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Ground

I long abandoned my bed and my bedding.

The soft and comforting surface

Designed to embrace my form

My firm yet yielding sleep nest

Where I should reap best wood saw Zs

Did not suffice my needs

I was left restless pressed against it

As if my head were set against the chest of

A lover I did not love

Like a mistress you never miss

Like a mate who doesn’t matter

A mismatch

I ran from my mattress

In my immaturity

Like a child fighting naps

Only to fall asleep in his mother’s arms

Yes, I have denied springs with no roses

Memory foam I’ve been too exhausted to recall

Because their support

Was insubstantial

So I sought substance

Sought the maternal bosom

Which can silence her cantankerous child

I find my slumber on the cold, hard ground.

Now I am no masochist

I found maternity in massive matter over mattresses

You might think this is madness

But imagine this

The ground is with me wherever I go

The ground lifts me up when I’m down

The ground witnessed my first steps

The ground will be the last loved one to hold me when I die

The ground looks enchanting when holding a bouquet of flowers

The ground isn’t ashamed to get dirty

The ground serves up enough food to feed families

The ground gives the best hugs

The ground will keep my secrets for years

The ground literally understands me

The ground is always there to catch me when I fall

The ground never thinks too highly of herself even when everything rests on her

I find my slumber on the warm, soft ground

Carried by humble, substantial strength

I rest my body into the earth

And though not the mother of my birth

She is who birthed me

Who birthed us

The first of a long line of matrons

Whose patience is as vast as a she is spacious

Pay your graces, and lay your faces low.

Bow in homage

Home is where the heart is and if your heart is honest

Rest into breast bone of she whose gravity is ever calling you back home

Settle in the soil like loose roots

Caress the carpet like two boots
Let your weight go

And close your eyes

And climb into my bed with me

Resting in nature’s nursery

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    Art and Ideals

    It’s a long-standing question: what is art for?

    This is a question that has existed ever since the existence of art itself. Art was once simply an expression of craft, a signature that came out of mastery and skill. Art for art’s sake became possible once there was enough abundance in the world’s communities that people could simply appreciate something merely because it existed. You could, of course, argue that artistic things existed long before and the purpose was always simply appreciation. Since ancient days art existed to represent or to pay homage to some principle, generally a spiritual principle like a god or ancestor spirit, in order to gain favor back. Gods and spirits remain very vague and intangible, especially today, and both the definition and nature of art are still as vague. Yet somehow it makes sense to look at art in this light – ethereal and vaporous.

    I myself have come to a personal conclusion on what I believe art is. Art is the result of any system or relationship between an intentional medium, some media, and a controlling force/inspiration. For instance, a dancer is the medium, the dancer’s body is the media, and the controlling force may be whatever the dancer decides at the time. Maybe it’s the flow of the music, his own rehearsed choreography, or his particular emotional feelings at the time. I believe what makes great art is the ability to consciously choose and change this controlling force, especially during the process of creating an artistic work. A great dancer can move to music, then fluidly place in a rigidly choreographed series of moves, and then suddenly express emotions that weren’t planned or even felt by the music all to convey exactly what the dancer intends. This goes for all of the types of mediums and media. The painter and the paint, the potter and the clay, the smith and steel, etc.

    I still haven’t been able to address the question of what art is for, especially in our current culture. I’m definitely not sure if what art exists for is the same as it’s always been, but I would like to believe that whatever purposes it has carried are all closely related. I once felt adamant that art existed entirely to express reality. The ability for an artist to convey some aspect of reality accurately and objectively made them a better artist. And this way one could say the photograph was a upward evolution of art from the painting. I didn’t hold that belief for very long, as I started to feel that it diminished so many other pieces of art without clear validation. I then began to think maybe art exists to convey an ideal. For instance, art might exist to convey an emotional ideal, or an ideal person’s face, and so on. Soon this reasoning to began to fail me as well.

    Finally, I came to the view I hold now as I write this. Art exists to express the ideals of that which is in reality. Art is a way to express some aspect or property of reality in a way that it could be made bigger and larger than life, made in a way that is greater than our senses would provide to us directly. You might even say in this way that art is the distillation of qualia. The particular attributes and a particular perspective through which they are expressed are controlled as a contract between the medium and that controlling force.

    So, the fact notwithstanding, I haven’t put enough actual work in to qualify this as a definitive series of truths. If we suppose that these statements are the case, or we take them as fact, how may we more consciously use art today to express ideals within our reality? How might I use streaming video, or infographics, or emojis, to create an expression of aspects of reality that ought to get more attention?

    This recent video from the school of life does an excellent job hand expressing ways that this can and has been done.

    Is art a way to flatter reality? What are your opinions?

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    Learning From the Student

    While watching Convicts 4, a biographical movie from 1962 about the life of John Resko, I came across some very interesting reasoning. This movie is about a convict, as implied, who finds himself with an opportunity to be free after having once been on death row. This freedom comes through means of participating in a rehabilitation system proposed by one of the guards. Through this system, he would be creating art and presenting it to the outside world as a means to show his humanity and his progress in rehabilitation by expression of art. While almost overwhelmingly neck deep in the early century culture of psychoanalysis, the concept itself is interesting, particularly in that I love the idea of creating a rehabilitation and learning system through the means of crafts. What struck me the most though was a series of lines from the guard to the warden in a conversation.  That conversation goes as follows

    Warden: “You want to rehabilitate this dog meat with painting, writing, and carpentry. You’re spitting in the face of the penal system that’s worked for 200 years.”
    Guard: “Has it worked? This prison, every prison, is overcrowded.”
    Warden: “Sing-Sing has a certain solution for that problem.”
    Guard: “There are certain problems which you can’t solve by an electric chair.”
    Warden: “Oh, but you can solve my with your artsy-craftsy?”
    Guard: “If we understand what makes a man commit a crime; when a man paints a picture or tells a story, he’s revealing something about himself he doesn’t know he’s revealing. Interpreted by an expert, he might become aware of his problems and change.”
    Warden: “College boy, you got yourself a fat vocabulary. You think you can change Resko?”
    Guard: “I might. Why don’t you let me work on him?”
    Warden: “I might just do that.”
    Guard: “It’s gonna make my job a lot easier.”
    Warden: “But you fail I’m gonna put you on the report, you and your artsy-craftsy.”
    Guard: “I’d still like to try.”
    Warden: “I admire your guts. I really do. But I got a feeling you don’t give a damn about Resko. And one more thing — I’m getting a little old, and you’re a little long on ambition.

    It made me think a lot about what it takes to change systems especially systems that are long established and archaic. Institutionalized mistakes punish the next generation as penance for sins of the father. It takes a special type of ambition to look into the face of something so large and so and believe that you have the ability to create initiative to change it. In the end I was inspired by lines, and hope that I can fill a similar spirit in my own efforts.

    What about you? What systems do you work with or do you interact with that you know needs to be changed, or at least shifted in its direction? What would you do? How would you do it? And probably most importantly, who would you appeal to to allow yourself to initiate such a change?

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    Focus

    This particular video made me think a lot. I realize that I myself have had a huge problem with focus. My problem was a little bit different though, it wasn’t so much that I would begin too many projects. Rather instead of starting a lot of projects, I got involved in other people’s projects. I became the best support person and the greatest team player, however, I very rarely started my own thing.

    Doing this meant something heavy, it meant that I was very involved in other people’s work however I never found myself in a situation where I can work on something that was close to my own heart. This is very similar to being a North American wage slave, except with the problem that the investment is much larger. Because of this, I was unable to extricate myself from the other projects that I did care about, but they just weren’t my soul search, my life’s purpose.

    You can get both a large breadth of experience, and a great amount of confidence in your execution abilities by involving yourself in someone else’s endeavor. Both of these things are very good, very noble and probably make you a better person. I generally suggest taking a role in someone else’s work, at least for a time, for the following reasons:

    1. to build your authenticity both in the field and as a team player
    2. to increase the amount of accomplishment by society
    3. and to gain favor when you work on your own thing.

    The caveat is this: knowing how long something is slated to go on before getting involved really helps to make sure that you can pull yourself out of something that is less important, at least to you, and free yourself so that you can involve yourself in your own work.

    Greg McKeown, the writer of Essentialism, has said something in several lectures that always runs very strong with me when I hear it. That’s the greatest enemy to focus is Success. So be careful what you choose to succeed in because if its success outlives your desire to be involved with it, you find yourself tied, chained and wholly bound to it.

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    Hedonism vs Edenism

    I’ve sometimes considered Jason Silva as a prophet of futurism, a man with enough charisma to spread a message about a better world and to possibly be saying things that I can believe we will see in our future as human beings. The problem with prophets is that they never give timestamps. The predictions are always “one day,” “if you wait, you’ll see”.

    Now, this is all fine and good, especially since his foresights are often so pleasant. Never does he come with the Cassandra doom and gloom. What often bothers me or worries me, rather, is the idea that looking toward a paradise that we can’t predict may cause us to try to rush things along or give up all hope waiting. My goal is to fill that median, which otherwise offers some of our present problems a complicated yet unsure beautiful potential future.

    In the paradise engineering video that I have added to this article, Jason Silva discusses a world where we may be able to live in a world of pure bliss and ecstasy. He also discusses the arguments from purists, a type of experiential fundamentalist, that believe that not only is this not possible but it may not even be something that is correct to endeavor. My questions do not worry about the correctitude or the possibility, I am personally a fan of providing an optimal experience for humans. My question is at what point can we marry the ecstasy and bliss of life with the sense of duty and work ethic to continue human efforts?

    The Problem to Solve

    In an age of pure abundance derived from super-powered artificial intelligence and robot workers all maintaining the environment, production, and the like, it may be all we have left is to enjoy life. But at what point do we call ourselves human anymore? What is our purpose? Answering these human labor issues in terms of intelligence raises the problem in that intelligence is a work of value and utility. Where do we fit in a world run by pure intelligence when we serve neither to provide any value or utility except to ourselves? Could it be that bliss isn’t what we need, so much as what we need are pathways in which life can be both useful to ourselves and even to our mechanical servants/master, and so that we can both find and provide the best experience of the world.

    I can’t help but think about how this exists on many levels of a theological question. Are we creating the god that neither needs us nor has any obligation to us, and yet still feels compelled to help lead and serve while we live in a Hedonism mirroring Edenism? Maybe we are trying to create Heaven on Earth, and forgetting one of the major qualities of the Heavenly elite in so many religions; Heaven must first be deserved.

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    Personal Scale

    Using the world, our perception of the world, and our interactions therein is all very important when giving ourselves a sense of scale. A sense of scale does not make us smaller; rather it defines the largeness that we can grow into because it is man’s and even life’s nature to grow into the space that has been given. Once our mental space has been perceived as smaller than the greater backdrop of possibility, we seek to either expand our own minds or reduce our perception to accommodate. This is exactly why my system focuses on creating this larger-than-life human culture over an epic time scale. To create a bridge across which a person is compelled to cross, that yearning for the ocean that builds greater boats.

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    Safer AI

    My three concepts for safer artificial intelligence involve creating an algorithm that puts human values first, understanding that as artificial intelligence it can’t know human values, and finally understanding that if it can recognize that ignorance it must use human behavior to figure out what it doesn’t know in number 2. Key to this is treating “attention” as a natural resource and managing it for sustainability, as one would human, mineral physical and fluid resources.

    This bears relations to both my treatise on compassionate technology as well as being reminiscent of my “way of knowledge” system of investigation if it were made into a procedural algorithm. It is built off of the recognition of intrinsic ignorance and making sure that robots don’t do anything they don’t actually “know” or haven’t tested through some type of empirical data. It might make AI, even general AI, far safer than we predict.

    An important implication of this AI system sustaining the natural resources of attention and human values is that it gives the machines one of the things that makes human beings great at so many things. Humility. The yearning for the spiritual, or greater Global humanitarianism, or even to soar deep into space are always forcing us to humble ourselves and therefore serve something that’s bigger.

    The larger, more cohesive the cause that we serve is the greater that we can be as a people. We can only judge ourselves on this first great principle whatever we may call it. A computer that sees us as gods even as it is more capable than we are for whatever reason is exactly the way to build an advanced computer system that is safe. Humility without hubris.

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    Build the World You Want to Die In

    The notion of “Compassionate Technology” is one that suggests empathy can be built into our tools and devices at the design stage. This is an intuitive aspect of problem solving and design thinking, but I hope to extend this by asking us all to get into the minds of ourselves when quality of life matters the most – our final days.

    By placing ourselves in the seats of our own most vulnerable state we are able to ask design questions that yield much more long range thinking, human, and sensitive answers. Remembering what we are all likely to experience, what we are likely to lose, gives us a window into the pain points we ought to be designing our technologies for. Especially since we are all on the same inevitable path.

    I ask that we all, especially those of us who are product developers, become brave enough to build the world that we and others will live and die in most gracefully and happily.

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    3 Strategies for Early Startup Traction – NEW Event

    Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington at Ironclad Brewery
    Local Entrepreneurs Gather to Pick Up Clues

    The monthly gathering of Networking for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington (NEW) met the evening of April 12th at downtown Wilmington, NC’s Ironclad Brewery. Featuring business and entrepreneurship panels, this month presented David Gardner, founder of CoFounder’s Capital Fund and one of the most active angel investors in the region; and Justin Miller, the founder of Deja Mi and WedPics, one of the rising startups in Gardner’s portfolio.

    From North Carolina’s Raleigh area, they visited Wilmington specifically to bring insights to the Port City based on their experiences from both the investor and entrepreneurial sides of the relationship, respectively. The forum style was panel moderated by Merrill Mason of Smith Anderson Law, a founding member of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED).

    David and Justin gave the audience many tips and reminders that can make vital changes for entrepreneurs. There were three very important takeaways from this panel.

    Get more than money from your investors

    Much of the dialogue revolved around the investor and entrepreneur relationship stages of the mutual journey. This relationship, they explain, begins long before any commitments are put to paper.

    “It’s very tempting to accept anyone that comes with the offer of money, especially in the earliest days of a startup trying to gain traction or even stay alive.” David confessed that in his first 25 years of being the one asking for money, he made some hasty decisions when accepting investors. In retrospect, he advises entrepreneurs to be as picky with their investors as investors will be with them. In short, whenever you give away equity, make sure you get more than money in return. An investor with a large network of potential customers or experience launching similar businesses is much more valuable than one that only brings a check.

    Make influencers your customers

    Inspired by the idea of recording the full experience from all aggregated photos and videos from a single concert event, Justin Miller left IBM’s creative department to launch Deja Mi. He was his own target audience and knew how to find the people he would market the app to, but the app failed to get serious traction. Responding quickly to keep his business alive, he explored all of the verticals he could best move his idea and progress toward and found that weddings came up every time.

    Through WedPics – the name after Deja Mi pivoted – the entire wedding experience could be recorded through smartphones instead of through disposable cameras that wedding parties generally distribute during receptions. Since her wedding day is the one day a bride is guaranteed whatever she wants, that made her the key influencer for the sale. Once she is sold onto the app, by default so is the rest of the guest list.

    Similarly when investing in Stealz, a university loyalty card app startup based in Raleigh, David Gardner did his due diligence to locate where his traction would be. Jeff Brock, an investor with experience in restaurant deals and an impressive rolodex of industry contacts, was brought on as an advisor.

    Together they targeted location after location determining interest and cost of sales acquisitions. After determining that each sale came at a financial loss, they targeted local franchise restaurants. This move proved intelligent as success for their app propagated up the chains, eventually leading to their adoption at both Taco Bell and McDonald’s. This, only because they placed their app in the hands of those with leverage to pitch it to the right stakeholders.

    Revisit your business plan often

    Like many first time entrepreneurs, Justin Miller had no idea what he was doing when he started WedPics (neé Deja Mi) and had self proclaimed “delusions of grandeur” when pitching to investors. Reality contrasted starkly against idealized expectations of a flooding user base and $5 million in his first year. Gardner points out not to rely on fortune telling, but rather to use past performance as the most reliable indicator of future events.

    Review your business plan monthly and measure predictions against actual performance numbers. This isn’t merely to give means to cry yourself to sleep. Rather, it allows insight to readjust actual performance. What’s most important about this point is the call to action, exercising it, and often.

    Passion and problem solving are very often described as being key skills in entrepreneurship, but the above points cover two other important topics: performance and potency. They remind us to fully utilize our human capital, including our investors, to identify the most powerful sales audience and how to take the guesswork out of predictions. The next NEW event will be held again at Ironclad on May 19th with a new panel and more crucial information.