Starting a superstructure is only the beginning. The real task is envisioning what it can do, how it will work, and who you need to work with. If you're not a member, consider joining now. If you are a member, be bold, jump in, and use the superstructure to start organizing for survival. Edit it, add to the vision, and make it real, online and off. And don't forget to rave.

More about Superstructures

  • Loving Flora

    Let's love Nature together
  • Founder: otterinwater

    ,

  • Who We Need
    Biofeedback techies, game developers, wireless handheld programmers, Buddhist monks.
  • How to join
    your creativity is all that's needed
  • Mission

    Advances in the biochemistry of emotions, particularly compassion, allow for increasing sophistication in biofeedback technology.  This begins to synergize with network gaming.

    Concept: A wireless handheld-based game that uses new biofeedback interfaces that track the biochemistry of emotions in the players, and require coordinated compassion response among multiple players to advance the game. These emotional responses must be produced while engaged with specific plants, while the player is in natural settings. The more compassion generated simultaneously with more players, the more points. Networked groups engage with a particular plant species, maintaining the compassion response; when they've racked up enough points, they proceed to another species.

    The goal is the encouragement of collective bioempathic response.

     

     

  • What we can accomplish
    • Encourage bioempathic response.
  • How this superstruct works
    • See the discussion below.
  • Other information

    • Excellent! I'm a game developer, and I'm in. Could you say more about the meaning of the name and motto of the superstructure? I never would have guessed bioempathic game development -- I'm curious to hear more!-- POSTED BY AVANTGAME

       

       

       

      Yes, bad name, sorry. and bad motto too. Avantgame, feel free to change the name to your suggested "Bioempathic Game Development". As you know, we can't change the names or mottos once submitted. Maybe the motto could be changed to "Learning Bioempathy is more fun than Grand Theft Auto". (Now how do we make it so?)

      But by way of explanation.  Underlying many of the problems that led up to the current crisis is this basic one: the global political economy was not ecologically sustainable. I am convinced that the reason for this is that the cultural narrative of the developed world, that is, of industrial capitalism, does not treat other species as sovereign beings, as sentient subjects, but rather as objects. Those who feel like they understand this concept can skip the next four paragraphs.

      (This Human/Nature divide parallels the Self/Other divide, because the act of relating to another “subject” (ie., another conscious being) is essentially making them a part of Self.)

      I have been doing ecological restoration long enough to know that development of the science and technology of the field, while necessary, is not sufficient to reverse the ecological degradation that results from industrial capitalism, because in that system, the spoils go to those who produce most cheaply, and where environmental costs can be externalized, they will be. This was amply illustrated back in 2010, when then President Obama was unable to put through environmental regulation that would have responded effectively to Global Climate Change, and lost the election in 2012 to the new Know Nothings.

      The solution is a redefined social contract that supports adequate environmental regulation, so that environmental costs are internalized. The political support for this will only come when Aldo Leopold’s vision is realized:

      “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

      So then how to encourage relating to our landscape as a part of its “community to which we belong”? We are hard-wired for this from living as hunter gatherers for most of the evolutionary life of Homo sapiens. Modern culture doesn’t offer much in the way of support for this relationship, however. We have become much more intuitively fluent at relating to computer interfaces than, say, a green ash tree (one of the many common species that will become extinct in many areas as a result of degrading ecological integrity).

      But take heart! This superstruct is designed to reprogram the nervous system to “love flora”, as my title suggested. There is a specific biochemical response signature that accompanies the emotion of compassion. Likewise when we are engaged with another person, listening reflectively, hanging on their words, readying ourselves to reply in a way that we hope will elicit a desired response. Think of flirting with a new acquaintance at a party who you think you might want to hook up with; now feel the state of your body.  While relating to someone from a state of compassion is different than relating to someone from a state of erotic charge, both states involve projecting self-hood onto the other.

      New biological sensor technology allows us to monitor when we are in this state, and the biofeedback technology (tones playing in a headset) allows us to increase this response. These technologies provide part of the interface with this game; the visual interface allows the player to choose plant species, connect in with a global group of players who are maintaining a bioempathic response to the same species, to see where in the world the other players are on digital maps, upload images of your current surroundings to a collective file: image recognition technology verifies the species. What else? Tell me…

       

       

       

  • Discuss this superstructure
  • Related stories
  • Other superstructures we are collaborating with
Edit

IMPORTANT WRITING TIP! Our servers occasionally time out (usually after an hour)! So if you plan to spend more than a few minutes writing, why don't you prepare your text offline? When you're ready, refresh this page and then cut and paste your content here.

Nominate For A Badge

Badge:
More detail on badges

High Ping Quotient

HighPingQuotient

Longbroading

Longbroading

Open Authorship

OpenAuthorship

Cooperation Radar

CooperationRadar

Multi-Capitalism

MultiCapitalism

Mobbability

Mobbability

Protovation

Protovation

Influency

Influency

Signal/Noise Management

NoiseManagement

Emergensight

Emergensight



NOMINATE CANCEL