by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

Believing that we know it all has a survival advantage. If we were riddled with doubt, we wouldn't do anything. The macro and microcosms reflecting each other, society suffers from the same misplaced certainty.

We imagine our knowledge as if it were a map. The conceit is that we already have the general outlines correctly drawn. We believe that the continents and seas are properly in place, and that all we need to do now is fill in the details, the blank spots, currently marked "Terra Incognita" (unknown land). Ignaz Semmelweis discovered a new continent.

In 1847 Semmelweis was practicing medicine in Vienna's General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where the doctors' wards had three times the mortality of the midwives' wards.

In those days, before Louis Pasteur proposed his germ theory, hygiene amounted to wearing evening clothes when you performed surgery; elegance was next to cleanliness. Doctors would go from dissecting corpses to delivering babies, only rinsing off their hands along the way. Semmelweis started washing his hands with a powerful disinfectant, and his mothers stopped dying.

Ignaz Semmelweis
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Semmelweis' discovery was greeted with scorn. It was forcefully resisted by doctors who were insulted by the idea that they might be a vector of contamination. They attacked, ridiculed, and bullied Semmelweis until he had a nervous breakdown, later dying in a mental hospital.

Recently, another revolution has started to reshape the scientific world. Over the last five years it has become increasingly acceptable to speak of consciousness as a subject fit for scientific enquiry. Earlier pioneers in the field of consciousness (Rupert Sheldrake for instance), like Semmelweis, had their careers ruined. Getting funding and having your ideas taken seriously by your colleagues are the lifeblood of scientific research.

I just came across a YouTube interview with Annaka Harris, a scientist who has a popular video series exploring the topic of consciousness. In the interview (not part of the series) Harris reveals that for years she was advised not to address her interest in consciousness, not even at dinner parties.

Apparently, she is still a little shy about speaking her mind. Because throughout the interview she laughs when there is nothing funny. She giggles nervously, as if retreating from her points, as if to say, "I'm just being silly. You don't have to take me seriously."

Annaka Harris
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Consciousness has long been a problem for mainstream scientific thought. In fact, it is the "Hard Problem." Established science, despite quantum's revelation that there really is nothing physical, is still dominated by the ancient Greek philosophy of Physicalism, the belief that everything results from material causes. According to this dogma, consciousness is only a second-tier phenomenon, an epiphenomenon, a phantom, illusory effect of the brain's electrical activity.

But today, and especially over the last five years, this scientific orthodoxy is being challenged, by scientists too brilliant, accomplished and well-funded, to ignore: Faggin, Kastrup, Levin... Consciousness, these revolutionaries claim, is the primary stuff, not derived from anything else, more basic than time, space, more basic even than gravity and the other cosmic forces. The person with the highest IQ, Chris Langan, insists that the world is not material, but cognitive.

As scientists these revolutionaries proceed step by step, but their speculative conclusions are fascinating... and uplifting:

My speculative conclusions are that:

Federico Faggin, who invented the CPU (the heart of computers and smartphones), the neuro-network (the heart of AI), the touch screen, and more, tells us that love is the answer.

Faggin says that we are "part-wholes," individuals who also partake of the universal whole. Love is the ability to maintain yourself while merging with another. When the resonance of your part-whole harmonizes with the resonance of another part-whole, then together you create a third, greater, more whole part-whole.

Federico Faggin
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Lokkal, local internet: town square, "Yellow Pages," local guide..., harmonizes our common, local interests, online and off. Like the first photographs of Earth from outer space marked a change in consciousness, so seeing the local community reflected online will change the way we think and live.

It's an information economy. Like Semmelweis disinfecting his hands, everything changes when we take control of our local information. We can present our city to the planet. We can make our own local social network (better than Facebook) and our local search engine (better than Google). Doing so will keep circulating locally some of the enormous advertising profits that are currently being extracted by global Big Tech. Investing (microfinance) or donating those profits locally will bring revolutionary change.

Lokkal is a community revolution.

Get involved:

Lokkal puts the unity into community.

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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