Hang gang, welcome to the new and improved PURETIMES! This is a place where you can find all kinds of inspiring stories about PUREPROJECTS around the world, which have a ‘pure’ intention at their core and are promoting a common good in the world! If you have a story of a PUREPROJECT you would like to share with us, please feel free to pass it along to info@pureproject.org.
For those receiving my ‘daily purefix’ posts, I will begin each post by sharing some inspiring morsel of insight aka the ‘daily purefix.’ This will be followed by a few examples of PUREPROJECTS that have inspired me recently. I hope you enjoy and please share anything that inspires you with your network. Have a lovely Thursday!
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daily PUREFIX:
For as long as I can remember, I have always loved sharing and supporting others! I’m not sure how this emerged as a key component of my personality. What I can tell you is that acts of kindness such as sharing and helping others fuel my soul! Like all humans, I am driven by both self-interest as well as altruism! I am extremely grateful that my life as afforded me the consciousness to maintain a generally healthy balance between these polarizing forces.
Basically, what I’m saying is that being kind to others makes me feel good. And when I feel good, I’m more productive in my life. And as a result, I am more successful in whatever it is that I’m doing in the world!
So, I urge you all to consider your own internal barometer as it relates to self-interest and altruism. Some wise woman (or man) once said, the more you give, the more you get! Seems like a smart idea!
Have a great day guys and see you soon!
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Life In A Day
Life In A Day is a historic global experiment to create the world’s largest user-generated feature film: a documentary, shot in a single day, by you. On July 24, you have 24 hours to capture a glimpse of your life on camera. The most compelling and distinctive footage will be edited into an experimental documentary film, executive produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin Macdonald.
Learn more at http://www.youtube.com/lifeinaday
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Turning Into Gods & The Immortalists
Turning Into Gods is a documentary film my buddy Jason Silva is working on about what happens once we decomission natural selection and the genome becomes our newest artistic and poetic tool. And the The Immortalists is an 8 minute meditation on mavericks in biotech who are seeking a “cure for death.”
Enjoy the videos & short Q & A below!
Q+A:
What was the motivation/inspiration and back-story behind creating “The Immortalists”?
Jason Silva: I wanted the film to be a love letter to scientific boldness: to the idea of rising up against an indifferent universe where everyone dies, and say, “this is unacceptable.” People rationalize death as a good thing in a poetic sense because there’s been no other option (and we’re clever creatures). We have an ability to take even the most absurd tragedies and make poetry out of them.
Ernest Becker talks about our death repression and rationalization in his book The Denial of Death. He talks about the religious impulse, the romantic impulse and ultimately the creative impulse … all ways of dealing with, and masking, the true horror of our mortality.
I wanted to make a film about standing up to mortality. I wanted to stare the human condition in the face and say: “We will overcome you.” [It's] a call to such action; a challenge to claim our lust for the infinite without apology.
How do you approach a project like this, from a conceptual and practical point of view?
Jason Silva: One of the things I enjoy about shooting on video is the immediacy of getting out there and shooting the content. I took off to track down Ray Kurzweil and others with a minimal crew … the idea was to capture real conversations about overcoming limitations.
I wanted to approach the film like an art-film that happens to be about science. I wanted it to be a philosophical discussion you could continue to have late into the night … I also had just read Alan Harrington’s magnificent book, The Immortalist, which is out of print. There were so many inspiring quotes in that book, and I knew my film could be a vehicle to disseminate Alan Harrington’s words, so I included lots of quotes from his book to anchor the film philosophically.
Scientific immortality brings with it new sets of problems and limitations … How would you deal with them?
Jason Silva: We would deal with a host of new issues and challenges the same way we always have … we’ll develop a new set of definitions and expectations about life. We’ll EVOLVE. We’ll tap into our uncanny ingenuity and make it work. Many feared and resisted man’s longing to fly like a bird, today millions of people travel safely in machines through the air (that weigh half a million tons and have a million moving parts). Things at first seem impossible, then improbable, then unusual and then we take them for granted.
What about the cross-faith argument that this sort of thing interferes with ‘Gods Will’?
Jason Silva: People are afraid of change, and they resist the unfamiliar. There are famous anecdotes where clergy have resisted science and progress claiming we were “playing God.” Religion has a dark stain in its history for stifling progress. The reality is that technology is the ONLY endeavor that has ever helped us overcome problems. This is data-driven fact. We are the only species that constantly overcomes its limitations; we reach for the stars. As Alan Harrington said: “We are cosmic revolutionaries, not stooges conscripted to advance a natural order that kills everybody.”
There are many ways to approach the topics discussed in your film. Scientists could attempt to stop aging, slow the aging process, extend life, etc. What do you feel at this point is the most feasible approach according to the research you’ve come across?
Jason Silva: Ray Kurzweil talks about three bridges. My understanding is as follows: The first bridge is biotechnology which includes reprogramming our biochemistry towards longevity and away from disease and aging. This will allow us to live much longer, until the nanotech revolution arrives. Nanotechnology will then usher in an age of nano-sized robots that will fix us from inside, buying us more time, until we completely merge with our technology, transcend our biology and become mindfiles. We will be consciousness-as-information, existing everywhere at once, in the all-encompassing technosphere. We will be as gods.
Some ask: Why would anyone want to live forever? How would that look?
Jason Silva: We would have the freedom to grow and evolve in the direction of greater complexity and organization; we will acquire sublime, ever-increasing knowledge and self-awareness. We will infuse ourselves with other intellects, explore the entire universe; taste the wine of centuries unborn … We will live in a world, to quote Wildcat, “of interweaved sensation and co-opted dreams.”
What’s the future of storytelling?
Jason Silva: I think storytelling will evolve exponentially, just as technology is evolving exponentially … I envision fully immersive virtual reality, indistinguishable from the real world, where Jose Campbell-esque hero journeys can be experienced by users … the future stories will be interactive, they will revolve around us. We will all be protagonists in stories sculpted by the iconography of our minds … unknown textures of phantasmagoria await … co-opted dreams and interweaved sensations … We will interface with our stories using all of our senses and have the freedom to merge our senses. We will be everywhere at once without ever leaving home. I personally am very excited for all of this.
