Lovely chill morning. Yesterday I surprised a fox as I came out of the house. Sienna and umber, pretty big too. He wasn’t in a huge hurry, eventually trotting off past the nitrogen accumulator (outhouse). Last Friday I passed a momma fox and her kits lounging on some cottage stairs. It’s still too early for most of the lake houses to be occupied, so the foxes have carte blanche. Never seen so many that I can recall.
Today I continue with the mini movie. I need to amp up the global life support system sequence. I think it happens after Larry does MIR the first time. Then we’ll show iconic examples of life support, balance maintained in the face of entropy. Examples from NASA, scuba and science fiction. When we play Larry the second time, we’ll be into the connection between Hello World and MIR with the rebuild and packing. The next question will be – why? Why go on this trip?
I edited a short sequence with Dick on Beaver Island, tho the sound quality isn’t stellar. He’s a mason with 68 years of experience, 40 of those working with stone. He talked about his trip to Peru and the stones there – artifacts of a technology (and perhaps even a worldview) that we moderns don’t understand.
The Peruvian stones/culture sequence leads to the trip’s premise.
“We assume that modern industrial capitalistic civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement, but if ancient people could do things that we can’t what else are we missing? If our civilization isn’t the most advanced, what does advancement look like? Certainly future civilizations must be sustainable – in accord with the planetary life support system – because we can’t stay suicidal indefinitely. We expect our kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews to have a future. Certainly to survive and even to thrive. Sustainable civilizations must emerge within the next 10-15 years. Since entire civilizations don’t just pop up overnight, they must *already* be in the process of emerging. We should be able to poke around and find evidence of future sustainable civilizations everywhere, right now. Just like the stones in Peru are artifacts of an advanced ancient civilization, so too there must be artifacts of advanced future civilizations. Can we find these artifacts and figure out what they imply, what they are pointing towards?”
“What does an artifact of a future sustainable civilization look like? How do we go about searching for them? I think it starts with asking the right questions… Listen to this talk I had with Ritch Branstrom and see if you hear any clues about the future.”
Ritch interview (already edited).
Review Ritch’s “artifacts”, bullet points.
Conclusion / credits