links for 2009-04-14

  • "The modern age of landscape is an age where social interactions, markets, and developments are routinely channeled by institutions invisible to the ordinary individual. State infrastructure and capital have made immense and irreversible the effects of building, in the form of corridors, monuments and waste, channeling everyday paths and interactions in new space. In the era of modern building, the secrets of landscape are constantly hidden in plain sight. "
  • "You can't be intelligent if you turn your back on truth and succumb to falsehood and denial. Similarly, it isn't intelligent to withdraw and isolate yourself from everyone and everything because that would rob you of all your best learning and growth experiences. And lastly, it isn't intelligent to weaken and disempower yourself. You can't live as a truly intelligent human being unless you're willing to embrace truth, love, and power.

    Intelligence is our highest expression of personal growth. The purest aim of all growth efforts is to live as intelligently as we can. We aren't talking about IQ here. We're talking about aligning ourselves with the true nature of reality instead of railing against it. This requires that we continually strive to become more truthful, more loving, and more powerful — both as individuals and collectively. Anything that turns us away from truth, love, and power also makes us less intelligent."

  • "Artificial histories help to plant identities. But they also work by smoothing over difference. Missing from the Wired history, the civic rituals of Burning Man, or the telling of Counterculture, is the role of dissent, that ingredient that seemed so crucial to the revolutions of 1968. Someone needs to prod these people into taking their own ideals seriously. If they actually care about a gift economy that will conquer the inequalities of gender, class, and race, they need to design an electronic economy that will reflect those values."