“War … is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate.”
Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was the thirty-sixth President of the United States (1963-1969) and thirty-seventh Vice President of the United States (1961-1963).
All Lyndon B. Johnson quotes | Lyndon B. Johnson Books
(Quotes.net)
― William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 1 is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written not later than 1597. The play dramatises part of the reign of King Henry IV of England, beginning with the battle at Homildon Hill late in 1402, and ending with King Henry’s victory in the Battle of Shrewsbury in mid-1403. Wikipedia
Published
BERNARD BEITMAN, M.D., is Founding Director of The Coincidence Project which encourages people to tell each other their coincidence stories. His book, Meaningful Coincidences: How and Why Serendipity and Synchronicity Happen (September 13, 2022) comprehensively describes their wide range of uses and explanations. The book serves as a personal guide to using synchronicities and serendipities.
He is former chair of Psychiatry at the University of Missouri-Columbia and has a private practice in Charlottesville, Virginia.
His manual Learning Psychotherapy received two national awards for its unique interactive training program for psychiatric residents. He is internationally known for research in panic disorder and chest pain and has edited several books about how to integrate pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy.
He went to Swarthmore College, Yale Medical School, and did his psychiatric residency at Stanford. He was captain of the baseball team in high school and college. He was scouted by the Oakland Raiders pro football team, tried out for the Pittsburg Pirates pro baseball team and played rugby at Yale and in San Francisco.
The stories in his first book Connecting with Coincidence (2016) illustrate how meaningful coincidences can be useful in most aspects of life.
(Goodreads.com)
The Astrology Podcast • Sep 30, 2024 An in-depth exploration of the astrology forecast for October 2024, with astrologers Chris Brennan and Austin Coppock. The major highlight of the month is the solar eclipse that happens in the signs of Libra on October 2, which is the last in a series of eclipses in that sign that began one year ago. The middle of the month features a lot of tense aspects between Mars and the inner planets, which the benefic planets Venus and Jupiter are attempting to offset with helpful configurations. By late in the month the Mars-Pluto opposition begins to loom large, and we start to get sense for what that tough aspect will look like over the next several months, since Mars will station retrograde and oppose Pluto three times. This is episode 464 of The Astrology Podcast: https://theastrologypodcast.com/2024/…Northwest Astrological Conferencehttps://norwac.netAustin’s Websitehttps://austincoppock.comElectional Astrology Chart for October Friday, October 25, at 3:00 PM with Aquarius rising. For more lucky dates in October see our Electional Astrology Podcast: / electional-for-112908274 Timestamps00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:48 Quick overview of October 00:03:40 New segment: eclipse season 00:04:10 Presidential debate & election 00:14:57 Lebanon 00:21:30 Diddy 00:26:51 Submarine wreck found 00:29:46 Hurricane Helene 00:31:45 Kendrick at Superbowl 00:40:20 Pope attacks astrology 00:46:58 Sean Evans of Hot Ones 00:53:14 NORWAC 00:57:19 October forecast begins 00:57:30 Eclipse in Libra Oct 2 01:08:15 Mars enters shadow Oct 4 01:15:57 Benefic transits counteract 01:24:57 Pluto stations Oct 11 01:38:40 Full Moon in Aries Oct 17 01:42:30 Mars-Pluto opposition 02:01:52 Uranus transits 02:06:52 Venus square Saturn Oct 28 02:11:05 Electional chart Oct 25 02:16:00 George RR Martin Mars transit 02:17:48 Moo Deng avatar of Mars in Cancer 02:20:00 Austin’s upcoming events 02:22:03 Chris’ 3rd house podcast 02:24:44 End cards
(Astrobutterfly.com)
October 2024 starts with a powerful Annular Solar Eclipse in Libra, followed by two important planetary stations: Jupiter goes retrograde in Gemini, and Pluto goes direct at 29° Capricorn.
Mid-month, we have an incredibly intense Full Moon in Aries forming a Grand Cardinal Cross with Mars in Cancer and Pluto in Capricorn.
But there’s light after the storm: the last part of the month is marked by beautiful configurations – two Grand Trines, one in Water and the other in Earth signs, followed by a Mystic Rectangle.
Everything will eventually fall into place… but we might have to weather the storm first.
Let’s take a look at the most important transits of the month:
October 2nd, 2024 – New Moon Solar Eclipse In Libra
On October 2nd, 2024 we have a New Moon Solar Eclipse at 10° Libra.
At this powerful Solar Eclipse, we are pressing the RESET button. South Node Solar Eclipses often come with an ending followed by a new beginning.
The Solar Eclipse is conjunct Mercury and square Mars in Cancer. These aspects suggests that some verbal tensions may be part of the release necessary for finding balance.
The good news is that the Eclipse ruler, Venus, is engaged in a harmonious Grand Trine with Mars and Saturn.
Our relationships CAN take a turn for the better if we’re emotionally honest and willing to be vulnerable.
October 9th, 2024 – Jupiter Goes Retrograde
On October 9th, 2024, Jupiter goes retrograde at 21° Gemini. Since its ingress into Gemini in May 2024, Jupiter has been on a rampage, moving swiftly through the sign. But now it’s time to hit the brakes.
Jupiter in Gemini is known for its restless, scattered energy, so going back and revisiting some overlooked details can actually be a good thing.
Jupiter’s retrograde station offers a powerful opportunity for introspection and growth, encouraging us to address deep beliefs, mindset patterns, and the overall approach we take to navigating our lives.
In the end, we manifest what we set our minds to, so working on these mental and belief levels now can make all the difference moving forward.
October 11th, 2024 – Pluto Goes Retrograde
On October 11th, 2024, Pluto goes direct at 29° Capricorn. Pluto changes direction in the final degree of Capricorn. What needed to be done has been done. What needed to be transformed has been transformed.
In these last weeks of Pluto in Capricorn, we take a final look back. This is a time for last goodbyes, for finding closure, and a sense of resolution.
This is a time for deeper wisdom to emerge and guide our next steps. Pluto at 29° Capricorn is like the council of elders. Pluto has seen it all, done it all.
As Pluto completes its final stretch in Capricorn, we’re invited to reflect, draw meaningful conclusions, and integrate the lessons before we move into Aquarian territories.
October 13th, 2024 – Mercury Enters Scorpio
On October 13th, 2024, Mercury enters Scorpio. Mercury in Scorpio’s goal? Intense focus and a relentless drive for uncovering hidden truths. This is not a time for chit chat or superficial encounters.
This is a great transit for honest conversations (with ourselves and others), therapy, and examining the root of our thinking patterns.
This 3-week transit invites all of us to speak our truth, say what we mean, and mean what we say.
October 17th, 2024 – Full Moon In Aries
On October 17th, 2024, we have a powerful Full Moon at 24° Aries, part of an intense Cardinal Grand Cross: Moon in Aries and Sun in Libra square Mars in Cancer and Pluto in Capricorn.
A Cardinal Grand Cross occurs when 4 planets in cardinal signs form squares and oppositions, generating dynamic tension that demands immediate action. This Full Moon is charged with high-voltage energy!
At the Full Moon in Aries, we truly have to confront what’s not working in our life. There’s no way around it.
If that was not enough intensity, the Moon is also conjunct Chiron surfacing vulnerabilities and old wounds, asking us to face and heal them head-on.
Behind the battle scars, we are still that innocent child (Aries). That divine spark is still there. Now, we must reconnect with it, even if it stirs our deepest vulnerabilities (Chiron). To BE is to be vulnerable.
October 17th, 2024 – Venus Enters Sagittarius
On October 17th, 2024, Venus enters Sagittarius.
Emerging from the depths of Scorpio’s underworld, Venus is now ready to aim her (cupid) arrows skyward. When Venus is in Sagittarius, adventure is calling. Say yes!
October 22nd, 2024 – Sun Enters Scorpio
On October 22nd, 2024, the Sun enters Scorpio. Happy birthday to all Scorpios out there!
This is the time of year to journey to the ‘dark side’ – that fertile, transformative realm where what is essential stays, and what is temporary dissolves or fades away, making space for deeper truths to emerge.
October 28th-31st, 2024 – Grand Water Trine And Mystic Rectangle
In the last few days of October, the ‘stars’ literally align.
Since so many planets are around the 27th degree of their sign, they form several important geometrical configurations. From October 28th onwards, we have a Grand Water Trine with Mercury in Scorpio, Mars in Cancer, and Neptune in Pisces.
On October 30th, we have a Grand Earth Trine with the Moon in Virgo, Uranus in Taurus, and Pluto in Capricorn. Then, the Water and Earth elements come together to create a Mystic Rectangle with Mercury in Scorpio, Mars in Cancer, Uranus in Taurus, and Pluto in Capricorn.
When planets align in the sky, we find alignment in our inner world as well.
This is when the puzzles of life come together. Our body and soul find deeper coherence, a sense of harmony and integrity, and we feel in tune with ourselves and the world at large.
There’s a sense that we truly belong to this Earth, that we are here at the right time, and for the right reasons.
SEP 29, 2024 (wisdomschool.org)
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.
—Zig Ziglar
In his 1937 classic Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill shared the secret that steel baron Andrew Carnegie used to transform himself from a penniless Scottish immigrant into one of the richest men in America. That secret, Hill reveals, is to bind a clear vision of a future you want (in the case of his book, a future filled with riches) with a strong and positive emotional state.
Hill wasn’t the first to observe how motivational states work. Three centuries before Christ was born, Plato wrote Protagoras, a story of a discussion between the sophist Protagoras and Plato’s teacher, Socrates. In this classic example of Socratic dialogue, the two men struggle with questions such as, “Why do the sons of good fathers often turn out ill [or good]?” and “Surely knowledge is the food of the soul?”
Socrates speaks directly to motivation and results, asking Protagoras, “And what is done strongly is done by strength, and what is weakly done, by weakness?” Plato tell us that, “He [Protagoras] assented.“
Following lengthy discussion of how people are raised and what they learn, one of the conclusions the men come to is that people are more strongly motivated by what they consider close than what they consider far away, be it in distance or in time.
Or, as King Solomon is purported to have said a thousand years earlier, “When desire cometh, it is a tree of life” Proverbs 13:12.
We are all, always, choosing between moving toward pleasure or moving away from pain. Every single minute is filled with one or the other: we’re never neutral.
Moving away from pain is the “hottest” of these two, but strategies that move us toward pleasure provide long-term, compelling, inexorable motivation. A good analogy is that moving-away-from-pain strategies are like lightning, producing rapid but short-lasting (and sometimes painful) jerks away from what we fear, whereas moving-toward-pleasure strategies are like gravity—inexorable, continuous, and ultimately a means for bringing us to our goals.
The key to making powerful moving-toward-pleasure choices and connecting them to our goals is anchoring a positive vision of the future we want with a powerful positive emotional state. Motivational teachers over the years have proposed many fine techniques to accomplish this—putting up note cards with motivational slogans on mirrors or refrigerators, reading a motivational statement every morning and evening, listening to tapes of motivational speakers regularly—but all eventually bring us to the same place: creating a powerful vision of the future that is bright, shining, and desirable.
Using the Walking Your Blues Away technique, you can build and anchor strong positive motivational states. The process is straightforward:
Having done this, you can then put reminders up around the house—the cards on the refrigerator or mirror with a word or two that remind you of your future goals. Whenever you see these you then assume the posture and make the sound or gesture that re-accesses that state, remembering your goal and letting the full positive intensity of the enthusiastic emotion fill you.
Over time—often over a surprisingly short time—you’ll discover that you are achieving your goals. Programming your unconscious mind like this, you’ll begin to see opportunities and chances where before you would have missed or ignored them. You’ll find yourself moving toward your positive future as if it were drawing you in the same inexorable straight line that drew Newton’s apple from the tree.
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental definition of solidarity — this tender recognition of our interdependence and fundamental kinship, deeper than sympathy, wider than love.
Half a century after Whitman’s atomic theory of belonging and half a century before Dr. King’s “inescapable network of mutuality,” the scientist and anarchist Peter Kropotkin (December 9, 1842– February 8, 1921) examined the meaning of solidarity in his visionary 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution (public library) — the culmination of his pioneering studies of the cooperation networks of social insects and his outrage at the destructive power structures and power struggles of human society, for which he was eventually imprisoned. After a dramatic escape, Kropotkin spent four decades in exile across Western Europe and went on to influence generations of thinkers with this radical insistence on cooperation and solidarity, not the struggle for power, as the true engine of survival and flourishing.
Peter Kropotkin by Félix Nadar.
Having fallen under Darwin’s spell as a teenager, Kropotkin came to see in evolutionary science an optimistic model for the elevation of human conscience — in the history of life on Earth, across which organisms have continually improved their biological adaptation for survival, he found assurance for a better future forged by our continual moral improvement.
Unable to obtain the scientific education he yearned for, the young Kropotkin took a post as an officer in Siberia (where Dostoyevsky was serving in a labor camp), then used his military credentials to join geological expeditions studying glaciation, all the while witnessing staggering corruption and abuses of power in local government while the peasants governed themselves through deep bonds of mutual trust that seemed purer, more primal, and closer to nature than any political power structure.
Challenging the anthropocentric view of other animals, Kropotkin considers the deepest driving force beneath the harmony and coherence of nature:
To reduce animal sociability to love and sympathy means to reduce its generality and its importance, just as human ethics based upon love and personal sympathy only have contributed to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a whole. It is not love to my neighbour — whom I often do not know at all — which induces me to seize a pail of water and to rush towards his house when I see it on fire; it is a far wider, even though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity and sociability which moves me. So it is also with animals. It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching towards a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy — an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and humans in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and humans alike the force they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in social life.
Century-old art by the adolescent Virginia Frances Sterrett. (Available as a print and stationery cards.)
An epoch before Lewis Thomas speculated in his poetic case for why we are wired for friendship that “maybe altruism is our most primitive attribute,” Kropotkin adds:
Complement with Albert Camus on what solidarity means and Lewis Thomas’s forgotten masterpiece of perspective on how to live with our human nature, then revisit Kropotkin on how to reboot a complacent society and the art of putting your gift in the service of the world.
Among the things I most cherish about science is the way it anneals curiosity. True curiosity is an open wonderment at what something is and how it works without emotional attachment to the outcome of observation and experiment. It is only when we cede emotional attachment that we can be truly free from judgment, for all judgment is feeling — usually some species of fear — masquerading as thought. And when we judge, we cannot understand. True curiosity is therefore a form of love, because, as the great Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh so plainly and poignantly put it, “understanding is love’s other name.”
There have been few more curious and loving observes of this world than Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817–May 6, 1862). “Life! who knows what it is, what it does?” he exclaimed on the pages of his journal — perhaps the book in my library most populous with highlights and marginalia — a tender record of Thoreau’s yearning to understand the nature and workings of life in all its physical and psychic manifestations, not as a scientist but as a poet. “Every poet has trembled on the verge of science,” he conceded as he read books of ornithology to deepen his reverence for the birds he observed, and yet it was with a poet’s eyes that he observed them, animated by the belief that “the poet’s relation to his theme is the relation of lovers.”
Because curiosity is a supreme act of unselfing, it is at its most difficult and most rewarding when aimed at what is most unlike ourselves — as Thoreau’s is in his journal account of a singular encounter from the autumn of 1855.
One “raw and windy” October afternoon, paddling down a stream under the overcast skies, Thoreau sees a small screech-owl perched on the lee side of a three-foot hemlock stump, looking at him with its “great solemn eyes” and raised horns. An epoch before science began illuminating the mysteries of what it’s like to be an owl, he marvels at this creature so profoundly other:
Art by JooHee Yoon from Beastly Verse
After observing the bird for ten minutes, transfixed by its strangeness, Thoreau decides he must study the creature closely to better understand its umwelt. He lands the boat and carefully makes his way to the hemlock from the windward side, surprised to find the owl unperturbed by his approach. Unlike the ornithologists of his day, who killed in order to know and reduced living species to “specimens” — even Audubon, for all his tenderheartedness, shot every bird he drew and described — Thoreau sets out to capture the living bird. (“If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others,” he writes in another journal entry.) Sneaking up behind the hemlock, he springs out his arm to gently grasp the little owl, which is so surprised that it offers no resistance but only glares at him “in mute astonishment with eyes as big as saucers.” He swaddles it in his handkerchief, rests it at the bottom of the boat, and paddles home, where he builds a small cage for observation. He marvels at the seemingly neckless owl puffing out its feathers and stretching out its neck, slowly rotating its head in that singular owl way. He tries to imitate its hiss “by a guttural whinnering.” He offers his hand, to which the bird clings so tightly that it draws blood from his fingers. He regards its “squat figure” and “catlike” face, the fine white down covering its legs all the way down to the sharp talons.
When dusk falls, he sits down to record his observations and becomes the object of observation himself, the owl looking out at him with its immense eyes, intent and perfectly still. Thoreau writes:
[…]
He sat, not really moping but trying to sleep, in a corner of his box all day, yet with one or both eyes slightly open all the while. I never once caught him with his eyes shut.
When morning comes, Thoreau sets out to return the bird to its home, rowing back to the hill with the hemlock. But to his surprise, the owl refuses to leave the box and has to be gently shaken out of it. With raw reverence for this creature, this mind so incomprehensibly other yet so strangely kindred, he records their farewell:
There is something poignant in this account — a disquieting reminder of how accustomed we too grow to the false comforts of our traps, how unwilling to leave them for the terror of freedom, how we too may need a gentle push to feel our own wings. Our habitual way of seeing is also a comfort and a trap. In another entry, Thoreau wonders what it might be like to “witness with owls’ eyes” the life of the forest, then concludes that what we perceive of the world is what we receive in the world and each person “receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally.”
Art by Jackie Morris from The Lost Spells
Complement with the strange and wondrous science of how owls hear with sound, then revisit Thoreau on living through loss, the Milky Way and the meaning of life, and his introvert’s field guide to friendship.
The sunshine of life springs from twin suns. We may call them love and art. We may call them connection and creativity. Both can take many forms. Both, if they are worth their salt and we ours, ask us to show up as our whole selves. Both are instruments of unselfing.
It is often in the cradle of friendship — a word not to be used carelessly — that our creative energies are strengthened and renewed. Through its tendrils, we find community — a place where our own creative work is reflected and refracted through that of others to cast a shimmering radiance of mutual magnification that borders on magic.
Art by Arthur Rackham for Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, 1906. (Available as a print and as stationery cards.)
This vital relationship between creativity and connection has been tensed and twisted in the era of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, where self-marketing so readily masquerades as “friend”-ship.
In 1950, epochs before our social media were but a glimmer in the eye of the possible, Henry Miller (December 26, 1891–June 7, 1980) reckoned with the seedling of our modern predicament in his meditation on art and life. Considering the downfall of art in his own epoch, when the age of publicity and mass media was just beginning to maim culture, he laments the state of the creative community:
After honing his ideas on two decades of living, Miller took up the subject again in his uncommonly wonderful 1968 book To Paint Is to Love Again. In a passage just as hauntingly true of the compulsion for social media “likes,” he writes:
Henry Miller: The Hat and the Man from To Paint Is to Love Again.
This mutually sustaining circle of creative kinship begins with a single lifeline of connection. Those of us who are lucky to have it in our own lives can easily identify it, always with a swell of gratitude. Miller writes:
Complement with David Whyte on the deepest meaning of friendship, Kahlil Gibran on the building blocks of meaningful connection, and this almost unbearably lovely vintage illustrated ode to friendship, then revisit Henry Miller on the measure of a life well lived and the value of and antidote to despair.
September 28, 2024 (menalive.com)
By Jed Diamond
In a recent article titled “Transformations: The End of the U.S. and the World as We Know It and The Truth About Our Collective Future,” I described the challenges we face in our world today.
“It is not easy to accept, but it is becoming more and more obvious that our country and our world are not doing well,”
I said.
“Some believe the U.S. is falling apart and the humans have made such a mess of the environment that we should call it quits, go out in a blaze of destruction, and leave planet Earth in the hands of species who are better able to be good partners in the community of life on Earth. Others believe that human ingenuity and innovative technologies will fix things and we have a bright future ahead. I have a different vision that was given to me in a sweat lodge in 1993 at a men’s gathering in Indianapolis, Indiana.”
In his book, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Home in the Universe, best-selling author Jeremy Rifkin offers is own vision for our future that very much resonates with mine. He says,
“What would happen if we suddenly realized that the planet we live on appeared eerily alien, as if we’d been teleported to some other distant world? That frightening prospect is now.”
What has happened to us? “To put it bluntly,” says Rifkin,
“our species, particularly in the Western world, has come to believe that we live on terra firma, a verdant green expanse of solid ground upon which we stand and thrive and which we call our home in the cosmic theater.”
That’s certainly the way I have come to think of our home. But our space travels and the pictures of the Earth that were sent back reveal a new understanding of our home.
“Earth was instantly reduced to a veneer atop of which has always been a water planet circling the sun, and to date, seemingly alone in its multiple shades of blue in our solar system and perhaps in the universe,”
says Jeremy Rifkin.
Looking at our world as “a water planet” allows us to better understand the poly-crises we face and how to deal with them more effectively. In his book, Planet Aqua, Rifkin gives us a new way to understand and potentially solve our problems. Rifkin lists a few of the crises that we face, along with the scientific references to support the statistics:
Back in 1993, my vision in the sweat-lodge gave me a unique understanding of our present predicament and potential solutions. I saw the “sinking of the Ship of Civilization” and the emergence of “lifeboats for humanity” which you can read more about here. Among the conclusions that emerged from the vision and my subsequent explorations were the following:
As long as we buy the myth that “civilization” is the best humans can aspire to achieve, we are doomed to go down with the ship. In The Chalice & the Blade: Our History Our Future first published in 1987, internationally acclaimed scholar and futurist, Riane Eisler first introduced us to our long, ancient heritage as a Partnership System and our more recent Dominator System, which has come to be called “Civilization.”
In her recent book, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future,written with peace activist Douglas P. Fry, they offer real guidance for creating a world based on partnership.
Historian of religions, Thomas Berry, spoke eloquently to our need to be honest about our present situation.
“We never knew enough. Nor were we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins in the great family of the earth. Nor could we listen to the various creatures of the earth, each telling its own story. The time has now come, however, when we will listen or we will die.”
When I was given the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn,I got a clear sense of the two worlds that are competing for our attention: A world where hierarchy and dominance rule (Quinn calls it the world of the Takers) and a world where equality and connection rule (Quinn calls it the world of the Leavers). In his many books Quinn offers a clear contrast in worldviews.
In his book, Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure, Quinn says,
“I can confidently predict that if the world is saved, it will not be because some old minds came up with some new programs. Programs never stop the things they’re launched to stop. No program has ever stopped poverty, drug abuse, or crime, and no program ever will stop them. And no program will ever stop us from devastating the world.”
The Dominator System Emerged 6,000 Years Ago as a Result of Environmental Trauma.
In a 1999 article, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” the world-famous scientist and historian, Jared Diamond, offered these powerful and startling insights:
“To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn’t the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren’t specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.” [Emphasis added by me, Jed Diamond].
A great deal has been written about what caused this catastrophe. Anthropologists had long demonstrated that humans had lived in relatively healthy balance with nature for two-million years. What happened 6,000 years ago set us on a course that now endangers our own lives and well as the lives of our children, future generations, and humanity itself.
In my most recent book, Long Live Men! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Men, Close the Lifespan Gap, and Offer Hope to Humanity, I discussed the research of environmental scientist Dr. James DeMeo. In his monumental, ten-year study that culminated in the book Saharasia, Dr. DeMeo began by asking a number of critical questions including the following:
He offers his simple conclusion in the introduction on page 3 and follows with 451 additional pages of findings, maps, and discussions:
“Human violence appeared to have a specific time and place of origins on the Earth; antisocial violence was not distributed world-wide at all times in the past! Furthermore, it was learned, the origins of violence was precisely timed to a major historical epoch of climate change from relatively wet towards dry conditions.”
The full title of the book captures his entire thesis: Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence in the Deserts of the Old World.The book was originally published in 1998 and has added to my own understanding in the years since my sweat lodge vision in 1993.
Both Jeremy Rifkin and James DeMeo believe that the ultimate cause of Jared Diamond’s “Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” was related to water. DeMeo’s research shows that years of drought caused large areas of the Middle East to be turned into desert and was the original trauma that led to many of the problems that we are facing today.
Trauma, of course, impacts both women and men, but the response to trauma has been different for the two sexes as I will discuss in Part 2 of this series. If you aren’t already subscribed to my free weekly newsletter, you can do so here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/
Founder and VHS (Visionary Healer Scholar) of MenAlive