This is a raw transcript of our weekly broadcast of One Mountain, Many Paths. In this episode, Dr. Marc Gafni describes the need for Unique Self and Digital Intimacy in the Tech Plex.
Every week we share a rough cut and almost unedited and unplugged version of Dr. Gafni’s conversation from the previous weeks of One Mountain, Many Paths broadcast. Thus, the style of the piece is the spoken word and not a formal essay. In our weekly broadcast of One Mountain, Many Paths we ask ourselves the same question every week: Why are we here?
We are here to make a revolution!
We are here to reject the status quo of mediocrity, to reject the status quo of superficiality, to reject the status quo of averageness, to reject the status quo of ordinariness, to reject the status quo which refuses to embrace the unbearable greatness and dignity of every human being on the face of the planet, to reject the status quo which doesn’t realize that all human beings are not only born equal but are also born uniquely creative.
Unique Self: A New Narrative of Identity
The unique creativity of every human being is the essential pillar upon which society is enacted and erected. To enact this new fundamental narrative of self, we must ask ourselves not only the question Why are we here?, but also: Who am I?
Who are you?
"You are an irreducibly unique expression of the LoveIntelligence, LoveBeauty and LoveDesire that is the initiating and animating Eros and energy of All that Is, that lives in you, as you, and through you… that never was, is, or will be ever again other than through you. As such, you, me, we have an irreducibly unique perspective and an irreducibly unique quality of intimacy that come together to form your unique capacity to give your unique gift that is uniquely needed in your unique circle of intimacy and influence." For that, you were born and that’s the source of your joy and the source of your delight and the source of that which allows you to be aligned with the evolutionary impulse moving uniquely in you. That’s the ticket for you to join the larger Unique Self Jazz Symphony in which you play your unique instrument.
These few lines, this new story of identity, is not fanciful and it’s not conjecture. It’s the best integration of the deepest validated insights at the leading edge of culture in the traditional, modern, and postmodern period. We’ve taken the best-validated insights and woven them together.
From that new weaving emerges a New Story of identity greater than the sum of any of the previous strands of identity that stands, and must stand, at the center of every political platform, every economic platform, every social platform, every psychological platform, and every tech platform.
This New Story of identity has to animate biotech, infotech, nanotech and the entire Tech Plex.
Downloading Unique Self into the digital world
We have to download this new narrative of identity, which is based on the human being as a unique configuration of Evolutionary Love, into the algorithms that are weaving and defining our lives.
The Tech Plex is what Alex Pentland of MIT calls the “nervous system of the planet." But the Tech Plex - as it is currently constituted - constantly upgrades machine intelligence and is - in inverse proportion - constantly downgrading human beings. These are the two movements in society today. We have discussed this in other context, so we will suffice for now with this allusion.
We all live in this digital web plex
We are raising our children, the next generation, as “digital natives.” They are living inside of the web plex. So, the web plex has to become not a place of alienation - not a place of downgraded humans – but a place of radical aliveness and unique creativity. We have got to upgrade the digital world.
We must pour Evolutionary Love into the Tech Plex, into the digital world, into the algorithms. We have to recode the algorithmic structure of "the nervous system of the planet" with Evolutionary Love and that means with the narratives of identity. The core of that New Story of Unique Self and Unique Self theory [which we have unpacked in great depth, but for now we can just say briefly,] is that each human being knows that they are an irreducibly unique expression of All That Is, who is "Loved, Desired, Adored, Needed, Recognized and Chosen by All That Is.
What would the digital world infused with Evolutionary Love look like?
Digital Intimacy
The First Principles and First Values of the Intimate Universe need to create what we called seven years ago, “Digital Intimacy.”
On the Center for Integral Wisdom website there’s a section called, “Digital Intimacy,” where Dr. Marc Gafni not only critiques the digital culture, but also offers a creative, emergent, evolutionary solution, an invitation to the Evolution of Love, to the evolution of consciousness.
"We have to offer a new technology, a new vision, a new evolutionary invitation, and we’re calling that invitation Digital Intimacy." - Dr. Marc Gafni
[click to read more]
The New Existential Risk: The Death of 'Our Humanity'
The first form of existential risk is generated by all the factors that come from the rivalrous conflict and the win/lose metrics success story.
This win/lose metrics success story is ignorant of the new narrative of identity, the narrative of Unique Self and Evolutionary Unique Self, what we call the narrative of homo sapien becoming Homo Amor, the emergence of the New Human and the New Humanity. If we ignore that narrative of Unique Self, we become a world of Separate Selves in a state of war with each other, which then causes all of the generator functions of existential risk, which leads to the very death of humanity, which is the sixth mass extinction. That’s the first form of existential risk – but it also generates a second form of existential risk. The second form of existential risk is not the death of 'humanity,' but the death of 'our humanity.'
The failure to infuse the digital world with Evolutionary Love and the Unique Self narrative of identity is the generator function of this new form of existential risk.
The second form of existential risk is that if we don’t embrace and articulate this new narrative of identity and deploy it through culture, then we are left with a Tech Plex whose intent is to extract from us information that is then sold to third parties, who are misaligned with us, intent on manipulating the sacred drama of our decision-making for their own power and profit.
[click to read last blogpost]
This not the sixth mass extinction, but the seventh mass extinction, which is at least equally threatening.
The Unique Self Response to the Existential Risk of the Tech Plex
How do we respond to this existential risk? Our intention is a Planetary Awakening in Love through Unique Self Symphonies as a revolutionary response to this new existential threat, the seventh mass extinction: the death of "our humanity."
We come together as human beings – both individually, face-to-face, and through the “Digital Intimacy” of the tech platforms – to create Unique Self Symphonies that self-organize and self-actualize Reality to a level of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, which was the inherent intention of Reality itself.
[This blogpost is almost all direct quotes from Dr. Marc Gafni collected from the raw transcript of the featured clip below, which is created from the free weekly broadcast of One Mountain, Many Paths, happening live every Sunday at 10 am PT]
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Receive a deeper transmission of Unique Self and Digital Intimacy in the Tech Plex by listening to this featured clip below.