Mother Whale and Calf: Harbin women, Groups at Harbin, Drumming in the Conference Center

It's the Harbin women ... who make Harbin Hot Springs exceptional, in so many ways. The women I've met and seen there since 1994-ish are easy taking off their clothes in public, in a situation where clothing-optionalness has been normalized for both genders. (For millions of years, I suspect our ancestors didn't wear clothes in Africa. By contrast, the clothing meme affects a lot of people now in modernity 2010). This clothing-optionalness adds an element of attraction and openness to Harbin's milieu, which may influence how people think there. {Do forms of what I might call improvisational opera then emerge?} Women (like men, too) who seek freedom - especially informed by the 1960s and 1970s - come to Harbin.

This morning when I was observing a man give a woman a Watsu (water shiatsu) in the warm pool, I thought that I was watching a whale surface and dive, in a very graceful way. As this woman's breasts emerged again and again so beautifully, her chest open in this water dance, I thought of breaching whales.

Women and men seem to enjoy seeing each other naked.


*

People form groups a lot, and especially at Harbin. 'Subcultures,' or little networks, abound there. I postulate that this is a development on 'troopbonding' in ancestral environments (Money 1988: 114).


How have residents and long term visitors come to deal with the flux of Harbin and life? I wonder if Harbin as a kind of tribe is one way, and if the many subgroups that have also formed there, since 1972, are another. For example, there are an amazing number of spiritual teachers - very colorful ones - and others, who have come through Harbin's gates since 1972. {Harbin has so many teachers!}


How does Harbin respond to these groups in all their uniquenesses? Harbin experiments, in part, - it tries things. Some groups (workshops) are laughter-oriented, many are New Age, some are sexually oriented groups. A kind of culture emerges around these gatherings in Harbin's Heart Consciousness Church's fluidness.

Harbin's founder has some say in what workshops happen at Harbin, as do the Managing Directors. And Harbin as a kind of family, and culture, gives a kind of form to these groups as a whole.

In many ways, Harbin is an ongoing exploration of, and return to, hippiness, as I see it.


*

Drumming last night in the conference center, we generated the big beat - that synchronicity that happens on the beat - the one - through music, particularly drumming.
















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/mother-whale-and-calf-harbin-women.html - February 3, 2010)

American bellflower: nontheist Friends, 'silent meeting' of evolutionary biology, "Harvard Psychedelic Club"

Dear nontheist Friends,


I continue to be curious how ways might open for nontheist Friends to explore the remarkable 'silent meeting' of evolutionary biology (which I believe in), and primatology, to deepen our Friendly exploration, knowledgeably, of diversity (symbolically, especially) and share this with other Quakers, perhaps to open new ways of exploring the relaxation response in Meeting, in warm pools ~ hot springs ~ baths, and at home with (atheist) friends. While Huston Smith's 'The Religions of Man' (whom I recently met (at around age 90, with his wife Kendra) at a Berkeley book store reading from a new book called 'The Harvard Psychedelic Club' by the San Francisco Chronicle's long time writer about spirituality and religion, Don Lattin) perhaps characterizes how richly people believe religiously, including Friends, I wonder, too, how we might best express an openness to all of this diversity in uniquely nontheistically Friendly and reasoning ways.

World University and School's subjects on 'Quakers' and 'nontheist Friends,' which will develop, may be two germane ways to come into conversation with Friends about nontheist Friends.

With friendly greetings,
Scott

worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Subjects

scottmacleod.com



Dear nontheist Friends,

As a follow up, Huston Smith is also one of 4 key individuals/subjects of 'The Harvard Psychedelic Club' along with Timothy Leary, Andrew Weil MD, and Ram Das. For folks in the 1960s and 70s, especially, psychedelic drugs gave rise to profound religious and spiritual experiences, in extraordinary senses of the words, and often in very nontheistically friendly ways, as well. I'd like to invite nontheist Friends to begin to engage, in our Friendly ways, these experiences, in letting friends know about nontheist Friends.

With nontheistically Friendly greetings,
Scott


*

Dear Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,

It's all neurophysiology.

Love,
Scott


*

http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2007/11/071115164134.jpg





(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/american-bellflower-nontheist-friends.html - February 2, 2010)

Silene scouleri: To contact improv

To contact improv ... :)

which creates connections ...


















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/silene-scouleri-to-contact-improv.html - February 1, 2010)

Badrinath Waters: Is culture a process - evolutionarily - of group inference around Identity, Modernity, Language, Counterculture, - Yoga Conference

Scott: Is culture a process - , evolutionarily - of group inference around tradition, ethnicity, subculture, and identity (some main concepts in anthropology which are sometimes juxtaposed with modernity, nation states and globalization, as well as the Network Society), where language is a key modality informing such inference? (Are each of these expressions of troopbonding, that is bonding together in groups, evolutionarily - John Money [1988]?) What anthropology papers explicitly address this?


Hippie friend online: No


Scott: ... neither in counterculture nor Hinduism, as well, where questions of agency (orangutans as an example of primate agency) become very involved - when I am that you are ... om tat sat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_Tat_Sat:) ... profound empathy/sympathy makes for wild relatedness - don't know of any related anthropological papers, though.


*

The yoga conference in the Regency Hyatt in San Francisco, which I passed through today, had a lot of yoga products ...

Yogis today in the Bay Area are entrepreneurial!

And, unfortunately, I didn't see Angela and Victor at this conference ...








uttarakhand.ws/d/1805-4/badrinath-6.jpg ~


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badrinath




(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/01/badrinath-waters-is-culture-process-of.html - January 31, 2010)

Button Williow: Berkeley on a Saturday, After 1964, Where are the hippies?

Berkeley on a Saturday - Farmer's Market (a friend was visiting and was doing a kind of Farmer's Market tourism) ...

Nabalom's Bakery Collective with its Saturday-morning, happening, live music, and great Josephine cookies ...

Unprogrammed silent meeting in Second Life on Sea Turtle Island ...

Teaching an "Information Technology and Society" class on Harvard's virtual island in Second Life ...

Contact Improv jam in the afternoon at 8th Street Studies ...

All come after free speech at UC Berkeley in 1964 ...

Where are the hippies? Living quietly around ...








(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/01/button-williow-berkeley-on-saturday.html - January 30, 2010)

Lilium Pistil and Stamens: Innovation Research Program, Abstract, World Univ & School Infrastructure

Innovation Research Program
World University and School
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University
January 29, 2010



World University and School is applying for an Innovation Research Program grant for Cloud research (No. 6) because of our mission in reaching out to the entire world to provide a free, wiki-based education platform and our vision, through facilitating the development of broadband worldwide, to make our service accessible to under served parts of the world.


World University and School is a global, digital, open, free to students, future degree-granting wiki university and school, potentially in all languages, countries-states, subjects and at all levels, using a Wikipedia-with-MIT Open Course Ware model, for everyone, especially OLPC countries and the emerging world. Being a wiki-based education and information site, it's a place where anyone can teach, learn and edit content, via video, via virtual worlds, and in ways people create.


By developing a wiki school in every language and country/territory, WUaS will facilitate a wiki-conversation between languages and countries, in terms of teaching/learning, free and open software, and also vis-a-vis free degrees. It will generate a language database to facilitate translation technologies in all possible language combinations, which will become a rich resource for brain and language research on end-users, using, for example, neural 'hats.' WUaS makes possible, in creative ways, the production, and linkage, of potentially all open source teaching/learning content, in all languages in an infinitely extensible way.


There are about 4.7 billion people without digital access (around 2 billion people have digital access), and WUaS would like to reach all with 7,385 languages in 220 countries and territories, as online universities and schools. World University and School teaching and learning wikis are a rational for wiring the whole world. Not only will your hardware be useful in these countries, but as people in small languages, for example, start to teach to their web cameras, and upload this content to video-hosting sites listed at WUaS (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Educational_Software#Video-Streaming_Hosting_Services), your hardware, with WUaS foreknowledge, can be used.


For this, WUaS needs ample resources to orchestrate not only bringing an open, teaching and learning university and school to the world, but also broadband development, through planning and partnering. The use of virtual worlds as integral to World University and School's open teaching and learning approach will require hardware such as laptops and desktops, with at least 1 gigabyte of RAM for current virtual worlds, such as Second Life and Open Cobalt, - to new markets around the world.


Due to the infrastructure realities in the poorer countries of the world our mission is twofold. First we endeavor to become the world's first completely free, degree-granting, multilingual, wiki-based website, partnering ourselves with organizations such as One Laptop per Child and UC Berkeley to provide access to education information and knowledge across borders. Secondly, we want to become the nonprofit organization that can provide Internet connectivity to under-served countries and areas; particularly those areas that already have programs such as One Laptop per Child and need ways to make those computers more meaningful and connected with the rest of the world.


For One Laptop per Child countries - Rwanda, Ethiopia, Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, USA (Birmingham, Alabama), Uruguay, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Cambodia, & Papua New Guinea, and the other poorest countries in the world - this may include not only developing the open, free, teaching and learning, WUaS wiki (for illiterate people, too, since they can potentially access the web using icons and video on hand held computers), but also becoming the key WUaS Internet service provider for these countries.


In many of these countries we envision utilizing hand held computers with 2 by 3 inch screens, as output, because these are the most economic models and hence the easiest way to serve and connect with the greatest number of people. This also favors cloud computing where applications are primarily located on servers in cyberspace and from which printers are easily used.


In terms of organizational development, we envision utilizing UC Berkeley and Stanford graduate students to develop the teaching and learning wiki for WUaS for these countries and to research and assist us in our endeavor to provide the Internet infrastructure in targeted countries. WUaS is planning for printable materials from the WUaS wiki, as well as from hand held devices.


For the the Open Innovation graduate student at WUaS, this would entail developing a plan for becoming this Internet service provider's service provider, as well as copying and translating the existing English wiki section titles, and the text, but neither the software nor video, into the major languages of these countries, and beginning to develop a long term plan to wire these nine countries, by focusing on adding to OLPC Internet service provider approaches, and existing OLPC on-site, broadband information technologies.


As part of our development plan, we envision ways to bring broadband to the world, focusing particularly on the poorest OLPC countries in the world but including everyone, so that World University & School's open teaching and learning in all languages, countries, subjects and at all levels becomes a viable, and flourishing, resource for the world.


Because of our comprehensive vision in expanding the free flow of people's attention through online teaching and learning content, people's knowledge and information, as well as the related broadband infrastructure to accommodate learning, we feel that we would be a worthy organization to receive this Innovation grant. Not only does World University and School focus the collective intelligence of the connected population inside and outside enterprises, WUaS gives individual end users the knowledge and resources for teaching and learning and thus to predict the future, make their own decisions, and allocate their own resources.







(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/01/lilium-pistil-and-stamens-innovation.html - January 29, 2010)

Dwarf Daphne: Harbin Hot Springs' field work in the pools is fascinating and salutary when studying the relaxation response

Harbin Hot Springs' field work in the pools {harbin.org} is fascinating and salutary when studying the relaxationresponse.org/steps, anthropologically, in the context of Heart Consciousness Church {which is Harbin}, as well as among friends there.

The warm pool deepens and makes more fulsome the relaxation response, even in inclement weather {e.g. rain, hail, etc.}. The warm water, at body temperature, is so encompassing and enveloping, in a very welcoming way, which adds to the experience of a kind of physical oneness for your bodymind. And people are often intimate, cuddling, in the pools, which in the state of relaxation due to the warm water, and observing this (participant observation as anthropological method), makes the relaxation response very harmonious and serene and natural to be a part of.


The Harbin pool area, as well as all of Harbin itself - the 1700 acres of relatively untouched land and nature - and even the process of traveling to get to Harbin, all contribute to the possibility of eliciting the relaxation response remarkably at Harbin, especially in its warm pool.


*

I've written in other blog entries here {} about how bliss can bubble up {a neurophysiological process for me}, when deeply relaxed, particularly in the Harbin warm pool, and also in moving back and forth from hot to cold.


*

Anthropologically, it's primarily the warm pool which facilitates the relaxation response's elicitation so richly, and is part of what I'm studying at Harbin.

In the context of Heart Consciousness Church, which is Harbin Hot Springs, I wonder if relaxation response elicitation in the warm pool is one unique expression of what happens there, biologically, that might contribute to aspects of Harbin being a church, but naturally {without the context of 'spirituality,' 'religion,' etc.}, and especially in the context even of evolutionary biology {since our bodyminds were shaped by this, and warm water elicits the relaxation response, richly}.

{talk}


*

Eliciting the relaxation response on my own at home every morning is a different experience, a different biology. It is more varied in terms of focus, but the focus isn't so influenced by the warmth of water (only occasionally through memory, that is, in going 'there' to what the memory elicits, in my bodymind}, and which gets me out of my 'head' in the Harbin pools - naturally. At home, I return my attention to the releasing process, again and again, which involves focusing my mind (on 'releasing' or the word 'one'), if only to release.

At home, while eliciting the relaxation response, I also explore the idea of my bodymind being a musical instrument, releasing relative to where my attention is drawn - the light through a window, an idea, a small piece of thread on the rug, etc. and so there's sometimes slightly more 'interactivity' in the releasing process when I elicit this at home.

My regular practice of eliciting the relaxation response makes possible a variety of ways of exploring it, and considering it anthropologically, as well, at Harbin.




*

Daphne (which is in a pot on the edge of the Harbin warm pool)

freshdirt.sunset.com/.m/images/2008/02/22/daphne.jpg



























(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/01/dwarf-daphne-harbin-hot-springs-field.html - January 28, 2010)

Orangutan birth: World University & School is a baby, Birth is happening, World Internet Service Provider

World University & School is a baby ... birth is happening ...


*

World University & School also wants to become internet service providers' internet provider on the rationale of making open, free teaching and learning available to the world, in all languages ...


*

So, into the Harbin {birthing} pools ...
















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/01/orangutan-birth-world-university-school.html - January 27, 2010)

Prickly Lettuce: Berkeley Faculty Club, Language of Travel and Trips, Loving Bliss

Berkeley Faculty Club ...

with a senior Berkeley anthropologist and a scholar/professor from Japan ...

Talking about Japan, Basho, Zen, bliss and many other tourism studies' topics ...


*

is the language of tourism studies helpful for thinking about pscyhedelic trips?


How might we think of LSD, using the language of tripping, as a touristic experience.

And similarly, how might we think of MDMA-ecstasy as a religious experience, in the context of the academic discourse of religious studies?


*

to Harbin ...










(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/01/prickly-lettuce-berkeley-faculty-club.html - January 26, 2010)

Nest: Three outputs for World University & School, Network Neutrality, Open 'Information Technology & Society' course

Three outputs for World University & School to plan for ...


4x6 inch OLPC screen

2x3 inch handheld computer screen

and printing from hand held mobile computers (PDFs, portable storage, etc.)


(http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Master_Plan)


*

Stanford University Law School panel of 5 on "Network Neutrality & Future of Internet" on Jan. 25, 2010:


Network Neutrality seems likely, ahead, in U.S., at least -


These are key principles for Telecom companies:

application agnosticism
user choice



At the time of deregulation …

4 principles for regulating of the internet (Principles For Broadband and IP Services):


1 access
2 choice
3 attach lawful devices
4 competition among network providers


((1) consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice; (2) consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement; (3) consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and (4) consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers. [http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:sDbLcaSIUK4J:www.usiia.org/pubs/principles.doc+time+of+deregulation+4+principles+for+internet+regulation&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a])


Two more principles have recently become important:

5 Transparency – (in response to Comcast's deep packet searching and blockage of Bit Torrent to deal with internet congestion)
6 Nondiscrimination principle



Barbara van Schewick – Stanford Law School
Jay Monahan – Vuze Incorporated
Daniel L. Brenner – Hogan and Hartson LLP
Markham C. Erickson – Holch & Erickson LLP – Open Internet Coalition
Mark Lemley – Stanford Law School & facilitator


lead to a fascinating and edifying conversation.




*

Open 'Information Technology & Society' class Saturdays, starting January 30, 2010 - 11:10a-1p Pacific Time, office hours after from 1:10 - 2p on Harvard's Second Life Island worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University Come join us. We'll explore how the information technology revolution is developing especially vis-a-vis webnographers.org











(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/01/nest-three-outputs-for-world-university.html - January 25, 2010)