donderdag 17 oktober 2013

Don’t Trust Your Feelings: Somatics & the Pre/Trans Fallacy.

Photo via Dreaming in the deep south on Flickr Creative Commons

It’s easy for counselors, and the people we counsel, to get stuck in our heads.


Counseling as we know it originated as “the talking cure.” Over the generations, counselors have discovered how to use dialogue as a powerful medium for facilitating change in our clients. Even at its best, however, conversation can only get us so far. We are more than mere talking heads. In a tradition that has long been top-heavy, the growing prevalence of somatics has brought counseling back into balance, adding much needed weight to the body’s role in healing and growth. “Soma” is the body and body-oriented work takes us places talking never can, but just like mind-oriented work, it has significant limitations. For those of us in the world of counseling who strive to live fully embodied lives, somatics has seemed like such a godsend that we can fail to recognize its limits. A practice that was once top-heavy can instead become headless, too much talking and thinking tipping over to become too much sensing and  feeling. People get somatics-happy and lose their balance. This swing of the pendulum too far in the other direction happens when somatics supporters fall prey to a particular fallacy, elevating somatics to a transcendent position above the mind, instead of down below it where the body belongs. To understand how this fallacy, the pre/trans fallacy, grabs onto those of us who are proponents of somatics, we first have to take a moment to get embodied.


face disembodied 

Why Counseling Needs Somatics

Human beings are physical creatures. Everything we’ve ever experienced, we’ve experienced through our bodies. Despite our basic somatic nature, however, not all of us are equally embodied. Most of us were raised in disembodied communities that devalued inner knowledge, emotional development, and present-time awareness. For instance, how many people do you know who learned to breathe in kindergarten? Basic instruction in breathing can help people develop the ability to calm or energize themselves at will, to tolerate strong emotions and to stay rooted in the present moment. Nonetheless, we fail to teach our children how to take conscious control of their breathing. That kind of instruction doesn’t fit in a mostly-disembodied school system. Physical education exists in our schools, emphasizing important physical capacities such as strength, endurance and coordination, needed for competitive athletics, but it tends to leave out everything else: inner sensory awareness, subtle energetics, all the many relational aspects of embodiment and the embodied aspects of relationship. Embodiment, as a result, is underdeveloped in many of us and so, somatics can fill in a wide range of missing developmental capacities. When counselors develop somatic awareness, and when we teach it to our clients, it provides at least three massive benefits to the counseling process.

1. Trauma and emotional injury are not primarily cognitive experiences.
Emotional hurts live in the muscles of the body and in patterns of activation of the nervous and endocrine systems. Bypassing the content and meaning of emotional injury, and directly addressing its somatic roots instead, can make healing more efficient and more thorough.
2. The body provides numerous easy access points to the deeper levels of human experience.
Attention to gesture, posture, facial expressions, voice intonations and breathing allows us to attune to our clients’ inner experience. Directing our clients to strategically alter these non-verbal expressions, as well as working with movement, body symptoms, touch and other kinds of physical contact, provides a repertoire of powerful interventions to explore and alter a person’s inner world.
3. Teaching clients to track their “felt sense” experience, the constant stream of inner and outer sensations, opens them to learn essential somatic resources.
For instance, we can teach people to self soothe, to become more grounded or centered or empowered, to sense and establish boundaries, to identify their needs and tell when those needs have been met, to follow or inhibit impulses, to sense their connection with others and deepen that connection, etc.


All of these resources have strong somatic components.

Somatics opens up a new developmental world, especially to people who missed these developmental pieces growing up. It is akin to training a person who has never developed their mind in the arts of perception, memory, logic, language and lateral thinking. If you have been stuck in your life and stuck in your head, somatics can expand your world. If you have tried to work on yourself in counseling by thinking and talking, but failed to get where you wanted to go, somatics can be the vehicle that gets you there. If the head has been the problem, the body seems like the solution, but it isn’t. This is where the confusion begins. Rationality has its limits, especially when it comes to re-organizing a person’s inner experience, which is one of the basic goals of counseling. It seems that the way beyond these limits comes from embracing the non-rational, but it isn’t. Welcome to the pre/trans fallacy.

Somatics and The Pre/Trans Fallacy

The non-rational dimensions of human experience are divided into two categories: those which are below rationality on the ladder and those which are above it. We commit the pre/trans fallacy (a concept introduced by psycho-spiritual philosopher Ken Wilber) when we collapse the pre-rational and the trans-rational into a single non-rational heap. Somatics is the realm of the pre-rational. Enamored with their newfound somatic abilities, many counselors and the people they counsel elevate somatics to the realm of the trans-rational, assuming that because it is non-rational, somatics must belong up on the pedestal of spirituality and higher development. This gets them into trouble. To understand the origins of the trouble, a Wilberian-type diagram will help. Think of a person as a series of concentric spheres.


steve circles wilberian diagram


Each sphere includes everything within its nested spheres, and also transcends them. In the center is the body, where we begin: our physical, animal, biological nature, felt sense experience. The next level out is the emotions. Emotions include but transcend the body. Any time you’re feeling an emotion, you know what you’re feeling in part because of the sensations you have in your body, the physiological dimensions of the emotion. But emotions are more than just physical. The mind, the next level out, includes but transcends the body and emotions. We can focus our thoughts on body sensations and emotions; we can include the information we glean from our physical and emotional bodies in our thinking. But the mind is more than just physical and emotional. The witness is the next level out. If the mind is the mental organ, the witness is the spiritual organ. In fact, “spirit” could be included on this level, but I don’t want to lose my readers who are committed to a more mundane, secular perspective on the world, so I’m sticking with “witness.” You are able to witness your thoughts in the same way you can witness your sensations and emotions. Whatever is doing the witnessing therefore includes but transcends the mind. It is at this level that people are able to stop identifying with thoughts, feelings and sensations, recognizing they are more than all of these put together. These nested levels of human experience can also be divided into the pre-rational, the rational and the trans-rational.


pre-rational, the rational and the trans-rational


To understand the difference between pre-rational and trans-rational states, and why these states are sometimes confused, consider a couple of contrasts. One contrast is between merging and oneness. At the beginning of our lives, we have not yet developed a sense of separate self. We exist in a kind of primordial fusion with our mothers, both pre-rational and pre-personal. Everyone begins this way. Later on, well after we acquire a sense of self, there is a stage of spiritual development, which only some people reach, superficially similar to this early merged state. In this advanced stage, the illusory nature of the separation between what is perceived as self and what is perceived as other becomes more and more apparent, producing empathy, compassion and an experience of oneness with everything: both trans-rational and trans-personal. These two states, merging and oneness, are profoundly different. If you are caught up in a fused state of co-dependence with your romantic partner, boundary-less, unable to be happy unless they are, which of these two states do you imagine yourself to be in? I would bet you’re hanging out in the pre-rational. They’re not the same. Another contrast is between intuition and integration. People love their intuitions, but an intuition is really just a sense of something that you have without understanding where it came from. This lack of understanding is an indicator that we are talking about a pre-rational state, and intuition, as often as not, is just a synonym for felt sense experience. As a San Francisco resident, this is a good place for me to mention that early on, Ken Wilber referred to the pre/trans fallacy as “415 syndrome”, 415 being the area code of San Francisco. Here, perhaps more than anywhere, people revere intuition and other pre-rational forms of knowing as if they are states of spiritual attainment. Contrast this with someone who has integrated their somatic, emotional and rational development and who has attained a level of understanding that transcends these levels. Such a person might be able to offer a rapid, synergistic insight that superficially looks like felt sense intuition. When pressed, however, they would be able to back up and present the logical steps that led to their conclusion, demonstrating that higher faculties, not just the lower ones, contributed to the insight. These contrasts, between merging and oneness, and between intuition and integration, demonstrate common confusions between pre-rational and trans-rational states. Imagine what would happen if, instead of mere confusion, reverence for pre-rationality was codified into a system for living.


{Photo via Orla on bigstockphoto.com} 


Pitfalls of Somatics

Rediscovering the felt sense can be a revelation. All along, beneath the numbness or dissociation of disembodiment, the felt sense has been available as a constant stream of invaluable information. Uncovering this source of information makes all manner of things possible that weren’t before. For instance, someone who has struggled with indecision can now use the felt sense to help them evaluate their options. Some things feel wrong, others feel right; imagining taking one path leads to feelings matching those of poor decisions in the past, while imagining the other path leads to feelings like those that have accompanied times when life was better. As a person’s sensitivity deepens, these feelings provide ever more nuanced information about which path to take. This newfound sensitivity is so fascinating and exciting, that the person who develops it wants to use it for everything. Unfortunately, the felt sense is a terrible guide to making decisions. Sensations and emotions are constantly shifting and changing. Important decisions should never be based on sensations and emotions, but instead on something more stable. The felt sense provides a key source of information, one that should be integrated with other sources of information to result in a decision backed by sound thinking. However, if you’ve been over-analyzing decisions your whole life and getting nowhere, the felt sense feels like the way to come back to life, and it is. Following the felt sense will lead to greater aliveness, but integrating the felt sense with well-developed rationality will lead to more holistic and sustainable decisions. One strength of the somatics movement has been in the area of healthy, secure attachment. In cultural communities where the effects of violence and oppression are passed on from one generation to the next, which is pretty much all of them, our early relationships can be disrupted. This produces a population of people who struggle to form healthy, sustainable bonds. Relationships can feel unsafe, intimacy can produce anxiety and people can oscillate between codependency and isolation. A somatic approach to relationship counseling often helps people establish the sense of secure connection they missed out on early in life. For instance, someone who is unable to bond with a romantic partner can develop that capacity, learning how to sense their connection to someone and to strengthen that sense of connection. Imagine the relief that can come from deeply sensing your connection to someone and feeling safe with them, if you’ve never been able to sense that before. It can go far to solidify an unstable relationship. Unfortunately, the existence of a bond between two people should not be the determinant of whether they remain in a relationship. Bonding is a necessary but insufficient condition for a relationship. Determining whether a relationship makes sense occurs somewhere in the nexus of attachment, differentiation and a host of variables that determine relational compatibility and sustainability. A newfound ability to bond, however, is so powerful it can become a person’s primary guide to action, saving them from old forms of relational dissatisfaction, only to introduce them to new ones. Instead, the sense of connection, or lack thereof, needs to be reduced back down to a valuable source of information, but only one of many sources that need to be integrated to make relational decisions. Ultimately, the ability to create meaningful bonds of all kinds, most of them non-romantic, may be a trans-rational capacity. Such a capacity can never be developed without first filling in the missing developmental ability to attach to one person. Secure attachment is the root. Don’t confuse it with the whole tree. Somatics has been at the vanguard of trauma healing. Understanding of the physiology of shock and of overwhelm has led to somatic healing approaches. Clients can learn to slow down an otherwise overwhelming felt sense experience, to draw on learned somatic resources to make aversive feelings and memories more tolerable. Instead of getting overwhelmed or shutting down in response to traumatic memories, this slow approach, balancing challenging feelings with supportive resources, a bit at a time, allows people who have been badly hurt to release painful emotions and reorder their disorganized nervous systems  Even here, however, we need to remember that humans are not just bodies and emotions. The failure of analysis to produce healing has led many people to believe that it is only through the body that healing can happen. But remember, somatics just fills in missing, early developmental resources. While it is true that healing cannot happen without somatic resources, it is also true that healing cannot happen without including the dimension of meaning-making through which humans make sense of our worlds. Even if you help a person who has experienced abuse to metabolize their terror, to stop contracting or shutting down in the face of intimacy and to breathe deeply and sense their own power instead, they are still left with an entire ecology of faulty beliefs amassed over the years in which the trauma was locked in the body. Disentangling the beliefs (about whether people are trustworthy, about how vigilant they need to be, about whether it was their fault that they got hurt, etc.) will always still be necessary. Neither understanding alone nor somatics alone is enough. These levels need to be integrated for true healing to take place.


steve rocks 


Integrating Somatics with Higher Development

Filling in missing developmental capacities and strengthening weak ones is a primary activity of counseling. Acquiring a new developmental ability, like the tracking of felt sense experience or the ability to securely attach to someone, can change a person’s world dramatically. Somatics excels at helping people complete missing pieces of early development. Let us, however, let soma be soma and nothing more. It’s so exciting to get our bodies back, and it should be, but taking up permanent residence at the lower levels of human development will not help us to integrate the pre-rational with the rational. Until such an integration occurs, the worthy goal of trans-rational development will be beyond our reach. “You have to be somebody before you can be nobody.” Buddhist psychotherapist Jack Engler gave us this memorable sound bite. Higher development, and cultural evolution, requires that we transcend the flawed model of separate self. Like all developmental processes, this one requires steps in a particular order. To move through the world as an integrated person, you must develop a strong, stable sense of self. If you never developed basic somatic and emotional capacities, you’ll need these. If you never developed the capacity to think, you’ll need that too. A healthy ego and a strong sense of self requires embodiment, emotional self-awareness and clear thinking informed by the somatic and emotional levels of our experience. Integrating these three levels is a prerequisite to be able to go beyond them. With a strong sense of self as a stable foundation, a more complete model of being human can develop and a larger self can be born. Development never ends. Transcending rationality and becoming our larger selves, is a developmental goal many people never reach. Somatics helps us prepare the ground. Don’t confuse it with the sky.

dinsdag 15 oktober 2013

The Virus of Freedom




"This film will showcase a potential future we can each help truly
create together..."

Please receive this in the spirit it was given: Hope, Peace, Necessity and LOVE.

http://informationwarfareblog.com

Which Path Are YOU Currently Walking?
Wouldn't YOU Want To Go In The RIGHT Direction?
Can We Unite Under The Common Idea Of FREEDOM??




A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.
- George Gurdjeff



The trickster is an important archetype in the history of man. He is a god, yet he is not. He is the wise-fool. It is he, through his creations that destroy, points out the flaws in carefully constructed societies of man. He rebels against authority, pokes fun at the overly serious, creates convoluted schemes, that may or may not work, plays with the Laws of the Universe and is sometimes his own worst enemy. He exists to question, to cause us to question not accept things blindly. He appears when a way of thinking becomes outmoded needs to be torn down built anew. He is the Destroyer of Worlds at the same time the savior of us all.

- Ride The Spiral -

the only constant is change ; feel free to change your mind , choose a different future or a different past 


maandag 14 oktober 2013

We live in public




Are you free?

Of course you're not.

You have to go to work, have to make a living, have to consume, have to have, more, more, more. Have to stand in line to pay the bills, have to watch TV, have to have a break, have to be polite, have to visit your family, have to wear clothes, have to stop drinking, have to be on time, have to lose weight, have to live long and prosper. Because there are rules. Social and legislated, they envelope our existence, and make sure we're all living in a safe, healthy environment. You have to obey the rules. But what if someone were to remove all those rules. What if you could do whatever you wanted, and all food, alcohol, drugs and weapons would be available to you at all times. Hell, you wouldn't even have to wear clothes! That is what happens in this documentary. The result is a mind-blowing film, which is on everybody's lips.

Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance




Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance." Created between 1975 and 1982, this film was the debut of Godfrey Reggio as a film director and producer. The film is an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds: urban life and technology versus the environment. The musical score was composed by Philip Glass.
This full length documentary is visually arresting and possesses a clear, pro-environmental stance. Koyaanisqatsi is composed of nature imagery, manipulated in slow motion, double exposure or time lapse, juxtaposed with footage of humans' devastating environmental impact on the planet. The message of director Godfrey Reggio is clear: humans are destroying the planet, and all of human progress is pointlessly foolish.
KOYAANISQATSI attempts to reveal the beauty of the beast! We usually perceive our world, our way of living, as beautiful because there is nothing else to perceive. If one lives in this world, the globalized world of high technology, all one can see is one layer of commodity piled upon another. In our world the "original" is the proliferation of the standardized. Copies are copies of copies. There seems to be no ability to see beyond, to see that we have encased ourselves in an artificial environment that has remarkably replaced the original, nature itself. We do not live with nature any longer; we live above it, off of it as it were. Nature has become the resource to keep this artificial or new nature alive.
KOYAANISQATSI is not so much about something, nor does it have a specific meaning or value. KOYAANISQATSI is, after all, an animated object, an object in moving time, the meaning of which is up to the viewer. Art has no intrinsic meaning. This is its power, its mystery, and hence, its attraction. Art is free. It stimulates the viewer to insert their own meaning, their own value.
The film's role is to provoke, to raise questions that only the audience can answer. This is the highest value of any work of art, not predetermined meaning, but meaning gleaned from the experience of the encounter. The encounter is the interest, not the meaning. If meaning is the point, then propaganda and advertising is the form. So in the sense of art, the meaning of KOYAANISQATSI is whatever you wish to make of it.
This is its power :)





samsara



"Expanding on the themes they developed in Baraka (1992) and Chronos (1985), Samsara explores the wonders of our world from the mundane to the miraculous, looking into the unfathomable reaches of man’s spirituality and the human experience. Neither a traditional documentary nor a travelogue, Samsara takes the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation



Naqoyqatsi




Naqoyqatsi ("Life as War") arrived 14 years later, and this final chapter of the trilogy is undoubtedly the most forceful and provocative. It's essentially about the gradual decline in human language and rise of impersonal communication, virtual reality and "civilized violence". In retrospect, Naqoyqatsi now seems a little ahead of its time in some areas but other segments haven't aged as well. Blame the ever-changing landscape; enough time has passed since Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi that their glimpses of outdated technology seem quaintly charming, whereas some of this digitally modified stock footage feels more like student work. Perhaps this third and final chapter, which undoubtedly focuses more on technology and its sinister, rapid evolution, was slowly doomed by the very same reason for its existence. It's still a fine cinematic experience in its own right, but Naqoyqatsi is the least essential of the three. Or the most.


Powaqqatsi




Powaqqatsi is a Hopi word meaning "parasitic way of life" or "life in transition". While Koyaanisqatsi focused on modern life in industrial countries, Powaqqatsi, which similarly has no dialogue, focuses more on the conflict in third world countries between traditional ways of life and the new ways of life introduced with industrialization. As with Koyaanisqatsi and the third and final part of the 'Qatsi' trilogy, Naqoyqatsi, the film is strongly related to its soundtrack, written by Philip Glass. Here, human voices (especially children's and mainly from South America and Africa) appear more than in Koyaanisqatsi, in harmony with the film's message and images.


Powaqqatsi ("Life in Transformation") literally slows down our trip around the world, focusing more on the global effect of industrialization in third-world countries. It frequently makes more obvious allusions to spiritual imagery and, during some of the film's most memorable scenes, focuses our attention on the next generation of humanity and how they might adapt to the rapidly changing landscape (or not). Unlike its predecessor, Powaqqatsi includes footage primarily shot by Leonidas Zourdoumis and Graham Berry, as Ron Fricke had transitioned to directing like-minded films such as Chronos (1985) and Baraka (1992).


Chronos


In Greek mythology, Chronos is said to be the personification of time. Taking that into consideration, you might assume that this would be the longest of the films that Ron Fricke was involved with but actually the opposite is true. Chronos comes in at just under 45 minutes making it a short but sweet trip around some of the world's most beautiful man-made and geological structures.
For those looking for a longer trip as well as more to think about when the film is over, I highly recommend Powaqqatsi at 99 mins, Baraka at 96 mins, and Koyaanisqatsi at 87 mins - but you should probably skip Naqoyqatsi at 89 mins because its the weakest of the Qatsi trilogy. Whereas Naqoyqatsi's seizure inducing mechanical/digital messages drench the experience, Chronos is the exact opposite.
Chronos is sort of a Baraka "lite". This does not have the music of Philip Glass or the socio-political messages, but the beauty on display should make up for it. Additionally Fricke experiments with different exposures and filters (not seen in the other films) to create some striking effects. If you get the chance to see it, definitely take this one for a spin.
Fricke has a new film coming out soon (should be sometime this year) called Samsara which is a sequel to Baraka, and if that doesn't fill the gap you can check out Anima Mundi (by Reggio about animals), Microcosmos (about insects) and Atlantis (by Luc Besson) which is like a scuba dive.


Jules Verne - Prophet Of Science Fiction


He put a man on the Moon in the Victorian Era. He criticized the Internet…in 1863. Jules Verne is the ultimate futurist, with an uncanny ability to observe the world around him and tell us precisely where our trends and technology will take us next.
When Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon in 1969, he credited Jules Verne with inspiring the mission over a century earlier. In From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne not only prophesized that man would walk on the lunar surface, he outlined exactly how to do it…from a Florida launch pad to a Pacific Ocean splash down.
In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne presents Captain Nemo — an enigmatic science renegade who perfects the Holy Grail of energy — with a clean power source that converts water into fuel. The concept has long been considered the greatest of Verne's unfulfilled prophecies. That is, until now. Today, Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology is poised to one day replace fossil fuel as a means of producing clean, renewable energy.
Some sci-fi writers predict future inventions. Jules Verne prophesizes entire future eras. 1879's The Begum's Fortune darkly portends the horrors of the coming World Wars: weapons of mass destruction, chemical warfare, and the rise of a charismatic German madman bent on world domination. Verne's Paris in the 20th Century, written in 1863, nails the details of modern life: skyscrapers, television, Maglev trains, computers, and a culture preoccupied with the Internet.
From the center of the Earth to the surface of the Moon, the extraordinary sci-fi voyages of Jules Verne continue to inspire art, industry, culture, and technology with an enduring question: Where can science take us?

Philip K Dick

Philip K Dick - A Day in the Afterlife [1994 Documentary]


Philip K Dick: 1981 Interview - Philosophy and Theology

In this rare audio, Greg Rickman Interviews Philip K Dick about his studies and thoughts on philosophy and theology and about Dick's works. Some topics include simulated reality, causality's non-existence, the illuminati as god and as benign conspiracy theory, friendship with Robert Anton Wilson, Rosicrucianism and Parmenides, Jung and psychological projection, Dick's exegesis, the dream state and the unconscious, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, entropy and the will to survive, Greek myth and the god Pan, the works Ubik, Valis, Maze of Death, and a lot more.

  
Prophets of Science Fiction - Episode 2 - Philip K Dick

Prophets of Science Fiction hosted by Ridley Scott posits the science-fiction imaginings of the writers of the past are now becoming the science realities of our day. In this episode, Philip K Dick, whose many works have influenced or become major motion pictures, questions reality with Do Androids Dream Electronic Sheep (Blade Runner), Minority Report, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (Total Recall), A Scanner Darkly, Adjustment Team (Adjust Bureau) and many others.


Isaac Asimov’s 1964 Predictions About 2014 Are Frighteningly Accurate

In 1964, famed science fiction writer Isaac Asimov ventured a guess at what you might find if you set foot inside the 2014 World’s Fair. Using his gift for envisioning future technology, Asimov’s predictions from 50 years out are both stunningly accurate and perhaps a little bit depressing. Here’s a look at what he got right.

“One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better.”

"One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better."

“Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare “automeals,” heating water and converting it to coffee”

"Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare "automeals," heating water and converting it to coffee"

“Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing.”

"Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing."

“The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course”

"The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course"

“Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with “Robot-brains”

“Vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.”

“There will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface”

"There will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface"

“By 2014, only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a manned expedition will be in the works and in the 2014 Futurama will show a model of an elaborate Martian colony”

"By 2014, only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a manned expedition will be in the works and in the 2014 Futurama will show a model of an elaborate Martian colony"

Georgi Petrov/ Mars Foundation i.space.com

“For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections.”

"For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections."

“In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000”

"In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000"
I mean, it’s just some simple math but…NAILED IT.

“Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth”

"Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth"

“Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone.”

"Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone."

“In fact, one popular exhibit at the 2014 World’s Fair will be such a 3-D TV, built life-size, in which ballet performances will be seen.

"In fact, one popular exhibit at the 2014 World's Fair will be such a 3-D TV, built life-size, in which ballet performances will be seen.

“Part of the General Electric exhibit today consists of a school of the future in which such present realities as closed-circuit TV and programmed tapes aid the teaching process.”

"Part of the General Electric exhibit today consists of a school of the future in which such present realities as closed-circuit TV and programmed tapes aid the teaching process."
JOE BURBANK/ORLANDO SENTINEL / Via media.trb.com

“Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.”

“The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders.”

"The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders."

“Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom”

"Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom"

“The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.”

Isaac Asimov's 1964 Predictions About 2014 Are Frighteningly Accurate

“Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!”

It’s worth noting that, while quite impressive, Asimov didn’t get everything right. 2014 will most surely come and go without “jets of compressed air [that] will lift land vehicles off the highways.” He also predicted that the entire east coast from Boston to Washington would merge into one large mega city, which seems unlikely at this point in time. But perhaps the most telling (and disheartening) is Asimov’s inaccurate notion that we’d even have a World’s Fair in 2014. But still, pretty good!
-
Prophets of Science Fiction - Episode 5 - Isaac Asimov
Prophets of Science Fiction hosted by Ridley Scott posits the science-fiction imaginings of the writers of the past are now becoming the science realities of our day. In this episode, Isaac Asimov, one of, if not, the most prolific cross-discipline authors ever, recognizes that science fiction requires a technological leap, differentiates science fantasy as the physically impossible regardless the technology, creates the Three Laws of Robotics, introduces trans-humanism, and raises the question 'What makes us human?'.

Secrets in plain sight

Secrets In Plain Sight is an awe inspiring exploration of great art, architecture, and urban design which skillfully unveils an unlikely intersection of geometry, politics, numerical philosophy, religious mysticism, new physics, music, astronomy, and world history.
Exploring key monuments and their positions in Egypt, Stonehenge, Jerusalem, Rome, Paris, London, Edinburgh, Washington DC, New York, and San Francisco brings to light a secret obsession shared by pharaohs, philosophers and kings; templars and freemasons; great artists and architects; popes and presidents, spanning the whole of recorded history up to the present time.
As the series of videos reveals how profound ancient knowledge inherited from Egypt has been encoded in units of measurement, in famous works of art, in the design of major buildings, in the layout of city streets and public spaces, and in the precise placement of obelisks and other important monuments upon the Earth, the viewer is led to perceive an elegant harmonic system linking the human body with the architectural, urban, planetary, solar, and galactic scales.


New World Capitals

Preplanned cities designed as magical seals for controlling demons are on the rise. Are we witnessing the creation of the New World Order capitals?




war for water

Flow: For Love of Water (2008)

How did a handful of corporations steal our water?
Water is the very essence of life, sustaining every being on the planet. 'Flow' confronts the disturbing reality that our crucial resource is dwindling and greed just may be the cause.
Everyone is entitled to water as they are air. Water is fundamental to life. Farmers need water to grow their crops and animals. An economy needs water to grow.




Blue Gold - World Water Wars

Wars of the future will be fought over water as they are over oil today, as the source of human survival enters the global marketplace and political arena. Corporate giants, private investors, and corrupt governments vie for control of our dwindling supply, prompting protests, lawsuits, and revolutions from citizens fighting for the right to survive. Past civilizations have collapsed from poor water management. Can the human race survive?

here's an example

Libya and Egypt sit on a resource more valuable than oil, in that part of the world . . The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer , is a sea of fresh water , that has an invaluable value , on a continet as Africa . Gaddafi used much of the funds generated from oil to build the " Great Man Made River Project " ( GMMRP ) . The 4,000 Km long water pipeline barried underneath the desert . $ 25 Billion has already been invested into this project, and not one penny has came from the IMF or the World Bank. In other words Gaddafi didnt allow his people to fall into debt, from there would be no way out and Guess who didnt like that ? Scientist estimate that there is an equivalant of 200 - 1,000 years of fresh water flowing down the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer . This Pipeline and Aquifer has been owned by the libyan people and not by Veolia , Suez Ondeo or Saur , the French companies who control more than 40% of the worlds water market . Remember Which Country Was The Fastest to Attack Libya?

Libyan War Is For Water - NOT Oil - Largest Fossil Water Reserve  


  
Great Man made River Project Libya 



Collecting rainwater now illegal in many states as Big Government claims ownership over our water
(NaturalNews) Many of the freedoms we enjoy here in the U.S. are quickly eroding as the nation transforms from the land of the free into the land of the enslaved, but what I'm about to share with you takes the assault on our freedoms to a whole new level. You may not be aware of this, but many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else.

As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from "diverting" water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use.

Check out this YouTube video of a news report out of Salt Lake City, Utah, about the issue. It's illegal in Utah to divert rainwater without a valid water right, and Mark Miller of Mark Miller Toyota, found this out the hard way.

After constructing a large rainwater collection system at his new dealership to use for washing new cars, Miller found out that the project was actually an "unlawful diversion of rainwater." Even though it makes logical conservation sense to collect rainwater for this type of use since rain is scarce in Utah, it's still considered a violation of water rights which apparently belong exclusively to Utah's various government bodies.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/029286_rainwater_collection_water.html#i...



The Great Culling: Our Water Official




The Story of Bottled Water




The Foods That Make Billions - Liquid Gold