04 December 2022

Jamál, 12 Qawl (Speech), 179 B.E

Seen

Granddaughter with a little help from Omi, made numbers out of Play-Doh

Done

Corresponded with Stephen Beckett and Tony Budak earlier today about timebanking:

Stephen asks, “How do we make our initiatives the most welcoming to the broadest audience?” I suggest we engage those whose youthful energy is driving learning and positive change in those PUBLIC forums (as opposed to private ones like Slack) where they participate. Two that come to mind immediately are Loomio and Hylo.

Stephen posits, “hOurworld is trying to raise the value of ANYTHING anyone does for anyone else including raising the value of learning by rewarding all the players in an event.” This sentiment manifests itself in almost any setting where people give serious consideration to current circumstances and future probabilities. The occasion is nigh for the principles of timebanking to be applied in response to humanity’s growing awareness that our true value lies between our ears. The challenge is how to get what we process in our heads 24 / 7 out there so that everyone else can benefit. Timebanking can help us do that by documenting what we do with the time we have, day in and day out. It can link with technology to do this automatically in the background.

This links nicely with what Tony asserts, “We need to use nouns for the name of the tasks or work that people do. In other words, what are you held accountable for?” Yes. I am a member of one human family. I am a node in a human network that connects me with everyone else. I am a human agent. I am responsible and held accountable for my involvement in human-agent teams.

The disruptive, rapid, and pervasive developments in technology, artificial intelligence, in particular, encompass us all. This shifting landscape changes the measure of human value. Our time is all we have. It’s invaluable. Assigning a dollar value to our time as a measure of personal worth is quickly becoming anachronistic. Timebanking can address this, but we have to dive in where change happens.

Noted

Astral Prospecting on Instagram | Astral Prospecting on YouTube | Astral Prospecting on Facebook

Marc Bosserman on Instagram | Marc Bosserman on Facebook | Marc Bosserman Music and Musings on YouTube

Tab’s Galaxy on YouTube

Listened

Stevie Nicks - Bella Donna

Notes by Discogs.com

Read

Obruchev, Vladimir. Plutonia: An Adventure through Prehistory. 2nd Printing 1988. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1957. http://archive.org/details/plutonia-gnv-64.

Bookmarked

Bhalla, Jag. “Free Market Genocides: The Real History of Trade.” Evonomics (blog), September 11, 2022. https://evonomics.com/free-market-genocide-the-real-history-of-trade/.

Bhalla, Jag. “White-Collar War Crimes and For-Profit Famines.” Current Affairs, October 11, 2022. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/10/white-collar-war-crimes-and-for-profit-famines.

Epstein, Alex. “The Climate Debate Ignores the Reasons We Burn Fossil Fuels in the First Place.” Tweet. Twitter, December 4, 2022. https://twitter.com/AlexEpstein/status/1599471173527605250.

Krammer, Florian, and Aubree Gordon. “Covid, Flu, RSV: We Know How to Deal With Them. Will We?” The New York Times, November 28, 2022, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/28/opinion/winter-rsv-covid-flu.html.

Loury, Glenn. “The Reality of Black Solidarity.” Substack newsletter. Glenn Loury (blog), December 4, 2022. https://glennloury.substack.com/p/the-reality-of-black-solidarity.

Span, Paula. “Who Will Care for ‘Kinless’ Seniors?” The New York Times, December 3, 2022, sec. Health. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/health/elderly-living-alone.html.

The Ethical Skeptic. “The Earth-Lunar Lagrange 1 Orbital Rapid Response Array (ELORA).” The Ethical Skeptic, September 14, 2019. https://theethicalskeptic.com/2019/09/14/the-earth-lunar-lagrange-1-orbital-rapid-response-array-elora/.

Sorted

Started cleaning another set of LPs. These are some of my classical music recordings — Schubert’s sonatas and piano trios. It’s been decades since I’ve listened to them. I’m pumped!

Quoted

As we have before indicated, this human reality stands between the higher and the lower in man, between the world of the animal and the world of Divinity. When the animal proclivity in man becomes predominant, he sinks even lower than the brute. When the heavenly powers are triumphant in his nature, he becomes the noblest and most superior being in the world of creation. All the imperfections found in the animal are found in man. In him there is antagonism, hatred and selfish struggle for existence; in his nature lurk jealousy, revenge, ferocity, cunning, hypocrisy, greed, injustice and tyranny. So to speak, the reality of man is clad in the outer garment of the animal, the habiliments of the world of nature, the world of darkness, imperfections and unlimited baseness.

On the other hand, we find in him justice, sincerity, faithfulness, knowledge, wisdom, illumination, mercy and pity, coupled with intellect, comprehension, the power to grasp the realities of things and the ability to penetrate the truths of existence. All these great perfections are to be found in man. Therefore, we say that man is a reality which stands between light and darkness. From this standpoint his nature is threefold: animal, human and divine. The animal nature is darkness; the heavenly is light in light. ¹