Utah’s Sacred Harmonies And Human Hubris

The two weeks I spent in Utah and Colorado with Jason, Lynn, and Dru were informative, productive, and restorative. Jason has most of the videos from Utah up on my youtube channel as a playlist. There are more to come from the week I was Colorado, including a filmed conversation Jason hosted in Denver with about thirty people. Lots of good discussion on that one. Stay tuned.

Here’s our short overview video following the conference, which was March 19, 2022. If you’re in Dallas or know someone who is, please support Lynn Davenport in her run for a seat on the Dallas College Board. Dru Heaton is an official write-in candidate for Governor of Arizona. She’s was raised in the LDS church and is currently chair of the Pima County Libertarian Party. All three of us are committed to keeping children off blockchain and out of the grip of those looking to turn them into digital twins and social impact data commodities.

Here’s a link to the playlist of site visits in and around Salt Lake City and in southeast Utah, uranium mining country. If you’re anxious for more, you can watch the playlist of visits I did in February 2021. I didn’t have Jason for tech support on that trip, so it’s just crummy phone video, but you’ll get the idea. While I’m at it I want to put in a plug for Jason Bosch of Argus Fest who has been intrepid for the past two years offering his expertise totally uncompensated so we can get this information out to the public. Jason has run into some complications with repairs to his van and actually had to borrow money to rent a car for the trip. If you’re in a position to send some funds his way it would help. Details can be found on the support page of my blog here.

While we were in the area, we had the chance to brief a few local residents. One of them asked if we could provide a list of resources that might help their community better understand how educational technology, blockchain identity, future gig work, social impact investing, and digital twinning go together. I compiled a curated list of 50 items that had been scattered across my youtube channel. I organized them so that that they inform one another in a logical way. I know that seems like a lot, but most are short clips of a minute or two with just a few ten to fifteen minutes. Other than my site visits, the clips are drawn from primary sources with links to the originals in the description if you want to investigate further.

If you work your way through this playlist, you’ll have a fairly good idea of where I’m coming from regarding my concerns, quite a few of which were touched on at the MTA conference. This year’s event was about blockchain decentralization much more than it was transhumanism.

Playlist – Lifelong Learning, Future of Work, Human+ On Blockchain

You can watch talks from the conference’s twenty speakers on the Mormon Transhumanist Association’s youtube channel. It was a packed day. We definitely got our $120 worth and green jello for lunch to top it all off! Of particular note was Tomicah Tilleman’s keynote. He is why we decided to come. When a former high-level state department staffer turned impact investing / digital ID think tank talking head, venture capital partner, crypto trader is willing to have their name attached to transhumanism, you know the big game is underway. Time for regular folks like us to get up to speed and and see who’s in the room. In the speech that follows Tillemann discusses the importance of pandemic and war in catalyzing new social systems.

One nugget I took away from the conference that shifted my understanding of the mixed-reality world was Dr. Scott Stornetta’s talk about creating the first encrypted decentralized ledger while working for Bellcore Labs. It’s kind of wild to contemplate that a possible future where we “live” as digital avatar crypto impact assets can trace its roots back to a family dinner at a northern New Jersey Friendly’s restaurant. Stornetta opened saying he’s often invited to speak about his early role in the blockchain space, but he was particularly excited to participate in the MTA event since it allowed him to discuss his work within the context of his faith. In developing blockchain technology he envisioned the “world as witness,” the replacement for the trusted third party. I felt this phrasing came with spiritual overtones. I made sure Dr. Stornetta and his wife both got a copy of our Nephele flyer. Thanks again to Raul of Silicon Icarus for helping us look polished and professional, from a graphic-design standpoint at least.

Evidently our attendance at the event rubbed some the wrong way. JP and Julie Collins, bloggers and podcasters at Book our Ours in Pittsburgh, spent a chunk of their Sunday morning breakfast hour questioning our intentions. They make their videos available for download, which I did. I annotated the one that references us with my responses written on titles overlaid on their video. Jason says next time leave them on long enough to be read. Point taken, Jason.  I’ll warn you that the tone is not at all kind. Inflammatory comments are made about mormons, which is not the name used by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, quite a few of whom are my dear friends and kind and caring people. It was members of the church who invited me to come speak to them about children and educational technology in 2021. Click here to watch those presentations.

JP and Julie are correct in saying most church members are not aware of the ways in which digital identity, bio-technology, and the Metaverse are being asserted by interests that appear fringe, but are aligned with the investment interests of the church. Such is the case not only in Utah, where the church has significant influence over cultural and political life, but for ALL OTHER FAITHS that will be sucked into social impact finance either through their endowments or by offering social services that come with pay for success data harvest requirements.

It is our responsibility to educate people about what is planned, remove plausible deniability, live with as much integrity as possible, and leave the rest to god. I came to Provo, just as I came to the Unitarians in the leafy liberal Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia and via Zoom to the faithful in Israel, to show them where the road goes. It is a road trod by Golems, Kratts, dancing brooms  – animatronic life turned mechanical counterfeit. Some interests out there feel it is God’s will that we use advanced technology to put humans on par with god in world-building as “creators.” I, myself, don’t think that is the right position to take. I prefer Robin Wall Kimmerer’s assessment that we are the younger sibling beings, and we should know our place and learn from the older beings of the Earth.

Most do not understand that we are in midst of narrative warfare raging on all sides. I still put my faith in the goodness of people that they will be discerning in the media they consume; that they will eventually turn to choices that nurture them. It deeply matters the story you choose to live in – it’s about energy, frequency, harmony. Remember, as John Trudell said “we are power.” The story JP and Julie told about us serves a purpose. I leave you to contemplate what purpose that might be. At the end of the day, this rather toxic half hour offers insights into techniques of deflection, ad hominem, mis-direction, conjecture, and linguistic programming being deployed against those who buck the established alt-media narrative and chart their own course.

So it appears that these content creators don’t appreciate receiving feedback on their breakfast banter. I hope to record a conversation with Jason and Lynn on this shortly. You can watch the original here. The main points I’d like to convey are:

1) the conference was about blockchain

2) we were there to witness and ask questions not make fun of the other attendees

3) what they call transhumanism I refer to as human+ and this includes digital twinning that is a major part of the ed-tech and health-tech sectors on blockchain

4) mixed reality is a military game that will disproportionately impact the poor, in opportunity zones, in a negative way

5) Utah is a prime example of a public-private partnership / social impact state with significant involvement of faith communities in social welfare

6) all faiths are going to have to make decisions about participating in human capital futures markets through their endowments or provision of social services

As for the brazen unsubstantiated accusations directed our way, I trust that those who follow my work can figure out what is really going on with their spectacle.

Just so you don’t think I’ve been twiddling my thumbs, I’m still deep into my research of Julius Stulman’s and Fritz Kunz’s World Institute / Foundation for Integrated Education. It appears to have been a Cold War-era extension of the Manhattan Project leading towards the Japan Science and Technology Agency’s (with the NSF and US Department of Energy) Moonshot Project with the goal of cyborg avatar “life” by 2050. Oliver Reiser, professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, and Hungarian systems theorist and Club of Budapest / SUNY Geneseo professor Ervin Laszlo were involved as well.

For a glimpse into the depths take a gander at:

Stulman and Laszlo’s “Emergent Man: His Chances, Problems and Potentials,” especially Robert A. Smith III’s in Chapter 7 on the Unibutz

The collected issues of “Main Currents In Modern Thought,” a journal edited by Fritz Kunz from 1940-75 with support from Julius Stulman and Ervin Laszlo

Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin’s archives at the University of Saskatchewan,”Foundation For Integrated Education” files

I had found Drew Hempel’s analysis early in my investigations, but didn’t have enough context at the time to truly appreciate what a revelation it was – and from almost 20 years ago! I’ll be getting back to this, but for now take a look and know that his findings are aligned with my independent research. I encourage you to check out the astute observations of a music theorist and one-time progressive organizer in the Twin Cities. His Academia.edu page is way beyond my pay grade.  I just ordered a copy of Reiser’s 1975 book “Cosmic Humanism and World Unity.” They make sure the good stuff stays out of print.

To keep you busy until my next post, feel free to browse the Kumu.io map I made linking Philadelphia Main Line elite, defense interests, and special education (left side) to the domination system of Junipero Serra’s Spanish Missions over the Chumash people and their sacred springs (right-center), a ritual extended through Theosophist engagement in Ojai and nanotechnology and theoretical physics undertakings at UC Santa Barbara (center). Fritz Kunz hosted a west coast launch (right side) for Stulman’s Foundation for Integrated Education in Montecito, CA during the summer of 1949 with Linus Pauling as keynote speaker. Ojai, CA about a half hour away was the home of the relocated Theosophist Krotona Institute (top center) associated with Annie Besant and Jiddu Krishnamurti. Click here to access the interactive map.

Finance and defense interests are in the process of manifesting digital enclosures designed to contain our material selves as ESG investment opportunities. This is happening in concert with government officials, faith leaders, and non-profits, most of whom have NO concept of the changes now underway. Are we to be locked a Metaverse tower like Saint Barbara? Will we allow a future of permanent digital incarceration through synthetic programmable hallucinations to bewitch the children and the not yet born? No. We won’t allow such a future to pass uncontested. For that reason we study, travel, question, witness, film, and tell stories of healing and redemption.

We plant seeds for trees we may never see – to replace oak forests felled and burned to boil whale oil on California beaches.

Despite the odds, we plant acorns of ideas, because life stands with life and all can be washed clean.