I sometimes wonder about what led me to my current interests. A lot of it has to do with all the books I’ve read and the films I’ve seen. Sometimes when I’m watching a film like Star Wars I’ll catch a particular scene that must have been one of many little memes that were planted in my mind when I first saw them.

So where did George Lucas get the memes he put in his films? He was inspired by the author Joseph Campbell who wrote a book called the Hero With A Thousand Faces which is about the arch-typical heroes journey. Campbell incorporated amongst other things some of the ideas of Carl Jung who of course had studied Buddhism and Taoism.

So when Yoda starts talking about being a luminous part of the Force and how there is no difference between himself the rock and the X-wing he is levitating, you could say that he’s another link in a chain that goes back thousands of years (at least). Whatever other value these ideas have, we can at least note how sticky they are.

Do you remember the scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi confuses the Storm Troopers by waving his hands and saying: ‘These aren’t the droids you’re looking for’? Well that’s a pattern interrupt. The hypnotherapist Milton Erickson used pattern interrupts to temporarily confuse clients so that they would be momentarily more open to suggestion.

Here’s an explanation of how Derren Brown uses his Force powers for evil and entertainment.

Some people have noted the similarity between the Jedi in Star Wars and the Bene Gesserit in Dune, by Frank Herbert. The Bene Gesserit are a group that posses a skill called ‘The Voice’, which is a particular way of speaking that allows them to strongly influence and sometimes control other people. One of the themes in Dune is how language influences thought and this was inspired by Alfred Korzybski who wrote General Semantics and Science and Sanity, books that were read by Bandler and Grinder, the developers of NLP.

Here is a video of Don Beck speaking at the UN. You can find more videos of him speaking on YouTube.

Don Beck and Chris Cowan wrote a book called Spiral Dynamics based on work by Clare Graves. Spiral Dynamics is a theory of human development. The theory is that when humans are faced by more complex life conditions they evolve more sophisticated models to deal with the those conditions. Not only do our bodies evolve but so do our minds and in turn the collective consciousness of societies.When people say that we need to evolve a higher consciousness they usually mean that we need to step up to the next level of the holarchical-model (holarchy). The reason is as Einstein often quoted saying goes is because: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Environmental destruction and war are brought about by lower level thinking. Fighting for perceived to be scarce rescources is a useful strategy when you are a hunter-gatherer but it’s not the most useful strategy at this point. The thinking that created that strategy is outdated.Some people find it difficult to conceive of ‘higer consciousness’. What does it mean? I think one way to illustrate it is to think of an instance where a problem is solved in a highly original way. This could be Ghandi practising non-violent protest or a football player beating a defender in way that no-one could have imagined.

You’ll know when you’re operating on a higher level when someone sees you do something and exclaims: ‘That’s impossible!’

This is a great video illustrating the realities of globalisation. Some of the statistics are a bit meaningless as they aren’t provided in any context, but the general ideas are sound.

It shows a lot of things that I’ve come to realise and discover about the world since the late 90’s. Most of my time in school I was being indoctrinated with the idea that I had to study and learn skills in order to get a job. Fashion myself into a cog that could fit into some machine. Problem is, that kind of thinking came out of the industrial age. India and China are pusing out around 4 million graduates a year. Anything that doesn’t need face to face contact will be outsourced. I have a friend who takes on programming contracts, but doesn’t actually do the work. Someone in India does it for him. There’s no such thing as a job for life anymore, soon a lot more people won’t have jobs at all. That doesn’t mean they won’t be productive or earn money. They’ll just go about it in different ways than previous generations.I had so many of these realisations around the age of 16 but I always trusted adults knew what they were doing and that I didn’t have the full picture. But about 2 years ago it finally hit home: most people don’t know what the hell they are doing. They just blindly follow what society-programming tells them to think and do. As I grow in confidence I learn to trust my instincts much more. I believe it’s life’s way of letting me know that I need to evolve.

Alan Watts discusses the meaning of life with a little help from the creators of South Park.