h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"The IRA could not have lasted more than a couple of years without American support. I was in an Irish bar in Boston when the Omagh bomb exploded, they sang and hollered. I left in disgust."

yep. I entirely agree, Math.

However, I was trying to address the question as it exists now, not how it existed previous to 9/11.

'By the earth having a collective consciousness, would you mean simply that it has an ecosystem?'

No!

'Or might it be stronger, such as a coordinated 'hive mentality''

See Morphic Resonance: Papers on Morphic Resonance by Rupert Sheldrake @ http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Morphic/index.html

Mind, Memory, and Archetype Morphic Resonance and the Collective Unconscious - Part I @ http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Morphic/morphic1_paper.html
Psychological Perspectives(Spring 1987), 18(1),9-25

Society, Spirit & Ritual: Morphic Resonance and the Collective Unconscious - Part II @ http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Morphic/morphic2_paper.html
Psychological Perspectives (Fall 1987), 18(2), 320-331

Extended Mind, Power, & Prayer: Morphic Resonance and the Collective Unconscious - Part III @ http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Morphic/morphic3_paper.html
Psychological Perspectives (Spring 1988), 19(1) 64-78

alji

Regarding those links, the author uses the word 'field' in the same sense that new-agers use the word 'energy'. Never says what type of field it actually is. An unspecified field is basically just a way of looking at something.

He also applies this same mysterious morphological field both to our thoughts and memories and to the form of matter, providing no hypothesis on how it would interact with either.

The bulk of evidence is ancedotal, and based on the lack of another conclusive explanation. I feel that a little imagination could easily produce many plausible rationalist explanations to these examples, which I would prefer since he has not addressed any of the holes within his own hypothesis.

I believe going on fairly recent news of advances in this area that many of the questions he has raised regarding how organisms come to have their form have been resolved in the past 15 years of genetics.

Reply to: Post 20823

Thankee muchly. Welsh is weird.

I suspect no one really knows what God (or the gods) is (or are) planning save said divine being(s).

Reply To: Post 20826

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I don't remember if I've posted this before, but I heard that a young girl said, about the Columbine shooting and such, that 'We asked God to get out of our schools and He has' or something to that effect. And in our school, we can learn about religions as part of Social Studies, it's just not part of the curriculum. Maybe I'm lucky.

Reply to: Post 20885

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Not to mention one young polytheistic agnostic (if there is a god, there's more than one) who recently got trapped in her first ever face-to-face religious debate and found it a bit scary.

Reply to: Post 20888

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All the ones I know seem to have a touch of the madman, not so nuch revolutionary, though. We're addicted to our computers.

Reply to: Post 20910

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An Arthur C Clarke story, where, when the satellites are put up, connecting all the telephones in the world, the telephone system becomes a conscious being. And starts rebelling against humans. Or something like that.

The computer game Alpha Centurai had human colonists stranded on an alien world. What they percieved as hostile life forms were in a sense the planets antibodies defending itself against an intrusion. As the game progressed and you discovered the planet had a consciousness you could try and dominate it or try to find a way to live in harmony with it.

Hi Toxx

You just have to pick at the scab don'tcha?

OK, I'll bite, just this twice .

Everything you say is true, it is also the gloss of an introduction to a spirituality that I could study for lifetimes and never truly understand.

What you read as 'steward' is the simplest term I could use for a role that has a depth that has taken me decades to even begin to comprehend. My dedication to this role will take me through the gate and onto many more lives. It is a path guided by my gods and the spirits of the land, what Jez would call wights.

Thus you are correct, yet so is Jez, and her understanding is more complete than mine for she has walked ahead of me for eons.

You understand computers right. Imagine discussing system architecture with a colleague and then realising there are others wathing you who haven't even seen a computer.

Do not take this to mean that we feel superior, far from it, each step places us further into our service of the land and all who live upon it.

Please feel fre to question us further upon this, but for now vitae interruptus.

Many blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

'Thus you are correct, yet so is Jez,'

That's what you get with two Geminis, Math!


alji

Hi Math and thanks for your kind, indeed generous, answer.

I hadn't intended to say any more, but then Jez enquired and I couldn't leave it. Since your 'whatever' implied a grudging consent if needed, I went ahead.

I hope you appreciate that I sometimes put specific questions in order to better understand what you are saying. This is meant in a spirit of respect, not as a form of carping or anything else.

I appreciate that what is 'normally' stewardship might become a more complete identification in a higher form; perhaps in 'exaltation' as some astrologers call it.

toxx

Reply to: Post 20909

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What's the Good Friday agreement?

Reply to: Post 20920

SD: You seem to be rather capital-letter-happy. Just something I couldn't help but notice.

Sorry about all the replies to posts on other pages; I was catching up with a 123-post backlog.

Esty

Hi Esty & Coren,

The Good Friday Agreement formally ended hostilities in Northern Ireland in 1994. Of course some extremists carried on and there have been a few outrages since then, but most groups - including Sinn Fein, the IRA, major Unionist Parties and paramilitary groups, the British and Irish governments have been working on a permanent political solution ever since.

This includes a devolved assembly, power-sharing between nationalists and unionists.

The American Government actually played a positive and active role in the process. This allows me to be nice about the USA for a change .

It's not perfect by a long chalk, but it is holding, just.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

Hi Toxxin

No explanation necessary. I have debated with you for long enough to understand your style.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

"Sometimes I become tired of hearing about feminism. At least we don't have to suffer 'masculism' too! Why can't we simply have justice that takes regard of people's differing circumstances - including any special interests that apply principally to one sex or the other."

Hmmm, well, you're talking to someone who's a bit post-feminist now, toxx. However, as you've brought the subject up, I don't think you can deny that women in most cultures in the world have restrictions imposed upon them by the men in the same culture, which those men are not subject to. I don't ant to get into a full blown argument but I do know that, should I every go to Saudi or one of several other Muslim countries, I would not be able to go out alone unmolested or even unattacked unless I wore the hijab or the burkha. So I don't go.

Thanks for the links, Alji! Very interesting.

I like Noggin's related point too, although I think you could also look at a system from the outside.

<... I don't think you can deny that women in most cultures in the world have restrictions imposed upon them by the men in the same culture, which those men are not subject to.>

I don't deny it for a yoctosecond, HS. To me it's just plain injustice, as is the later pensionable age for the shorter lived sex. I don't see why the sexes should be separated for the purposes of justice. Can't we be allied if only for the purposes of encouraging a 'childist' school of thought. We aren't going to get an 8 yr old professor of childist studies, after all. Where's their justice to come from, if not from non-children?

I would argue that govenments world-wide are too slow to take up issues of social justice. This is partly because such changes tend to require a time-scale beyond that of the next election. That is understandable, at least. Hence I take the view that our 'isms should relate to the weakest in society: children, the sick, the elderly, the handicapped etc. Many of these are the least likely to be in a position to make their own case for themselves. Yes, there are parts of the world where this should include women too, and the more privileged of both sexes everywhere should show solidarity with them.

toxx