The Waking Trance

Human consciousness is an odd pickle. We all experience it every waking day, but no one understands it well enough to build a good imitation. What are we missing?

Quite a lot, actually. For example, why are we so changeable from day to day or moment to moment? Is it possible that much of what we call ordinary consciousness is simply the slipping from one state of automatic trance into another?

Let's try to define "trance:"

To many psychologists a trance is a state of limited awareness. Some psychologists would also characterize trance as a form of sleep, or dreamlike awareness or a kind of altered state of consciousness.

... it is relatively easy to hypnotize a person and to keep that person in a trance state without their being aware that they are in fact in a trance. The technique of pacing and leading a subject from a rich or varied set of thoughts to a limited or impoverished set of thoughts is a technique used consciously by hypnotists, advertisers, sales people, preachers and politicians.

...how can you tell if you are in one of these ordinary, unconscious trances? You are in a trance when your attention is limited and there is a certain repetition of thoughts. In an extreme case, your attention is so limited that it feels like "tunnel vision."... Concentration, when the mind is focused on a specific problem or thought, is also a form of trance. You could characterize trance cybernetically as an awareness loop, or a circular flow of consciousness. _Unconscious Trance

Most of us spend most of our time in one type of trance or another. Even the experience of unconscious mastery is a type of trance.

In general this is fine, if we are in control of which trance we choose to be immersed within -- and if we can exit the trance whenever we wanted.

Almost every human being on Earth will revert back to what is known as "the consensual trance," the limited world of the particular social consensus within which the person happens to be immersed. It is a trance into which we are born and to which we are conditioned. Later, when we enter -- or are close to -- adulthood, we may be presented with a choice as to whether we wish to move into a different consensual trance. Very few discover the ability to experience large portions of their lives outside of the consensual trance. Even fewer make the choice to step outside the consensual trance into a greater freedom of the mind.


It is possible to move other persons into a trance, shift them from one trance state to another, or to help them emerge -- temporarily -- from a typical trance state. It is worth learning how to manipulate other persons' trance experiences in order to better apprehend when someone is attempting to do the same to you, typically in an attempt to enlist you into some kind of mass movement or ideology:

1. Build Rapport with the Listener

Your first task is to gain rapport with the listener. Rapport is simply put that feeling of connection and trust between two people. It doesn’t have to be too deep. You already have a rapport with your friends, parents and others. You can easily gain rapport with other people just by making compliment, laughing at their jokes etc.

2. Switch off the Critical Mind

After building rapport, you can now use covert hypnosis techniques to switch off the critical mind of the listener.

One of the ways to do this is to use the words “Imagine”, “What if” etc. When you use these words, the critical mind immediately shuts off, thus making the imagination work. This is very important, because we are only doing the things that we could imagine before, so invoking the mind’s eye of the listener will help you to send commands to his (her) subconscious.

3. Make Irresistible Hypnotic Commands

After bypassing the critical mind of the listener, you can now make your irresistible commands and describe the things you want a person to do.

Covert hypnosis is that simple. In covert hypnosis, your success will depend on the depth of rapport, your hypnotic language and how you follow the covert hypnosis technology. _Covert Hypnosis

It is no accident that these are simultaneously the tools of sexual seduction, religious conversion, and political enlistment and indoctrination. These are tools that are used in government and religious school classes, sports team pep talks, pick-up bars, cathedrals and mosques, clubs, associations, gangs, and mass movements of all kinds.

The tools of conversational trance manipulation have been perfected by ethical persons such as Milton Erickson, and by unethical persons such as your charismatic politician of choice.

But no one needs to put you into a trance. You do that every day, all by yourself. It is possible to go through days, weeks, months, and years without ever truly emerging from the waking trance, the consensual trance. In general, the possibility that one may emerge from such a trance is so disturbing that it can lead to psychic trauma, drug addiction, membership in a cult, or worse.

But just in case one wished to experience a different state of existence, how would he go about emerging from the waking, consensual trance?

How can anybody distinguish, then, between dream, hypnotic trance, and reality? Dehypnotization, the procedure of breaking out of the normal human state of awareness, according to both mystics and hypnotists, is a matter of direct mental experience. The method can be learned... _Howard Rheingold on Charles Tart

Maybe, maybe not. A lot depends upon the person's experience up to the point when he tries to break free. If the person were raised to be a dangerous child, he will likely have already learned ways of breaking out of the consensual trance -- at least temporarily, for specific purposes. But if the person were raised to be a psychological neotenate -- like most modern children -- his chances of learning to break free of the waking consensus will depend upon his strength of character and his motivation.

Human societies are moving toward a point where it becomes more crucial for persons to wake up. Whether this will involve waking up into yet a higher trance, or waking up outside of trance altogether, may be more a matter of semantics than we would like to think.

If a person wants you to "wake up" to his way of thinking, that is a clue that he wants you to share his trance. This is a typical experience for university students in the modern classroom of indoctrination, and for consumers of mainstream media news and commentary.

But if you want to wake up outside the consensual trance -- and perhaps into your own trance -- you will need to do some creative thinking and experimenting.

If it seems like I am trying to "dumb down" and generalise the definition of trance to the point that it encompasses all experience and consciousness, that is not my intent. I am leaving room for several types of consciousness outside of trance states.

But it takes work to reach them, and even more work to stay in them for any appreciable period of time.

Most people will never wake from the consensual trance, and that is just how they want it. But as push comes to shove, and shove comes to strike, someone will have to devise some workable alternatives. Hopefully, at least some of these alternatives will involve a larger scale emergence from the limited consensus.

The Unbearable Lightness of Constructive Change

Is there anything about yourself or your life that you've been wanting to change, but somehow just cannot get enough willpower together to make the change? You may be going about it the wrong way. Psychologist Ibrahim Senay of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign looked at the difference between "willfulness and willingness", or the difference between "making it happen" and "letting it happen."

In twelve step programs, for example, participants must admit that they cannot make the needed change by themselves, and must be willing to let a "higher power" assist them in changing. The approach has worked for atheists and believers alike, for good reason, if the person is willing to let go, and let constructive change happen to him.

It’s a tricky concept for many and must be taken on faith. But now there may be science to back it up. Psychologist Ibrahim Senay of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign figured out an intriguing way to create a laboratory version of both willfulness and willingness—and to explore possible connections to intention, motivation and goal-directed actions. In short, he identified some key traits needed not only for long-term abstinence but for any personal objective, from losing weight to learning to play guitar.

...Here is how Senay tested this notion. He had a group of volunteers work on a series of anagrams—changing the word “sauce” to “cause,” for example, or “when” to “hewn.” But before starting this task, half the volunteers were told to contemplate whether they would work on anagrams, while the others simply thought about the fact that they would be doing anagrams in a few minutes. The difference is subtle, but the former were basically putting their mind into wondering mode, while the latter were asserting themselves and their will. It is the difference between “Will I do this?” and “I will do this.”

The results were provocative. People with wondering minds completed significantly more anagrams than did those with willful minds. In other words, the people who kept their minds open were more goal-directed and more motivated than those who declared their objective to themselves.

These findings are counterintuitive. Think about it. Why would asserting one’s intentions undermine rather than advance a stated goal? Perhaps, Senay hypothesized, it is because questions by their nature speak to possibility and freedom of choice. Meditating on them might enhance feelings of autonomy and intrinsic motivation, creating a mind-set that promotes success.

...Next, Senay ran still another version of this experiment, one more obviously related to healthy living. Instead of anagrams, he changed the goal to exercise; that is, he measured the volunteers’ intentions to start and stick to a fitness regimen. And in this real-world scenario, he got the same basic result: those primed with the interrogative phrase “Will I?” expressed a much greater commitment to exercise regularly than did those primed with the declarative phrase “I will.”

What’s more, when the volunteers were questioned about why they felt they would be newly motivated to get to the gym more often, those primed with the question said things like: “Because I want to take more responsibility for my own health.” Those primed with “I will” offered strikingly different explanations, such as: “Because I would feel guilty or ashamed of myself if I did not.” _SciAm

The exercise of willpower involves a tightening and pulling together of the person's resources. The "I", or ego, is fortified and solidified. This makes change -- for good or bad -- more difficult.

The exercise of a wondering willingness opens gaps in the ego -- places where the subconscious components of motivational change can slip in unnoticed, subtly altering the sub-surface dynamics.

Salesmen, propagandists, political operatives, drug dealers, and pickup artists know all about this -- and use numerous cues to get inside a person's mind in order to create manipulated change. But if more parents, teachers, supervisors, and counselors understood these inbuilt mechanisms of change better -- and were willing to call on them to aid the growth of the individuals under their care or instruction -- the everyday world would take on a more constructive appearance.

In the end, it is up to the person to choose the attitude he will adopt in facing the world and his life. And it is that attitude -- whether of willfulness or wondering willingness -- which makes all the difference.

The tricky part is that there is no one attitude which suits all situations. Human beings who attain a higher level of existence are more likely to possess a fuller toolbox of attitudes with which to approach a wide array of situations. Such persons are able to slip from one attitude to another as conditions warrant. This wide and easy adaptability of a full palette of attitudes is priceless, and is unlikely to be achieved automatically -- nor to be the result of indoctrination.

The leaked emails of JournoList and UAE Hadley CRU, provide two good examples of the destructiveness of groupthink and orchestrated indoctrination. Any society that breeds such perversity is in desperate need of constructive change on a societal level.

Like that's gonna happen. In lieu of that, focus on the personal level. Personal constructive change is more satisfying, regardless.

We Are Marching to Utopia, We Will Soon Be There...

...optimists and idealists -- with their ignorance about the truths of human nature and human society, and their naive hopes about what can be changed -- have wrought havoc for centuries....instead of utopian efforts to reform human society or human nature, we [should] focus on the only reform that we can truly master -- the improvement of ourselves through the cultivation of our better instincts. _OUP Review of "Uses of Pessimism"

Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. _Captain Malcolm Reynolds

There is something deep in human nature which has resisted change -- despite the best efforts of crusaders, utopians, religionists, and wishful thinkers -- for many [tens of?] thousands of years. After countless failures to reform the human spirit, most utopians are unfazed. If they can only grab enough power and control over how resources are distributed, they are sure that they can bring perfection to the land, under their own benevolent leadership. "The land will heal, the sea levels will begin to subside, and every man will say to every other man, you are my brother." And so on.

Philosopher Roger Scruton -- author of The Uses of Pessimism -- takes a somewhat more reluctant view:

The belief that humanity makes moral progress depends upon a wilful ignorance of history. It also depends upon a wilful ignorance of oneself – a refusal to recognise the extent to which selfishness and calculation reside in the heart even of our most generous emotions, awaiting their chance. Those who invest their hopes in the moral improvement of humankind are therefore in a precarious position: at any moment the veil of illusion might be swept away, revealing the bare truth of the human condition. Either they defend themselves against this possibility with artful intellectual ploys, or they give way, in the moment of truth, to a paroxysm of disappointment and misanthropy. Both of these do violence to our nature. The first condemns us to the life of unreason; the second to the life of contempt.

...In order to see human beings as they are, therefore, and to school oneself in the art of loving them, it is necessary to apply a dose of pessimism to all one’s plans and aspirations. _GloomMerchant

In another piece, Scruton presents a paradoxical recommendation for how to teach children to think for themselves, logically and clearly:

...children are drawn to magic...they spontaneously animate their world with spirits and spells...they find relief and excitement in stories in which the heroes can summon supernatural forces to their aid and vanquish untold enemies – these facts reflect layers of deep settlement in the human psyche. But they also remind us that, in the life of the child, belief and imagination are not to be clearly distinguished, and that both serve other functions than the pursuit of truth.

...humanists should wake up to this point, and be careful when they seek to deprive their children of enchantment, or to replace their spontaneous fantasies with the cold hard facts of empirical science. It could well be that religion is a better discipline than pop science, when it comes to shaping the rational intellect, and that [we can offer our] children more in the way of a solid foundation, by anchoring their imagination in sacred stories and religious doctrines, than they are likely to be offered by those “Darwinian fairy tales’” as David Stove has called them, which have gained such currency in the wake of Dawkins and Hitchens.

In response to a child’s metaphysical curiosity grown-ups can say that everything has a scientific explanation. But they will know that this is a lie. The proposition that everything has a scientific explanation does not have a scientific explanation – it describes an amazing fact about our universe, a point where reasoning falls silent. There are many such points, as anyone who has children knows: why is there anything? Why should I be good? What existed before the Big Bang? What is consciousness? You can wrestle with these questions through philosophy, but science won’t answer them.

Children have an inkling of this. They also recognise that behind these questions lies a huge void – an emptiness which must be filled with love and reassurance, if their existence is not to seem like an accident. _Art_of_Certainty

Utopians try so hard to purge their children's minds of falsehood and "error", to create the perfect children of rational thought, capable of seeing through all the corrupt fables of the past. Except...children will be who they will be. You cannot make boys into girls or girls into boys without destroying who they are. And you cannot make humans into angels without ruining the essence of what they are. And still the utopians continue to try -- until they finally throw their hands up in complete exasperation at and condemnation of the utter evil of those who do not think along the same lines as themselves, the utopians.

The disgusted dismissal of homo rapiens and all his works that we find spelled out by John Gray in Straw Dogs is not a form of pessimism. It is an attempt to dismiss humanity entirely, as a kind of plague on the face of the earth. That kind of misanthropic nihilism is of no use to us. It removes the ground from all our values, and puts nothing in their place. _GloomMerchant

At that point, they often begin to plot and fantasize the great dieoff, to cleanse the otherwise pristine Earth of the incorrigible human demons who infest the lands and oceans. Fortunately, utopians are as incompetent in planning the great dieoff as they are in most other aspects of their lives.

The point is not to resist all change or improvement of humans. But any lasting change for the better is likely to happen from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Nothing illustrates the different approaches to a better world than the contrast between the French and American revolutions of the late 19th century.

The primary difference in causes that led to the American Revolution and the French Revolution was based in the world view of the innate goodness or innate evil of man. _Hyperhistory

Not all utopians believe in the innate goodness of men -- sometimes they only believe in the innate perfectibility of men. But utopias born of such ideas all come to a bitter end.

Every child has to learn to think for himself, from the beginning. But he must have a beginning from which to start.

The need for foundations is quite clearly an adaptation, and these foundations must provide the promise of protection and love, if they are to fit the new organism for its brief time in the world. If that is so, you are not going to eliminate the need for faith: the best you can do is to withhold all objects of faith, so that a child goes hungry into the life to which he or she is destined. More often than not, a humanist education will leave a child exposed to massive and mind-clogging superstitions of the Harry Potter and Star Wars kind. But these superstitions contain far less in the way of insight than is contained in the first chapter of Genesis.

Religious stories are also the result of natural selection – though selection at another level: they have come down to us because they have fulfilled a moral need. They have survived refutation because they contain, beneath their superficial falsehood, the moral truths that people need, when they must order their lives by good examples. _The Art of Certainty

This is true not only of religious stories, but of all the mythology and lasting moral fables from antiquity. Children must have some kind of foundation that transcends deductive logic, because that is how minds begin. Then, later, when they choose to either reshape or reaffirm their beliefs, they will have a sense of having decided for themselves, and feel stronger for it.

Yes, humans can make choices that make them better. Improved nutrition of mother and child can make humans stronger, smarter, taller, and sometimes capable of clearer thought. But a power structure that attempts to legislate morality, to engineer the moral and ideological purity of the human souls of its citizens -- that power structure is morally bankrupt, and deserves to die quickly. If it is allowed to continue, its leaders will eventually decide that the recalcitrant citizens do not deserve the benefit of the leaders' great wisdom. Then, beware.

This question has been acquiring an ever greater urgency over the past century -- even longer. It is now coming to a head in the demographic and economic crises of many of the world's most advanced nations. A culture that has rested on its own laurels, that has comforted itself with mental images of its own progressive improvement, is soon to be reawakened to a coarse and unruly history.

Utopia is In Your Mind--Enjoy It

Nick Bostrom continues to update his classic "Letter From Utopia."

Have you ever known a moment of bliss? On the rapids of inspiration, maybe, where your hands were guided by a greater force to trace the shapes of truth and beauty? Or perhaps you found such a moment in the ecstasy of love? Or in a glorious success achieved with good friends? Or in splendid conversation on a vine-overhung terrace one star-appointed night? Or perhaps there was a song or a melody that smuggled itself into your heart, setting it alight with kaleidoscopic emotion? Or during worship?

If you have experienced such a moment, experienced the best type of such a moment, then a certain idle but sincere thought may have presented itself to you: “Oh Heaven! I didn’t realize it could feel like this. This is on a different level, so very much more real and worthwhile. Why can’t it be like this always? Why must good times end? I was sleeping; now I am awake.”

Bostrom seeks to convey to present-day humanity what their existence might be like if it were substantially elevated.

What I have is not merely more of what is available to you now. It isn’t just the particular things, the paintings and toothpaste-tube designs, the record covers and books, the epochs, lives, leaves, rivers, and random encounters, the satellite images and the collider data – it is also the complex relationships between these particulars that make up my mind. There are ideas that can be formed only on top of such a wide experience base. There are depths that can be fathomed only with such ideas.

You could say I am happy, that I feel good. You could say that I feel surpassing bliss. But these are words invented to describe human experience. What I feel is as far beyond human feelings as my thoughts are beyond human thoughts. I wish I could show you what I have in mind. If only I could share one second of my conscious life with you!

Bostrom joins other writers from the distant past: More, Bacon, Bellamy, Plato, Huxley and many others who have made the attempt to paint their longings (and warnings) in words so that they must be understood. These several authors have sought to motivate their readers--to awaken them from complacency and inefficacy. To inspire them to grow beyond their present selves and tendencies.

I have always been drawn toward the dystopian side of the literature. It is the marvelous feeling of awakening from the Orwellian nightmare into a bracing reality that drives much of my selection in leisure reading. Looking up from Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 to glance across the thousands of books in my library, or pausing a moment from A Clockwork Orange to gently stroke the soft hair of my bedmate.

Likewise, in science fiction, I am drawn to the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic. The challenge of preserving civilisation through the apocalypse--or of jump-starting civilisation in a post-apocalyptic era--is stimulating. Certainly I would prefer to move straight through the present into a next level future, without the apocalypse. But we should always count on something going wrong, at some point.

As for utopia, it really is up to us. Utopia, like happiness or heaven, is in our minds. We can cultivate it or neglect it.

In terms of future society, my utopia is not what they call the "singularity." My utopia is an open-ended future where at least 10% of humans (hopefully a much higher proportion) are empowered by brighter minds, longer lives, wiser perspectives, and a compassionate desire to take enlightened life into the cosmos. My utopia is a utopia-by-choice, so that I would never expect every human to choose it.

Many modern day persons are content with a climate-controlled place to watch cable/satellite HD television, play high-res video games, or enjoy alternate reality VR immersion. Preferably with an infinite supply and under the influence of their drug of choice. Others immerse themselves in missionary religious fervour, some even willing to kill the infidel to create their utopia. Still others are content to work, raise a small family, enjoy hobbies and limited interests, and thus serve out their time. Some cluster together with like-minded people to create the closest approximation to utopia their mind can hold. And another category of people see themselves as wolves, to prey on all the rest who they see as sheep.

Even in the era of my utopia--the next level--there will be examples of all of those groups and more, who choose not to participate in my particular utopia. Some will opt out because they have their own visions of utopia. Others simply can not be bothered.

Mind The Enchantment

The human mind is subject to various forms of enchantment. Not a magical enchantment, but more like a trance, sometimes pleasant, sometimes not.

Because our minds are "self organised", they are subject to falling into distinctly different states, at particular "bifurcations."An illustration of this phenomenan is the "bistability" of particular images. Following the series of images above, can you say exactly where the transition occurs? What if you saw only that one image?

But the deeper you dive into the mechanisms of consciousness, the larger the number of possible mind states, so that bistability becomes tristability and so on. Just the single topic of synaptic plasticity quickly acquires a complexity to confound most scientists.

Hypnosis takes advantage of the inherent ambiguity of consciousness, and "adjusts the weighting" of various competing states of mind. Since mind is inherently a self-organizing, ongoing trance-like process, it is often likened to "riding the wave," or staying on the "bucking bronco." From the moment of waking to the release of sleep, that "blinking cursor" of consciousness compels us to provide answers and solutions, even to unknown or nonexistent problems.

For anyone who is curious about some of the underlying neurophilosophy of consciousness, I suggests looking over this article by Edelman and Tononi--two prolific and respected students of consciousness. Or look over this overview of Models of Consciousness from Scholarpedia.

Understanding human consciousness is difficult enough. But a lot of people wish to create intelligence in machines. This dream goes back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. But since the computer age beginning in the 1940s, multiple generations of ingenious scientists of mind and computation have dashed their skulls against the wall of computational complexity (not to mention a lack of understanding of the complexity of human cognition or intentionality).

Each person experiences a consciousness of an enchanted mind. Not a mind of equations and computations. Rather a mind of metaphor and narrative. An entranced mind where real world expediencies intrude on waking dreams. Complex trances of strange attractors and slippery bistable conscious surfaces.

There would be no point in trying to emulate all of that in a machine. Not unless that is the only way we can find to create a conscious machine. Perhaps it is better to settle for machines that only seem conscious or intelligent, as viewed by a simple Turing test. After all, we are only looking for help in making better decisions and devising a better world for smarter, healthier, longer-lived people.

We may be entranced, but why burden our machines with all of that? It is our trance that we wish to enjoy far into the future, not the trance of a machine.

An Enchanted Life: The Various Uses of Danger for Raising Boys

Something about a boy that requires danger, and adventure. Boys cannot truly grow to manhood without it. Author Conn Igulden exposes this dangerous gap in western child-raising practices in The Dangerous Book for Boys.

Amazon.com: It's difficult to describe what a phenomenon The Dangerous Book for Boys was in the UK last year. When I would check the bestseller list on our sister site, Amazon.co.uk, there would be, along with your book, which spent much of the year at the top of the list, a half-dozen apparent knockoff books of similar boy knowledge. Clearly, you tapped into something big. What do you think it was?

Iggulden: In a word, fathers. I am one myself and I think we've become aware that the whole "health and safety" overprotective culture isn't doing our sons any favors. Boys need to learn about risk. They need to fall off things occasionally, or--and this is the important bit--they'll take worse risks on their own. If we do away with challenging playgrounds and cancel school trips for fear of being sued, we don't end up with safer boys--we end up with them walking on train tracks. In the long run, it's not safe at all to keep our boys in the house with a Playstation. It's not good for their health or their safety.

You only have to push a boy on a swing to see how much enjoys the thrill of danger. It's hard-wired. Remove any opportunity to test his courage and they'll find ways to test themselves that will be seriously dangerous for everyone around them. I think of it like playing the lottery--someone has to say "Look, you won't win--and your children won't be hurt. Relax. It won't be you."

I think that's the core of the book's success. It isn't just a collection of things to do. The heroic stories alone are something we haven't had for too long. It isn't about climbing Everest, but it is an attitude, a philosophy for fathers and sons. Our institutions are too wrapped up in terror over being sued--so we have to do things with them ourselves. This book isn't a bad place to start.

As for knockoff books--great. They'll give my son something to read that doesn't involve him learning a dull moral lesson of some kind--just enjoying an adventure or learning skills and crafts so that he has a feeling of competence and confidence--just as we have. ....Amazon.com: Do you think The Dangerous Book for Boys is being read by actual boys, or only by nostalgic adults? Have you seen boys getting up from their Xboxes to go outside and perform first aid or tan animal skins or build go-carts?

Iggulden: I've had a lot of emails and letters from boys who loved the book--as well as fathers. I've had responses from kids as young as ten and an old man of 87, who pointed out a problem with the shadow stick that we've since changed. The thing to remember is that we may be older and more cynical every year, but boys simply aren't. If they are given the chance to make a go-cart with their dad, they jump at it. Mine did. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to know the book is being used with fathers and sons together, trying things out. Nothing is more valuable to a boy than time with his dad, learning something fun--or something difficult. That's part of the attitude too. If it's hard, you don't make it easy, you grab it by the throat and hang on for as long as it takes.

The book is often bought by fathers, of course. Their sons don't know Scott of the Antarctic is a great adventure story. How could they if it isn't taught any more? Good, heroic stories don't appear much in modern school curriculums--and then we wonder why boys don't seem interested.

Source

Listen to an interview with Conn Iggulden on the Glenn and Helen podcast show.

You may also want to contemplate Cristina Hoff Sommers' message in War Against Boys, when thinking about the much-neglected topic of "what boys need."


Boys are not exposed to adult male role models for much of their lives. Most schoolteachers are women. The curriculum throughout K-12 and into university is slanted toward a feminist, anti-male outlook. With so many single mother households, many boys may not learn the special enchantment that boys must learn, if they are to grow to be responsible, independent, and courageous men.

Western feminism has grown from a liberation movement to a power grubbing movement of cowardly and insecure third rate minds. Feminism has been hijacked by the perpetual revolutionaries--the inferiors who have the need to oppress all other points of view besides their own.

It is the boys who suffer the most, the boys who remain dangerously psychologically neotenous throught their lives. Why does the prevailing ideology in education and western intelligentsia wish to handicap boys for their entire lives? Clearly independent and courageous persons represent a serious threat to an ideological group that wishes to grab and retain its hold on power. If not shackled and confined in monotonous walls of indoctrination early, there is always the danger that boys may eventually grow into men. Men uncontrollable by the ruling ideology.

Rather like what is done to bulls to make them more tractable as steers.

Dreaming, Flying, Falling, Away

Searching for a dream, for a wonder, for the magnificent moment when everything fits. Troubled by the incongruity of the pleasure of perfect flow with the comfort of luxurious attainment. You cannot hold a crashing cataract still in a crystal goblet. A dynamic mind perfectly balanced on the wave of flowing ions will not rest contented in the food or drug sated condition.

While the masses pursue the calm of slumber, the repose of intoxicated diversion, the eccentric and exceptional few cultivate the vintage of growth, forward momentum, evolution. The euphoria of discovery, the enchantment of invention, the elation of creativity. These intoxicating enterprises demand long hours of exacting effort, to reach the point of effortlessness, of completion.

Yet if the world of reality is a fractal entity, there can never be completion. Merely the attainment of another level. Retirement is not an option. The chase goes on as long as contenders step forward to the pursuit.

Most between levels humans will be content to rest, to eat, to drink, to sleep. The commonwealth will provide the provisions for their survival. It is presently an exacting and exorbitant obligation, but necessary. Even after the attainment of millions of next level humans, the need will remain to support the many billions of between levels who will never achieve the transition.

The lion's share of next levels will devote their time to the goals of understanding space, time, matter, energy, and mind. A few will feel an ancestral obligation to devote a tithe of their time to providing support for those who cannot cross the gulf. Intelligent machines and automated factories and plantations will provide the goods and foods for the between levels who cannot or will not work. For the between levels who wish to work, ample opportunity will be given for the creation of small scale economies. The only prohibitions will be on weapons of great lethality, and on acts of violence. Coercion and inequality will be inevitable in any between levels society. At least the basic necessities will be provided.

Most of earth's land mass will be devoted to the housing, recreation, and well-being of between levels humans. Next levels will tend to occupy islands, and mini-cities located in more isolated areas of continents.

Everyone dreams of something. A utopian dreams of more utopia. A creator dreams of more creation. A drunken sot dreams of more drinking. A criminal dreams of more satisfying crime. A playboy dreams of flocks of willing and seducible females. A slut dreams of ever more men, and plenty of time. A lot of people seem happy with 500 channels of cable, high speed internet, and a surfeit of snack food and full beer or wine bottles in the pantry.

Humans fear the nightmare of hell, of eternal slavery and subjugation to something evil, something that demands everything and gives nothing. The fear of being nothing but an object for something more powerful. The fear of being sucked dry by vampirish exploiters who cannot be denied. That was indeed the experience of life for those under Pol Pot, for those under the Taliban, for those under Idi Amin, Kim Jong Il, Khomeini, and Robert Mugabe. These modern vampires of state gladly expand their empires of blood as far as possible. You see the fangs of an Osama bin Laden, or an Iranian theocrat, a wahabi imam. You watch the blood drip from the ever thirsty lips of a third world dictator. Hell on earth. That is the future without next levels.

Next level humans will require little in terms of land area. For the time spent on the planet's surface, little acreage will be needed. If next levels become prolific in numbers, that will take place away from this planet. Dispersal of next levels is likely to be profound.