Just wanted to throw a quick note of thanks for last night. It was phenomenal, not least of which was due to the great presenters:

1. Katrin Verclas from MobileActive.org giving us the low-down on how mobile technology is changing the world and in particular how it’s empowering the 3rd world.
2. Graham Hill from Treehugger.com kicking it straight style, showing how we can stop screwing the future over and perhaps treat this planet with due respect.
3. Sem Devillart showing future of design with its unlikely influences and newfound sense of responsibility.
4. Ben Donaldson from College Humor, talking about psychological warfare through video games and the blurry line between fantasy and reality just keeps getting blurrier. And remember: don’t shoot the puppy

Special shouts out to Jay Medhurst, Gaurav Mishra, and Robert Schwartz for making my life a bit easier. And of course my darling audience. It was a kick ass crowd with many new and old faces. We had a great time in spite of frigid temperatures outside and, unfortunately, in.

There will be a LucidNYC in February–I should have a date soon enough. And as always, feel free to shoot me a suggestion, recommend a presenter, anything to keep the conversation lively, over at dfriedlander@lucidnyc.com.

Again many, many thanks.

David Friedlander

Getting Lucid in the New Year

Happy New Year to the lucid and the befogged alike!  We’d like to report that it’s been an exciting time here at Lucid NYC, filled with big plans for the New Year, with big names and intellectual pyrotechnics, the likes of which will set New York City ablaze!

But we won’t report that, because it’s silly and not true.

Here’s the deal:  Lucid NYC—the event and concept—while undoubtedly providing great times, ideas, and crowds, has been getting a little overwrought.  It has been getting too formal and too far from its initial intention:  to create a fertile environment for New Yorkers to share ideas and make the world a better place.

Lucid NYC will be the living room you always wish you had, pre-filled with fascinating people.

With that in mind, we’re scaling back to the essentials.
Like always, we will have great presenters.  For example, for the next event, we have the eco-style innovator Graham Hill, founder of Treehugger.com and Discovery Channel’s Planet Green; futurist Sem Devillart talking about predicting visual trends; and a couple others who who we’ll announce shortly.
But everything else will be scaled back:  the new venue is a spacious and charmingly imperfect Chelsea loft with many sofas that may have been found curbside.  No more rows of seats.  No more formal bar.  It’s BYOB and F (food) (there’ll be plenty of both to start people off).   We don’t want to sell you anything.  The goal is to create a comfortable environment to generate conversation.
[Note: we will still be charging $10 because, well, we need to cover overhead that is in excess of $600. It's still way cheaper than getting a loft of your own.]

So please come on January 15th.  Settle in and make it your own.  And, as always, shoot me presenter suggestions, or any input as to how Lucid NYC could achieve its end better.  And sign up for the Facebook group to RSVP.   See you soon.
Happiest of New Years,

David Friedlander

Here’s are presentations from October Lucid event presenters Gaurav Mishra, talking about his forthcoming book, “The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption,” and Steven Hirsch, talking about his blog Court House Confessions.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/2342806]

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/2343923]

So there’s this Buddhist meditation called “the kindness of others”; it urges us to see that whenever we get pissed at other people, whenever we’re impatient, righteous, ungrateful, whatever, it’s because we’re not seeing reality as it truly exists. We are feeling like we are the end and the beginning, we are the full circle. We don’t need anyone thank you very much.
No say the Buddhists. Everything we do is the byproduct of things done for us by others. We’ve been the recipients of many, many kind acts from the time our dads’ durable little cell hit our moms’ welcoming eggs. So be humble and grateful—you’d be nowhere without others. Even the seeming slights and injustices, ostensibly sprung from malevolent intentions of others, often serve to make us stronger in the end.
Thursday night, the kindness of others was very evident at Lucid NYC. From friends and volunteers, presenters and guests, the whole thing was just bitching. I was remiss to start the presentations because people were having such a good time (as it was, the action didn’t start until 8:30).
While I’d like to dedicate much more attention to each and every person there, I’m going to have to settle on a quick overview of the people who made it happen:
• Dominic Frasca for his amazing performance and for housing the event. If you don’t know him, check him out.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2BOApUvFpw]
• Josh Shabtai for his great presentation on “Easter Eggs”—nerds, as he so profoundly purported, can show you many things.
• Cory Kahaney for her illuminating talk on the chauvinistic poison affecting the comedy world and the world at large.
• Doug Jaeger from thehappycorp and LVHD—one of the few men who can make diseases funny.
• Jenny Sabin from Cabin Studio and UPenn, whose mind-boggling presentation on networks of information and architectural design was as intellectually humbling as it was interesting.
• Scott Elliot from 590 Films for his support filming (videos coming soon).
• Jaysen Medhurst, Fernando Rizo, Marshall Swatt, Gaurav Mishra and Trader Joe for general support and guidance.
• Shelley Tanner, girlfriend and registrar extraordinaire. She also teaches a great meditation class in the Wall St. Area Wednesday nights.
Finally, everyone who showed up, braving cold and uncertainty of what the hell Lucid NYC is. There were a lot of new faces and a great vibe, all of which renewed my resolve to create something deeper and more lasting from a night out than a hangover and a number scrawled on a Starbucks receipt.
I’ll be working on some smaller stuff in December, and surely back no later than January. Please email me dfriedlander [at] lucidnyc.com, if you’re not on the mailing list, and/or sign up for the Facebook group to keep in the loop on a more minute level (I try to be sparing with the emails), or if you have some presenter ideas. Until then, be good, keep connected.
David

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Buddhists lately. Say what you will about them, but you cannot fault them for not being goal oriented. What’s their goal? The total liberation of oneself and all living beings from suffering.

Whether you agree with the particular methods the Buddhists employ, it’s tough to argue with their aim. Who doesn’t want to be happy all the time? Who doesn’t want world peace? Who doesn’t want to free him or herself of anger and attachment? (If you’re not sure if you do, I suggest you meditate on it or tell me when is a good time to be sad, depressed, or angry? And no, Joy Division is not a worthy rationale for any of these things.)

Which leads me to Obama. Or more to the point, “Generation Obama,” if there is an identifiable thing. What is Generation Obama’s goal?

I read an article by George Packer in last week’s New Yorker, called “The New Liberalism.” Packer draws parallels between Obama and other “Transformational Presidents”: Lincoln, Roosevelt, Truman, et al. He writes how each man rode the crest of larger movement, and how they provided “moral leadership” as much as political leadership. Packer, quoting Robert B. Reich, Clinton’s first Labor Secretary, writes, “‘Lincoln had the abolitionists, Roosevelt the labor unions, Johnson the civil-rights leaders, Reagan the conservative movement.’ Clinton didn’t have one [a social movement], and after his election, ‘everyone went home.’” This to me is a great explanation for the short-term memory that followed the Clinton years: that despite a surplus economy, a fat middle class (figuratively and literally unfortunately) without the gravity of a social movement, his presidential proficiency was easily contorted in whichever way suited Rovian rhetoric, thus ushering in the purgatorial Bush years.
I don’t think Obama will be another Clinton. Both men have competence worthy of the ages. But this is not 1993. Problems in 1993, at least as far as I remember them, seemed somewhat straightforward: we had a recession, a botched but completed invasion of Iraq to contend with, and some stuff in the Balkans. But the full impact of Reaganonmics hadn’t reached their zenith. People still had health insurance (or at least could withstand not having it). Global warming was still easy to dismiss.
2009 isn’t so straightforward. The last 16 years have created an unprecedented level of change and ambiguity in the American and global social landscape. There are more current or impending issues that could (or should) constitute a social movement for Obama: looming economic disaster, a meltdown with Russia/Iran/N. Korea/etc., or an environmental catastrophe that could tear the fabric of modern life as we know it. Despite these worthy foes, Obama and his minions chief goal, something that could impel a movement, seems to be “not that”—not Reaganonomics, not Rovian manipulation, not Quayle/W./Palin exaltation of the average.
The lack of a primary goal may be attributable to the web, which has atomized the landscape of the status quo to such an extent that we want to tackle everything at once versus dealing with one central issue. We want to withdraw from Iraq in carbon-neutral troop carriers.
If you asked me what I think the central issue should be for Obama, I have to side with the Buddhists: I want to be free from suffering and I want the same for everyone. Buddhism has some esoteric and mentally rigorous prescriptions for ultimate freedom from suffering, but there are a couple earthly ways to reduce suffering in a way that might fall within presidential purview:
1. The environment. Whatever insinuation about an incremental approach to environmental policy reform must be tempered with the preponderance of evidence insisting on immediate and drastic reduction of carbon emissions. No other issue has the power to affect so many. Nor does any topic have the potential for being so intractable—we’re going to wish a tanking economy were our main problem when the Gulf Stream shuts down. This is not even to suggest all the possible benefits of reducing our desire for resources and energy, for which volumes could be written.
2. Peace. I’m with Einstein’s: I believe it’s impossible to simultaneously prepare and prevent war. We must get the hell out of the Middle East. I don’t know what our precise exit strategy will be, but the active withdrawal should be our intention. It’s a bad situation—one I don’t think is being resolved with our chaperone duties. I do think it’d help to install the infrastructure we destroyed, perhaps improving the conditions that make that region so fertile for “ain’t-got-nothing-to-lose” extremism. Just as harmful as the overt acts of violence are the tacit ones. We must stop colluding with totalitarian regimes through economic support; this is something easier to achieve with a lessened dependence on foreign energy and goods (see #1). I think our refusal to promote or be complicit with violence will have a profound effect upon the nation and the world.
But these are just my values. I created Lucid NYC to generate a conversation that compels people to make the world a better place for everyone. I would like to hear what you think, what you think a worthy social movement would be. Please comment or send me something to post. And of course, come to Lucid’s event Thursday armed with ideas. Until then, peace be with you.
David

Last night my good friend Jeremy invited me to a talk he organized.  John Dear (no affiliation with the tractor company) spoke on his life and his memoir, “A Persistent Peace.”  Dear is Jesuit priest, Nobel Peace prize nominee, activist, and a man who often throws himself in harm’s way to stand up for the downtrodden, abused, tortured, exploited, and generally fucked in the world.

Even though Dear’s message was distinctly Christ-focused (insofar as Christ was an agent of peace) and even though his methodology was distinctly radical (doing things like trying to smash F-16 fighters with a hammer at an air force base), Dear really elucidated the scope of our global dysfunction.  He reminded us how the often-automatic choices we make—the clothes we wear, the energy we consume, the tyrants we don’t actively dethrone—have global and human consequences.  It might not be new news, but it’s the same bad news, gotten worse with time.

On a more secular note, I watched a Bill Moyer’s Youtube video this morning with his take of what happened and is happening in the Middle East.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDs57H3I6Oo]

I’ll spoil the ending:  we’re there for oil, and in the beneficiaries are the select few cabal members with the skulls and the crossbones and the perpetually fresh haircuts.

What’s my point?  We mustn’t get lazy.  While this Obamamania is sweet, it’s merely a step.  He’s unquestionably bright and, to my mind, likely to be one of our greatest presidents and leaders.  But without our active and individual championship for truth, justice, urgent environmental responsibility, and above all else, peace, the efforts we might have exerted in the last year toward Obama’s election will be for naught.  And this championship must be consistent and egalitarian:  we must dilute the vitriol spouted about willy-nilly by many during the latter days of the election (stop picking on Palin…would you make fun of a little child for not knowing the capital of Uzbekistan?); we must demand Obama hold his modest resolutions regarding the environment (no, there is no such thing as “clean coal”) regardless of financial turmoil; and we must continually ask how all of our behavior affects the world:  do my choices help or harm the welfare of others?  Often, the calculus is not that difficult.

I started Lucid NYC to help the world.  I wanted a place where people could get to know one another, to be informed by one another’s passions, to have a place where people could share what they’re doing, a place free from overbearing commerce, blaring music, and drunken escapism; a place where people can create and share conversations about things that matter to them.  It’s my belief that when people are engaged by the things they do and with the people in their world, they’re more likely to take care of it.  So I invite you to add to that conversation.  Please come to the event on Nov 20th, submit something for this blog, email me, help someone out who needs it, and make the world a better place in whatever way you know best.
Until then.
Peace.
David