biosphere: noun. The regions of the surface, atmosphere, and hydrosphere of the earth (or analogous parts of other planets) occupied by living organisms.

Noosphere: noun. The sphere or stage of evolutionary development characterized by (the emergence or dominance of) consciousness, the mind, and interpersonal relationships.

Note: See comments for Greek roots

Comment? [3]

In additional to literature, art, literary and political theory, psychedelic philosophy has substantially shaped my thinking over the last few years. The work of great psychedelic thinkers such as Alan Watts, Terence McKenna, Dr. Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsburg, William S. Burroughs, Aldous Huxley, Robert Anton Wilson, and many others are too often decontexualized, trivialized, reduced, and mocked by a superficial culture that seeks to deny and infanticize the indelible influence of the 1960’s.

The spirit of the 1960’s is very much alive today, as evidenced by the swaths of suburbanites on the train reading Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth.” (Note: Consider what it means that Oprah’s stamp of approval makes these philosophies “safe” enough for consumption by middle America).

Friday morning I was listening to a podcast from the Psychedelic Salon featuring a talk by Terence McKenna at the Palenque Entheobotany Conference in 1999 shortly before his death. In the Q&A portion of the talk, McKenna was asked about robot intelligence and how that intelligence and Gaia are interrelated.

Below is a poorly made diagram of McKenna’s response:

The Earth, Gaia , is a living organism. From the Earth comes Nature, of which man is a part. Man creates civilization and eventually machines. The average machine is capable of processing information at a rate which far surpasses the capabilities of the human brain. Network these machines and you have a creative force greater than the totality of humanity, a singular organized unit that can think and process information at speeds and depths that our great-grandparents could never have imagined.

Departing from McKenna’s argument now, following this line of reasoning reveals that Gaia’s ultimate destiny will lie, not in the hands of man as many of us imagine, but with machines. Machines will surpass man as the planet’s most evolved creation, and once this threshold is surpassed man will play a less centralized role in the interconnectivity of the planet.

How will machines deal with mankind and with Gaia? Despite our best cyberpunk efforts, this is a question we cannot imagine an answer to because this machine consciousness will exist in a temporal universe unintelligible to the common man. Even our greatest efforts to speculate in this direction, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner, Battlestar Galactica, only lead us to models of machines that, for all intents and purposes, function like extravagant, existentially conflicted humans.

We are yet to see, or possibly we are unable to see, how this sort of intelligence would actually function. However, if technology continues on its current trajectory it seems increasingly possible that these concepts will become more than just the products of science fiction speculation.

Comment?

“The people who plant and tend the [marijuana] gardens are terrorists who wouldn’t hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties.”
— John P. Walters Director of the National Drug Control Policy

Chart from DrugWarFacts

“That humanity at large will ever be able to dispense with Artificial Paradises seems very unlikely. Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul. Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory—all these have served, in H.G. Wells’s phrase, as Doors in the Wall. And for private, for everyday use there have always been chemical intoxicants. All the vegetable sedatives and narcotics, all the euphorics that grow on trees, the hallucinogens that ripen in berries or can be squeezed from roots—all, without exception, having been known and systematically used by human beings from time immemorial. And to these natural modifiers of consciousness modern science has added its quota of synthetics—chloral, for example, and benzedrine, the bromides and the barbiturates.

Most of these modifiers of consciousness cannot now be taken except under doctor’s orders, or else illegally and at considerable risk. for unrestricted use the West has permitted only alcohol and tobacco. All the other chemical Doors in the Wall are labeled Dope, and their unauthorized takers are Fiends.”

from The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley

Comment?