Dan Massey

April 21 Update

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

I’m returning here after another hiatus but if you have been following me on Facebook and Twitter you can see what we’ve been up to: fighting to end poverty, racism, and war, while promoting the advancement of sexual freedom, a state of being someday where each person is autonomous and mutually respected, having shed our backwards, primitive attitudes.

The book is finally ready for e-book publishing this summer. Long ago, Dan Massey and I uncovered the cosmic connection to love energy, something we have researched and benefited from ever since. This energy is so closely quartered within individuals that they often have trouble understanding its source and how to yield it creatively. This world-changing power has been and always will be at hand but it has been almost entirely masked by religious hierarchies and cults and the fundamentalists who fear it.

by Alice Popkorn Flickr/creative commons

by Alice Popkorn
Flickr/creative commons

The goal of the journey of discovery we embarked on became explaining this immense human power, this love energy, in a more accessible way by demonstrating scientifically the mechanics of how we are connected to the vast array cosmic technologies, personalities, and administrators; what that knowledge means to change ourselves and our world; and, why it has so much to do with human love, affection, sexuality, and gender.

Love energy is something so large in all of creation that we submit it is singularly worthy of worship. It is real. It is not ideological or necessarily religious. We are not starting yet a new religion, but outlining a format for a non-religion, what we call a trans-religion, something that comes after religion once it’s no longer a valuable or viable building block of civilization.

Enjoy our archive of ideas, and check this space almost every day for something new on all fronts of social, economic, and ecological justice and the tools we need to build our better future.

As always, comments and feedback are welcome: columbia@venusplusx.org.

 

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Adam Lambert’s Post-Gay World

Adam Lambert Is a ‘Killer’ Queen by Daniel Reynolds for The Advocate

Dan Massey and I had a somewhat secret passion for Adam Lambert ever since he sang Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen for his audition on American Idol in 2009. (Can you even remember who came in first to his second place finish?) We once spent a weekend in Baltimore and Washington, DC, attending two of Lambert’s early concerts coinciding with his first album. They were medium-sized venues, and at the last one I got lost finding the restroom only to run in to Lambert, face to face, as he was going out on stage.

Yes, he glowed.

Adam Lambert Flickr/creative commons

Adam Lambert
Flickr/creative commons

For several years, Dan not-so-secretly finished each of his emails by attaching some of Lambert’s lyrics we were especially fond of, ones like these that captured VenusPlusX’s campaign for a better world.

Welcome to the Master Plan
Don’t care if you understand
Don’t care if you understand
Welcome to the Master Plan.
(“Master Plan”)

And . . .

I was born with glitter on my face
My baby clothes made of leather and lace
And all the girls in the club wanna know
Where did all their pretty boys go?
(“Sure Fire Winners”) 

Lambert set out to answer that question, Where did all their pretty boys go? Something we are explaining to each other in our joint search for equality rights.

Lambert has become the personalization of gay is good, slowly emerging as one our most articulate gay icons in the entertainment industry.

[Like last year, Lambert is continuing] “as spokesperson for AT&T’s “Live Proud” campaign. The initiative encourages all people – regardless of sexual orientation – to share memes illustrating their pride through social media channels. Five lucky participants in the campaign, which ends August 10, will have the chance to attend a private event with Lambert in New York. The goal, he says, is ’empowerment,’ and to give others ‘a voice to be what and who they are.'”

Through the AT&T campaign and in practically all of his public statements, Lambert is showing youth what it’s like to just be yourself, no matter who that is, and to not only be proud but to be exceedingly happy that you are you. After all, there is no one in the greater universe that can be that person.

Right now Lambert is finishing up a well-reviewed tour with the band QueenHe inhabits the lead spot formerly held by Freddie Mercury, who happened to have been an openly bisexual artist who died of AIDs in 1991. Mercury lived through some bitter years when being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans (LGBT), especially in the public eye, was a grim affair with mostly everyone else in the closet. The AIDs epidemic changed all of that because it has become a matter of life and death to acknowledge LGBT people. 

“I feel like it’s one of the things that I respect about him a lot. He never really made any apologies for anything,” Lambert says of Freddie Mercury. “He just was who he was. And if there’s something I can take from that, it’s that sometimes, especially in today’s world, where we’re at, there’s such a strong statement in just boldly being what and who you are.”

Lambert’s builds on our shared history by heralding the coming ordinariness of being openly gay, a world where we all can live in a post-gay and post-gender, a new age of sexual freedom unimaginable just a couple of decades ago.

Even as the industry continues to close doors on many out musicians, Lambert attests to a noticeable shift to what he terms a “post-gay place.” He maintains that younger generations do not share the stigmas that were more prevalent in Mercury’s day and they refuse to be pigeonholed with labels on their identities.

“This next generation coming up is like, ‘Hey, it doesn’t fucking matter… My sexuality, doesn’t [determine that] this is the type of music I listen to, or this is the type of activities I’m into, or these are the type of people I hang out with. It’s getting to the point now where we’re more mainstream, and we’re allowed to do anything we want, and we’re allowed to be with anybody we want,’” Lambert says. “So there’s not as much segregation… and I think that’s really exciting, because I don’t think it should matter.”

Daniel Reynold’s article today is well worth a full reading.

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Casa Ruby Awards First Dan Massey Trans Ally Award

Last week, we had another wonderful night out in New York City with our friend and current candidate for the Maryland Senate, Dr. Dana Beyer. The Maryland primary election is today and, win or lose, it’s not an exaggeration to say the force is with her. As a trans woman running against an entrenched old boy who happens to be a gay man, she has been heroic in this campaign (and in her previous campaigns for Maryland Delegate) in presenting voters with a true progressive vision that enfranchises all people, not just special interests, not the status quo.

(l. to r.) Dana Beyer, DC Mayor Vincent Gray, and Casa Ruby Distinguished Service Award recipient, Consuella Lopez Photo by Ted Eytan Flickr/creative commons

(l. to r.) Dana Beyer, DC Mayor Vincent Gray, and Casa Ruby Distinguished Service Award recipient, Consuella Lopez
Photo by Ted Eytan
Flickr/creative commons

Dana related to us what transpired a couple of weeks ago at Casa Ruby, a Latino LGBT services and resource center in Washington, DC, a place that has long been a focus of VenusPlusX’s support. We weren’t able to be in DC to attend Casa Ruby’s second anniversary celebration and be present to witness the award of the first Dan Massey Ally Award, but it’s made me and our family very happy. From Dana’s Huffington Post weekly column . . .

Alison, together with her husband Dan Massey, is responsible for making the D.C. trans community the presence in the city that it is today. Through their support of the DC Trans Coalition, and particularly Casa Ruby, the city’s leading nonprofit supporting the daily needs of its trans citizens, they made their indelible mark on us all.

Two weeks ago I had the honor of awarding the inaugural Dan Massey Ally Award to Dr. Ted Eytan, who is working assiduously to make the Kaiser health system completely trans-inclusive, trans-supportive and culturally competent.

Those words, and this wonderful new award in Dan’s name, are heartening to hear, but I’d like to give a little context.

Before moving last year from DC to Brooklyn, New York, a few months after Dan suddenly left for higher shores, Casa Ruby became sort of second home to the both of us.

Following our close involvement with the 2011 Equality March Host Committee, Dan and I joined with Casa Ruby founder Ruby Corado, the DC Trans Coalition, and many other local lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) activists and organizations to bring about better public safety, healthcare access, and employment, especially for transfolk, work that had been ongoing for more than a decade. The high incidence of local attacks and murders of trans women in and around DC drives these activists who give all of their free time (and money) to make things better in a selfless wayk

In 2011, VenusPlusX helped establish a pop-up coalition of more than a dozen local organizations, at the time called the TLGB Police Watch. (Putting the T ahead of LGB was my brainstorm, to put the emphasis on the most-discriminated-against group in the fold). This group worked together, first listening to some very scary stories from trans victims and eventually translating these sacrifices into community-wide concerns, goals, strategies, and non-violent actions.

The TLGB Police Watch coalition brought solid demands directly to DC’s Metropolitan Police Department, elected city officials, and to the US Attorney for Washington, DC, giving trans activists’ public engagement a much-needed reboot. And, sure enough, the next day, our phones started ringing with positive results. The following spring, Ruby, Dan, and I took our experience to a national audience with a panel at the Philly Trans Health conference (the largest LGBT conference in the country) to reach out to activists from other cities who were seeking help figure out what more they can do. Click here more info. (If you live in a city that needs help to advance trans rights, please let us hear from you via columbia@venusplusx.org.)

This group of activists has stuck together and grown in size, and continues to make strides to protect and advance trans rights in DC. At each turn, they manage to feast of adversity, and time after time rescue success from the jaws of defeat. The largest trans rally the city had ever seen took place in the summer of 2012, attracting hundreds, and more than 100 new volunteer allies committed that day to work with us. (The press under-reported the number in attendance; I hand counted 235 people). I remember sitting at the sidelines with tears swelling to see how far we had come in making ourselves heard. 

Thank you Ruby and Casa Ruby, and thank you Dana, for all that you do. You never seek attention or reward, you just go about doing good to others, the greatest legacy of all.

 

 

Dan Massey Memorial Service: Eulogy

Additional material from this February 28, 2013 Memorial Service: Introduction, Mayor’s Proclamation, Dan The Activist, Upcoming Book Excerpt, and Printed Program. Also see: WikipediaThe AdvocateHuffington Post, and MetroWeekly.

Dan, 1977

Dan, 1977

I am Joan Wentworth, a friend with a long history with Dan and his family. Within the embrace of that friendship, loyalty, love, and service are themes in this story.

I have always had a deeply intuitive trust that Dan and Alison were innately loyal people. Dan was loyal to his family, friends both new and old, to values that he esteemed, and to the movements that held those values.

For all who knew him, walking with Dan in this life for any length of time was an experience measured according to his thoughtful and personal understanding of LOVE, whether he was propagating the idea that God is Love or that Love is God, Dan meant it, and lived it. There was a measure of urgency about him to put that love into service.

Was Dan ever NOT in service to something of value? I can’t quite remember, but did Dan and Alison EVER go on a vacation to do nothing more than to relax? Maybe once? Wasn’t their whole life, for both of them, dedicated to improving the world? Look at the people whom Dan attracted to his life. Just look around today at the diversity of this group. He saw ideas as movements and created collective units from them. His science community, his spiritual communities, his social activism are all peopled with ideals that motivate and serve; they’re all the same transcendent ideals, really, rooted in the premise that Human beings must be known to be loved, while divine beings must be loved to be known.  My dear friend Dan has been an enigma in my life since I first saw him in 1974 at a Urantia Book Readers conference. I will never forget that first time. He and Alison were that distinguished, fascinating couple—tall, distinctive, and with a lot of hair, and at the time a little bit “scandalous.” I thought they were the perfect hippies, cool, groovy types who would have no trouble believing in supernatural messengers. I heard Dan was a scientist and mathematician, which sounded so elusive, and that Alison was an educator, which I could relate to. Right off, Alison showed a warm personal interest, which was so gratifying and compelling, it made up for what appeared to me to be Dan’s prompt and unabashed critical assessment. He was intimidating. Maybe intimidating is not the word, but if you can recall Dan’s stature and his curious gaze, you can appreciate my unease. Dan was taller than even I, and that for one I was not used to, but he was also “DAN” whom everyone seemed to know and respect. Awesome Dan with Awesome Alison and they were talking to me. When I told Dan I was a Latin teacher, he was quick to let me know that he had chosen MIT over other universities specifically because they did NOT teach Latin there. I think he was smiling when he said it, but either way, he took his leave rather quickly. So, I dutifully assumed my place as the dead-language teacher in his life. Nevertheless, he did talk to me. And here I am close to 40 years later, still the dead-language teacher, but one made so much more alive by my friendship with this awesome couple. Imprinted in my mind forever is also the last time I saw Dan. It was at the wonderful surprise 70th birthday party Alison arranged for him just over a month before he became ill. I sat next to Alison, opposite him. At one moment, I caught him looking intently across the table at her. I wish I could have heard whatever it was he was saying to himself. His gaze was contemplative, and perplexed. He seemed appreciative, but a bit stunned. How in the world had she managed to surprise HIM? How HAD she outwitted him? No one had before her— Alison gave Dan his first and most memorable surprise birthday party. The classicist in me compels me to point out that Penelope was the one and only person ever to outwit Odysseus. And she did it with the test of their marriage bed, immovable and built from an ancient olive tree ever rooted in the ground. It was their secret sign, the secret of the bed only those two knew. Dan and Alison surely have their exclusive secret sign. To my mind that makes them epic heroes. And then, of course, in an apparent deliberative display of one-upmanship, Dan managed to surprise her, too, by leaving just over one month later. How lucky were we 17 people present at that celebration of Dan’s 70 years of living. There were photos all along the table of Dan as a boy and a young man, etc.  And there he sat, center table, surrounded by his children and their spouses, people whom he cherished in his life, by extended family, and the beautiful woman who has loved him for 40 years. He had to have been happy. I am touched to the core by the vision of that Last Supper. I spent many, many years following Dan and Alison around, from New Hampshire to Massachusetts to Virginia and finally to DC. Alison became my dearest of friends and most intimate adviser. Dan hung over our visits like a benevolent mind spirit! He was always somewhere in the house working on something–something fascinating, I guessed. He worked a lot, always. He would pass by on his way out to work, dressed neatly in a business suit, with his hair close-cropped, but he was wearing Birkenstocks on his feet, which I always thought was the right touch of eccentricity for a scientist. Before the children came, I did not actually see Dan much, but once the house gave birth, he was a constant presence. He was always talking to them, teaching them something, just playing with them. Our families became close. My daughter, Bree, babysat for both Ross and Tiye for years. I became godmother in case anything unforeseen should happen. I depended on their friendship and love in ways neither of them could possibly fully know. That is what love does—it grows imperceptibly, as you get to know each other. Human beings must be known to be loved. With these human beings, it was easy. Dan’s level of brilliance gave a surge to the depth of my own insights. I did not always understand what he was saying, in fact if I am honest, I rarely understood what he was saying, but I listened with the chaste enthusiasm of a schoolgirl who adores her teacher because he is so smart and so cute! Gradually over the years, I had opportunities for solo conversations with Dan. Always the professor, he gave freely of his knowledge, to put it mildly. I got the complete history of the occult foundations of Washington DC on one long ride from Union Station to Great Falls in Dan’s cool I’m-still sexy-black Lexus two-seater sportscar. I think my question was something like, “So, do you like DC?” I figured out that I needed only to ask one question, make one simple inquiry, and I would be the beneficiary of a long and fascinating narrative, full of tangents and supportive references. Sometimes he even remembered I was there. I wish I could remember every single word. He told me that he hoped Obama would win in 2008 because he was the ethical candidate and the survival of our world depended on moral revision, or something like that. Once the Supreme Court redefined “human,” in terms of corporations, Dan declared the end of the world, as we know it (not exactly his words, either.) The next I knew he had discovered the Transhumanist movement, or for all I knew he had invented it, and was setting out to transform it. When Dan and Alison came to NYC, they always included me somehow. I hold onto so many precious dinner conversations that jarred me out of complacency. How often would I finish correcting Latin tests and find myself an hour later engaged in an explanation of the joys of erotic robotics. Then I had to go home, ALONE, to digest, all of it, which after that, seemed unfair. Alison was always able to help me understand Dan’s ideas by transforming them into literary metaphor. My mind is full of images that somehow translate into ideas deeper than any I could explain in words. Alison is the queen of metaphor and the great interpreter of her husband/partner. She has that NJ street-wise pragmatism combined with a literary eloquence that could filter Dan’s “esoteric cogitations” (and hers) for me. So much in Dan’s recent years seems full of wonder. The dead-language teacher in me has to resist finding myth in his story. It would be so easy to mythologize him. There is his three-fold evolution from Scientist to Urantian to Transhumanist, from husband to father to Transgenderist. We find ourselves remembering his life here in a building dedicated to one of his most precious life’s goals—equality. From his ivory tower of information theory, to his highly tangible defense-systems innovations, all the way to his transcendent social activism, Dan used his mind for the Good. He clarified for me God the Supreme and led me to envision God the Ultimate. Dan made practical sense of where all this living and experiencing was really taking us. He seemed to know for sure. And he did. I really do believe that Dan knew he was immortal and that we were, too.  He was so TRANS, always ‘trans-ing’ some obstacle or other. Now he has transitioned and transcended, and who knows what else he is doing there. Reading the numerous testimonials that started pouring in on line I gained a humbling insight into who Dan was and will remain to those who knew him. It seems he had so many incarnations that each of us probably has our own version of him. Dana says his manner was “respectful but firm, and though Dan and Alison both had strong opinions, they never demanded compliance.”  (adapted) Dan was opinionated. Davis adds, “His tremendous intellect was matched by a compassionate heart and generous sense of humor.” Dan was funny. Lee offers: “Dan, never hesitant to express his truth-seeking beliefs—blew the roof off a UB event when he went ‘off-script’ and boldly challenged many of the pre-conceived “pure revelation” concepts that many held so conservatively.” (adapted) Dan was NOT conservative. There is no disputing he was intelligent, or that he was formidable. Either way, his mind was a gift for all of us. Living with Dan must have been something like living with an intellectually challenging Socrates, who was a real handful, they say. But that spirit of confrontation is exactly what propels spiritual evolution. Dan was not a lazy religionist, nor could he abide those who were. He tamed and trained his own genius in service to greater values and expected as much from others. Alison used to say that when she passed on, I would inherit Dan–second wife she called me! As if I could ever have presumed to manage Dan. Love him, yes, but delight him, no. Only Alison could do that, only Alison, and everyone knows that. Their bond is a melding of 2 hearts and 2 minds: his math, her literature; his facts, her meanings. The goal of each: something very valuable–a true love relationship, enviable and beautiful to see. Dan’s earth family is relatively small in number, but these four people are all larger than life each in his/her own way. Surely I seem naïve, awed perhaps, when I talk about the Masseys, but in my own defense, I am a literature teacher, I earn my money from hyperbole. Hyperbole is a poetic device suiting for description of this family. Tiye is everything from a ballet dancer, a blogger, an artist, a scholar, a linguist, a health expert, a good wife, a loving daughter, a tough-love kind of sister, a loyal friend, and a precious godchild (that’s the short list), and she has managed all that along with the wise selection of her wonderful husband, Carles, in just 27 years. She is a Massey. That is fact, not hyperbole. Nor can her love for her dad or for her mom be exaggerated. Ross is a larger than life character, too. He is already running the world, you know, in his own way and he is only just 30. What 17-year old goes to Cal Tech and in his first year starts tutoring upperclassmen? Who finishes Cal Tech with a year to spare? Who goes to Cal Tech in the first place and learns to drink beer? Ross has his dad’s irony, irreverence, and wry humor. His reserved and benign presence is the embodiment of both his mother and father. When I see Ross, I hear Dan and I sense Alison. Yet he is so vividly his own person. I can’t see either Alison or Dan on skis out running an avalanche on any mountain anywhere, particularly in Alaska. I am not convinced that was an intelligence test, but Ross passed it, thank God, and he has found the wisdom to choose a partner as spirited as he is. Caroline, Carles, you have the best of paradigms to model. Your partners have observed a partnership in their parents that is select. Dan and Alison raised their kids in an atmosphere of freedom, the freedom to do the right thing as each understood it—no jealous interference, no pre-made prejudices. Alison shared with me Dan’s marriage mantra: “Marriage is a state of perpetual divorcement to which both parties agree every morning to try one more time.” It’s like Aphrodite’s bath. Each time she bathed she restored her virginity. What a great idea! Who has ideas like that? And, finally — to my dearest, Alison. You have made me laugh over the years more than anyone I know. You and Dan made humor an art form. Please try to remember all the peculiar perspectives, all the terse witticisms, all the hilarious ironies you and Dan nurtured over the course of your years together. Keep laughing, and keep us laughing, please. It is the best way to preserve each other, to remember each other. As it is said, “humor is the antidote to the exaltation of ego,” which I guess means being funny is a preservative. Alison left me with a final and lasting image of Dan. She described his body, lying on the bed at 8:30 am Monday, January 28, 2013: “He looked like a pharaoh, like a Pharoah. ” Thank you Dan-Alison, Ross, and Tiye for your friendship, your loyalty, and your love. I love you.      

Transgender Transhumans! Are you headed to Venus Plus X?

También en español Depending on how you space it, VenusPlusX or Venus Plus X, it’s no accident that you may have stumbled over a novel by Theodore Sturgeon of the same name. Since first reading Venus Plus X in 1960, it has invoked a strong resonance with my own inner truth even though it was Sturgeon’s creative imagination, a perhaps fantasy. It is our namesake because it stands as the earliest and still clearest exposition of the world’s essential ideas and ideals in the world of sex and gender, and guides the our work as advocates, educators, and activists.

In the novel, a 1950’s human male, Charlie, is transported through time to a distant future where the surviving population of earth is a people called the Ledom (that’s model spelled backwards). The Ledom are fully functional androgynes, being capable of mutual impregnation and of resulting individual pregnancy. Most of the novel is focused on exploring the emotional and dramatic situational differences between normative human bi-gender society (envisioned through time flashbacks) and the behaviors of the Ledom, who are free of all sex and gender inequalities and limitations.

Throughout most of the novel the reader is led to think that the Ledom are some natural product of human evolution or genetic reengineering. Near the end, after Charlie has become friends with some Ledom and given them some feedback on their society vs. primitive human society (1950s), they give him a rather detailed explanation of how they view the society from which he came and how that view has come to shape their own. This is Philo’s Manifesto, which is an authoritative debunking of human history, philosophy, religion, and pretty much everything else, while showing the way to a vastly higher and transcendent body of truth. This short statement it is a must read for every person on earth.

Although Philo’s Manifesto is surely one of the most remarkable and complete syntheses of rational human knowledge of a subject normally considered too exotic to be open to intelligent, unbigoted, unbiased discussion, the final reality of the Ledom is even more remarkable. While the directed biological redesign of the human race into the Ledom is surely enough to be called Transhuman, in the final chapters of the story it is revealed that Ledom reproduction is not entirely biological, but involves a complex symbiosis from conception to adulthood with elaborate medical machinery that continually reshapes the “natural” human biology of development into a series of stages that lead to reproductively mature Ledom. That is truly a Transhumanist idea and far ahead of its time!

Without the medical machines, Ledom infants would be ordinary human infants. The creation of the Ledom is a deliberate act of human creativity, expressed in biomedical technology. This is a transformation of a very basic human character as all members of society enter into this reproductive symbiosis with the machine as a way to perfect their society. They have diagnosed the problems of humanity and conclude they all begin with sexual dimorphism and the resulting bi-genderism that rises from ignorance and refusal to examine reality carefully. Their reproductive symbiosis with the machines allows each to mature into androgynes indistinguishable in hermaphroditic sexual function and completely without gender.

Like Sturgeon’s Ledom, we examine many of the problems of humanity. Like Sturgeon, we feel many of the problems would not exist if humans were perfectly androgynous; however, we see many technological alternatives to the “brute force” approach in the novel (remember that DNA had been discovered only a few years before the novel was written, and nothing was known of its detailed structure and function). For example, a simple reduction in the expression of secondary sexual characteristics and the adoption of extracorporeal fertilization and gestation could achieve similar objectives.

Thus, unlike the Ledom, we do not expect to abolish sexual dimorphism. Rather, we seek to encourage health and longevity by discouraging extreme dimorphism that causes the incorrect and unproductive bi-gender model, and encourage either biosex to develop as symmetrically as possible to enjoy the full range of psychosexual and gender experience available to the human nervous system.

Extracorporeal gestation remains a distant technological objective, although planned fertilization is now part of the culture.

Today, as we learn to accommodate the needs of consciously transgender pre-pubescent children, we know that even crude pharmacological intervention at puberty can greatly enhance the experience of androgyny for the matured adult.

The technology foreseen by Venus Plus X is still in the distant future and may never be developed as an option for directed human reproductive evolution. On the other hand, the social changes envisioned in the novel are ready to move ahead today, since they depend only on changing human hearts and minds, and that means education and socialization, not biology. At VenusPlusX.org, we know how quickly such changes can occur in individuals and in groups, once a successful meme has been sufficiently distributed. While we support research into the technology of androgyny, we understand that the time is here today to empower the Transgender Transhuman community to assume leadership in the revolution for full sex and gender freedom and equality.

Editor’s Note: This originally appeared in July 2011, and is one of several posts being reprinted here in connection with the relaunch of VenusPlusX after a year’s hiatus because they are especially elemental in our thinking.

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

More on Giulio Prisco’s Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance (Part 3)

 

Giulio Prisco

Giulio Prisco

This is the third installment about Giulio Prisco’s upcoming book entitled, tentatively, Tales of The Turing Church. A draft of his chapter, “Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance,” that includes recollections of his many interactions with VenusPlusX Co-founder Dan Massey.  Part 1 included an excerpt from Dan’s talk at the Transvision conference where we met Giulio for the first time, and Part 2 focuses on ensuing interactions.

Giulio is a physicist and computer scientist, and former senior manager in the European space administration. Giulio works as a consultant and contributes to several science and technology magazines. In 2002-2008 he served on the Board of Directors of Humanity Plus, of which he was Executive Director, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Italian Transhumanist Association. He is often in Hungary, Italy and Spain. You can find more about Giulio at Turing Church and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET).  

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Participating in the August 2012 Discussion Group of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, Dan described very eloquently the idea that other civilizations in the universe may have already developed resurrection technologies and may be already “providing resurrection services” to less advanced civilizations like ours. If this is the case, we and everyone else in the universe will be resurrected by the Cosmic Government.

Here is a (slightly edited, but almost literal) transcript of Dan’s words:

“I think you start out realizing that the universe is vastly older than the little area within the light sphere that we can see from this planet on the backwater of the Milky Way galaxy.

Let’s say just for the sake of argument that it is not merely a few billion years old, but it is a few trillion years old, maybe even quadrillion years old, I have no idea obviously, no way to find out, really, right now anyway, but I feel that there is a well organized cosmic government and civilization, that populates literally millions and millions, I really should say billions and billions (Carl Sagan) of planets scattered throughout this part of the universe, and they are all, you know, most part of them are in some degree of communication with each other, there is some sort of coordinated sense of purpose in this community, and they have been at it for a very long time by our standards.

So during this time, you expect that this kinds of things, life extension, and mind uploading, and all these other technologies that we speculate about, would have been long explored, analyzed, built on, other things developed. Frankly, I think the promises of many religions of personal immortality on some terms, sometimes the terms are absurd, but the idea of personal immortality is not absurd at all, because just as we think that we could resurrect our dead, and we might go out and help other people to resurrect their dead, well, rather than being at the front-end of that process, we are at the back-end of that process, we are the clients, not the service company for the project.

Why? Because there is some really big project going on in the universe, and it’s bringing about the universe in unity and harmony. It has really long ways to go, but on this planet it has incredibly long ways to go, because, you know, whether you call it the fall of man or the planetary rebellion or any of these things that are written down in some garbled form in the myth books of world religions, the fact is that something very bad happened here a long time ago, and we have been pretty much in the backwater, cut off from cosmic civilization ever since.”

I hope an alien “service company” has taken good care of Dan, and he is now a happy and productive part of the cosmic mind at the end of space and time. But even if at this moment there are no alien service companies providing resurrection services to the little people of infant backwater civilizations, we will become the service company ourselves, if we progress in the New Age. From his subjective point of view, Dan is still with us, out there.

See also my longer video interview with Dan and Alison on sexual freedom, the occupy movement, transhumanism, the singularity, physics, religion and spirituality, and their forthcoming book. LGBT rights, quantum entanglement, and new cosmic religions in the same talk, it’s really awesome.

For more, see Part 1 and Part 2.

 

Giulio Prisco discusses Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance (Part 2)

Giulio Prisco

Giulio Prisco

This is the second installment about Giulio Prisco’s upcoming book entitled, tentatively, Tales of The Turing Church. A draft of his chapter, “Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance,” that includes recollections of his many interactions with VenusPlusX Co-founder Dan Massey.  Part 1 included an excerpt from Dan’s talk at the Transvision conference where we met Giulio for the first time, and Part 3 recollects Dan’s remarks from one of his interactions with the Mormon Transhumanist Association in 2012.

Giulio is a physicist and computer scientist, and former senior manager in the European space administration. Giulio works as a consultant and contributes to several science and technology magazines. In 2002-2008 he served on the Board of Directors of Humanity Plus, of which he was Executive Director, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Italian Transhumanist Association.  He is often in Hungary, Italy and Spain.
You can find more about Giulio at Turing Church and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET).  

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 In a letter following Dan’s talk at TransvisionDan wrote . . .

“When Martine [Rothblatt] suggested I submit a paper, I knew very little about Transhumanism beyond the superficial elements (live forever, upload your mind, freeze your DNA, etc.). My paper was a total shot-in-the-dark to present to some Transhumanists viewpoints I had previously shared with Martine that were related to sex and gender freedom. I had not thought of these ideas being related to Transhumanism until she suggested it.

I scrubbed all references to GOD and/or DEITY from the talk, because I knew that a significant part of the audience were self declared ‘atheists’ who would have been very distracted by these words, even though I am not sure they understood what they did not believe in. Therefore, even though these words might connote useful concepts to me, they did not mean the same thing to the audience, many of whom suffered from overexposure to the extremely bad public relations of nominally Judaeo-Christian cults for the past 4000 years. There was no need to wade into that quagmire.”

At the conference and after, I had frequent opportunities to discuss religions, mythologies and cosmologies with Dan, among many other things. He was a frequent participant in online discussions hosted by my Turing Church group, Martine Rothblatt’s Terasem, and the Mormon Transhumanist Association. Dan wasn’t a Mormon or a sympathizer, if anything he was very strongly critical of some aspects of Mormon society, in particular their attitude to LGBT persons, but he appreciated the progressive scientific theology promoted by Mormon transhumanists.

In one of my fondest memories with Dan, one day in Manhattan after a Singularity Summit, we realized that my religion of technology and his religion of love are really one and the same, in a relation analogous to the particle-wave complementarity of quantum physics. An electron appears sometimes as a particle, other times as a wave, which seem not only different but incompatible things. But how the electron appears in a specific case doesn’t reflect the intrinsic nature of the electron (which is neither one nor the other) but the configuration of the experiment – in other words, the question that we have chosen to ask. Similarly, technological transcendence and universal love are apparently different but complementary aspects of our shared religion.

Dan used to drop intriguing hints about a “Cosmic Government” – a confraternity of natural Gods and advanced galactic civilizations. Perhaps we will join the Cosmic Government when the time is right, and perhaps the Cosmic Government is benevolently interested in in our world here and now, and may give some help now and then. Dan explained his ideas in more detail in a letter:

“I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of a religion that would sustain Transhumanist ideals without introducing irrational or mythic ideas. When I finally got around to reading Martine [Rothblatt]’s Truths of Terasem I was surprised to see that the concepts she had assembled at the outset, as she set out to define Terasem, were nearly congruent with a concept I had come to know quite well in a totally different setting, specifically, The Urantia Book. In fact, she was going quite a bit further, trying to anticipate what it would be like for Terasem to be actual.

You see, my decision to take up the cause of sex and gender freedom stems directly from some 30 years of very deep involvement with this nearly occult text and the small group of people who take it seriously. Since the book is 2100 pages, about 1.2 million words, I cannot expect people to have or want to read it, although I think it is well worth reading, even if you don’t take it seriously. Sex and gender freedom are not directly addressed in the book. Rather, from the book one takes certain approaches to very open minded but very rational thinking about all manner of subjects, all more or less explained in terms of what educated middle-class Americans in the 1930s would understand. Since I had long cared about sex and gender issues, it was natural that at some time I would become active in actually applying the ideas and ideals I had adapted/adopted from my familiarity with the book.

For example, the comprehensive structure of our activism program is intended to put spiritual pressure on society for change toward higher ideals and superior social practices. We think the most rapid progress can be made when development proceeds synchronously across the dimensions of value – truth, beauty, goodness, and love – corresponding generally to intellectual, physical, motivational, and personal realizations. This approach to structuring activity is based on concepts from the book, though not specified there. Because of what we have learned from the book about the structure of reality, we are confident that, by examining the four basic values, we will get a reasonably comprehensive view of all the issues and connections. At the same time, you will see us trying to subtly teach readers these same ideas, so you will find these themes used repeatedly in our writings.

To explain further, this four dimensional world of ideals comes from The Urantia Book, in which it is said to be the foundation upon which we, as individual persons, are participating in the development of the Supreme Being, an incompletely realized deity of finite space and time, which even now shapes events (I often use the term force of destiny) to assure its final emergence. At this occasion, the ‘finality,’ all persons will have become elements of a complete cosmic consciousness. But long before this final event many ordinary people will have learned to participate in an integrated, orderly life, in which everything and everyone work together better if you give them a chance.

So, when I suggested that a reasonable rational Transreligion fit for genuine Transhumans would be open to acknowledging and working with a cosmic government, I was basically thinking some of us already are, so to speak. That is, we are actively dedicated to the realization of values in answer to common ideals that are what we sincerely imagine a cosmic government would care about. And by so doing, our combined effort to realize supreme values makes our society better and makes us participants in and contributors to the final emergence of the fully integrated Supreme Being.

I kept hinting (or more) at the idea of accepting or even theoretically admitting the possibility of some sort of intervention as a component of a Transreligion framework. The Urantia Book itself claims to be one such intervention, and, if you accept its statements that we are actually living in a universe populated by diverse, non-hostile beings, some like ourselves and some vastly superior in physical, mental, or motivational endowments, the possibility of some intervention cannot be discarded for want of confirming evidence. The book specifically describes four previous interventions, several of which, according to the book, did not go well for the people of this planet and have led to many of our current problems of uniting to solve major social problems. I believe we are currently in the middle of an intervention on an extensive, planet-wide scale that is gradually becoming apparent.

What sort of vision can illuminate the path to a meaningful and worthwhile future? It must recognize the potential of humans to become ‘as gods.’ The Terasem notion of a technodeity, constructed through human action and culminating at ‘the end of time,’ or some other definite but undefined occasion in the future, with the power to reach back through time and across space to force the actions that finally lead to its full emergence, constructed from the collective consciousness of all universe creatures, is certainly a good start. This provides a vision that we shall all then become fully functioning personalities of a supreme, finite deity.”

I find Dan’s vision of the supreme consciousness, God, emerging from the community of advanced forms of life and civilizations in the universe, able to influence space-time events anywhere, anytime, perhaps even here and now, very beautiful and illuminating. I think this is what all great religions really said, in the form and language of their times, and new religions try to say in the language of our times. But what does this cosmic vision have to do with social activism, LGBT issues, and sexual love? Dan continues:

“I demand that society place no limitation on the individual or collective exploration of joy and pleasure, which necessarily begins with the liberation of Transhumankind from the universal social oppression of long denied sex and gender freedom. To me it seems reasonable to recognize the Transgender as Transhuman; to me Transhuman is the great umbrella under which all who embrace in their own lives and persons the exploration of transformed physical bodies, human minds, and personal superconsciousnesses may be welcome.

I see the framework as an enabling structure for the elaboration of more specific and overtly religious practices that work for different communities. It basically reminds us of our common will to shape the world, regardless of our specific approach, and thus can accommodate erotic mystics (like myself) at one extreme and cyronic speculators at the other.

Obviously, the suggested requirements framework is reaching far beyond the material aspects of current Transhumanism. Specifically, to me, it is the transmaterial aspects that are far more important to the overall future of Transhumans and their destined leadership of planetary society into a new age that answers the longings of the past with a result that is unclogged by myth and chaotic group thinking, is better than anyone could have expected, and opens the doors to achievement of destiny on physical, intellectual, motivational, and personal levels as well.”

The religion of love includes both Agape, the spiritual and ethereal aspect of love, and Eros, the physical and passionate one. Some people are more inclined to one or the other, but Eros and Agape, like love and science, are complementary aspects of one and the same thing. Western religions exclude erotic mysticism and limit individual or collective exploration of joy and pleasure, but other religions are much more open. The supreme consciousness at the end of space and time encourages thousands, billions, uncountable transfinities of flowers to bloom – new religious practices based on the erotic mysticism of Eros may play an important role in our progress to join the cosmic community of Gods.

For more, see Part 1  and Part 3.

 

 

Giulio Prisco’s incoming book examines Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance (Part 1)

Giulio Prisco

Giulio Prisco

Our dear friend, Giulio Prisco, is writing a book entitled, tentatively, Tales of The Turing Church, and sent us this draft chapter, “Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance,” that includes recollections of his many interactions with VenusPlusX Co-founder Dan Massey. (This post continues in Part 2 and Part 3.)  

Giulio is a physicist and computer scientist, and former senior manager in the European space administration. Giulio works as a consultant and contributes to several science and technology magazines. In 2002-2008 he served on the Board of Directors of Humanity Plus, of which he was Executive Director, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Italian Transhumanist Association.  He is often in Hungary, Italy and Spain. You can find more about Giulio at Turing Church and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET).  

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Dan Masseya Renaissance man interested in everything under the stars, a visionary thinker, a relentless social activist, a scientist, a teacher, and a friend, passed away on January 28, 2012. He was persuaded that death is not the end, and expected to go on an eternal, infinite journey after death. I hope the eternal cosmic winds will be fair and wonderful to Dan, and I hope to see him again out there.

I first met Dan and his life partner Alison Gardner at Transvision, an itinerant transhumanist conference that I organized in Milan in October 2010. We became good friends and met often after the conference, both online and face to face.

I guess Dan’s talk at the conference shocked many people, used to the often aseptic tone of transhumanist talks. Here was a white-haired hippie, with a New Age messianic look, a benevolent guru of times gone by and times yet to come, proposing a new spirituality founded on transhumanist science and unbounded love including, of all things, sexual love! Quite a shock for “conventional” transhumanists from the straight and narrow path of science and engineering! Dan was an engineer himself, an MIT and Harvard graduate with a distinguished scientific career, but he didn’t walk straight and narrow paths. He and Alison founded an activist organization to create a New Age of liberty, freedom, justice, and equality for all people, centered on the intrinsic value of sex and gender expression, of personal erotic freedom, to replace millennia of unreasoned ignorance, fear, and hatred with the true joy of Love.

Here is the summary of Dan’s talk at Transvision 2010. Thanks to wonderful communication age that his work helped to come into being, the full talk is available online.

“There necessarily exists a divinely determined order throughout the universe. This order pervades and defines three levels of experiential existence – the spiritual, the mental/emotional, and the physical/sensory. The failure of humans and human associations to recognize the love of god pervasive in the sensory level of experience is the principal obstacle to individual and collective human progress, which is essential to the realization of our diverse ambitions for increasing human happiness.

This situation can be corrected by inspiring and educating all humanity to appreciate sex and gender freedom and equality as sacred gifts of god and by training individuals to appreciate the joy of their own freedom of sex and gender, enabling them to inspire, educate, and train others. The power of divine love, expressed through the physical and sensory, is sufficient to seduce humanity into a new way of living, loving, and being that will open wide the doors to our true planetary future.

We are now beginning public discussion of how life is lived in this new age, through all levels and in all areas of inspiration, education, and training. From these discussions a spiritual vision, a social agenda, and a technological program will be established to fashion a transhuman future on which we can begin work today to bring truth, beauty, goodness, and love to our worldwide life experience, building towards the full future fruition of a broad human commitment to universal freedom, justice, equality, and liberty.

The specific issue to be briefly examined is the necessary and sufficient requirements for an artificial object, one created by human vision, thought, and deed, to support the hosting of a human identity equivalent to, but apart from a human body. Even if everyone agrees that the new me is just like the old me, how do I know that I will continue to experience a continuous personal sense of consciousness as the new me?

The answer is that, as a biological human, I know that ‘I am’ by virtue of knowing that I have a personal relationship to god, though I may not consciously admit that I know this. Our bodies and brains evolved to enable this connection, which is what makes us a potentially permanent part of the universe. We can know god and know that god also knows us. While we have rational evidence of human spiritual immortality extending beyond physical life, the creation of physical immortality by artificial means requires an artifice that can, in effect, talk to god. Our brains and bodies are finite and can be fully modeled as finite-state systems; therefore, the creation of such an artifice could be possible. That does not mean it will be easy. This is something we will eventually achieve if we work on it long and hard enough, but when it comes it will surely be the crowning final achievement of human artifice. Our universe will hail this accomplishment, so great will it be, for any people that can build a machine able to know god will have finally taken up the reins of creation itself.”

Part 2 continues with a follow-up letter after this conference, and others, and  Part 3 covers Dan’s related presentation to the Mormon Transhumanist Association.

 

 

Until we meet again . . .

Dan and I have just spent the last a couple months retooling our website to focus more directly on the campaigns that have become the most important to us, and finishing our book on erotic communion that we have been researching and writing for the last 3 years. Look for more info on both.

For now, we have to report that Dan at 70 put down his keyboard on January 28, and after a short and painless illness took his last breath on this earth. He arose anew to carry on with the joyful immortality he and his family enjoy, only now in different form. When you chance to live day-by-day in the eternal-infinite, the now that can so easily escape our grasp, it’s not surprising that a transition like this is pervaded by peace and grace, lessening emotional pain, joyous in the unfolding of a new reality.

Dan and I have spent the last 4 decades in partnership and parenthood dedicating ourselves to Love and service, seeking Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in all our actions and decisions. While we often fell short, there is not anything that was and is more important in shaping who we are and want to be. In sharing his thoughts of late, Dan centered on one phrase to illuminate what we must do to make our world better, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

For information on Dan’s Memorial Service in Washington, DC, on Saturday afternoon, February 23, contact columbia@venusplusx.org. In lieu of flowers, Dan requested that a contribution be made to Casa Ruby instead, or a charity of your choice. A newly endowed Dan Massey Transleadership Scholarship Fund might be your choice, as well.

We are compiling many of your notes and letters in a book that will have blank pages and photographs for anyone that wants to contribute their thoughts, or you could send them to columbia@venusplusx.org at any time to be included in this special keepsake.

For more, click through to Wikipedia, The Advocate, and Huffington Post.

Three Basic Ideas of VenusPlusX

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

The work of VenusPlusX is to explain to humanity a few basic ideas that can be applied to address weaknesses in the evolved human social order. These ideas  have the power to shape the path of human social evolution.

These concepts are fundamental to all of our work and help us understand and explain how humanity can escape from the constraints imposed by fear and ignorance that presently interfere with human progress.

  1. the universe is populated and has an organized government, one branch of which is responsible for the conditions of prior mismanagement present on this planet and ongoing efforts to expedite their remediation.
  2. there is a simple supreme law of behavior that defines for each individual how they may best contribute to the expression of love and the healing of evil for their fellows.
  3. the human concept and phenomenon of transgender is the emerging direct experience of cosmic joy and play in human social and recreational activities.

First, we are in no way alone in the universe. Not only is our galaxy necessarily populated by beings much like ourselves in different stages of social development, but the large-scale operation of the affairs of the peoples of that galaxy is necessarily coordinated by some sort of cosmic government that deals with human affairs on a scale that no single people can address themselves.

In this and many other comments on this blog we will speak of something as “necessary.” By this we mean that some aspect of destiny cannot be fulfilled unless it is true. This form of argument in terms of potentialities rather than actualities belongs to the world of “modal logic,” especially developed by the great logician Kurt Goedel. In the paragraph above, we basically mean, “Why the hell would you think the universe isn’t populated? If it could happen here it must have happened all over the place. Don’t be a heliocentic homocentric fool.” As for the government, it basically comes down to, “Considering the human propensity to invent rules of living for everybody, how can you imagine an entire galaxy wouldn’t develop systems of administration and adjudication? Just because you can’t imagine what the issues would be for a group of planets separated by light-years, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Your imagination isn’t that great.” Grow some humility, monkey-son.

Second, there is a supreme law of behavior that determines what actions of each person contribute to the individual’s development as a loving person and make a permanent impact on the expression of Love in the universe. We state them here and will return to their explanation in a later blog:

  • Become Love
  • Live Truth
  • Do Good
  • Make Beauty

We do not say “tell the Truth,” although a decision to do so might be entirely correct. To us, Truth is not just words, but the direction in which our will shapes our actions of Love to achieve Good and Beauty as results. Thus, we say “live Truth,” because, to us, Truth is a living reality. Similarly, we say “make Beauty,” not “seek Beauty,” though the latter may be entirely appropriate in a given situation. In each case, the prescribed action is particular to the Supreme value being enacted.

Third, except for areas in which biological reproduction is employed for the creation of new human personalities, all transcendent beings exist in state one might call intergender or omnigender; however, since such beings have no need for sex for reproduction, but are widely exploring all forms of gender expression and behaviors provided by their transphysical bodies, the term “transgender” will be used in these blogs, in the sense of omnigender or intergender. We see the transgender phenomenon as increasingly manifest in human society to stem from the natural human responsiveness to the true transgender nature of the developing human personality. You will find an initial exploration of these ideas in my paper Why We Are All Transgender.

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