Great stuff Nikola. Bulletrank has a free play offer right now, you should try it out and get some plays

Chapter 2: The Story of Story

"The limits of my language means the limits of my world." Ludwig Wittgenstein

Humanity has searched for meaning since its beginning. And we find it in story. The story that we tell ourselves. Thus, a world devoid of meaning becomes meaningful. But this meaning is given by and designed for us. And it is created in language.

The truly unique feature of human language is not its ability to transmit practical information about animals, rivers, stones, and trees. This feature is present in the languages of many other species such as whales, dolphins, apes, elephants, birds and bats, even bees. What makes human language unique is its ability to transmit information about things that don’t exist in the physical world at all – like gods, money, law, ethics, corporations, and so on. In other words, what makes our language unique is its ability to tell fictional stories. That is why ours is a fictive language. And this fact is very important for the two key features of our civilization:

1. Large-scale cooperation: Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons rarely cooperated in groups larger than 150 [Dunbar’s number]. This placed a rather low upper limit on what they could accomplish. Homo Sapiens, however, when given a powerful enough story, can exhibit cooperation among millions of strangers working towards the same goal. And what we can accomplish is of unlimited scale. Both positive and negative examples abound in history from wars and genocides through sports events, religious rituals, social movements, construction projects such as the Great Wall of China, or technological and scientific ones such as the Large Hadron Collider and space exploration.

2. Fast [cultural] evolution: What this means is that when we change the story, we change the culture. When enough people switch the story they believe in we have a revolution. For example, in 1789 the population of France switched almost overnight from the story of the divine right of the king to the story of the sovereignty of the people. [“Liberté, égalité, fraternité.”] Now known as the French Revolution, this phenomenon shows how cultural revolutions, in contrast to genetic revolutions, are very fast. This is the main reason why humanity has outstripped all other species in evolutionary terms – because we are using culture, not genes, to evolve faster. Every revolutionary paradigm switch – be it the French Revolution or the Scientific Revolution or the Industrial Revolution, is accompanied by a respective cultural switch in story about what the paradigm could or should be. That new story is in turn told by coining new language about political or legal rights, scientific concepts, or business terms. Because new stories require new language. So the expansion of story necessitates the expansion of language and the expansion of language creates opportunities for new stories.

In short, without our fictive language, we can’t have a story. And without a human story, our human civilization will not exist. So, the story of story is the story of our language. Keneth Burke said it best:

"Language does our thinking for us."

ReWriting the Human Story - Chapter 2

Bold - INTRODUCTION & CHAP 1

Singularity University is not about the singularity and is not even a university. It is not about abundance and is not an exponential organization.

Then what is Singularity University about?!

Those are the claims I made and the questions I asked, and tried to address, during my recent presentation at a local meetup organized by Singularity University in the Netherlands. Check it out and judge for yourself.

You can watch the full video here: https://www.singularityweblog.com/socrates-deconstructs-singularity-university/

The Emperor Has No Clothes: Socrates Deconstructs Singularity University

Small Gods

Nikola Danaylov Author of Conversations with the Future,Insights from Interviewing 200+ Tech Leaders

💫✨Always Another Way Podcast ✨💫
✨💫Ep: 32 The World is Transformed by Asking Questions. With Nikola Danaylov, The Modern Day Socrates.

You don’t know what you don’t know and if you don’t ask the question, the answer is always no.

At the very least, you’ll walk away from this podcast smarter than you are today.

Don’t miss my conversation with Nikola. July 26 at 1pm CST. On Always Another Way Podcast Tell your friends. Let’s transform the world.

Nikola Danaylov is an Author, Futurist and Speaker. His Conversations with the Future is an International Bestseller and his popular Singularity.FM podcast is the reason why Danaylov has been called the “Larry King of the Singularity.”

Ep: 32 The World is Transformed by Asking Questions with Nikola Danaylov

This piece is published as part of the collection of 'Letters 
to the Earth', by HarperCollins - a collection of writings in response to
planetary crisis.

We Are In The Underworld And We Haven't Figured It Out Yet

Maria Farrell is the author of some of my most favorite op-ed pieces of 2020. She is very smart, gutsy, genuine, feisty, generous, and Irish. Her writing is sharper, it penetrates deeper and she’s not afraid to go further than most others. I have already learned a lot from her and have become a total fan. So it was a blast to have her on my podcast and I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

During this 2.5-hour interview with Maria Farrell, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why she is a reader who eventually became a writer for crooked timber and elsewhere; the image and mythology of Conor McGregor as the Fighting Irish; the biggest issues that humanity is facing today;  stories as tools we think with; futurism as an interest of those happy with the present; what Feminism can teach us about our smartphones; how China is selling Autocracy as a service; why the internet must be more than Facebook; whether technology is a magnifying mirror; the importance and impact of story; why I wasn’t welcome at Google and CISCO; Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History; why the Agrarian Revolution is history’s greatest fraud; the Prodical Techbro phenomenon; my interview with Tristan Harris; the Tragedy of the Commons as a false narrative; why no one is coming to save us from ourselves.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/singularityfm

Singularity.FM

Maria Farrell on Technology, Ethics, Stories and the Prodigal Techbro

Singularity.FM is the first and best known singularity podcast - the place where we interview the future. 

Singularity.FM is a series of singularity podcast interviews with the best scientists, writers, entrepreneurs, film-makers, philosophers and artists, debating issues such as the technological singularity, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, life-extension and ethics.

Past guests of this singularity podcast include people such as Ray Kurzweil, Peter Diamandis, Noam Chomsky, Stuart Hameroff, Marvin Minsky, Aubrey de Grey, Max More, Michio Kaku, Vernor Vinge, Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross and many, many others.

ReWriting the Human Story - Chapter 2

Singularity.FM

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