The original plan for the IAIA dome was to record stories. Ed _______________________
Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-984-0136 (home) [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel > On Jul 20, 2024, at 10:56 AM, Stephen Guerin <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > I would pay to watch this film! Student production on the dome (digital Kiva) > at IAIA, Ben Shedd? Just a rough cut as students then present their own > experiences. > __ > > On Sat, Jul 20, 2024, 9:57 AM Prof David West <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> dragon stories: >> >> my very first experience with peyote, I was 12-13 and living on the Hopi >> reservation with my aunt and uncle. A group of boys were given the peyote as >> a reward for gathering cottonwood buds for use in a Hopi ceremonial dance. >> Of the five of us only one other wanted to try the drug, so I consumed >> roughly for doses. A massive thunderstorm was in progress. At some point, a >> dragon coalesced from the lightning, thunder, filtered sunlight and began >> speaking to me. >> >> [important interjection: my brain was "making sense' of an overwhelming >> number of sensations, some detected by nerve endings, others generated by >> frantic neuron firings. Assumed/assuming this is the same kind of thing that >> happens when the brain 'makes sense' of the bombardment of sensations/neural >> firings that create the "illusion" of an external world.] >> >> we engaged in an apparently long lasting conversation about my recent >> experiences in Hopi-land, the various Hopi stories I had been told that >> summer and how to interpret them. At some point the dragon used the phrase, >> "alarums and excursions;" an idiom I had first encountered some 8 years >> prior (pre-grade school) in a book called David and the Phoenix. >> >> [interjection: till this point my interactions with the dragon were, as far >> as I could tell, pretty much identical to the interactions I might have had >> with another human being in the 'waking world'. This includes the implicit >> assumption that I was interacting with a sentient, conscious, and >> self-conscious being.] >> >> Second story: >> >> I was exploring the use of pain as a means of inducing an altered state of >> consciousness. Four hours of enduring intense and varied pain administered >> by a sadistic dominatrix in Salt Lake City, made me very self-aware with a >> raspy voice. I began the 9 hour drive to Santa Fe to attend FRIAM. Along the >> way my body went into shock and I dealt with that using meditative >> techniques. I also was playing a CD of meditative Buddhist chants that I >> began to hum out loud with my raspy voice. The result was the altered state >> I had been seeking. >> >> Somewhere in Arches National Park, I stopped, stripped naked and walked down >> a dry wash where I 'encountered' a campfire and sat down. Brigham Young was >> sitting at the periphery of the campfire and we began a long conversation >> about Mormon theology and metaphysics, why blacks lost the right to the >> priesthood (there were blacks in the priesthood in Nauvoo while Joseph Smith >> was alive and that is one of the reasons the Mormons were persecuted by >> Missourians), why religions like Christianity, Islam and Mormonism changed >> from Feminism to misogyny, education, eternal progression, and a host of >> other topics. The conversation ended when I realized I would be late for >> FRIAM unless I stopped and resumed my journey. >> >> [interjection: both the dragon and Brigham Young were 'illusions' >> constructed "by the brain" just as the 'illusion' of ordinary reality. While >> interacting with them, they were, to me, sentient, aware, and conscious >> entities. I attributed sentience, intelligence, consciousness to them >> precisely because of the perceived interactions- the verbal (in my case) and >> the 'auditorialized' (neuron firings interpreted as sound) voices (of dragon >> and Brigham).] >> >> After the fact self analysis of the incidents conclude that in both cases, >> the "conversation" was between 'my self' and 'my memories': of the David in >> the book and his conversations with the Phoenix in the book; all of the >> writings of Brigham Young I had read years before. >> >> These stories do not, technically bear on where or not dragons are >> conscious, but they most definitely bear on whether or not domestic animals >> and Nick are conscious—by virtue of the fact that the 'data' and the >> 'interpretation of the data' are, evidently, the same. >> >> You might make an argument for 'faulty machinery' in my two stories, but >> what is gained vis-a-vis our common understanding. >> >> davew > <file-4ouNzdNFY0tOaOhnLq9Dt8Jm.webp>-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- > .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
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