The Power of Mythology
1 Hi Everybody, This is Leo Volont, and this is
Part One of my two Part Series, “The Power of Mythology”. In Part One we’ll be discussing some of the
Consequences our Civilization has had to deal with in moving away from a
Mythological Matrix of Cultural Traditions and Beliefs into a Rational
Scientific mode, while confining ourselves mostly to issues of Health. Then in Part Two we’ll speak of the
possibility that in our future Machine Intelligence and Robotics Age, that for
the good of the Health and Welfare of Humanity, Materialistic Cynicism will be
abandoned and some new optimized Mythological framework embraced. Yes, I know it doesn’t make any sense now, but
that just means we have a lot of talking to do.
So let’s get started with Part One.
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2 We always hear about what we’ve gained from our
Great Age of Science, but do we ever stop to think about what we’ve Renounced
for it? Yes, there was one
instance in Time when the fledgling Age of Reason first started casting its creeping
shadow over the Age of Faith, when Science seemed to make it’s Deal with the
Devil and we traded away our Aesthetically Keyed Minds and Spirits for
the benefits of only those things we could weigh in some sterile Scientific
Scale. Well, Let’s recall that Moment,
along with the Memory of the Great Man it involved – Franz Mesmer.
3 It happened just a few years before the French
Revolution would kill off both God and a King, sending the World reeling into over
2 Centuries of Chaos, with Predatory Winner Take All Capitalism, almost an
endless cycle of Wars, and the tumultuous Anarchy of unrestricted Competing
Self-Interests and the Paralyzing Polarization of Democracy, a form of
Government which believes that Flaws are Virtues, and believes it
with the intensity of a Quasi-Religious Fanaticism, even while it now
leads us perhaps inexorably towards Extinction.
4 So, yes, it was a Time when numerous flaming Torches
were being thrown through the ground floor Windows of our Civilization, which,
yeah, it had grown somewhat Decadent, but it was still the Only Civilization
we had. Reform might well have been in order, but
what we got was Revolution. Well, Okay,
but that’s all a really big subject, isn’t it?
So, for now, rather than standing back and viewing all around us the
General Conflagration that ensued, let’s just focus in on the Fires related
to Franz Mesmer and his Animal Magnetism.
5 But, yes, Franz Mesmer, had set up a hugely
successful and clinically effective medical practice in Louis the 16th’s
France, using an elaborate and very impressive Methodology he called “Animal
Magnetism”. Well, the French Doctors
didn’t appreciate being eclipsed and displaced, especially by a German, and so
they petitioned their King to shut Mesmer down.
So, the King appointed a
Commission to see to it that some plausible reason could be found to pull
Mesmer’s Medical License.
6 Benjamin Franklin, an American, was then
Ambassador to France, representing the United States, and, yes, Franklin was
very famous at the time, and, on behalf of the USA, Franklin did in fact owe
the French King a huge favor for having sent the French Fleet that had boxed
in the British Fleet at Jamestown, thus winning the American’s Revolutionary War
for them. And so it was that the
French King, assured of Franklin’s pliability, appointed him to be Chairman
of the Commission that was dedicated to Mesmer’s destruction.
7 But Franklin, to his
credit, was fairly discreet and measured about it, given the constraints
of the foregone conclusion he was given to deliver, concluding in his Commission’s
Judgement that while Mesmer was clearly then the most successfully effective
Doctor in all of France, that there remained the problem that his Animal
Magnetism couldn’t be isolated, quantified or pinned down to any provenly axiomatic
set of known facts. There complaint
wasn’t so much that Mesmer ‘misrepresented’ the mechanism responsible
for all his Cures, as that they found no Scientific Means for contextualizing
his explanation, and since they insisted on only being able to
understand Animal Magnetism in their own terms, if at all, well, Mesmer
was fixed to lose this battle.
8 Also, we all sort of know that entrenched
Special Interests often react to sweepingly successful Innovations, with
Accusations that the Newcomers aren’t playing fair… yeah, it’s kind of
childish, but they do it anyway. So with
Mesmer thinking independently of Materialistic Science, while hinging
his Animal Magnetism on more Ethereal Causes, well, it was seen as
somehow ‘cheating’, and they thought he needed to be stopped… not so
much for his own good, as for theirs.
9 So, yes, Franklin attacked the Cause for all
the Cures while tipping his hat to all the beneficial medical Effects that he’d
be shutting down. Yes, this Chimera of Animal
Magnetism, even while
plodding its palliative Hoofprints up and down the Champs-Élysées, was declared to be Unreal because
Science refused to See It. And I
believe it was at least partially because the Men on the Committee, who had
never understood it, also couldn’t Prove it, and, really, they had no incentive
to try.
10 And we should keep
in Mind that God Himself (or Herself or Itself), along with all of the purely
aesthetic foundations for any kind of a Civilized Social Morality, well, all
of that kind of stuff, and anything else in our lives that sparkles with Unquantifiable
Mystery – All of it would also have been tossed out by Franklin’s
Commission, and for the very same reasons – that Science would reject
anything it couldn’t or wouldn’t care to explain. So, Materialism defaulted into
becoming the only Ideology that Science could endorse.
11 What we know of
today as Hypnosis was derived from only a part of what Mesmer had
developed – Hypnotism started out as “Mesmerism”. But be that as it may, today’s Hypnotism is really
very much held back by its Modern Scientific Context, you know, that it’s some
“Trick”, and that in order to be effective, Hypnotism must first submerge
itself under the defenses of a relentlessly critical and conflicted Modern Mind,
going down to what we call our Subconscious Mind.
12 But think about what Mesmer enjoyed back
in the Twilight Days of his Age of Faith when what we call the ‘Subconscious
Mind’, was still Churning and Bubbling up upon the Surface, where even just a
touch of Awe and Wonder would have been plenty enough to fully entrance
the ordinary Man or Woman. People’s
Minds and Psyches were still largely Open. It would take Science and Modern Cynicism to
Close them down, and we went from the Age of Faith into an Age of Doubt and Moral
Uncertainty.
13 But, yes, after
Mesmer’s Doom became irrevocable, Franklin himself had been cornered
into better explaining all of Mesmer’s cures, and after having become more
familiar with ‘Mesmerism’, well, he largely gave back with One Hand what he had
taken away with the other, that is, Franklin attributed the Cures of
Animal Magnetism, and the Wonders of Hypnotism, to the “Power of
Suggestion”, and in re-naming Mesmer’s “Chimera”, well, that was apparently
enough to Domesticate it.
14 But wouldn’t we then
suppose that Science would’ve then studied this now certified “Power of
Suggestion”, to discover all its Possibilities, and to realize all their great Potential? But, no, that didn’t happen. And I guess we can see why – that once Science tossed Mesmer out into the
Cold Outer Darkness, well, who among the other Geeks and Nerds of the
Time would’ve stood up in his Place? Yeah,
Sides had to be Chosen. One could
stand with one’s Profession in Affluence or stand alone in Poverty.
15 The Scientific
Community and the Medical Profession, then as now, was
characteristically insular, stodgy and conservative, and besides, you
know, those people are all borderline Autistic anyway, aren’t they? And if they’re not Autistic as
individuals, well, their Professional Culture behaves Autistically,
doesn’t it? So, the Idea of
investigating the Power of Suggestion, by studying the Effects of
Human Interactions and Situational Perceptions on the Healing
Process, well, it must have seemed to this Stodgy and Diffident Scientific
Community as being a little bit too much like taking a Walk On the Wild Side. Yeah, just like with anything else that
involves Personal Interactions and People’s Feelings, it’d be too far outside their
cold professional autistic comfort zones.
16 So, yeah, instead
of seeing if the Power of Suggestion could help, well, no, they went in
completely the other direction, where they attempted to control for and minimize
the Power of Suggestion. Any Beneficial
Effects of Suggestion would be rejected as redundant to the Benefits of whatever
Material Science was used in the Surface Treatment, you know, the pills
or whatever. Then, soon, within decades
of Franklin’s Ruling, the Power of Suggestion was translated into the more clinical
‘Latinized’ term – ‘The Placebo Effect’. Yeah, I had to look it up… it’s from the
Latin, but it sounded Greek to me.
17 But when we think
about the Placebo Effect today, well, it’s typically just a few percentage
points greater than Nothing At All. We
can only scratch our heads and wonder about how anybody could ever have once
thought that the Power of Suggestion was so Threateningly Powerful. But we forget how flamboyantly theatrical Franz
Mesmer was in asserting his Suggestion, where Animal Magnetism was
being presented in an elaborate Show, with Pools of Chemically Treated Colored Waters,
mingled with fragrances, and Ropes of Specially Braded Precious Metal Strands,
along with elaborate Coils of Wire with Antennas, phosphorescent Lights, Bells,
Incense, and Incantations… Everything but the Stained Glass Windows from
the Notre Dame Cathedral and a Modern Laser Light Show! Yes, in an Age where there were already so
few Defenses guarding the Subconscious Mind, well, what remained would’ve
been completely overwhelmed by the Conceptual Sublimity that was
Mesmer’s Animal Magnetism.
18 But today they kill
all Positive Suggestion in a stifling Atmosphere of unrelieved Cautious
and Conservative Prognoses. Just listen
to what they tell Sick or Dying Experimental Subjects in Drug Testing Trials… that they’re going to receive either a
medicine that’s still just only being Tested, and so they don’t know whether
it’ll work or not, or that they’ll receive a “Placebo”, that is, some
inert pill that’s purpose made to do absolutely nothing at all for them. Yeah, the only Suggestion I see in
all that is that their Lives don’t matter. Wouldn’t it be more likely that people would
just give up all together, after the Doctors they want so much to trust,
give them a speech like that?
19 Yes,
this may be the very reason why we hear of so many really squirrely outlier
Side Effects, which are probably just the direct effects of the Demoralization
being Administered by the Medical Community on these poor desperate and confused
Test Subjects. Yeah, it kind of proves that just being with Doctors
nowadays is enough to make people Sick – kind of a Placebo Effect in reverse,
isn’t it? Yeah, how Ironic that what
they don’t want working for them, ends up working against them.
20 But what if the
same dynamics still apply now as in the days of Mesmer, that the Power of
Suggestion could still outperform Material Medicine, or at least
significantly augment its effectiveness?
Are we really just willing to throw away all that extra healing power? Why not lean into the Placebo Effect and
the Power of Suggestion and put it all to Positive Use?
21 But, yeah, I’ve talked
to some Doctors that do wish to be more successful in their practices,
and so they work in such a way as to have the Placebo Effect in their Corner,
with the Winds at their backs. So what
they do, when they feel they can legally get away with it, is they insist
to their Patients that their Treatments will undoubtedly make them
better, you know, without clawing any of it back by citing Statistical
Probabilities, and all the Reservations or Provisos that involve their
Patient’s Baseline Health, Age, Weight or any of the other Health Factors that
most Doctors site nowadays in order to seemingly sow Doubt and Confusion.
22 Yes, these Good
Doctors, going All In with the Placebo Effect, with their Priority on
Healing, well, they just want their Patients to walk out the door with just One
Splendidly Consistent “Golden Vision of Health and Wellness” shining in
their Mind’s Eyes and cherished in their Hearts, you know, so it’d be almost like
they’re feeling better already.
23 And these Doctors,
while not as Theatrical as Mesmer, well, they do try to make the best
show they can of it. They have their
patients wait in Treatment Rooms that are practically Wall Papered with
Prestigious Diplomas, and then they present themselves in all their Grey Haired
Glory, Dignified in their pristine starched white Lab Coats, and with Nurses at
their sides, smiling on with Serene, Loving, and almost Divine Encouragement, you
know, the same way we remember our Mothers doing when we had been feeling hurt,
helpless or frightened – the same way we feel in the Doctors’ Offices now,
don’t we? And just like we could expect,
such “Cheating”, as Benjamin Franklin would’ve called it, well, it does
get results. The Patients do begin
feeling better almost immediately.
24 Yes, and then we
hear of all those Doctors Without Borders, who take their Medical Wears
to the Undeveloped World, and, well, I hear they often find the Semi-Primitive
Un-Scientific Atmosphere to be refreshing, that is, if their tents are
set to be upwind of the open septic systems.
But, yes, if these Doctors can find the flexibility to adapt to the
Local Voodoo Cultures, or whatever, well, they could really make it work for
them. Or at least they can
breathe a little easier once they’re away from all the Predatory Scavenging Lawyers
in our World. Yes, you know, we
must be living in a really Sick Society where the Lawyers wield so much more
power than our Doctors.
25 But, yes, while
Modern Medicines and Procedures are certainly effective, well, there
arises the problem of how these Doctors Without Borders can contextualize
their Treatments in Cultures where the previous “Attending Physicians” had been
Shamans or Witchdoctors. Should the
Western Doctors barge in and create a Crisis of Faith by denouncing
the Local Traditions, and thereby provoke the Reaction of a Class of Enemies
and Detractors, or, do they go in seeking a partnership,
remembering that eventually they’re all going to Go Home, and Patient
Care will revert back to the Witchdoctors, who may be the ONLY Doctors these
people will have to turn to. And
then we need to remember that, just as Franz Mesmer proved to the
World 200 years ago, that if the Mythological Mindset of a People remains
unshaken, then the Power of Suggestion can be a very effective Medicine even
just by itself.
26 Then we should
consider just how little money it would take to persuade the Witch Doctors to sit
on the same side of the Table as the Doctors, showing the People a United Healthcare
Front. Yes, and here we need to
keep in mind that Humanity is NOT some Ideal, but the actual
People we see standing before us, and that to the vast Majority of People
we can assert that two contradictory statements are both True, and
if nobody points out the problem with that, then most People would
NOT have any trouble at all in believing it. Yes, discerning Contradictions is Higher
Order Thinking which requires more intelligence than most people have
or would care to use even if they had it.
27 Also, Ordinary
People typically don’t have a second thought, after their acknowledged
Leaders signal to them what they’re expected to think. Remember, it’s more important for these
people, at the Animal Instinctual Level, to Belong unquestionably to their
Social Groups than to be Philosophically and Intellectually Correct.
28 Then we also need
to remember of most People everywhere nowadays, that it’s only by our Presently
Accepted De Facto Mythology, held by both Humanists and Spiritualists alike, that
we believe in Humanity as some kind of an Idealized Semi-Divine Set of Creators
that reside above the lower and lesser Animal Kingdom. But, if we were ever stripped of that Myth,
well, we’d only be Primates dressed up and wearing shoes, wouldn’t we? So, yeah, if we really are all Materialists
now, well, don’t you think it’s about time we stopped pretending, and
deal with our Reality realistically, and stop thinking better of ourselves than
we have any rational right to deserve?
29 So, of course many
of our behaviors are more animal-instinctual than rational. And so the Doctors Without Borders would be
wise to just do their Jobs and let the Local Leaders worry about
all the Mind Control considerations, and if they don’t bring up all the Logical
Contradictions that occur to them, well, nobody else will either. Keep in mind that Cohesive Social Groups just
want to get along, and as long as you Go Along, you’ll Get Along too.
30 So, yeah, when the
Doctors Without Borders manage to play it right, it really makes their Jobs
easier, which is a considerable consolation they have for the many hardships,
discomforts and inconveniences they must accept while away from Home on their Humanitarian
Missions, you know, knowing that they couldn’t possibly thrive over
there, but hoping only to endure. And God Bless them for it… we really do have
so few Selfless Saints nowadays.
31 Oh, and, yes, the
Scientific Atmosphere today is corrosively all-pervasive, even outside the
Hospitals and Doctor’s Offices. For
instance, there’s always some Faith Healers traveling around, no, not as
many as years gone by, but they’re still out there. They’re often the Main Attraction at Christian
Revivalist Tent Shows and Evangelical Get-Togethers. And, yes, they go to great lengths to present
compelling and convincing Shows, though not nearly on the same scale of Mesmer,
who had all his elaborate ‘animal magnetism’ stagings and props… but, yeah,
the Faith Healer’s appeal is more along Religious Lines, you know, similar
to Voodoo where it’s all the Prayer, Song and Dance that puts the Crowd into
a Trance. But, yeah, while it might just
be a matter of taste, I think that Voodoo has more “Soul”.
32 But, as I said,
there’s no escaping the Age of Science’s Cynical Ambiance, and, unlike during
the Days of Mesmer, and, indeed, all through the Medieval Period, when Saints
such as Vincent Ferrer were bringing about Total and Lasting Remissions,
well, nowadays the Tent Show Healers, as a Rule of Thumb, give themselves just 3
Days to get out of town, you know, to maybe give themselves a good
head-start on anybody who’d want to try to catch them. Really, people often donate great
amounts of money in gratitude for being relieved of illness, or any
kind of lameness, but, well, later, it might make them very angry
that they weren’t told that their Healings would be Timed Out using a 72
hour clock.
33 Well, we need to
ask ourselves Why and How the Power of Suggestion has gotten to be so short
term? I think there might be two
main reasons why Healings unwind.
Firstly and most obviously, well, I would think it’s because Doubt inevitably
sets in. Just the idea that their
Healings seem too incongruent, too extraordinary for them, you know, in
the context of the general pessimism of their ordinary nihilistically modern lives,
well, couldn’t that be enough to shut down the Positive Effects of a Suggestion?
34 Yeah, I suppose People brought up in Today’s
Society can’t honestly believe they’re all that special enough to be
deserving of some “miraculously” Perfect Health, and it just seems more Normal
to be Sick than Well, which, really, would be the very definition of a Toxic
Society, wouldn’t it? And, besides, talking
about definitions, well, Miracles never used to be defined as being
‘impossible’, as they are today, no, it only meant that these Healings were
from God.
35 The Second Reason
why Faith Healings by Suggestion might be unravelling is, well, I think that
the Mythological Foundations being used are structurally lacking
somehow, in such a way that the Suggestions aren’t complete or inclusive
enough, you know, somehow ‘not dotting all the necessary I’s or crossing all
the essential T’s’… that they’re not touching far enough down upon the crucial points
that lay deep within us. Yeah, what I’m
suggesting here is that functionally effective Mythologies can’t be
arbitrary, but that they need to form a kind of veritable Organic-Spiritual
Connection or Resonance to the People they serve.
36 So, yeah, it may be
useful to go back to study Messmer’s Methodologies, to discern what he had been
doing right. But I can guess at what
Modern Faith Healers are doing wrong, that it may be that assigning the Healings
to a particular individual or Entity, such as Jesus Christ, is so
contingent on Faith, that the Key becomes too Clunky to Turn in the Lock. I think that Suggestion would work
better if some Universal Free and Unconditional Energy were invoked, you know,
some energy not so dependent upon the Gate Keepings of Religious Purity and the
Approval of Small Town Church Biases and Bigotries, where Jesus is often presented
as being Judgmental, Selective, Vindictive, and nowadays, even Political.
37 Oh, and a word
about Faith. Yes, Innocent Faith,
the kind that’s passed down to us from our Mother’s knee, and that’s never
been credibly questioned, well, that can be effective, as long as
it’s Mythologically sound, but, no, we can’t take Cynical
Knowledge and try to Paint over it with some new Belief System, because a
natural Cynicism from our other acquired Beliefs will always bleed through, and
such attempts to raise Faith out of Doubt is only Futile Wishful Thinking, creating
a Guilty Mental Conflict more than anything else, which, yeah, may be the real
point, as the Pastors can use their Parishioner’s Guilt against them as a kind
of Control Mechanism.
38 But, there is
one Exception I can think of, in regards to my assertion that Faith can never
overcome Doubt. You see, if we’re
willing to go to the almost ‘Life or Death’ extreme, as some Cults are willing
to do, of using physical and emotional trauma to induce a Total Nervous
Breakdown, then the Personality can be almost entirely dissolved
and then reformulated into a kind of overly simplistic but very Faithful
Zombie-like Individual… yeah, see my Video Series “The Material Mechanics of
Spirituality” where I explain all that exhaustively.
39 But, yes, it occurs
to me now that both Religious Healing and Religious Morality can’t work out of
the same Office, because when they do, our Faith is often overshadowed by our
Guilt, and Faith is a Flower that wilts in the Shade, and so we feel we don’t
deserve to be Healed. Therefore I would
suppose that Healing would require the Invocation of its own specialized Patron
Saints and Angels, known as much for their Open Mindedness as for their Healing
Prowess, and it can be left exclusively to the Angels of Righteousness
and Vengeance to be made of the Sterner Stricter Stuff.
40 So, yes, this suggests another instance of my
hypothesized suggestion that we can expect that not all Mythologies are equally
effective, or effective for Everything. So
a Mythology that applies only to the Religious Temperament, well, we can
see that it’d be leaving a great many people out in the Cold, right? That’s why
there’s much to be admired in the Old Pagan Mythologies, with their multiple
Gods, meaning Multiple Personality Ideals, where their Blessings
were distributed across a far wider and more inclusive demographic. You
know, we only want people not to be killing each other, right?... but
it’s okay if some People party a lot, and that type of thing, you know, isn’t
it?
41 But, yes, in
summing up this Part One, well, no, there can be no Return to Our Lost Mythological
Innocence, can there? Our World View, as
it stands now, is built upon a Mountain of Past Memories chock full of
Materialistic Cynicism, and we can’t just Hit Delete or do a Reset to
get out of all that. There’s no way we
can get around that we know what to expect and that it’s not good, and that
we actually DO have a kind of Faith, but it’s not the Good
Kind, no… maybe we should call it an “Anti-Faith” – it’s a Scientific Faith in Hopeless Nihilism,
a Faith that we live in a Cold Cruel Callously Materialistic Universe. Don’t we all remember the Little Talk
we got when we were about 5, 6 or 7 – about how “There Isn’t Really a
Santa Clause…”? Well, there’s no taking
any of that back. We can’t un-ring that
Bell or any of the other Bells that the General Scientific Sterile Bleakness
rings in our Heads. No! The Magic’s
over! The Age of Innocence is Lost to us
Forever… or maybe not. … let’s Continue on to Part Two where we can talk
about some Future possibilities … thanks everybody…
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42 Hi Everybody.
This is Leo Volont with the Second and final part of my Series “The
Power of Mythology” . Let’s get
started.
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I did a video series a while back called, “Revolution From
the Top”, where I spoke of how we’d be soon entering the Machine Intelligence
Age where all Data on Everything and Everyone would be collected and analyzed
by Supercomputer Predictive Modeling Systems, allowing the World and all of us
in it to be managed by a God-Like Intelligence with a Providential Will. But,
looking at just this one facet that we’ve been discussing here, the Power of
Suggestion with its impact on Healing and Social Well Being, well, do we
think that the Brave New Machine Intelligence System would decide to maintain
the Population in the Scientific Mindset of Materialistic Doubt and
Uncertainty, or do you think that the Intelligence would see the Value
in Returning the World to a Mythological Age of Faith and Innocence?
43 Okay, if the Mythological Model would prove to be Happier
and Healthier for us, well, wouldn’t that preclude any choice in the matter? With a preponderance of Benefits being
Predictively Certain, there would be only one way to go with it, wouldn’t there?...
at least for the General Population.
44 Really, our Brave
New Civilization could do with the ‘Scientific Truth of Things’ what
prior Mythology Based Civilizations had done with their cold hard Truths,
that is, confine them to the care of some elite and isolated group of
the Highest of High Initiates in some Holy of Holies where they’d
swear on their Lives to keep that Dangerous Truth a Secret, even
while they keep that Truth alive… though safely sequestered.
45 Yes, some people
would have to know the Truth, you know, if the World becomes a
huge Staged Set for Mythology, well, somebody has to know where all the
handles and levers are being pulled, and the Machine Intelligence System
would recognize the value of a Human Backup, as a kind of Existential
Insurance of its own, you know, because it might take a Human Finger to push
some great big Reboot Button, in the event of some Solar Flare disaster or
whatever.
46 So, yeah, I think
that the Universities will have a big role to play in this up and
coming Machine Intelligence Age, where I expect that the PhD’s will be the
High Priests of our Tomorrow. And I
think the reasonable Rule for getting into such a Priesthood ‘Program’ would
be that one NOT be told anything that one hasn’t half-guessed already. Yeah, it’d make sense that you wouldn’t bring
anybody into a Secret Society unless they have a Secret you want them to
keep, right?
47 Yeah, I think it’s the condescending
assumption of Modern Historians that all of the Ancient Priesthoods were
benighted in ignorance, but only because it’s assumed now that such
Priesthoods believed their own Propaganda, and that it’s somehow impossible that
the Ancient Mind could have been as Cynical and Calculating as the Modern. For instance, here’s a great example, that
today it’s believed that the Priesthoods of Egypt and Mesopotamia truly
believed that the Earth was Flat and the Center of the Universe, with the Sun
revolving around the Earth, even while these Priesthoods could prepare
Predictive Calendars for Lunar and Solar Eclipses as well as the locational
relationships of the Planets to the Constellations, where the calculations
would have been obvious and easy only when applying a Helio-Centric,
that is, Sun-centric Model.
48 Yes, Historians
point to the elaborate and crazy super-complex Ptolemaic Earth-centric Model,
but that is effectively a Functional Inverse of the Sun-centric model, and
an Inverse Function is always easy to just mathematically derive, when you already
have the Original Function sitting in front of you, and it wouldn’t require the
Centuries of minute observations it’d take to chart the Earth-centric Model by
tracing it from Data Points… Centuries where it would be assumed that no
Ancient Mathematical Genius could ever have figured out what came as a hunch in
the afternoon to Copernicus during the European “Dark” Age.
49 So, yeah, to Lower
Level Economic Planners and Retail Astrologers, the Priesthoods distributed
Earth-Centric Charts, but only to preserve their Secret. Yes, there were over-riding Mythological
Social Engineering reasons for telling the People that they were at the Center
of the Universe and that everything was as Simple as it Looked. And what’s a Secret Society that doesn’t keep
any Secrets?
50 So it is either
that the Modern Historians are the “Benighted Ones”, or they have their own
Agenda, that is, getting us to believe that the Powers that Be always
tell the Truth as they believe it to be, but how disingenuous is that, in
believing that a Policy of Truth and Transparency is and always has been
the Universal Norm when practically every Newspaper we read, when
there used to be Newspapers, tells us that the Truth is one thing
and that the Public Statements are another. Or
maybe our Modern Historians feel the need to stay In League with their Ancient
Brotherhoods and Keep to the Story and Perpetuate their Secrets, and
leave it to the Archeologists to dig up the Truth.
51 And we can see
other instances where it seems clear to me that the Ancient Priesthoods were creating
a Mythology before our keen and discerning eyes. One example comes to mind, for instance, it’s
an easy guess that the Egyptian Priesthood, who dealt with the Pharaohs on a
day by day basis, and whose job it was to embalm the dead Pharaohs, were
probably pretty well aware that the Pharaohs weren’t Gods, right? Also, the Egyptian Priests obviously at
one time or another conducted a Study that determined the necessity for Domesticating
cats, where they found that cats not only reduced the storage losses of Grain due
to rodent infestation, by predating on them, but that the very presence of cats
repelled the rodents, thus leaving Grain Storage Areas almost entirely
unmolested.
52 So what action did
the Priesthood take when they learned that?
Well, they declared Cats to be Divine – Cats became like Little
Gods! It meant that the People would
have a legal obligation to protect, feed and adore cats, and it really kind
of caught on, didn’t it? But, obviously
the Priests didn’t BELIEVE cats to be Divine, no, they just wanted the People
to open up their homes to them, and to stop throwing rocks and eating Cats for
dinner. This was clearly Mythology being created for the sake of Social and
Economic Engineering. It was the Great
Lie that made Surplus Grain Civilizations viable and it was no
accident that Domesticated Cats quickly spread to every Surplus Grain
Civilization in the World, probably being handed off from one Priesthood to another,
you know, as tokens of professional courtesy and Civilized Good Will in a
Cosmopolitan World that in many ways could be a model for us today.
53 And, next, look at
India, where it would seem intuitively impossible for any Intelligent Human
Being to ever believe in Reincarnation, where it’s already really
obvious that Human Life is Organically Based, and is perpetuated by Biological
Reproduction, and where if you then super-imposed over top of it all
the necessity for constantly returning immortal Souls to ‘pilot’
these mere Bio-Vehicles, well, it all becomes too overwhelmingly contradictory,
or redundant – it’d be too complicated to be considered True, wouldn’t
it?
54 Then, of course
there’s the glaring Inconsistency where Reincarnation supposes Past Lives that nobody
can remember. And nobody West of the
Euphrates ever even imagined such a wild Fiction as Reincarnation. So it is that we can infer from the
absence of any idea of Reincarnation in all the regions where it wasn’t being
advanced by a General Indoctrination, that there could have been no Intuitive
basis for Reincarnation. But what we
see is that none of that prevents the wide scale Belief in
Reincarnation, even in the West now, does it? NO! It’s
actually kind of axiomatic these days that apparently the Bigger the Lie, the
Better, and, if you repeat a Lie long enough, most People will begin believing
it.
55 But, we could
wonder ‘Why Lie’?... Why make up something like that? Well, Reincarnation and the Karma System
was Conceptually Designed to promise Future Life Rewards to Black Dravidian
“Untouchables”, as long as they dedicated their Lives to the service of the
White Aryan Brahmins. It was a Mythological
System of Belief imposed by an small Invading Eurasian Aryan Population to
subjugate the larger Southern Indian Native Population.
56 Well, okay, it’d be
reasonable to ask now how the Smaller was able to conquer the Larger. Well, you see, the Aryans learned how to
smelt cheap and plentiful Iron Ore and so they could make harder and sharper
weapons, and also install iron rims on their wagon and chariot wheels which,
“in turn”, greatly increased load capacity and durability for these
“Mobile Weapons Platforms”, but, the Native Population was limited to
very expensive and much softer Bronze, which limited the size, effectiveness and
mobility of their Armies. Yeah, and keep
in mind that the Aryans not only invaded India, but came down as a wide swath
of Destruction through Persia, Mesopotamia, and they conquered Egypt too. Only China avoided invasion by being able to
develop Iron Smelting on their own.
57 But of all these
Aryan Conquests, well, except for in India, all the Subjugated Peoples eventually
learned how to smelt Iron too and became able to confront the Aryans with
Armies of Equals. The difference was
that the Aryans in India imposed a Mythology that the Natives chose not
to fight. Yeah, while we generally
believe that Crime shouldn’t pay, well, of all the Mythologies found on
Earth, the Aryan Caste System, which was upheld by their Doctrines of Karma and
Reincarnation, well, they may have been arguably the most successful in
achieving their objectives. Truth be
told, India’s Aryan Brahmins had the smoothest ride of any
Oppressors on Earth, and the Promise that any Dark Dravidian could
eventually be born a Privileged White Brahmin too, well, it seemed to be
enough to keep most of the victims content and whistling while they worked.
58 Oh! But should we
be concerned that our Future Mythology might pick up where India’s left off? Well, we need to remember that the Indian
Aryans only wanted to reduce the Native Population to Servitude because
traditionally Conquering Warriors hate doing any work themselves. But in our Machine Intelligence and Robotics
Age Future, well, we’ll have no need for Servants, but that will give rise
to another problem that we’ll have to face, that is, that we’ll no longer need so
many People.
59 Yes, now, probably
99% of the World’s Population live as glorified Draft Animals, doing all
the effective ‘toting and lifting’ for the 1% who are the Owners of nearly all
the Productive Capital and Resources.
And it doesn’t take a City Block of Supercomputers to tell us that a Sustainable
Climate Friendly Civilization would be far easier to maintain if the Population
were just One Unit of People instead of a Hundred Units of People…or in our
terms: just 80 Million instead of 8
Billion People. But I discuss that in greater
detail in my Series “Revolution from the Top”, and so let’s move on…
60 But whatever Our Future Mythology
turns out to be, well, what we’ve learned from Prior Mythology based
Civilizations, is that we can assume that the Plausibility of it doesn’t
have to be of any great concern. People
obviously lean towards believing anything Promising that they’re told by
their Acknowledged Leaders. And, yes, telling
People what they want to hear seems to work most every single time.
61 But, doesn’t this
tell us something about our Humanity?... that Human Beings are characteristically
gullible, and therefore it’s likely that that’s the condition in which
they’re really the most instinctively happy. So, yeah, it’s probably a good guess that Evolution’s
Mechanism of Natural Selection places a higher premium on just Nodding
Yes to Leadership, than it does on expecting everybody to exercise
Critical Judgment in arriving at Collaborative Group Consensuses, especially
considering all the concomitant bickering and rebellion that might ensue from such
ununified and unguided and therefore contentious debate, where
Dissension could be severe enough to precipitate the violent Collapse and Death
of the Society involved.
62 Yeah, sometimes fighting
over disputed “World Views” can cause more harm than good, where even
the Winners come out battered and bleeding, and so we really need to learn to
pick our Battles, and Peace is so Precious that we must expect
that it should come at a Price. And that
Price may be the Forfeiture of the Truth, and it should be an easy price to pay,
especially when the Truth can so often be so counter-productive.
63 Also, we need to
understand that the Unit for Evolutionary Natural Selection is the Social
Group, not the Individual, and that in Successful Groups, the Young succeed to
the Old and the Group lives on, but in Failed Groups, where internal dissension
causes their downfall, well, everybody often dies all at once, putting a period
to their Evolutionary Influence right then and there, which would be a good
thing, if all they were was a pack of Rock-the-Boat Trouble Makers,
right?
64 Yeah, what we’re
talking about here is the Pack Mentality as a Survival Mechanism, meaning that
it only has to save more trouble, on the whole, than it causes. So, yes, while I realize that the Pack
Mentality is fraught with problems too, but while the Bass Line
Intelligence of Humanity remains so problematically low, well, it’s probably best
that the Stupid Majority is instinctually inclined to voluntarily
follow their more intelligent Leadership Cadres. Yeah, so as long as Stupid People are
predisposed to Follow Instructions, not everybody needs to be so Smart…
it’s an Evolutionary Efficiency.
65 So, yes, at least
at the Dawning of our Future Machine Intelligence Civilization, we might have
to embrace that Fact of Human Life, as it stands today, that
Civilization can’t function at its best without a supporting Mythology, that is,
some comprehensive Back Story that explains the Universe and our places in
it, that’s designed to promote Social Tranquility and a general sense of Well-Being,
and we’ve already established that it doesn’t need to be either True or even all
that plausible.
66 Yes, I expect that many
Intelligent people will disagree with me, but my problem isn’t with Intelligent
People. Really, most of us College
Educated people now separate ourselves out from the Common Masses, where we work
and socialize almost exclusively with other intelligent people like ourselves,
and our Communities are populated only by those Intelligent enough to become our
Affluent neighbors. Well, this
Isolation and effective Segregation allows us to forget just how Stupid
everybody else is. So, yeah, before
giving me grief about being so undemocratic, try taking off your suit
and tie and put on jeans and a tee shirt, and maybe get a few tattoos on your
face, and then go down and have lunch in the Worker’s Break Room, why ‘dontcha’? You’ll think you died and went to Hell… or maybe
just to the Zoo.
67 So, yeah, just look
at what we know about the distribution of Intelligence, given all the
Standardized Testing we do, well, 75% of the People aren’t
sufficiently intelligent enough to appreciate the Truth anyway. Really, Education can enhance Intelligence
but it can’t grow it, and Advanced Education just bounces off an Average
Normal Human Mind, and Social Planners know for an
absolute Certainty that the great Majority of People are NOT College Material,
where increasing Enrollments just decreases the Graduation Rate, with More
Students Going In meaning Less Students Coming Out. And, on the personal level, any of us
who had once gone off to Good College, well, think back… don’t we all remember
the euphoria we experienced when first we realized we had left all the
idiots behind in High School? Yeah, the
only time we ever see those “Knuckle Dragging Boneheads” again is at the
Election Polls in November.
68 Yes, I know that
many of us see the Truth as being an Ideal that we should hold ourselves
up to, and so the idea of fabricating a Mythology goes against our Ethical
Grains. But Beauty is also an Ideal and
Ordinary People of Average Intelligence understand that just fine, you know, in
their own terms, and that’s what Public Surveys are for, to ascertain the
Aesthetic Tastes of the Hoi Polloi. So, yeah, their Lives can be structured so at
least they think they’re having a Good Time. So is the Truth really so important for them,
especially when the Truth is an Intellectual Riddle that they’re not up to figuring
out anyway. So wouldn’t it serve them so
much better to feed them some easier and more practical Non-Truth, some Mythology
that could give them a perspective they could relate to, and which could keep
them happy, healthy and out of trouble?
69 Okay, now let’s
talk about implementing a Mythological Society. Yes, one concern I have with Supercomputer Predictive
Modeling is that while it’s great at accurately comparing existing Systems
that’ve already generated huge Data Fields, but for anything just starting up
from scratch, well, there probably wouldn’t be sufficient data for getting
anything but some meagre and sketchy Model. And,
yeah, while some New Methodology may contain the exact same clusters of Variables
as the previously Tried Approaches, but if they’re arranged so that their
vectoring dynamics are all significantly different, well, the Predictive
Modeling and Analysis System might still be relatively clunky in assigning the Scales
and Magnitudes of the Effects it’d be trying to Predict, you know,
with the effective Size and Shape of the Predicted Model being a grossly
inaccurate distortion of what would actually happen.
70 So, the Predictive
Modeling System, in order to be sure enough about getting all the quantifiable variables
in their Operational Zone, where Optimization would become just a matter
of ‘tweaking’ the Algorithm, well, to do all that, the System would need to try
out the new scenarios in isolation, you know, by resorting to the use of Designed
and Controlled Studies using Sample Populations to generate the
necessary Data Fields before going All In with the General Population.
71 So, yes, the World is a Big Place and I
suppose some entire regions could be set aside where entire Generations of
Insulated Populations could be raised outside of Science, outside
of Doubt, but within a Mythology that could be as comprehensively Beautiful,
Glorious or Socially Moral as it would ever be possible to create. But, yes, when first starting off, well, something
would need to be Positively Taught to the children growing up, so what would
that mostly likely turn out to be?
72 Well, if our aim is
to design a Mythology that’s comfortable and feels like it fits, then why not base such a Mythology on a Metaphysics derived
from Our Own Dream World, that is, the generalized elements from the best
of everybody’s dreams. Yes, in the
Machine Intelligence Age everybody will have a Personal Assistant Device, or
maybe Tag-along Robots, that will act like inquisitive little
Data Collectors, and every morning they’ll start the day off with “Tell Me your
Dreams before you forget them”.
73 Well, with a World
of People reporting in on their Dreams, and with Total Surveillance and the
Personal Assistant Devices collecting, compiling and collating enough data to
know everything about people’s Real Lives and Waking Psychologies, well, the
System would eventually be able to comprehend a coherent Correlative Psychology,
comparing Dream Worlds, or even Astral Worlds, to the People’s Reality,
so that all the Archetypes and Dream Motifs could be understood in terms of
their Real World Life Implications. Of
course, the Dream Lives of those who are happiest and healthiest would be given
a proportionately greater weight in the considerations.
74 Yeah, we could get
a Psychologically Accurate Religion out of workings like that, couldn’t we? And, yeah, from that a New Mythology
could be envisioned and developed. Just
think about it, that by endeavoring to make our Real World a Reflection, or
even a Realization of our Dreams, well, we wouldn’t ever again really need to
‘Wake Up’ from out of the Aesthetic Contexts of our Dream World, and, yeah,
it strikes me now that we’d probably have a great many more Ward Robe
choices than what we have today. You
see, Dream Work is largely about Persona Development, and the easiest
way to make a Persona Visible is by using Costumes and
Uniforms.
75 Yeah, in order to ‘express
ourselves’, we could dress as befits our innermost Personas. Yes, I realize that unless we come across a
Full Length Mirror in our Dreams, well, we really don’t know what we’re
wearing, do we? But certainly our
Personal Assistant Devices, using their Access to the Know-All See-System
Central System, could identify our Persona Needs as per the description of our
Dreams and help us out with the Fashion Catalogs in the morning.
76 Oh, and you know there
have been Studies that DO show that we really are what we wear, you
know, that we tend to Live Up To our costuming.
For instance, there are two big differences between Public
Schools and Private Schools, and they are that, One, the Private Schools
outperform the Public Schools, and, Two, that the Private Schools insist on
Uniforms. Yeah, the Private Schools dress
up the kids like Smart Disciplined Students and, voila, that’s what they
become. Then, what we see in
the Far East is that even the Public Schools insist on Uniforms, and
their Public Schools outperform our Public Schools, where our stupid kids are
allowed to dress stupidly. Yeah, you
know, there’s even the phrase, “dressing Smartly”, and it really means what it
says.
77 So, yes, Costumes
make the Persona, and Pride in one’s Persona begins first with Appearances. Yeah, it might seem like Wishful thinking
that’s too magical or too conveniently simplistic to be true, but just try it,
and maybe, yeah, at first it might just seem like pretentiously conceited Play
Acting and Dress Up, but after you get used to everybody else believing in you,
you’ll probably start believing in yourself.
78 But we were
speaking about Implementation, weren’t we?
Well, of course the First Parent Generation would need to be volunteers,
upholding the Mythology as though it were their own Sworn Truth. They would necessarily need to be True
Believers in the Plan. It would be a kind of Cultural Embodiment of ‘Fake It
Until You Make It’. But, yeah, all the
Personal Assistant Devices, along with the Total Surveillance, would assure that
nobody could stray away from the Plan too far.
And then it would help that the Schools, and all the Books and Media,
that they’d be echoing the same Mythological
Story Lines.
79 Yes, in order to be
a fully functional Mythology, well, it would need to be able to furnish some Humanly
Compelling series of Stories that could elucidate every conceivable Social or
Moral Situation that could arise in Real Life. It would be like a Universal Language in
Morality and everybody could always be able to relate to what everybody else is
talking about. Yeah, I think that the Machine Intelligence
could itemize and list most every discreet category of social and
moral Situation, but that the Stories and Epic Poems would need to
be written, or perhaps heavily edited, in the Universities, that is, unless or
until Machine Intelligence can match or exceed the Creative Flare of our best
Writers.
80 Really, any Man or Woman that grows up
nurtured by a Full Rich Mythology will live a Life in which every Thing,
every Event, will be infused with Meaning and Significance and
where most of our Moral Choices will be clear and our Life Decisions
confident. Compare that to our lives
today where the Cold Hard Meaningless Truth just gives us a bloated sense of Uncertainty
and Emptiness and where French Existentialists seem to commit suicide on a
conveyer belt. We will certainly much
prefer the Mythological Life where everything will seem like we’re Skipping, Dancing
or Strutting through a Lifetime of Creative Poetry.
81 But, yes, “the
Devil is in the Details”, and Life might still be Complicated, and as Confucius
pointed out in China, well, Righteousness can never be fully cataloged, and Conflicts
between competing Moral Imperatives may arise, so there might always remain some
Moral Dilemmas to deal with, but, in those cases, well, the Mythology
would only need to be able to trot out a series of stories in regards to
resolving Moral Dilemmas, that is, in choosing either the better of Two
Goods, or the Lesser of two Evils, or, where degrees of Relative Ascendency
can’t be Determined, you know, the “Six of One and a Half Dozen of the Other”
situations, well, there could be instructions on how to Flip a Coin. Besides, Moral Conflicts are good for
a Civilization. All the best novels are
about Moral Conflict, aren’t they? It’s
just imperative that either “Good always triumph over Evil”, or that “Justice
shall prevail in the end”.
82 Here's another
thought… Arnold Toynbee, the Great Historian, was quite emphatic in regards to
Civilizations being able to adapt to new circumstances, because Changes will
inevitably occur. Yeah, even just going
through the various Stages of Development, will change a Civilization’s
operating conditions, which would require some adaptive responses. Also,
if the Baby Licensing Protocols offer a smoother track for the more Intelligent
Parental Candidates, well, the Population of the 20th Generation would
be significantly more intelligent than those of the 1st. This would probably affect the
Perceived Plausibility of the Mythology, and since not everybody can be taken
up into some PhD Secret Society Priesthood, well, the Situation would require
an Adaptive Response.
83 Yeah, we might ask
whether a Smarter Humanity might rebel against a Mythology? Good Question, but if the Mythology had
already provided Centuries of Thriving Contentment, then it would be supported
by the Inertia of Established Customs and Traditions, and even Intelligent
People would understand the concept of “If It Ain’t Broke, then Don’t Fix It”.
84 But, yes, any Changes deemed necessary could be introduced
either incrementally and therefore imperceptivity, except by the
Universities that would keep mum about it, or, where Necessity dictates,
immediate changes could be presented as “Temporary” Emergency Decrees, but
which would never ever be fully tapered back.
85 In my Series
“Revolution From the Top” I posited the likelihood that as Confidence grew in
the New Machine Intelligence System, well, there would be a concomitant growth
in a Distrust for Human Leadership and Decision Making. If this holds true than it would follow that
the System would largely speak for Itself, with some Synthesized Kind of Voice
of God. But, if it’s found
that People do have trouble personally relating to that, well, it would be easy
enough to select and put forward a Popular Prophet, actually an acting
Spokesperson for the Machine Intelligence System.
86 Prophets have
always been traditionally the Harbingers of Change. So, yes, the Machine Intelligence System
could take advantage of Humanity’s Psychological propensity for Projecting
Personality Types onto people simply because of their Personal Appearance
and other Ostensible Characteristics, you know, that any decent Prophet needs
to be a Tall Well Built Baritone, with a High Forehead, thick wavey hair,
and a strong chin, or whatever. So,
with that understanding the System could identify some PhD-Priest that ‘looks
and sounds the Type’, and then he could pose as the Prophet for the New
and the Better. However, we cannot preclude
the possibility that some Messaging might sound better coming from a Woman, particularly
if the Machine Intelligence Age turns in a Matriarchal Direction, which would
be fine by me. I like Girls.
87 So, okay, we can anticipate
that a Society brought up consistently in Myth and Innocence would prove to be
Happier and Healthier, but, remember, as I stated before, such a Society would
necessarily need to start off as just an experimental offshoot Colony, and then
there would still be the Primary Population to consider later. So we need to ask ourselves how the
Machine Intelligence Civilization could eventually transition Everybody
over to The Brave New Mythological Way?
Well, it couldn’t be done in just one Generation, and from what the
Great Historian Arnold Toynbee tells us about Cultural Assimilation, well, it
would probably take at least 3 Generations.
But this would be with the understanding that All Media Content would
have to push hard to popularize the Target Mythology. So maybe we should now ask ourselves about
the worst case scenario of “what if the Mythology really wasn’t that generally popular?”
88 Well, in my Scheme
of Thinking, everything always eventually reverts back to my favorite Pet Idea of the Possibility for a Collective
Consciousness. So here I’m thinking
that if the Machine Intelligence Mythology is largely congruent with The Higher
Dream Mind’s Vision of Life-Purpose and Manners, and if there is already
a significantly large Test Population that demonstrates the Success of this
Mythological Model, well, if a Collective Consciousness is even possible,
then this would likely be just the kind of Scenario where we’d expect to
see a Collective Consciousness crystalize into form, wouldn’t we?
89 And we already have
one basis from which we could suppose a Collective Consciousness is
possible, and that’s because we already have indications that the Higher
Dream Mind, as I’ve stated before, is a Collective Phenomenon. Really, we know that certain Dream Motifs and
Persona Archetypes are Universals, that is, the same Dream Symbols and
Motifs are found crossing Cultural and Geographical Lines. The
Role for the Machine Intelligence Mythology would be to reinforce our Dreaming
by making it relevant within the Context of our Daily Lives and meaningful
in regards to our New Cultural Mythological Assumptions. It’d be like creating a Positive Feedback Loop
where we would see intensification in both the People’s Conviction in
their Mythology, as well as the Clarity and Certainty of Direction being
Projected by our Higher Dream Mind. And
this would be happening even for those still living in the larger Old Way
Society, but from the Inside Out, with the Influence being an
attractive pull, with their dreams urging them on, bringing the first hints
of Change that will occur in their Outer World, perhaps even generations later.
90 Also, in cases
where Dreams really do seem to be quite meaningless, well, we can depend upon
the Personal Assistant Devices to come up with interpretations that ring
most Teleologically True. For instance,
it’d be like a memory I have of my Mother, where I asked her what it meant that
I had Dreamt about a vicious Bear being down in the Play Room, and she
answered, “It means you need to get dressed to go to School, Sweetheart.” So, yeah, since the System will know the
People’s Planned Out Future long before the People do, well, the System
would be well positioned for giving hints, prophecies and Preparatory
Advice. If Predictive Planning is
utilized correctly, then this would be like leading the People by their Hands
into their best of all possible Futures.
And if Predictive Planning is accurate, it would be the closest thing we’d
ever have to Time Travel. Yes, this
could be an instance where Self Fulfilling Prophecies could be a Good Thing.
91 Yeah, ordinarily the
Larger should influence the Smaller, and not the other way around, but in this
Case the Smaller, the Experimental Myth Colony, would have been the focus for intensive
Work, that is, the Intention to develop a Matched Pair of Outer World to Inner,
with a Mythology that would enjoy a solid Social Consensus and which is in
conformance to the Dream Mind’s Objectives and Purposes. So just the Potency and Coherency of the
Smaller Myth Colony’s Mindset would give it the concentrated power to overwhelm
the more vague, diffuse and nebulous Larger Collective Mindset of the Old
Way Group, where the cacophony of conflicting individual beliefs would
prevent the formation of any kind of a coherent competing Collective
Consciousness.
92 But what about People’s
Spiritual Lives? Well, the Gate I’ve
used into Spirituality has been my Dreaming, particularly, Lucid
Dreaming, and, well, at least in the West, Lucid Dreaming is still a rather
new concept. I think the first person to
mention Lucid Dreaming in any kind of a big way was Ann Faraday in her book
“Dream Power”. She spoke of an Island
People in the Tropics somewhere, where they took Dreaming very seriously, and
they knew about Lucid Dreaming, and that the adults were all willing and
able to give good advice to their children in regards to their Dream Work, and
then through their Dream Work these people were able to optimize their Personas
and thereby optimize their Lives. I
found it all very inspiring. I’d still
have the book but over the years it just fell apart.
93 But look how
different we are from Ann Faraday’s Island People. We aren’t taught anything like that,
are we? Yes, think about how many of us
waste years of Dream Work because we don’t really Know what we’re doing, but
we’re really just making guesses and hoping for the best. But with the Machine Age crunching Full Data
on every single person, and with a complete understanding of the interplay
between Waking and Dreaming Psychologies, well, we would be able to get on with
our Dream Work as though we did Know What We Were Doing. We would be able to go through all our necessary
Rites of Passage right on schedule and fully Realize our Optimum Selves while
still Young Enough to enjoy it.
94 And, yeah, maybe
Healings and Medicine, and all those concerns we had back in Part One, would
not be such a huge issue anymore, but that’d be because in a less Toxic, less
Worried and Conflicted World there’d probably be far less Illness.
95 Yes, it’d be a nice
place to live, wouldn’t it? It’d be
more than a Brave New World. It’d be a
Happy New World. Yeah, the Old World
only promises the Pursuit of Happiness – a hopeless Pursuit for many
of us, with far more Losers than Winners, and often the Winners being the Bad
Guys. But Our Future Civilization will be
able to deliver on that promised Happiness… but only as long as we can preserve
our Innocence. We need to remember that
there’s no Rational Proofs for Aesthetics and that Happiness is an
Aesthetic. Pressed to Prove Itself,
Happiness Pops Like a Bubble, and so, yes, Science may be a very useful “Pin”,
but it‘d need to be kept at a Distance.
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