First a frame-Berdyaev’s metaphysic here. “Man is entering a new cosmos,” he writes:
All the elements of our epoch were present in the past, but now they are generalized, universalized and revealed in their true aspect. In these days of the world’s agony we feel keenly that we are living in a fallen world, torn asunder by incurable contradictions…. The world is living in a period of agony which greatly resembles that of the end of antiquity. But the present situation is more hopeless, since at the close of antiquity Christianity entered the world as a new young force, while now Christianity, in its human age, is old and burdened with a long history in which Christians have often sinned and betrayed their ideal. And we shall see that the judgment upon history is also a judgment upon Christianity in history.
Christianity, that is, in its amnesia has forgotten how to make all things new.
[T]echnology and mechanization transfigure (or, more accurately, disfigure) man as their innovations and methods are blindly and uncritically welcomed and incorporated into human life.
Jeff Bezos has just given £7m to UK scientists to develop a vaccine for cow farts
Amazon's Jeff Bezos has announced he will award a £7.3m grant to help a UK-based project to slash cattle emissions with the use of a potential new vaccine.
The project seeks to use biotechnology to figure out the mechanism by which a vaccine could cut livestock methane emissions by more than 30%.
[link to www.farminguk.com (secure)]
Startup raises $26.5 million for vaccine to stop cow farts and burps
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/10/arkeabio-cow-emissions-bill-gates
ArkeaBio, a Boston developer of a vaccine to reduce livestock methane emissions, raised $26.5 million in venture capital funding led by an investment fund founded by Bill Gates.
Why it matters: Caring about cow farts (or burps) has become a political punchline, but they're estimated to create more than 5% of global greenhouse gasses.
Vaccines could be a relatively low-cost, scalable solution, particularly as food demand increases.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/world/cows-methane-emissions-seaweed-bill-gates-climate-intl/index.html
It turns out burps can be big business. Billionaire Bill Gates has announced an investment in Australian start-up Rumin8, which is developing a seaweed-based feed to reduce the methane emissions cows produce through their burps and, to a lesser extent, farts.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. While it is shorter-lived in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, it has 84 times more global warming potential over a 20-year period. Nearly one-third of global methane emissions come from livestock and most of that from beef and dairy cows.
Microbes in cows’ stomachs produce methane as the animals digest food but when seaweed is added to their feed it has been shown to significantly cut down the amount of planet-warming gas released. A 2021 study found that giving cows small amounts of seaweed over several months saw their —-methane emissions fall by more than 80%.
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https://www.thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com/g/tags/nikolai-berdyaev
In the Gnostic mythos, Sophia lives in exile, trapped in a kind of spiritual prison. We, too, live in exile, which is also a spiritual prison. Most of all, we live in exile from the Divine and the Creation. As the pandemic and the ever-increasing totalization of the technocracy have shown, we are also in exile from each other, and, ultimately, from ourselves. This is an untenable situation and one which, if left unchecked, will have disastrous repercussions, many of which are deep into their implementation stages. The antidote to such a situation, as I argue in these pages, lies in reorienting ourselves to the Real, to the sophianic structure of the world. Like St. Francis’s project, this is one of simplicity and not applicable to the needs of hierarchies of power and influence. In essence, what Sophiology offers is a regeneration of life by an engagement with what is Real. And this regeneration is conditioned by learning how to see.
"In the Gnostic mythos, Sophia lives in exile, trapped in a kind of spiritual prison. We, too, live in exile, which is also a spiritual prison. Most of all, we live in exile from the Divine and the Creation."
Very Philip K. Dick. Did you read his Exegesis? It's two parts inspiration and one part madness. Worth your time, if you haven't read it before IMO.
"What Sophiology offers is a regeneration of life by an engagement with what is Real. And this regeneration is conditioned by learning how to see." Yes.
Or would it be that we have to unlearn our way of not-seeing?
Perception and attention are constrained to the point where our experience becomes linear. Why? Because ordinary thinking is linear and we experience ourselves and the world around us through the lense of our thinking.
Perhaps no special consciousness is required to experience the realms of Divinity and Creation. Impartial attention can access a miracle of simultaneous impressions among the higher sensations if it is allowed to act directly, unimpeded by the thinker.
"Looking is a trace of what we are looking for.," said Rumi. Can I see that I see? In this way can I enter direct perception without content? This is akin to clearing the palate before tasting a fine wine. Content is provided by the many forms of sensing that open up my experience. Perhaps then, regeneration.