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Novelty: After my sister Samantha's and the Custard Divas' performance on the 20th of January, I went out to a Bondi Cafe for coffee and cake with ender and Charlie girl (Danielle). During our conversation we stumbled onto the topic of novelty. Ender has been quite interested in certain ideas of philosopher Terence McKenna and outlined the Novelty Theory, which says that, since the big bang, the Universe is just one new event after another with increasing frequency. And on December 21 of 2012 AD, at the coincidence of the moment of the solstice and the heliacal rising of the galactic center, levels of planetary novelty will exponentially increase, and our planetary consciousness will be raised into a new dimension. All these ideas caused some heated discussion about exactly what novelty is anyway:   ender: newness was in the beginning and always shall be, but it shall be more... dan: what is newness? It's elements in a different combination to what we have experienced before... cindi: novelty is something not known before... And the debate continued: Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 11:09:13 +1000 To: cindi@projectroom.com From: danielle hickie Subject: new New, - from the Oxford Paperback Dictionary 1 Not existing before, recently made, invented discovered or experienced 2 unfamiliar, unaccustomed 3 recently changed or renewed, different Brian's definition: "not old"! Danielle Hickie Multimedia Assistant & Charlie Girl As a result of the discourse I had to check McKenna's website to try and understand exactly what he is on about. There's a whole section dedicated to the concept of Novelty with a report on the current level of planetary novelty activity. The Eschatological concept of Time Wave Zero is fascinating, and seems to be related to concepts deeply rooted into many ancient religions, from the Ragnorak of the Vikings to the Armageddon of Christian Revelations. As individual human animals we have the inbuilt self awareness of our own mortality and eventual demise, so naturally the collective unconsciousness of our species will reflect that with spiritual and religious concepts to deal with the end or our species. I wonder if plotting the course of history that hasn't happened yet, as Mckenna has done with the Novelty Time Wave, is a kind of self fulfilling prophecy? If we believe that the world as we know it will end on December 21st 2012, will it? In much the same way that one could say that the earth changed from flat to round when enough people believed that it was spherical... Anyway, I think that there is no doubt that there are more new things happening every day, change is happening faster, at least in my part of the world. Whether this is leading us forward toward a transcendental leap into another dimension remains to be seen. Some might say that perhaps the eschaton is all that the "young generation" has left to hope for; and others say that the Novelty Time Wave is helping us to understand and embrace the nature of change. Regardless, I'll have my boogie board ready for the big ride... ...and now back to our cafe debate about Novelty. Here's the definition from McKenna's site, as defined by Alfred North Whitehead: "Creativity is the principle of novelty. Creativity introduces novelty into the content of the many, which are the universe disjunctively. The creative advance is the application of this ultimate principle of creativity to each novel situation which it originates. The ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction. The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the 'many' which it finds and also it is one among the disjunctive ' many' which it leaves; it is a novel entity, disjunctively among the many entities which it synthesises. The many become one, and are increased by one. In their natures, entities are disjunctively 'many' in process of passage into conjunctive unity... Thus the 'production of novel togetherness' is the ultimate notion embodied in the term concrescence. These ultimate notions of 'production of novelty' and 'concrete togetherness' are inexplicable either in terms of higher universals or in terms of the components participating in the concrescence. The analysis of the components abstracts from the concrescence. The sole appeal is to intuition." I'll have another coffee and piece of cake.