Transcending the Cultural Entanglements of Death

One lesson regarding life has repeatedly impressed itself upon me lately: the chains of entanglements society deliberately imposes upon us from birth and increasingly ensnares us in throughout our lives are systemic manifestations of "ego" and "death."  These snares of ego-dominated society rob us of our life energy and freedom to live in peace, joy, and harmony.

From birth we are told who we are and what we are supposed to be and do as a person.  We are given a name we did not choose for ourself before we were even born; a government we literally were incapable of consenting to being ruled by prints out a fancy piece of paper and generates a random number locking in and imposing that false ego-identity for the rest of our life; we go through childhood being bombarded by other people's ideas about what we should believe and how we should behave, robbing us of our own identity; public education gives us a sanitized, spoon-fed notion of what the world is like, suffocates our creativity and imagination, denies us the knowledge of how to think critically, and robs us of our conscience; as we go about our lives, our mistakes follow and haunt us because society tracks and labels everything you do, judges you for it, and never allows you to live beyond it once you learn from it and make amends (our mistakes are supposed to guide us, not imprison us); and, as adults, the need for money enslaves us into committing our invaluably precious time to corporate machinations that are destroying the planet and our fellow human beings, robbing us of our life-force and destabilizing our families and communities in the process.

Life and death are a dancing pair of dualities; they do indeed need one another.  Yet, what we see in the delusional abstract layer of conceptualization humanity has imposed on its self is grossly out of balance with the ground layer of physical reality, dangerously favoring egotistical falsehoods and insatiable desires to a degree that threatens the totality of Life on this planet, and continues to cause immense and unnecessary suffering upon billions of souls.  Our collective ego has become completely out of control, behaving like a mental parasite on a global scale.  Whenever a duality is so out of balance, it is inevitably subject to a self-instigated correction that restores balance – this is karma (cause-and-effect within a dynamic system).  In this case, a karmic correction will mean a mass-extinction of the human race.

(Transhumanism and the "technology singularity," which will inevitably lead to humanity becoming a Borg-like hive mind in which individuality is destroyed, are an unattainable mirage due to the systemic failures and societal decay exponentially increasing in parallel with technological advancement.  We do not have the maturity and wisdom as a species to reach this evolutionary threshold without destroying ourselves one way or the other.  Besides do we really want to lose our individuality and the creative power of diversity in the process of collective integration?)

The extreme manifestations of our collective ego, such as global capitalism (built upon a sociopathic ponzi banking scheme writ large), xenophobic nationalism, and ego-driven populist individualism are a "clear and present danger" to the People of the world, and the life-support systems of Earth which we all depend upon to sustain us.  As I have increasingly urged myself, and urge all of you here and now to consider, we must have the courage and determination to dissolve the societally imposed entanglements that currently siphon our individual life-force into systems that are destroying humanity and the Earth.  We must withdraw our consent to be subjects of corrupt socioeconomic systems.  We must let go of all entanglements that no longer serve our best interests.  We must relinquish our attachments to ideas that misguide as from seeing the "truth of what is."  We must redirect our life-force, or precious time, to constructing a new and novel socioeconomic paradigm that is life-affirming and sustainable.

The infinite growth paradigm of our global culture has crashed into the finite limits of our world.  No matter how hard we try, we will only serve to compound the problem (and accelerate our own destruction) if we continue to rely on and feed into the old socioeconomic order.  It cannot be saved; it must be allowed to die conscientiously and in deliberate fashion, or we will all die with it.  Only by collectively walking in balance and wisdom, built on a solid ground of life-sustaining values and systems, can we safely proceed in our technological advancements and noble ego-drive to explore and understand the universe, without destroying ourselves in the process.

My Debut Album: Wise 'Trip' EP

You can listen to the finalized version of my entire album on SoundCloud.
It is also available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Amazon MP3, Deezer, and Rdio!

Wise 'Trip' EP is a "concept album," falling under the sub-genres of ambient, ambient industrial, and "space music," that provides the listener with a variety of unique mental impressions united by a thread of universal metaphysical concepts concerning life and reality.  'Trip' has a double-meaning: trip, as in a journey; and trip, as in a "head-trip".

My goal has been to create a truly fresh, unique, and rich listening experience, with each song being structured and composed to serve as a musical metaphor for the concepts and feelings I wanted to share.  I did not wish to be bound by common song structures in doing so--the structures are defined instead by the concepts themselves.

I have thrown in a mellow, alternative genre "bonus track" I recorded and produced in a little over an hour using a full-featured recording studio.  It was intentionally produced to give it an impromptu, "off-the-cuff" performance feel, with every instrumental and vocal track performed by Drake Holliday.  He has my thanks for letting me work with him on it, and for letting me share this song.

The lyrics for "Ascendency" were written by Taylor Podkranic.  I'm grateful to him for writing them specifically for me, and for how personally meaningful they are to me.  I'm further grateful for him transferring copyright ownership of the lyrics over to my record label.  All together, a great example of thoughtful altruism.

"Ascendancy" was a song born from a deeply personal struggle I had for many years. The primary concept conveyed musically is of moving from "darkness to light". The lyrics, which have strong ties to the mythology of the Phoenix (and were written for me by my friend Taylor Podkranic), are perfectly complimentary to the musical development of the song. The purpose of the song, as a whole, is to remind and inspire people, who may be in, or at least remember, that in their darkest hour, they can transcend their limits and struggles to be reborn into whoever they wish to be...

"Ascendancy" Lyrics
(Written by Taylor Podkranic)

©2015 Wise 'Trip' Records

[Verse 1]

Broken and beaten,

to the depths of my soul

Sundered and shaken,

will I ever be whole?

(Repeat Verse)

[Chorus 1]

Climbing higher and higher,

fists to the sky

Through the smoke and the fire,

screaming why... why!

Why did I fracture?

Why did I break?

Can I come back together?

What will it take?

No longer that boy

Reborn as a man

Embers burn in my eyes,

and now here I stand

...now here I stand

[Verse 2]

Self-loathing a cancer,

dragging me down

Choking on silence,

what then is the sound?

Of a soul as it's breaking,

as all lies are lost

As new eyes come open,

I know the cost

[Chorus 2]

Climbing higher and higher,

fists to the sky

Through smoke and the fire,

screaming why... why!

Why did I stumble?

Why did I fall?

Am I worth saving?

Am I worth it at all?

The answer is yes!

We deserve one more chance

A shot at redemption

I'm worth more than a glance

...more than a glance

[Bridge]

Because if you watch,

I'll burst into flames,

soar out of my ashes

Remember my name

Suffering can cleanse you,

each trial a gift

Harder, Faster, Stronger,

even mountains may shift

You have the power

Exert your will

Learn from this lesson,

as I am still...

[Final Chorus]

Climbing higher and higher,

fists to the sky

Through the smoke and the fire,

screaming I will not die

Now I can fly,

fists to the sky

I will not die

Now I can... fly...

[Outro]

What is broken,

may be mended... (x7)

Systemic Vulnerabilities in the Global Economy

Hello All,

     It would seem, 14 years later, that I was correct in the grander thesis I strongly eluded to throughout my H.S. Senior Paper (available at http://j.mp/SeniorPaper).  In the global economy there has been an ever-growing trend of:

  Increasing over-interdependence of large-scale economic providers, within increasingly-globalized supply chain-webs (most courtesy of “J.I.T.” supply systems, globalized ‘vertical specialization,’ and as I now recognize, the overly interdependent Banking & Lending {financing} web), have made what once was a relatively resilient economic system, capable of dampening out local disruptions, turn into one of a remarkably systemically fragile nature — inherently of the nature to propagate and “snow-ball” microeconomic disruptions into massive socioeconomic disruptions (recent e.g., the 2008 “Sub-Prime Mortgage Bubble” collapse, inducing the “Great Recession”).

I would appreciate your feedback.  This economic trend is going to inevitably be disastrous if we do not alleviate the fundamental systemic vulnerabilities elluded to in my research paper.  Thank you.



"One Love"

Matthew L. Morgan
{ dJ_5entIn3L℠ / WiseFromWithin℠ }
[ Wise ‘Trip’ Records® / Harmony through Music Foundation℠ ]

Reflections on the Nature of "Living" Systems

[Text below adapted from my college astronomy course discussion contributions:]


//Conditions Supportive of Life//
What conditions does Earth have that seem necessary to support the existence of living organisms? Be specific, and relate these conditions to the history and astronomical context of our planet.

Although other combinations of chemical compounds may possibly lead to self-organization, metabolic activity, and replication (and therefore evolution) as xenobiologists are currently studying, the most basic necessities for life in the form we are familiar with, which are provided for on Earth, include:

• The Sun, as a source of electromagnetic energy necessary for photosynthesis and maintaining habitable temperatures on the Earth's surface (i.e. keeping water in its liquid state beyond the Archean Eon, 4.0-2.5 Ga; Note: "Astronomers think that the sun had about 70–75 percent of the present luminosity, yet temperatures appear to have been near modern levels even within 500 Ma of Earth's formation [> 4.04 Ga], which is puzzling (the faint young Sun paradox).  The presence of liquid water is evidenced by certain highly deformed gneisses produced by metamorphism of sedimentary protoliths. The equable temperatures may reflect the presence of larger amounts of greenhouse gases than later in the Earth's history.  Alternatively, Earth's albedo may have been lower at the time, due to less land area and cloud cover.").  Additionally, the Sun's electromagnetic radiation (reduced to a "healthy" level due to the Earth's magnetic field and ozone layer) accelerates evolution by introducing errors in DNA and RNA encoding sequences, a small percentage of which lead to beneficial adaptations [see Genetic Variation].
• A very wide variety of types of elements and molecules from one or more supernovae, (reactants and catalysts) needed for complex chemical reactions, which provided the diverse array of chemical interplay and structures needed for the random creation of biochemical precursor compounds (i.e. amino acids, nucleic acids) necessary for a successful selection of chemically interacting components that could inherently self-organize, self-sustain through metabolic reactions, and replicate (via RNA or simpler precursors such as PNA, GNA, or TNA).
• Liquid water, provided by volcanic activity as well as ice-containing asteroids, meteorites, and proto-planets (particularly during the Late Heavy Bombardment phase of Earth's history, 4.1-3.8 Ga), as a highly efficient medium for the suspension, free movement, and interaction of chemical compounds necessary for the formation of the first organic compounds (by allowing a very high frequency of random encounters of inanimate chemical compounds to occur), and to eventually continue providing cellular life the capacity for homeostasis (via self-containment within a membrane) and the medium in which to carry on cell processes, including metabolic chemical reactions.
• An atmosphere, providing the containment (i.e. avoiding loss into space) of water vapor, a positive pressure environment necessary for cellular life to survive beyond the oceans, and a major source of molecules (such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen) necessary for the metabolic activity of more complex unicellular, and eventually multicellular, organisms utilizing photosynthesis.

How likely do you think it is that other planets in the universe have, or have had in the past, those conditions that seem necessary to support the existence of living organisms? Explain why you think so.

The following quote, which I used part of in my Week 2 discussion about the likelihood of "intelligent" life elsewhere in the universe, provides support for the idea that life must (extrapolating statistically) exist in other locations in the universe because very similar conditions to those on Earth exist in countless other solar systems in the universe:

"The chemistry of life may have begun shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, during a habitable epoch when the Universe was only 10–17 million years old.  According to the panspermia hypothesis, microscopic life—distributed by meteoroids, asteroids and other small Solar System bodies—may exist throughout the universe.  Nonetheless, Earth is the only place in the universe known to harbor life.  Estimates of habitable zones around other stars, along with the discovery of hundreds of extrasolar planets and new insights into the extreme habitats here on Earth, suggest that there may be many more habitable places in the universe than considered possible until very recently.  On 4 November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy.  11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars.  The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away, according to the scientists." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_habitability]

I personally concur with the panspermia hypothesis, that forms of basic animate matter (i.e. "life" and/or its precursor components) exist throughout the universe.  It is quite plausible that Earth was "seeded" with very basic form(s) of animate matter by one or more space bodies entering the Earth's atmosphere during its first billion years or so of existence.  On Earth, and on other planetary bodies in the universe with the right conditions, there as a "nursery" environment that permits the development of more complex animate matter and an evolutionary process, through natural selection, providing ever more complex forms of life to develop.

//Variety Possible in Forms of "Life"//

Many people often forget that there is a vast middle-ground of possibilities when it comes to the "variety spectrum" for animate systems.  For them there is either little, if any, forms of life beyond our planet or solar system, or there are countless other intelligent species in the universe that are generally very similar in their biochemistry and physiology to homo sapiens.  Yet, xenobiologists (and astrobiologists) have made significant progress in the last decade in expanding our realization of the vast variety of forms in which "living" things can potentially exist—forms of animate systems that are not carbon based, use a different molecular liquid besides water to provide an emulsion medium for metabolic-related chemical reactions, and even perhaps "life" that has advanced beyond biochemistry altogether (e.g. self-organized and evolving electromagnetic energy matrices that take full advantage of the significant evolutionary freedom the quantum mechanical characteristics of matter-energy systems provide at the microscopic level (the average photosynthetic efficiency in plants and photosynthetic bacteria is a staggeringly high ≥90-98%^, as compared to our most recent "cutting-edge" advance in solar cell efficiency in the lab of 46.0%, because those biochemical systems provide for the quantum process of photonic energy pathway self-selection called "quantum walk"*).

* "A phenomenon known as quantum walk increases the efficiency of the energy transport of light significantly. In the photosynthetic cell of an algae, bacterium, or plant, there are light-sensitive molecules called chromophores arranged in an antenna-shaped structure named a photocomplex. When a photon is absorbed by a chromophore, it is converted into a quasiparticle referred to as an exciton, which jumps from chromophore to chromophore towards the reaction center of the photocomplex, a collection of molecules that traps its energy in a chemical form that makes it accessible for the cell's metabolism. The particle's wave properties enable it to cover a wider area and try out several possible paths simultaneously, allowing it to instantaneously "choose" the most efficient route, where it will have the highest probability of arriving at its destination in the minimum possible time. Because it takes place at temperatures far higher than quantum phenomena usually occur in, quantum walking is only possible over very short distances, due to obstacles in the form of destructive interference that will come into play. These cause the particle to lose its wave properties for an instant before it regains them once again after it is freed from its locked position through a classic "hop". The distance towards the center is therefore covered in a series of conventional hops and quantum walks." [Source]

^ "Plants 'seen doing quantum physics'"; "Quantum Biology: Better Living Through Quantum Mechanics - The Nature of Reality"; "Quantum coherent energy transfer over varying pathways in single light-harvesting complexes"; "Environment-Assisted Quantum Walks in Energy Transfer of Photosynthetic Complexes"