"As consciousness expands, so does the risk of insanity."
– John Horgan
"Our idea of unity and our way of solving conflicts is simply to eliminate one of the two parties...But this is the habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns."
– Alan Watts
– John Horgan
"Our idea of unity and our way of solving conflicts is simply to eliminate one of the two parties...But this is the habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns."
– Alan Watts
My Creation Skateboards deck is finally here!
Before I say another word, let me simply revel with you in a moment of modest success: back in January over 1300 friends, family, and total strangers voted my design to victory in the international Creation Skateboards DIY Contest. Thank you guys so much! I just got word from the company that the boards are on their way – and not a moment too soon, because I'm broke as a joke after summer tour and needed another kickass perk for my indiegogo campaign to help support me while I pursue my Greater Calling as writer of provocative, futuristic meta-disciplinary ecodelia.
So please: buy this skateboard by contributing to my campaign. You're helping me dedicate more time to sharing my words and insights with the world, and less time to hustling art.
Here's what's been on my mind, of late:
Someone whose opinion I greatly respect just pointed out to me that my posts about Google Glass sound like unequivocally positive fanboy raving - "breathless like a nun in adoration" - and so I want to be totally clear about how conflicted and ambivalent I am about all of this. It's important you guys know where I'm coming from, and that I'm not just gleefully strolling into Borgdom. In fact, the only reason I took on this opportunity as a beta tester is because the whole thing scares me silly.
I'm terrified by the knowledge that the people in power today think human beings can be reduced to data and reprogrammed...by the thought that I may not even recognize my children as human, or the world they grow up in as one in which we can survive. That we will be so caught up in the "bread and circus" of our Brave New World that won't even remember what we've lost.
But fearing the technological future feels to me like a symptom of the same dissociation that got us into this mess in the first place: the idea that we are separate from the automatic, unconscious realm of nature and the body, that we are one thing and the planet is another.
That is exactly why I agreed to become a Glass Explorer – to face these fears, to better understand them, to find what peace I can in my heart torn between enthusiasm for a world of unimagined possibilities and grief for a world crushed underfoot by machines. Demons are angels denied, hell is heaven resisted. I feel the urging of a greater Self and I'd rather help it come alive in love than fear.
Kevin Kelly inspired me with the thesis of his book What Technology Wants that we take a more deliberate, discerning approach to technological adoption. That we not simply rush in aroused by the thrill of novelty. That we treat our technologies (both machines and ideas) as our children - acknowledging that they have a life of their own, and we can only do our best to rear them lovingly.
What some might call giving myself to Google in human sacrifice, I call choosing to love a problem child, in the hope that taking the third path between the past-loathing uncritical techno-optimist and future-loathing neo-luddite reactionary will lead us into a world where the Made can get along with the Born.
If I'm a sacrifice, it's in the service of trying to teach people how to relate to technology with caution, care, sensitivity, and discernment. I think the vast majority of my fellow Glass Explorers are just cracked out on a Future High and walking into an open manhole. All the more reason to try and be a loud, exemplary exception to the rule. Figure out what good things can be done with this, and how to think about it in a healthy way.
The knights of old wielded double-edged swords. They were trusted to do so. Just because something could hurt you doesn't mean we shouldn't use it. (In fact, "If guns are outlawed...") So yeah, I'm an enthusiast. A reluctant enthusiast. I want to do my small part to steer this in the right direction.
"The good news is that the increase in entropy of the civilization we're experiencing is, in a sense, feeding the whole new information of a planetary culture. It's precisely the chaos of an industrial society that is creating the passion to create alternatives, so that the entropy or noise is creating the possibilities for innovation and music."
This is a conversation. Feel free to weigh in on Facebook or Indiegogo, or email me personally. I'll find a way to answer you in the essays I'm writing about this over the next several months. Your feedback is invaluable to me.
In the meantime, below are the some of the videos I've taken through Glass at Burning Man & Rootwire:
The Arrest
Dedicated to everyone violated by the prison industrial complex for a nonviolent crime. I wanted to do a painting that disturbed me, that was visceral and unsettling. That felt violating. (And, I wanted to ape the style of my homie and fellow live painter Andy Reed.) I don't know if I pulled it off...looking at it now, all I can think is "space bacon." Which in some weird way, I guess, is appropriate. :P
Painted live at
Ecstatic Saturdays (Dallas, TX) 2013 04 13 - Bliss Goddess
The Upper Decks (ATX) 2013 04 19 - Sun Salutation
The Parish (ATX) 2013 04 27 - A Live One, Papadosio
The Granada Theater (Lawrence, KS) 2013 05 01 - Papadosio
Californos (KCMO) 2013 06 29 - Luminaries, Miss Conception, Wstndgrl
The Parish (ATX) 2013 07 05 - Mountain Standard Time, Earphunk
12th & Porter (Nashville) 2013 07 21 - Gates
Click for a closer look at the process:
Like/Comment/Share
That's all for now, folks. I know it's a lot. I'm being way too productive these days. Thanks for sticking with it! Love and gratitude...
