Reading " metamorphosis " e-zine in my indiatimes email. They referred to this book , this author whose book has rave reviews in amazon.com. About love and ' hippie spirituality'.
" Lazy Man's guide to enlightenment ' by Thaddeus Golas.
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Book Description$10.95 cloth hardcover 1-58685-190-X 5 x 7 in, 112 pp, Rights: W, Self-Help Originally published by the author in 1972, the underground classic Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment teaches how to improve the quality of life, to feel good, and to determine what's real. Golas leads the reader down the path toward enlightenment with simple steps, like memorizing key phrases and incorporating them into daily life and thought. Think of how much better your life might be if you reminded yourself to "love as much as you can from wherever you are" or "love it the way it is." This classic book is full of useful tips on how to live a more conscious life and to be an engaged and aware member of the universal community. "While we have humility and pride enough to act on the knowledge that we exist in an infinite harmony, that we are neither greater nor lesser than any others, we can enjoy exquisite spiritual wealth and pleasures. When you love yourself, you are in truth expanding in love into many other things. And the more loving you are, the more loving the beings within and around you. On all levels we are mutually dependent vibrations. Play a happy tune and happy dancers will join your trip." - From The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment After serving in World War II, author Thaddeus Golas graduated from Columbia College in New York. He later moved to San Francisco, where he became involved in the activism and spiritual quests of the 1960s. He was an editor of Redbook magazine and a book representative for publisher Harper and Row. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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FIRST REVIEW
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The lazy person's Dhammapada, December 31, 2002
By
John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Silver Lake, OH) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment (Hardcover) I've never been interested in having a guru, and Thaddeus Golas was never interested in being one. He wasn't looking for converts, followers, or even agreement, and I've always felt free to disagree with the way he makes this or that point. So this book has long been perfectly suited to me and my somewhat iconoclastic/refractory temperament.
This little book is one of a very small handful that I regard as the absolute cream of "hippie spirituality". Stephen Gaskin's _This Season's People_ is that literature's Diamond Sutra and Paul Williams's _Das Energi_ is its Tao Te Ching. Golas's slim volume comes very close to Gaskin's in its adamantine wisdom and so ranks as a close second in diamond-sutrahood, but I think of it as something like the Dhammapada.
Its message is so easy to put across that, technically, you already know everything it says. The heart of the matter is: relax; just love as much as you can from wherever you are. When you come right down to it, you're already "enlightened" and you don't have anything to prove.
But somehow, the _way_ Golas puts this message (and the bit about "love as much as you can" is a direct quotation) has some major mojo in it, enough to knock your mind loose from your brain.
Golas knew it, too. He died in 1997, but a couple of years before that, he wrote a nice long introduction to this book so that it could be republished in hardcover. It was, and this is that edition. There are also some photos of Golas, ranging from childhood to middle age. (That's good for potential buyers to know, because the full text of the original book is available online and there wouldn't be much point in getting this one if it didn't contain anything new.)
In the introduction, Golas provides some interesting autobiography and also expresses more than a little wonderment at the effect this little book has had. He even notes that there are some things in it that he's even come to believe are incorrect, and yet he won't change a word of it because it seems to have the power to _do_ something to its readers, something compared to which his "corrected" views seem flat and tame. This is quite true. So beware; in its way this text is every bit as potent as all of Anthony de Mello's books.
A longtime "underground" spiritual classic, this little book belongs on your shelf next to Douglas Harding's _On Having No Head_ (which takes a very different but every bit as "simple" approach to the non-problem of enlightenment).
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Muktar Mai ; " In the name of honour"
Throughout the book she describes herself as an illiterate woman, but emerges as one of the most articulate, courageous and insightful women you have ever met. The story of Pakistani peasant woman Mukhtar Mai's gang rape and humiliation in the name of `honour' is told by Marie-Therese Cuny (translated from French by Linda Coverdale) in the book In the Name of Honour (Published by Atria books).
This is a poignant, heart-wrenching tale of the atrocious customs in the tribal regions of Pakistan, where women are made to pay for the sins — real and concocted — of their men. The ordeal of Mukhtar, a 30-year-old divorced Gujar woman in Meerawala village near Muzaffargarh in Pakistan's Punjab region, begins on June 22, 2002, when she is tricked into appearing before the village jirga ostensibly to apologise for the `crime' committed by her 12-year-old brother in daring to talk with a woman from the powerful Mastoi community.
But to their shock her family finds Mukhtar being given the punishment of gang rape.
Under the guise of restoring their honour four Mastoi "drag me away like a goat led to slaughter"; after the gang rape she is thrown out half-naked in front of the entire village, and her father has to cover her nakedness with his shawl and take her home. Most women who get such brutal and dehumanising punishment end up committing suicide, says Mukhtar, adding, "They know that a woman humiliated in that way has no other recourse except suicide. They don't even need to use their weapons. Rape kills her. Rape is the ultimate weapon; it shames the other clan forever."
Initially she too wants to do the same, but her vigilant mother prevents this, till anger and the desire for revenge overwhelms her. But she has neither money nor weapons to get her tormentors killed. As days roll by, she is determined to file a police complaint and get justice. The twists and turns her attempts take, with the police constantly trying to foil her attempts at justice are captured in the moving story.
The fight begins
As the national and international media zeroes in on the story and human rights activists take up her case, Mukhtar defies all attempts by the Pakistani authorities to silence her voice. Finally the administration is forced to take notice and act. But not before she is accused of selling herself to `foreign agents' out to besmirch the image of Pakistan in the international arena.
Under international scrutiny the Pakistan government awards her compensation of $8,500 and her story reported in the American media also fetches more money. The rapists are sentenced to death, but predictably enough the administration system takes its own time to punish the guilty. She is prevented from travelling abroad on invitations from US, Canada and European countries and her passport is taken away as "the President (Pervez Musharraf) himself seems to feel that we must avoid giving the nation a bad image abroad."
Worse, the Lahore High Court reverses the decision of the antiterrorism court granting death penalty to six people; they are acquitted and released from jail, and Mukhtar and her family are petrified about the backlash; their very lives are at stake.
But the most remarkable quality of Mukhtar, by now a woman possessed with a sense of mission, is her tenacity and she refuses to give up. The police pressurises her into signing blank papers that are then filled up with completely conflicting versions of her actual story, angering judicial officers. Her helplessness and frustration at her illiteracy and inability to understand what the judge is saying at the several court hearings her case goes through open her eyes to her greatest handicap — illiteracy.
Apart from taking revenge on her tormentors, Mukhtar is consumed by the passion to ensure that no other girl in her village remains illiterate. With her compensation money, the money raised through the American media and help from the Canadian embassy in Islamabad, she builds a school for girls in her village. Naseem, the principal of her school, becomes not only her solid supporter but also her best friend.
As Mukhtar's story spreads, female victims of the `war for honour' fought by men start coming to her seeking solace and with the zeal of a missionary she listens to their tales and gives them advice and support.
Gender statements
While Mukhtar's story is one of the indomitable human spirit and immense courage in the face of adversities, what comes through most vividly from her narrative are the powerful, eloquent and soul searing gender statements. Throughout the book she reflects on the unequal battle women of her ilk have to fight all the time. Often she admits to feeling broken and defeated; her battle is not an easy one, as she points out: "Both the ordeal that destroyed my peaceful life and this resounding victory hailed by the media depress me no end — I'm tired of talking, of having to deal with men and their laws. People say that I'm heroic, when I'm utterly exhausted. I used to laugh and be merry, but I've lost that gaiety."
Counting her blessing for getting solid support from her family in her ordeal, Mukhtar muses on the plight of most women who do not have such support, and while doing so captures beautifully, and without any fuss or frills, the situation of millions of women in the sub-continent: "A woman here has nothing solid to stand on. When she lives with her parents, she does what they want. Once she has joined her husband's household, she follows his orders. When her children are grown, her sons take over, and she belongs to them in the same way. My destination is to have broken free of that submission. Freed from my husband, childless, I can now seek the honour of taking care of other people's children."
Mukhtar's story also brings out as poignantly, as forcefully, the miserable plight of the Pakistani women entangled in different legal systems — the government's law, Islamic law, and the laws devised by the various tribal and village councils. And, of course, the village council meetings are all presided by men. "Women have always been excluded from meetings, even though they are the ones — as mothers, grandmothers, the custodians of daily life — who understand family problems the best. Men's contempt for their intelligence is what pushes women aside. I don't dare hope that one day, even in the distant future, a village council will accept the participation of women."
She adds that under such law women are "exchanged as merchandise" to resolve conflicts with the "punishment" meted out to them being either rape or marriage by force. "This behaviour is not what the Koran teaches us," argues Mukhtar, who though illiterate, had learnt the Koran by heart by listening to it, and taught passages to children, before this ordeal came her way.
The entire effort has to be complimented for the firm yet calm and dignified manner in which Mukhtar challenges stereotypes, questions Pakistan's judicial system and exposes the rank corruption in the law and order machinery which always favours the rich and the powerful. Thousands of women from Indian villages can glimpse their own grim lives — the helplessness and frustration they live with in a very unequal world — in Mukhtar's story.
As women who are raped or disfigured with acid in the name of `honour' flock to her, Mukhtar ponders: "Sometimes the magnitude of the problem overwhelms me. Sometimes I'm so angry I can hardly breathe. But I never despair. My life has a meaning. My misfortune has become useful to the community."
As her educational venture adds one more school, this time for boys, Mukhtar's comment leaves us with a lot of food for thought. "Educating girls is rather easy, whereas boys, who are born into this world of brutes and learn from their elders' behaviour, present a more difficult challenge. The justice dispensed to women must educate them with each passing generation, since suffering and tears teach them nothing."
This is a poignant, heart-wrenching tale of the atrocious customs in the tribal regions of Pakistan, where women are made to pay for the sins — real and concocted — of their men. The ordeal of Mukhtar, a 30-year-old divorced Gujar woman in Meerawala village near Muzaffargarh in Pakistan's Punjab region, begins on June 22, 2002, when she is tricked into appearing before the village jirga ostensibly to apologise for the `crime' committed by her 12-year-old brother in daring to talk with a woman from the powerful Mastoi community.
But to their shock her family finds Mukhtar being given the punishment of gang rape.
Under the guise of restoring their honour four Mastoi "drag me away like a goat led to slaughter"; after the gang rape she is thrown out half-naked in front of the entire village, and her father has to cover her nakedness with his shawl and take her home. Most women who get such brutal and dehumanising punishment end up committing suicide, says Mukhtar, adding, "They know that a woman humiliated in that way has no other recourse except suicide. They don't even need to use their weapons. Rape kills her. Rape is the ultimate weapon; it shames the other clan forever."
Initially she too wants to do the same, but her vigilant mother prevents this, till anger and the desire for revenge overwhelms her. But she has neither money nor weapons to get her tormentors killed. As days roll by, she is determined to file a police complaint and get justice. The twists and turns her attempts take, with the police constantly trying to foil her attempts at justice are captured in the moving story.
The fight begins
As the national and international media zeroes in on the story and human rights activists take up her case, Mukhtar defies all attempts by the Pakistani authorities to silence her voice. Finally the administration is forced to take notice and act. But not before she is accused of selling herself to `foreign agents' out to besmirch the image of Pakistan in the international arena.
Under international scrutiny the Pakistan government awards her compensation of $8,500 and her story reported in the American media also fetches more money. The rapists are sentenced to death, but predictably enough the administration system takes its own time to punish the guilty. She is prevented from travelling abroad on invitations from US, Canada and European countries and her passport is taken away as "the President (Pervez Musharraf) himself seems to feel that we must avoid giving the nation a bad image abroad."
Worse, the Lahore High Court reverses the decision of the antiterrorism court granting death penalty to six people; they are acquitted and released from jail, and Mukhtar and her family are petrified about the backlash; their very lives are at stake.
But the most remarkable quality of Mukhtar, by now a woman possessed with a sense of mission, is her tenacity and she refuses to give up. The police pressurises her into signing blank papers that are then filled up with completely conflicting versions of her actual story, angering judicial officers. Her helplessness and frustration at her illiteracy and inability to understand what the judge is saying at the several court hearings her case goes through open her eyes to her greatest handicap — illiteracy.
Apart from taking revenge on her tormentors, Mukhtar is consumed by the passion to ensure that no other girl in her village remains illiterate. With her compensation money, the money raised through the American media and help from the Canadian embassy in Islamabad, she builds a school for girls in her village. Naseem, the principal of her school, becomes not only her solid supporter but also her best friend.
As Mukhtar's story spreads, female victims of the `war for honour' fought by men start coming to her seeking solace and with the zeal of a missionary she listens to their tales and gives them advice and support.
Gender statements
While Mukhtar's story is one of the indomitable human spirit and immense courage in the face of adversities, what comes through most vividly from her narrative are the powerful, eloquent and soul searing gender statements. Throughout the book she reflects on the unequal battle women of her ilk have to fight all the time. Often she admits to feeling broken and defeated; her battle is not an easy one, as she points out: "Both the ordeal that destroyed my peaceful life and this resounding victory hailed by the media depress me no end — I'm tired of talking, of having to deal with men and their laws. People say that I'm heroic, when I'm utterly exhausted. I used to laugh and be merry, but I've lost that gaiety."
Counting her blessing for getting solid support from her family in her ordeal, Mukhtar muses on the plight of most women who do not have such support, and while doing so captures beautifully, and without any fuss or frills, the situation of millions of women in the sub-continent: "A woman here has nothing solid to stand on. When she lives with her parents, she does what they want. Once she has joined her husband's household, she follows his orders. When her children are grown, her sons take over, and she belongs to them in the same way. My destination is to have broken free of that submission. Freed from my husband, childless, I can now seek the honour of taking care of other people's children."
Mukhtar's story also brings out as poignantly, as forcefully, the miserable plight of the Pakistani women entangled in different legal systems — the government's law, Islamic law, and the laws devised by the various tribal and village councils. And, of course, the village council meetings are all presided by men. "Women have always been excluded from meetings, even though they are the ones — as mothers, grandmothers, the custodians of daily life — who understand family problems the best. Men's contempt for their intelligence is what pushes women aside. I don't dare hope that one day, even in the distant future, a village council will accept the participation of women."
She adds that under such law women are "exchanged as merchandise" to resolve conflicts with the "punishment" meted out to them being either rape or marriage by force. "This behaviour is not what the Koran teaches us," argues Mukhtar, who though illiterate, had learnt the Koran by heart by listening to it, and taught passages to children, before this ordeal came her way.
The entire effort has to be complimented for the firm yet calm and dignified manner in which Mukhtar challenges stereotypes, questions Pakistan's judicial system and exposes the rank corruption in the law and order machinery which always favours the rich and the powerful. Thousands of women from Indian villages can glimpse their own grim lives — the helplessness and frustration they live with in a very unequal world — in Mukhtar's story.
As women who are raped or disfigured with acid in the name of `honour' flock to her, Mukhtar ponders: "Sometimes the magnitude of the problem overwhelms me. Sometimes I'm so angry I can hardly breathe. But I never despair. My life has a meaning. My misfortune has become useful to the community."
As her educational venture adds one more school, this time for boys, Mukhtar's comment leaves us with a lot of food for thought. "Educating girls is rather easy, whereas boys, who are born into this world of brutes and learn from their elders' behaviour, present a more difficult challenge. The justice dispensed to women must educate them with each passing generation, since suffering and tears teach them nothing."
"Evolution of Cooperation" by Robert Axelrod
I came across this name and author in ' Business and Economy' mag ; although I am not having time these days to read all the mags i am getting.
Visited amazon. Here is the page that reviews http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Cooperation-Robert-Axelrod/dp/0465005640/ref=sr_1_1/105-7335050-7022037?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188152005&sr=1-1 the book.
Related reading and similar books that customers bought or enquired or browsed, also makes exciting. Here is the first review sample.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you read this book as long ago as I did, you probably first heard about it from Douglas Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" column in _Scientific American_, or the book in which his columns were collected. (If you're just now being introduced to this book, check out Hofstadter's too; his discussion of it is very helpful and insightful.)
What Robert Axelrod describes in this book is a novel round-robin tournament (actually two such tournaments) in which various game-theoretic strategies were pitted against one another in the game known as the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Each strategy was scored, not according to how many times it "beat" its "opponent," but according to how many points it accumulated for itself. The surprising result: a strategy dubbed TIT FOR TAT, submitted by Anatol Rapaport, cleaned everybody's clocks in both tournaments.
Why was this surprising? First, because TIT FOR TAT was such a simple strategy. It didn't try to figure out what its "opponent" was going to do, or even keep much track of what its "opponent" had _already_ done. All it did was cooperate on the first move, and thereafter do whatever its "opponent" had done on the previous move. And second, because this strategy can _never_ do better than its "opponent" in any single game; the best result it could achieve, in terms of comparison with the other player, is a tie.
So it was odd that such a simple strategy, one that went up against all sorts of sophisticated strategies that spent a lot of time trying to dope out what their "opponents" were up to, should do so much better than all the "clever" strategies. And it was also odd that a strategy that could never, ever "beat" its "opponent" should nevertheless do so much better _overall_ than any other strategy.
As Axelrod is careful to point out, this isn't always true; how well TIT FOR TAT does depends on the population with which it's surrounded, and in fact it wouldn't have won even _these_ tournaments if certain other strategies had participated. But TIT FOR TAT is surprisingly robust, and its success does offer some tentative political lessons. Axelrod spells them out, in the form of principles like "Be nice and forgiving" -- which means: never be the first to defect; be quick to forget what your "opponent" has done in the past. And in a follow-up computer simulation, he shows that it's possible -- under some conditions -- for a little cadre of "cooperators" to increase their numbers and "take over" a population that practices other strategies.
Axelrod's research was and is important for several reasons, one of which has to do with evolutionary theory: it shows that, under the right conditions, natural selection can tend to generate cooperation rather than competition, even among actors who act solely out of self-interest. Another has to do with the spontaneous growth of cooperative behavior in predominantly competitive or hostile environments (Axelrod's examples include holiday cease-fires in the trenches during the First World War). Yet another has to do with the need (or otherwise) for external authorities to _enforce_ cooperative behavior -- a point not lost on Axelrod's libertarian and/or Hayekian readers, including myself.
Nevertheless, as groundbreaking as this work is, the results are modest and Axelrod states them very cautiously. TIT FOR TAT doesn't _always_ "win," and in any case not all of our social interactions can be modelled as Iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas. It's a _very_ hopeful book, but readers will want to be careful not to claim more for Axelrod's results than he claims for them himself.
Visited amazon. Here is the page that reviews http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Cooperation-Robert-Axelrod/dp/0465005640/ref=sr_1_1/105-7335050-7022037?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188152005&sr=1-1 the book.
Related reading and similar books that customers bought or enquired or browsed, also makes exciting. Here is the first review sample.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you read this book as long ago as I did, you probably first heard about it from Douglas Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" column in _Scientific American_, or the book in which his columns were collected. (If you're just now being introduced to this book, check out Hofstadter's too; his discussion of it is very helpful and insightful.)
What Robert Axelrod describes in this book is a novel round-robin tournament (actually two such tournaments) in which various game-theoretic strategies were pitted against one another in the game known as the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Each strategy was scored, not according to how many times it "beat" its "opponent," but according to how many points it accumulated for itself. The surprising result: a strategy dubbed TIT FOR TAT, submitted by Anatol Rapaport, cleaned everybody's clocks in both tournaments.
Why was this surprising? First, because TIT FOR TAT was such a simple strategy. It didn't try to figure out what its "opponent" was going to do, or even keep much track of what its "opponent" had _already_ done. All it did was cooperate on the first move, and thereafter do whatever its "opponent" had done on the previous move. And second, because this strategy can _never_ do better than its "opponent" in any single game; the best result it could achieve, in terms of comparison with the other player, is a tie.
So it was odd that such a simple strategy, one that went up against all sorts of sophisticated strategies that spent a lot of time trying to dope out what their "opponents" were up to, should do so much better than all the "clever" strategies. And it was also odd that a strategy that could never, ever "beat" its "opponent" should nevertheless do so much better _overall_ than any other strategy.
As Axelrod is careful to point out, this isn't always true; how well TIT FOR TAT does depends on the population with which it's surrounded, and in fact it wouldn't have won even _these_ tournaments if certain other strategies had participated. But TIT FOR TAT is surprisingly robust, and its success does offer some tentative political lessons. Axelrod spells them out, in the form of principles like "Be nice and forgiving" -- which means: never be the first to defect; be quick to forget what your "opponent" has done in the past. And in a follow-up computer simulation, he shows that it's possible -- under some conditions -- for a little cadre of "cooperators" to increase their numbers and "take over" a population that practices other strategies.
Axelrod's research was and is important for several reasons, one of which has to do with evolutionary theory: it shows that, under the right conditions, natural selection can tend to generate cooperation rather than competition, even among actors who act solely out of self-interest. Another has to do with the spontaneous growth of cooperative behavior in predominantly competitive or hostile environments (Axelrod's examples include holiday cease-fires in the trenches during the First World War). Yet another has to do with the need (or otherwise) for external authorities to _enforce_ cooperative behavior -- a point not lost on Axelrod's libertarian and/or Hayekian readers, including myself.
Nevertheless, as groundbreaking as this work is, the results are modest and Axelrod states them very cautiously. TIT FOR TAT doesn't _always_ "win," and in any case not all of our social interactions can be modelled as Iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas. It's a _very_ hopeful book, but readers will want to be careful not to claim more for Axelrod's results than he claims for them himself.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Dangerous idea is ‘the idea that ideas can be dangerous’
It was a genetic breakthrough that made us capable of ideas in the first place, says Seth Lloyd, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.
“Ideas have had their impact for good… But one of these days, one of those nice ideas is likely to have the unintended consequence of destroying everything we know,” he writes in one of the brief essays included in What is Your Dangerous Idea? edited by John Brockman ( http://www.landmarkonthenet.com/ ).
The title draws from the question posed to the readers by ‘Edge’ ( http://www.edge.org/ ). And the responses fill the book, as ‘a celebration of the ideas of the third culture’.
The ‘dangerous ideas’ are not about harmful technologies and WMDs, but about statements of fact or policy evidenced by science, which are ‘felt to challenge the collective decency of an age’.
Every era has its dangerous ideas, notes the intro. “Time and again people have invested factual claims with ethical implications that today look ludicrous.”
There are a few mercies, however.
“Punishments have changed from torture and mutilation to cancelling of grants and the writing of vituperative reviews.”
The opening essay, ‘we have no souls’, by John Horgan, director of the Centre for Science Writings, dangerously proposes that when our minds can be programmed like personal computers, then perhaps we will finally abandon ‘the belief that we have immortal, inviolable souls – unless, of course, we program ourselves to believe.’
Rodney Brooks, author of ‘Flesh and Machines’, wonders if we might find ourselves to be alone, not just in the solar system, but in the galaxy.
The shock could ‘drive us to despair and back toward religion as our salve,’ he postulates.
In a similar vein, Keith Devlin of Stanford University suggests that we are entirely alone. Yet, “The fact that our existence has no purpose for the universe – whatever that means – in no way means that it has no purpose for us,” he declares. “I don’t share my most dangerous ideas,” protests W. Daniel Hillis, chairman of Applied Minds, Inc.
“I have often seen otherwise thoughtful people so caught up in such an idea that they seem unable to resist sharing it. To me, the idea that we should all share our most dangerous ideas is itself a very dangerous idea. I hope it never catches on.”
On the contrary, to Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University, the only dangerous idea is, ‘the idea that ideas can be dangerous’.
We live in a world in which people are beheaded, imprisoned, demoted, and censured simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air, he rues.
“Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we’re in one.”
Cyberdisinhibition is dangerous, according to Daniel Goleman, author of ‘Emotional Intelligence’. A major disconnect between the ways our brains are wired to connect and the interface offered in online communications, he cautions.
“The Internet may harbour social perils that our inhibitory circuitry was not evolutionarily designed to handle.”
Kevin Kelly, editor at large of Wired feels that it is dangerous to think that more anonymity is good.
“Privacy can be won only by trust, and trust requires persistent identity, if only pseudoanonymously,” he says. “In the end, the more trust the better. Like all toxins, anonymity should be kept as close to zero as possible.”
Recommended read to detox a tired mind.
http://BookPeek.blogspot.com
“Ideas have had their impact for good… But one of these days, one of those nice ideas is likely to have the unintended consequence of destroying everything we know,” he writes in one of the brief essays included in What is Your Dangerous Idea? edited by John Brockman ( http://www.landmarkonthenet.com/ ).
The title draws from the question posed to the readers by ‘Edge’ ( http://www.edge.org/ ). And the responses fill the book, as ‘a celebration of the ideas of the third culture’.
The ‘dangerous ideas’ are not about harmful technologies and WMDs, but about statements of fact or policy evidenced by science, which are ‘felt to challenge the collective decency of an age’.
Every era has its dangerous ideas, notes the intro. “Time and again people have invested factual claims with ethical implications that today look ludicrous.”
There are a few mercies, however.
“Punishments have changed from torture and mutilation to cancelling of grants and the writing of vituperative reviews.”
The opening essay, ‘we have no souls’, by John Horgan, director of the Centre for Science Writings, dangerously proposes that when our minds can be programmed like personal computers, then perhaps we will finally abandon ‘the belief that we have immortal, inviolable souls – unless, of course, we program ourselves to believe.’
Rodney Brooks, author of ‘Flesh and Machines’, wonders if we might find ourselves to be alone, not just in the solar system, but in the galaxy.
The shock could ‘drive us to despair and back toward religion as our salve,’ he postulates.
In a similar vein, Keith Devlin of Stanford University suggests that we are entirely alone. Yet, “The fact that our existence has no purpose for the universe – whatever that means – in no way means that it has no purpose for us,” he declares. “I don’t share my most dangerous ideas,” protests W. Daniel Hillis, chairman of Applied Minds, Inc.
“I have often seen otherwise thoughtful people so caught up in such an idea that they seem unable to resist sharing it. To me, the idea that we should all share our most dangerous ideas is itself a very dangerous idea. I hope it never catches on.”
On the contrary, to Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University, the only dangerous idea is, ‘the idea that ideas can be dangerous’.
We live in a world in which people are beheaded, imprisoned, demoted, and censured simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air, he rues.
“Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we’re in one.”
Cyberdisinhibition is dangerous, according to Daniel Goleman, author of ‘Emotional Intelligence’. A major disconnect between the ways our brains are wired to connect and the interface offered in online communications, he cautions.
“The Internet may harbour social perils that our inhibitory circuitry was not evolutionarily designed to handle.”
Kevin Kelly, editor at large of Wired feels that it is dangerous to think that more anonymity is good.
“Privacy can be won only by trust, and trust requires persistent identity, if only pseudoanonymously,” he says. “In the end, the more trust the better. Like all toxins, anonymity should be kept as close to zero as possible.”
Recommended read to detox a tired mind.
http://BookPeek.blogspot.com
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