Ben ... feeling weirded out by the last three weird days
Eric ... doing good, just got back from the local UU and I'm hopeful that there are kindred people there
Brandon ... excited to have Keith on the call today, glad that my in-laws can watch the boys today
Keith ... pretty good, closing in on the one year anniversary of abandoning the corporate world (October 5)
WWWs from last time
<s>Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing</s>
Brandon ... finish the visitor cookies and logging including google analytics ... by next week
<s>Brandon ... send the image of the SolSeed emblem to Eric ... by next week
Brandon ... react to the transcendent experiences table ... by next week
Brandon .. ask Mark Neilssen if we can include his paintings in the intial The Seed video ... by the week after next
Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing</s>
Ben ... re-contact John about getting the rights to the song ... by tonight
Ben ... check with Brandon about the rights to use the paintings in a Creative Commons licensed video ... by tonight
Ben ... make some progress on the next music video ... by next call
<s>Eric ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing</s>
Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
Eric ... Extract issues from Commentary on commentary and add to Git ... by next call
<s>Eric ... mail thing to Sequoia ... by next call</s>
WWWs
Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
Ben ... write a draft of the summer newsletter ... by next call
Ben ... re-contact John about getting the rights to the song ... by tonight
Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
Brandon ... finish the visitor cookies and logging including google analytics, FOR REAL THIS TIME :-) ... by next week
Brandon ... send PSAS media to Ben ... by Monday
Brandon ... start scheduling conversation about when to continue funds chat ... by next call
Eric ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
Eric ... start fleshing out Galaxia ... by next call
Eric ... Extract issues from Commentary on commentary and add to Git ... by next call
Orientation
SolSeed intro
Keith already has the "We Believe" book
Brandon: It's important that what we have now is good, and that every point in our growth is a good place to be ... what we have on the small scale is what we'll get on the larger scales ... this movement is less about the specific plan for growth than about creating an identity (Be Starfarer Now)
Brandon: Jonathan Haidt rider/elephant metaphor ... a lot of what we're doing is changing our elephant's habits, which is why we're organized as a religion
Practices
Celebrations at the turnings of seasons
Two calls a week, the service call (speaks to our elephants) and the work bee (lets our riders make progress)
Daily meditation
Tithing (each person decides how much to give, no centralized decision-making yet on how to spend the money)
Eric: Our goal is to bring life to the stars, but Keith probably already knows that
Brandon: We're firmly science-based, and we don't want to engage in discussions about fringe or pseudoscience ideas
Brandon: We're also tree-hugger types; caring for the Earth is a strong value as well
Keith's intro
these are my opinions and perspectives ... some others may see things differently
1998, First Millennial Foundation
some fussing with the IRS because of how close it was to Marshall Savage's book
draw up a new organization (Living Universe Foundation) and not mention the book
y2k came along and there were some ideas about a new economy ... many LUF folks influenced, did what I think was some damage
I enrolled in a 4 yr school to pick up a degree (had a 2 yr degree instead)
I became an accountant instead
Looking at FMF/LUF and being inspired I put together a 10 year plan to become free of being a wage/debt slave ... I failed well (it took me 15 years) ... October 5, 2012 was my last day at the office (was doing SEC reporting)
In 1998 I dedicated myself to this mission (you call it The Destiny) ... I expected the LUF to be where I settle in and work
Coming up on the 1 year anniversary I expected that people would follow along ... but instead I keep hearing yeah but
Then saw Brandon mentioning SolSeed in the forum
In 1998 we had a guy named William Gale (Ph.D. in physics) ... He was one of the guys who created Space Environments Ecovillage ... Dmitry Osborne (sp?) was scheduled to move out there ... at the last second took an employment opportunity
A couple people moved out there
William Gale died and Richard Crews sold what he had inherited
William Gale was really high on the idea that there were 3 kinds of orgs that have demonstrated the ability to gather these resources
Commerce ... but how do you get the ROI?
Government ... but LUF members don't trust government (?)
Religion ... he was in favor of creating a religion ... many of the membership were strong athiests and hostile to the idea ... I thought maybe he was crazy for suggesting the idea, but now I've had 15 years to ponder the idea
Questions about Solseed
Question about meditation: Do you do it the same way a typical religion does?
Eric ... some of the time we do clear your mind, others contemplate ideas
We are all three of us atheists ... the service practice is probably where we come the closest to mainstream religion
No worship of deities involved ... more of a weekly ritual to remind ourselves of our place in the universe and our aspirations
Season 1 talks about the origin of the universe
Brandon: Religion is a very loaded word; you can call us a pseudo-religion if you want, since we don't have any supernatural ideas
Keith: You might need to invent a new word for this
At Sol 2012 we discussed the idea of a Religious Method to describe how to do what science doesn't do (establish identity and figure out what we should do in the world)
Keith: all religions believe that there are eternal truths in the universe
Common ideas: reaping what you sow, storing up your "treasure" in a future that's better than today, e.g. Heaven
Brandon: Science doesn't have absolute truth, just better and better models ... likewise, religion should develop better and better principles on how to live, e.g. the Golden Rule and "sow that ye may reap" ... we judge religion by what good things it produces
Keith: Sounds like a new science for how to live in ways that aim toward The Destiny ... economists have religiously held assumptions at the base of their "science"
Brandon: I do this because I want to live in community with others in the context of this greater purpose
Keith: You embrace the concept of "enough" and an incremental approach, being satisfied with the small thing you can do for now
Brandon: This is related to our spheres of influence and being wise enough to recognize where we can be effective, while hoping to grow our sphere of influence by accomplishing things within our current sphere
Keith: Who are the participants?
Eric: Four of us on the weekly calls, plus some others who only come to our events
Brandon: There are long-term friends of the movement who show up sometimes but don't tithe their time or money ... I think there will always be these different circles of commitment
Keith: Demographics?
Brandon: Generally white and mostly male so far ... I have some concerns that there is some natural elitism built into the philosophy
Keith: In addition to elitism (poor people have no time for space), space groups tend to have a "geek problem" and be overwhelmingly male, which isn't going to work in the long term
Brandon: We're working on media that speaks to a broader demographic
Eric: My local UU is white, mostly 50 or older, probably wealthier people ... very different from the neighborhood it's in
Our introductions
Eric: I was born and raised an atheist by former Catholics, and I therefore was always searching for structured meaning ... I came up with something called Biospheric Communionism in about 2006 (after thinking about it for 6 years) but didn't get any real members, just a fan of the sushi feasts ... I'd been reading Freeman Dyson's books and became a fan of Dyson trees, and I asked Dyson whether he thought there needed to be a religion to create them, and he led me to the Earthseed books, which led me to SolSeed
Ben: I was raised by Jewish (in the sense of celebrating the holidays) parents ... enjoyed shabat and presents ... I didn't really think about religion until I was in college ... I had lots of thoughts about space exploration as a kid (star trek, NASA, novels) ... In college I discovered environmentalism ... I realized suddenly there were these huge massive global problems we had to solve somehow ... change how people think/act and think long-term ... started thinking about religion as an institution that can do that ... like Eric I found SolSeed through the Wikipedia article about the Earthseed books ... at the time I kind of realized I didn't want it to be religion per se (I don't want to try and replace people's deeply held beliefs with mine) ... I'm conflicted because we are leaning back toward religion ... weird thing for a scientifically minded person to be doing
Brandon: I grew up 7th-Day Adventist ... my community was very insular ... I became a militant atheist in college, which was hard on the people around me ... I recognized the value of my religious community and came to appreciate that a lot, even though I couldn't believe what they believed anymore ... I read the Earthseed books in grad school, which inspired me ... I attended UU congregations and found that they were very cerebral and people were there for selfish reasons, vs. the hospitality and generosity of the Adventist community ... I had a peak experience where I discovered a non-egocentric perspective, identifying with the universe as a whole and the story of life, and that's when I started SolSeed ... I've been muddling along ever since, with the conviction that I'll never stop doing this (even if we change the name and the organization) ... I'm working on a related project, the Awakening Science Foundation, in 3 minutes
Evaluation
Brandon: It was great, and I gotta go right now
Eric: I am excited about growth. I feel like my local UU, Michael Dowd and now Keith all point to a potential for us to start growing for real. I think the work we have done to create a message that is clear and beautiful is about to pay off!
Ben: I feel like the odd man out.. I didn't get to participate in describing SolSeed and I am worried our identity will drift if we add too many people too quickly and I am worried that we don't know how to deal with the issues of money and power distribution.