Michael Ventura: The Sadness that Stays

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

One of the many things I like about Michael Ventura’s writing — presumably, about his mind, though we have never met — is that he not only doesn’t stop at the easy answers, he doesn’t even pause. He’s always thinking for himself. Have you ever thought how rare that is, in a media-permeated culture such as ours?

MICHAEL VENTURA

LETTERS AT 3AM –

THE SADNESS THAT STAYS

Austin Chronicle – April 16, 2014

    “Can Google Solve Death?” Time ran that headline on its cover last September. They call it “radical life extension”: engineering biology so as to live much, much longer. My personal response is “No, thank you,” and my hunch is that the longer you extend longevity, the less you’ll like what you find – but let’s give a cheer of “Good luck!” anyway, because the more successful they are the more they’ll need the luck.

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Darwin’s Lost Theory of Love

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Back in the year 2000, I interviewed psychologist, evolution theorist, and systems scientist David Loye about his book Darwin’s Lost Theory Of Love: A Healing Vision For The New Century. The interview appeared in Magical Blend magazine. I recently came across it, and decided that it deserved more attention than it had received. David Loye published the book via iUniverse.com. I don’t know whether it is still available. I hope so.

Darwin’s lost theory of love

During his research into evolutionary theory and scientific foundations of morality, David Loye found that whereas in The Origin Of Species, natural selection theorist Charles Darwin did focus on pre-human evolution, in The Descent Of Man, he concluded that morality and conscience are “by far the most important” elements in human evolution. In Descent, Darwin says he “perhaps attributed too much to the action of natural selection or survival of the fittest.” Yet this crucial information was neglected by scientists over the past 100 years who chose instead to focus only on Darwin’s theory of evolution, which did not include God or religion as a prime motivator beyond natural selection.

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Ventura/3 a.m.: Toast on a Park Bench

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

MICHAEL VENTURA

LETTERS AT 3AM –

TO SIT ON A PARK BENCH

Austin Chronicle – April 4, 2014

   Every generation is like a ship casting off under sealed orders, on a mission fraught with dangers, and only the captain knows the truth: There will be no survivors.

That’s the thing about getting old: One day you look around at your contemporaries and it dawns on you that there were will be no survivors. One by one, you’re all going down.

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Remembering Ed Carter on his birthday

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

April 3, 2014, is the 99th birthday of my old friend Ed Carter — J. Edwin Carter — author of Living is Forever and then an investor in Hampton Roads. Ed was a long-time friend of Bob Monroe, and whetted my interest in doing a Gateway even more than it was already. In 1995, Ed paid for me to do the Lifeline program with him because, he said, he thought we’d both get a lot out of it if we did it together. Typically generous of him. And, indeed, we did both get a lot out of it.

we-three012014-04-02-we-three

 

Here is a picture of a rather younger Frank DeMarco  with his friends Ed Carter and Richard Spees, taken by our dear friend Joyce Johnson-Jones during Lifeline, July 1995.

Ed moved on in December, 1996. Rich and I have remained friends for going on 20 years now.