In most esoteric religions, one of the most important concepts is the idea that everything is, in fact, an illusion.  All forms, all emotions, all thoughts, these are all illusions.

Now if everything is an illusion, one might wonder, then does anything matter?  If nothing is real, is it all a dance of illusions that we have become attached to?

It is truly all an illusion.  Yet it is also something else that is seldom considered.

It is creation.  Being creation, it is worthy of our deepest respect.  To treat the creations we encounter with deep care and respect.  To honor them for what they are.

Yet we do not remain attached.  We also recognize that they are simply illusions.  Illusions that deserve honor and respect, since we are illusionary ourselves.

Life is creation. It is the ultimate expression of love. What more worthy way to experience and celebrate this beautiful illusion than to cooperate and co-create with it?  Not to be drawn into it, to make it become yourself but to simply interact with it with conscious awareness, love, honor and respect.

By looking at life's creations, and knowing that they are illusions, we can see the world through two perspectives, adding a dimension to the world, with a unshakable center.  This gives us the ultimate freedom.  Not freedom simply to break away, but freedom to create and co-create.  And to Love.

Here is an idea for a new venue for Gaia to grow into.

A site that I call Dreams Unlimited... of course another name might be more suitable, but the idea goes as follows:

A site, a little like Prosper.com, but for Dreamers and Idealist Enablers to unite.

Some members sign up to post their dreams, these are the Dreamers.  Others, the Enablers, sign up to help the dream that suits them.

For instance, if I want to open a meditation resort in Fiji, I sign up as a Dreamer.  I post my dream and ask for help in the form of money, gifts, or volunteer service.

Perhaps an Enabler is a teacher of meditation and has always wanted to go see Fiji, this person might sign up as a volunteer.

Perhaps an Enabler has a video workshop on mediation that they have mastered, and they wish to donate this as a gift.

Perhaps an Enabler is a wealthy Fijian contractor who wishes to give to the community of Fiji.  This person might decide to donate money or land.

Successful Dreamers might end up being Enablers.  Enablers, inspired by opening the door of love in the first place, might end up being Dreamers.

Advertisers can also sponsor these Dreams, and ordinary people can click on them if they support this dream but do not have anything to donate.  The Gaia Community can take a portion of this revenue.

This is part of one of my ideas I have for a wider, more encompassing culture, called the Giver Culture.  If at all interested, please read my blog post:  http://jeremykelsey.zaadz.com/blog/2007/3/the_giver_culture

In the last week a string of remarkable circumstances provided me with a number of amazing perspectives that led to the realization through direct experience that a great Peace lies within us.

This is a type of Peace that is deep within all of us, it is the true source of true creativity, love and bliss. 

No one is responsible for this Peace.  Only we are.  It is our responsibility.  It is our birthright.  All we need to do is to access it.  And this Peace lies within each one of us.

To reach this Peace, all we need to do is be one with the Now.  Be here.  Feel yourself.  Feel your emotions, your aches and pains, watch the illusion of time dissolve as only the Now is present.

The deeper you come to this realization that all is in the Now, a great Peace will fulfilll you.  Start spinning the illusion of past and future and the Peace will dissipate.

It is our greatest freedom, to access this great Peace through the Now. 

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
-Albert Einstein-

There is Truth and there is Beauty.  Some may chose one over the other.  Few are those who find the delectable discovery that when Truth and Beauty are combined it forms a symphony that approaches divinity not only in its depth of creative power, but also its scope of infinite possibilities.  Today I saw but a glimpse of that rare beauty that such a combination can bring. 

Since I was in my early twenties I have had a number of experiences that have shaken me to my core.  At first, these experiences came slowly.  Recently the frequency of these experiences has seemed to accelerate—almost exponentially.   Each experience has had its own indistinguishable nature.  No two experiences were alike.  Some were like being shot out of a cannon; some took days or weeks to conclude.  Some were composed of one big experience.  Others took a string of fairly large incidences.  Today I had a number of small insights, coincidences and experiences that all centered around one central theme.  This theme was about the nature of Faith.

The very idea of faith has been one in which I have had trouble with for quite a long time.  Previously I never saw it as necessary.  I felt that looking at the underlying truth of any matter was much more important than having faith in something unsubstantiated. It seemed foolish, I thought, to put blind trust in something that had no facts or reason behind it.  Yet I always felt that “a leap of faith” is what drives evolution, and the discovery of the unknown.  The two ideas seemed irreconcilable. 

Today, for the first time in my life, the two ideas were not irreconcilable any longer.  I now seem to have a perspective that not only allows for a “leap of faith” but also gives it the wings to soar.

All one needs do, I found, was to allow for the possibility—to entertain any possibility.  One does not need to take this possibility too seriously, yet one needs to open the gates of their imagination just a smidgen to allow that possibility to exist.  For when that is done, the human mind will eventually start to figure out how that might be possible, and when there are a few human minds at work on such a possibility, then success is even more likely.

Jesus spoke of having only the faith the size of a mustard seed as being enough to move a mountain.  What I believe he meant by this, was that if you allowed just the seed of a possibility—a tiny amount of faith to acknowledge that a mountain might be moved—then one would naturally find a way for that mountain to be moved.  If we open our eyes we can see this in the modern era.  We have many marvelous technologies now that were not even conceivable for the vast majority of the time we have, as a species, been here on Earth.  These advances all required a smidgen of faith to start, as well as being backed by the foundations of truth.  And the greater beauty was that these discoveries inspired others to build and discover more and more.  Now, in today’s world, moving a mountain not an impossible task for human beings to accomplish—for we have the knowledge and vision to accomplish such a task.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine who has been on a spiritual journey of discovery, came down from the mountains of Taiwan. He and his wife gave up everything, including money, to put trust in existence.  The timing of his visit was absolutely perfect.  He contacted me just as I was looking to contact him.

When he came, he had some outrageous spiritual theories.  Some of which I had heard before he went into the mountains.  They seemed irrational and absolutely crazed in some aspects.  They completely made no sense especially in view of modern scientific knowledge.  When he came he asked me to have faith in him, simply as a friend.  I opened myself to the possibilities that my friend’s theories were true.  I did not believe completely that they were, but I instead imagined, as if, they were true.

I never completely came to agreement with my friend in the end, although we spend days talking as if the foundation of his theories were factual.  We built upon these theories, expanding it with our ideas and imaginative speculations.  In the end they allowed me to make some spiritual discoveries that I have been testing, with great success, since his visit ended.  My theories are different than his.  Yet I would possibly never have come to such conclusions if I had not opened my mind to what he believed.  I took a leap of faith, and since I never abandoned what I felt to be true, I not only survived any potential crash, but have also soared. 

If our perspective is founded on a layer of truth, at least as close to the truth as we currently know, this can provide us with a secure foundation.  Yet, if we layer our perspective, with beauty provided by our imaginations, we can add an extra layer of color and texture to nature without losing site of what is real.  This frees our imaginations to find solutions to problems that are currently impossible, and with time, awareness, patience and cooperation we might eventually discover ways to make the impossible truly possible.  

By mixing truth with beauty we can create and discover more, for it gives us greater motivation to create and discover.  Books, films, art are often more powerful when they mix truth with beauty.  Discoveries are more compelling when they not only give us the facts of how and why certain processes in nature happen, but also give us the possibilities of where these discoveries might lead us. 

The culmination of my day ended up with me, by sheer coincidence, watching a movie that was about the power of faith.  An army of extremely talented and creative people created this beautiful film.  Its central theme was faith, which had strangely also been the central theme of my day.  This movie was woven in a most delightful way that mixed realism and fantasy in the visuals, the message, the characters and the plot. 

This day and this movie gave power to this idea that all we need is simply a tiny amount of faith—just enough faith to imagine possibilities. By doing so we can, through our imaginations, add beauty to our perspective without abandoning our foundations of truth.

Love.  It is a word that stands alone.  It has been the subject of much pleasure and strife in human history. We give great credence to this word.  It fulfils us, inspires us, and takes us to new heights and depths.  It renders us helpless, yet frees us to soar upon the heavens.

What is this stuff called love?  Is it simply an illusion or an actual force of nature?  Is it both, neither, nor?

With human beings, love is a messy affair.  You can say whatever you wish about the human realm of love, but it is often a complex mess of emotions and feelings that make it hard to decipher.  One of my good friends, a fairly rational thinker, feels that love is simply biology.  What humans call love, he states, is simply a wash of hormones and neurotransmitters released by the brain, evolved for the purpose of passing along our genes.  Although I can follow his reasoning, for it is hard to find fault with it, yet it doesn’t ring true to me. It never seemed like the complete answer.

Once I looked deeply into some of the fundamental roots of the joys and difficulties of relationships I realized that my friend was only partially correct. Although he thought he had ‘love’ all figured out, he hadn’t truly reached the heart of the matter.

Human beings are undoubtedly one of the most complex species that have ever evolved on this planet.  We evolved our emotions the same way as our mammalian cousins.  We evolved such feelings simply so we would, simply, connect.

If one examines the world of love and relationships purely rationally, one can see that they do not quite make sense.  Human beings, with our ability to rationalize, must see the illogic even more clearly than our animal brethren.  It seems that love is such a complex and powerful mess of emotions for human beings simply for the fact that we need to overpower our strong rationalities in order to connect at all.

It dawned on me that love is simply ‘connection’.  Love is the ability to connect.  Absolute love is a completely open connection.  When you love something such as a person, or the joys of painting, or sailing, or eating chocolate, you are connecting with it.  The stronger the connection, the stronger the love is.  Loving people are people who are simply open to connections. 

Under this line of reasoning, the opposite of love, of connection, is repulsion.  Repulsion is what we experience as fear.  Fear drives us away from things, where love attracts. In the center, between love and fear is simply ‘disconnection’.  Disconnection means nothing; there is neither love nor fear. 

This insight certainly seems interesting.  What made me even more curious about this line of reasoning was that it took me to something else that I have been thinking about for quite some time—that trinary logic might provide some insights to some of the mysteries of our universe. 

With computers we have a binary system of fundamental building blocks—the ‘O’ and the ‘1’.  With these two components we can build an infinite variety of hardware and software, all of which rests on this binary foundation.

With atomic forces we tend to see three behaviors—Attraction, Repulsion, Neutrality.  The interplay of these forces create the molecular world that we experience on a daily basis.  Whether the entire universal building blocks, whether quarks or strings or something else not yet discovered, are also governed by three types of behavior is not yet certain, but perhaps it is something that might end up being true—making our universe a trinary system.

This trinary idea made me think of Taoism.  With Taoism the universe separated into two fundamental forces, the dark Yin force and the light Yang force.  According to Taoism the interplay between these forces created all that was in the universe.  Although, according to Taoism, there was another ‘something’ or ‘nothing’ that these yin and yang forces originally derived from.  The balancing that Taoists attempt to achieve is hoped to bring a closer to this ultimate universal essence.  This original nothing-essence seemed to me as the third state that I had been thinking about with my thoughts on love and fear.  Disconnection, which is neither love or fear, lies somewhere as the potential to be either. 

-1—0—1

Fear—Disconnect—Love

Repulsion—Neutrality—Connection

Now one of the more interesting things about connection is that it unites and creates diversity and complexity.  Single-celled life forms connected billions of years ago to allow multi-cellular creatures to exist.  One day, the connections that we are laying, in this information age, may allow the human species, and maybe even all Earth-based life, to connect in ways that would be as revolutionary as the rise of multi-cellular organisms.  The more we connect the greater we become.  Perhaps this is a fundamental mathematical truism stemming from the very trinary nature of our universe itself.  Perhaps our biological mess of emotions is simply an echo of this primary law of the universe. 

Now this same friend once lived in a Taoist temple for a couple of years as a teenager.  He used to believe, and perhaps still does, that when Buddhists masters seek enlightenment they are pointlessly shooting their energies into a black hole, turning their life force into nothingness.

On a motorcycle ride home, after sitting in a beautiful banyan tree in my neighborhood today, I was reminded of my friend’s statement, made over a decade ago.  It just popped in my mind.  Curious to know why this particular statement had so suddenly appeared in my mind, I examined it and suddenly I received an insight.  I felt that even if this is what Buddhist masters were actually doing when achieving nirvana they might be doing exactly what they should. 

A master, being aware of subtleties that we cannot ordinarily comprehend, is quite aware of anything that causes fear.  Fear cannot exist at this state if the master wishes to progress.  Now what could be the absolute, most frightening concept that is known to exist in the universe?  Entering a place where no escape exists, where time and space are meaningless, a prison cut entirely off from the rest of the universe—a black hole.

A black hole is known to cosmologists as a singularity.  All laws of physics break down inside this singularity.  The only other singularity that has ever existed in the known universe, besides a black hole, is the universe just before the Big Bang itself. 

The Big Bang.  It was essentially a black hole just before the universe began.  Now this singularity is the source of everything, of all life, of all death.  If these Buddhist masters were actually shooting themselves into such singularities, the eventual outcome would be the same.  Certainly, they would be cut off from this universe, yet they would eventually be part of a singularity that would eventually become its own source of everything in its own universe.

So by facing this ultimate fear, it results in the ultimate love: the creation of all.  And this practice, of hunting down and conquering fears, ends up balancing things out to allow the greatest expression of love of all—pure creation.

Giving love to your fear as you face it, causes it to die, which transforms it to love as you do it.

Give your fear energy. Love your enemy.  It is the greatest love of all.

One of the most difficult questions, with any social movement, is the question, ‘How to begin?’ It is hard enough to be able to step far enough outside of the box to see what is amiss with modern consumer society, harder yet to visualize what could be done to set it right. To be able to put together a plan to create a new way of living, when human beings have only discovered two other lifestyles (Takers & Leavers) in the hundreds of thousands of years we have existed here on Earth, is a daunting task. Yet, this is what this article will attempt to address: a practical solution to start coalescing the Giver Culture into something much more tangible than its current form.

One basic premise of this article is the claim that the beginnings of the Giver Culture already exist. Yet these beginnings currently exist only in a proto-cultural state. To spot such individuals and groups, one needs only to determine the core values of the Giver Culture. The Giver Culture is a culture of people that highly value creation, discovery and the sharing of their knowledge and creations with others. Where can we find such groups and individuals? In actuality such people are becoming more prolific, and finding them, due to the increasing interconnectedness of society, is becoming easier. Many of these proto-Giver groups have a marked presence on the Internet, and have made significant contributions to society.

One of the most colorful examples lies in a radical expression of creative culture, The Burning Man Festival. This eight day long festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada asks all members to become active participants, exploring the limits of their creativity and sharing everything, from food to art, freely with others. Gifting is one of the core guiding principles of the festival, and is encouraged to be completely unconditional. Another core principle is creative cooperation, supporting any type of expression that brings about creativity in a free communal setting. The participants of this event often suffer culture shock when returning back to regular society after such an event and find ways to connect with other Burning Man participants when they return home. This shared culture, even though it lasts for only eight days in a year in one specific spot on Earth, is close to holding many of the same fundamental values of the Giver Culture. Although there are only thousands of participants, it is a growing phenomenon, and many other festivals have arisen, worldwide, to capture some of its spirit. These participants are experiencing a proto-Giver lifestyle.

Another recent example of a lifestyle that is very close to the culture of Givers is the hacker culture. With this term, I do not refer to the type of criminal activity that breaks into computer systems to obtain data for nefarious uses, but the type of activity that tinkers, hacks into systems to learn, and creates solutions to problems. (For a more detailed explanation of this culture, please refer to the linked article, How to be a Hacker)
Often hackers are part of what is known as the Open Source Software Movement. Open Source Software is a type of computer software that is given freely to all users, and in addition, users can opt to modify and share any improvements back to the community of programmers. Linux, Java (to an extent), the Python programming language, Open Office, the PHP web programming language, Apache Web Servers and other backbones of the internet/computer industry are all free, open software packages that anyone can view and alter for their own use. Countless hours of difficult programming go into these projects and are given, freely, for the entire world to utilize. Many of these projects could be valued at millions or billions of dollars in terms of how useful they have been for the technology industry in the last decade. Open Software is a gift created by a networked group of individuals, who, in the process of creation, discover unique solutions for many difficult problems, and share their creations and discoveries freely with the world, at no charge. They support each other in their endeavors to learn, and often mentor and teach those with skills below their own, especially since they value any additional manpower they can get on the projects. Many programmers have learned extremely valuable programming practices by working on such projects, since many individuals, who are master programmers in their respective fields, give their knowledge openly and freely. This is practically identical to the values of the Giver Culture. It may not be as visibly exciting as the Burning Man festival, but it strikes much closer to what form the Giver Culture will start to take.

There are plenty of other examples: the scientific community, academia, NGOs, NPOs, charities, web-communities (such as Zaadz), web-sites (expertvillage.com, wikipedia.org, wikibooks.org etc.). These are all examples of groups of people who spend time sharing their knowledge, discovery and creativity with others. Instead of simply consuming, they are creating and sharing, often quite actively. As time passes, it seems that these types of organizations and groups are increasing in numbers. These people are forming a proto-Giver culture. As with many other cultures, it is often easier to interact with people who share a similar culture. People of similar cultures tend to clump together; again this is what seems to be occurring. A festival, such as the Burning Man, tends to attract people, such as scientists, artists, spiritual seekers, computer/hardware hackers, for they are starting to share a common culture—a culture of Giving. It is similar here in the community of Zaadz.

With large groups of likeminded people available, who are steps away from forming a true Giver Culture, what are the steps necessary to truly seed the beginnings of a culture that can help balance the uncontrolled growth of the Consumer/Taker culture? How can this culture be robust enough to survive harsh disasters, manmade or otherwise? I maintain that the simple acknowledgement of such a culture is possible an important step, for it would allow those who are Giver-spirited to identify with a cultural movement and seek others who are similar. Once the knowledge spreads, however, additional steps must be taken to solidify the culture, and to enable the members.

Since the Open Source Software movement is quite similar to the Giver Culture, it can be used as an example to find out what holds such a culture together. This software movement has gathered up a large enough group of likeminded individuals, and has remained stable enough to thrive and to continue enabling its members. Often the nature of working on a project together helps cement social bonds, especially after successful completion. A successfully completed project also serves to advertise to other potential members who may have been previously indecisive fence sitters.
So, following in the example of the Open Source Software movement, some of the key steps needed are as follows: A) Attract likeminded individuals, B) Immediately have these new members work on a project together, C) Repeat (hopefully on a larger scale).

So the first question should be, ‘How to attract proto-Givers?’ One method, is here on the internet, other methods could be by spreading the knowledge, word-of-mouth, or via pamphlet, flyer, booklet or presentation at Giver-like events such as Burning Man, or an Open Source Software project, at a university, at a fund-raising event as well as many others. New ideas and old ideas to spread knowledge could be explored. Newly declared members of the Giver Culture could write their own blog posts, and generate enough of a presence to warrant an entry by wikipedia, and possibly an article by a small magazine or newspaper. Virtual communities, such as Second Life, could also include a Giver Culture presence. There are countless ways to spread the knowledge far enough to attract those who are almost already Givers.

After a sizable number of Givers have been attracted our next question should be, “What kind of project do we have in mind?” I have two example projects in mind that I will share in this article. One is a completely hands-on project which requires a physical presence for all members. The other is a little closer to an Open Source Software project, with a physical presence only required for a few members. Both projects would be good for a burgeoning Giver Culture with only a limited membership roster to start with.

I will start with the more physical project; one method of solidifying a community of creative people who thirst after knowledge and discovery is to help build a place where creativity and learning can take place. Gathering up resources to build a center of learning could be a way of bringing together various members of the Giver culture. One idea I have had in mind, is to have various members learn alternative building methods, or to find an existing Giver who already knows an alternative building method (cob, adobe, strawbale etc), and who is willing to teach other Givers for free. Collectively purchase a property, and build a series of structures, as part of a lesson, on the premises. These structures can be used as a center of learning for Givers to meet, teach and learn. Givers can take turn sharing their knowledge with each other on various subjects (electricity, plumbing, carpentry, outdoor survival, pottery, physics, chemistry, Chinese etc). Those who take courses in construction, who may eventually teach or help teach such courses, can expand buildings, as they are needed. Such centers can be valuable places for Giver members to congregate, hold meetings and plan events. These centers can be temples to creativity and learning, holding the community together just as churches and temples hold religions together.

The second project would be a more ambitious project in scope, yet it holds more promise to expand the Giver Culture’s membership and influence. Like the first project, it has a heavy emphasis on education. Yet, unlike the first project, which is geared for Giver members only, this helps the Giver Culture to gain possible revenue, to be used for additional projects, as well as creating new members in countries around the world. This project would be educational software, but not the kind of educational software that we are currently familiar with, but a new, group-oriented software that teaches in an entirely new way. In today’s world, scientific education is increasingly important, yet in some developed countries, such as the United States, scientific studies are on a decline. Ironically, this lack of interest comes at a time when many scientific discoveries are being made, and our models and theories are becoming more accurate and detailed. At the very least, computer software can give people a general overview in the sciences, to rekindle interest, and to stimulate imaginations while simultaneously grounding people in practical knowledge.

With computer animation, we could give an eight year old (or even an eighty year old) an engaging interactive tour of the general basics of scientific knowledge in the span of a half-hour lesson. Starting, for example, at the Big-Bang, the animation could show the user a vision of the universe starting at the very large right down to the very small components of energy and matter. This could widen perspectives and whet appetites for discovering more about science. Too often, elementary scientific texts forget to give the student a wide perspective that allows all of the different faucets of scientific knowledge to make sense. In this design, the software would offer a very general, wide perspective, and proceed to fill in the various details afterwards. After each fifteen to thirty minute lesson, a multiplayer game would be presented, to teach some of the knowledge interactively, in a group setting. This software would not be for individuals, sitting at private terminals at home or in a computer lab. This software would be designed for a classroom setting, using a laptop and a projector ( I am currently creating some prototype lessons and games using this method, interested parties please email me for more details).

This software could start at an elementary level, and slowly work up into high-school and then undergraduate level software. The teacher/instructor would be able to control the software in real time, to realistically gauge the actual situation at hand. The software would not need to be limited to science, but could cover many topics, such as language, mathematics, history and others, eventually including all classes. Instructional videos and animated demonstrations would be followed up by fast, fun mini-games that reviewed the concepts at hand. (Match chemicals with their symbols, catch the correct falling equations, properly create a working electrical circuit to stop the ticking time bomb etc.) This software could measure a student’s progress and would tend to review/test on an individual level automatically tailored to each student.

This software would be sold to schools. Schools that use such software would have advantages over schools that did not, which would create a demand for schools with this software. Since the Giver Culture would collectively own such software, it could be used, internally for members to freely learn any subject we create. Another aspect of this project that could help expand membership, and help create new Givers, is to use such software to help educate people in impoverished areas. A volunteer Giver teacher, given a projector and a laptop, could go into impoverished areas, teaching people whatever useful lessons available. These people could be empowered by software that taught basic science and mathematics. Lessons geared towards survival techniques, health and hygiene and simple economics would also be helpful. Hopefully these people, after lifting themselves out of poverty, would become Givers, instead of new members of the Consumer Culture. Since education tends to lower birthrate, especially when women are educated, this may also help offset population growth rates in poor, developing nations.

Hopefully both projects could be created simultaneously, since any Giver center of learning could highly benefit from such software, and by having a center of learning, teachers could be found to provide the content for the software. Either of these options would help gather various Giver peoples from around the globe. By working on such projects, a greater camaraderie and shared culture would emerge. These projects would increase the visibility and capabilities of the Giver people. Givers would discover and create new artistic visions and scientific knowledge. This would help to empower our people even further, allowing our culture to thrive. Unlike the currently dominating Consumer/Taker culture, we would not be interested in consuming physical goods, but would instead be interested in consuming knowledge, and using such knowledge to make further discoveries, and create more wondrous visions. More projects would arise, and the Giver community would strengthen.

So, how to begin? We have already begun, and if any of you, reading this article, feel that you are, in spirit, a Giver, please let me know and we can find practical solutions to start bringing this culture together.

Our new evolution starts now.

Occasionally I am asked if I believe in God. Yet I find this is a tricky question. I am tempted to give one of three answers: yes, no or ‘kinda’. All three of them, however, do not seem to ring true, so I am often hesitant to give an answer. Often it depends on what the questioner is truly asking and that is often difficult to ascertain.

Unfortunately the word “God” is a very loaded word in our culture. It can mean many things to nearly every individual. People have colored this word in a myriad of different ways. It means something different to each religion, and even within each religion there are probably a number of differing interpretations depending on the individual. It is easy to see why this is so. In my earlier article “The Grand Unified Theos”, I wrote “God, Buddha, the Tao, or any other commonly sought archetype is the highest conceptual archetype ever realized.” Human beings, unable to imagine the infinite All, tend to partition such an archetype into a limited yet understandable idea of what God is. Since the infinite can be infinitely divided, one can clearly see how we have come up with so many conflicting understandings of God through such means.

I now maintain that I simply do not know what God is. I think that we are free to approach the question openly if we honestly acknowledge that our understanding of God is light years from any of our current conceptualizations. With an open mind and heart, we can begin the search earnestly without any prior projections to get tangled in. When we assume we know the answer, or even a part of it, we tend to stop progressing. This is very true in science, for example. In antiquity, by holding on to certain beliefs about the physical world, such as its flatness or its central position in the heavens, we were hindered in our progress. It was only when we approached the question with an open mind, without assuming we knew anything certain, were we able to make some enlightening discoveries. Could this same approach of honestly seeking with an open mind bring us closer to God? I think that it is a question that is, at the very least, something worth pursuing.

It can also be pursued by anyone. Unlike Science, which has progressed to such a state that new discoveries are hard (although not impossible) for the layman, this area is mostly new ground. Since it is such a monumental task, it would possibly be the best interests of our collective understanding that it was done by a large number of people. These people could seek their own path, finding out their own insights and matching these insights with other likeminded seekers. With open minds, they could come together for progressive discussions, instead of the classic bickering that is often associated with religious debate.

Being a seeker of truth is a core value of the Giver Culture. If most or all of humanity could become true seekers, we might uncover the mysteries of existence and beyond. If we could be free of relying on the rare and brave individual who comes along once every lifetime or so, perhaps humanity would become collectively enlightened, the understandings we would then have would be well beyond the limits of what we can currently imagine. Perhaps even, we would uncover a truer and more honest understanding of what God is.

This is a continuation of ideas presented in part 1, "The Giver Culture".

In this time in history, a number of dividing opinions exist regarding whether humanity is progressing towards an improved world or whether we are dooming ourselves (and countless other species).  Answering the question, "Are we doomed?" is a little more complex than offering a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

One group of people might suppose that we, as humanity, are fine.  Why add more complexity and divisions by creating yet another cultural branch of humanity?  This group may argue that science and technology will help solve our problems, that we are living in a Golden Age of humanity, and as we progress, current problems will be rendered meaningless, as some of our old problems were rendered meaningless by current advances. Another ultra-positive viewpoint heard in some circles—is the belief that humanity is on the brink of a spiritual revolution and that we will become collectively enlightened. (I’m personally hoping for this one, however I feel that we have much more progress to make before this happens.)

Yet these are others who tend to think that we on the verge of extinction due to an imminent and devastating environmental catastrophe.  They point out that our way of life is based on growth and consumerism—that this lifestyle the majority of us live is destroying the Earth.  Often technology is blamed. Sometimes human nature is blamed.  Either way, I seldom hear truly practical solutions presented.  A few solutions, such as the New Tribal movements, wish to turn the clock back to our pre-civilized past arguing that was the only time that human beings fit naturally into the circle of life.  It would take all of humanity, simultaneously in alignment to return to a Hunter-Gathering society—and it is obvious that is not going to happen any time soon, if ever.

So are we doomed to extinction or will we somehow transcend these problems?

When I was in my early twenties, I read an excellent book by Daniel Quinn that echoed some thoughts I had been having about the problems that civilized culture was facing.  Before I read this book, had been doing some science fiction story writing at the time and wrote a short story that hinted at two cultures of humanity that ended up living amongst the stars.  One culture was based from Earth, one was based from the colonists of Mars.  Each had opposing viewpoints on how to colonize the Galaxy.  The Terrans, having discovered faster-than-light travel before the Martians, were the first to discover planets with life outside our solar system.  They colonized these life-rich worlds.  The Martians, having created a life-rich world on the previously dead planet of Mars, skipped the life-filled worlds and gave life to dead worlds with potential.  In hindsight, the Terrans of my story were part of a Consumer Culture, based on the one that is dominant on Earth today.  The Martians were a Giver Culture, one that is just appearing on Earth now.

 (This was just a subtle background for a story, in which the Terrans finally face a sentient species.  These aliens viewed the Terran world snatching as sacrilegious—thus wordlessly declared war on them.)

Daniel Quinn’s book, Ishmael, allowed me to put this little science fiction back-story into a truer perspective.  It seemed to me that the Consumer Culture that Daniel Quinn talked about in this book (he calls it the Taker Culture), was truly a cultural anomaly, believing in unlimited growth and consumption, that would and could truly bring humanity and countless other species to the brink of extinction.  This book also widened my perspective by showing that, since we seem to view history as only existing when civilization appeared, we often forget that we existed for far longer without civilization. Countless other cultures preceded the rise of our Consumer Culture .  The Consumer Culture was not the only way humanity could live.  Ishmael never truly gave any solution besides stepping outside the Consumer/Taker culture to try to find a way to live.

With my Martian society, I realized that there could be another way for humanity to live.  I expanded the idea of the Giver culture, somewhat, for a science fiction novel that I had planned to write.  Eventually, however, I started to think that this culture should not be regulated to simply one of countless ideas in the world of speculative fiction, but should, instead, become a real way for humanity to live.

One thing I noted, after reading Ishmael, and thinking about these questions further, is that the Consumer/Taker Culture simply had to appear.  Take a time machine, for example, armed with a powerful ray gun.  Go back in time, and blast the initial Consumer/Taker cultural anomaly out of existence—before it had a chance to spread.  Would this solve the problem?  Is this cultural mess-up simply a one-chance wonder, or would it have appeared in a different form, at some other time, regardless?  I place a strong bet in the latter.

This brings me to branch of mathematics called Game Theory.  Many people have seen the movie or read the book, A Beautiful Mind, about a Nobel Prize winning game theorist, John Nash.  Many students of sociology and psychology are given a peek at Game Theory, by playing one of its most well known examples, Prisoner’s Dilemma.  Without going into many details (although some of the details in Game Theory are fascinating) Game Theory often deals with what is called Evolutionary Stable Strategies.  An Evolutionary Stable Strategy is a strategy, if adopted by a population, which prevents invasion from an alternate, competing strategy. In Ishmael, Danniel Quinn’s two major branches of human cultures are, the Takers (what I term as Consumers) and the Leavers, which are tribal, hunter-gathering oriented societies.  He shows that the early Leaver societies dominated human culture on Earth until some indeterminate point of time roughly around ten thousand years ago when the first Taker cultures appeared.  The Taker culture then systematically drove the neighboring Leaver societies into extinction, either by absorbing them, or by destroying them by waging wars for local resources. The reason the Taker lifestyle was more successful, at first, is that they waged war with any competing species to increase their food supply.  With an increased food supply, their population increased, forcing them to step up resource gathering—including more vigilant attempts to cut off any competition for their growing demands of food.  Eventually, in the present day, you can only find a handful of Leaver cultures.  Most humans live in Taker cultures, and we are nearing our limitations of this type of lifestyle.  The Taker Culture, in comparison to the Leaver Culture seems to be an Evolutionary Stable Strategy, at least until our resources run out.

The fact that the Taker Culture can only be a superior strategy when there are newly available resources, strongly hints that it is not a true Evolutionary Stable Strategy.  It is just simply one that has not run its full course. And if it is not, what alternate type of strategy could truly be a more stable solution?  Would this new idea of a Giver culture be closer to a true Evolutionary Stable Strategy?  Evidence exists that it might be so.

Richard Dawkins, the famed evolutionary biologist and science popular writer, wrote a chapter, in his critically acclaimed book, The Selfish Gene, titled ‘Nice Guys Finish First’.  He pointed out that game theorists have often shown that cooperative strategies beat out competitive or purely selfish strategies in the long term.  Although the Consumer/Taker Culture may seem, at first glance, to have strong elements of cooperation, it also has a very marked history of competition, especially when resources dwindle. Much evidence suggests that we are nearing a major problem, as the population explosion on Earth is accelerating, and resources are becoming increasingly harder to find.

This is where a Giver Culture may be a more stable strategy in the long term.  A Giver Culture, would have the technical know-how to create solutions to our problems.  Food could be grown with the most limited of resources using cutting-edge scientific knowledge.  Having high levels of education, especially amongst women, would prevent population growth.  To ensure that the Giver Culture grows in numbers, families would become larger partially through adoption.  As members of the Consumer/Taker culture grow beyond their ability to feed themselves, many of their children may be abandoned, just as what happens in famine stricken areas today.  The Giver Culture, a compassionate culture rooted in spirit of cooperation, would be a natural place for these abandoned children to turn.  A Giver Culture could also lessen the Consumer Culture’s resource thirst, by weaning them off the purchase of material goods somewhat, by the consumption of virtual entertainment and goods in their stead.  As energy costs spike, in response to global oil shortages, people will be unable to travel as often. Improved virtual worlds, evolved from today’s video games, combined with generations of new consumers, who are increasingly more computer-savvy, will help generate a large market for such goods.  Their social standings in these virtual worlds may slowly surpass their social standings in the real world (this is already happening).  A Giver Culture may take advantage of this by being the creators of the most premier content—since it is a culture where creativity is practically worshiped.  The profits of such creative endeavors can help to secure land that is protected against the machinations of the consumer lifestyle. 

So do we need a Giver Culture to survive?  Unfortunately the answer to that question is uncertain.  It has a good chance, however, of increasing our likelihood, as there is evidence that such a culture may be closer to a true Evolutionary Stable Strategy.  In the beginning of this article, I divided the question of whether humanity survives or thrives into two possible answers—‘yes’ or ‘no’.


But is that the most important question, whether we, as a species, survive?  Is life only about survival?  For many members of the Consumer/Taker society, it seems so.  The pinnacle of the consumer society is a comfortable existence.  In this modern age, we surely have almost mastered this goal, yet for most it is a very unsatisfying way to live.  In modern countries, where most people live a fairly comfortable existence, people are often left wondering whether there is anything more to life.  Many members of modern society are increasingly finding themselves to be depressed, lonely, anxious and with deep feelings of despair.  To choose a Giver Culture simply on survival, so that we may lessen our chances for extinction, is a choice based on fear.  Fear of extinction feels like an extension of the individual’s fear of death.  Living a life centered upon the fear of death is often a very poor choice.  Human beings grow and thrive on risk and experience, none of which can be had if the fear of death is too strong.  Likewise, the Giver Culture does not simply exist so that we may stave of our own extinction.

The Giver Culture is necessary for humanity to raise the bar, for us to start living more authentically. It exists for us to find out exactly what are the limits to what we can know, experience, create, love, find, make.  What are humanity’s limits?  How can we find out what they are? A creative culture, such as the Giver Culture, would seek out the limits of these questions.  By exploring the inner and outer universe, we can find out what it truly means to exist.  This reason alone is why we need a Giver Culture.

For more on this subject, please read part 2, "Foundations of a Giver Culture"

"Like Shel Silverstein's concept of “The Giving Tree” there are aspects
of culture that are dedicated to giving rather than exploiting or
acquiring power.   Imagine an entire culture emerging from within the
belly of our narcissistic capitalism.  This culture is a culture of
giving, of selfless compassion and helping, not because we are of any
religion or law, but just because it is who we are. "


The quote above is a gift to this article, which is apt since this idea, itself, begins with a gift. Since this gift is a new culture for humanity—a Culture of Givers, this gift also contains the concept of a gift within itself.  Just as the seeds of life contain the ability to eventually create their own seeds of life. This culture is also a gift to Life, and since you are a being infused with the essence life, it is a gift to you. Like all gifts you may accept or reject it; it is your decision. Your have the right to decline it, or to receive it, to disbelieve it, to believe it. It is your choice—your freedom. Do with it what you will.

As this work is published, this Giver Culture already exists amongst us. Yet for now, we are small and fragile. It may be too early for our idea, just as democracy seemed premature in the fifth and sixth centuries when appeared in ancient Greece and India. Even so, those early democracies paved the way forward for more mature democracies, with checks and balances, universal suffrage, racial and gender equality and other enabling features allowing human beings to enjoy the greatest amount of freedom since the dawn of civilization. Like any new idea, our early culture of Givers holds the potential to be a seed that grows into a new way for humanity and life to interact. It offers the promise of undoing the damage that has been done to the Earth, of finding a new respectful relationship with the life on this planet, and as a way of creating, for ourselves, a world that is exciting, rewarding, new, beautiful and full of richness and freedom. This new culture exists, in part, to displace, but not replace, the Culture of Consumers that is currently dominating the planet; our goal is to cooperate with them, yet to limit the destruction that they are causing to the Earth. It proposes the eventual transformation of society—from a majority of takers to a majority of givers.

What is the Giver Culture?

One of the simplest explanations of a culture could be stated as a shared way of living. The Giver Culture is simply a framework for a way of living that heavily supports creativity and discovery. Composed of creators and seekers who share and give their creations and discoveries freely amongst others, our new culture celebrates our creativity, freely shares our discoveries, and wishes for our gifts to spread onwards. This sharing, of knowledge, art, inspiration and discovery, is an enabling force for all members of our culture, pushing the limits of what we can do and what we can know. Since it is an open culture, we allow and encourage all beings to join regardless of what is currently seen as gender, race, class or beliefs. As regards to beliefs, each member is encouraged to seek and create a customized belief and personal subculture, to try it and test it and alter it if necessary. This is ultimately a culture, not an ideology or a religion, and even more than most cultures, we are able to support a variety of ideas and beliefs—and even encourage and celebrate this diversity.

As members of the Giver Culture, we are more interested in expanding our knowledge and experience than acquiring material goods. Material goods are not shunned, but used simply for what they are and are shared whenever the opportunity arises. We come together, in centralized locations to learn and share knowledge. We seek knowledge anywhere we can, whether from their own members, or from members and institutions of the Consumer Culture, from direct experience, or from the dwindling populations of Hunter-Gatherer societies that still exist.

Our culture is also rooted in the laws of cooperation. It considers, as recent mathematics suggest, that generally cooperation is often a superior, more stable strategy to competition, especially in the long-term. Cooperation is encouraged, amongst ourselves, amongst other cultures and amongst life itself.

Givers wish to create more than they consume. Whether we create stories, paintings, ideas, music, poems, sculptures, connections, meditations, dances, teachings, structures, jokes, families, communities or many other forms, we create and share with whom we can. With members of the Consumer Culture, we do as members of the Consumer Culture already do, trading our creations for currency. In turn, we use currency to help better the world. Our finances are used to create films, books, games, software, scientific research, inventions, crafts, art, music and creative corporate entities to help produce goods, that contain low material costs, to be sold for a profit to consumers. Our profits are used to help buy and protect wildlife reserves that are given freely to the collective life on Earth.

The Giver Culture, through our sharing of resources, respect for other living things and cooperative spirit, tends to leave a small footprint on the Earth. We organize ourselves together to pool and share resources that do not need to be purchased by each individual. By doing so, we can use our time and money more wisely furthering our communities and ourselves. Since we use less of the Earth’s resources, the Giver lifestyle helps to lessen environmental destruction. It also allows for the possibility of more free time for each individual. Members of the Giver Culture can opt to work less to live well and spend the rest of our time creating, discovering, learning new skills and experiencing the beauty and richness of life.

In a more primordial, unorganized form, a Giver Culture is starting to emerge amongst some scientists, artists and engineers of this world. The scientific world is full of cases, in which great, valuable discoveries or inventions are given back to the world community. There have been many scientific breakthroughs, shared freely by those that made the discoveries that have resulted in many advances and technologies used daily. If counted, the sum of the riches that these advances have given us would be immeasurable. The inventions and discoveries of scientists are often ones that shape us the most, and although corporations privately hold many discoveries, there are many others that are freely given to the academic world. In the world of computer software, members of the Open Source Software Movement echo many of the key tenants of the Giver Culture. In this movement, programmers, testers, web designers, and artists, work together, cooperating to create software that is given to the world for free. From doing so, they gain experience, knowledge, friendships, connections, esteem and many other benefits. Even with such, non-monetary rewards, it is often found that their true calling is to create, to collaborate, to discover, to step up to new challenges and have fun in the process. Likewise, this is a calling that we adamantly share in.

Although there is no clear, compelling evidence that life, or the human experience, is endowed with any special purpose beyond simple survival, we, as creators and seekers, cannot idly accept this to be the final verdict. We, as creators, can give life a purpose: to seek and create ad infinity. It is not that we assert that this is life’s true purpose, we assume that, unless revealed, life may not have a purpose, yet we do not suppose that we are prevented from endowing life with our own created purpose. Since we continuously seek and discover, we are not prevented from discovering any possible purpose, if it truly exists. Even if a grand purpose to life does hold to be true, we would try to test and seek the entire depths of what that might mean to us.

For more on this subject, please read part 2,  "Why a Giver Culture?"

The Age of Reason

"Soon after I had published the pamphlet, Common Sense, in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion,"
Thomas Paine -The Age of Reason

One may argue that the Age of Enlightenment is not yet complete, for although the institutions of science, government, and economics have shaken of their pre-medieval structures, the institute of religion has not undergone any similar revolution. Since the beginnings of the Age of Enlightenment, science, government and economics have looked deeply within, and have been changed and improved by their self-introspection. It is easily imagined that if citizens were taken from the era of feudalism into the modern world, they would scarcely be able to understand how society operates and would be utterly bewildered by the workings of science. In all likelihood, they could easily find comfort in the fact that religion has been scarcely altered in the centuries following the Scientific Revolution. The question that this article presents is as follows: Is it possible for religion to undergo an equally transformational change?
It may be said that religion has evolved with the times and has made much progress. Clearly, religion has been forced to change to maintain its position in the modern world, but the changes are often the bare minimum. Unlike the changes that have befallen science, government and economics, the changes that individual religions made to survive did not generally promote unity. Science, government and economics have increasingly moved towards universal acceptance, and although they have not entirely succeeded, each decade that passes brings forth a tendency towards unification. Science is identical in every nation, governments are increasingly democratic and economics have largely developed a practical global organization based on the universal systems of supply and demand. By evolving through careful introspection, these institutes have allowed increased capabilities for its human citizens.
If religion could successfully undergo a revolution that sought out fundamental truths in a united, globally acceptable system we might find that the human experience would improve in ways that are simply unimaginable to the people of our times. Just as Nicolaus Copernicus could not have foreseen the epistemological revolution his theories helped to ignite, we would not be able to conceive of the eventual benefits of a spiritual revolution.

The Rise of Science

Of all of the changes that have swept over the planet, ones resulting from the so-called Scientific Revolution have had the greatest range and influence. The sweeping changes that this revolution brought allowed the people of the world to imagine that all human institutions could likewise reform. With these ideas in mind, bold attempts of transforming society have been in affect, changing the ways that groups, and individuals experience the world. Through the application of systematic doubt and empirical verification, the universe slowly revealed its secrets.
Before the application of empirical reason, science was more akin to religion; it was steeped in dogma, superstitions and absolute acceptance of Ptolemaic thought. Once the scientific method was developed, systematic testing revealed the fallacy of prior worldviews. The scientific method can be, at most, simplified into three parts.
1. Observation of Phenomenon: The experimenter views phenomenon, either directly or indirectly.
2. Hypothesis and Prediction: The experimenter finds a reason for this phenomenon and tries to find reasonable methods of predicting results based upon this hypothesis.
3. Experimentation and Repetition: The experimenter devises methods of making the predictions practical through experimentation. The experiment is repeated as often as possible thus proving or disproving the results.
Now this simplified method has many complex facets, not covered in this article, but the results of of the scientific method is clear. We live in a transformed world. Discoveries have shown us to the very beginnings of the universe, the fundamentals of matter and energy and the workings of life itself.
In the last few decades, physicists have been working hard at discovering a Grand Unified Theory in physics. This theory would help explain all physical phenomenon, and would have ramifications that would bleed into all other areas of science. It would represent the culmination of one of the greatest human adventures that has ever been attempted: the unraveling of the cosmos.

The Search for Truth

One aspect of science, that many are clearly aware of, is that science never contains the entire truth. Each discovery made helps to simultaneously clarify and abolish various tenets of scientific knowledge. The search for truth seems like an infinite quest from a reductionist standpoint. It is in this very dilemma that religion trumps science, for spiritual knowledge tends to come from a holistic view of nature. God, Buddha, the Tao, or any other commonly sought archetype is the highest conceptual archetype ever realized. The fact that many religions have developed throughout human history is a testament to the sheer difficulty of the human mind to completely fathom it. Each religion imagines their own understanding of the infinite and uses faith to bridge the gap. If faith could be replaced by using a system similar to the scientific method, would religion be transformed with the same level of success? Consider the following example of applying the scientific method to a religious question:
1. Observation of Phenomenon: We are complex creatures with intelligence, living in an infinitely complex universe. We, a part of the universe, have intelligence, awareness and consciousness, and therefore the universe has laws that govern the pattern of intelligence.
2. Hypothesis and Prediction: Our minds, also a part of the universe, are created by connections. Neurons communicate in an immensely complex pattern and the sum of that communication is our mind. The universe is also governed by connections. Particles (and perhaps superstrings) communicate in a likewise complex pattern, much of which is governed by laws and dimensions we do not currently understand. The sum of the universe is aware at a super-intelligent level. This is what we have called God. Our minds, the microcosm of the mind of God, are governed by laws of pattern. If we discover these laws that govern the pattern of intelligence we may find a similar set of laws in fundamental physics. This would highly suggest that the universe has intelligence, and would point to the existence of God.
3. Experimentation and Repetition: Create a workable artificial intelligence and compare its pattern of operation to the human mind. Compare patterns, and the laws that govern them, to the cutting-edge laws of physics to see whether there is any correlation.
Putting such a theory into practice would be extremely difficult, and it is uncertain whether such a theory would be successful. The challenge should not discourage any attempt, for discovering truths has seldom been easy and disproving such a theory is, in itself, valuable knowledge. It is not difficult to imagine that, if successfully proven, such a hypothesis would transform the spiritual quest of humanity. Such a discovery, or others like it, could develop into a unifying spiritual search, and may extend beyond humanity if we were to discover or create other intelligences. Would our traditional human religions be compatible with other minds in the universe? It is unlikely that such homo-centric religions would. A scientifically minded search that discovered the nature of mind, and of God would seem more compatible. Perhaps the culmination of such discoveries would be a great, universally accepted understanding of God: a Grand Unified Theos.