The Liminalist # 168: Where the Wild Oranges Grow (with Dave Oshana)

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Third of four-part conversation with Dave Oshana, on the appeal of movies, interactive media, dying in video games, practicing survival skills, movies as training manuals, robotization of the species, plastic surgery and electronic implants, YouTube video gamers, letting the Grinch take over, glorifying the toxins, transgender & transhumanism, beman (bio-electric human)rights, a religious argument, euthanasia, human and animal kingdoms, earth as ET slave colony, the pros and cons of waking up, attachment to a fictitious identity, fear of punishment for waking up, acclimatization to harsh reality, states of consciousness, varying reactions to sky-diving, being overwhelmed by sensory data, deputizing the mind, mind and identity, fantasy pursuits, Noah’s ark DNA test tubes,  keeping ETs on the table, ancestors, an invisible support network, pronoia vs paranoia, finding goodness, off the grid, contact with real fruit.

Dave’s website.

Songs: “Slouching Towards Bremen” by Geoff Berner; “Fever Dream” by “Littlefoot”; “Nothing Else Changes,” by Hazelwood Motel

3 thoughts on “The Liminalist # 168: Where the Wild Oranges Grow (with Dave Oshana)”

  1. I enjoy the crossover between the end of Gib’s recent chat and this “robotization of the species” thing. Like, in the very near future you won’t be able to be “fully in your body” because of tech implants, vaccines and other Huxleyesque (Huxleyian ?) horrors. And if you add the “epic template” of “reincarnation and sequestered knowledge of it” to that.. well, anyway..

    I want to write something about how the music selection has shifted over the past few weeks and how it’s reflecting the overall shifts around here.. but, that’s the only way I can think to put it..

    Thanks again. Great balance. I can’t imagine where you guys go from here..

    Reply

  2. Great to see someone like Dave discuss these issues. It’s a rare thing.

    Nick Bostrom’s Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, which initially seemed to be a platform for exploring ethical issues around technology, is now explicitly techno–progessive:

    https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/biopolitics

    I’ve seen Buddhism being touted there and in other places as the perfect religion for our secular/transhumanist age, but could not find the reference*. Maybe I found something better – I’d like to know what Dave would make of this:

    “Vajrayana Buddhism: Preparation for the Posthuman?”

    https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/john20160203

    more https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/category/C447

    (In so far as western buddhism is often enlightenment teaching for the ‘spiritual but not religious’ secular humanists and children of the new age movement, I don’t think this can be brushed aside as Only Buddhism/Not what Dave is doing.)

    *I was thinking also of Robert Wright, who wrote ‘Why Buddhism is True’ (because science), turns out he chaired a panel there on ‘Governing a Technologically Uncertain Future’.
    https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/treder20110203

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    • Thanks Taz.

      I am curious to know what “someone like Dave” means.

      I have greatly enjoyed hearing how Jasun’s Liminalist group perceive and are affected by my online interactions (my free and Sunday online meetings). Their comments are different because they do not use hackneyed concepts from the spiritual market place. This in turn, encourages me to use plain English.

      Not sure that I have time to look at Buddhism again. I did that as extensively as I could as a teenager when Buddhism was the bastard child of a Japanese Zen Roshi and a Theosophist. Not sure that I care to enter into any melee for religious supremacy and secular one-upmanship.

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