Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Baby Gorilla Beating Chest

I'm almost done moving from my current place of residence- with all the organizing, packing, cleaning, and weekend yard sales that it entails.

I've been living at this place for 10+ years, even before I started The Monkey Buddha... in the early days of blogging! :) The house I lived in was built in the 1800's & had a lot of history. I've had a lot of great memories & time spent there. However, the nature of the Universe is change, so I'm ready to move out & move on.

Until I'm settled & can blog regularly on my free time, my posts have a bit more been sporadic than usual. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled anti-programming soon.

On Reddit I saw this great GIF of a little gorilla beating his chest and taking a fall. The look on his face after he looks up is priceless.



Here is a video, with more of his reaction afterward:


Thursday, June 23, 2016

The Original Light of the Unified Field

 From the "Chakra Ascension" series
 by Paul Micarelli

Last night, my girlfriend & I were having one of our usual deep discussions. She had read something by Osho & asked me what I thought of him. When looking up information about him, this led to our discovery that Osho's parents practiced Jainism. I told her that she would identity with that belief system- because they were not only vegetarians, but they avoided harming or killing all living things, including plants.

This, in turn, led to me discussing the idea that our human consciousness is only one form of consciousness. Any living system that receives input, then interacts & communicates with other living systems is fundamentally conscious.

Even vegetarianism is narrow-minded, in the sense that thinking it's okay to kill a plant, but not an animal, ignores the fact that you are still destroying & consuming a living system to absorb it's stored energy and physical nutrients. Just because it doesn't have "consciousness" in the form of human senses & thought-language, does not mean that it does not have some form of consciousness. A plant can sense changes in its environment, send signals to other plants or animals, and react to stimuli.

Then, I took it a step further & said that on a quantum level, consciousness is all-pervasive, even in seemingly non-living forms. The base energy field, from which our reality arises, is inherent in all things, and must be able to store and transmit information for any observable coherence to exist, at all.

This information snowballs into ever-increasingly complex systems & forms:
Quantum fluctuations give rise to -> atomic waveforms -> elements -> molecules -> larger biological & elemental structures.

This cumulative formation of complexity is nothing more than a infinitely intertwined play of energy- originating at the deepest level of the single, unified field of all being.

This "unified field" is talked about frequently in religious philosophy & spirituality, as well as physics. It can go by any name you'd like - God, Tao, Quantum Field, Brahma, The Source, etc. As soon as we name it, however, we lose it. It is not something that can be conceptualized. It is beyond conception.  

It is EVERYTHING, on all dimensions & scales.

Anyway, what really spurred me to write this post was seeing the quote below on Daily Zen. It describes the difficult notion of a single, seamless reality- "The Clear Light" -that is beyond our limited conceptions of separateness and individual phenomena.

"When the stains from old habits
Are exhausted,
The original light appears,
Blazing through your skull,

Not admitting other matters.
Vast and spacious,
Like sky and water merging
During autumn,
Like snow and moon
Having the same color,
This field is without boundary,
Beyond direction,
Magnificently one entity
Without edge or seam. "

- Hongzhi (1091-1157)

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Amish Hex Sign Rosette Patterns

I haven't been able to post because been very busy lately, moving out of my current home. I've been clearing out the place I rent, packing up my belongings, & having yard sales. Once I make the move & finish the transition, I'll have more time to post here.

My girlfriend's parents sell items they find at auctions and estate sales on eBay. Their store is called "Posha '05", and I designed their logo & eBay banner. Anyway, they always come across interesting things I've never seen before.

Last night, I was looking through their latest set of finds & saw a folder with the rosette pattern, which is found in the center of the "Flower of Life" symbol. This is a geometric construction of interlocking circles that is the basis for the design of the strategy game I created, "Da Vinci's Challenge".

The Official Facebook Page: 

Since my eye is trained to look for this symbol now, it jumps out at me whenever I come across it. I knew that the rosette design is common in Pennsylvania Dutch, or "Amish", art.


When I looked at the contents of the envelope, there were several patterns featuring the rosette in a circle. These templates were used to guide artists who wanted to create are with these features.

I thought it was pretty cool, so I took some photos of the cover envelope & pages to post:

Legendary Pennsylvania Dutch
Hex Sign Patterns
©1964 Jacob & Jane Zook




The rosette pattern is much older & more widespread than just the use by the Amish. Here is a Flikr photo gallery showing ancient uses of "The Flower of Life", and the simpler "Seed of Life" & rosette designs:

scroll down to see examples

Monday, June 13, 2016

Ocean Cleanup


Awhile ago, I saw a post on fUSION Anomalog about the invention of 20 year old Boyan Slat of the Netherlands.


He invented a system of floating arrays that skim garbage of the surface of the ocean, while preventing the aquatic plants & animals under the water from being disturbed.

Unfortunately people create a tremendous amount of waste & garbage that has built up in the environment. This is especially problematic in the oceans, where materials such as plastic are dumped and have accumulated to form the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.


If implemented, this invention is projected to remove almost half of the plastic waste from that patch over 10 years. It would take thousands of years to clean using conventional methods.

His foundation recently raised enough funds to conduct a trial of the skimming technology in the North Sea.


I firmly believe that humans can use technology and intelligence to solve any problem, even ones that we create. Hopefully innovators like Boyan continue to create solutions to the most pressing problems facing our world.


Wednesday, June 08, 2016

I'm the Best Graphic Designer

I saw this paradoxical shirt on BoingBoing, created by ZoĆ« Quinn.

As both a connoisseur of bad design & a professional graphic artist with a sense of humor, I found it to be amusing yet visually disturbing.


Buy it Here:

Monday, June 06, 2016

"The Tree of Life" Storybook


I am illustrating a storybook, called "The Tree of Life".

I was contacted out of the blue by the author Danny Ling. He had found my website The Monkey Buddha while doing a Google search for his story. He shared the manuscript with me & I thought it was an awesome story, so we decided to work together to make this vision a reality.

"The Tree of Life" is a story of cooperative problem solving, featuring animal characters with their own unique personalities. However, they must come together to save the ancient "Tree of Life" that is the center of their world.

The logo above is a design that I made for the social media pages about the book.

* Please "Like" or "Follow" the pages if you want to follow our progress. you will be able to see the animal characters I've drawn, as we release them!

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/treeoflifestory/

Google +:
https://plus.google.com/107538559662950650050

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/treeoflifeunity

 Here is some info about the project:

_____________________________________

“The Tree of Life” is a story by Danny Ling, that explores the interconnected nature of all living things.

Danny serendipitously found artist Paul Micarelli on the Internet to help bring his idea to life. We have been collaborating to turn this idea into an illustrated storybook, in the style of zen ink drawings & watercolor paintings. 


Our vision is to create a beautiful and enjoyable book which instills enlightened ideals into the younger generations. 

By introducing these insights to children, we hope to help raise the consciousness of the whole world. 

These concepts include problem-solving through cooperation, appreciating the sanctity of life, and having a deep connection with the natural world.

_____________________________________

Follow us to be a part of the ongoing development of “The Tree of Life”. We look forward to sharing images & ideas related to the creation of the book!

To contact us about ‘The Tree of Life” project, please email:
treeoflifeunity@gmail.com

We hope you will join us, to find unity through art & storytelling.

Thank You!

Friday, June 03, 2016

Elon Musk- "We Are Already Cyborgs"

This week I posted about the "Deus Ex: The Mechanical Apartheid" trailer & how it serves as a warning for the dangerous possibilities of cyber-human interfacing.

Raw Story posted this talk about A.I. & cybernetics with one of the greatest visionaries of our time, Elon Musk. He's also sounding the alarm about the difficulties that we will face as computer intelligence continues to outpace that of humans, on an individual & collective level.



Like "The Matrix" movies, Musk's answer to the problem of emerging artificial intelligence is one of symbiosis

However, his concept of a "neural lace," to connect the biological nervous system with digital networks, seems like it could present as many problems as solutions. This is the complicated nature of all technology.

This approach sounds similar to my concept of an "Apple iThink" neural-computer interface.



Thursday, June 02, 2016

Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Deus Ex: The Mechanical Apartheid



I saw this thought-provoking trailer, titled "The Mechanical Apartheid," for the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

It is a harsh look at some of the possible dangers that may come along with the inevitable augmentation of human beings- through cybernetic prosthetics & other digital technologies.



A lot of the issues in this trailer seem distinctly within the realm of possibility. Of course, there will likely be other complicated effects of human cyber-augmentation that we can't even imagine right now.

I played Deus Ex: Human Revolution awhile ago, and although the game was okay, it bought up many questions about the merging of man & technology. These concerns are being further explored in this new game, and perhaps the fictional scenarios will serve as a warning to prevent humanity from creating real suffering through these advances.

No matter how much merge with machines, biology is still primarily a vessel for preserving & propagating genetic information.

As long as people still reproduce through sexual means, there will still be human qualities such as family, intimacy, and love. 


If we somehow overcome that fundamental, biological reproductive function (& all its resulting behaviors), then there's no telling what kind of consciousness the individual and collective consciousness of human beings will develop into...

It is the function of art and creative thinking to help lead humanity into the best possible future for people, and all life. Works of fiction like this help us avoid pitfalls that we would otherwise blindly stumble into. We still might have to face these challenges, but at least there will be some collective anticipation of it- and that is necessary to overcome any of the seemingly insurmountable problems that we face.