{"id":5997,"date":"2014-07-10T17:22:10","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T21:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5997"},"modified":"2025-04-15T19:58:19","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T23:58:19","slug":"thoughts-on-thoughts-on-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5997","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Thoughts on Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/wolvensnothere.tumblr.com\/post\/91278483676\/theres-only-one-rule-that-i-know-of-babies<\/a>Hey everybody. In case any of you didn’t see this, I made a blog post, yesterday, basically about where my head is, recently. I’ve attached it, here.<\/p>\n

One of the things that’s always kind of struck me is that there’s no cynic like a frustrated idealist. Someone who believes in the potential of how things COULD be, but has seen, over and over again, how “the way things are” grinds that into the dirt.<\/p>\n

The Status Quo is the enemy of betterment–again, for a co-determined value of what “better” means. Stasis and comfort are wonderful, because we all like to know that we’re safe, that we can breathe without fear, but that’s all *I* want it for. That is, for me, stasis is the time to catch my breath, and we all need that sometimes. Some of us may need a little longer than others of us.<\/p>\n

And like Oatman tries to get Martin to understand, there are tims when we all need to take a moment, be fully present in who and what we are, and realise what the world looks like, when we just breathe. But there’s a poem by Irish poet Ger Killeen called “Evolution Prayer,” that comes to me, when I think about theses kinds of things:<\/p>\n

Dark night of my heart, raked
\nin the blizzard of my ten thousand lives,
\nI am again briefly
\nthe Moloch of blind fish, sing again
\nbriefly the pterodactyl\u2019s jubilas
\nto the sun, am sacrificed
\nagain briefly for the dog\u2019s kingdom\u2026
\nDark night of my heart, I scream
\nin recollection of comfortless origins,
\nsuffer for the arrogance
\nof my entropy. God protect me
\nfrom sins of stasis, keep me
\nin the movement that fixes me<\/p>\n

You can find that in his 1989 collection “A Wren.”<\/p>\n

I guess what I’m thinking about is a species of compassion. Compassion and, as my friend Kristen said, elsewhere, “Kindness, empathy, and boat-rocking.”<\/p>\n

More audio, soon, for those who like the sound of my voice. If you want to give me an early birthday present (it’s next week), why not talk to your friends, and show them what we’re doing, here?<\/p>\n

Thanks. We’ll talk more, soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/wolvensnothere.tumblr.com\/post\/91278483676\/theres-only-one-rule-that-i-know-of-babiesHey everybody. In case any of you didn’t see this, I made a blog post, yesterday, basically about where my head is, recently. I’ve attached it, here. One of the things that’s always kind of struck me is that there’s no cynic like a frustrated idealist. Someone who believes in the potential of how things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-patreon-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5WByP-1yJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5263,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5263","url_meta":{"origin":5997,"position":0},"title":"My Thoughts on “This Is America”","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"May 9, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY \u00a0 Others have already examined the dances, the layering of images, so\u00a0 much else, but wanted to try to\u2026 evoke something of what I felt, watching this. The absolute bare minimum simplest way to interpret this working is as an attempt to force a reckoning with the fact of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"audio\"","block_context":{"text":"audio","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=audio"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/VYOjWnS4cMY\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4842,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=4842","url_meta":{"origin":5997,"position":1},"title":"Rundown: Theorizing the Web 2015","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"April 20, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"As most of you know from personal experience or from reading or hearing about it, it's been a deeply intense few weeks. For me, alone, there were deaths and conference presentations and more deaths, and then more conferences. The most recent of these deaths was my uncle-- more like a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"20150418_222643[1]","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/20150418_2226431-300x169.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5204,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5204","url_meta":{"origin":5997,"position":2},"title":"Audio & Presentation: A Discussion on Daoism and Machine Consciousness","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"October 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com\/patreon-posts\/13067997299595990810.mp3 [Direct link to Mp3] My second talk for the SRI International Technology and Consciousness Workshop Series was about how nonwestern philosophies like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Daoism can help mitigate various kinds of bias in machine minds and increase compassion by allowing programmers and designers to think from within a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Yin-YangRing2-268x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4803,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=4803","url_meta":{"origin":5997,"position":3},"title":"Audio and Transcript of “From Norma to Normalization”","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"March 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\"From Norma to Normalization,\" the first audio post for A Future Worth Thinking About, is now available for public consumption.","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5162,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5162","url_meta":{"origin":5997,"position":4},"title":"Audio and Outline of My Guest Lecture, “Technology, Disability, & Human Augmentation”","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"April 15, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com\/patreon-posts\/7224113132387652353.mp3 [Direct link to Mp3] [09\/22\/17: This post has been updated with a transcript, courtesy of Open Transcripts] Back on March 13th, 2017, I gave an invited guest lecture, titled: TECHNOLOGY, DISABILITY, AND HUMAN AUGMENTATION 'Please join Dr. Ariel Eisenberg\u2019s seminar, \"American Identities: Disability,\" and [the] Interdisciplinary Studies Department for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ableism\"","block_context":{"text":"ableism","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=ableism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4869,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=4869","url_meta":{"origin":5997,"position":5},"title":"More Like This Please: Advances in Prostheses & Therapeutic Cybernetic Augmentation","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"May 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm working on having conversations with some developmental and family psychologists about the kinds of things you would expect I'd be talking to them--and then telling you--about. I'm also working with several other people to organize three or four different A\/V conversations about various shows and films that've come out,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"3d printing\"","block_context":{"text":"3d printing","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=3d-printing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5997"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6363,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5997\/revisions\/6363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}