I’m just halfway through the Big TOE Trilogy, and this is my first visit and my first post here. I’m surprised with this thread because it seems to portray a little picture view. I take Mr. Campbell as one who hovers above the political fray; observing the political reality without being actively involved in it. I may be wrong in this opinion, so forgive me if my impression has yet to mature in this respect.

Montana wondered early in the thread (I read only the first whole page) why no one with a past life had commented. I may be the first one to do it, so here goes:

My previous life, as far as I can tell, occurred approximately 5oo years in our future. Although my memory of the future is fuzzy, it is improving every day. My human purpose this time around is to observe. Whatever efforts I make to alter the trajectory of the present has, and will have, no effect because almost no one ever listens to those from the future; they can hear the words, but they don’t understand them. At times when someone with charisma tries to alter the trajectory of human civilization shit like the three desert religions result in a spiritual plague upon humanity. Even if the motive of that charismatic individual could have been pure, just look at the outcome it produced! Millions and millions of innocent people murdered! I think Mr. Campbell would understand what I’m saying but I doubt that anyone in this thread will.

Humanity needs a cold reboot—power off, wait thirty seconds, power on. Without such a cold stop and restart, the current operating system will just keep crashing more and more frequently. Or maybe humanity needs a total wipe with a clean upgrade to Consciousness OS 6.0. In either case the ideology of the republicans will get us there more quickly, because they seem better able to create the critical instability necessary to continue and even exacerbate such a cycle. The sooner the shut down begins, the more of Earths resources can be saved for the survivors who will have OS 6.0 installed and operating smoothly. So, if I were to vote (which I never have) it might be for the party who can crash the system more quickly, and at the moment that appears to be the Republican Party.

Chaos leads to stability and stability leads to chaos. The comfortable stability of the industrial revolution is naturally heading toward an uncomfortable state of chaos. Clamoring for democratic change will only delay the increasing chaos for a short period of time and result in fewer remaining resources for our great, great, great grand children to put to better use than our consciousness 5.0 OS is capable of doing.

The increasing intensity of chaos cannot be prevented and perhaps it should not be delayed any further. Unless its delay will deepen the eventual effect of the chaos for the benefit of the survivors, in which case those who vote democratic would have a point. Delay the chaos and thereby increase the potential of its devastating effect.

Do you see what I’m trying to say? Perhaps a more rapid republican kick over the cliff is better for future generations because of resource preservation. And perhaps the delay tactics of democrats will give our inevitable fall into the abyss more gravity and therefore a more permanent beneficial effect. The thing is, I still can’t remember which one was better from the perspective of my former life in the future. Therefore, from a big picture perspective, I wouldn’t know which choice to make if I were to vote in a presidential election.

Does Mr. Vollers know which path is the better one to take? Is his memory of the future better than mine? If so, then perhaps he should enlighten us all?

It’s funny how I continue to place comments like this one on the Internet even though I know that no one can hear me…

Hah!

Delightfully wild first post Leon! </raises hat> Welcome aboard! </hat>

You know, I woke up a couple three days ago thinking how we (humans and the world in general) would have been so much better off now if there had been a minor, but substantial, nuclear conflagration back in the fifties. (Although the proposition would be hard to defend rationally, as they had by then developed fusion bombs, which were of an absurd strength.... see youtube files on this, if anyone is interested.)

Anyways, nice to have someone here that doesn't feel compelled to pull punches, while throwing them diplomatically.

Yes, this is a small picture topic ... but, to contra-contextualize it, philosophy or grand models that do not grapple with experienced real life issues is/are a recreational undertaking, at best. So we do that and share. These boards can be thought of as a group meditation ... just like personal meditation, for most of us, there is a lot of noise and static. The direction of the vector is set, if not the length.

-Montana

Welcome to Tom's MBT discussion forums Leon Night. You would do better to try and drop making so many assumptions. Ted is discussing this is the forum that developed into one for anything not Tom.

Tom probably wouldn't touch your three desert religions comment but I will and I agree, but again you make a wrong probabilistic assumption.

"Humanity" already has rebooted probably several times. But the US politics is NOT humanity even though they may think they are. When this VR reboot the goodies are all restocked, don't worry.

Welcome again. Keep reading. :)
Love to you and yours,
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Hi Leon, welcome to this forum.

When you read further in MBT you should learn that the future only exists as probability, there can as such only be memories of the probable future database. It's not uncommon for people to stumble into that database and confuse it with an actual reality, the same with the historical database.

I think your possible course of action, that is to crash the system intentionally, is misguided. That chaos is about to win over order (I'm certainly not saying it is) is never a reason to join it, then you would be a part of the problem as well. Focus on the present moment and your interactions with others, to prioritize "resources" for future generations is taking it all backwards. You are here, now. Deal with it as it is, in the best way you can. Even more important, your chaos scenario is not inevitable. People are still making free will choices, and as long there are free will choices, there is a potential for improvement.

In one of the early (captain Kirk era) Star Trek episodes, the intrepid leadership team got flung back in time to a pre-nazi era America. Kirk fell in love with a peace-making social worker. It turned out that if he had saved her from getting run over by a car, she would have ultimately prevented America from entering that war for a time, with the result that the Nazis would have won it, and come to rule to the planet. It was Bones, I recall, that intervened, and prevented Kirk from saving the woman.

Science Fiction, of course. But it does demonstrate harshly that sometimes a dose of what anyone would call "bad" can be relatively "good" in the larger picture.

I should probably add that I don't necessarily like this fact. The phenomenal world is a pesky set of propositions altogether, IMO, and that fits right in.

-Montana

Leon,

This is the 'Wud I Say?' forum and politics can be referred to here as well as other significant topics that are unrelated to the purpose of the bulletin board. Welcome aboard.

While you may feel that you are from the future, you are unlikely to convince me of that as the future exists only as probability in the MBT model of reality. You can visit that data base and form impressions of what is to possibly occur but you will not see absolutely what is to occur. As probability, it is open to change. This question has been discussed here before and Tom has described views of the future when he was working with Robert Monroe in the early exploratory work. What they saw didn't happen quite as seen. Things were put off until later and then further modified.

Tom would not post this thread's original material perhaps, but I am not Tom. I have some concern that intelligent and aware persons, like those on these forums, will throw up their hands at politics and politicians leading to increased probability of bad outcomes by their inattention, inaction and failure to vote. Even in a mass die back, we would not have a 'reboot' as you think. The 'new humans' will not be of an advanced new model with improved thinking. You do not understand the concept of a Virtual Reality as yet with our participating here based upon our existence as minds/consciousnesses existing in Consciousness Space. Those same minds/consciousnesses, IUOCs as we refer to them as an acronym for Individuated Units of Consciousness, would be back without significant change. They would be no more nor no less functional than they had developed themselves so far. There are no step function changes of this nature. That is a strictly New Age concept and no part of Tom Campbell's My Big TOE. This is a kindergarten level world of many relative beginners and that sets the level of functionality for the whole as the lowest common denominator. Change and development into an adult is hard won and a long term effort through many reincarnations.

Life will be difficult into the coming decades without attempting to make it worse. We should be instead trying to make it better as fitting with the purpose of the existence of this VR which is to provide an opportunity for interacting with the VR physicality and others on the best possible basis. Keeping in mind the free will rights of all, optimized as we best can. Assisting or thinking that we should assist in creating crises and disasters is in no part within the intent. This VR provides rapid and intense feedback relative to our interactions with others. These factors are how it works and it is considered to work well in this way.

Your ideas of the future will not be accepted here, not because we cannot understand you but rather that we see the errors in thinking that you do come from the future as opposed to perhaps having had a glimpse of the possible future.

Ted

We might consider our ideas of just what "the future" are.

It might be, for any particular form or set of forms, the set of possible progressions of events.

OTOH, mystics seem nearly at one on the statement: "There is no time, there is only Now."

I personally cannot discount the idea of reincarnating in the past, or a realm indistinguishable from the past, and so can neither categorically make any such judgment about the possiblity of future incarnations.

And, for me at least, it seems that The Belief System Busters are always laying in wait for me to even think of believing something as The Unassailable Truth: Just a couple three days ago, the speed of light got popped.

-Montana

For me, Tom's model is the map of the territory. Things may not be precisely to any specific term or description of that model and that has been extensively discussed. Extensions have been made to that model by Tom on this board and even to some extent by myself. We hope for more improvements into the future. By that map, once the past is past, it is past. You can visit and poke around there but you cannot go there to incarnate any more than you can go to the future and incarnate there, other than by waiting for its advance to become now. You can go to the past and the future and experience 'what if' scenario's within your ability or within the system's willingness to indulge you. Just like you can go OOB or to NPMR and poke around. Where do you have the system connect your immediate address for your incoming experience and outgoing interaction? In a very real sense, there is only NOW as an advancing 'plane' of reality cells advances system state by system state in one direction only. But you can travel either way, past or future, in terms of where your data stream is connected. You can however only BE NOW. That is the now of your IUOC as it exists within the Consciousness System at its base. What it experiences is as Bette likes to say, only data.

Ted

The world is so screwed up. Global economic collapse could well be underway. The stock charts look horrid and Europe hangs on a knife edge and US politics is going crazy.

It's like a bad re-run of the 30's, except our societies have limited redundancy and mechanisms to cope with a decline in complexity and an increase in chaos.

What's gonna happen? Probably lots of fascism and war.

Can we launch a complaints box about this in NPMR?

They have access to the probable future data base there in NPMR. Why do you think that this project to change the paradigm of our world society was started many decades back. It is not just Tom Campbell. He is just the cutting edge. All through physics and science in general individual researchers are coming up against a need for consideration of the operations of Consciousness to explain things within their disciplines in recent research. There are many notes here on such although far from a comprehensive coverage. And by no means do they, the individual researchers, know that they are part of a plan from NPMR. And of course I don't know that. It is just so easy to trip over that it seems certain and Tom has not corrected me when I comment about it. How else would you explain it? Is it being done in time? Will the world yet survive to struggle on another day? Stay tuned tomorrow for another exciting episode of the "Perils of Pauline" as the world turns.

In the meantime, I write my Congressmen and the Congressional management and the President pointing out what idiots they are not to get the rational Republicans together with the rational Democrats to sit down at the table with President Obama as the adults in the room and figure out how to govern the US rationally and put muzzles and leashes on the Tea Party ideologues. As a little old man ranting on, equivalent to the proverbial little old lady in tennis shoes, I have no clue to whether anyone other than the junior file clerk in charge of emptying the trash, both paper and digital, ever sees what I send. But I find that preferable to doing nothing.

Ted

Thanks for saying “hello”.

Here’s my tentative definition of the words “the future” in the context of my writing: “Possible scenarios I’ve extrapolated from my current knowledge of past and present event streams as viewed in their larger contexts, which I consider to be more likely compared to those of other people I’ve read about or have spoken to.” Here’s a definition for the words “I am from” in the context of my writing: “I enjoy thinking about.” So “I am from the future” is like saying: “I enjoy thinking about possible scenarios I’ve extrapolated from my current knowledge of past and present event streams as viewed in their larger contexts, which I consider to be more likely compared to those of other people I’ve read about or have spoken to.” I am from the future, is just a lot easier to say.

It also immediately separates those whose thinking has become stagnant from those whose streams of thinking still flow sweet and clear. The Jesus of the Bible was said to have done something similar by making statements that would have seemed blasphemous. Many were immediately turned off, but there were always a few who would say, “What do you mean by that?” These were “the children”; the curious of mind and spirit who his message was essentially directed toward. If anyone asks me, “what do you mean by that?” I’ll be happy to attempt an explanation.

Words are an inadequate means by which to describe the ineffable. I do the best I can with them.

500 years is just an arbitrary placeholder that I use as a reference point along this vast expanse of time. Some people like to understand the present from the perspective of the past. (History repeats, etc.). That’s fun, but I also like to study the present from the perspective of "the future” (as defined above).

What I was attempting to convey by my comment is that I take a zoomed-out view of politics, which I assumed Mr. Campbell does also. I compare the current state of world politics to the history of the government of Rome in the final months of its decline and demise. I think that if I lived back then I would have been able to plot its demise given examples of the rise and fall of governments that had existed prior to it. The fall of Rome was just as inevitable as is the fall of the current world’s governing bodies. In my opinion they are all small-picture projects that will be replaced by other small-picture projects.

In the future, the American Empire will have the same influence upon the world that the Roman Empire has upon us today. Therefore, in my opinion, those who are engaged in helping to stabilize the current system of the world’s governments will be just as unsuccessful in doing so as those who had helped to stabilize the Roman governmental system. The enduring legacy from the efforts of Americans today will be just as ineffectual as the efforts of Romans were back then.

That is, of course the macro view. The dilemma with the micro view is: How do I know if my personal involvement in politics today helps individuals, or hurts them? It seems to me that any position helps some and hurts others. Since this appears to be the case, and since I tend to take the macro view of it all anyway, doing nothing neither helps nor hurts, and that is what I have chosen to do.

While I personally think that the decline of the world’s governments should (and probably will) continue apace, I am no more inclined to work toward this demise than to work toward its survival, because I don’t really know which position will help or hurt future generations. Bette seems to believe that after the reboot, “the goodies are all restocked”. Perhaps, in geologic and in evolutionary terms, she is correct. But the richer the soil, the cleaner the air, and the purer the water those future generations have available after the collapse of this system, the better.

So, anyway, thanks again for your warm and enthusiastic welcome. I’ll be looking at some of the other threads here, so don’t be put off if I don’t come back to this one too often.

Shine!

This type of faulty logic is employed also by millenialists (e.g. Left Behind rapturists), Nazis and Stalinists, and people like Glenn Beck who think that humanity is fundamentally flawed. The idea is that the majority of humanity is rotten, so we need some catastrophe to do away with the rotten bunch, then we will be left with the "good" people who will do the right thing, and we'll have heaven on earth.

If you accept the premises of MBT, the current state of humanity owes to the fact that there is lots of low quality consciousness here. So did the system make a mistake by flooding us with low quality beings? Or is the mistake a result of the failure of free-will to make wise choices? If you select the latter, you're behaving like the groups I named above.

Are you sure your "zoomed out" prescience is adequately informed so as to advocate hastening the collapse of modern civilization?

_________________
Everything is simpler than we can imagine, at the same time more complex and intertwined than can be comprehended--Goethe, Maxims & Reflections

That IS one of the first BIG lies, that we are "bad" and it is one of the lies I am working on eradicating from as many people's Reality as I can.

It's like a humanity wide spousal/parental/societal abuse method of making the other feel like they are bad to make them controllable called "religion."
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

s.lareck,

You are correct. The present state of PMR is related to the fact that this is a kindergarten level VR with lots of low quality, i. e. high entropy, beginners, here for refinement of their digital consciousness through the gradual process of incarnation. This is exactly how this VR is designed to work. It is not a mistake by the CS in overloading us with newcomers and is nothing at all new. We gain nothing from a mass setback of population, although that may yet come. My purpose in starting this thread was to promote proper interaction. To encourage those who are functional and capable to act to preserve the free will of those who cannot so protect themselves. Also to protect their own freedom by interacting with knowledge of what is happening so that they not just throw up their hands and say 'those politicians' and don't bother to vote. That will not be an interaction that will preserve your own free will.

Ted

Here is an interesting article.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/h ... obama.html

"...This “we” of Friedman’s, the “we” that more or less shares that three-point agenda, includes, besides Friedman himself, President Obama, the vast bulk of Democratic senators and representatives, and the great majority of economists not employed by the Heritage Foundation. It emphatically does not include the “Tea Party” right and its cowed auxiliary, the Republican Party.

The members of this group believe (or claim to believe) that “short-term jobs stimulus” is wrong in principle, does not work in practice, has already been tried, and has been shown to make things worse, not better. They believe that federal spending should be cut right now, especially spending on things that inject money directly into the economic bloodstream—things like extending support for the unemployed, giving aid to the states so they don’t have to fire cops and teachers, and employing construction workers on projects that don’t require shovels, such as repairing schoolhouses. They believe that poor people are undertaxed: in their view, it’s outrageous that the poorest of the working poor don’t pay income tax. Of course, Republicans might be willing to “compromise” by agreeing to cut taxes on the rich. That’s the one thing they’re always willing to do, no matter what the condition of the economy.

Obama has proved over and over, as in the debt-limit horror show, that he is willing—all too willing—to compromise. The Republicans have proved that they are not. They are re-proving it at the moment by again threatening a government shutdown, this time by holding disaster relief hostage."

This section is from somewhere near the middle...

Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.