I came to Ephemerisle as part of a process healing my relationship with humanity. Yes that complex system of 8 billion humans I feel such resistance being part of. Based on my early life data collection and some historical knowledge there is a strong bias in my brain “humans propagate pain. They hurt others to get what they need.”

As I learned about the brain and it’s 86 billion neurons and layers of agency I came to understand the brain has two modes of operation. When it is in scarcity mode, not getting enough of what it needs, survival mode kicks in. The higher layer of the cortex get shut down and the base instincts of fight, flight or freeze takes over. Many times this sense of scarcity is based on those early life conditions. A baby that didn’t get enough physical affection from it’s parents grows up to propagate that pain maybe even becoming an attention seeking, power hungry president but mostly just sending the pain into the people closest to them. This toxic feedback loop plagues humanity and has probably gotten a lot worse since wheat started domesticating us into farmers and even worse since monotheism became a thing creating false scarcity in our beliefs systems.

Every thing you need for a society on the water, porta potties and transportation

I am no different, when I perceive pain either directly or even just hearing about what’s going on in the world, a large part of my brain starts going into fight mode, wanting to crush and hurts and destroy everything including my self. Not fun or rational or productive. In order to try to remodel this pattern in me and insert some beliefs that humanity can learn to overcome its false scarcity mode I took myself to a week on the water where basic resources like space are actually scarce but the mentality is around creating abundance, collaborating and sharing an adventure. Where a group of people most of which barley know each other try to build islands on a river to live, create and party for a week.
Building was hard work in the sun and not very efficient management but it was also filled with so much more patience than what I grew up with.
The group was very diverse age wise and it was very interesting to have some inter generational conversations. Any visitor wanting to visit the main island gets a lecture about consent culture and it was very heartwarming to hear how these memes were being passed on to both older and younger men (and other genders).
I’m not sure about the numbers but it felt like there were less women there than other festivals. In the naked swim competition commemorating a very strange story in the history of Ephemerisle I was the the only vagina holder participating but my nudity wasn’t commented on even once. Me practicing peeing standing up into the Delta, which was what penis havers were doing all the time, occasionally got some unwanted attention from men but was worth the support I got from women and inserting the memes that this is a biological possibility at least for some vagina’s.

Pimped my kyak so I could recognize it which came in handy when the rope got cut when the island platforms were shifted. Boating around I recognized it. Someone had seen it drifting and jumped in to paddle it to the closest island.

I had many deep conversations with people throughout the week, sharing our childhood traumas, pain from past relationships and more. I wasn’t the only person coming to facilitate their healing.
When science started replacing dogmatic religion it didn’t bring with it the sense of community our social brains need, these type of gatherings allow also the rationalist atheist to connect to something bigger then themselves. A unique aspect of Ephemerisle which has no central org and no tickets is the community assistance. I saw people swimming waving boats down to give them a ride to the other island. Everyone carries a whistle in case we see someone drown so we can alert others and get help and finally due to the very limited space you find yourself climbing onto other people’s boats and living spaces, while it is recommended to ask even the fanciest boats around were very welcoming to guest. Another unique aspect is that things keep changing, as weather conditions effect the location of the Islands along with boats and barges constantly being changed and moved to accommodate the community. I especially enjoyed looking out into the distance most of the day without requiring my brain to model any close topography it seemed to allow my thoughts to gain more distance and space too.

I came to Ephemerisle with a large part of my extended polyamerous family. Polyamory is the radical philosophy that considers humans to be different than things. Especially when it comes to women who in many parts of the world are still considered property, being bought, sold, mutilated, hidden, their own needs ignored and stumped on, poly is a massive revolution and where I personally find some hope for humanity. Poly is focused on practicing those theory of mind networks your brain has, allowing you to model that different people have different needs and that it’s ok for them to fulfill these needs with other consenting people. Very rarely is it actually sustainable for a coupled unite to fulfill all of each others’ intimate needs. Physical affection or sex is probably the first need that comes to mind, but in reality the need for acceptance, connection, support, freedom and play are all extremely important for humans and poly lifestyle doesn’t create a false scarcity around them by putting arbitrary limitations on what you can do with yourself or with others. Poly allows me a higher level of collaboration, if I’m better at something than someone I can practice being a kind teacher and if someone is better than me I have the opportunity to learn even with things as intimate as coping mechanisms or blow jobs. While festival poly always has its challenges, it was extremely healing and amazing to see men who love and have sex with the same partner connect and deconstruct these social norms of possessives. It was a true gift to receive support and affection from these men and it was so touching to be seen and heard by my metamore and friend. Women supporting each other instead of competing for the support of men is another way to disintegrate the scarcity in human connections. It was her words that resonated with me most deeply this week. When I talked about how I’m trying to change this automatic anger/violent reflex I recorded as a kid her recommendation regarding her practice was:
“I just keep practicing loving and sharing and reminding myself that we can do that, that humans can do that”. Her advice resonated deeply because it might indeed be much easier for brains to grow new patterns that will compete with the hate and anger than to erase old ones.

I’d like to end with a thought experiment:
Imagine you are on your deathbed what is the best version of humanity you can imagine? Now work your way backwards. What part of that did you contribute your time and computational power? Which of the memes you collected and morphed joined other memes to bring about this reality?

Last week I joined a group from a hackerspace called Noisebridge to show some of my VR demos at an event proclaiming to be the best show and tell on earth. Read on, for some impressions about Maker Faire.

Will you be my friend?

Maker Faire is a strange combo, many individual creative makers come together to show their stuff and connect with others but also some more established  businesses and companies are there with their pretty standers sale pitches.

I was there with a group of people from Noisebridge we had a VR booth with demos we created. Some of the group created a virtual Noisebridge with a 3d scanner and also a a 3d model you could switch between. I was showing my MindMoVR experience and also a demo with a leapmotion camera where you could use your own hands in VR and interact with actual objects. A pillow became a giant teddy bear and the HTC Vive controller became a buzzing butterfly you could catch.

There was also another group from the space showing this crazy contraption they made, a type of printer that was just holding a sharpie pen and moving it on a page to create a very unique style of drawings based on photos you could take at the booth.

Besides us there were hundreds if not thousands of other booths. Here are some trends I notices.

Robot mayham

Robots – lots and lots of robots made from anything imaginable including cardboard. One of the biggest highlights was the giant MegaBot unavailing. This Robot is supposed to fight a Japanese Robot sometime soon.  The robot was swinging its giant arms and crashing into a car but the transfer of momentum was more of a pushing then punching.

Drones – there was a drone race track as well as a drone fighting. Mostly these sports seem to be about picking up the fallen drones and fixing them. But I guess letting out human aggression this way is pretty harmless unless these drones or robots actually get sentience.

Blinky

Blinky – a whole room filled with blinky LED stuff.  Not much new for anyone who’d been to burning man, but still pretty.

Personalisation – on the more commercial front there was a little trend of personlising daily objects by using scanners and 3d printers. Print your own perfectly fitting shoes or glasses for instance.

Personalize your shoe

Tools – laser cutters, 3d printers and lots of other tools that are the maker’s version of crack. There was even an automatic knitting machine.

Some nostalgia – among all this futuristic stuff there was also a bunch of steam engine machines and an old style photo booth with one of those box cameras and film!

Even for an “old cynic” like me there was enough novelty and interactivity to make the event worth it. And seeing strangers play with the stuff I made was pretty amazing. I’ll be showing MindMoVR at Figment interactive art festival on june 10th in Oakland. Come say hi.