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Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world

2009-10-03T09:48:00.000+01:00

http://www.ted.com Mycologist Paul Stamets studies the mycelium -- and lists 6 ways that this astonishing fungus can help save the world.

Hymn to Hathor

2009-07-04T23:47:00.001+01:00

My latest video/music. Hymn to Hathor - excerpt from Awakening Osiris (The Egyptian Book of The Dead).

Graham Hancock

2009-06-19T20:51:00.001+01:00

Researcher and author Graham Hancock presented his thesis that "supernatural" entities such as aliens and fairies are actually transdimensional beings that humans encounter during altered states of consciousness. The ability to shape-shift has been ascribed to both modern aliens as well as elves and other entities reported centuries ago, he detailed.

Around 35,000 to 40,000 years ago humans underwent a sudden change, and the emergence of cave and rock paintings are evidence of this, said Hancock, who noted that some of their depictions were of part human/part animal beings. He believes these represent the supernatural entities, and through altered states (probably due to ingesting psilocybin mushrooms) humans learned advanced skills from their encounters with these beings.

Nowadays, shamans commonly have such altered state communications. They feel humanity is at a crossroads-- the West has lost contact with the spirit world, and many of the world's woes are due to this, Hancock reported. As part of his experiential research, he traveled to South America and took the psychedelic plant mixture ayahuasca. During one such episode, he described a confrontation with an alien being, but rather than being an extraterrestrial, he suggested it inhabits another dimension that can only be accessed during an altered state.

A New Day on Earth

2009-06-13T15:30:00.000+01:00

Kymatica

2009-02-06T07:33:00.000Z

The sequel to ESOTERIC AGENDA

Holographic Universe

2009-01-26T16:43:00.003Z

Our world may be a giant hologram

New Scientist, 15 January 2009 by Marcus Chown

DRIVING through the countryside south of Hanover, it would be easy to miss the GEO600 experiment. From the outside, it doesn't look much: in the corner of a field stands an assortment of boxy temporary buildings, from which two long trenches emerge, at a right angle to each other, covered with corrugated iron. Underneath the metal sheets, however, lies a detector that stretches for 600 metres.

For the past seven years, this German set-up has been looking for gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 has not detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century.

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.

If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.

The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard 't Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

The "holographic principle" challenges our sensibilities. It seems hard to believe that you woke up, brushed your teeth and are reading this article because of something happening on the boundary of the universe. No one knows what it would mean for us if we really do live in a hologram, yet theorists have good reasons to believe that many aspects of the holographic principle are true.

Susskind and 't Hooft's remarkable idea was motivated by ground-breaking work on black holes by Jacob Bekenstein of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and Stephen Hawking at the University of Cambridge. In the mid-1970s, Hawking showed that black holes are in fact not entirely "black" but instead slowly emit radiation, which causes them to evaporate and eventually disappear. This poses a puzzle, because Hawking radiation does not convey any information about the interior of a black hole. When the black hole has gone, all the information about the star that collapsed to form the black hole has vanished, which contradicts the widely affirmed principle that information cannot be destroyed. This is known as the black hole information paradox.

Bekenstein's work provided an important clue in resolving the paradox. He discovered that a black hole's entropy - which is synonymous with its information content - is proportional to the surface area of its event horizon. This is the theoretical surface that cloaks the black hole and marks the point of no return for infalling matter or light. Theorists have since shown that microscopic quantum ripples at the event horizon can encode the information inside the black hole, so there is no mysterious information loss as the black hole evaporates.

Crucially, this provides a deep physical insight: the 3D information about a precursor star can be completely encoded in the 2D horizon of the subsequent black hole - not unlike the 3D image of an object being encoded in a 2D hologram. Susskind and 't Hooft extended the insight to the universe as a whole on the basis that the cosmos has a horizon too - the boundary from beyond which light has not had time to reach us in the 13.7-billion-year lifespan of the universe. What's more, work by several string theorists, most notably Juan Maldacena at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, has confirmed that the idea is on the right track. He showed that the physics inside a hypothetical universe with five dimensions and shaped like a Pringle is the same as the physics taking place on the four-dimensional boundary.

According to Hogan, the holographic principle radically changes our picture of space-time. Theoretical physicists have long believed that quantum effects will cause space-time to convulse wildly on the tiniest scales. At this magnification, the fabric of space-time becomes grainy and is ultimately made of tiny units rather like pixels, but a hundred billion billion times smaller than a proton. This distance is known as the Planck length, a mere 10-35 metres. The Planck length is far beyond the reach of any conceivable experiment, so nobody dared dream that the graininess of space-time might be discernable.

That is, not until Hogan realised that the holographic principle changes everything. If space-time is a grainy hologram, then you can think of the universe as a sphere whose outer surface is papered in Planck length-sized squares, each containing one bit of information. The holographic principle says that the amount of information papering the outside must match the number of bits contained inside the volume of the universe.

Since the volume of the spherical universe is much bigger than its outer surface, how could this be true? Hogan realised that in order to have the same number of bits inside the universe as on the boundary, the world inside must be made up of grains bigger than the Planck length. "Or, to put it another way, a holographic universe is blurry," says Hogan.

This is good news for anyone trying to probe the smallest unit of space-time. "Contrary to all expectations, it brings its microscopic quantum structure within reach of current experiments," says Hogan. So while the Planck length is too small for experiments to detect, the holographic "projection" of that graininess could be much, much larger, at around 10-16 metres. "If you lived inside a hologram, you could tell by measuring the blurring," he says.

When Hogan first realised this, he wondered if any experiment might be able to detect the holographic blurriness of space-time. That's where GEO600 comes in.

Gravitational wave detectors like GEO600 are essentially fantastically sensitive rulers. The idea is that if a gravitational wave passes through GEO600, it will alternately stretch space in one direction and squeeze it in another. To measure this, the GEO600 team fires a single laser through a half-silvered mirror called a beam splitter. This divides the light into two beams, which pass down the instrument's 600-metre perpendicular arms and bounce back again. The returning light beams merge together at the beam splitter and create an interference pattern of light and dark regions where the light waves either cancel out or reinforce each other. Any shift in the position of those regions tells you that the relative lengths of the arms has changed.

"The key thing is that such experiments are sensitive to changes in the length of the rulers that are far smaller than the diameter of a proton," says Hogan.

So would they be able to detect a holographic projection of grainy space-time? Of the five gravitational wave detectors around the world, Hogan realised that the Anglo-German GEO600 experiment ought to be the most sensitive to what he had in mind. He predicted that if the experiment's beam splitter is buffeted by the quantum convulsions of space-time, this will show up in its measurements (Physical Review D, vol 77, p 104031). "This random jitter would cause noise in the laser light signal," says Hogan.

In June he sent his prediction to the GEO600 team. "Incredibly, I discovered that the experiment was picking up unexpected noise," says Hogan. GEO600's principal investigator Karsten Danzmann of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany, and also the University of Hanover, admits that the excess noise, with frequencies of between 300 and 1500 hertz, had been bothering the team for a long time. He replied to Hogan and sent him a plot of the noise. "It looked exactly the same as my prediction," says Hogan. "It was as if the beam splitter had an extra sideways jitter."

Incredibly, the experiment was picking up unexpected noise - as if quantum convulsions were causing an extra sideways jitter
No one - including Hogan - is yet claiming that GEO600 has found evidence that we live in a holographic universe. It is far too soon to say. "There could still be a mundane source of the noise," Hogan admits.

Gravitational-wave detectors are extremely sensitive, so those who operate them have to work harder than most to rule out noise. They have to take into account passing clouds, distant traffic, seismological rumbles and many, many other sources that could mask a real signal. "The daily business of improving the sensitivity of these experiments always throws up some excess noise," says Danzmann. "We work to identify its cause, get rid of it and tackle the next source of excess noise." At present there are no clear candidate sources for the noise GEO600 is experiencing. "In this respect I would consider the present situation unpleasant, but not really worrying."

For a while, the GEO600 team thought the noise Hogan was interested in was caused by fluctuations in temperature across the beam splitter. However, the team worked out that this could account for only one-third of the noise at most.

Danzmann says several planned upgrades should improve the sensitivity of GEO600 and eliminate some possible experimental sources of excess noise. "If the noise remains where it is now after these measures, then we have to think again," he says.

If GEO600 really has discovered holographic noise from quantum convulsions of space-time, then it presents a double-edged sword for gravitational wave researchers. One on hand, the noise will handicap their attempts to detect gravitational waves. On the other, it could represent an even more fundamental discovery.

Such a situation would not be unprecedented in physics. Giant detectors built to look for a hypothetical form of radioactivity in which protons decay never found such a thing. Instead, they discovered that neutrinos can change from one type into another - arguably more important because it could tell us how the universe came to be filled with matter and not antimatter (New Scientist, 12 April 2008, p 26).

It would be ironic if an instrument built to detect something as vast as astrophysical sources of gravitational waves inadvertently detected the minuscule graininess of space-time. "Speaking as a fundamental physicist, I see discovering holographic noise as far more interesting," says Hogan.

Small price to pay
Despite the fact that if Hogan is right, and holographic noise will spoil GEO600's ability to detect gravitational waves, Danzmann is upbeat. "Even if it limits GEO600's sensitivity in some frequency range, it would be a price we would be happy to pay in return for the first detection of the graininess of space-time." he says. "You bet we would be pleased. It would be one of the most remarkable discoveries in a long time."

However Danzmann is cautious about Hogan's proposal and believes more theoretical work needs to be done. "It's intriguing," he says. "But it's not really a theory yet, more just an idea." Like many others, Danzmann agrees it is too early to make any definitive claims. "Let's wait and see," he says. "We think it's at least a year too early to get excited."

The longer the puzzle remains, however, the stronger the motivation becomes to build a dedicated instrument to probe holographic noise. John Cramer of the University of Washington in Seattle agrees. It was a "lucky accident" that Hogan's predictions could be connected to the GEO600 experiment, he says. "It seems clear that much better experimental investigations could be mounted if they were focused specifically on the measurement and characterisation of holographic noise and related phenomena."

One possibility, according to Hogan, would be to use a device called an atom interferometer. These operate using the same principle as laser-based detectors but use beams made of ultracold atoms rather than laser light. Because atoms can behave as waves with a much smaller wavelength than light, atom interferometers are significantly smaller and therefore cheaper to build than their gravitational-wave-detector counterparts.

So what would it mean it if holographic noise has been found? Cramer likens it to the discovery of unexpected noise by an antenna at Bell Labs in New Jersey in 1964. That noise turned out to be the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang fireball. "Not only did it earn Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson a Nobel prize, but it confirmed the big bang and opened up a whole field of cosmology," says Cramer.

Hogan is more specific. "Forget Quantum of Solace, we would have directly observed the quantum of time," says Hogan. "It's the smallest possible interval of time - the Planck length divided by the speed of light."

More importantly, confirming the holographic principle would be a big help to researchers trying to unite quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity. Today the most popular approach to quantum gravity is string theory, which researchers hope could describe happenings in the universe at the most fundamental level. But it is not the only show in town. "Holographic space-time is used in certain approaches to quantising gravity that have a strong connection to string theory," says Cramer. "Consequently, some quantum gravity theories might be falsified and others reinforced."

Hogan agrees that if the holographic principle is confirmed, it rules out all approaches to quantum gravity that do not incorporate the holographic principle. Conversely, it would be a boost for those that do - including some derived from string theory and something called matrix theory. "Ultimately, we may have our first indication of how space-time emerges out of quantum theory." As serendipitous discoveries go, it's hard to get more ground-breaking than that.

Marcus Chown is the author of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You (Faber, 2008)

The Police - your friendly guides

2008-12-23T08:00:00.000Z

Film-maker Darren Pollard was clearing up flood rubbish from his front garden when he noticed the police and a teenager opposite his house. Darren retrieved his camera and this is what he filmed!

Psychedelic Healing?

2008-12-16T02:11:00.000Z

This article originally appeared in the December/January 2008 issue of Scientific American Mind magazine

Mind-altering psychedelics, or hallucinogens, are back in the research labs, where their therapeutic applications -- rather than the illegal use -- are being explored. Studies are looking at psychedelics to treat a number of otherwise intractable psychiatric disorders, including chronic depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and drug or alcohol dependency.

The past 15 years have seen a quiet resurgence of psychedelic drug research as scientists have come to recognize the long-underappreciated potential of these drugs. In the past few years, a growing number of studies using human volunteers have begun to explore the possible therapeutic beneﬁts of drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, ibogaine and ketamine.

Much remains unclear about the precise neural mechanisms governing how these drugs produce their mind-bending results, but they often produce somewhat similar psychoactive effects that make them potential therapeutic tools. Though still in their preliminary stages, studies in humans suggest that the day when people can schedule a psychedelic session with their therapist to overcome a serious psychiatric problem may not be that far off.

The Trip Begins

Psychedelic drug research began in 1897, when the German chemist Arthur Heffter first isolated mescaline, the primary psychoactive compound in the peyote cactus. In 1943 Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann discovered the hallucinogenic effects of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Basel while studying ergot, a fungus that grows on rye. Then, 15 years later, in 1958, he was the first to isolate psilocybin and psilocin-the psychoactive components of the Mexican "magic mushroom," Psilocybe mexicana.

Prior to 1972 close to 700 studies with psychedelic drugs took place. The research suggested that psychedelics offered significant benefits in easing the teetotaling of alcoholics, the anxieties of terminal cancer patients and the symptoms of many difficult-to-treat psychiatric illnesses, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder.

For example, studies by Stanislav Grof and colleagues at the Spring Grove State Hospital in Baltimore with terminal cancer patients between 1967 and 1972 showed that LSD combined with psychotherapy could alleviate symptoms of depression, tension, anxiety, sleep disturbances, psychological withdrawal and even severe physical pain. Other investigators during this era found that LSD may have some interesting potential as a means to facilitate creative problem-solving (see sidebar: "A Spark for Creativity?" ).

Between 1972 and 1990 there were no human studies with psychedelic drugs. Their disappearance was the result of a political backlash that followed the promotion of these drugs by the 1960s counterculture. This reaction not only made these substances illegal for personal use but also made it extremely difﬁcult for researchers to get government approval to study them.

Things began to change in 1990 when "open-minded regulators at the FDA decided to put science before politics when it came to psychedelic and medical marijuana research," says Rick Doblin, a public policy expert and head of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). "FDA openness to research is really the key factor. Also, senior researchers who were inﬂuenced by psychedelics in the sixties now are speaking up before they retire and have earned credibility." Chemist and neuropharmacologist David E. Nichols of Purdue University adds, "Baby boomers who experienced the psychedelic sixties are now mature scientists and clinicians who have retained their curiosity but only recently had the opportunity to reexplore these substances."

Research Begins Anew

The efforts of two privately funded organizations have catalyzed much of the recent wave of research: a California-based group called the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), founded in 1986 by Doblin, and The Heffter Research Institute, a New Mexico-based organization started in 1993. Outside the U.S. are groups such as the Beckley Foundation in England and the Russian Psychedelic Society. These groups seek out interested researchers, assist in developing the experimental design for the studies, and help to obtain funding and government approval to conduct clinical trials. They have initiated numerous FDA-approved clinical trials in the U.S., Switzerland, Israel and Spain. So far the agency has approved seven studies, with two under review and more on the way.

Current studies are focusing on psychedelic treatments for cluster headaches, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), severe anxiety in terminal cancer patients, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcoholism and opiate addiction. New drugs must pass three clinical milestones before they can be marketed to the public, called Phase I (for safety, usually in 20 to 80 volunteers), Phase II (for efficacy, in several hundred subjects) and Phase III (more extensive data on safety and efficacy come from testing the drug in up to several thousand people). All the studies discussed in this article have received government approval, and their investigators are either in the process of recruiting human subjects or have begun or completed research on human subjects in the ﬁrst or second stage of this trial process.

Psychedelic drugs affect all mental functions: perception, emotion, cognition, body awareness and one's sense of self. Unlike every other class of drugs, psychedelic drug effects depend heavily on the environment and expectations of the subject, which is why combining them with psychotherapy is so vital.

"Psychedelics may be therapeutic to the extent that they elicit processes that are known to be useful in a therapeutic context: transference reactions and working through them; enhanced symbolism and imagery; increased suggestibility; increased contact between emotions and ideations; controlled regression; etcetera," says psychiatrist Rick Strassman of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, who from 1990 to 1995 performed the ﬁrst human study using psychedelic drugs in about 20 years, investigating the effects of DMT on 60 human subjects. "This all depends, though, on set and setting," he cautions. "These same properties could also be turned to very negative experiences, if the support and expectation for a beneﬁcial experience aren't there."

Mechanisms and Targets

Scientists divide classical psychedelic drugs into two basic chemical groups: tryptamines (such as LSD, DMT and psilocybin) and phenethylamines (such as mescaline and MDMA). In addition, some people consider so-called dissociative anesthetics (such as ketamine and PCP) to be psychedelic drugs, although the way they affect the brain is quite different.

The exact mechanisms differ, but all of the tryptamine hallucinogens-which make up the majority of psychedelic drugs-selectively bind to specific serotonin receptors on neurons, mimicking the effect of serotonin on these receptors. Phenethylamines mimic the chemical structure of another neurotransmitter, dopamine. They actually bind to many of the same serotonin receptors activated by the tryptamines, however. Serotonin is responsible for many important functions, including mood, memory, appetite, sex and sleep. It is such an essential neurochemical that any substance-such as a hallucinogen-that interferes with its action might be expected to produce dramatic changes in brain function.

How do the drugs create their perceptual effects? Neuroscientists believe that activation of serotonin 2A receptors, which are highly expressed (or present) in the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, interferes with the processing of sensory information. Consciousness is thought to involve a complex interaction between the cortex, an area known as the thalamus and another region called the striatum. Disruption of this network by activation of serotonin 2A receptors is now the most popular theory for the mechanism of action for tryptamine and phenethylamine psychedelics.

"There are at least two possible mechanisms for beneficial actions," Nichols says. The first simply involves a change in the numbers of brain serotonin 2A receptors. Activation of serotonin 2A receptors by psychedelics causes the number of receptors expressed on the surface of neurons to decrease, a process called downregulation. For some disorders, such OCD, it may be this receptor downregulation that could be therapeutic. The other possible mechanism is a psychological effect that is harder to define, but in some way produces profound changes in the way the subject perceives pain and distress. Psychedelics seem able to produce a profound cognitive change that provides the patient with a new insight, able to see the world with a new perspective, somehow reducing anxiety, and raising the pain threshold."

MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine) is also chemically classified as a phenethylamine, but its action in the brain is substantially different from that of other drugs discussed in this article. "In contrast to most psychedelics, MDMA does not directly stimulate serotonin 2A receptors but instead causes dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine [another neurotransmitter] to be released from their stores in neuron endings," Nichols says. There is some controversy about whether MDMA has neurotoxic effects. Most researchers believe, however, that the occasional moderate use of MDMA at therapeutic doses would not be damaging. There have been no recent studies using mescaline, although MAPS plans to initiate some in the future.

In contrast to the traditional psychedelics, the dissociative anesthetics selectively bind to N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors, blocking the neurotransmitter glutamate from activating these receptors. "Because glutamate is an essential neurotransmitter that activates neurons, this blocking effect seems to prevent the processing of sensory information by the brain,"

Ketamine appears to hold particular promise as a psychedelic therapy because it is already among the selections in Western medicine's pharmacopoeia. In addition to being part of a different chemical class of drugs than the other psychedelics, ketamine is in a separate legal class as an FDA-approved schedule III drug. This designation means that any physician can administer it for an off-label use if he or she believes it will help the patient.

Although some research indicates that psychedelic drugs may enhance suggestibility and certain aspects of psychotherapy, the beneﬁts of dissociative anesthetics such as ketamine and ibogaine may simply be the result of enduring biochemical changes in the brain. For example, in 2006 Carlos Zarate of the National Institute of Mental Health published a study demonstrating ketamine's unusual antidepressant properties [see "Good News about Depression," by Walter Brown; Scientiﬁc American Mind, June/July 2007]. A single infusion of ketamine relieved symptoms of depression in some patients within a few hours, and that relief persisted for several days.

This was the third study that demonstrated ketamine's powerful and enduring antidepressant effects. In one intriguing finding from one of the previous studies, subjects received the ketamine as an anesthetic for orthopedic surgery -- so they were not even conscious during the mind-altering portion of the drug's action in the brain and the antidepressant effects occurred post-operatively.

In other work seeking to help cure addicts, a preliminary ketamine study, in which psychiatrist Evgeny Krupitsky of St. Petersburg, Russia, treated 59 patients with heroin dependency, produced encouraging results. And the Iboga Therapy House in Vancouver, Canada, has recently begun a study that has so far successfully treated three out of 20 opiate-addicted subjects with ibogaine. The experimental procedure substantially reduced the withdrawal symptoms associated with opiate addiction, helping the addicts to recover and break their dependency on the drug.

OCD, Cluster Headaches and Cancer

In addition to the promising work with ibogaine and the dissociative anesthetics, progress is also being made in the study of conventional psychedelics. In 2006 investigators at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine published the results of a six-year project on the effects of psilocybin, in which more than 60 percent of the participants reported positive changes in their attitude and behavior after taking the drug, a beneﬁt that lasted for at least several months.

In another 2006 study, researchers at the University of Arizona, led by psychiatrist Francisco Moreno, found that psilocybin relieved the symptoms of nine patients with OCD. The patients suffered from a wide range of obsessions and compulsions. Some of them showered for hours; others put on their clothes over and over again until they felt right. All nine experienced improvements with at least some of the doses tested.

"What we saw was a drastic decrease in symptoms for a period of time," Moreno says. "People would report that it had been years since they had felt so good." Moreno cautions that the goal was simply to test the safety of administering psilocybin to OCD patients and that the true effectiveness of the drug is still in question until a larger controlled study can be conducted. Such a study is being planned, although there are currently no funds available for it. According to Moreno, however, no treatment in the medical literature eases OCD symptoms as fast as psilocybin does. Whereas other drugs take several weeks to show an effect, psilocybin worked almost immediately.

Preliminary results of a current study led by psychiatrist Charles Grob of the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center suggest that psilocybin may reduce the psychological distress associated with terminal cancer. This research seeks to measure the effectiveness of psilocybin on the reduction of anxiety, depression and physical pain in advanced-stage cancer patients. Grob's study is almost complete; 11 out of 12 subjects have already been treated. Although the formal data analysis has not been completed, "my impression," Grob says, "from just staying in touch with these people and following them is that some do seem to befunctioning better psychologically. There seems to be less anxiety, improved mood and an overall improved quality of life. There also seems to be less fear of death."

The ﬁrst studies of psychedelic drugs at Harvard since 1965 are also now under way. In one study, psychiatrist John Halpern and his colleagues are looking into using LSD and psilocybin to treat the debilitating symptoms of cluster headaches. The researchers, who are in the process of recruiting subjects, will probably begin trials in early 2008.

Acute Anxiety and PTSD

Another study at Harvard, also led by Halpern, will look into MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in subjects with anxiety associated with advanced-stage cancer-similar to Grob's psilocybin study-using measures to evaluate anxiety, pain and overall quality of life. This study is also in the process of recruiting human subjects.

Psychiatrist Michael Mithoefer in Charleston, S.C., is running an MDMA study for treatment-resistant PTSD victims of crime, war or childhood sexual abuse. So far 17 out of 20 such subjects have already undergone the experimental therapy. "At this point the results are very promising," Mithoefer says. "I think we're seeing pretty strong, robust effects in some people. I hasten to add these are preliminary ﬁndings-we're not ready to draw conclusions yet. But assuming it keeps going this way for the rest of the study, it certainly seems that there's very good reason to go on to larger phase III trials."

Although we are still in the early days of psychedelic therapy research, the initial data show considerable promise. A growing number of scientists believe that psychedelic drugs may offer safe and effective help for people with certain treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders and possibly help some people who receive partial relief from current methods to obtain a more complete healing.

A Spark for Creativity?

Nobel Prize winners Francis Crick and Kary Mullis reportedly attributed part of their breakthrough scientiﬁc insights to psychedelic drugs. And architect Kyosho Izumi's LSD-inspired design of the ideal psychiatric hospital won a commendation for outstanding achievement from the American Psychiatric Association. Others scoff at the notion that the drugs deserve the credit. What do studies say?

In 1955 psychiatrist Louis Berlin investigated the effects of mescaline and LSD on the painting abilities of four nationally recognized artists. Although the study showed that the artists' technical abilities were hampered, a group of independent art critics judged the experimental paintings to have "greater aesthetic value" than the artists' usual work.

Two years later Los Angeles psychiatrist Oscar Janiger asked 60 prominent artists to paint a Native American doll before taking LSD and then again while under its inﬂuence. A panel of independent art critics and historians then evaluated the results. Members generally agreed that the craftsmanship of the second set of paintings suffered, but many of those pieces received higher marks for imagination.

In 1965 psychologist James Fadiman and social scientist Willis Harman of San Francisco State College administered mescaline to workers in various ﬁelds as they sought a creative solution for a professional problem. After some psychological preparation, subjects worked individually on their problem throughout their mescaline session. Psychological tests, subjective reports, and the eventual industrial or commercial validation and acceptance of the ﬁnished product or ﬁnal solution measured the output of each volunteer. Virtually all individuals produced solutions judged highly creative and satisfactory by these standards.

Psychologist Stanley Krippner of the Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center in San Francisco, however, remains skeptical. "It is naive to claim that psychedelics produce creative experience," he argues. "At best, they may be one of many factors that result in something new that comes into being."

____

Further Reading

*Hallucinogens. D. E. Nichols in Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Vol. 101, No. 2, pages 131-181; February 2004.

*Safety, Tolerability, and Efﬁcacy of Psilocybin in 9 Patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. F. A. Moreno, C. B. Wiegand, E. K. Taitano and P. L. Delgado in Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Vol. 67, No. 11, pages 1735-1740; November 2006.

*The Use of Psilocybin in Patients with Advanced Cancer and Existential Anxiety. C. S. Grob in Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments, Vol. 1. Edited by Michael J. Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts. Praeger/Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007.

*MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. M. Mithoefer. Ibid.

*The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) publishes a quarterly bulletin that reports on the status of current scientiﬁc research into psychedelic substances: www.maps.org

The Sound of Silence

2008-12-16T01:35:00.000Z

Educate-Yourself
The Freedom of Knowledge, The Power of Thought ©

The Sound of Silence
The Antithesis of Freedom

[Editor's Note: This is an extremely timely and important essay. It overviews a secret Pentagon psychotronics technology known as Silent Sound Spread Spectrum (SSSS) that has been fully operational since the early 1990s. I first found out about the use of this technology from Al Bielek in a 1992 video he made with Vladimir Terziski. This technology was used against battle-hardened Iraqi troops fortified in deep underground bunkers in Kuwait and Iraq in the first Gulf War in January of 1991.

The physical, emotional, and psychological effects of this technology were so severe that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops surrended en masse without firing even a single shot against U.S. led coalition forces. The numbers reported in the news were staggering: 75,000 and then annother 125,000 (or more) Iraqi troops would come out of their deep desert bunkers waving white flags and falling to their knees before approaching U.S. troops and literally kiss their captor's boots or hands if given the opportunity. Why would eight year veterans of Middle Eastern warfare (with Iran 1980-1988) behave this way? Simple. They were subjected to a technology that was so extreme and incomprehensible that they were suddenly reduced to the level of compliant children and felt grateful to still be alive in the wake of their mind-wrenching experience.

This technology is about to be used, albeit in a more subtle fashion, against American citizens in a highly classified and covert operation to mind control and manipulate the entire population into 'compliance' with our New World order overlords. The technology will utilize a combination of HAARP transmitters, GWEN towers, microwave cell phone towers, and the soon-to-be-mandatory High Definition DIGITAL TV that will enter your home via A) Cable, B) Satellite, C) HD TVs, or D) those oh-so-easy -to-obtain "Digital Converter boxes" that the government is so anxious to help you obtain and underwrite most of the cost on your behalf.

But why is the government so anxious to help American citizens experience a clearer and more highly defined television picture? Does that make sense to you? Since when is the government so concerned about the visual quality of our televised entertainment that congress would pass an undebated statutory proclamation which mandated that the HD conversion take place on Feb. 17, 2009 and and then subsidze about 90% of the associated cost? I'm only guessing, but if there are 200 million "regular" televisions in America to be converted into HD, then that $40 in government subsidy per TV x 2,000,000 = 80 million dollars. Why is the government so anxious to spend $80 million dollars on her citizens to improve the clarity of a TV picture? Or is the recently touted "additional bandwidth" cover story that supposedly is to be gained with the HD technology the only and genuine reason for spending so much taxpayer dollars on HD conversion?

The second service that this author performs is to "out" two of our more deceptive CIA/Pentagon 'assets' masquerading under the rubric of natural health advocates. Their names are Rima Laibow and her husband, "former" Major General Albert Stubblebine. If your e-mail Inbox has been filling with warnings and articles in recent months about the coming Codex regulations and the "wonderful" job that Rima and her retired Army husband have been doing to try and stem the tide, then you know who I'm talking about.

Folks, is it time to wake up yet? Or should we just resume our slumber and wait for them to take us away in those spiffy Gunderson cattle cars that Phil Schneider warned us about in 1995 (you know, the ones with the built in shackles and manacles)? ...Ken Adachi]
__________________________________________________ _________

By A. True Ott, PhD, ND
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/sound...e11dec08.shtml

December 11, 2008

The Sound of Silence: The Antithesis of Freedom
by A. True Ott, PhD, ND (Dec 12, 2008)

The year was 1961, and John Kennedy was soon to become the 35th President. Shortly before Kennedy’s inauguration, President Dwight D. Eisenhower shocked the nation and the world with his televised farewell speech. The speech’s content was shocking because General Eisenhower was a very popular war hero, and American military might was second to none. Eisenhower, a highly decorated five-star general, was the Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces during World War II. It was Eisenhower’s leadership during the Normandy Invasion that ultimately freed Europe from the Nazi scourge. Incredibly, in his farewell address, this great American hero did not warn the nation of the budding communist threat or the horrors of nuclear proliferation. No, not at all! Instead, this career military genius poignantly and soberly declared to this great nation:

“... we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence --- economic, political, even spiritual --- is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to recognize its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or our democratic processes"

Here we have a career military officer, and sitting U.S. President warning the nation in his final farewell speech, that something called “unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex” poses an extremely dangerous threat to our Free Republic society. According to Eisenhower, this threat “exists and will persist”.

To President Eisenhower, in January of 1961, this evil was a much greater threat to America than Castro’s Cuba or Kruschev’s Soviet Union. What exactly could have happened in the “military-industrialist” establishment that would have caused Eisenhower to issue such a strongly worded warning? Improved machine gun production? Nope. Battleship production? Nope. Nuclear submarines? Nope. Proliferation of Nuclear warheads? A concern of course, but a concern that most Americans were fully aware of.

No, obviously what caused Eisenhower such deep concern had to be something much more pervasively shadowy, dark and secret. Some new, covert, technology had clearly emerged that had the very real potential to provide certain individuals with the “acquisition of unwarranted influence” that in turn would “endanger our liberties or our democratic processes” (i.e. our free and fair election process). In other words, it had the clear potential to circumvent the voice of the people and completely empower un-elected power mongers.

Eisenhower, I would submit, was warning America about something called the “Sound of Silence”. Eisenhower was an honest and patriotic American. Like Marine Corp General Smedley Butler, who decades earlier declared to Congress that “War is a Racket” --- Ike knew that such absolute power and total covert control over the minds and hearts of individual citizens would corrupt society absolutely. He also knew and understood, as did the German philosopher Goethe:

“No man is more hopelessly enslaved, than he who falsely believes that he is FREE.”

Therefore, he issued his strong, concluding warning to America. Today, this author must do no less.

The Sound of Silence is a military-intelligence code word for certain psychotronic weapons of mass mind-control tested in the mid 1950’s, perfected during the 70’s, and used extensively by the “modern” U.S. military in the early 90’s, despite the opposition and warnings issued by men such as Dwight David Eisenhower. This mind-altering covert weapon is based on something called subliminal carrier technology, or the Silent Sound Spread Spectrum (SSSS), (also nicknamed S-Quad or "Squad" in military jargon.) It was developed for military use by Dr. Oliver Lowery of Norcross, Georgia, and is described in US Patent #5,159,703

– “Silent Subliminal Presentation System” for commercial use in 1992. The patent abstract reads:

“A silent communications system in which nonaural carriers, in the very low (ELF) or very high audio-frequency (VHF) range or in the adjacent ultrasonic frequency spectrum are amplitude – or frequency-modulated with the desired intelligence and propagated acoustically or vibrationally, for inducement into the brain, typically through the use of loudspeakers, earphones, or piezoelectric transducers. The modulated carriers may be transmitted directly in real time or may be conveniently recorded and stored on mechanical, magnetic, or optical media for delayed or repeated transmission to the listener.”

In layman’s terms, this device, this “Sound of Silence” simply allows for the unwarranted implantation of specific thoughts, emotions, and even prescribed physical actions into unsuspecting human beings.

In short, it has the very real ability to turn human beings into mere puppets in the hands of certain “controllers” or puppet-masters. Eisenhower knew full well what such a “weapon” could do in the hands of greedy, conspiring men and women scheming to control the planet. It could easily result in the takeover of American society without a single bullet being fired.

This is what he was warning America about, this is the “combination” he feared above all others. Have the leaders of America ignored Ike’s warning? Have conspiring and evil men and women utilized this diabolical technology on unsuspecting Americans and others outside of our borders? If so, will they continue to utilize the technology through the medium of Television and Radio? This exposé will attempt to answer these questions, and give the reader a clear picture of exactly who made the decisions to use the “Sound of Silence” in both war and peace.

On March 23, 1991, a news brief was released in the form of an ITV News Bureau Ltd. (London) wire service bulletin entitled “High-Tech Psychological Warfare Arrives in the Middle East”. This was during the administration of George Bush Sr., during “Operation Desert Storm” and describes in remarkable detail a US Psychological Operations (PsyOps) covert operation successfully deployed against Iraqi troops in Kuwait.

Saddam Hussein’s vaunted “Republican Guard” crack troops were promising Bush “the Mother of all Battles” with many thousands of dead coalition troops. On paper, it looked convincing. Hussein’s Republican Guard troops were battle-hardened veterans of the 10 year war with Iran, while coalition troops were unblooded. The Iraqis had modern weaponry and were well trained in how to use it. Something very strange happened, however. The “mother of all battles” ended before it began, as literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers surrendered en masse without even firing a shot!

Here is what the British press reported on the incident – while the American press was censored:

“... an unbelievable and HIGHLY CLASSIFIED PsyOps program utilizing “Silent Sound” techniques was successfully deployed. The opportunity to use this method occurred when Saddam Hussein’s military command-and-control system was destroyed. The Iraqi troops were then forced to use commercial FM radio stations to carry encoded commands, which were broadcast on the 100 MHz frequency. The US Psy-Ops team set up its own portable FM transmitter, utilizing the same frequency, in the deserted city of Al Khafji. This US transmitter overpowered the local Iraqi station. Along with patriotic and religious music, PsyOps transmitted “vague, confusing and contradictory military orders and information”.

“Subliminally, a much more powerful technology was at work, however. A sophisticated electronic system designed to ‘speak’ directly to the mind of the listener; to alter and entrain his brainwaves, to manipulate his brain’s electroencephalographic (EEG) patterns and thus artificially implant negative emotional states ---- feelings of intense fear, anxiety, despair and hopelessness were created in the Iraqi troops. This incredibly effective subliminal system doesn’t just tell a person to feel an emotion, it makes them feel it; it implants that EMOTION in their minds.”

While utilizing such a “non-lethal” covert psy-ops weapon resulted in many lives being saved, both American, Coalition, as well as Iraqi, the question begs to be asked: How can Americans be assured that such a weapon is not being used on them by “Big Brother” on a daily basis?

Moreover, why was the REAL STORY behind the mass Iraqi surrenders censored so completely from the American people? Typically, secrecy of this nature is only employed when the subject is morally offensive, or when the powers that be wish to continue to deploy the subject without public scrutiny or oversight, or both. Clearly, if such a device employed covertly on Americans could result in “unwarranted influence” over a society, as Eisenhower warned, I submit the majority of Americans would be completely outraged and incensed, and rightfully so. Therefore, of course the technology would need to remain hidden away.

Officially, the Sound of Silence (S-quad) technology does not exist, just as the US Government officially denies the existence of UFOs and Area 51, (Groom Lake) in the Nevada desert. However, the physical realities cannot be ignored by the rational and logical mind. For instance, during the first Gulf war, the man who most likely ordered the deployment of the Sound of Silence was Major General Albert (Bert) Stubblebine, who was the Commanding General of the U.S. Army’s INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL AND CENTER, as well as the Army’s Electronic Research and Development Command (ERADCOM) as well as the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM).

In short, Albert Stubblebine was the Army’s liaison with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Naval Intelligence operatives (ONI) – and as head of ERADCOM, he would of necessity have had complete working knowledge of the Sound of Silence weaponry, if indeed it truly exists. He was the U.S. Army’s top spy-boss, and of course, was privy to all its secrets. Now retired from active duty following a 32-year career, General Stubblebine has combined with his wife, Rima Laibow to form something called the Natural Solutions Foundation, supposedly dedicated to fighting all HEALTH FREEDOM THREATS to individuals including Codex Alimentarias, Vaccinations, and of course the FDA Gestapo. On their website,
www.healthfreedomusa.org

one can read this about Albert N. Stubblebine:

“Many of the innovations he developed helped the U.S. to conduct the First Gulf W ar effectively and swiftly with a very low casualty rate.”

But of course, such “innovations” are never fully disclosed to Americans and are officially non-existent. With all due respect to General Stubblebine and shadowy power-brokers such as Frank Carlucci and Donald Rumsfeld, this author concurs whole-heartedly with General Eisenhower and I declare that such posturing and secrecy with weapons of mind-control constitutes indeed an “acquisition of unwarranted power and influence” and has absolutely no place in a free and open society- no matter how many soldier's lives it may save on the battlefield. The potential for massive misuse and abuse of such immense controlling power is simply too great.

Furthermore, with all due respect Mr. Stubblebine, is he and Rima Laibow using the cover of Natural Health activistism to hide their true agenda? Could this hidden agenda be the covert promotion and testing of Sound of Silence equipment and technology commercially throughout the world?

It would seem quite logical that since covert “Black Project” mindcontrol operations was indeed his highest area of expertise while in the military, would it not be logical to assume that he would continue to engage in such work in his “retirement” years? I would submit such activity would be immensely more potentially PROFITABLE than soliciting donations while hawking organic veggies and supplements over the internet.

Is it not highly unusual for a career military man with such deep ties to CIA Black Ops to suddenly become a highly vocal natural health guru, especially considering that he had zero prior experience or hands-on training in the field?

According to his Natural Solutions website,

“He [Stubblebine] has taken this set of experiences [psy-ops work] and become involved in leading-edge medical research and development in collaboration with his wife Rima E. Laibow, M.D.”

Yet, oddly, nowhere on the NSF website is any of this “leading-edge” R & D technology discussed, even in the most generic terms. Instead, it is primarily aimed at soliciting tax-deductible donations. This alone should raise immediate red flags.

Furthermore, according to public documents available in Virginia, General Albert Stubblebine separated from his former wife Geraldine on Independence Day, (July 4) 1991 while he was at the height of his power and successful Psy-Ops venture in Kuwait against the Iraqi Army. The Stubblebines were formally divorced on September 9, 1994, whereby the divorce court granted Geraldine a decree on the “grounds of adultery”with a “female psychiatrist friend”, in all likelihood, his current wife Rima Laibow. Court documents show that Geraldine was chronically ill at the time of her divorce, suffering from “cancer and other ailments”and needed financial support from General Stubblebine to continue with her ALLOPATHIC treatments.

Nowhere is it mentioned in the divorce proceedings that any NATURAL treatments were being employed or had even been considered. Immediately after “retiring" from the army, General Stubblebine took a position as the “VP for Intelligence Systems” with Braddock, Dunn, and McDonald (BDM), a major defense contractor owned by the shadowy Carlyle Group and ex-Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci of Iran-Contra infamy.

According to author Dan Briody in his book : "The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group",

“BDM’s major business was in an area called Black Projects which are kept secret because to publicize them would compromise national security. Lawmakers often complain about Black Projects, citing that many contracts are thusly classified, not because of national security concerns, but rather to avoid the required congressional review.” (Ibid, pg. 35)

It is clear that BDM was very deeply involved in highly questionable dealings during this time frame. According to Dan Briody:

“On Christmas Eve, 1994, the New York Times reported that Frank Carlucci had again been involved in a clandestine arms deal, this time with the Soviets. With Carlucci as chairman, BDM, now a Carlyle portfolio company, had brokered a deal between the Pentagon and the former Soviet Republic of Belarus to secretly purchase an S-300, the Soviet’s version of the Patriot missile defense system the United States had used so effectively during the Gulf War. ... For the deal, BDM used the infamous Canadian arms dealer Emmanuel Weigensberg, the same man that brokered the Iran-Contra arms shipments for the Reagan White House.” (Ibid, pg 38-39)

Since the Sound of Silence machine technology was patented for “privatization” commercial applications by Dr. Lowery on October 27, 1992 , it clearly opened the door to private defense contractors such as BDM to develop their own “Intelligence Systems”.

It would then make sense to employ General Stubblebine as a consultant. Of course, what would then stop BDM from quietly marketing and selling the Sound of Silence to large corporations tied to Wall Street? For example, imagine utilizing the Sound of Silence in a large Wal-Mart store, mixing the ELF waves with background music to subliminally brainwash dishonest shoppers NOT to engage in shoplifting? Such a device would save Sam Walton many millions of dollars in lost revenue every year.

Suppose also that a young, black man from Illinois was given access to, and was able to utilize the S-quad Sound of Silence technology in his public speeches, radio and 30-minute television“infomercials” -- all programmed and designed by “handlers” to illicit strong emotional responses from audience members who then are merely “hearing without listening”.

Moreover, what if televisions across the U.S. and Canada all went 100% DIGITAL [E.g. the mandatory HD conversion to take place in Feb. 2009] in their signals (which must happen in order to successfully link to pre-positioned, interconnected GWEN (Ground-Wave Emergency Network) Towers) which of course would allow the unrestricted use of the Sound of Silence frequencies in a complete and massive control of the nation’s mind and consciousness?

I am telling you that is EXACTLY what is happening. President Eisenhower was absolutely correct, and his worst fears were indeed well founded!

The military-industrialist complex has quietly completed the takeover of the nation’s consciousness, and thus its very soul. All without firing a shot! What about Stubblebine and his side-kick Laibow? What could they actually be doing in their world travels disguised as natural food activists?

Keep in mind that taking complete fascist control of America is just one step of the Zionist elites ultimate agenda, of which Stubblebine and Laibow have very likely pledged their true loyalty. The elitist Zionists overall objective is indeed absolute world control, something they refer to as a “New World Order”with them as dictators and overlords. Again, the absolute SECRECY surrounding the development and deployment of the electromagnetic mind-altering technology of the Sound of Silence in a very real way reflects the tremendous power that is inherent in it. This is why Eisenhower knew that he HAD to warn the nation about it back in 1961. To put it bluntly, whoever controls this technology literally has the power to control the minds of men – all men and women everywhere.

Of course, whoever controls the minds of all humans, controls the wealth and destiny of planet earth. Furthermore, Stubblebine, as commander of Army Intelligence would likely follow the prescribed manual of all covert ops --- such as is found in a de-classified U.S. manual for the planned subversion and coup of the government of Nicaragua. The manual instructs the CIA “guerilla forces” to engage in different “false front” organizations designed to win the respect, trust, and influence of the enemy. Once complete trust and confidence is achieved by means of the activities of the “false front”, then the destruction of the enemy by means of misdirection and dis-information tactics can more easily be executed.

I would submit there is no better “false front” to infiltrate in America than Natural Health proponents, for they are typically healthier, better informed, and more dedicated to preserving individual freedoms and fighting tyranny than other Americans. Thus, there could be no better “false front” to establish, and there is clearly no more potentially vicious wolf hiding in sheep’s clothing than the man who knows more about the Sound of Silence secret deployment than any other human –one General Albert (Bert) Stubblebine and his Jewish psychiatrist wife, Rima Laibow.

There is ample evidence that certain elitists in America and Israel plan to definitely extend the capacity of this technology to encompass all people on every continent. A key to this is the HAARP project where ELF and VHF frequencies can indeed be beamed off of the earth’s ionosphere to various GWEN towers world-wide. Of course, the U.S. Government officially denies all of this, telling the talking heads of the controlled news media that the GWEN towers are merely private cell-phone towers with no ulterior agenda, and therefore anybody who thinks otherwise is a lunatic-fringe conspiracy nut.

The evidence to the contrary, however is clear and unequivocal.

Dr. Michael Persinger is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada. Concerning this subject, Dr. Persinger writes:

“Temporal lobe stimulation can evoke the feeling of a presence, disorientation, and perceptual irregularities. It can activate images stored in the subject’s memory, including nightmares and monsters that are normally suppressed. Contemporary neuroscience suggests the existence of fundamental algorithms by which all sensory transduction is translated into an intrinsic, brain-specific code. Direct stimulation of these codes within the human temporal or limbic cortices by applied electromagnetic patterns may require energy levels which are within the range of both geomagnetic activity and contemporary communication networks. A process which is coupled to the narrow band of brain temperature could allow all normal human brains to be affected by a sub-harmonic whose frequency range at about 10 Hz would only vary by 0.1 Hz.”

Dr Persinger concludes the article by writing:

“Within the last two decades a potential has emerged which was improbable, but which is now feasible. This potential is the technical capability to influence directly the major portion of the approximately 6.5 billion brains of the human species, without mediation through classical sensory modalities, by generating neural information within a physical medium within which all members of the species are immersed.

“The historical emergence of such possibilities, which have ranged from gunpowder to atomic fission, have resulted in major changes in the social evolution that occurred inordinately quickly after the implementation. Reduction of the risk of the inappropriate application of these technologies requires the continued and open discussion of their realistic feasibility and implications within the scientific and public domain.”

How can one have an “open discussion” on the subject when government circles continually deny the existence of such technology?

All we see & seem

2008-12-10T08:17:00.002Z

My latest video...
"All we see & seem is but a dream within a dream": the illusory nature of physical reality, creative consciousness & the universal mind. Featuring Fred Alan Wolf, Nassim Haramein, Amit Goswami, Jim Al Khalili, Greg Braden, Bill Hicks & David Icke.
(music: Rachid Taha "Barra Barra")

The void

2008-12-09T16:30:00.001Z

The void is no mere emptiness, but is real, free and existing. It is the source from which all things arise and return. It cannot be seen, touched or known, yet it exists and is freely used. It has no shape, size, colour or form, and yet all that we see, hear, feel and touch is "it". It is beyond intellectual knowing and cannot be grasped by the ordinary mind. When we suddenly awake to the realization that there is no barrier, and has never been seen, one realizes that one is all things, mountains, rivers, grasses, trees, sun, moon, stars, universe are all oneself. There is no longer a division or barrier between myself and others, no longer any feeling of alienation or fear. Realizing this, results in true compassion. Other people and things are not seen as apart from oneself, on the contrary, as one's own body. - BRUCE LEE

Nassim Haramein - MUST WATCH!!!

2008-12-09T15:02:00.002Z

If you are not yet familiar with Nassim Haramein's exciting work, prepare yourself for an exhilarating odyssey into hyperspace and beyond. Haramein, who has spent his lifetime researching fields of physics from quantum theory to relativistic equations and cosmology, will lead you along a fascinating discussion geared to a layman's understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe and creation that includes black holes, gravitational forces, dimensions, and the very structure of space itself - all of which are integral parts of his now-complete Unified Field Theory. Haramein's theory is currently in peer review process for publication in physics journals; however, the presentation does not end with the introduction of his theory alone, but includes the discussion of the path that he took to arrive at his views, which weaves between the texts and monuments of ancient civilizations, biology, chemistry and the primordial role of consciousness - all of which lend further credence to the science behind the theory...

The most mind-blowing thing I have ever watched!!
~Ali

Culture Is Not Your Friend

2008-11-09T10:07:00.003Z

My latest video, a deconstruction of consumerist society featuring Bill Hicks, Terence Mckenna, Alex Jones & George Carlin.
~ali

Dark Flow

2008-11-08T08:02:00.001Z

Something may be out there. Way out there.

On the outskirts of creation, unknown, unseen "structures" are tugging on our universe like cosmic magnets, a controversial new study says.

Everything in the known universe is said to be racing toward the massive clumps of matter at more than 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) an hour—a movement the researchers have dubbed dark flow.

The presence of the extra-universal matter suggests that our universe is part of something bigger—a multiverse—and that whatever is out there is very different from the universe we know, according to study leader Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

The theory could rewrite the laws of physics. Current models say the known, or visible, universe—which extends as far as light could have traveled since the big bang—is essentially the same as the rest of space-time (the three dimensions of space plus time).

Picturing Dark Flow

Dark flow was named in a nod to dark energy and dark matter—two other unexplained astrophysical phenomena.

The newfound flow cannot be explained by, and is not directly related to, the expansion of the universe, though the researchers believe the two types of movement are happening at the same time.

In an attempt to simplify the mind-bending concept, Kashlinsky says to picture yourself floating in the middle of a vast ocean. As far as the eye can see, the ocean is smooth and the same in every direction, just as most astronomers believe the universe is. You would think that beyond the horizon, therefore, nothing is different.

"But then you discover a faint but coherent flow in your ocean," Kashlinsky said. "You would deduce that the entire cosmos is not exactly like what you can see within your own horizon."

There must be an out-of-sight mountain river or ravine pushing or pulling the water. Or in the cosmological case, Kashlinsky speculates that "this motion is caused by structures well beyond the current cosmological horizon, which is more than 14 billion light-years away."

"We Found a Great Surprise"

The study team didn't set out to explode physics as we know it.

They simply wanted to confirm the longstanding notion that the farther away galaxies are, the slower their motion should appear.

That movement is detectable in data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which NASA says "reveals conditions as they existed in the early universe by measuring the properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation over the full sky"—radiation thought to have been released about 380,000 years after the birth of the universe.

Hot gas in galaxy clusters warms the microwave background radiation, and "a very tiny component of this temperature fluctuation also contains in itself information about cluster velocity," Kashlinsky said.

If a cluster were moving faster or slower than the universe's background radiation, you'd expect to see the background heated slightly in that region of the universe—the result of a sort of electron-scattering "friction" between the cluster's hot gas and particles in the background radiation.

Because these fluctuations are so faint, the team studied more than 700 galaxy clusters.

The researchers had expected to find that, the farther away clusters are, the slower they appear to be moving.

Instead, Kashlinsky said, "We found a great surprise."

The clusters were all moving at the same speed—nearly 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) an hour —and in a single direction.

Though this dark flow was detected only in galaxy clusters, it should apply to every structure in the known universe, Kashlinsky said.

Explaining the Unexplainable

To explain the unexplainable flow, the team turned to the longstanding theory that rapid inflation just after the big bang had pushed chunks of matter beyond the known universe.

The extra-universal matter's extreme mass means it "could still pull—tug on—the matter in our universe, causing this flow of galaxies across our observable horizon," said Kashlinsky, whose team's study appeared in the October 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"Strong Doubts"

Not everyone is ready to rewrite physics just yet.

Astrophysicist Hume Feldman of the University of Kansas has detected a similar, but weaker, flow.

He said the Kashlinsky team's study is "very interesting, very intriguing, [but] a lot more work needs to be done.

"It's suggestive that something's going on, but what exactly is going on? It basically tells us to investigate," he said.

David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton University, echoed the sentiment.

"Until these results are reanalyzed by another group, I have strong doubts about the validity of the conclusions of this paper," he wrote in an email.

He added that, if the result does hold up, "it would have an important implication for our understanding of cosmology."

Study leader Kashlinsky agrees many questions remain unanswered. For starters: What exactly are these things that are apparently tugging our universe?

"They could be anything. As bizarre as you could imagine—some warped space-time," Kashlinsky said.

from National Geographic

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081105-dark-flow.html

Sit Down, Shut Up

2008-11-03T20:55:00.002Z

Another video I made...

Tony Benn

2008-10-29T10:15:00.001Z

"This is a clip from Michael Moore's film "Sicko", which is an excellent documentary about the US health care system, as well as the socialized health care systems of France, Britain and Canada. It is profound and brilliantly done, and is a must see.

In this clip, former British MP Tony Benn talks about power and democracy, and how empowering people is what is essential to bring a higher quality of life for most people. For, when people are empowered, they will demand more and shift the system in their own favour. The more empowered a society is, the less they will be exploited by their political and economic systems, and the better off the majority will be.

So, if you want to make a better world a reality (which you should), it is up to you to feel empowered. Feel hopeful. Feel worthy of more, and then demand it. Demand a higher quality of life for yourself and for all of those around you."

UK POLICE violate civil rights! Shocking videos

2008-10-29T10:10:00.001Z

Police disrupt freedom of expression in Liverpool city centre.

Our World

2008-10-28T21:02:00.001Z

Short video I made, music by MGMT
~ali

Thoughts From Within - Woody Harrelson

2008-10-28T12:09:00.000Z

Wake Up Call - Remastered Edition (NEW) - New World Order Documentary

2008-10-24T16:22:00.000+01:00

Some of the topics covered in the film: The New World Order, Federal Reserve, Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, North American Union, the Rockefeller/Rothschild families, Freemasonry, Bohemian Grove, the Illuminati, Illuminati symbolism, Problem-Reaction-Solution, 9-11, war profiteering, the phoney 'War on Terrorism', the impending 'Big Brother Surveillance Society', the war on civil liberties, microchipping, mind control, media control and 'education system' indoctrination... Featuring: Alex Jones, David Icke, Aaron Russo, Jordan Maxwell, G. Edward Griffin, Jim Marrs, Bill Hicks, Daniel Estulin, Jim Tucker, Ted Gunderson, Anthony Hilder, Professor Steven Jones, Webster Tarpley, George Carlin, John Taylor Gatto, Charlotte Iserbyt, Dave vonKleist, Stan Monteith and others...

1984

2008-10-16T19:32:00.000+01:00

For those who have not read the book, this is a must see!

HAARP: holes in heaven

2008-10-15T17:34:00.001+01:00

HAARP And Advances In Tesla Technology

Billions

2008-10-15T15:45:00.002+01:00

"How many zeros in a billion?

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,
but one advertising agency did a good job of
putting that figure into some perspective in
one of it's releases.
A.

A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B.

A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C.

A billion hours ago our ancestors were
living in the Stone Age.

D.

A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

....and the government is spending £500bn on a

Bail-out deal for banks. . .

And the goverment BORROWS this from the
Bank of England (PRIVATELY OWNED)

YOU PAY THE INTEREST on £500bn BY TAX!!! "

David Icke - Freedom Road - The Human Journey 7000 BC - 2012 AD Part 1

2008-10-13T07:57:00.002+01:00

Since 1990, David Icke has been on an amazing journey of self- and collective discovery to establish the real power behind apparently "random" world events like 9/11 and the "war on terrorism."

Secret Space

2008-10-13T07:10:00.004+01:00

"This new film continues Chris Everard's SECRET SPACE series of films by investigating if there is any evidence supporting the idea that highly intelligent "star gods" with reptilian features have visited planet Earth. Two hours of solid hardcore research, plus another two hours of interviews and amazing photos from the NASA archives showing vegetation on the surface of Mars presented by Jaime Maussan make this film simply the best UFO documentary ever made. A thoroughly professional film, British film director Chris Everard gives us a grandiose, mystical vision of the known and unknown cosmos. Superb in every respect."
-JANIS WRIGHT - The Voice

Blueberry

2008-10-13T07:01:00.000+01:00

Ayahuasca scene from "Blueberry"...

Shift in Consciousness

2008-10-12T16:35:00.002+01:00

Excerpt from Conscious Media Networks http://consciousmedianetwork.com David does a comparison with our addictions to "things." It's interesting to hear what the alternative is to the current direction modern humans are consuming the material world. It is time we start aligning our true selves and see the connection to true consciousness.

The Biggest Secret: Money out of nothing

2008-10-12T15:14:00.004+01:00

Money out of nothing

"Today the initiates and frontmen for the Babylonian Brotherhood control world politics, banking, business, intelligence agencies, police, the military, education and the media. The most important of these, in terms of control, is banking. The creation and manipulation of money. The Brotherhood financial sting is very simple and spans the period we are documenting from the time of Sumer and Babylon to the present day. It is based on creating money that doesn’t exist and lending it to people and businesses in return for interest.

This creates enormous debt for governments, businesses and the general population, and you therefore control them. Vital to this has been to allow bankers to lend money they do not have. It works like this. If you or me have a million pounds, we can lend a million pounds. Very simple. But if a bank has a million pounds it can lend ten times that and more, and charge interest on it. If even a fraction of the people who theoretically have ‘money’ deposited in the banks went today to remove it, the banks would slam the doors in half an hour because they do not have it.

Money in the bank is a myth, another confidence trick. When you go into a bank and ask for a loan, the bank does not print a single new note nor mint a single new coin. It merely types the amount of the loan into your account. From that moment you are paying interest to the bank on what is no more than figures typed on a screen. However, if you fail to pay back that non-existent loan, the bank can come along and quite legally take your wealth that does exist, your home, land, car, and possessions, to the estimated value of whatever figure was typed onto that screen.

More than that, because money is not brought into circulation by governments, but by private banks making loans to customers, the banks control how much money is in circulation. The more loans they choose to make, the more money is in circulation. What is the difference between an economic boom (prosperity) and an economic depression (poverty)? One thing only: the amount of money in circulation. That’s all.

And, through this system, the private banks, controlled by the same people, decide how much money will be in circulation. They can create booms and busts at will. The same with the stock-markets where these guys are moving trillions of dollars a day around the financial and banking markets, so deciding if they go up or down, soar or crash. Stock-market crashes don’t just happen, they are made to happen.

Most of the ‘money’ in circulation is not physical money, cash and coins. It is represented as figures passing from one computer account to another electronically via money transfers, credit cards and cheque books. The more money, electronic or otherwise, that is in circulation, the more economic activity can take place and therefore the more products are bought and sold, the more income people have, and the more jobs are available. But a constant theme of the reptile-Aryan financial coup has been to create a boom by making lots of loans and then pull the plug.

Overpaid economists and economic correspondents, most of whom have no idea what is going on, will tell you that boom and bust is part of some natural ‘economic cycle’. What claptrap. It is systematic manipulation by the Brotherhood to steal the real wealth of the world. During a boom many people get themselves into even more debt.

The vibrant economic activity means that businesses borrow more for new technology to increase production to meet demand. People borrow more to buy a bigger house and a new, more expensive car, because they are so confident about their economic future. Then, at the most opportune moment, the major bankers, coordinated by the secret society networks, raise interest rates to suppress the demand for loans and they begin to call in loans already outstanding. They ensure they make far fewer loans than before. This has the affect of taking units of exchange (money in its various forms) out of circulation. This suppresses demand for products and leads to fewer jobs because there is not enough money in circulation to generate the necessary economic activity. So people and businesses can no longer earn enough to repay their loans and they go bankrupt. The banks then take over their real wealth, their business, home, land, car and possessions in return for non-repayment of a loan that was never more than figures typed on a screen.

This has been going on in cycles over thousands of years, especially the last few centuries, and the real wealth of the world has been sucked out of the population and into the hands of those who control the banking system...

The same applies to countries. Instead of creating their own interest free money, governments borrow it from the private banking cartel and pay back both the interest and the capital by taxation of the people. Fantastic amounts of the money you pay in taxes go straight to the private banks to pay back loans which the governments could create themselves interest-free!! Why don’t they do it? Because the Brotherhood controls the governments as much as they control the banks. What we call ‘privatisation’ is the selling off of state assets to stave off bankruptcy caused by the bank-created debt.
Third World countries are handing over control of their land and resources to the international bankers because they cannot pay back the vast loans made, on purpose, by the banks to ensnare them in this very situation. The world does not have to be in poverty and conflict, it is manipulated to be that way because it serves the Agenda.

The Knights Templar used the system I’ve just described when they created the foundations of the modern banking network back in the 12th and 13th centuries and this clearly connected with the Venetian network of the Black Nobility operating at the same time. The world financial manipulation is today coordinated by ‘central banks’ in each country which appear to be working independently, but are in fact working together to a common end. The Bank of England, chartered by the Black Nobility’s William of Orange, has been the spider at the centre of this web and so, too, since the 1930s, has the Bank of International Settlements in Switzerland. Like the Bank of England, the central banks were chartered by the descendants of the banking families of Genoa and Venice. "
(The Biggest Secret, David Icke)

Labyrinth of the Psychonaut...

2008-10-12T13:53:00.002+01:00

"We are on the verge of an important milestone in our world's political history. State-sponsored false flag operations, the central weapon of governments seeking a pretext for war and domestic repression can be eliminated forever. George Santayana wrote: "Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it." Today we have an opportunity to learn from our past and forge a new era in human sovereignty while righting the scales of justice. Horrible crimes against humanity were committed on 9/11 and the true criminals need to be identified and removed from positions of power in our world.

I think it's also very important to state that the Illuminati officials who orchestrated the 9/11 Mega Ritual were actually serving humanity a purpose, albeit a rather cruel one. Without "evil" or suffering there would be no cause for unification or evolution of consciousness. The Earth would become a stagnant pool in a Utopian society because there would be no lesson to be learned, no sickness to cure, and no hatred to absolve. They are apart of us as we are apart of them.. and as we approach the great change and 2012 please try and remember that the universe will unfold exactly as it should."

"The living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed; nor would there have been any use of organs by the help of which he might receive his food or get rid of what he had already digested, since there was nothing which went from him or came into him: for there was nothing beside him. Of design he was created thus, his own waste providing his own food, and all that he did or suffered taking place in and by himself. For the Creator conceived that a being which was self-sufficient would be far more excellent than one which lacked anything; and, as he had no need to take anything or defend himself against any one, the Creator did not think it necessary to bestow upon him hands: nor had he any need of feet, nor of the whole apparatus of walking; but the movement suited to his spherical form was assigned to him, being of all the seven that which is most appropriate to mind and intelligence; and he was made to move in the same manner and on the same spot, within his own limits revolving in a circle. All the other six motions were taken away from him, and he was made not to partake of their deviations. And as this circular movement required no feet, the universe was created without legs and without feet."

- Plato

Join me as I research the correlation between the water door Wormhole, The CERN facility: which may unlock the secrets of the universe for the second time in human history, and the Death/Rebirth themes of Ouroboros -- The Eternal Serpent."

"The silver cord has been described as being smooth, very long, very bright, like an elastic cable made of light, about an inch wide, sparkling like a tinsel on a Christmas tree, and attached to one of several possible locations on the physical body. During the dying process, as the spirit body leaves the physical body and moves farther away it, the silver cord becomes thinner as it is stretched to its limit and becomes severed. When this occurs, the spirit body is released from being attached to the physical body. At this point, it becomes impossible for the spirit body to ever return to the physical body. For this reason, we can define "irreversible death" as that point when the silver cord becomes stretched to its limit and severed. This is the so-called "point of no return." This boundary point may also be accompanied by the appearance of a particular landmark representing a boundary such as a river, a wall, a fence, or a canyon. Once this barrier is crossed, the near-death experience becomes an irreversible death experience.

Many experiencers have felt the pull of the silver cord when it is stretched near its limit. They often describe the experience as being instantly retracted to their physical body - like stretching a rubber band to near its limit and then releasing one end of it.

This silver cord is our spirit body's "lifeline" to our physical body in the same way that our umbilical cord is our "lifeline" to our mother's body during the birth process.

During the death process, should the physical body be subjected to a violent death, such as in a severe car accident, the silver cord is severed before the impact preventing the pain that is experienced by the physical body from being felt by the spirit body.

The Shuman resonance is described as the earths heartbeat.

Electromagnetic waves of earth energy occur at frequencies, These waves are called the Shuman resonance factor. They occur between 3 and 6 hertz. Oddly enough it happens to be in the range of the "delta" waves of the human brain.

One scientist Dr. Michael Persinger has demonstrated that artificial stimulation of the brain at these frequencies can cause hallucinations. Allowing humans to achieve an altered state of consciousness, enabling perception of realms usually invisible to humans, but altogether real.

One strange phenomenon is that the Shuman resonance is on the increase and has over the past year begun to increase rapidly. Its currently resonating at 13 hertz and rising.

This is a big change. The Shuman resonance obviously has a connection with human life. It is no coincidence that it resonates at the same frequency as the human brain, it proves that we are an intricate part of the earth. Like the Jungian concept of the "collective unconscious". We are not only connected to all humans at an unconscious level but to the earth as well.

Coupled with the ongoing environmental turmoil.. With corrupt political parties, humans inability to be truthful and resound, to rid themselves of their fevered egos and live in the love indoctrination that we once did ~ Earth's pulse is erratic and irritated."

Dueling puppets

2008-10-09T05:47:00.001+01:00

In 2003, Stephen Harper and Australian Prime Minister John Howard deliver largely identical speeches urging their nations to join George W. Bush's Coalition of the Willing to go to war with Iraq.

Icke on Alex Jones part 1 of 11

2008-10-07T12:28:00.003+01:00

Zeitgeist: Addendum

2008-10-05T13:20:00.001+01:00

Full length film: Zeitgeist: Addendum, by Peter Joseph 2008
>
"Zeitgeist was created in the hope that it will inspire people to start looking at the world from a more critical perspective, and to relay the understanding that very often things are not what the population at large think they are. The true understanding of events, both historical and modern, are crucial to the development, awareness and spirituality of the human condition."

What is the Matrix - distraction from what is important

2008-09-29T16:02:00.002+01:00

It was acceptable in the 80s....

2008-09-29T12:55:00.004+01:00

"First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses full of asbestos.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese & tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took cadging lifts.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

A trip to the beach on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the stream and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC, Subway or Kebabs.

Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and only opened for a few hours at weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner shop and buy fruit Spangles and some bangers to blow up frogs with.

We ate buns, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No mobile phones - no one was able to reach us all day. And we were always O.K.

We would spend hours building our trolleys out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in streams with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on Sky, no video tape or DVD movies, no surround sound, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
Lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross buns at Easter time.......no really!

We had air guns and catapults for our birthdays,

We drank milk laced with Strontium 90 from cows that had eaten grass covered in nuclear fallout from the atomic testing.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them from the street!

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!

Mum & dad didn't need Brandy, Whisky whatever when they came in from work!

Footy had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

Our teachers used to belt us with big sticks and leather straps and bully's always ruled the playground at school.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 70 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned

HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT ALL!"

The Grid

2008-09-24T10:29:00.004+01:00

This was constructed almost entirely using government / military quotes, animations, videos, images and photos. The narrative is sourced from government quotes from start to finish. It is the “official version”, if you will, but in an unprecedented format. It unveils the governments numerous and ongoing programs related to A.I., “NBIC”, the “Global Information Grid”, nanotechnology, biotechnology, autonomous drones, “naval sea-bases”, space weapons, weather modification… or more directly: domestic and global totalitarian technological domination. American Imperialism meets Artificial Intelligence. The only debate is: what are we going to do to stop it? Time’s running out… It mostly centers around DARPA materials, as they’re the fountainhead of all of this, but this is all a broad multi-agency effort. Some of the video content, the “OS” of the video, was screen captured from the DARPA sites old iXo interactive flash presentation, from almost a year ago, but is now no longer available.

Calamitous Web Bot Predictions 1 of 12

2008-09-23T09:01:00.003+01:00

Calamitous Web Bot Predictions

George Ure and his colleague 'Cliff', two self-described "time monks," shared dire predictions based on their web bot technology. Their method captures changes in language patterns within Internet discussions. This aggregated data is then processed with software to determine various keywords, which they interpret in a predictive fashion.

Beginning on October 7, 2008 and running through March 2009, they foresee a calamitous period on an epic scale. America will be beset by a variety of problems, which they broke down as 45-48% related to the economy, 40% concerning the military, and the rest associated with natural disasters. Between 2 and 22 million lives could be lost or seriously impacted, they estimated, possibly related to a "global coastal event" in 2009. On Dec. 10-12th, 2008, a large quake could hit the Pacific Northwest, they added.

The two recommended developing self-sufficiency and the ability to live off the grid. They also spoke about strange disappearances next year, in which people, including those in power, will vanish without a trace into interdimensional doorways. Additionally, an object they call a "coherer" -- a reverse-engineered or left-behind dimensional artifact is currently in the possession of people who are concerned for their lives.

Apologies for the "sheeple" image.

RELATED: Web Bot Report Foresees October 7 "Turning Point"

"The Time Monks" of the Web Bot Project answered questions on Coast to Coast radio during the early morning hours on September 22nd, 2008.

Firstly, here is a short recap to the previous Web Bot interview from September 2nd, 2008:

" The Web Bots see September 22-27, 2008 as precursor dates to the main turning point date of October 7, 2008. Closely watch events during September 22-27, 2008 for hints as to what to expect on October 7, 2008.

Cliff said whenever "it" happens, and whatever "it" turns out to be, "it" will be a date in history you remember like 9/11, we will remember 10/7.

The Web Bots foresee that October 7, 2008 to February 19, 2009 will be filled with emotional intensity, and the length of the release period will be extraordinary. The Web Bots have never picked up any event lasting this long. In comparison, 9/11 length lasted about 10 days. This event will be four months of high emotion......."

Based upon the September 22nd interview on Coast to Coast radio with the Time Monks, here is an outline of what the Web Bots have uncovered for the following weeks, months and years:

The next year will get very ugly and will change your life worse than 9/11. It is important to understand the magnitude of the data. The sort of agony, grief, pain and rage that was felt the six days following 9/11 will be felt for five and a half months. From October 7th, 2008 until March of next year....

Will there be a total economic collapse?
Yes. 2009 will be a "year of transformation." The keyword "monumental" shows up as how the future will view our current situation. Time Monks describe this as an "epic situation"

How to prepare for what's coming?
The Time Monks say:

Have a plan in place to be as independent of the institutions of society as you can possibly get. Prepare for a situation in which you will have no water, food, electricity or heat. Have clothing for all seasons and EXTRA MEDICINE. Possibility of oil going up to $500 a barrel, also possible massive deflation from nobody buying anything. This is the kind of thing where the other nations on the planet will be so scared of whats going to happen in the U.S. that they will begin preparing, fearing that the U.S. will go crazy. This includes mobilizing military.

Try not to panic, we have a couple of weeks. You can not store enough to get you by indefinitely. A situation my arise in which you may need to move or be relocated. Time Monks do not advocate bank runs because money may become useless. Says longer term data "implies money is less intense part of society than it is now."

September 22nd - 27th - The Plateau of building tension.
On October 6th, 11:59 pm, the planet is going to go through a "period of release" following the traumatic event. The information will spread very quickly due to technology. The release language will start at the point of impact.

The event could be something such as a "false flag terror attack" in some part of the world, U.S. may not necessarily be at epi-center of said event. It could also be a "slow boil" event such as a bio-agent released. There are expected elements of a prequel that will set the stage for the event, between the dates of September 15th-September 27th.

Is this a self fulfilling prophecy?
Time Monks say this is possible.

Is there something worse looming?
"The situation is complex, not a single trigger. 45-58% economic, 40% military, the rest is terra activity."

Really big numbers popped up that are quite worrying. Somewhere between 2 to 22 million lives will be drastically effected by the event.

It is possible that a manufactured terror event will lead to terrible things. Possibility of martial law or military reaction to terror event, real or manufactured.

Is this inevitable?
Time Monks do not know. Cite the possibility that if enough people get the message it may be possible to hijack the future based upon knowing about "constant co-creation".

December 10th-12th, 2008 - China sized earthquake in Pacific NW.

In 2009 there will be a global coastal event.
This does not necessarily mean a tsunami. If you live around water it would be good to have a boat.

Are there other think tanks who are saying something similar not based on the same system?
"We know the Chinese are into this.": Similar language grabbing program with much larger chunks. Time Monks tracked these techniques back to a Chinese super computing center.

Are U.S. agencies using Web bots?
There seems to be a suggestion it's too "woo woo" for them. They have used remote viewing in the past, but it's not as accurate as what we're doing. The current thinking in the military and alphabet organizations is that they want massive databases. They are looking for social networking. They think in terms of if they can find one terrorist they can find the rest of network. The web bot is not based on this style of gathering information. Web bot looks for big stuff. It's like comparing binoculars to a microscope. Web bot looks for MASSIVE Change. Web bot is not a "microscope" like military program. Also, these groups (military and alphabet organizations) may not need web bot if they're creating what is going to happen. The Time Monks contacted the CIA to take a look at what they have found and submitted a brief. CIA said it's interesting but they're not interested.

Anything about Antarctica/Global Warming?
Antarctica is very important to the "powers that be". 13% of linguistics related to the "powers that be" concern Antarctica. Antarctica is big key to whatever is driving them.

Anything to do with the Hadron Collider?
Time Monks not worried about Hadron Collider. Data so far indicates that the scientists at CERN are performing a "juggling act and keep dropping oranges". Doesn't show up in linguistics as a driver in what's about to occur.

Do you believe extraterrestrials are real and/or play a role?
Within consciousness, there is a distinct consciousness that is not human.

Clear that there is something outside of the human realm that drives the "powers that be". There is "stuff" in the model space (of the web bot) that goes through the idea of "disappearances" beginning next year (relating to extraterrestrials). It's as if an inter-dimensional door opens up and people are sucked though the door and the door closes.

2009: Disappearance language gets more specific. Big changes. Some of the "powers that be" will disappear. "Powers that be" will be out and about with large groups of people with them and they will all disappear.
A lot of alien activity way off in the future.
Indications in language involving e.t.s (possible result of disinformation):

Alien wars are coming.

These alien events may or may not be real but people are acting as if they are real.

Things that Time Monks could not categorize/make sense of:
There is a device out and about in the world being chased down by the "powers that be".
Two whistle-blowers have a device in their hands and are on the run.

By just having the device they have created certain side effects that the "powers that be" couldn't have predicted. The Time Monks do not have a word for these devices. Relate it to a cave man trying to describe a modern gun.
Presidential Election
Won't be decided for some months past November. Won't make any difference to what's happening.

Religion
Religious component. Religion will change in December between 12th to the 15th. Evangelicals will have an "un-burdening", Evangelicals will feel some sort of "shame".

Big revolution coming against the "powers that be"

roll over and keep on counting sheeple

2008-09-19T16:23:00.006+01:00

are you awake or are you a sheeple?
within the conspiracy community, you're either one or the other.

but from what i have seen, there are as many again who simply wear the awake badge, and are really just talking in their sleep.

the "awakened" of this variety occupy some kind of idealogical and pseudo-spiritual high-ground which absolves them of having to participate in actioning REAL, rather than hypothetical, change.

more and more, the alleged "awakened" psychologically deconstruct the sleeping "sheeple" and target their so-called ignorance with fascist zeal. they wait patiently for the New World Order, actually looking forward to it, just so they can say "i told you so". the ignorant, it seems, deserve their inevitable destruction and enslavement.

which is a bit like condemning a caterpillar for not being able to fly.

being awake is not reading a few conspiracy theories and then sitting on the internet blaming other people for the state of the world.

being awake is realising your own divinity, and the divinity of everything, not developing a god-complex that condemns others. it's pure unenlightened ego that makes someone think they are in a position to judge another's worth and whether they deserve "suffering".

simply being aware that the world is not as it seems does not make you a good person, or any less responsible for the way things are than anyone else.
hatred is not enlightenment.

intellectual elitism is still herd following, it's still programmed behaviour, it's STILL people allowing themselves to be divided because of differences, rather than united by similarities. it's the most cunning deception of all; tumbling down the rabbit hole with the illusion of awareness and enlightenment, all the while trapped inside the same old grandiose, sociopathic brain.

it's the REPEATER programme for channel 2012.
~ali

Almost Human

2008-09-16T18:40:00.001+01:00

The Pathological nature of our "Leaders"

Good Bones?

2008-09-16T14:51:00.011+01:00

Size zero models are now apparently bypassing food altogether and staying alive via INTRAVENOUS DRIPS.

And yet, 15 million children die of starvation every year. World Health Organization figures state that TWO THIRDS of the worlds population are seriously under-fed or starving and that 200 people, globally, will have died since you started reading this.

What a world we live in. The layers of paradox are too hellish to contemplate. Within our privelidged well-fed third, the majority of the population are overweight, many more clinically obese. But on the cover of every magazine, "beauty" is represented as skin and bones. Beauty is literally as thin as you can get before there's nothing left.

Beauty is staring into the face of a grinning skull as the skeleton rises up beneath the skin.

As the rest of the world starves, our society is polarised by extremes of body fascism. We are so spiritually bereft that eating becomes a means of filling the void; we are told "you are what you eat" so many times that we become trapped in a perpetual state of body-identification where all we do is consume. we're hungry for meaning but, finding none, worship celebrities, the body, physicality, impermanence.

everywhere you look; fast food, organic, GM, diets, additives, low-fat, low-carb, high-protein, superfoods.... food is control, keeping you focussed on your body, making you think that your body is YOU, when in fact it is just the car your mind is driving.

identify with your body and there is nothing more to life than wondering what to have for tea, or what you're NOT going to have, because you are deliberately starving yourself. life will be better, somehow, if you either eat the whole packet of biscuits, or eat nothing at all.

~ali

Entheo:genesis - Awakening the divine within

2008-09-13T05:39:00.001+01:00

Entheo:genesis - Awakening the Divine Within is a feature length documentary which invites the viewer to rediscover an enchanted cosmos in the modern world by awakening to the divine within.

The film examines the re-emergence of archaic techniques of ecstacy in the modern world by weaving a synthesis of ecological and evolutionary awareness,electronic dance culture, and the current pharmacological re-evaluation of entheogenic compounds. Within a narrative framework that imagines consciousness itself to be evolving, Entheo:genesis documents the emergence of techno-shamanism in the post-modern world that frames the following questions: How can a renewal of ancient initiatory rites of passage alleviate our ecological crisis? What do trance dancing and festivals celebrating unbridled artistic expression speak to in our collective psyche? How do we re-invent ourselves in a disenchanted world from which God has long ago withdrawn? Entheo:genesis invites the viewer to consider that the answers to these questions lie within the consciousness of each and every human being, and are accessible if only we give ourselves permission to awaken to the divine within.

Stan Grof, Marilyn Schlitz, Ralph Metzner, Alex Grey, Terrence McKenna, John Markoff, Daniel Pinchbeck, and Kat Harrison among others, postulate how the disenchantment of the modern world may be remedied by summoning the courage to take the next leap in the evolution of planetary consciousness.

2012

2008-09-13T05:30:00.000+01:00

I Can Believe

2008-08-14T09:54:00.002+01:00

Video Illustration exploring the holographic nature of reality as presented by Michael Talbot in his book, "The Holographic Universe" using his comments recorded in a 1992 workshop. Additional insights contributed by fantasty writer Lewis Carroll (from Disney's 1952 animated movie adaptation), mythologist Joseph Campbell (from his interviews with Bill Moyers) and comedian Bill Hicks, (from his 1992 Oxford appearance).

100th Monkey syndrome & Morphic Resonance

2008-08-13T20:05:00.003+01:00

"In his book The Hundredth Monkey, Ken Keyes, Jr. wrote about scientists who had been observing monkeys in the wild for thirty years.

In 1952, on the island of Koshima, when there was a serious drought & famine, they provided monkeys with sweet potatoes which they had dropped in sand.

The monkeys liked the taste of the potatoes but found the sand unpleasant. One day, an eighteen month old monkey washed the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught the trick to her mother and her playmates, who taught it to their mothers.

As the story is told, perhaps 99 monkeys learned to wash their sweet potato between 1952 and 1958. One day the 100th monkey learned to wash the potatoes. Suddenly, almost every monkey on the island began to wash their potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this 100th monkey had somehow created a behavioral breakthrough.

But, more amazing, the scientists observed that the act of washing sweet potatoes had jumped over the sea, because the colonies of monkeys on other islands, as far as 500 miles away, began washing their sweet potatoes.

This phenomena is known as "critical mass." When a limited number of people know something in a new way, it remains the conscious property of only those people. However, there is a point at which if only one more person tunes in to a new awareness, that new awareness is picked up by everyone."

Nature As Alive:
Morphic Resonance and Collective Memory*
Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.d.

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ABSTRACT: Memory is inherent in Nature, and what we think of as the laws of Nature may be more like habits. The basis of this memory process is morphic resonance, which is the influence of like upon like through or across space or time. Its implication, in the realm of heredity, is that inheritance depends not only on the chemical genes coded in DNA but also on morphic resonance from past members of the species. Other implications are an accelerated rate of evolution of new patterns of form and behavior; memory in individuals being based on self-resonance and not stored in the brain; the existence of a collective memory, to which we all contribute and on which we all draw; and providing understanding of past-life memories, survival of bodily death, telepathy, and ritual.

This hypothesis is part of a wider change in paradigm in which all of Nature, the entire cosmos, is viewed as being alive. This new sense of the life of Nature connects with the morphic resonance idea in the idea of the memory of place, or field, exemplified by the sense of places both haunted and sacred, which is the basis of such human activities as pilgrimage. Regardless of the ultimate validity of morphic resonance, a return to the sense and idea of Nature as alive and animate is absolutely essential to coming into a better relationship with the environment, on which we depend, and therefore is probably essential for our very survival.

Memory Inherent in Nature
I suggest that there is a memory inherent in Nature and that what we usually think of as the laws of Nature may be more like habits.

I will give an example. When you make a new chemical compound, the first time it crystallizes it is usually assumed that the crystal form, the lattice structure, is completely determined in advance by the laws of Nature, electromagnetic laws, Schrodinger's equation, the laws of thermodynamics, and so on. It is assumed that these laws fully determine the crystal's structure. Therefore the way a crystal forms the first time, the thousandth time, or the millionth time should be exactly the same, because the laws of Nature never change and they are not themselves influenced by the events they determine.

This is the standard view. By contrast I suggest that the first time a compound forms there will not already be a habit developed for its structure. It may actually take a long time for that to happen. Still, the second time it forms there will be an influence on it from the first time it formed by a process I call morphic resonance. The third time there will be an influence from the first and second times, and so on. These events contribute to a cumulative memory, which is expressed all around the world. So the new compound should become easier to crystallize as time goes on, all around the world. A memory, a habit, is building up.

In fact new chemicals do generally get easier to crystallize around the world as time goes on. And chemists usually explain this, not in terms of rigorous theories, but in anecdotes which are part of the folklore of chemistry. The most common anecdote is that this happens because fragments of previous crystals get carried from lab to lab on the beards of migrant chemists. Another explanation that is heard is that fragments of crystals get wafted around the world in the atmosphere.

Obviously, I am suggesting that this increased rate of crystallization happens even without migrating chemists and even if dust particles have been filtered from the laboratory air. So, the formation of crystals is one example of the buildup of habits in Nature, which we mistakenly assign the status of laws.

The Present Crisis in Science
This idea of a memory inherent in Nature is obviously a very radical, controversial, and unconventional view. The reason I think we need to consider it seriously is that science is at present in crisis because two of its most fundamental models of reality have come into conflict with each other.

The Model of Eternal Laws

The first model is the idea of eternity: nothing really changes. This model has dominated the physical sciences for a very long time, beginning in ancient Greece with the Pythagorean who thought that the realm of mathematics—the realm of number and proportion—was an eternal truth and that the changing world we live in was a reflection of that eternal order. Plato incorporated these ideas into his well-known philosophy of eternal forms or Ideas. And with the revival of Platonism in the European Renaissance, these Platonic forms or Ideas were built into the foundations of modern science.

In Christian Neo-Platonism, as formulated by Saint Augustine, the eternal Platonic forms were ideas in the mind of God. And for the founding fathers of modern science—Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, DesCartes, and others—science was about finding out the eternal mathematical truths which were these ideas in the mind of God. God begins to be conceived as an ultimate mathematician, and this is a perennially popular idea with mathematicians even to this day.

So the idea that the laws of Nature are eternal has a strong theological and metaphysical background. Most scientists do not actually discuss it; it is simply taken for granted, built into the foundations of the scientific method as we know it. The idea that any experiment should be repeatable anywhere, at any time, follows from this idea, as the practical application of it. The reason scientific experiments are supposed to be repeatable at any time is because the laws of Nature are supposed to be the same at all times and in all places.

Of course, these laws are not things you actually meet or encounter. You do not see E=MC2 written in the sky. You do not find it under stones. These are things that are abstract ideas. They are not made of energy or matter; they are not part of the physical universe in fact. They are part of a cosmic dualism built into mechanistic science since the Seventeenth Century: on the one side, eternal laws; governing eternal matter and energy on the other.

This way of thinking is deeply imbedded in the mentality of scientists. It is one of the most fundamental paradigms or models of Western science.

The Model of Evolution

The other fundamental assumption of Western science is the model of evolution, which is the idea that everything changes and develops in time. This one came to us not from the Greek but from the Jewish part of our cultural heritage.

Unlike most ancient peoples, the Jews believed that the historical process involved a development in time. Most ancient peoples, like the Greeks, the Hindus, and the Buddhists, believed that time was essentially cyclical. Things just repeated in cycles . . . including great cycles of cosmic repetition. But the Jews emphasized the nature of the historical process as a journey—the prototypic journey being the journey of the Jews out of Egypt through the wilderness and to the promised land. And in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature this promised land became the Millennium, the kingdom of God, the time in the future when history would end.

This idea was subsequently secularized in the Seventeenth Century and gave rise to the idea of progress through science and technology. And it is of course the same idea that underlies systems as diverse as Marxism and the New-Age movement. In Marxism it is thought there is an evolution to an end of history when the state withers away. Well, Marxist states have withered away, but history has not ended. And the entire New-Age movement is another way of thinking of history leading to some kind of new culmination.

Anyway, these originally Jewish ideas of change and development in time led to the idea of human progress. By the end of the Eighteenth Century, most people agreed that human beings progressed and society progressed, but the rest of Nature was still thought to be static. By the middle of the Nineteenth Century, the idea of biological evolution was gaining ground. Darwin's theory was generalized so that human development was seen as part of a much larger process of biological development, biological evolution. Some philosophers began to suggest that maybe the whole cosmos evolves.

However, the physicists quickly contradicted them. They said the cosmos was not evolving, that it was an eternal machine that is in fact devolving—slowly running out of steam, heading toward a thermodynamic heat death. So it was generally held that the cosmos is going downhill whereas evolution on earth was a progressive development, a kind of momentary fluctuation in a universe headed nowhere.

It was not until the 1960s that physics finally adopted an evolutionary cosmology. This occurred with the introduction of the Big-Bang theory—the idea that the cosmos started small and has been growing ever since. With its corollary that the cosmos is continually forming new patterns and forms within it as it grows, the Big-Bang theory gives us a model of the cosmos that's far more like a developing organism than like any machine we know of. So we now have an evolutionary cosmology. All Nature is evolving. Human development is in the context of biological evolution. Biological evolution is part of a vastly greater evolutionary process, cosmic evolution.

Evolving Laws of Nature

It follows that until the 1960s the question I am raising did not come up. If the universe was eternal, the idea of eternal laws of Nature made sense. But if Nature were evolving, why should the laws of Nature not evolve as well? Why should we think of the universe as governed by a cosmic Napoleonic code which was fixed at the outset rather than being governed by evolving principles. As a matter of fact, as soon as you begin to think about laws of Nature you realize that this is an extremely anthropocentric concept. In the Seventeenth Century the image was clear. God was lord of the universe, and His laws applied to everything. Not only did He make up the laws, but He was omnipotent and provided the role of the all-powerful law-enforcement agency.

However most scientists no longer bring God into their thinking. And if, from a scientific point of view, we no longer think of God as a cosmic legislator, then why should we think of laws of Nature at all? As the English writer C. S. Lewis said, "To say that a stone falls to earth because it is obeying a law makes it a man and even a citizen." So this concept of law is intensely anthropocentric. And I think it is much better to change our metaphor than to continue this. The metaphor I suggest instead is habit.

Things may have the regularity they do and Nature may have its patterns of regularity because of habits that build up within Nature according to what has already happened and according to how often it has happened. Furthermore, habits are subject to natural selection. They can evolve. Only successful patterns of activity are capable of being repeated, and only the ones that are repeated become habits.

Morphic Resonance and Morphic Fields
Obviously, if there are habits in Nature, then there must be a memory in Nature. Our own habits depend on memory, largely unconscious memory. There is no need to assume the habits of Nature are any more conscious than our own. So what I am suggesting is an inherent memory process in Nature. The basis of it is the process I call morphic resonance.

Morphic resonance is the influence of like upon like through or across space and time. Similar things resonate with subsequent similar things on the basis of similarity of pattern and, particularly, of vibratory patterns of activity. A chemical of a given kind resonates with previous chemicals of that kind and is influenced by it. A member of a given species, like a giraffe, is subject to morphic resonance from previous giraffes. Each giraffe draws upon a collective memory of the species and in turn contributes to it. Each organism, I propose, is organized by a morphic field, morphic from the Greek word meaning form: morphi.

The morphic field is the organizing field of a system. Each crystal has its own kind of morphic field; each species has its own kind of morphic field. Then, say, within the body, each organ has a morphic field, each tissue, each cell, each kind of organelle, each molecule. There are nested hierarchies of fields within fields. The whole of Nature is built up of systems within systems: solar systems within galaxies, the Earth within the solar system, ecosystems within the Earth, and so on. Each of these, I suggest, has a morphic field which organizes it in accordance with habit, in accordance with the habits of that kind of thing.

Things that have been around for hundreds of millions of years—hydrogen atoms, for example, or salt crystals—have habits that are so repetitive that they become effectively fixed. They behave as if they are governed by eternal laws.

Therefore where we see the difference between the conventional theory and the one I am putting forward is when we look at new systems, new patterns of behavior, new patterns of activity. There, according to morphic resonance theory, it should be possible to see new habits building up, and this should be testable by experiment.

Testing Collective Memory

I have already mentioned a possible test with crystals. But the same theory applies in animal behavior, in biological morphogenesis, the development of form, and in many other areas. For example, the theory predicts that if you train rats in a new trick in Prague, then rats all around the world should learn the same thing quicker just because the rats have learned it in Prague.

Now, there is already evidence from studies done on rats in laboratories that this kind of effect actually happens. I have summarized this evidence in my books, A New Science of Life and The Presence of the Past. In fact, it is surprising how much evidence there already is for this principle.

The hypothesis also applies to human beings. It should be getting easier for children to solve or play video games of a particular kind just because so many have learned them . . . or for people to learn new sports, new skills like windsurfing. In the human realm I am suggesting that what we learn is facilitated by morphic resonance from all those who have learned it before.

This is the area where the theory has been tested most extensively. Some of the first experiments were done in response to an international competition organized by the Tarrytown group in New York, sponsored by Bob Schwartz. The Tarrytown group offered prizes—twenty-thousand dollars in prizes—for the best tests of the morphic resonance theory, which could either support or go against it. The results were very interesting. There were some very good experiments done in human psychology; these are summarized in my book, The Presence of the Past.

This effort was preceded by a competition in the British magazine, Scientist, which offered a more modest prize for suggestions of inexpensive ways of testing the theory. One of the things that has happened as a result is that I have been led to see that really interesting research can very often be done on very small budgets. With an idea as radical as this, that is a very convenient finding, because as you can imagine it is difficult to get conventional grant giving agencies to fund this kind of research. But if it is so cheap that anyone can do it, you do not need funding. Some of the most interesting experiments have actually been done by students. Research in morphic resonance is now going on at universities in Europe, in New Zealand, and in America.

Space does not allow summarizing all the work that is happening at present. I will just mention one experiment done recently. It is not, in fact, the best experiment, but it is the easiest to explain. This was done with crossword puzzles in the psychology department at Nottingham University. The young woman who did it, Monica England, reasoned as follows: If morphic resonance is happening, it should be easier to do today's newspaper crossword puzzle tomorrow than it would have been yesterday.

So we managed to persuade a London newspaper, The Evening Standard, to supply its crossword puzzle in advance for the purpose of this experiment. Students were tested in Nottingham the day before and the day after the crossword was published in London. They were also tested with a control crossword which was not published during that period. This of course involved testing different groups of students before and after. The control crossword gave a measure of each individual's ability to do crossword puzzles of that kind.

It turned out that students' performances on the test crossword did indeed improve by about 25 percent after it had been published, compared with the control crossword. This result is statistically significant and is, of course, very interesting.

Several other experiments have subsequently been done through the media, including magazines. Previous experiments have been done in Britain on television—the results of these are summarized in the Appendix to the new edition of A New Science of Life. Other tests are under way. Obviously this is an area where if the hypothesis is supported by evidence, as it seems to be so far, it could lead quite soon to applications in the realm of training and education. For if we could facilitate, if we could improve the way that we tune into the experience of others through morphic resonance, we could learn things quicker.

Implications of Shared Memory

Heredity and Genetics

This hypothesis has a great many implications. In the realm of heredity it suggests that inheritance depends not only on the chemical genes coded in DNA but also on morphic resonance from past members of the species. In fact, I think that chemical genes have been grossly overrated and that what they actually do is what we know they do, that is, code for the sequence of minor acids in protein. They give organisms their chemical heredity. They are able to make particular chemicals. But the way those chemicals are organized, the form they take up, and the way organisms behave—all that I believe is primarily controlled through morphic fields and morphic resonance.

So heredity involves both genetic changes and morphic resonance. If you think of the rat example I mentioned—rats learning things quicker in London after rats have learned them in Prague—there is no need of change in the DNA of the rats here or the rats there. The rats tune in on the basis of their chemical similarity, but what they pick up doesn't depend on genetic change.

Evolution

This also gives us a new view of evolution, because it allows new patterns of form and behavior to spread much more quickly than they could on the basis of conventional, neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory based on random genetic mutation followed by generations of natural selection. Rats learning a new trick in one place could enable rats elsewhere to learn it much quicker, within days; it would not take many generations of natural selection.

In the human realm this, of course, has many interesting implications for change. It suggests that new ideas and new attitudes spread much more quickly than they might otherwise. Over and above the influence of the media and so on, morphic resonance enables these new things to spread much more quickly and effectively.

In the realm of evolution there are some examples that suggest this really happens. The best known of them concerns the behavior of certain birds, blue tits, in stealing cream from milk bottles. In England at the beginning of this century a system of milk delivery began where people had bottles of milk delivered to their doorsteps. After about twenty years in one city, Southhampton, blue tits started tearing off the tops of the milk bottles and drinking the cream from the bottle. This was a very successful habit. It spread by imitation throughout the whole city, and usually it worked very well. There were a few tragic cases where blue tits were found drowned, headfirst, in people's milk bottles, but most of these birds got a free breakfast. After a while this turned up in another city far away. The rate at which the habit spread throughout Britain was carefully monitored by observers all over the country.

Now, blue tits are home-loving birds. They move very short distances from their homes, so at the time it was concluded that the habit was being independently discovered again and again in different parts of the country. Yet the rate of discovery was accelerating. The professor of Zoology at Oxford, Sir Alistair Hardy, suggested this was so remarkable that it perhaps depended on telepathy. I would say, however, this is exactly the kind of effect you would expect with morphic resonance in evolution.

The most interesting developments actually came from Holland. After British blue tits had started stealing milk, Continental ones began doing it, too. And in Holland the habit spread as it had in England, until by the time of the Second World War, all over Holland blue tits were stealing milk. Then unfortunately for the Dutch blue tits, the Germans invaded and milk delivery stopped. It was not until 1948 that deliveries began again. But blue tits do not live more than three or four years, so there could have been no blue tits around in 1948 that remembered the golden age of free cream before the war. Nevertheless the habit reestablished itself all over Holland within two or three years.

So this is the kind of effect we would expect with morphic resonance. There are not many examples where people have studied behavioral evolution in animals; but this is one of the few well-documented cases, and it fits very well with the ideas I am suggesting here.

Memory

Another area where this hypothesis has many implications is in the realm of memory. Morphic resonance depends on similarity. The more similar something is to something that has happened before, the more effective, the stronger the resonance will be. It is a general principle that organisms in general are most like themselves in the past. I am more like me half an hour ago than like you. I am more like me ten years ago than like you ten years ago. In general the most specific morphic resonance acting on an organism from the past will be from its own past states. Thus, self-resonance is the predominant kind of morphic resonance.

In the realm of form, this self-resonance enables organisms to retain their form through the stabilizing of the morphic field even though the chemicals and the cells within the body may be changing over time. In the realm of behavior it enables organisms to tune in to their own past patterns of activity. If I get into a car, for example, and start driving it, then I come into morphic resonance, through similarity of the condition and of my activities, with all the previous times I have driven cars. There is a kind of habit memory that is transmitted through morphic resonance.

I think the same also applies to remembering events or acts. If I remember the last time I came to Prague, which was in 1971, that memory is also accessed in the same way, suggesting that these memories depend on morphic resonance, on tuning-in to ourselves in the past. We are the transmitters in the past. Morphic resonance moves through time; the tuning-in involves a resonance through time with ourselves in the past.

In other words I am suggesting it is not necessary for memories to be stored inside the brain. I am not ruling out the possibility that this can happen. Tony Soipler from Saint Petersburg, for example, has developed a kind of hybrid theory of memory bringing together a conventional molecular basis of memory and morphic resonance. That is possible. But what I am suggesting at the moment for purposes of clarity is the most extreme form of morphic resonance: that memory depends on morphic resonance through tuning-in to the activities of the brain in the past, but it is not necessary for your brains to store memories as traces.

This may be difficult to imagine because we have all been brought up with the idea that memories are stored inside the brain as memory traces. This just shows how much we are influenced by the dominant paradigms of science. This is very much part of the materialistic, mechanistic theory of the mind. From this outmoded view, the mind is just an aspect of the brain. We have memories, therefore they must be in the brain. This is taken for granted by a great many people. Many people, who have never studied science at all, take it for granted as an act of faith.

Yet it is not something borne out by a great deal of evidence. In fact throughout this century many scientists have looked at brains to try to find memories in them, to find localized memory traces, and they have failed repeatedly to find them. The evidence for memory storage in the brain is, if anything, weaker than it was fifty years ago, through repeated failures where millions of animals were sacrificed on the altar of science and vast amounts of money spent in research.

This failure to find localized memory traces is what led Karl Lashley, the great investigator of memory, at the end of his career to despair of finding it. He said, "Memory ought to be impossible, yet it happens." Someone else who worked in this field, Boycott, said, "Memory seems to be both everywhere and nowhere in particular in the brain." And this is the context in which Karl Pribram (1971) put forward his well known holographic theory of memory storage to account for the failure to find localized memory traces.

Well, I am suggesting that memory may well be holographic in the general sense of David Bohm's (1980) implicate order theory. It may not be present in the brain as memory traces at all. If I came to your house and analyzed the wires and transistors of your television set to try to find out what programs you had been watching last week, I would not be able to find any traces of them. That is because the television does not leave traces. What you tune into goes through the set. It is not stored within it. And I am suggesting the brain might be more like a TV receiver than like a video recorder.

Now, you may wonder, why is it then if we have accidents, brain damage, there can be loss of memory. This is not difficult to understand. Think again of the TV set. If I came and cut out bits of your TV set in the sound circuit, the TV set could no longer produce sound, but it could still give pictures. In other words you would have an aphasic TV set. This would not prove that all the sounds, the music, or the voices rose inside the bit of the set that was damaged. It would merely show that part was important for the reception of the information that was coming from somewhere else. Likewise, brain damage leading to loss of memory does not prove that memories are stored inside the damaged brain. It simply shows that those bits of the brain play some role in the recovery or the tuning-in to the memories.

Collective Memory
If we tune into our own memories, why do we not tune-in to other people's? Well of course, I think we do. The whole basis of this theory is that we tune into the memories of many other people, that there is a collective memory on which we all draw. This is something that many people are already familiar with from Jung's theory of the collective unconscious. From the point of view of morphic resonance, if the collective unconscious did not exist as a theory it would have to be invented, because it fits very well with this way of thinking.

However, Jung was suggesting the collective unconscious only in the human realm. I am suggesting that this is part of a much more general process throughout all Nature.

From a conventional, scientific point of view, a mechanistic point of view, Jung's theory does not make sense. And it is not taken seriously by most scientists. It is regarded as a flaky, marginal theory, which might appeal to people with literary educations but not to anyone with a proper scientific way of thinking. Of course it is of great value in many forms of psychotherapy and is one of the important ingredients in transpersonal psychology. However, from the point of view of morphic resonance Jung's theory becomes absolutely central, no longer on the margins of scientific psychology. It becomes absolutely central to an understanding of the human mind. Collective memory is an important ingredient of what we are.

Past-Life Memories

This also leads to several other rather surprising implications. One is that if we tune into lots of people in the past, occasionally we could tune into particular people in the past who are now dead and through morphic resonance pick up memories of past lives.

On this note, there is quite good evidence from the work of Professor Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia that some young children remember incidents from previous lives. They have memories which can not be explained normally and which seem to be valid when checked up on. There is also some evidence, which I think is less reliable, from hypnotic regression of past-life memories.

Usually this evidence produces a polarized response: on one side, a lot of people, usually dogmatic mechanists, say this is impossible therefore the evidence is wrong. We can not explain it, therefore it can not happen. That is one reaction I am sure everyone is familiar with. On the other side are people who say this is reincarnation, which is exactly what we believe anyway. But I am suggesting a middle path. It is possible to accept this evidence for past-life memories in terms of people tuning-in to people in the past, but it does not necessarily prove that you were that person. That is another question. It leaves that question open.

Survival After Death

This question of memory has many other implications. It has a great relevance to all religious theories of survival. All religions that I know of suggest that there is some form of bodily survival of death, some kind of personal survival—either in some shadowy ancestor realm or underworld; or through reincarnation or rebirth; or as in the Judaic, Christian, or Islamic traditions, through some kind of after-life. None of these theories would make sense if memories are stored in the brain, because obviously when the brain decays, all memories would be obliterated. Materialists like the idea of memory storage in the brain—not because it is strongly supported by evidence, it is not—but because it is such a simple and convenient argument which can be used to refute almost all religions. If memory is in the brain, the brain decays at death and that is the end. It would not make much sense if you arrive at the Last Judgment, for example, and you have totally forgotten who you are and what you have done.

However, if memories are not stored inside the brain, then the question of survival of bodily death is left open. This is one of those areas where changing the boundaries of science changes the boundaries between science and religion.

Telepathy

Indeed this change in perspective shifts the boundaries between the so-called normal and the paranormal as well. In a world in which morphic resonance occurs, telepathy also ceases to be shocking. You could even see where some people could say to me, "Well what's so new about morphic resonance? Isn't this just telepathy?" However, from a scientific point of view that would not be quite accurate. I think morphic resonance may be very akin to telepathy, but morphic resonance is a more general principle. We would not, for example, speak of a crystal influencing another crystal by telepathy, which means thought transference. Still, in a world with morphic resonance, telepathy would cease to be a shocking, paranormal phenomenon. It would seem quite normal. This is another one of the reasons why my hypothesis is so controversial.

Ritual

This hypothesis has many other implications. We can think of societies as governed by morphic fields, and I go into this in some detail in my book, The Presence of the Past. Here I will simply mention one implication, which has to do with ritual. All societies have rituals, and rituals are patterns of activity which are done usually in order to recall or relate to some previous event. The Jewish Passover Festival, for example, is a re-creation of the original Passover dinner, which Jewish people have celebrated every year since then. The Christian Holy Communion is another example like this, and so is the American national ritual of the Thanksgiving dinner.

In rituals people deliberately do things in as similar a way as possible to the way they were done before: the same words, the same language. In Hindu ceremonies, for example, the Sanskrit language, their ancient language, is used. There exists a great conservatism of ritual language; the same smells, the same places, the same gestures, the same food, and so on, are employed. I think that through ritual people are deliberately re-creating a particular pattern of activity, consciously re-creating this pattern of activity, in order to connect with those who have done it before. Through ritual, people claim there is a presence of the past, that the past becomes present to those participating in the ritual, that there is a kind of collapse in time. In the Christian Holy Communion, for example, it is believed there is a presence of the original Last Supper in the spirit of Christ and also of all those who have partaken of this ritual since—the Communion of Saints.

These kinds of ideas are found all around the world in all societies. From the point of view of conventional rationalism, this is just another example of meaningless mumbo-jumbo and superstition; but from the point of view of morphic resonance, these ideas make perfect sense because the conservatism of rituals creates exactly the right conditions for a morphic resonance between the present participants and those who have done it before. There really would be some kind of influence through time brought about by the ritual, which is exactly what those who do the rituals believe they are doing.

Nature As Alive
This hypothesis is part of a wider change in paradigm that is going on, which I summarized in my most recent book, The Rebirth of Nature, the idea of Nature as alive. This idea is not only that of the Earth being alive, as Gaia, but of the entire cosmos as alive, akin to a developing organism. Through science the mechanistic theory of Nature is being transcended. Science is returning us, I believe, to a new sense of the life of Nature.

Memory of Place, Field

To summarize one way where this new sense of the life of Nature connects with the morphic resonance idea, I wish to introduce the idea of the memory of places. All traditions have ways of thinking about the quality of place. Each place has its own kind of quality or character. The Romans spoke of the genius loci (spirit of the place). We all know that different places have different feelings or atmospheres; but there is nothing in mechanistic science, with its universalistic laws, that enables us to understand this very well. In terms of morphic resonance theory, however, I think it is possible to think of places as having fields. Places can have morphic fields, and morphic fields can have an inherent memory through self-resonance.

Upon my first thinking of morphic fields this way I thought, thinking of the fields of places is going too far. It is taking the concept beyond its legitimate limits. Then I realized that the concept of fields in the first place comes from placed bits of land in the countryside with hedges around them. The field concept was introduced into science by Farraday who borrowed it from the ordinary English usage of the word field—the primary use of which is agricultural. It has to do with a region of land. The most general definition of field is a region of influence, a region of activity.

So thinking of the fields of places on the one hand makes it easy to understand traditions of geomancy, which are ways of understanding the relations of different parts of a place in terms of its field. It also enables us to think in terms of the memory of places. The place itself can have a memory. There can also be a memory through going to a place. You are in the same environment other people have been in before so you can tune into the collective memory of other people in that place. Therefore there are two senses in which places can have memories: through the human collective experience in that place and through the memory in the place itself.

Now, this concept makes a lot of sense of beliefs found all over the world. For example, it is believed in most parts of the world that certain places are haunted, that there are ghosts or spirits in those places because of bad things that have happened there in the past. Ghosts are a kind of memory, if you like, of what has happened there. It is also believed that certain places can have a positive effect through what has happened there. These are holy places, where great men or women have been born or enlightened, or where many people have prayed, as in the great cathedrals of Europe, the great temples of Asia, and so on.

Pilgrimage

And these sacred places are traditionally, all around the world, places of pilgrimage. The Australian Aborigines with their song lines, the American Indians with their power places, the medieval Europeans with their great networks of pilgrimage all over Europe—all were relating to the spirit of places through a basic human tendency, this tendency to go on pilgrimage to places of power because of the memory and the power in that place.

Almost the only societies where pilgrimage has not happened are the Protestant societies of northern Europe. Pilgrimage was suppressed in the Protestant Reformation in England and elsewhere because it was identified as being essentially pagan by the reformers. I think they were right to see it as pagan in its roots. However, they were wrong to see it as something contrary to the spirit of religion. And I think that this suppression of pilgrimage has a great relevance to us today. Pilgrimage is such a basic instinct, it could not be suppressed for long. And within a few generations the English had invented tourism.

Tourism

Tourism is best understood as a form of secularized pilgrimage. Tourists, you see, go to the great sacred places of the past, the cathedrals, the temples, the holy mountain, the pyramids, Stonehenge, and so on. But because they are modern people who think they have risen above superstition and that kind of thing—because they are rational, educated and modern—they are alienated from the places they go to. They can not kneel down and say a prayer, or light a candle in a cathedral. They can not do a puja in a Hindu temple. They can not invoke the gods or the goddesses, or the patron saints of the place, because that would be superstitious. So instead they have to pretend they are going to these places for educational reasons and are primarily interested in some figures about the place.

Well, this is a profoundly ambiguous activity. If they really did not feel anything about the power of the place, they would stay at home. Yet people are drawn to these places. In fact in England we call them "tourist attractions," and people come there because of the power of the place. When they arrive, they can not relate to the place adequately because the mechanistic theory of Nature first of all treats Nature as entirely lacking in any sacred power. There is nothing sacred in a mechanical world. Second, there is nothing animate. It is seen as some primitive animism to relate to places in this way.

If we recover instead a sense of the life of Nature, the life of the Earth, we can see that we can recover this sense not only theoretically, as I have been describing in this article, we can also recover it through a variety of actual practices. What follows is just one of the ways that we can recover a sense of the sacredness of the Earth. I suggest that one of the paradigm shifts that could make a big difference in the way we relate to the Earth is a very simple one—the shift from tourism to pilgrimage. If only a small percentage of the tourists would go as pilgrims, then the whole world would be linked up by networks of pilgrimage encompassing the sacred places of each country in the world. Already people are going there; already the infrastructure is in place to get people there. I believe that this would be one of the ways that this new paradigm, this new spirit, could be expressed in practice in our own lives.

Recovering Nature's Aliveness Essential For Our Survival

These ideas, you see, are part of a more general move, as I mentioned, towards a recovery of the sense of our life in a living world—Nature as alive. The morphic resonance idea as a scientific hypothesis has to be tested by the methods of science, but it is part of a more general movement of the recovery of the sense of the life of Nature. Regardless of whether morphic resonance turns out to be right or wrong, I believe that this sense of the life of Nature is absolutely essential for coming into a better relationship with the environment, on which we depend. In fact I think these changes in ideas are probably essential for our very survival.

Choose Life

2008-08-13T17:17:00.007+01:00

choose life. choose awakening. choose rejecting your programming. choose opening your mind. choose questioning every distorted version of reality you are spoon-fed by the media, choose awareness that you are manipulated into demanding solutions to problems that do not exist, serving an agenda you do not understand, and that you are a human battery in the farm of fear.

choose not to walk through life like the living dead, dumb and unaware, accepting every injustice, every war, every crime against your fellow man, fulfilling your fate as the powerless drone society has conditioned you to be, choose to take control, to say no, choose to speak and be heard. choose love. choose not to honour those who pursue a career in death, who are paid to kill, who sell their souls to the system, whose brains are washed by the blood and tears of the people they destroy, who obey without question.

choose to reject the insane heirarchy that decrees that others have dominion over you by accident of birth, choose to reject the idea that your worth as a human being is measured by what you possess, choose to be free rather than another mindless consumer running on the eternal hamster wheel of materialism. choose not to be a number, a bar-coded, microchipped member of the herd, spending your life inside a box, watching a box.

choose your future, choose life.
~ali

The World According to Monsanto....

2008-08-13T15:09:00.001+01:00

The gigantic biotech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years.

Rik Clay

2008-08-06T10:16:00.002+01:00

Absolutely amazing interview!

Police State UK

2008-07-30T11:19:00.001+01:00

An over-view of how the "anti-terror" agenda is being used as a conduit to reduce civil liberties and implement a police state

Esoteric Agenda

2008-07-29T10:12:00.002+01:00

Documentary illustrating the myth of prison religions, the use of aspartame and fluoride to lower IQ and the implementation of agenda 21 and codex alimentarius to reduce global population.

Repeaters ( a short story )

2008-07-23T21:20:00.008+01:00

after 2012 came and went, he was disappointed. nothing much happened. he turned on the tv and it was still the same old war, life was still the same old gameshow with slightly different actors repeating the same old lines.

he sat on the morning train and looked at peoples faces and they seemed as asleep as ever. their eyes were open but they didn't seem alive. he listened to them speak and they all sounded like robots, programmed with the same story, the same 2.2 beta version of interaction. he started to make notes. he studied them.

at night, when he had removed his rather expensive striped silk noose and hung it on the back of the door next to his suit jacket, he would examine his notebook, read the snippets of conversation he had overheard and recorded.

the first thing he noticed was that people liked to talk about what they had seen on tv. they would speak so fondly of people who didn't exist, as if they were real. they would analyze every pretend situation and give their verdict as if it were a matter of life and death. this, he soon realised, was the only time people ever really seemed to come alive, when they were talking about these imaginary worlds and these imaginary places and these imaginary people.

alot of the time, people would repeat things they had read in a magazine or a newspaper. he heard the same story over and over again, like a pointless, stupid echo. even peoples lives seemed the same. every day a different face beside him on the train would recount the similar tale of the day before, meaningless anecdotes detailing some random child, or some random boyfriend, or some random car/holiday/house they had bought. it was like listening to the drone of a million and one ants, the pulse of the hive mind sweeping them from day to identical day.

he didn't know what to make of it all. he put on his tv and on every channel, people were dressing in the same clothes, trying to copy each other, people were going to plastic surgeons and demanding they be changed to look the same as someone else. people were all driving the same car, drinking the same cola, smoking the same cigarettes. they were all giving their children the same few names, all parting their hair in the same direction, all listening to the same music, all dying of the same diseases.

and he looked up from his notebook, and stared at the tie hanging on the back of the door. even that was the same. the same three diagonal stripes. and he looked at his shoes, and he thought, impossible! those were the same shoes a million other tired feet had worn before him.

and he got out his wallet and looked at his identity card. that grey, shocked, badly lit face didn't look anything like him. that name, printed underneath, that didn't capture the essence of who he was. how could it? he started to repeat his own name, over and over. it just sounded like noise, not like real words. it sounded no different to the squeak of a monkey in a zoo, or the squeak of any monkey, anywhere.

his ape heart beat furiously and he needed air.

he went outside and looked around. there was still enough light to see, so he lit a cigarette and started paying attention. he sat cross legged on the lawn, which he had trimmed to the same length as everyone else in his street, and looked at the grass. the more he looked, the more he noticed how no two blades were the same. they weren't even close.

he looked at the sky, at the clouds, and there was no symmetry. he went to bed feeling very confused.

the next morning on the train, he didn't make any notes, he just looked. he looked at the sea of faces in the same way he had looked at the grass but nothing stood out. it was just the same bland face over and over again, like some kind of repeating hologram.

some of the faces were male, and some were female, and some were old and some were fat and some were incredibly ugly, but when it came down to it it was just the same old face, repeating forever, a self-replicating fractal of identical skulls, to infinity. their lips moved and their eyes opened and closed but the more he looked, the more he could see that they were like animations in a perpetual loop. they never thought anything new, or expressed an opinion that was entirely their own, they were all stuck in one monotone vinyl groove, repeating themselves forever.

and he watched them disconnecting from the world, plugging themselves into music players so they wouldn't have to listen, texting each other so they wouldn't have to speak, and he thought, what the hell is this?

whenever one of them approached him at the water-cooler now, he didn't know what to say. he would just stare at their lips and hope he looked like he was listening. he lost all interest in girls, because eventually, no matter how pretty or different she appeared at first, all he could see was the dull grey face of his boss, writhing beneath him, and he would have to makes his apologies and leave.

he began to find he couldn't tell people apart anymore. his own face in the mirror every morning was the only thing that seemed real. all around him were programmed people following sub-routines he no longer understood. they went to work and came home and watched tv and went to sleep, then got up and went to work again, over and over again, as if they were sleep-walking, as if they had never fully been awake.

he was pretty sure he was awake. he turned the lights on and off in his room every now and then, because he was sure he had read that in dreams, this was impossible. he couldn't remember why.

he got out his notebooks again, tried to find an answer, or at least some meaning, anything. but it made no sense, and he cried with frustration.

and suddenly he remembered being a child, knocking on peoples doors and running away, scrambling behind the nearest bush and having to choke back laughter as a confused face would appear, staring blankly at their empty doorstep, looking this way and that, shaking their heads silently and going back inside.

he put on his trainers and went into the street. he knocked on his neighbours door. noone came. so he tried the next, and the next, and the next. he didn't bother running away. he knocked more and more furiously, shouting hello. he peered through windows. in each house, people were huddled around their tvs, while cold plasma light streamed the same images onto their empty eyeballs. in each house, people just sat and stared, barely noticing each other, or his face, pressed against the glass.

he went home and closed the door. this had to be a dream. a dream within a dream, with no waking. he got into bed and closed his eyes.

and as he slept, the meat robots did not once break their gaze, did not lift their hollow eyes from the screen. they watched every second of his dreaming. the last free human, his soul just a film, his mind their entertainment.

and they sat around, plugged directly in, chasing every last synaptic wave, every last abstract, confused, hyper-real thought, absorbing every memory, until all that was left was a tiny spark, feeding them with liquid light, and he was just a spot, fading into darkness on the screen.

~ali

Waking Life

2008-07-23T14:13:00.003+01:00

A man shuffles through a dream meeting various people and discussing the meanings and purposes of the universe... Amazing animated film that looks into the meaning of life, reality and human consciousness.

atheism

2008-07-19T20:00:00.006+01:00

my god. if i could really be bothered to disentangle my webcam from the veritable rats nest of wires lurking behind my desk, i would create some kind of response.

as it is, i can say only this. if you're an atheist, how are you different from a rock? how are you any more meaningful than a potato?

you're a victim of nihilistic programming. i don't believe in a hellfire and brimstone deity, but "atheism" is more than simply denying an affiliation with a God. it's a rejection of your spirituality as a sentient being... whatever your worldview, to deny that the energy that makes you slightly more animated than a corpse exists is a rejection of life itself. by proxy, that energy must have intelligence, sentience, and be part of a wider collective consciousness or else the universe is literally the dream of a cabbage.

atheism is not just a denial of creationism, it is a denial of the creation of the universe via conscious energy. could a simple accident of chemistry account for the sophisticated dream worlds we inhabit 8 hours a night? could random selection explain the unique, beautiful, starling complexity of a single thought?

deny the idea of you participating in thinking the material world into being, i won't.

e=mc2. where does that fit? energy, once created, cannot be destroyed. it can change form, transmute, but remains in some form. it is indestructable. so conscious, calculated, constructive energy.... where does that go?

the energy source that animates your body... whatever you wish to call it.... however simple your understanding... that spark that makes you BE... that represents your consciousness, your memories, your experiences, your hopes and dreams. everything that, again, differentiates you from a root vegetable.

are you really dening the power of your own consciousness? are you really admitting that you are essentially a meat robot, following a programme? maybe you are. i am not.

"atheism" isn't about rejecting the traditional creator God idealogy. atheism is a denial that your life even has a meaning. it is the mindset of the psychopath, an existentialist who sees no value in anything that exists. it is a kill-yourself-now mentality, it is a hollow, empty, self-replicating delusion that makes all life pointless, all being a projection. but a projection of what? what are you?
a fission of egg and sperm?

get back in the womb mate and consider yourself an abortion.
~ali

Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

2008-07-16T16:49:00.003+01:00

our world is a cell in the body of the universe, one tiny air-lock endlessly adrift in infinite space. our world is one thought alone in the perpetual mind of being, a single seed cast to the wind, growing dreams and breathing ideas with the unstoppable pace of an A-bomb in reverse.
~Ali

In Lies We Trust

2008-07-16T12:40:00.002+01:00

This feature length documentary about medical madness, cloaked in bioterrorism preparedness, will awaken the brain dead. It exposes health officials, directed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), for conducting a “War of Terror” that is killing millions of unwitting Americans.

This monumental film exposes the agents and agencies behind: Hollywood films and the media creating a profitable culture of bioterror; the “War on Terrorism” used to control populations; the most lucrative war in history—the “War on Cancer;” the onslaught of dozens of new immunological diseases and deadly flus; the “War on AIDS” triggered by contaminated vaccines; the anthrax mailings resulting in restricted freedoms, and sales of toxic drugs, deadly vaccines, and more.

this horrible God

2008-07-15T15:19:00.003+01:00

from The Cassiopian Experiment

"Millions of Americans go to church every Sunday and contemplate a story about a man who was born 2,000 years ago, the son of a divine father and a human mother. This man, according to the story, grew up to raise the dead and perform other miracles until, at age 33, he was tortured and killed and then rose from the tomb to rejoin his father in heaven. Ever since then, one of the most sacred rituals of this story's adherents is to symbolically drink the blood and consume the body of this son of God.

I intend no disrespect to those who have faith in this particular story. I grew up inside that faith myself; during the catechism classes of my Catholic childhood, I was taught that Communion is not symbolic at all, that every Sunday at Mass we truly do eat the body of Christ.

By any measure, that is a wild story.

I remember how shocked I was to learn that about 60 million people died in WW II, but all I had ever heard about was the 6 million Jews. It was even more shocking to realize that Stalin had done away with - by various means - millions and millions of his own people. But nobody had said much about that at all. This was very much exercising me when I wrote "The Secret History of The World."

The Laws of Probability tell us that, without any intelligent input, 50% of the time the events in our world would lead to great good and benefit for mankind. In a strictly mechanical way, life in our world ought to have manifested a sort of "equilibrium." Factoring in intelligent decisions to do good would bring this average up to about 70%. That would mean that humanity would have advanced over the millennia to a state of existence where good and positive things happen in our lives more often than "negative" or "bad" things. In this way, many of the problems of humanity would have been effectively solved. War and conflict would be a rarity, at least 70 percent of the earth's population would have decent medical care, a comfortable roof over their heads, and sufficient nutritious food so that death by disease or starvation would be almost unheard of.

The facts are, however, quite different.

More than 840,000,000 people on the Earth suffer from hunger. That's about three times the population of the entire USA. This is chronic, persistent hunger, which kills 24,000 people every day, or over 8 million each year. Three of four who die from starvation are younger than five years old.

According to the Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century, during the past 100 years there have been approximately 2 billion deaths (including civilians) resulting from war , tyrannical governments, and man-made famine. When these figures are broken down into deaths caused by Communism vs. Capitalism, they are almost equal, with the figures slightly higher for Capitalism which may surprise some people who believe that the Capitalistic system is the "right" one.

"By their fruits you shall know them."

Turning to mortality statistics that are NOT related to war and famine, we find that it is a bit difficult to get an actual number because the stats are nearly always expressed in terms of percentages rather than in hard population numbers. One gets the feeling that the actual count is so frightening that this approach is used for the express purpose of avoiding having to face the facts. One thing we do know is that deaths from cardiovascular diseases and stroke are the leading cause of death in 31 of the 35 Western Hemisphere countries that report disease related mortality statistics. The highest of these mortality rates are found in the English-speaking Caribbean, USA, Canada, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Mortality rates from these causes are increasing in the Central American and Latin Caribbean regions as they come more and more under the sway of Western capitalism.

What we are talking about above are the "quiet" statistics, from our present reality.

Even now it is easy to forget that there were 65 Million deaths from WW II alone and that deaths from disease and starvation continue as a quiet, steady, drum beat of increasing mortality behind the trumpeting of school shootings, sensational murder trials, and little Cuban boys who become the center of international custody disputes.

I don’t think that one single person on this planet will disagree that they want a better life for themselves and their children; and most of them will add that they do not presently have the capacity to make it a reality. Except for a very small minority of very sick people, I don’t think anybody likes to see misery and suffering, disease and death and despair, in any context. And again we must ask: if these things are so detestable to human beings at large, if so many people are working and thinking and praying to improve the conditions of our world, why isn’t it happening?

Seekers of "Ascension" - a large number of whom could be considered "Intelligentsia" - are always aware of these things, and they are asking "What is the origin of all the misery and suffering? Does it just happen? Do people and only people cause others to suffer? Is it that God is good, but allows bad things to happen?"

"Don't forget the power of prayer," we are told by our religious leaders, or "positive thinking," as we are told by the New Age gurus.
The only problem is, prayers and positive thinking do not seem to have improved the world very much on the occasions when it is certain that nearly every human being was praying for a certain outcome.

Jesus promised: "If any two of you shall agree and ask... it shall be done." (Matt 18:19) That's a promise. What do you want or need? Just ask!
But it doesn't work and we see it!

Over sixty million people died because God didn't do what everybody thought he should do. C.S. Lewis struggled with this issue in the latter part of his life. He saw clearly that, before World War II, practically every human being on the planet was praying—to Jesus, God the Father, the Virgin Mary, Allah, Buddha and whoever else you can name or mention, so all the bases were covered—that this terrible thing would not happen. The memory of the previous “Great War” was still fresh in the mind of mankind. They remembered the horrible carnage and vowed, never again!
In the end, after the most mighty cry of prayer in human memory, rising from the earth, almost one-third of the world was uninhabitable and sixty-five million human beings were dead.

That was God’s answer to prayer.

That was the result of the "power of positive thinking."

THINK ABOUT IT.

Throughout history we find one group praying to their god to protect them from the depredations of another group. The other group is praying just as fervently that their depredations will be successful. When one group succeeds in killing another, is that proof that its god is supreme?

What then happens if the members of the successful group are then reincarnated into the group that was defeated? (We are assuming some form of reicarnation to be highly probable based on research.)

This is not a rhetorical question since a very interesting book by Rabbi Yonassan Gershom, Beyond the Ashes, [1992, A.R.E. Press, Virginia Beach] was written about the great numbers of Jews who died in the holocaust now being reincarnated as Christians. There has also been some suggestion that many Nazis are now being reincarnated as Jews in the present time which would go a long way toward explaining the Fascist flavor of "Zionism."

What then, does such an idea do to the concept of “my god is the only right one?”
I can assure the reader from my own experience as a hypnotherapist, that every single case I have worked with in terms of “past life therapy,” has demonstrated a “string” of "past lives" in such variety of nationality and religious orientation, that it literally makes a joke of anyone stating with absolute certainty, that their beliefs or religious orientation now, are the only right ones.
It is quite plausible, assuming the reincarnation is "real", that those who declaim against another group most vehemently, will most certainly find themselves a member of that very group in the next “round” of incarnation.

I get really irritated with people who are "holocaust deniers," when they try to say that 6 million Jews were not systematically murdered by the Nazi war machine. But I get equally irritated by those who forget about the deaths of the other 59 million people.

In point of fact, one could say that, because of the Jews, many more millions of "Christians" or peoples of other religions have been killed than for any other single reason.

Because of the Jewish religion - monotheism - Christianity was "born" as the "new covenant" with the putative Jewish God.

Because of this Jewish God, claimed by Christianity, endless wars were fought in Europe, the Crusades took place, followed by the Inquisition. And then, of course, there are the endless deaths of entire cultures, due to the claims of the Christians and their "missionary" efforts.

So, in the end you could say that Yahweh/Jehovah has been the root cause of nearly all of the sufferings and deaths of humanity in the past four millennia.
Not a very good track record, and certainly, something to think about when pondering: "By their fruits, you shall know them."

[Note: we do not forget that cruelty and brutal killings of civilians has occurred in other cultures as well, though not on the same scale. And so, according to some sources, in December 1937, in a single attack, known as "The rape of Nanjing", Japaneese soldiers killed nearly 200,000 civilians. These soldiers considered themselves to be heros, serving their "One God" - the Emperor.]

Human beings as a whole ought to reject this horrible God in ALL his forms and variations from his beginnings as the god of the Jews right down to his putative appearance to Mohammed. A more evil being has never - I think - appeared on the stage of history."

Ethnosphere

2008-07-14T22:45:00.004+01:00

In this stunning talk, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis celebrates the extraordinary diversity of the world's indigenous cultures, many of which are disappearing, as ancestral land is lost and languages die. (50 percent of the world's 6000 languages are no longer taught to children.) Against a backdrop of extraordinary photos and stories that ignite the imagination, Davis argues that we should be concerned not only for preserving the biosphere, but also the "ethnosphere," which he describes as "the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness." An anthropologist and botanist by training, Davis has traveled the world, living among indigenous cultures. He's written several books, including The Serpent and the Rainbow and Light at the Edge of the World.

Terence Mckenna

2008-07-14T22:39:00.002+01:00

The Corporation

2008-07-14T22:35:00.002+01:00

THE CORPORATION explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Footage from pop culture, advertising, TV news, and corporate propaganda, illuminates the corporation's grip on our lives.

Money As Debt

2008-07-14T21:17:00.003+01:00

The scam of money and global banking revealed.

History And The Masters Of Deceit: on the power of mass mind control through emotion

2008-07-11T19:05:00.003+01:00

"'How can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.' "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane." - 1984 (George Orwell)

History And The Masters Of Deceit:
on the power of mass mind control through emotion

By Stuart Harris

Human nature can be best understood by the study of history. Dates, locations of battles, and timelines are of secondary importance with regard to analyzing human nature through historical data. The actions of the few have not changed at all, not from Sumer, through the Roman Empire, to the present day. The lack of moral integrity and political righteousness has been haunting mankind for over 4000 years. Erich Fromm has provided insightful analysis of evil with many concrete examples from History. His approaches to psychoanalytic theory and dynamic social psychology illuminate the current crisis with which we are in.

The following passage is from The Heart Of Man 1964:

" Wars are the result of the decision of political leaders to wage war for the sake of gaining territory, natural resources...for defense against real or alleged threats to their country's security..."
Could we perhaps substitute "natural resources" for "oil"? Could "alleged threats" be substituted for Operation Northwoods, the burning of the Reichstag, The Gulf of Tonkin, or Pearl Harbour just to name a few? I think so. How naive and suggestible the masses have become to accept disinformation and opinions from any authority figure on T.V. or in the newspapers. This is what happens to those who do not get involved in the political processes, instead, they remain in their bourgeois cocoon watching T.V. and preoccupying themselves with accumulating wealth. Americans have become narcotized sheeple who have been misguided and conspired against via the mass media and corporate elitists.

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
- William Colby, former Director of the CIA (Please note that William Colby had died during a swimming "accident")

Take a look at the news stories presented by the conventional wisdom of the mass media. The suppression and control of information is quite apparent. We are distracted and bombarded with events such as child abductions. Without degrading or discounting the seriousness of this issue, it is noteworthy that there are over 3500 incidents of child abductions per year in the U.S. yet this is all we are fed at a time when we must be critical about our government's policies and our own civil liberties.

Fromm goes on by stating:

"There is hardly a case of an aggressive war which could not be couched in terms of defense. The tendency of pretending that any war is a defensive one shows that the majority of people cannot be made to kill and to die unless they are first convinced that they are doing so in order to defend their lives and freedom... it shows that it is not difficult to persuade millions of people that they are being attacked"

This passage was written almost 30 years ago, yet it shows Fromm's clear understanding of the marriage between sociopathic elitists and their amoral, cold-hearted actions.

Unfortunately, this example (although in a different costume) of mass repression and psychic numbing has thrived during the Crusades, the French Revolution, and Nazi Germany. The Nazi propagandists led by Goebbels had perfected the art of propaganda through every realm of media. For example, mass pamphlets were distributed such as How They Lie in 1940 accusing the Allies of inventing German atrocities. False Consideration, a weekly published by the SS suggested that German citizens should take drastic action to deal with those who grumble about the war or doubt final victory. What was considered "grumbling"? This sounds similar to the rhetoric we have been hearing about "If you're not with us, you're against us". Will the civilian, neighborhood snooping Operation Tips "find" those who are "against us" (i.e. those who are grumbling). Other propagandist material like America As A Perversion Of European Culture and Roosevelt Betrays America were clear attempts to brainwash the masses in order to vilify and demonize the enemy. The very same ploy is being carried out in the current War on Terrorism, the objectification and vilification of Bin Laden and Sadam Hussein.

Another example from history supports Fromm's position on leadership qualities.

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." -- Julius Caesar

The Nazi propaganda machine learned how to "Bang the Drums of War" from watching American football pep rallies (their expertise was "hired" by the CIA after WW2 via Operation Paperclip). President Bush's drum beating with regards to, "Patriotism", the "Evil One", and "Us vs. Them" rhetoric is blatant, " whipping the citizenry into a patriotic fervor…" The current war on terrorism employs the human experience of emotion rather than reason, "…the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed…" The same has been repeatedly stated by the father of "spin" Edward Bernays. He had never underestimated the power of mass mind control through emotion. The last passage from Caesar's quote is probably the most disturbing one relating to the current predicament, " …the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry…rather the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all their rights unto the leader and gladly so…" How many times have we heard "I'm willing to get a National I.D. Card (which the Nazi's also imposed) in order to protect myself against terrorists!" or " I don't mind if my phone or e-mail accounts are monitored if it means I'm being protected."

History has proven that the masters of deceit have devilishly used their powers to manipulate and impregnate their citizens with lies, disinformation, and fabrications. People have to disillusion themselves from their lives, which is a conspiracy against reality.

As Hobbes stated, "Homo Homini Lupus" (Man is a wolf to his fellow Man). I believe that if Fromm were here today, he would probably say, " I told you so".

Ayahuasca and Human Destiny

2008-07-11T14:14:00.006+01:00

"This is what they have suppressed so long. This is why they are so afraid of the psychedelics, because they understand that once you touch the inner core of your own and someone else's being you can't be led into thing-fetishes and consumerism. The message of psychedelics is that culture can be re-engineered as a set of emotional values rather than products. This is terrifying news."

by Dennis Mckenna

"...And suddenly, and literally, “out of the Amazon,” one of the most impacted parts of our wounded planet, ayahuasca emerges as an emissary of trans-species sentience, to bring this lesson: You monkeys only think you’re running things. In a wider sense, the import of this lesson is that we need to wake up to what is happening to us and to the planet. We need to get with the program, people. We have become spiritually bereft and have been seduced by the delusion that we are somehow important in the scheme of things. We are not.

Our spiritual institutions have devolved into hollow shells, perverted to the agendas of rapacious governments and fanatic fundamentalisms, no longer capable of providing balm to the wounded spirit of our species; and as the world goes up in flames we benumb ourselves with consumerism and mindless entertainment, the decadent distractions of gadgets and gewgaws, the frantic but ultimately meaningless pursuits of a civilization that has lost its compass. And at this cusp in human history, there emerges a gentle emissary, the conduit to a body of profoundly ancient genetic and evolutionary wisdom that has long abided in the cosmologies of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon who have guarded and protected this knowledge for millennia, who learned long ago that the human role is not to be the master of nature, but its stewards, Our destiny, if we are to survive, is to nurture nature and to learn from it how to nurture ourselves and our fellow beings. This is the lesson that we can learn from ayahuasca, if only we pay attention.

I find it both ironic, and hopeful, that within the last 150 years, and particularly in the last half of the 20th century, ayahuasca has begun to assert its presence into human awareness on a global scale. For millennia it was known only to indigenous peoples who have long since understood and integrated what it has to teach us. In the 19th century it first came to the attention of a wider world as an object of curiosity in the reports of Richard Spruce and other intrepid explorers of the primordial rainforests of South America; in the mid-20th century Schultes and others continued to explore this discovery and began to focus the lens of science on the specifics of its botany, chemistry, and pharmacology (and, while necessary, this narrow scrutiny perhaps overlooked some of the larger implications of this ancient symbiosis with humanity). At the same time, ayahuasca escaped from its indigenous habitat and made its influence felt among certain non-indigenous people, representatives of “greater” civilization.

To these few men and women, ayahuasca provided revelations, and they in turn responded (in the way that humans so often do when confronted with a profound mystery) by founding religious sects with a messianic mission; in this case, a mission of hope, a message to the rest of the world that despite its simplicity was far ahead of its time: that we must learn to become the stewards of nature, and by fostering, encouraging, and sustaining the fecundity and diversity of nature, by celebrating and honoring our place as biological beings, as part of the web of life, we may learn to become nurturers of each other. A message quite different, and quite anathema, to the anti-biological obsessions of most of the major world “religions” with their preoccupation with death and suffering and their insistence on the suppression of all spontaneity and joy.

Such a message is perceived as a great threat by entrenched religious and political power structures, and indeed, it is. It is a threat to the continued rape of nature and oppression of peoples that is the foundation of their power. Evidence that they understand this threat and take it seriously is reflected by the unstinting and brutal efforts that “civilized” ecclesiastical, judicial, and political authorities have made to prohibit, demonize, and exterminate the shamanic use of ayahuasca and other sacred plants ever since the Inquisition and even earlier.

But the story is not yet over. Within the last 30 years, ayahuasca, clever little plant intelligence that it is, has escaped from its ancestral home in the Amazon and has found haven in other parts of the world. With the assistance of human helpers who heard the message and heeded it, ayahuasca sent its tendrils forth to encircle the world. It has found new homes, and new friends, in nearly every part of the world where temperatures are warm and where the ancient connections to plant-spirit still thrive, from the islands of Hawaii to the rainforests of South Africa, from gardens in Florida to greenhouses in Japan. The forces of death and dominance have been outwitted; it has escaped them, outrun them.

There is now no way that ayahuasca can ever be eliminated from the earth, short of toxifying the entire planet (which, unfortunately, the death culture is working assiduously to accomplish). Even if the Amazon itself is leveled for cattle pasture or burned for charcoal, ayahuasca, at least, will survive, and will continue to engage in its dialog with humanity. And encouragingly, more and more people are listening.

It may be too late. I have no illusions about this. Given that the curtain is now being rung down on the drunken misadventure that we call human history, the death culture will inevitably become even more brutal and insane, flailing ever more violently as it sinks beneath the quick sands of time. Indeed, it is already happening; all you have to do is turn on the nightly news.

Will ayahuasca survive? I have no doubt that ayahuasca will survive on this planet as long as the planet remains able to sustain life. The human time frame is measured in years, sometimes centuries, rarely, in millennia. Mere blinks when measured against the evolutionary time scales of planetary life, the scale on which ayahuasca wields its influence. It will be here long after the governments, religions, and political power structures that seem today so permanent and so menacing have dissolved into dust. It will be here long after our ephemeral species has been reduced to anomalous sediment in the fossil record. The real question is, will we be here long enough to hear its message, to integrate what it is trying to tell us, and to change in response, before it is too late?

Ayahuasca has the same message for us now that it has always had, since the beginning of its symbiotic relationship with humanity. Are we willing to listen? Only time will tell."

It's such a profoundly strange experience; meeting a plant spirit and hearing its voice and viewing creation through the roots of a tree. it makes you see the world is upside down.

it makes you conscious of the fact that the whole of existance is a swirling mass of intelligent energy trying to interact with us, but we are too busy to listen. it makes you re-evaluate; you will never look at a blade of grass in the same way again.

and this is exactly what we need. we need to awaken to the fact that we do not have to be parasites upon the planet, we can return to the conscious symbiosis we once knew as hunter gatherers. how can we continue to believe the lie that only we have spirit, only we have consciousness, and that everything else is merely commodity, resource, to be used and destroyed for our own ends?

we ARE stupid monkeys, until we start listening. the resources of the earth are finite. The Cree indians sum it up perfectly:

"Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money"
~ali

Darwinism: a crumbling theory?

2008-07-11T13:10:00.007+01:00

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect." Chief Seattle

LIFE, OR SOMETHING LIKE IT
by Lloyd Pye

In Charles Darwin's time, nothing was known about life at the cellular level. Protoplasm was the smallest unit they understood. Yet Darwin's theory of natural selection stated that all of life--every living entity known then or to be discovered in the future--simply had to function from birth to death by "natural laws" that could be defined and analysed. This would of course include the origin of life. Darwin suggested life might have gradually assembled itself from stray parts lying about in some "warm pond" when the planet had cooled enough to make such an assemblage possible. Later it was realised that nothing would likely have taken shape (gradually or otherwise) in a static environment, so a catalytic element was added: lightning.

Throughout history up to the present moment, scientists have been forced to spend their W*rking lives with the "God" of the Creationists hovering over every move they make, every mistake, every error in judgment, every personal peccadillo. So when faced with something they can't explain in rational terms, the only alternative option is "God did it", which for them is unacceptable. So they're forced by relentless Creationist pressure to come up with answers for absolutely everything that, no matter how absurd, are "natural". That was their motivation for the theory that a lightning bolt could strike countless random molecules in a warm pond and somehow transform them into the first living creature. The "natural" forces of biology, chemistry and electromagnetism could magically be swirled together--and voilà!Éan event suspiciously close to a miracle.

Needless to say, no Darwinist would accept terms like "magic" or "miracle", which would be tantamount to agreeing with the Creationist argument that "God did it all". But in their heart-of-hearts, even the most fanatical Darwinists had to suspect the "warm pond" theory was absurd.

And as more and more was learned about the mind-boggling complexity of cellular structure and chemistry, there could be no doubt. The trenchant Fred Hoyle analogy still stands: it was as likely to be true as that a tornado could sweep through a junkyard and correctly assemble a jetliner.

Unfortunately, the "warm pond" had become a counterbalance to "God did it", so even when Darwinists knew past doubt that it was wrong, they clung to it, outwardly proclaimed it and taught it. In many places in the world, including the USA, it's still taught.

TOO HOT TO HANDLE

The next jarring bump on the Darwinist road to embattlement came when they learned that in certain places around the globe there existed remnants of what had to be the very first pieces of the Earth's crust. Those most ancient slabs of rock are called cratons, and the story of their survival for 4.0 billion [4,000,000,000] years is a miracle in itself. But what is most miraculous about them is that they contain fossils of "primitive" bacteria! Yes, bacteria, preserved in 4.0-billion-year-old cratonal rock. If that's not primitive, what is? However, it presented Darwinists with an embarrassing conundrum.

If Earth began to coalesce out of the solar system's primordial cloud of dust and gas around 4.5 billion years ago (which by then was a well-supported certainty), then at 4.0 billion years ago the proto-planet was still a seething ball of cooling magma. No warm ponds would appear on Earth for at least a billion years or more. So how to reconcile reality with the warm-pond fantasy?

There was no way to reconcile it, so it was ignored by all but the specialists who had to W*rk with it on a daily basis. Every other Darwinist assumed a position as one of the "see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil" monkeys. To say they "withheld" the new, damaging information is not true; to say it was never emphasised in the popular media for public consumption is true.

That has become the way Darwinists handle any and all challenges to their pet theories: if they can no longer defend one, they don't talk about it, or they talk about it as little as possible. If forced to talk about it, they invariably try to "kill the messenger" by challenging any critic's "credentials". If the critic lacks academic credentials equal to their own, he or she is dismissed as little more than a crackpot. If the critic has equal credentials, he or she is labelled as a "closet Creationist" and dismissed. No career scientist can speak openly and vociferously against Darwinist dogma without paying a heavy price. That is why and how people of normally good conscience can be and have been "kept in line" and kept silent in the face of egregious distortions of truth.

If that system of merciless censure weren't so solidly in place, then surely the next Darwinist stumble would have made headlines around the world as the final and absolute end to the ridiculous notion that life could possibly have assembled itself "naturally". They couldn't even be sure it happened on Earth.

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

The imposing edifice of Darwinian "origin of life" dogma rested on a piece of incontrovertible bedrock: there could be only one progenitor for all of life. When the fortuitous lightning bolt struck the ideally concocted warm pond, it created only one entity. However, it was no ordinary entity. With it came the multiple ability to take nourishment from its environment, create energy from that nourishment, expel waste created by the use of that energy and (almost as an afterthought) reproduce itself ad infinitum until one of its millions of subsequent generations sits here at this moment reading these words. Nothing miraculous about that; simply incalculable good fortune.

This was Darwinist gospel--preached and believed--until the bacteria fossils were found in the cratons. Their discovery was upsetting, but not a deathblow to the Darwinist theory. They had to concede (among themselves, of course) that the first life-form didn't assemble itself in a warm pond, but it came together somehow because every ancient fossil it spawned was a single-celled bacteria lacking a cell nucleus (prokaryotes). Prokaryotes preceded the much later single-celled bacteria with a nucleus (eukaryotes), so the post-craton situation stayed well within the Darwinian frameW*rk. No matter how the first life-form came into existence, it was a single unit lacking a cell nucleus, which was mandatory because even the simplest nucleus would be much too "irreducibly complex" (a favourite Intelligent Design phrase) to be created by a lightning bolt tearing through a warm pond's molecular junkyard. So the Darwinists still held half a loaf.

In the mid-1980s, however, biologist Carl Woese stunned his colleagues with a shattering discovery. There wasn't just the predicted (and essential) single source for all forms of life; there were two: two types of prokaryotic bacteria as distinct as apples and oranges, dogs and cats, horses and cowsÉtwo distinct forms of life, alive and well on the planet at 4.0 billion years ago. Unmistakable. Irrefutable. Get over it. Deal with it.

But how? How to explain separate forms of life springing into existence in an environment that would make hell seem like a summer resort? With nothing but cooling lava as far as an incipient eye might have seen, how could it be explained in "natural" terms? Indeed, how could it be explained in any terms other than the totally unacceptable? Life, with all its deepening mystery, had to have been seeded onto Earth.

PANSPERMIA RAISES ITS UGLY HEAD

Panspermia is the idea that life came to be on Earth from somewhere beyond the planet and possibly beyond the solar system. Its means of delivery is separated into two possible avenues: directed and undirected.

Undirected panspermia means that life came here entirely by accident and was delivered by a comet or meteor. Some scientists favour comets as the prime vector because they contain ice mixed with dust (comets are often referred to as "dirty snowballs"), and life is more likely to have originated in water and is more likely to survive an interstellar journey frozen. Other scientists favour asteroids as the delivery mechanism because they are more likely to have come from the body of a planet that would have contained life. A comet, they argue, is unlikely ever to have been part of a planet, and life could not possibly have generated itself in or on a frozen comet.

Directed panspermia means life was delivered to Earth by intelligent means of one kind or another. In one scenario, a capsule could have been sent here the same way we sent Voyager on an interstellar mission. However, if it was sent from outside the solar system, we have to wonder how the senders might have known Earth was here, or how Earth managed to get in the way of something sent randomly (à la Voyager).

In another scenario, interstellar craft manned by extraterrestrial beings could have arrived and delivered the two prokaryote types. This requires a level of openmindedness that most scientists resolutely lack, so they won't accept either version of directed panspermia as even remotely possible. Instead, they cling to their "better" explanation of undirected panspermia because it allows them to continue playing the "origin" game within the first boundaries set out by Charles Darwin: undirected is "natural"; directed is "less natural".

Notice it can't be said that directed panspermia is "unnatural". According to Darwinists, no matter where life originated, the process was natural from start to finish. All they have to concede is that it didn't take place on Earth. However, acknowledging that forces them to skirt dangerously close to admitting the reality of extraterrestrial life, and their ongoing "search" for such life generates millions in research funding each year. This leaves them in no hurry to make clear to the general public that, yes, beyond Earth there is at the very least the same primitive bacterial life we have here. There's no doubt about it. But, as usual, they keep the lid on this reality, not exactly hiding it but making no effort to educate the public to the notion that we are not, and never have been, alone. The warm pond still holds water, so why muddy it with facts?

A PATTERN EMERGES

In my book, Everything You Know Is Wrong, I discuss all points mentioned up to now, which very few people outside academic circles are aware of. Within those circles, a hard core of "true believers" still seizes on every new discovery of a chemical or organic compound found in space to try to move the argument back to Darwin's original starting point that somehow life assembled itself on Earth "naturally".

However, most objective scholars now accept that the first forms of life had to have been delivered because: (1) they appear as two groups of multiple prokaryotes (archaea and true bacteria); (2) they appear whole and complete; (3) the hellish primordial Earth is unimaginable as an incubator for burgeoning life; and (4) a half-billion years seems far too brief a time-span to permit a gradual, step-by-step assembly of the incredible complexity of prokaryotic biology and biochemistry.

Even more damaging to the hard-core Darwinist position is that the prokaryotes were--quite propitiously--as durable as life gets. They were virtually indestructible, able to live in absolutely any environment--and they've proved it by being here today, looking and behaving the same as when their ancestors were fossilised 4.0 billion years ago. Scalding heat? We love it! Choked by saline? Let us at it! Frozen solid? We're there! Crushing pressure? Perfect for us! Corrosively acidic? Couldn't be better!

Today they are known as extremophiles, and they exist alongside many other prokaryotic bacteria that thrive in milder conditions. It would appear that those milder-living prokaryotes could not have survived on primordial Earth, so how did they come to be? According to Darwinists, they "evolved" from extremophiles in the same way humans supposedly evolved on a parallel track with apes--from a "common ancestor".

Darwinists contend such parallel tracks don't need to be traceable. All that's required is a creature looking reasonably like another to establish what they consider a legitimate claim of evolutionary connection. Extremophiles clearly existed: we have their 4.0-billion-year-old fossils. Their descendants clearly exist today, along with mild-environment prokaryotes that must have descended from them. However, transitional forms between them cannot be found, even though such forms are required by the tenets of Darwinism. Faced with that embarrassing problem, Darwinists simply insist that the missing transitional species do exist, still hidden somewhere in the fossil record, just as the "missing link" between apes and humans is out there somewhere and will indeed be discovered someday. It's simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

For as expedient as the "missing link" has been, it's useless to explain the next phase of life on Earth, when prokaryotes began sharing the stage with the much larger and much more complex (but still single-celled) eukaryotes, which appear around 2.0 billion years ago. The leap from prokaryote to eukaryote is too vast even to pretend a missing evolutionary link could account for it. A dozen would be needed just to cover going from no nucleus to one that functions fully. (This, by the way, is also true of the leap between so-called pre-humans and humans, which will be discussed in Part Two).

How to explain it? Certainly not plausibly. Fortunately, Darwinists have never lacked the creativity to invent "warm-pond" scenarios to plug holes in their dogma.

DOING THE DOGMA SHUFFLE

Since it's clear that a "missing link" won't fly over the prokaryote&endash;eukaryote chasm, why not assume some of the smaller prokaryotes were eaten by some of the larger ones? Yeah, that might W*rk! But instead of turning into food, energy and waste, the small ones somehow turn themselves--or get turned into--cell nuclei for larger ones. Sure, that's a keeper! Since no one can yet prove it didn't happen (Thank God!), Darwinists are able to proclaim it did. (Keep in mind, when any critic of Darwinist dogma makes a suggestion that similarly can't be proved, it's automatically dismissed, because "lack of provability" is a death sentence outside their fraternity. Inside their fraternity, consensus is adequate because the collective agreement of so many "experts" should be accepted as gospel.)

To Interventionists like me, the notion of prokaryotes consuming each other to create eukaryotes is every bit as improbable as the divine fiat of Creationists. But even if it were a biological possibility (which most evidence weighs against), it would still seem fair to expect "transition" models somewhere along the line. Darwinists say "no" because this process could have an "overnight" aspect to it. One minute there's a large prokaryote alongside a small one, the next minute there's a small eukaryote with what appears to be a nucleus inside it. Not magic, not a miracle, just a biological process unknown today but which could have been possible 2.0 billion years ago. Who's to say, except an "expert"? In any case, large and small prokaryotes lived side by side for 2.0 billion years (long enough, one would think, to learn to do so in harmony), then suddenly a variety of eukaryotes appeared alongside them, whole and complete, ready to join them as the only game in town for another 1.4 billion years (with no apparent changes in the eukaryotes, either).

At around 600 million years ago, the first multicellular life- forms (the Ediacaran Fauna) appear--as suddenly and inexplicably as the prokaryotes and eukaryotes. To this day, the Ediacaran Fauna are not well understood, beyond the fact they were something like jellyfish or seaweeds in a wide range of sizes and shapes. (It remains unclear whether they were plants or animals, or a bizarre combination of both.) They lived alongside the prokaryotes and eukaryotes for about 50 million years, to about 550 million years ago, give or take a few million, when the so-called "Cambrian Explosion" occurred.

It's rightly called an "explosion", because within a period of only 5 to 10 million years--a mere eye-blink relative to the 3.5 billion years of life preceding it--the Earth's oceans filled with a dazzling array of seawater plants and all 26 of the animal phyla (body types) catalogued today, with no new phyla added since. No species from the Cambrian era looks like anything currently alive--except trilobites, which seem to have spawned at least horseshoe crabs. However, despite their "alien" appearance, they all arrived fully assembled--males and females, predators and prey, large and small, ready to go. As in each case before, no predecessors can be found.

THE PACE HEATS UP

Volumes have been written about the Cambrian Explosion and the menagerie of weird plants and animals resulting from it. The Earth was simply inundated with them, as if they'd rained down from the sky. Darwinists concede it is the greatest difficulty--among many--they confront when trying to sell the evolutionary concept of gradualism. There is simply no way to reconcile the breathtaking suddennessÉthe astounding varietyÉthe overwhelming incongruity of the Cambrian Explosion. It is a testament to the old adage that "one ugly fact can ruin the most beautiful theory". But it's far from the only one.

All of complex life as we understand it begins with the Cambrian Explosion, in roughly the last 550 million years. During that time, the Earth has endured five major and several minor catastrophic extinction events. Now, one can quibble with how an event catastrophic enough to cause widespread extinctions could be called "minor", but when compared to the major ones the distinction is apt. The five major extinction events eliminated 50% to 90% of all species of plants and animals alive when the event occurred.

We all know about the last of those, the Cretaceous event of 65 million years ago that took out the dinosaurs and much of what else was alive at the time. But what few of us understand is the distinctive pattern to how life exists between extinction events and after extinction events. This difference in the pattern of life creates serious doubts about "gradualism" as a possible explanatory mechanism for how species proliferate.

Between extinction events, when environments are stable, life doesn't seem to change at all. The operative term is stasis. Everything stays pretty much the same. But after extinction events, the opposite occurs: everything changes profoundly. New life-forms appear all over the place, filling every available niche in the new environments created by the after-effects of the catastrophe. Whatever that is, it's not gradualism.

In 1972, (the late) Stephen J. Gould of Harvard and Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History went ahead and bit the bullet by announcing that fact to the world. Gradual evolution simply was not borne out by the fossil record, and that fact had to be dealt with. Darwin's view of change had to be modified. It wasn't a gradual, haphazard process dictated by random, favourable mutations in genes. It was something else.

That "something else" they called punctuated equilibrium. The key to it was their open admission of the great secret that life-forms only changed in spurts after extinction events, and therefore had nothing to do with natural selection or survival of the fittest or any of the old Darwinist homilies that everyone had been brainwashed to believe. It was the first great challenge to Darwinian orthodoxy, and it was met with furious opposition. The old guard tagged it "punk eek" and called it "evolution by jerks".

TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

What Gould and Eldredge were admitting was the great truth that evolution by natural selection is not apparent in either the fossil record or in the life we see around us. The old guard insisted that the fossil record simply had to be wrongÉthat it wasn't giving a complete picture because large tracts of it were missing. That was true, but much larger tracts were available, and those tracts showed the overwhelming stasis of life-forms in every era, followed by rapid filling of environmental niches after each extinction event. So while parts of the record were indeed missing, what was available was unmistakable.

Arguments raged back and forth. Explanations were created to try to counter every aspect of the punk-eek position. None was ever particularly convincing, but they began to build up. Remember, scientists have the great advantage of being considered by one and all as "experts", even when they haven't the slightest idea of what they're talking about. That allows them to throw shot after shot against the wall until something sticks, or until the target of their wrath is covered in so much "mud" that it can't be seen any more. Such was the fate of the punk-eekers. By the early 1990s, they'd been marginalised.

One can hardly blame the old-guard Darwinists for those attacks. If granted any credence, the sudden radiations of myriad new species into empty environmental niches could have gutted many of the most fundamental tenets of gradual, "natural" evolution. That idea simply could not become established as a fact. Why? Because the warm pond was drained dry, biochemistry was rendering the "small-eaten-by-large prokaryotes turned into eukaryotes" story absurd, and the Cambrian Explosion was flatly inexplicable. If "sudden radiation" were heaped onto all of that, the entire theory of evolution could flounderÉand where would that leave Darwinists? Facing righteous Creationists shouting, "See! God did do it after all!" Whatever else the Darwinists did, they couldn't allow that to happen.

Speaking as an Interventionist, I don't blame them. To me, God stands on equal footing with the lightning bolt. I see a better, far more rational answer to the mysteries of how life came to be on planet Earth: it was put here by intelligent beings, and it has been continuously monitored by those same beings. Whether it's been developed for a purpose or toward a goal of some kind seems beyond knowing at present, but it can be established with facts and with data that intervention by outside intelligence presents the most logical and most believable answer to the question of how life came to be here, as well as of how and why it has developed in so many unusual ways in the past 550 million years.

So now we come to the crux.

COSMIC ARKS

Darwinists go through life waving their PhD credentials like teacher's pets with a hall pass, because it allows them to shout down and ridicule off the public stage anyone who chooses to avoid the years of brainwashing they had to endure to obtain those passes. However, their credentials give them "influence" and "credibility" with the mainstream media, who don't have the time, the ability or the resources to make certain that everything every Darwinist says is true. They must trust all scientists not to have political or moral agendas, and not to distort the truth to suit those agendas. So, over time, the media have become lapdogs to the teacher's pets, recording and reporting whatever they're told to report, while dismissing out of hand whatever they're told to dismiss out of hand.

Despite Darwinists' rants that those who challenge them do so out of blithering idiocy, that is not always the case. For that matter, their opponents are not all Creationists, or even Intelligent Designers, whom Darwinists labour feverishly to paint into the "goofy" corner where Creationists rightly reside. So Interventionists like me have few outlets for our ideas, and virtually none in the mainstream media. Nevertheless, we feel our view of the origin of life makes the best sense, given the facts as they are now known, and the most basic aspect of our view starts with what I once called "cosmic dump trucks". However, that term has been justly criticised as facetious, so now I call them "cosmic arks".

Imagine this scenario: a fleet of intergalactic "terraformers" (another term I favour) cruises the universe. Their job is to locate forming solar systems and seed everything in them with an array of basic, durable life-forms capable of living in any environment, no matter how scabrous. Then the terraformers return on a regular basis, doing whatever is needed to maximise the capacity for life within the developing solar system. Each system is unique, calling for specialised forms of life at different times during its development, which the terraformers provide from a wide array of cosmic arks at their disposal.

With that as a given, let's consider what's happened on Earth. Soon after it began to coalesce out of dust and gas, two forms of virtually indestructible bacteria appeared on it, as if someone knew precisely what to deliver and when.

Also, it would make sense that every other proto-planet in the solar system would be seeded at the same time. How could even terraformers know which forming planets would, after billions of years, become habitable for complex life? And guess what? A meteorite from Mars seems to contain fossilised evidence of the same kinds of nano- (extremely small) bacteria found on Earth today. All other planets, if they're ever examined, will probably reveal similar evidence of a primordial seeding. It would make no sense for terraformers to do otherwise.

THE RUST ALSO RISES

So, okay, our solar system is noticed by intergalactic terraformers as the new sun ignites and planets start forming around it. On each of the planets they sprinkle a variety of two separate forms of single-celled bacteria they know will thrive in any environment (the extremophiles). But the bacteria have a purpose: to produce oxygen as a component of their metabolism. Why? Because life almost certainly has the same basic components and functions everywhere in the universe. DNA will be its basis, and "higher" organisms will require oxygen to fuel their metabolism. Therefore, complex life can't be "inserted" anywhere until a certain level of oxygen exists in a planet's atmosphere.

Wherever this process is undertaken, the terraformers have a major problem to deal with: iron. Iron is an abundant element in the universe. It is certainly abundant in planets (meteorites are often loaded with it). Iron is very reactive with oxygen: that's what rust is all about. So on none of the new planets forming in any solar system can higher life-forms develop until enough oxygen has been pumped into its atmosphere to oxidise most of its free iron. This, not surprisingly, is exactly what the prokaryotes did during their first 2.0 billion years on Earth. But it had to be a two-part process.

The proto-Earth would be cooling the whole time, so let's say full cooling takes roughly 1.0 billion years. So the extremophiles would be the first batch of prokaryotes inserted because they could survive it. Then, after a billion years or so, the terraformers return and drop off the rest of the prokaryotes, the ones that can live in milder conditions. Also, they have to keep returning on a regular basis because each planet would cool at a different rate due to their different sizes and different physical compositions.

However many "check-up" trips are required, by 2.0 billion years after their first seeding of the new solar system the terraformers realise the third planet from the sun is the only one thriving. They are not surprised, having learned that a "zone of life" exists around all suns, regardless of size or type. Now that this sun has taken its optimum shape, they could have predicted which planet or planets would thrive. In this system, the third is doing well but the fourth one is struggling. It has its prokaryotes and it has water, but its abundance of iron (the "red" planet) will require longer to neutralise than such a small planet with a non-reactive core will require to cool off, so it will lose its atmosphere to dissipation into space before a balance can be achieved. The fourth planet will become a wasteland.

The terraformers carry out the next phase of planet-building on the thriving third by depositing larger, more complex, more biologically reactive eukaryotes to accelerate the oxidation process. Eukaryotes are far more fragile than prokaryotes, so they can't be put onto a forming planet until it is sufficiently cooled to have abundant land and water. But once in place and established, their large size (relative to prokaryotes) can metabolise much more oxygen per unit. Together, the fully proliferated prokaryotes and eukaryotes can spew out enough oxygen to oxidise every bit of free iron on the Earth's crust and in its seas, and before long be lacing the atmosphere with it.

Sure enough, when the terraformers return in another 1.4 billion years they find Earth doing well, but the situation on Mars is unimproved: rust as far as the eye can see. (Mars is likely to have at least prokaryotic life, because there wouldn't have been enough oxygen in the surface water it once had--or in the permafrost it still has--to turn its entire surface into iron oxide.) Earth, however, is doing fine. Most of its free iron is locked up as rust, and oxygen levels in the atmosphere are measurably increasing. It's still too soon to think about depositing highly complex life, but that day is not far off now, measurable in tens of millions of years rather than in hundreds of millions. For the moment, Earth is ready for its first load of multicellular life, and so it is deposited: the Ediacaran Fauna.

Though scientists today have no clear understanding of what the Ediacarans were or what their purpose may have been (because they don't exist today), it seems safe to assume they were even more prolific creators of oxygen than the eukaryotes.

If, indeed, terraformers are behind the development of life on Earth, nothing else makes sense. If, on the other hand, everything that happened here did so by nothing but blind chance and coincidence, it was the most amazing string of luck imaginable. Everything happened exactly when it needed to happen, exactly where it needed to happen, exactly how it needed to happen.

If that's not an outright miracle, I don't know what is.

MAKING BETTER SENSE

Assuming terraformers were/are responsible for seeding and developing life on Earth, we can further assume that by 550 million years ago at least the early oceans were sufficiently oxygenated to support genuinely complex life. That was delivered en masse during the otherwise inexplicable Cambrian Explosion, after which followed the whole panoply of "higher" forms of life on Earth as we have come to know it. (The whys and wherefores of that process are, regrettably, beyond the scope of this essay, but there are answers that have as much apparent sense behind them as what has been outlined.)

During those 550 million years, five major and several minor extinction events occurred, after each of which a few million years would pass while the Earth stabilised with environments modified in some way by the catastrophes. Some pre-event life-forms would persist into the new environments, to be joined by new ark-loads delivered by the terraformers, who would analyse the situation on the healing planet and deliver species they knew would survive in the new environments and establish a balance with the life-forms already there (the Interventionist version of punctuated equilibrium).

We've already seen the difficulties Darwinists have with trying to explain the flow of life on Earth presented in the fossil record. That record can be explained by the currently accepted Darwinian paradigm, but the veneer of "scholarship" overlaying it is little different from the divine fiat of Creationists. And it can be explained by Intelligent Designers, who claim anything so bewilderingly complex couldn't possibly have been arrayed without the guidance of some superior, unifying intelligence (which they stop short of calling "God", because otherwise they are merely Creationists without cant).

Considering all of the above, we Interventionists believe the terraformer scenario explains the fossil record of life on Earth with more creativity, more accuracy and more logic than the others, and in the fullness of time will have a far greater probability of being proved correct. We don't bother trying to establish or even discuss who the terraformers are, or how they came to be, because both are irrelevant and unknowable until they choose to explain it to us. Besides, speculating about their origin detracts from the far more germane issue of trying to establish that our explanation of life's origin makes better sense than any other.

We will continue to be ignored by mainstream media simply because the idea of intelligent life existing outside Earth is so frightening to the majority of those bound to it. Among many reasons for fear, the primary one might be our unfortunate habit of filtering everything beyond our immediate reality through our own perceptions. Thus, we attribute to others the same traits and characteristics we possess. Another bad habit appears when we discover new technology. Invariably our first thought is: "How can we use this to kill more of our enemies?" Collectively, we all have enemies we want to eliminate to be done with the problem they present. Like it or not, this is a dominant aspect of human nature.

Because we so consistently project onto others the darkest facets of our nature, we automatically assume--despite ET and Alf and other lovable depictions in our culture--that real aliens will want to harm us. Consequently, we avoid facing the possibility of their existence in every way we can. (Here I can mention the obstinate resistance I have personally found to serious consideration of the Starchild skull, which by all rights should have been eagerly and thoroughly examined three years ago.)

So Interventionism is ignored because it scrapes too close to UFOs, crop circles, alien abductions and every other subject that indicates we humans may, in the end, be infinitesimally insignificant in the grand scheme of life in the universe. There is much more to say about it, of course, especially as it relates to human origins, but that has to wait until the second instalment of this essay.

For now, let the last word be that the last word on origins--of life and of humans--is a long, long way from being written.

But when it is, I strongly suspect it will be Intervention.

THE EARLIEST PRIMATES

Darwinists believe the human saga begins with mouse-sized mammals called insectivores (similar to modern tree shrews) that scurried around under the feet of large dinosaurs, trying to avoid becoming food for smaller species. Then comes the Cretaceous extinction event of 65 million years ago that took out the dinosaurs and paved the way for those tiny insectivores to evolve over the next few million years into the earliest primates, the prosimians (literally pre-simians, pre-monkeys) of the early Palaeocene epoch, which lasts until 55 million years ago.

As with nearly all such aspects of Darwinist dogma, this is pure speculation. There is, in fact, no clear indication of a transitional insectivore-to-prosimian species at any point in the process. If any such transitional species had ever been found, then countless more would be known and I wouldn't be writing this essay. Darwinian evolution would be proved beyond doubt, and that would be the end of it.

To read the fossil record literally is to discover the legitimacy of punctuated equilibrium (discussed in Part One) as a plausible explanation. "Punk eek", as detractors call it, points out that in the fossil record life-forms do seem simply to appear on Earth, most often after extinction events but not always. Both the supposed proto-primates and flowering plants appear during the period preceding the Cretaceous extinction. They come when they come, so the relatively sudden post-extinction appearance of the earliest primates, the prosimians (lemurs, lorises, tarsiers), is one of many sudden manifestations.

In terms of human origins, it begs this question: did proto-primates actually evolve into prosimians, into monkeys, into apes, into humans? Or did prosimians appear, monkeys appear, apes appear, and humans appear? Or, in our "special" case, were we created?

However it happened, there is a pattern. The earliest prosimians are found in the fossil record after the Mesozoic/Cenozoic boundary at 65 million years ago. It is assumed their ancestors will someday be found as one of countless "missing links" needed to make an airtight case for Darwinian evolution. Prosimians dominate through the Palaeocene and the Eocene, lasting from 65 to 35 million years ago. (There won't be a test on terms or dates, so don't worry about memorising them; just try to keep the time-flow in mind.) At 35 million years ago, the Oligocene epoch begins and the first monkeys come with it.

Again, Science assumes that monkeys evolved from prosimians, even though evidence of that transition is nowhere in sight. In fact, there is strong evidence pointing in the other direction, toward the dreaded stasis of punctuated equilibrium. The lemurs, lorises and tarsiers of today are essentially just as they were 50 million years ago. Some species have gone extinct while others have modified into new forms, but lemurs and lorises still have wet noses and tarsiers still have dry, which seems always to have been the case. That's why tarsiers are assumed to be responsible for spinning off monkeys and all the rest.

Monkeys start appearing at 35 million years ago, looking vastly different from prosimians. There are certain physiological links, to be sure, such as grasping hands and feet to permit easy movement through trees. However, prosimians cling and jump to move around, while monkeys favour brachiating--swinging along by their arms. Also, prosimians live far more by their sense of smell than do monkeys. This list goes on.

The reason they're linked in an evolutionary flowchart is because they seem close enough in enough ways to make the linkage stick. Simple as that. Science focuses on the similarities and tries hard to ignore their gaping discrepancies, assuming--as always--that there is plenty of time for evolution to do its magic and generate those inexplicable differences.

For the next 10 million years the larger, stronger, more "advanced" monkeys compete with prosimians for arboreal resources, quickly gaining the upper hand over their "ancestors" and driving several of them to extinction.

Then, at around 25 million years ago, the Miocene epoch brings the first apes into the fossil record, as suddenly and inexplicably as all other primates appear. Again, Science insists they evolved from monkeys, but the evidence to support that claim is as specious as the prosimian&endash;monkey link. The transitional bones needed to support it are simply not in the fossil record.

If this isn't a distinct pattern of punctuated equilibrium, then what is?

THE PUZZLING MIOCENE

In terms of primate evolution, the Miocene makes little sense. By 25 million years ago, when it begins, prosimians have been around for about 30 million years and monkeys for 10 million years. Yet in the Miocene's ample fossil record, prosimians and monkeys are rare, while the new arrivals, the apes, are all over the place.

The Miocene epoch stretches from 25 million to 5.0 million years ago. (These are approximations quoted differently in various sources; I round off to the easiest numbers to keep track of.) During those 20 million years, the apes flourish. They produce two-dozen different genera (types), and many have more than one species within the genus. Those apes come in the same range of sizes they exhibit today, from smallish gibbon-like creatures, to mid-range chimp-sized ones, to large gorilla-sized ones, to super-sized Gigantopithecus, known only by many teeth and a few mandibles (jawbones) from India and China.

That's another interesting thing about Miocene apes: their fossils are found literally everywhere in the Old World--Africa, Europe, Asia. Most of them are known by the durable teeth and jaws that define Gigantopithecus, while many others supply enough post-cranial (below the head) bones to grant a reasonably clear image of them. They present an interesting mix of anatomical features. Actually, "confusing" is more like it. They are clearly different from monkeys in that they have no tails, just like modern apes. However, their arms tend to be more like monkey arms--the same length as their legs. Modern ape arms are significantly longer than their legs so they can "walk" comfortably on their front knuckles. More than any other reason, this is why we hear so little from anthropologists about Miocene apes. Their arms don't make sense as the forelimbs of an ancestral quadruped. Miocene arms fit better withÉsomething else.

This is not to say, of course, that no ape arms in the Miocene fossil record are longer than legs. That's nowhere near to being determined because many species--like Gigantopithecus--have yet to provide their arm bones. However, since we do have some tailless, ape-like bodies with monkey-like arms and hands, we have to consider how such a hybrid would move around. Swing through trees by its arms, like a monkey? Not likely. Monkey arms are designed to carry a monkey's slight body. An ape's body needs to be brachiated and leveraged by an ape's much longer, stouter, stronger arms. So how aboutÉwalking?

From a physiological standpoint, an ape-like body with monkey-like arms and hands does not move as easily or comfortably as a quadruped (down on all fours). It simply can't happen. In fact, there's really only one posture that lends itself to the carriage of such a monkey-ape hybrid, and that's upright. Go to a zoo and watch how much easier monkeys--tails and all--stand upright compared to apes. Any monkey can move with grace on its hind legs. In comparison, apes are blundering, top-heavy oafs. Thus, it seems likely that at least some of the hybrid monkey-apes of the Miocene probably had to carry themselves upright, in opposition to the other apes of the era bearing the longer, thicker arms of gibbons, orang-utans, chimpanzees and gorillas. Remember, we're talking about two dozen genera and around 50 species.

WALKING THE WALK

Walking is critical to an understanding of human origins because Darwinists feel it is the factor that set our ancestors on the road to becoming us. The theory is that around 5.0 to 10 million years ago, when the heavy forests blanketing Africa began shrinking, some forest-dwelling quadrupedal Miocene apes still living then (there had been the inevitable extinctions and speciations during the preceding 15 to 20 million years) began to forage on the newly forming savannas. Though terribly ill-equipped to undertake such a journey (more about that later), several ape species supposedly took the risk by learning to stand upright to see out over the savanna grasses to scout for predators. Then--after millennia of holding that position for extended periods--they adopted constant upright posture. In doing so, one of those daring, unknown species took the real "giant step for mankind".

No one can yet say which of the early upright-walking "pre-humans" went on to become us, because the physiological gaps between us and them are simply enormous. In fact, physically, the only significant thing we have in common with those early ancestors is upright posture. But even that reveals noticeable divergence.

Incredibly, we have the walking trail of at least two early pre-humans at 3.5 million years ago. Found in Laetoli, Tanzania, these tracks were laid down on a volcanic ash fall that was then covered by another ash fall and sealed until their discovery by Mary Leakey's team in 1978. Photos of that trail are common and can be accessed in any basic anthropology textbook or on the Internet. What is not commonly portrayed, however, is that detailed analysis of the pressure points along the surface of those prints indicates something that would be expected: they didn't walk like us. After all, 3.5 million years is a long time, and from a Darwinist standpoint it's logical to assume extensive evolution would occur. But whether it was evolution or not, our methods of locomotion are uniquely different.

Humans have a distinctive carriage that starts with a heel strike necessitated by our ankles placed well behind the midpoint of our feet. After the heel strike, our forward momentum is swung to the left or right, out to the edges of our feet to avoid our arches (in normal feet, of course). Once past the arch, there's a sharp swing of the momentum through the ball of the foot from outside all the way to the inside, where momentum is gathered and regenerated in the powerful thrust of the big toe, with the four small toes drawing themselves up to act as balancers. (Watch your own bare feet when you take a step and you'll see those final "thrust-off" stages in action.)

The pre-humans at Laetoli walked with marked differences. Instead of having a heavy heel-strike leading the way, their ankle was positioned at the centre balance point of the foot, allowing it to come down virtually flat with an almost equal distribution of weight and momentum between the heel and the ball area. Instead of a crazy momentum swing out and around the arch, their arches were much smaller and the line of momentum travelled nearly straight along the midline of the entire foot. That made for a much more stable platform for planting the foot and toeing off into the next step, which was done by generating thrust with the entire ball area rather than with just the big toe. When you get right down to it, the Laetoli stride was a superior technique to the one we utilise now.

Slow-motion studies of humans walking show that we do virtually everything "wrong". Our "heel-strike, toe-off" causes a discombobulation that courses up our entire body. We are forced to lock our knees to handle the torque as our momentum swings out and around our arches. Because of that suspended moment of torque absorption, we basically have to fall forward with each step, which is absorbed by our hip joints. Meanwhile, balance is assisted by swinging our arms. Because of those factors, we don't walk with anything approaching optimum efficiency, and the stresses created in us W*rk, over time, to deteriorate our joints and eventually cripple us. In short, we could use a re-design.

What we actually need to do is to walk more like the pre-humans at Laetoli. In order to secure that heel-and-toe plant with each step, we'd have to modify our stride so our knees weren't locked and we weren't throwing ourselves forward through our hip joints. We'd have to keep our knees in a state of continual flexion, however slight, absorbing all the stress of walking in our thighs and buttocks, which both are designed to accommodate. This would provide us with a "gliding" kind of stride that might look unusual (it would resemble the classic Groucho Marx bent-kneed comedic walk), but would actually be much less stressful, much less tiring and incredibly more efficient physiologically.

Based on the evidence of the Laetoli tracks, this is exactly how they walked.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

When Darwinists present reconstructions of so-called "pre-humans", invariably they look nothing like humans.

Lucy and her Australopithecus relatives were little more than upright-walking chimpanzees. The robust australopithecines were bipedal gorillas. The genus Homo (habilis, erectus, Neanderthals and other debatable species) was a distinct upgrade, but still nowhere near the ballpark of humanity. Only when the Cro-Magnons appear, as suddenly and inexplicably as everything else, at around 120,000 years ago in the fossil record, do we see beings that are unmistakably human.

The Laetoli walkers lived 3.5 million years ago. Lucy lived around 3.2 million years ago. Recent discoveries show signs of pushing bipedal locomotion back as far as 6.0 million years ago. So let's assume for the sake of discussion that some primates were upright at no less than 4.0 million years ago.

Thus, from approximately 4.0 million years ago all the way to the appearance of Cro-Magnons some time before 120,000 years ago (95% of the journey), all pre-human fossils reveal distinctly non-human characteristics. They have thick, robust bones--much thicker and more robust than ours. Such thick bones are necessary to support the stress generated by extraordinarily powerful muscles, far more powerful than ours. Their arms are longer than ours, especially from shoulder to elbow. Their arms are also roughly the same length as their legs, à la Miocene apes. And in every aspect that can be quantified--every one!--their skulls are much more ape-like than human-like. Those differences hold from australopithecine bones to the bones of Neanderthals--which means that something quite dramatic happened to produce the Cro-Magnons, and it wasn't the result of an extinction event. It wasÉsomething else.

The chasm between Cro-Magnons (us) and everything else that comes before them is so incredibly wide and deep that there is no way legitimately to connect the two, apart from linking their bipedal locomotion. All of the so-called "pre-humans" are much more like upright-walking chimps or upright-walking gorillas than they are incipient humans. Darwinists argue that this is why they are called pre-humans, because they are so clearly not human.

But another interpretation can be put on the fossil record--one that fairly and impartially judges the facts as they exist, without the "spin" required by Darwinist dogma. That spin says that the gaping physiological chasm between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons can be plausibly explained with yet another "missing link".

LOOKING BACK TO SEE AHEAD

Darwinists use the missing link to negate the fact that Cro-Magnons appear out of nowhere, looking nothing like anything that has come before. What they fail to mention is that dozens of such links would be needed to show any kind of plausible transition from any pre-human to Cro-Magnons. It clearly didn't happen--and since they're experts about such things, they know it didn't happen. However, to acknowledge that would play right into the desperate hands of Creationists and Intelligent Designers, not to mention give strong support to Interventionists like me. They face a very big rock or a very hard place.

Let's accept for the moment that in Darwinian terms there is no way to account for the sudden appearance of Cro-Magnons (humans) on planet Earth. If that is true, then what about the so-called "pre-humans"? What are they the ancestors of? Their bones litter the fossil record looking very unlike humans, yet they clearly walk upright for at least 4.0 million years, and new finds threaten to push that back to 6.0 million years. Even more likely is that among the 50 or more species of Miocene apes, at least a few are walking upright as far back as 10 to 15 million years ago. If we accept that likelihood, we finally make sense of the deep past while beginning for the first time to see ourselves clearly.

We can be sure that at least four of the 50 Miocene apes were on their way to becoming modern quadrupeds, because their descendants live among us today. Equally certain is that others of those 50 walked out of the Miocene on two legs. Technically these are called hominoids, which are human-like beings that are clearly not human. In fact, every bipedal fossil preceding Cro-Magnon is considered a hominoid--a term that sounds distinctly outside the human lineage. So Darwinists have replaced it in common usage with the much less specific "pre-human", which not so subtly brainwashes us all into believing there is no doubt about that connection. And that brainwashing W*rks.

We are further brainwashed to believe there are no bipedal apes alive in the world today, despite hundreds of sightings and/or encounters with such bipedal apes every year on every continent except Antarctica. Darwinists brainwash us to ignore such reports by showering them with ridicule. They call such creatures "impossible", and hope the weight of their credentials can hold reality at bay long enough for them to figure out what to do about the public relations catastrophe they will face when the first hominoid is brought onto the world stage--dead or alive. That will be the darkest day in Darwinist history, because their long charade will be officially over. The truth will finally be undeniable. Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman and several relatives are absolutely real.

IF THE SHOE FITSÉ

I'm not going to waste time and space here going over the mountain of evidence that is available in support of hominoid reality. I cover it extensively in the third part of my book, Everything You Know Is Wrong, and there are many other books that cover one or more aspects of the subject. If you care to inform yourself about the reality of hominoids, you won't have any trouble doing so. And the evidence is solid enough to hold up in any court in the world, except the court of public opinion manipulated by terrified Darwinists. However, I will go over a few points that bear directly on the question of human origins.

Let's grant a fairly obvious assumption: that the thousands of ordinary people who have described hominoid sightings and encounters over the past few hundred years (yes, they go back that far in the literature) were in fact seeing living creatures rather than Miocene ghosts. And no matter where on Earth witnesses come from, no matter how far from the beaten path of education and/or modern communications, they describe what they see with amazing consistency. To hear witnesses tell it, the same kinds of creatures exist in every heavily forested or canopied environment on the planet--which is precisely what we would expect if they did indeed stride out of the Miocene epoch on two legs.

Furthermore, what witnesses describe is exactly what we would expect of upright-walking apes. They are invariably described as having a robust, muscular body covered with hair, atop which sits a head with astonishingly ape-like features. In short, the living hominoids are described as having bodies we would expect to find wrapped around the bones found in the so-called "pre-human" fossil record. In addition, witnesses describe what they see as having longer arms than human arms, hanging down near their knees, which means those arms are approximately the length of their legs. Witnesses also contend that the creatures walk with a "gliding" kind of bent-kneed stride that leaves tracks eerily reminiscent of the tracks left at Laetoli 3.5 million years ago.

Now we come to the crux for Darwinists, Creationists and Intelligent Designers. Evidence supporting the reality of hominoids is overwhelming. Truly. And if they are real, it means the "pre-human" fossil record is actually a record of their ancestors, not ours. And if that's the case, then humans have no place on the flowchart of life on Earth. And if that's true, then it's equally clear that humans did not evolve and could not have evolved here the way Darwinists claim. And if we didn't evolve here, that opens the door to the Interventionist position that nothing evolved here: everything was brought or created by sentient off-world beings whom I call terraformers, whose means and motivation will remain unknown to us unless and until they see fit to explain themselves. I hope no one is holding their breath.

The point is that the Miocene epoch had the means to produce living hominoids--50 or more different species (which almost certainly will be shaved down to perhaps a dozen as more complete bodies are found) as far back as 20 million years ago. It produced some with monkey-like arms better suited to an upright walker than a brachiating tree-dweller or knuckle walker.

By the time it ended, 5.0 million years ago, a half-dozen or more bipedal apes were on the Earth, which we know from the ape-like australopithecine and early Homo fossils. And we know from Laetoli that they had a walking pattern distinct from humans, which modern witnesses describe as still being the way hominoids walk. In short, they've followed the punctuated equilibrium pattern of long-term stasis.

SO WHAT ABOUT HUMANS?

Humans simply do not fit the pattern of primate development on Earth. Notice the word development instead of evolution. Species that appear here do undergo changes in morphology over time. It's called microevolution, because it describes changes in body parts. Darwinists use the undeniable reality of microevolution to extrapolate the reality of macroevolution, which is change at the species-into-more-advanced-species level. That is blatantly not evident in the fossil record, especially when it comes to human physiology.

We have shown, I hope, that humans have been shoehorned by Darwinists into having a place in the fossil record that doesn't belong to them but to living hominoids (Bigfoot, etc.). Furthermore, humans have been shoehorned into being primates, when there is little about them--certainly nothing of significance--that fits the classic primate pattern. In fact, if it weren't for the desperate need of Darwinists to keep humans closely linked to the primate line, we would have had our own appellation long ago--and we'll surely have it once the truth is out from the Pandora's box of Darwinist deception.

Relatively speaking, primate bones are much thicker and heavier than human bones. Primate muscles are five to 10 times stronger than ours. (Anyone who's dealt with monkeys knows how amazingly strong they are for their size.) Primate skin is covered with long, thick, visible hair. Ours is largely invisible. Primate hair is thick on the back, thin on the front. Ours is switched the other way around. Primates have large, round eyes capable of seeing at night. Compared to theirs, we have greatly reduced night vision. Primates have small, relatively "simple" brains compared to ours. They lack the ability to modulate sound into speech. Primate sexuality is based on an oestrus cycle in females (though some, like bonobo chimps, have plenty of sex when not in oestrus). In human females, the effects of oestrus are greatly diminished.

This list could go on to cite many more areas of difference, but all of them are overshadowed by the Big Kahuna of primate/human difference: all primates have 48 chromosomes, while humans have "only" 46 chromosomes. Two entire chromosomes represent a heck of a lot of DNA removed from the human genome, yet somehow that removal made us "superior" in countless ways. It doesn't make sense. Nor does the fact that even with two whole chromosomes missing from our genome, we share what is now believed to be 95% of the chimp genome and around 90% of the gorilla genome. How can those numbers be made to reconcile? They can't.

Something is wrong here. Someone has been cooking the genetic books.

THE STUFF OF LIFE

In the wild, plants and animals tend to breed remarkably true to their species. That's why stasis is the dominant characteristic of life on Earth. Species appear and stay essentially the same (apart from the superficial changes of microevolution) until they go extinct for whatever reason (catastrophe, inability to compete for resources effectively, etc.). When "faulty" examples appear, they're nearly always unable to put the fault into their species' collective gene pool. A negative mutation that doesn't kill the individual it appears in is unlikely to be passed along to posterity, despite Darwinist assertions that this is precisely how evolution occurs. All genomes have hard-wired checks and balances against significant changes of any kind, which is why stasis has been the hallmark of all life since beginning here. Aberrant examples are efficiently weeded out, either early in the reproductive process or soon after reproduction (birth). Faulty copies are deleted.

This deletion of faults holds true in the vast majority of species. Most genomes are--and stay--remarkably clear of gene-based defects. All species are susceptible to mistakes in the reproductive process, such as sperm/egg misconnections. In mammals, this produces spontaneous abortions, stillbirths or live-birth defects. However, there are precious few defects that swim in the gene pools of any "wild" or "natural" species. The only places we find significant, species-wide genetic defects are in domesticated plants and animals, and in those they can be--and often are--numerous.

Domesticated plants and animals clearly seem to have been genetically created by "outside intervention" at some point in the distant past. (For those interested in learning more about this, I discuss it in considerable detail in NEXUS 9/04.) Domesticated species have so many points of divergence from wild/natural species, it's not realistic to consider them in any kind of relative context. As we've seen above, the same holds true for humans and the primates we supposedly evolved from. They're apples and oranges.

We humans have over 4,000 genetic defects spread throughout our common gene pool. Think about that. No other species comes close. And yet, our mitochondrial DNA proves we have existed as a species for "only" about 200,000 years. Remember the first Cro-Magnon fossils showing up in strata 120,000 years old? That fits well with the origin of a small proto-group at around 200,000 years ago. (There will almost certainly be Cro-Magnon fossils found prior to 120,000 years ago, but it is unlikely they were dispersed widely enough to have left fossils near the 200,000-year mark. Naturally, the very first one could have been fossilised, but that's not the way to bet. Fossilisation is quite rare.)

All that being the case, how did over 4,000 genetic defects W*rk their way into the human gene pool, when such genome-wide defects are rare to nonexistent in wild or natural species? (Remember, Darwin himself noticed that humans are very much like domesticated animals in many of our physical and biological traits.) It can only have occurred if the very first members (no more than a handful of breeding pairs) had the entire package of faults within their genome. That's the only way Eskimos and Watusis and all the rest of humanity can express the exact same genetic disorders.

If we descended from apes, as Darwinists insist, then apes should have a very large number of our genetic defects. They do not. If, on the other hand, we've been genetically unique for only 200,000 years, then the only way those defects could be with us is if they were put into our gene pool by the genetic manipulation of the founding generation of our species, and the mistakes made in that process were left in place to be handed down to posterity. And, as might be expected, this is also how domesticated plants and animals came to have their own inordinate numbers of genetic defects. It simply couldn't happen any other way.

THE FINAL NAILÉ

When Einstein was asked in reference to relativity, "How did you do it?", he replied, "I ignored an axiom." This is what everyone must do if we are to get anywhere near the truth about human origins.

Darwinists ask us to believe a theory based on this axiom: "There are good grounds to believe our early ancestors lived in forests. There are equally good grounds to believe our later ancestors lived by hunting game on African savannas. Therefore, we can assume that somehow, some way, we went from living in forests to living on the savannas." The trick, for Darwinists, is in explaining it plausibly.

Savanna theorists ask us to believe that, 5.0 to 10 million years ago, several groups of forest-dwelling Miocene apes were squeezed by environmental pressures to venture out onto the encroaching savannas to begin making their collective living. This means they had to rise from the assumed quadrupedal posture attributed to all Miocene apes to walk and run on two legs, thus giving up the ease and rapidity of moving on all fours. Those early groups had to make their way with unmodified pelvises, inappropriate single-arched spines, absurdly under-muscled thighs and buttocks, and heads stuck on at the wrong angle, and all the while doggedly shuffling along on the sides of long-toed, ill-adapted feet, thereby becoming plodding skin-bags of snack-treats for savanna predators. If any harebrained scheme ever deserved a re-think by its originator(s), this would be the one.

Of course, the real re-think needs to be done by Darwinists, because it is glaringly obvious that no forest-bound species of ape could have ventured onto the savanna as a stumbling, bumbling walker and learned to do it better out there among the big cats. If a collective group had been unfit for erect movement on the savanna, they wouldn't have gone. If they did go, they couldn't and wouldn't stay. Even primates are smarter than that. And understand, there are primates that did make the move onto the savanna, albeit always remaining within range of a high-speed scurry into nearby trees. Baboons are the most successful of this small group, all of which have retained quadrupedal locomotion.

In addition to the forest-to-savanna transition, Darwinists face numerous other improbable--if not impossible--differences between humans and terrestrial primates. In addition to bipedalism and the genetic discrepancies already addressed, there are major differences in skin and the adipose tissue (fat) beneath it; in sweat glands, in blood, in tears, in sex organs, in brain size and function, and on and on and on. This is a very long list that can be examined in much fuller detail in the W*rk of a brilliant, determined researcher into human origins, named Elaine Morgan.

Ms Morgan is the chief proponent of what challenged Darwinists derisively call "the Aquatic Ape theory", as if the juxtaposition of those disparate words were enough to dismiss it as an absurd notion. Nothing could be further from the truth. In books like The Scars of Evolution (Souvenir Press, London, 1990), she makes a devastating case against the notion that humans evolved from forest-dwelling apes that moved out onto the savannas. She believes humans must have gone through an extended period of development in and around water to generate the bizarre array of physiological oddities we exhibit relative to the primates we supposedly evolved from.

However, despite all her wonderfully creative W*rk, Ms Morgan remains wedded to the Darwinist concept of evolution, which had to play itself out in only the 200,000 years dictated by our mitochondrial DNA.

MAKING SENSE OF THE INSENSIBLE

The pieces of the puzzle are on the table. The answer is there for anyone to see. But rearranging those pieces properly is no easy task, and it is even more difficult to get dogmatists of any stripe to look at the picture in a light different from their own. That has been my purpose in writing these two essays on origins--of life and of humans. They are two of the world's most sensitive areas of scholarship and debate, producing some of the most vitriolic exchanges in all of academia. But vitriol, like might, doesn't make right.

I once knew a baseball player who'd pitched a no-hitter against a seriously inferior team. Upon being criticised for the obvious imbalance between his abilities and those of his opponents, the pitcher shrugged and said, "A no-hitter is a no-hitter, even against Lighthouse for the Blind." And so it is with a mistaken belief. If millions believe a thing, that doesn't make it correct.

I believe that the facts, if fairly evaluated, will over time prove that humans--and indeed, life itself--did not originate on Earth, and that nothing has macroevolved on Earth. It has all been brought here and left to fend for itself, then replaced when events required the introduction of new forms. No other theory suits the facts nearly as well.

As for humans (the object of this essay), look back to the Miocene epoch, where the earliest traces of our ancestors supposedly originate. Apes dominate. Look at the fossils--the so-called "pre-humans"--from the Pliocene epoch, starting 5.0 million years ago. Other than bipedal walking, all of their physical aspects shout out "ape roots". Look at today's tracks, sightings and encounters with living hominoids, Bigfoot and others. These all-too-real creatures will one day be proved to have a direct link back to the Miocene--which, at a stroke, will eliminate any possibility that humans and apes share any kind of common ancestor.

We humans are not indigenous to planet Earth. We were either put here intact or we developed here, but we did not evolve here. Our genes make clear that we've been cut-and-pasted from other, non-primate, non-Earthly species.

Personally, I believe that the W*rk of Zecharia Sitchin (The Earth Chronicles) comes closest to a plausible explanation. But even if some aspects of what he says are wrong, or even if all of it someday is proved to be wrong, that won't change the basic facts that his W*rk--and my own W*rk--address.

Humans are not primates. We do indeed stand apart as a "special" creation, long espoused by theologians and now by certain credentialled scientists. The only question left hanging is, of course: who or what was the creator? I don't think I'll be privileged to learn that in my lifetime. But I'm confident I'm within reach of the next best answer.

I'm confident that we were created by invasive genetic manipulation."

Darwinism and Christianity are responsible for the fallacy that we have dominion over other life-forms, even each other. It's just reinforcing the programmed heirarchy that binds us all to get so lost in what is essentially a pointless argument. The only point of measurement is the ability to manipulate matter, and going along these lines you eventually end up in Nazi territory; if we are superior simply because we are "more intelligent", then logic dictates that we sub-divide humans accordingly - and there you have the archaic basis of the class system.

It's interesting that animist societies, who have never been force-fed the superiority programming, respect all life, live in harmony with their environments and recognise the whole planet as a spiritual entity of which we are an indistinguishable part, albeit with a "care-takers" role.

I don't care if i'm an ape, or if i'm not. i am probably even less capable of doing algebra than a zebra. we're all different, but all living beings are endowed with consciousness and having respect for that is the only thing that really matters.

extraterrestrial intervention or otherwise, this argument represents two different varieties of repeating; one creationist, the other darwinian. that is not to say that i don't encourage the questioning of our origins for those who have never considered it further than either the schoolbook scientific version or the "god did it" approach. all things considered, alien intervention makes the most sense as it joins up the dots between millenia of religious teaching and what we now know as scientfic fact regarding the nature of evolution. i have never believed the two are mutually exclusive.

however, ultimately, it doesn't matter how we got here. we're just here. the journey isn't about understanding our origins, it's about where we are going. you don't buy a car and then spend the rest of your life obsessing about which factory it was built in, being so concerned about the details that you forget how to drive and don't actually go anywhere!

i think part of our problem as a species is the fact that we think we are separate from every other living being, that we are superior. this kind of thinking is the reason that people have no respect for other sentient beings, and think we have the right to just consume every resource this planet has to offer with no concern for anything else that lives on it alongside us. it's just an ego trip of cosmic proportions.

the whole point of infinite consciousness is that ALL consciousness combined creates infinite energy, not just OUR consciousness. the fact that we happen to inhabit a more capable vehicle than other lifeforms is irrelevant; it's the same spark of divine energy that makes everything from an amoeba to us alive.

most of us don't even understand our own consciousness, never mind that of anything else. it's like trying to measure the unmeasurable. we build stuff, animals don't. this actually tells us nothing about the nature of consciousness, only matter.

it makes no difference whatsoever what we evolved from, or whether we were deliberately constructed in this form. whatever we are, we're here on this planet on our own individual journeys, just like every other creature. some of us are walking, some of us are on pushbikes and some of us are flying. we all get to the same place in the end.
~Ali

so i dreamed of utopia...

2008-07-11T12:40:00.003+01:00

"This is what boundary dissolution means; it means nothing less than the anticipation of the end-state of human history. A return to the archaic mode, a rediscovery of the orgiastic freedom of the African grasslands of 20,000 years ago. A techno-escape into a future that looks more like the past than the future, because materialism, consumerism, product fetishism, all of these things will be eliminated and technology will become nanotechnology and disappear from our physical presence. If-- if-- we have the dream. If we allow the wave of novelty to propel us toward the creativity that is inimicable to the human condition."

A postcard from the future. Everything is possible these days.

We start with a fully automated production system which requires little human intervention in the assembling and maintenance of essential utilities. The W*rkforce is freed to follow a life of pleasure and contemplation. We focus on sustaining the equilibrium of nature, taking only so much as is required. We learn not to waste anything.

Human kind cooperates in the goal of achieving sustainability; we are all children of a global village. Nationalism, separatism, and patriotism end. Our vision is planetary. The accumulation of personal wealth ends, for it only divides and perpertuates itself through exploitation. All life is respected, no matter how small. We begin journeys of conscious inner space exploration. The meanderings of the universe are essentially a distraction when our own realm is misunderstood.

We isolate manufacturing to designated areas, so that the earth can once again be unfenced and untamed. We wander around in wellington boots sniffing flowers.
Food and water and shelter are provided to all for free: money is now the abstraction it always was, meaningless beside human need. We are nurtured as infants and kept at our parents side until we are old enough to crawl away, asserting our forming independance. We are not given our own rooms and left to cry at a few weeks old because we realise that isolation at this formative age leads to insecurity and anger and self destructive feelings as adults. Our parents do not try to shape us into a vision of what they should have been, but encourage our innate talents and curiosities. In life we learn to follow our own paths, seek answers to the questions that are our own, rather than follow a rigid life structure which decrees THOU SHALT ACHIEVE!

We embrace the natural order of existance that so many prophets for so many millenia have tried in vain to show us and make them the only laws:
* Respect all life
* Harm none
* Show compassion and understanding

We experience a renaissance in the art of conversation and interaction, TV now a controlled drug used to sedate.

We live in small communities focused on self sufficiency. Everyone has a role. Everything is worth its true value. We reeducate ourselves in the politics of excess: we no longer eat beyond fullness, or starve for the sake of silhouette. Mind and heart matter more than aesthetics. We accept change and impermanence rather than waste precious lifetimes trying to overcome them. Friendships and relationships are prized above anything else. We do not try to opress or alter the will of those we love, accepting them the way they are.

There is no war, because we realise that there is no use in fighting against ourselves, that we can never win. And noone is in charge of the world. There is no power so there is no power struggle.

Everyone is free to believe what they want to believe about the nature of existance, all religious dogma is abandoned save the basic principles of the ideology, the emphasis being on the individual to choose a path based on their own experience and synchronous events. Everyone understands that spiritual thought is a personal activity and cannot be made into a movement or cause, the goal of which being persuading others of the validity of your way of thinking. We realise that this is social brainwashing and interferes with the sacred doctrine of free thought. We realise that people ultimately end up at the same conclusions anyway, regardless of which label they wish to apply to their faith, and that harmony is only possible when we accept the different facets of the same universal truth.

We focus on the conscious evolution of our species into beings of pure thought.

We learn self-control in all things; in thought, in action, in consumption. We focus on overcoming our neurosis and insecurities through active use of logic and rationale where paranoias are concerned. We take responsibility for our own negativity and deal with the causes, rather than attempting to sate them with aggressive, controlling or destructive behaviours. We do not try to replace what is lacking emotionally with material objects or compulsive activity. We confront our problems and deal with them, rather than casting them aside. We think of others. We realise that selfishness and greed have been the downfall of our previous civilizations.

We educate ourselves, rather than accepting hear-say and propaganda. We learn continually as it is a means of being a more complete human being. We no longer worship celebrities or sportsmen, but those whose contribution to society is of true value: healers, teachers and Mothers. We respect the elderly and their varied life experiences: we realise that without their wisdom and learning we are destined to repeat the mistakes of history.

We do not judge others for past mistakes, or hold against them their previous indiscretions. We do not recognize race or gender or class or sexuality.
The worth of people is measured by their capacity to love.
~Ali

Catastrophe, collective trauma & civilization

2008-07-11T12:35:00.001+01:00

"If we consider mankind as a whole and substitute it for a single individual, we discover that it too has developed delusions which are inaccessible to logical criticism and which contradict reality. . . . Investigation leads us to the same explanation as in the case of the single individual. They owe their power to the element of historical truth which they have brought up from the repression of the forgotten and primeval past.
— Sigmund Freud

In the past I have explored the origins and horrific contradictions of Western civilisation through the lenses of economics, history, and religion. But what about the psychological sources of our socially intensified and organised compulsions to dominate, domesticate, and overpopulate? What changes in the human psyche, beginning perhaps ten or more millennia ago, led us to leave behind hunting and gathering and start down the slippery slope of progress?

There are several theories that seek to explain the origin of domestication, agriculture, and civilisation, of which three have gained wide currency. The first is that these came about simply as the result of a natural evolutionary process. I have examined the shortcomings of this explanation, where in general, hunting and gathering presents the most favourable cost-benefit ratio of any means of subsistence yet devised by human beings. Why evolve toward a way of life-agriculture-that requires more W*rk and results in increased disease and stress? A second theory ascribes the horticultural revolution to population pressure: Perhaps in the late Pleistocene prehistoric hunters came to occupy every available ecozone. Then, according to this theory’s foremost proponent, Mark Cohen, “The only possible reaction to further growth in population, worldwide, was to begin artificial augmentation of the food supply.” A third theory focuses on climate changes at the end of the last Ice Age, which caused sea levels to rise. The rising seas not only drowned the habitats of people and animals, but brought the extinction of many Pleistocene megafauna. “This,” says anthropologist Marvin Harris, “must have been a major stimulus for the development of new modes of production regardless of whether the depletions and extinctions resulted primarily from overpredation or from the reduction in suitable grazing and browsing habitats.”

In fact, all three influences — climate change, population pressure, and evolution — may have W*rked together in motivating the switch from foraging to planting. But if we wish to uncover the psychological underpinnings of civilisation there are more things to explain that than just the introduction of agriculture. Why did humans begin systematically to destroy their environments? Why did they invent organised warfare and learn to pursue it with such ruthless efficiency?"

" Again, one can argue that these further developments were the inevitable outcomes of population pressure or environmental stress; and again, we might suppose that evolution was a contributing factor, though it is hard to see how it could have been the primary one. But when we take all of these developments together, and when we begin to appreciate the depth and scope of their destructiveness of human health and social bonds and of the human habitat, surely we then must also consider the possibility — which is not exclusive of the three explanations already cited — that civilisation might also have arisen, at least in part, or at the very least in the way it did, as a kind of collective psychic disease.

The idea that civilisation is fundamentally sick goes back at least to the early Greeks; closer to our own time, Sigmund Freud once asked: “May we not be justified in reaching the diagnosis that, under the influence of cultural urges, some civilisations or some epochs of civilisation — possibly the whole of mankind — have become ‘neurotic’?” Unfortunately, Freud refused to follow out the implications of this question, being by nature somewhat of an authoritarian and a political conformist; but other psychologists have picked up where he left off. Carl Jung wrote of “politico-social delusional systems” having their roots in the collective unconscious; Wilhelm Reich believed that civilisation was swept up in an “emotional plague”; and Immanuel Velikovsky theorised that humankind suffers collectively from amnesia and repetition compulsion.

More recently, as it has become apparent that civilisation is in the process of profoundly and perhaps permanently impairing the biological viability of the entire planet, a new discipline know as “ecopsychology” has undertaken to expose the roots of civilisation’s omnicidal mania. Paul Shepard’s Nature and Madness (Sierra Club, 1982), Theodore Roszak’s The Voice of the Earth (Simon & Schuster, 1992), and Chellis Glendinning’s My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilisation (Shambhalla, 1994) have all underscored the idea that individual psychological dysfunctions may be merely local eruptions of a collective insanity afflicting the entire civilised world. The ecopsychologists say that so-called “advanced” human societies are actually merely in an advanced state of some virulent cultural psychic disorder, and that in order to heal ourselves individually, and to restore our world to biological viability, we must find and treat the cause of our illness."

" Initially, as we seek to grapple with the idea of mass neurosis, we are compelled to draw analogies with individual manifestations of psychic distress. While a certain amount of caution is always required in extrapolating from the individual to the collective, in this case the method does yield some promising leads.

There is, it seems, one disorder whose symptoms in individuals closely resemble the irrational, self-destructive attitudes and behaviours of civilised people acting together ¡X a disorder that is commonly seen in war veterans and in survivors of rape, assault, abuse, or environmental disasters; psychologists call it post-traumatic stress disorder. The symptoms of post-traumatic stress include:

ƒÜ vigilance and scanning,
ƒÜ elevated startle response,
ƒÜ blunted affect or psychic numbing (the loss of the ability to feel),
ƒÜ denial (mental reorganisation of the event to reduce pain, leading sometimes even to amnesia),
ƒÜ aggressive, controlling behaviour,
ƒÜ interruption of memory and concentration,
ƒÜ depression,
ƒÜ generalised anxiety,
ƒÜ episodes of rage,
ƒÜ substance abuse,
ƒÜ intrusive recall and dissociative ¡§flashback¡¨ experiences,
ƒÜ insomnia,
ƒÜ suicidal ideation, and
ƒÜ survivor guilt

Clearly, it would be absurd to argue that all civilised people, without exception, suffer from each and every one of these symptoms. Nevertheless, some symptoms do seem almost indisputably to characterise most members of civilised cultures. When hunter-gatherers encounter civilised people, they often remark on how the latter appear generally to be disconnected, alienated, aggressive, controlling, easily frustrated, addictive, and obsessive. But if civilisation got its start as the result of mass trauma, presumably that trauma would have occurred in the distant past; why, then, would these symptoms appear in civilised people today, perhaps many millennia after the fact?

Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, in his studies of the long-term psychological effects of the Hiroshima bombing in 1945 and the 1972 flood in Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, concluded that the impact of disasters affects not only the immediate victims, but is transmitted to succeeding generations. Because the aggressive, controlling behaviour and episodes of rage exhibited by trauma victims can result in traumatic effects on others ¡X particularly, on children and other close family members ¡X post-traumatic stress can infect entire families, and, conceivably, entire cultures.

It is not hard to catch civilised cultures in the act of passing trauma on from generation to generation, though it is difficult to trace the chain of abuse back to its ultimate origin. The instances are plentiful and, occasionally, brutally plain. In her book For Your Own Good (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983), psychologist Alice Miller showed how the German people¡¦s willingness, during the first decades of the twentieth century, to submit to authoritarian domination and to participate with blind obedience in unprovoked attacks against strangers can be traced in part to violent, authoritarian pedagogical practices that were widely promulgated at the turn of the century. And these practices in turn arose from previous generations of ¡§poisonous pedagogy.¡¨ The infanthood authoritarian programming of the generation that brought Hitler to power was merely a conspicuous instance of a broader pattern: Child-rearing in Western civilisation is typically and systematically abusive in comparison with that among many ¡§primitive¡¨ peoples, particularly the hunter-gatherers. Miller notes that ¡§the scorn and abuse directed at the helpless child as well as the suppression of vitality, creativity, and feeling in the child and in oneself permeate so many areas of our life that we hardly notice it anymore.¡¨ Anthropologists Colin Turnbull and Ashley Montagu, and psychotherapist Jean Liedloff, have described and analysed in some detail how typical Western practices surrounding childbirth, informal child-rearing, and formal education alienate the infant or child from her body and its natural surroundings, suppress innate needs, implant authoritarian messages, and undermine the sense of self-worth."

In cases of severe trauma in infancy or childhood, the victim may experience extreme dissociation, culminating in multiple personality disorder. Extraordinary abuse — especially from primary caregivers — overwhelms the child’s ego. To keep from being psychologically annihilated, the child hypnotises herself into a trance state, while a secondary personality emerges to take the abuse. Over time, several — even dozens — of discrete personalities may develop, each with its own personality and ways of thinking and feeling.

Can a whole culture be dissociative? Native peoples often note that civilised people typically act at cross-purposes to their stated ideals (for example, talking about justice and mercy on Sunday morning, then practising murderous pillage the next day). It is as though the colonial European has a divided self: “White man speaks with forked tongue.” And Western civilisation seems to glory in the splitting process: God is pitted against Satan, mind against body, subject against object, spirit against the flesh, angelic virtue against animal instincts, and so on. Most of these distinctions appear extreme or even nonsensical to members of non-Western cultures, whose very languages usually reflect more inclusive, less categorical patterns of thought. Colin Ross, a multiple-personality researcher, says that Western culture has promoted the “executive ego self” to the exclusion of others. This executive ego is arrogant, intolerant, overly logical, and anti-intuitive. Ross writes: “A cultural dissociation barrier has been created and reinforced, the purpose of which is to keep other part selves suppressed, out of contact and communication with the executive self, and relegated to second-class status in the mind.”

People suffering from post-traumatic stress often develop addictions as a way to control psychic pain. Addiction is an out-of-control compulsion to fill an inner sense of emptiness with substances like alcohol or food, or with experiences like falling love or gambling. In The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power (North Atlantic, 1993), Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad see addiction as an unconscious revolt against an inner authoritarian. If civilised people do have inner authoritarians, implanted through abusive child-rearing, it stands to reason that they might collectively exhibit addictive behaviours as a way of rebelling, as well as to distract themselves from pain and to fill inner voids. Historian Morris Berman writes: “Addiction, in one form or another, characterises every aspect of industrial society. . . . Dependence on alcohol (food, drugs, tobacco . . .) is not formally different from dependence on prestige, career advancement, world influence, wealth, the need to build more ingenious bombs, or the need to exercise control over everything.” It should be noted that Berman is not merely offering a cynical commentary on our society’s more egregious failures, using the word “addiction” metaphorically; he is pointing to specific addictive symptoms that are not shared by many traditional cultures, particularly those of hunter-gatherers, wherein the compulsive search for wealth, power, novelty, and gadgetry is, if not completely unknown, certainly comparatively rare.

Trauma victims frequently suffer from psychic numbing — the decreased ability to feel joy or sorrow, or to empathise with the feelings of others. Native peoples wonder how civilised Europeans can treat other humans, and the animals, trees, and land, with such unfeeling indifference. Of course, the relentless monetisation and compartmentalisation of our society are partly to blame: trees and animals have ceased to be magical beings and have become instead “economic resources”; people have ceased to be members of a community and have become instead “W*rkers” or “consumers,” “national allies” or “enemies of the state.” Nevertheless, the questions arise: Why is it that people in Western society have failed to put brakes on tendencies to turn empathic relationships into abstract, manipulative ones — even when these tendencies are clearly out of control and acting to the detriment of people’s own fundamental interests? Could it be because the population is already numbed to some extent by some ancient trauma, the destructive energy of which has been passed along from generation to generation through abusive childrearing? Now, up to this point we have simply stated a hypothesis. Even if it is a reasonable one, it lacks any sort of proof. How would we go about supporting it with evidence? One way would be to examine human societies that have been subject to horrific disasters in recent times, and see if the traumatised survivors responded collectively by developing the sorts of symptoms we have listed, and whether these symptoms led to permanent social change. Another would be to search for evidence of an ancient trauma that might have been capable of producing multi-generational effects."

" Anthropologist Colin Turnbull’s The Mountain People (Simon & Schuster, 1972), is a classic, poignant study of the Ik — a hunting and gathering people of west-central Africa who had been driven from their former hunting grounds by the creation of a new game preserve. While the Ik were not the victims of a natural disaster per se, they were nevertheless experiencing the equivalent of a catastrophe-slow starvation due to the loss of their means of subsistence.

Previously, the Ik (also known as the Teuso) had lived the way most hunter-gatherers do. Hunters, according to Turnbull, “frequently display those characteristics that we find so admirable in man: kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity and others. This sounds like a formidable list of virtues, and so it would be if they were virtues, but for the hunter they are not. For the hunter in his tiny, close-knit society, these are necessities for survival; without them society would collapse.” As for the Ik themselves, “we have the remnants of past traditions, customs and beliefs, and something of their own oral tradition, all of which indicate that they were . . . an easy-going, loosely organised people whose fluid organisation enabled them to respond with sensitivity to the ever changing demands of their environment. There is ample evidence in their language that they once held values which they no longer hold, that they understood by ‘goodness’ and ‘happiness’ something very different from what those words have come to mean now.”

Forced to pursue an unfamiliar agricultural life in the mountains separating Uganda, Sudan, and Kenya, on land unable to support them, the Ik had changed profoundly. In less than three generations, they had become a handful of scattered hostile bands interested only in individual survival. They had abandoned compassion, love, and kindness for the sake of mere existence. Turnbull: “Economic interest is centred on as many individual stomachs as there are people, and cooperation is merely a device for furthering an interest that is consciously selfish. . . . In present circumstances they are highly disputatious and given to much acrimonious fighting. . . . They have replaced human society with a mere survival system that does not take human emotion into account. . . .” Children were put out of the family at age three or four; old people were sent away to die alone. “The ideal family, economically speaking and within restricted temporal limitations, is a man and his wife with no children. Children are useless appendages, like old parents. Anyone who cannot take care of himself is a burden and a hazard to the survival of others. . . . Such interaction as there is within this system is one of mutual exploitation. That is the relationship between all, old and young, parent and child, brother and sister, husband and wife, friend and friend. . . . They are brought together by self-interest alone....”

Turnbull sees clear parallels between what has happened to the Ik suddenly, in a matter of years, and what has happened to Western civilisation gradually, over several centuries. Today, “The very old and the very young are separated, but we dispose of them in homes for the aged or in day schools and summer camps instead of on the slopes of Meraniang [one of the mountains of the Ik].” Turnbull points to “our cutthroat economics, where almost any kind of exploitation and degradation of others, impoverishment and ruin, is justified in terms of an expanding economy and the consequent confinement of the world’s riches in the pockets of a few.”

The most extensive survey of the psychological effects of mass trauma yet published is Lewis Aptekar’s Environmental Disasters in Global Perspective (G.K. Hall, 1994). Aptekar compares studies from traditional, “developing,” and “developed” cultures; he also explores the aftermaths of many kinds of disasters-including chronic disasters (droughts, famines), quick onset disasters (floods, fires, storms, earthquakes), and human-induced disasters (wars, toxic chemical spills, nuclear plant meltdowns). The findings he reviews are complex and varied, and researchers whose W*rk he cites have come to differing conclusions. There is some controversy, for example, on a point central to the present discussion: Do the psychological effects of disasters persist for years, perhaps generations, or are they only transitory? After a thorough study of researchers’ conflicting views, Aptekar concludes that discrepancies in observations probably arise from differences in the nature and severity of the disasters, the presence (or lack) of a social support system, the degree to which the environment returns to its pre-disaster state — as well as from differences in research methods (different studies of the same disaster sometimes produced different results)."

" Aptekar first dispels misconceptions about people’s immediate responses to disasters. Looting and panic are rare; instead, people more frequently display behaviour that has a clear sense of purpose and is directed toward the common good (tragically, officials who believe that social chaos inevitably follows disasters often delay warning communities of impending crises because they wish to avoid a panic). Nor do people flee from disaster sites; rather, they tend to remain. In addition, outsiders usually enter the area in order to help survivors or to search for family members, producing what has come to be known as the “convergence phenomenon.”

While Aptekar describes post-traumatic stress disorder and cites the W*rk of researchers who have found its symptoms among disaster victims, he cautions that “the idea that it is common for disaster victims to develop . . . post-traumatic stress disorder . . . should be questioned.” Symptoms seem to appear only after the severest disasters, and in cases where victims are directly and personally affected. “The victims who show the greatest psychopathology are those who lose close friends and relatives.” Not all of the symptoms occur immediately, and reactions may appear years afterward, especially on anniversaries of the disaster. Gradually, people tend to distort their memory of the event, forgetting parts of what happened and minimising its impact and their reactions to it.

Children appear to be particularly vulnerable after a disaster. “Galante and Foa documented the aftermath of an extremely destructive earthquake that struck the mountainous region of Lombardy, Italy on November 23, 1980. . . . Right after the earthquake the children demonstrated extreme signs of apathy and aggression.” Girls tended to be more affected than boys. (Aptekar notes, “Perhaps the girls were more aware of their feelings than the boys.”) Boys tended to react with aggression.

Meanwhile, adverse reactions in adults can be so severe that disaster victims “pass fear and insecurity onto their children — even those yet to be born — by replacing in their child-rearing a sense of a secure world with a fearful worldview.”

One of the early pioneers in the study of disasters, Samuel Prince (whose W*rk was published in the early 1920s), was convinced that disasters inevitably bring social change. Subsequent W*rk has tended to confirm Prince’s conclusions. Basing his speculations on his study of the aftermath of a large ammunition explosion aboard a ship in the harbour of Halifax, Canada, Prince hypothesised that disasters may cause changes in technology and culture in a given society; and that after disasters, differences between social classes tend to increase.

Sociologist Max Weber wrote (in 1968) that disasters tend to produce charismatic leaders — an observation that has been confirmed in various cultural settings. In nonindustrial societies, according to Aptekar, “Before a disaster, traditional local leaders are important; but as the society adapts to the changes brought about by a disaster, new leadership skills are needed.” When pastoral Somali nomads were forced by drought to assume a sedentary agricultural way of life, “their once pastoral democracy was converted to a severe hierarchy of social status; cooperative leadership changed to leadership by domination. . . .”"
" In an attempt to discover the sources of warfare in human society, anthropologists Carol and Melvin Ember compared 186 mostly nonindustrial cultures and found a strong correlation between disasters and armed conflict. In most instances, war seems not to have been brought on by the actual scarcity produced by the disaster, but the fear of having no food as a result of an unpredictable recurrence of catastrophe. This led some groups to attack others in an effort to store enough to guard against scarcity. Then, the fear of being invaded increased each group’s fears of others. Disasters may also bring changes in W*rk habits, gender roles, and kinship patterns. Studies of Pacific island cultures by Firth (1959), Schneider (1957) and Spillius (1957) point out that (in Aptekar’s words) “the progression of societies from traditional ways to those of the developing world is greatly speeded up by environmental disasters.” Again, Aptekar:

Among the Kung bushmen of the Kalahari desert, drought now determines where and how they live. Among the Navajo, alliances between kin and family groups changed as a result of drought. Because of drought the Tikopia of the South Pacific rescheduled their adult initiation ceremonies to occur much later, thus introducing what for them was a new developmental phase of life: adolescence. After an earthquake the Inca of Huarez, Peru, moved from a local bartering economy to an urban service economy. Typhoons on the island of Yap caused Yapians to abandon their traditional values and adopt a European lifestyle. Because of Typhoon Ophelia the people of the Micronesian island of Ulithi changed the food they ate, the style of homes they lived in, their habits of W*rk, the way men and women related to each other, their form of government, and even their religion.

In “developed” (i.e., highly civilised) cultures, patterns of reaction are somewhat different. In many instances, impacts are minimised because of the almost immediate availability of elaborate aid and support systems. Yet disaster researcher Benjamin McLuckie hypothesised (in 1977) that “the higher the society’s level of technological development, the more vulnerable it would be.” That is because people in developed countries live in large population centres and rely on sophisticated technologies, so that there is a possibility of their being vulnerable to a large-scale collapse of interlocking systems of transportation, communication, water supply, and food distribution. Most civilisations seem to fall because of human-made disasters.

Indeed, civilisation itself can be seen as a disaster-in-progress, traumatising people as it destroys nature, relentlessly preparing the way for its own demise. The social effects noted two paragraphs above, quoted from Aptekar, are the same sorts of effects that vast numbers of human beings are experiencing now as a result of technological and economic change. Traditional modes of W*rk, patterns of subsistence and nutrition, social and family relationships, religious ideas and practices, and common values are all vulnerable to the ravages of “progress.”"

" In history, effects become causes: wars beget wars, which beget political, economic, and social changes that may later lead to still more wars. The search for ultimate causes is nearly always frustrating. However, natural disasters are sources of change that come from outside the human social system and that are capable of introducing influences unimaginable in a closed human system.

But then, is there any such thing as a closed human system? Of course, there is not: all societies are highly dependent on soil, climate, and ecology. A change of a few percent in the sun’s output of energy would bring every human culture to a dramatic end.

Civilisation appears in many respects to be a pathetic and futile attempt to create the feeling of a closed human system. Agriculture partially unlinks humans from wild nature; the division of labour unlinks people from the process of agriculture (leaving only their dependence on its products); and cities and technologies psychologically unlink people from their environment in manifold ways. People become ever more dependent on complex social and technological systems; their dependence on wild, natural systems persists, but is forgotten and hidden from view. Could this compulsion to escape external influences by substituting artificial systems under human control have originated as a collective strategy to elude the ravages of natural disasters? As we have seen, in many-but not all-cases, survivors of disasters and civilised people alike. . .

- show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder

- pass psychological dysfunctions onto their children

- tend more frequently to undertake basic changes in values, lifestyle, and social organisation, and

- are more warlike. . . than people who live in traditional societies that have not experienced a major disaster within the past few generations.

As yet we have left many questions unanswered. The most obvious of these is simply, Can we identify the original trauma? No less significant, however, are two others: How do we go about treating collective trauma?, and, what is the significance of this discussion in the present, as our own society lurches toward a human-made disaster of unprecedented scope?"

In most cases of individual neurosis, psychoanaysts look for an early trauma, or emotional shock, in the life of the patient-usually a forgotten incident and often one from the pre-verbal period of life. Accordingly, it seems reasonable for the ethnoanalyst to attempt the same thing, difficult though it obviously is for anyone to find evidence for collective prehistoric emotional experiences.
— Roger W. Wescott, The Divine Animal

Our society is made up of vast numbers of traumatised individuals, and our culture has come into being through a universally traumatising process. The outcome-today’s technological civilisation with its massive psychopathologies and unending ecological disasters-is a collective reflection of the traumatised personality.
— Chellis Glendinning, My Name Is Chellis & I’m in Recovery from Western Civilisation

In the first part of this article (New Dawn No. 55, July-August) we began exploring the idea that civilised human beings exhibit stress responses (aggressive, controlling, and addictive behaviours; blunted affect; and generalised anxiety) because civilisation systematically traumatises them from birth as part of the process of domestication. Perhaps civilisation detaches human beings from nature — through agriculture, urbanisation, and technology — in order to impart a sense of security against unpredictable natural disasters; and perhaps civilisation wounds people and nature because it is wounded — i.e., because it began as a response to environmental trauma. We have as yet left some important questions unanswered. The principal one is simply, What was the catastrophe that lit civilisation’s fuse? "

" There are two classes of possible causes of civilisation’s original trauma: events that stemmed from human agency, and ones that did not. And of the latter — causes that arose beyond the human sphere — there are also two types: endogenous (those that resulted from processes operating within Earth’s systems) and exogenous (those triggered by an agent outside Earth).

It is theoretically possible that at least some of civilisation’s ancient psychic wounds were self-inflicted. Freud believed that humanity’s original trauma was the Oedipal crisis, in which sons in the primeval cave typically killed their fathers in order to possess their mothers. However, no archaeological evidence has ever been found to suggest that this actually happened, on even a small scale. A much more plausible scenario is that at the end of the Pleistocene — roughly 11,500 years ago — human beings allowed their populations to exceed the carrying capacity of the land and brought on starvation through overhunting.

It is also possible that some non-human agent was responsible for the catastrophe(s) that led humans to domesticate themselves. Likely non-human candidates of an endogenous nature include earthquakes, floods, fires, volcanoes, and climate change. Possible exogenous culprits include wayward comets or meteors and fluctuations in the Sun’s energy output. How do we go about determining which (if any) of these possible non-human sources of trauma might have been the actual one? Naturally, we should consider the evidence — of which there are again two kinds: material and cultural.

The material evidence of ancient catastrophes includes ice cores, lake bed cores, tree rings, topographical anomalies, and fossils. From these, scientists have deduced that for the past 2.5 million years our planet has been on a climatic roller coaster — a general cooling trend featuring Ice Ages that come about every 100,000 years and last 90,000 years or so, during which temperatures fluctuate wildly, leading to intervening warmer periods of a few thousand years. We are in one of those warm periods now. It was during these past 2.5 million years, according to evolutionary biologists, that humankind evolved, its brain increasing in size fourfold. During the last 120,000 years (encompassing the most recent Ice Age) there have been roughly 20 sudden and drastic cooling and warming episodes, averaging one every 6000 years. The end of the last Ice Age occurred about 11,500 years ago; not long afterward, humans in some areas began the process of domestication. Like the beginnings and endings of the Ice Ages that preceded it, the close of the most recent glacial period came suddenly, and it brought devastation in its wake. Sea levels rose by some 300 feet over the course of centuries. Hundreds of species were extinguished, including (in America alone) the camel, mastodon, mammoth, ground sloth, giant peccary and giant beaver, dire wolf, short-faced bear, mountain deer, and saber-toothed cat. Some paleontologists believe that human beings hastened a few of these extinctions through overhunting.

Also, the Earth’s magnetic field has apparently reversed its polarity some 20 times during the past 4 million years-most recently, about 12,500 years ago in the so-called Gothenburg flip. There seems to be some correlation between extinction episodes, climate change, and geomagnetic reversals. It is not clear whether climate fluctuation causes field reversals (through changes in the volume of ice at the poles), or field reversals causes climate change (via volcanic activity or a collapse of the ionosphere and ozone layer), or whether both are influenced by some exogenous agent."

" Clearly, the Earth was not a quiet place during the time Homo sapiens was evolving. But what about the period when civilisation was emerging? More recent global climate spikes (not as severe as the ones 40,000 and 11,500 years ago) occurred at around 8000 b.c.e., 6000 b.c.e., 3100, b.c.e., and 1100 b.c.e. A climatological fluctuation known as the Little Ice Age lasted from 1200 to 1800 c.e., and was made even worse for parts of that period by volcanic eruptions that clouded the atmosphere and lowered temperatures worldwide for years at a time (1783 was the year of the “dry fog,” while 1816 was known as “the year without a summer”). Localised floods, earthquakes, violent storms, and volcanic eruptions known to have occurred during the past 10,000 years are far too numerous to list here, and it seems likely that archaeologists and geologists have discovered and interpreted evidence of only a fraction of such disasters that actually took place.

Most of these events appear to have been of endogenous provenance, and few (other than climate change and geomagnetic reversal) would have been global in impact. But in the case of global climate change — and, possibly, field reversals — extraterrestrial agents may have played a role. In the year 536, according to tree-ring measurements, just as many of the civilisations of the period were suffering major setbacks, there was a sudden world-wide decline in tree growth that lasted about 15 years. Since Greenland ice cores show no signs of large-scale volcanic activity for that time, the most likely explanations are comet impact or cosmic dust. British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier have calculated, on the basis of observed cratering rates on the Earth and Moon, that we should expect the collision of a meteor or comet “of several megatons energy to occur somewhere on Earth every 200 years or so.” Further, “a few dozen sporadic impacts in the tens of megatons, and a few in 100 to 1000 megaton range, must have occurred within the past 5000 years.” Comet collisions don’t always leave an obvious crater: the comet that struck near Tunguska, Siberia in 1908 (if, indeed, it was a comet) is estimated to have weighed 1000 tons; its fiery above-ground explosion flattened trees for miles in all directions but left no crater. We should expect an impact of similar energy about every 20 years on average; but, given that two-thirds of incoming meteors or comets fall into the oceans, one of similar size is likely to strike land only about once every 60 years. In short, the physical evidence shows unequivocally that our planet is disaster-prone, but it does not point to a single dramatic event that would have traumatised humankind once and for all. Rather, the possible sources of trauma are all too numerous.

We should next consider cultural evidence bearing on the nature of the catastrophe(s). While some mythologists (such as Joseph Campbell) have maintained that ancient myths contain no reliable historical data whatever, I have argued elsewhere (in Memories and Visions of Paradise) that “. . . anthropologists and archaeologists have uncovered many instances in which myths do unquestionably conceal [or reveal!] elements of historical fact”; there I cited the examples of the Klamath Indians’ memory-based myth of the origin Crater Lake, and Aboriginal Australian Dreamtime stories that feature animals that have been extinct for some 10,000 to 15,000 years. Every mythologist knows that tales of ancient catastrophes of one sort or another constitute an extremely widespread and common genre. Examples range from the biblical story of the Deluge to Plato’s account of the destruction of Atlantis; from South American myths of universal destruction by fire and water to the aboriginal Australian depiction of the end of the Dreamtime. Many cultures — including the Chinese, Hopi, Greek, Aztec, Iranian, and Indic — recall a series of four or five World Ages, each ending in catastrophe. Many catastrophe myths ascribe responsibility for these calamities to human beings."

" If we were to attribute some historical truth to such myths, we would, I think, conclude from them (as from the physical evidence) that more than one catastrophe traumatised ancient humanity. Since many cultures viewed comets and other unusual celestial phenomena with extraordinary dread, we might also conclude that at least some of these catastrophes had an exogenous source. And since many myths blame the people themselves for catastrophes, we should leave open the possibility that some disasters were indeed humanly caused.

The first of these conclusions finds still more support in other fields. In individual psychology, the effects of trauma seem most severe and long-lasting in cases not of singular, but of repetitive abuse or injury. The Embers’ findings on the origins of violence (which we cited in Part I of this essay; see New Dawn No. 55) likewise suggest that if civilised humanity’s destructive tendencies arise from post-traumatic stress, the source would likely have been a series of disasters occurring at unpredictable intervals.

Humanity: Wounded and Precocious

It appears that humankind has had a trying childhood. And just as some abused children cope with adversity by plunging themselves into intellectual or creative activities, perhaps humanity as a whole has done something similar. Neurobiologist William Calvin, in his The Ascent of Mind: Ice Age Climates and the Evolution of Intelligence (Bantam, 1990), suggests that it was by matching wits with frequent climate changes that our early ancestors learned to develop their capacities for language, culture, technological innovation, and ethics.

For biologists, the evolution of modern Homo sapiens constitutes one of the greatest of mysteries. We differ from the apes in a hundred ways: language, accurate throwing ability, concealed ovulation, dramatically increased brain-to-body size ratio, different hand anatomy, lack of body hair, descended larynx, flatter face, smaller teeth, and so on. It is not so difficult to explain how one or another of these developments could have occurred in a couple of million years, but all of them taken together constitute virtually a miracle of evolutionary transformation. Calvin suggests that we look to only a few basic causes, of which each would have had multiple effects. For example, if early humans spent much of their time living in open savannas, this might account for our transition to seed eating and our upright posture. And if we spent another phase of our development foraging for food along shorelines, living partly in water, this might explain features we share with the aquatic mammals — our subcutaneous fat, salt-and-water wasting kidneys, tearing, and descended larynx, among others.

But what of brain size and intelligence? Calvin suggests that repeated, drastic climate fluctuations were the motivating factor, acting as a kind of evolutionary “pump” encouraging change in certain directions: “[W]e look at the back-and-forth Ice Ages and see in them not just overblown winter but a way of amplifying the effect of the wintertime natural selection. . . .” Calvin’s hypothesised winter-specialised hominid subtype — which would have relied more on hunting, and therefore would have developed better throwing skills than its more tropical cousins — would have expanded its population during warmer boom times in order to take advantage of ice-free land; when the ice returned, the hunters would simply have moved south. With each warm/cold fluctuation, the winter-specialised types would have grown to constitute a greater percentage of the overall hominid population."

Calvin suggests that it was through juvenilisation that these versatile hunters developed bigger brains for making, aiming, and throwing projectiles. The juveniles of most mammals have a bigger brain/body ratio than adults, as well as flatter faces and smaller teeth. If, in a given population, puberty gradually occurs earlier, somatic development will be cut short, and after many generations the adult population will acquire juvenile characteristics. Calvin argues that the alternation of harsh and hospitable climates during the past 2.5 couple of million years encouraged early maturity: during boom times “there [was] a race to fill up newly available ‘job slots’ afforded by an environment able to feed more mouths.” When the ice returned, juvenile body features were retained. And once brain size had grown, new uses were quickly found for all this new gray matter — such as the invention of language and culture.

Calvin emphasises that there is still a lot to account for and that the problem is complex — “So much brain enlargement in 2.5 million years is awfully quick by the standards of evolutionary biology” — and he admits that his explanation may not be the final one. An alternative theory he doesn’t mention is that human beings are the result of genetic experiments on the part of extraterrestrials. This suggestion is admittedly beyond the pale of conventional scientific thinking, but it is really not so far-fetched in light of ancient myths about culture-heroes and creator gods, and modern UFO sightings and abduction accounts. If the ET genetic-experiment hypothesis turned out to be true, it would not deny the role of catastrophes in the shaping of human culture and consciousness, but it would surely add a bizarre twist to the story.

Still, let’s assume that Calvin’s explanation (or something like it) is right: Catastrophe and trauma (via sudden, drastic climate changes at unpredictable intervals) have led us to become intelligent tool users. But it seems they have also planted seeds of alienation and distrust within our vastly enlarged brains. Perhaps, as Paul Shepard suggests in Nature and Madness, in additional to physiological juvenilisation we have also undergone a stunting in our psychological development. Civilisation, according to Shepard, produces people who are incomplete, infantile. Deep down we seem to believe that the gods are angry at us. What have we done wrong? We must be flawed, sinful children who deserve the gods’ (our parents’) wrath. Nature is cruel and chaotic. We must defend ourselves, propitiate the gods, and make sure we have a surplus for when the next disaster strikes.

Some Problems and Possible Solutions

In this essay we are proposing an explanation for a great many cultural phenomena. The matters we have touched on are complex and raise many questions, which I hope to treat elsewhere in more detail than is possible here. Nevertheless, we might briefly consider three of the most obvious objections which our theory must face.

Problem: Why would only a few cultures react to catastrophes by developing civilisations? After all, most human cultures, historically, have maintained modest hunting-and-gathering, horticultural, or pastoral ways of life. Were these people not traumatised? If not, why not? If they were, why did they respond differently?

Possible solution: Even in the case of global disasters — climate change and comet impacts — the effects would not have been geographically uniform. Moreover, it is entirely possible that distinct cultural groups would have been predisposed to handle trauma in varying ways. It is true that some cultures have maintained a much greater sense of harmony with nature than have others; however, evidences of collective psychopathology are not unique to Western civilisation: in nearly every culture it is possible to point to some institution, rite, or taboo that could have had its origin in mass psychological trauma."

" Problem: Why were no other animals similarly affected? Why didn’t horses, monkeys, squids, and parrots develop big brains, technology, language, and cultural neuroses?

Possible solution: Perhaps they were affected, but responded differently. The creation myths of many cultures speak of a time (before the catastrophes) when the animals were less aggressive or fearful and when a universal harmony prevailed throughout nature. Of course, such myths need to be regarded with healthy skepticism, but they may hold some kernel of historical truth. In most higher animals, behaviours are scripted by instinct, while in humans (for reasons William Calvin may be partly able to explain) culture has largely usurped instinct’s role. If traumatic stress caused at least some humans to develop dysfunctional cultures, then it is possible that the same stressors caused at least some animals to develop dysfunctional instincts. The lemmings’ suicidal boom-and-bust population behaviour is one possible example.

Humans’ unique responses to stress may be traceable partly to their unique brain structure. In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Houghton Mifflin, 1976/1990), Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes anticipated Calvin in suggesting that “it is possible for the brain to be . . . reorganised by environmental changes.” With the Ice Ages came the development of language, and with language came the invention of an analog inner world of words, paralleling the behavioural world “even as the world of mathematics parallels the world of quantities and things.” Jaynes argued that, in its early stages, the use of this new linguistic ability was split between the brain’s hemispheres: the right hemisphere spoke to the left, and its voice was interpreted as being that of a god. This bicamerality may have served to obviate the stress of decision-making during times of environmental change. But later, during the early historical period, as civilisations were developing, the bicameral organisation of the human mind began to collapse. This, says Jaynes, was partly due to the invention of writing: once the words of the gods were written, they became silent and could be turned to or avoided at will. But disasters also played a role: “The second millennium b.c. was heavy laden with profound and irreversible changes. Vast geological catastrophes occurred. Civilisations perished. Half the world’s population became refugees. And wars, previously sporadic, came with hastening and ferocious frequency. . . .” The gods fell silent, and left-brain-dominant humans were left to fend as best they could. The result was the dawn of rational self-consciousness, of alienation and anxiety, and of a condition in which “we have become our own gods.”

Problem: We have suggested that the traumatic energy of ancient disasters is passed along from generation to generation via civilised child-rearing methods. If so, we might expect the post-traumatic stress symptoms evident in civilised populations to gradually dissipate over the centuries and millennia, or at worst to remain constant. Yet we now face humanly generated social and ecological problems of unprecedented scope and severity. Why would these problems be increasing, if they are the effects of some ancient trauma?"

" Possible solution: It may be that civilisation is (or can be) a progressive social disease. In individuals, a progressive disease is one in which the body’s natural defense systems are overwhelmed or subverted; rather than improving, the patient becomes sicker and sicker. Civilisation progressively re-traumatises itself — not only through child-rearing practices, but through economic inequality and poverty, environmental destruction, alienation from nature, and war. Thus as civilisation “advances,” the effects of the original trauma are magnified. Add to this the impact of natural disasters that have occurred in relatively recent times — such as the Black Death in medieval Europe, in which nearly two-thirds of the population was wiped out, and which may have helped prime the European psyche for witch hunts and bloody colonial exploits.

The idea that our psycho-social disease may be a progressive one is disturbing, of course. Even worse is the realisation that we are infecting and killing our only potential therapists — the primal cultures of the world, who appear to have been less traumatised than ourselves, or to at least have found more sensible ways of coping with their wounds. If we cannot look to them — and, realistically, we have no right to expect them — to save us from ourselves, then we must learn somehow to heal ourselves and one another.

Recovering from Collective Post-Traumatic Stress

How would one go about treating an entire culture for post-traumatic stress? The difficulties involved are considerable — especially in a chronic case, or one in which the society in question doesn’t want to be treated. It is difficult to know even where to begin, given a “patient” so huge, powerful, and deranged as our contemporary global civilisation. Such a task may actually be impossible. But perhaps we can heal ourselves and one another individually, at least to some degree, and thereby plant the seeds of a new sane and biologically benign culture. In order to do so, it would seem vital that we familiarise ourselves with what is presently known about individual trauma treatment and recovery.

There are several good books on trauma recovery, of which the most relevant is certainly Chellis Glendinning’s My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilisation. Another helpful one is How to Survive Trauma: A Program for War Veterans & Survivors of Rape, Assault, Abuse or Environmental Disasters, by Benjamin Colodzin (Station Hill Press, 1993).

In cases where the original trauma is long past, the most important aspect of treatment seems to be the recollection and emotional processing of the traumatic event. Whether humankind as a whole can recall events millennia ago is problematic; it seems more feasible for individuals to bring to mind and face the specific ways in which they were taught — beginning at birth — to throttle their wildness and conform to a contorted system of beliefs and behaviours. A therapist or therapeutic community is often helpful in this regard — assuming that the purpose of therapy is not seen as merely to adjust more successfully to the society as it presently is."

" Another step in recovery is to learn to feel our repressed grief and rage — as well as our repressed joy. Chellis Glendinning, Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy, environmental educator Annie Prutzman, and others have offered suggestions for ways to safely uncork the vessel of our dammed-up emotions, via psychodrama and storytelling.

It is also possible to benefit from techniques used in shamanic cultures for the re-integration of nature and psyche. Primal peoples resort to prayer, dancing, drumming, and purification rites in order to restore the wholeness of individual, community, and nature. While mere imitation of such rites may constitute a kind of cultural theft, we may nevertheless find similar ways of W*rking in small groups to call upon ancestors, spirits, and natural forces to assist us in our healing. Recovery may not penetrate past the surface layers of consciousness without significant, deliberate lifestyle changes. As long as we are utterly dependent upon civilisation it is difficult to see its influences with any objectivity, or to forge a new relationship with the natural world. On the other hand, disconnecting from the civilisational system — via natural home-building, growing or gathering much of one’s own food, and providing for other needs with a minimal use of money — tends to induce feelings of basic self-worth and competence.

Independence from the system need not be seen as abandonment of responsibility, however. Often a member of a dysfunctional family will stay in the abusive situation in order to try to fix it from within. In cases like this, a therapist will usually counsel the individual to leave, since it is only from a secure position outside the abusive situation that one can have a positive impact on those still within it. Perhaps something similar is true with respect to individuals awakening to the dysfunctionality of civilisation: we can be of more help to other people if we are not entirely dependent on the system that is progressively reproducing its woundedness. Then our activism is grounded not just in anger and pain, but in knowledge of W*rkable alternatives.

Regaining our autonomy and reconnecting with life require deliberate effort, but the rewards are instantaneous. New avenues for play, creativity, and love open up before us precisely to the extent that we seek them.

As we do, we provide a platform for the next generation. It may be possible to forge a path toward sustainable culture only so far in one lifetime. Perhaps our greatest responsibility, therefore, is to explore whatever routes we can, go as far along them as we can, and then pass on whatever we have learned. Children growing up in — or under — the dominant culture today are inevitably subject to nearly constant trauma, some forms of which are extremely sophisticated and seductive. Unless some young people are provided with effective tools for self-defense, self-expression, exploration, and creativity, and examples of what it is to be a relatively free and happy human, the way ahead looks pretty bleak."

" Of course, every sane person would wish to avert another disaster; everyone hopes that civilisation can somehow quickly reform itself so that we don’t have to face massive starvation and ecological devastation in the coming century. But it would be foolish to ignore the implications of current trends. The likelihood is that those of us who will be around in the early decades of the next century will experience a catastrophe of one sort or another first-hand — either one that is humanly caused or an “act of God” whose effects are experienced far more severely as a result of population density and the interconnectedness and vulnerability of civilisation’s systems of transportation, communication, food delivery, and political control.

How will people respond? According to Lewis Aptekar, victims of human-induced disasters often show more stress than victims of natural disasters because of the perceived need to find parties to blame. Whatever the eventual circumstances, it seems certain that groups in differing geographic areas, and in differing economic conditions, will react in dissimilar ways. In the case of a breakdown of communication and control, those who are more dependent on high tech will likely suffer much more than those who are still somewhat accustomed to locally filling their own basic needs. Over the short term, we are likely to see acts of extraordinary heroism alongside extreme examples of opportunism and stupidity. But what about the long-range prognosis?

If human beings are re-traumatised, will they develop even stranger and more virulent cultural neuroses than the ones they already exhibit? Or will at least some of us learn from the experience? The fact that we are now coming to understand how the human psyche typically deals with trauma is cause for hope: perhaps a significant number of people will experience civilisation’s crisis as a catharsis that will reach all the way to the roots of our ancient, irrational fear of nature, and help us learn to live in peace with the world, with one another, and with ourselves."

David Icke - Big Brother, the Big Picture (July 6th 2008)

2008-07-10T10:15:00.004+01:00

Obey!

2008-07-04T18:44:00.007+01:00

"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it."

Apparently, only 3% of crimes are solved using CCTV. This tiny percentage hardly justifies the huge expense of installing covert surveillance devices across every region of the UK, begging the question that if crime reduction and prevention is not the goal, what is?

Not just a treasury money-spinner in terms of extracting yet more stealth tax from the nation by means of speed cameras, these devices are also a means of ensuring social control. The introduction of "talking" CCTV cameras, which will bark warnings to unsuspecting litter-droppers and dog walkers who fail to poopa-scoop, as well as the developing capability to "eavesdrop" on pedestrians conversations and identify individuals via face recognition technology are all very real aspects of an increasingly Orwellian state in which civil liberties and personal privacy are threatened. This is a psychological war. Teenagers are being targetted by sonic waves in the form of the high-pitched "mosquito" resonators that broadcast painful levels of high-frequency noise in an attempt to disuade them from loitering in public places. This is a form of audio VIOLENCE, and regardless of how you feel about "hoodies", who in their right mind can agree with this level of abuse against children? Or argue that people should not be allowed to congregate in public places, irrespective of their intent?

Not only is it possible, following the introduction of anti-terrorism legislation, for the state to create highly detailed profiles of "suspects" using email and telephone interception, our increasingly on-line lives also leave an electronic trail detailing via transaction records what clothes we wear, what books we read, what music we listen to, even what food we eat. This may appear harmless but in terms of identifying a demographic of intellectual dissent likely to oppose the totalitarian tiptoe, this kind of psychological profiling means that anyone whose lifestyle choices fit the stereotype of a "free thinker" can be immediately identified and monitored. Come on down, Winston Smith.

The more blinkered amongst us always tend to shriek "well, if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear... they're only after the terrorists!" Which brings us into a semantic debate about what exactly constitutes a terrorist, and the dreaded realm of "thought-crime". Is being intellectually opposed to the government an act of terrorism? You may be the most ghandi-esque, passive character known to man, but potentially, as far as they are concerned, your ideas are a threat. You may have the POTENTIAL to be a terrorist, purely by the nature of your idealogy, and we can't have that, now can we? The aim of society is to keep everyone neatly inside their box, mentally dulled on a diet of e-numbers, junk television and crippling debts. You're not supposed to have time to think about anything else, or question why only 2% of the population control 90% of the countrys wealth. You need to know your place, and carry on working for a shit wage in a job that does not inspire you for the rest of the days, just so that 2% can prosper as result of your efforts. They need to protect the status quo here. If people start thinking, they will start to realise that this system is inherantly unfair. We have the capability to re-distribute the wealth of the nation, yet "they" prefer to keep it all for themselves. far better that they should spend the majority of their time hunting foxes and paying £300,000 for a pair of earrings whilst pensioners freeze to death because they can't afford to put the heating on!

Constant CCTV surevillance means that any peaceful protest can be immediately nipped in the bud, and the instigators identified and removed from circulation. They want us passive and unresisting, and will continue to chemically and intellectually pacify us as long as they can. Fluoride in the water supply? Fuck all to do with protecting our teeth, countries which do not flurodate have LESS dental caries. Fluoride is a toxic by-product of the aliminium industry, known to cause brain damage and a lowering of IQ. The Nazi's were the first to consider the concept of adding it to the water supply for social control and we all know how that turned out!
How about aspartame, 200 times sweeter than sugar and found in every diet drink and sugar-free chewing gum? Again, neuro-toxic, lowers IQ, and causes cancer.
Next we turn to television, the opium of the masses. That REALLY keeps you in your box, safely tucked away. Watching TV causes a lowering of brainwaves to an ALPHA state, the same state of low-arousal that results from hypnosis. Prolonged periods of alpha-state functioning leave us open to suggestion, and is the intellectual equivalent of staring at a blank wall. Which means you are perfectly attuned to believe any old bollocks you see.

The advent of "reality-tv", in particular programmes such as Big Brother have, in light of this, a dual purpose. On a subliminal level, experienced in the alpha state, the message is that being constantly under surveillance isn't such a bad thing after all. Appearing on BB is regarded as an achievement for talentless losers who have no hope of success through any other format. People queue for hours for the chance to live in a literal prison for 3 months, giving up their privacy and dignity, having every psychological defect scrutinised by the public in what is the 21st century equivalent of a public hanging. To the viewer, the message is that people who don't conform to society's idea of how people should behave, regardless of whether it is in their true nature as an autonomous human being to do so, will be relentlessly and mercilessly vilified for something so trivial as arguing about oven chips. We watch people come perilously close to losing the plot, all for the sake of cheap entertainment, whilst at the same time, we are introduced to the idea of this kind of intrusion as normal, even desirable. For three months we obsess over these people, then they are chewed up, spat out and forgotten, left to deal with the emotional scars and being deemed evermore unemployable all for the sake of their 15 minutes of fame. And let's not forget that from the outset, this programme was hailed as a "social experiment". We are now seeing the results of this spreading throughout society at large.
~ali