The annual All & Everything International Humanities Conference (25-29 April, 2012) presented “Gurdjieff and Steve Jobs,” a documentary movie by John Amaral. [youtube]http://youtu.be/I3P3G8lvLsA[/youtube]
The documentary draws on the insights of George Gurdjieff and neuroscientist Paul McClain, tied together with the work of physicists James Clerk Maxwell and Richard Feynman, to understand the products marketed by Steve Jobs at Apple, Inc. in a new important way essential for the survival of human life.
Said Professor Amaral, “In the 20th Century, George Gurdjieff and Paul McLean independently proposed the idea that we have three functional brains (evolved to digest outside, inside and abstract images). Mr. Gurdjieff identified the second, emotional brain as ‘atrophied,’ characterizing this as the chief cause of war. The future of human life depends on Man’s ability to bridge this gap and to reconcile the rapidly accelerating technological innovation since Maxwell, beginning 1875. Apple, Inc.’s products can generally be understood as focusing, amplifying and facilitating tools for the growth and expansion of emotional-brain capacity. Apple’s tremendous success in the marketplace can be seen as an existence-proof of the effectiveness of this strategy. This success may now be in jeopardy.”
