisseurs of taboo-busting that yields uplifting pleasures; we identify and initiate transgressions that don’t hurt anyone and expand our intelligence and improve the world.
Here are a few examples: midwife Ida May Gaskin’s suggestion that a partner can expedite the birth process by giving erotic pleasure to the woman in labor; our idea that satirizing one’s own cherished beliefs is the most honest form of mockery; the Menstrual Temple of the Grail’s classes that teach men how to symbolically menstruate in order to learn to love rather than fear the Dark Goddess (described in my book The Televisionary Oracle); my ability to use principles formulated by people I mostly disagree with, as in the case of St. Paul’s “I die daily.”
Are there examples of this kind of taboo-busting in your life? Make a list of uplifting transgressions that expand your intelligence and push you in the direction of cosmic consciousness and improve the world.
9. Question: Which part of you is too tame, overcivilized, and super-domesticated, and what are you going to do about it?
Answer, from a reader named Jason R.:
“I was like a mole in a suburban backyard. I had just one little path I trod each day: to the compost pile and back. I chewed on orange rinds and leftover cabbage. I was tamed by the comfort of my familiar environment, content to have a narrow vision.
“But then I was eaten by a hawk, and became part of a wild, free body. Now I perch on the tops of trees and the peaks of roofs. I survey giddy-wide horizons, from the river to the mesa and far beyond.
“I have a wealth of choices. Where to fly? What to hunt? Who are my allies? My thoughts breathe deep, like the slow explosion of sun on the morning lake.”
How would you answer the same question?
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10. The outsourcing of fortune-telling is well underway. Psychics and astrologers from India have been showering me with email invitations to take advantage of their services.
One I especially liked: “By the grace of the oceanic flames of goodness that by night simmer the roof of our temple and by day water the roots of our foolish wisdom, we have pledged to slave away our many reincarnations to cause the happy encroachment of bubbling karma on your masterful head. We will coax and guide the effects of various planets, comets, satellites, and dolmens, guaranteeing their flavor to fall on the living accidents of your love so as to ease your slippery upheaval to health.”
In the course of your life, you will probably get puzzling offers of help like this. You may even be given gifts you can barely make sense of and blessings that are unlike anything you imagined you needed.
What might you do to receive them in the spirit in which they’re offered? Here’s one possibility: Cultivate living accidents of love so as to ease your slippery upheaval to health.
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11. I love this excerpt from “The Seeker,” a poem by Rilke in his Book of Hours (translated by Robert Bly):
I am circling around God,
around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling
for a thousand years,
and I still don't know
if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.
Here’s my own permutation:
I am circling around love,
around the throbbing hum,
and I have been circling
for thousands of days,
and I still don't know
if I am a wounded saint,
or a rainy dawn,
or a creation story.
Compose your own version.
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12. I swear the woman standing near me at Los Angeles’ Getty Museum was having an erotic experience as she gazed upon van Gogh’s Irises. She was not touching herself, nor was anyone else.
But she was apparently experiencing waves of convulsive delight, as suggested by her rapid breathing, shivering muscles, fluttering eyelids, and sweaty forehead.
Fifteen minutes later, I saw her again in front of Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Fountain of Love. She was only slightly more composed. In a friendly voice, I said, “This stuff really moves you, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah,” she replied, “I’ve not only learned how to make love with actual flowers and clouds and fountains, I can even make love with paintings of them.”
Do you have any interest in mastering the method in this maestro’s madness? Where will you begin?
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13. Many visionaries and prophets expect there to be a huge and sudden shift in the world’s story sometime soon. A sizable proportion of them even predict that it will be “in the twinkling of an eye”—a sudden cascade of events that completely changes everything everywhere.
Some paint the scenario in broad, catastrophic strokes, expecting something—they’re not sure what—that will have the impact of a large meteor strike or nuclear war or pandemic disease.
Others harbor a more benign but equally fuzzy expectation, speculating that maybe some higher psychic powers will kick in to the multitudes all at once, or that benevolent extraterrestrials will arrive to solve our energy crisis.
What very few of the prophets do, however, is make a precise prediction about exactly will happen. Their visions contain no assurances, no specifics.
And in my view, that’s worse than useless. It fills us with a vague buzz of fear or amorphous sense of hope, but offers no concrete directions about what to do to prevent the dreaded thing or help create the hoped-for thing.
And the fact is, as I see it, they can’t possibly know what the Big Shift is—if, that is, a Big Shift is really looming. The very nature of any Big Shift will be so unexpected, so beyond our imaginations, and so utterly alien to what we understand, that we can’t possibly delineate its contours in advance.
I’m reminded of Jung’s formula, which is that we don’t so much solve our problems as we outgrow them. We add capacities and experiences that eventually make us bigger than the problems.
This theory can be applied in reverse: If we have not yet grown wiser than our current predicament, then we can’t see what the evolved state is beyond the predicament. Our minds are as-yet incapable of embodying the vision that will catapult us beyond the problem we’re stuck in.
When the Big Shift comes, whether or not it comes in the twinkling of an eye, it will be something that no one foresaw, let alone described in detail.
It will be beyond our comprehension, unlike anything we could have visualized headed our way. (Thirty years ago, did anyone imagine the Internet or the impact it’s having?)
And if that’s true, then the inescapable conclusion is: There’s no use trying to plan ahead for it. It’s counterproductive to hold a particular scenario in our mind as the likely development. And it’s downright crazy to harbor a chronic sense of dread about an unknowable, unimaginable series of events.
The best way to prepare for a Big Shift is to cultivate mental and emotional states that ripen us to be ready for anything: a commitment to not getting lost inside our own heads; a strategy to avoid being enthralled with the hypnotic lure of painful emotions, past events, and worries about the future; a trust in empirical evidence over our time-worn beliefs and old habits; a talent for turning up our curiosity full blast and tuning in to the raw truth of every moment with our beginner’s mind fully engaged; and an eagerness to dwell gracefully in the midst of all the interesting questions that tease and teach us.
Everything I just described also happens to be an excellent way to prime yourself for a chronic, low-grade, always-on, simmering-at-low-heat brand of ecstasy—a state of being more-or-less permanently in the Tao, in the groove, in the zone.
Try it!
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14. The Beauty and Truth Lab term “blisssavvvy” means “highly skilled at inducing states of rapture, synergy, and ecstatic empathy.” Do you have any ideas about how you could cultivate blisssavvvy?
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15. While loitering on a sidewalk outside a nightclub in San Francisco, I found the cover of a booklet lying in the gutter.
Written by Marilena Silbey and Paul Ramana Das, it was called How to Survive Passionate Intimacy with a Dreamy Partner While Making a Fortune on the Path to Enlightenment.
Sadly, the rest of the text was missing. Ever since, hungry for its wisdom, I’ve tried to hunt down a copy of the whole thing, but to no avail.
I’m hoping you will consider writing your own version of the subject. If you do, please send it to me.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (photo: Ronen Zvulun/AFP)
26 march 24 (RSN.org)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday he will not send a delegation to Washington after the U.S. refused to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
The Security Council passed the resolution on Monday that called for a cease-fire during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in two weeks. The resolution also demands the unconditional release of the remaining hostages that have been held captive since the Oct. 7 terror attack by Hamas.
The U.S. abstained from the vote, which Netanyahu’s office said was a “clear retreat from the consistent position of the U.S.” since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
“This withdrawal hurts both the war effort and the effort to release the hostages, because it gives Hamas hope that international pressure will allow them to accept a cease-fire without the release of our hostages,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Netanyahu made it clear to the U.S. on Sunday that he would not send the delegation to the U.S. to discuss the Israeli military’s plans for an operation in Rafah without the veto, according to his office.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel’s statement was “surprising and unfortunate.”
The U.S. had concerns about the resolution because it did not condemn the terrorist attack, but did not veto it because its call for a cease-fire and the release of hostages is consistent with U.S. policy, Miller said, calling the resolution “non-binding.”
White House spokesman John Kirby called the cancelation “disappointing” and said the U.S. was “perplexed by this” because the U.S. abstention “does not represent a shift in our policy.”
“The prime minister’s office seems to be indicating through public statements that we somehow changed here. We haven’t, and we get to decide what our policy is,” Kirby said. “It seems like the prime minister’s office is choosing to create a perception of daylight here when they don’t need to do that.”
Kirby said the U.S. still supports Israel and is providing weapons systems and other capabilities for the country to defend itself.
The rift has added to growing tensions between the longtime allies over Rafah, a city near Egypt’s border where more than 1 million displaced Palestinians are estimated to have taken refuge after fleeing fighting elsewhere in Gaza.
The Biden administration has supported Israel’s right to defend itself in response to the terrorist attack, but has become more critical of Netanyahu’s government amid a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and has urged restraint in Rafah. Israel says it needs to proceed with its Rafah operation to destroy the remaining Hamas battalions there.
“We don’t believe that a major ground operation in Rafah is the right course of action, particularly when you have a million and a half people there seeking refuge, and no conceived plan, no verifiable plan to take care of them,” Kirby said. “We’ve been very consistent on that.”
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is still visiting Washington this week to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, but those meetings are separate from those with the now-canceled delegation, Kirby said.
“As we age we become our better selves, or our worse selves”.
–Steve Martin, 78
(Courtesy of William P. Chiles)
Stephen Glenn Martin (born August 14, 1945) is an American comedian, actor, writer, producer, and musician. Known for his work in comedy films, television, and recording, he has received many accolades, including five Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award and an Honorary Academy Award, in addition to nominations for two Tony Awards. Wikipedia
Consciousness, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (photo: Ronen Zvulun/AFP)