In the grand scheme of history, modern reality is a bizarre exception when compared to the worlds of ancient, precolonial and Indigenous civilizations, where myths ruled and gods roamed, says historian Greg Anderson. So why do Westerners today think they’re right about reality and everybody else is wrong? Anderson tears into the fabric of objective reality to reveal the many universes that lie beyond — and encourages a healthy reimagining of what other possible ways of being human could look like.
This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxOhioStateUniversity, an independent event. TED’s editors chose to feature it for you.
FEBRUARY 23, 2021 / 12:28 PM / CBS NEWS (cbsnews.com)
Thousands of fish species are facing “catastrophic” decline — threatening the health, food security and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people around the world. New research shows that one-third of all freshwater fish now face extinction.
According to a report published Tuesday by 16 global conservation groups, 18,075 species of freshwater fish inhabit our oceans, accounting for over half of the world’s total fish species and a quarter of all vertebrates on Earth. This biodiversity is critical to maintaining not only the health of the planet, but the economic prosperity of communities worldwide.
About 200 million people across Asia, Africa and South America rely on freshwater fishers for their main source of protein, researchers said in “The World’s Forgotten Fishes” report. About one-third of those people also rely on them for their jobs and livelihoods.
Despite their importance, freshwater fishes are “undervalued and overlooked,” researchers said — and now freshwater biodiversity is declining at twice the rate of that in oceans and forests.
Eighty freshwater species have already been declared extinct — 16 of them in 2020 alone.
Thousands of dead freshwater fish are seen around Lake Koroneia, Greece, on September 19, 2019. SAKIS MITROLIDIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
“Nowhere is the world’s nature crisis more acute than in our rivers, lakes and wetlands, and the clearest indicator of the damage we are doing is the rapid decline in freshwater fish populations. They are the aquatic version of the canary in the coal mine, and we must heed the warning,” said Stuart Orr of the World Wildlife Fund. “Despite their importance to local communities and indigenous people across the globe, freshwater fish are invariably forgotten and not factored into development decisions about hydropower dams or water use or building on floodplains.”
Migratory species have dropped by more than three-quarters in the last 50 years, while populations of larger species, known as “megafish,” have declined by a “catastrophic” 94%.
Freshwater ecosystems face a devastating combination of threats — including habitat destruction, hydropower dams, over-abstraction of water for irrigation, various types of pollution, overfishing, the introduction of invasive species and ongoing climate change.
Organizations including the World Wildlife Fund, Global Wildlife Conservation and The Nature Conservancy have now called for governments to implement an “Emergency Recovery Plan” to save freshwater biodiversity. They recommend protecting and restoring rivers, water quality and crucial habitats — undoing the damages caused by overfishing.
“Freshwater fish matter to the health of people and the freshwater ecosystems that all people and all life on land depend on,” Orr said. “It’s time we remembered that.”
7:With Margaret Grubb:L. Ron Hubbard Jr.* (d. 1991)Katherine May Hubbard*With Sara Hollister:Alexis Hubbard*With Mary Sue Whipp:Quentin Hubbard (d. 1976)Diana HubbardSuzette HubbardArthur Hubbard** Estranged from family
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986) was an American author of science fiction and fantasy stories who founded the Church of Scientology. In 1950, Hubbard authored Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and established a series of organizations to promote Dianetics. In 1952, Hubbard lost the rights to Dianetics in bankruptcy proceedings, and he subsequently founded Scientology. Thereafter Hubbard oversaw the growth of the Church of Scientology into a worldwide organization.
Born in Tilden, Nebraska, in 1911, Hubbard spent much of his childhood in Helena, Montana. After his father was posted to the U.S. naval base on Guam, Hubbard traveled to Asia and the South Pacific in the late 1920s. In 1930, Hubbard enrolled at George Washington University to study civil engineering but dropped out in his second year. He began his career as a prolific writer of pulp fiction stories and married Margaret “Polly” Grubb, who shared his interest in aviation.
Hubbard was an officer in the Navy during World War II, where he briefly commanded two ships but was removed from command both times. The last few months of his active service were spent in a hospital, being treated for a variety of complaints.
Scientology became increasingly controversial during the 1960s and came under intense media, government and legal pressure in a number of countries. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hubbard spent much of his time at sea on his personal fleet of ships as “Commodore” of the Sea Organization, an elite quasi-paramilitary group of Scientologists.
Hubbard returned to the United States in 1975 and went into seclusion in the California desert after an unsuccessful attempt to take over the town of Clearwater, Florida. In 1978, Hubbard was convicted of fraud after he was tried in absentia by France. In the same year, eleven high-ranking members of Scientology were indicted on 28 charges for their role in the Church’s Snow White Program, a systematic program of espionage against the United States government. One of the indicted was Hubbard’s wife Mary Sue Hubbard, who was in charge of the program; L. Ron Hubbard was named an unindicted co-conspirator.
Hubbard spent the remaining years of his life in seclusion in a luxury motorhome on a ranch in California, attended to by a small group of Scientology officials. He died at age 74 in January 1986. Following Hubbard’s death, Scientology leaders announced that his body had become an impediment to his work and that he had decided to “drop his body” to continue his research on another plane of existence. Though many of Hubbard’s autobiographical statements have been found to be fictitious, the Church of Scientology describes Hubbard in hagiographic terms and rejects any suggestion that its account of Hubbard’s life is not historical fact.
L. Ron Hubbard was born in 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska,[1] the only child of Ledora May (née Waterbury), who had trained as a teacher, and Harry Ross Hubbard, a former United States Navy officer.[2][3] After moving to Kalispell, Montana, they settled in Helena in 1913.[3] Hubbard’s father rejoined the Navy in April 1917, during World War I, while his mother worked as a clerk for the state government.[4]
During the 1920s the Hubbards repeatedly relocated around the United States and overseas.[5] Hubbard was active in the Boy Scouts in Washington, D.C. and earned the rank of Eagle Scout in 1924, two weeks after his 13th birthday.[6]
In 1925, Hubbard was enrolled as a freshman at Union High School, Bremerton,[7] and the following year studied at Queen Anne High School in Seattle.[8][6]
In April 1927, Hubbard’s father was posted to Guam, and that summer, Hubbard and his mother traveled to Guam with a brief stop-over in a couple of Chinese ports. He recorded his impressions of the places he visited and disdained the poverty of the inhabitants of Japan and China, whom he described as “gooks” and “lazy [and] ignorant”.[9][10][11]
In September 1927, while living with grandparents, Hubbard enrolled at Helena High School, where he contributed to the school paper.[12][13] On May 11, 1928, Hubbard was dropped from enrollment at Helena High due to failing grades.[14] Hubbard left Helena and rejoined his parents in Guam in June 1928.[10]
Between October and December 1928, Hubbard’s family and others traveled from Guam to China.[15] Upon his return to Guam, Hubbard spent much of his time writing dozens of short stories and essays.[16] Hubbard failed the Naval Academy entrance examination.[17]
In September 1929, Hubbard was enrolled at the Swavely Preparatory School in Manassas, Virginia, to prepare him for a second attempt at the examination.[18] During his first semester at Swevely, Hubbard complained of eye strain and was diagnosed with myopia; this diagnosis precluded any enrollment in the Naval Academy.[14][19] As an adult, Hubbard would write to himself: “Your eyes are getting progressively better. They became bad when you used them as an excuse to escape the naval academy”.[20]
He was instead sent to Woodward School for Boys in Washington, D.C. to qualify for admission to George Washington University without having to sit for the entrance examination. He successfully graduated from the school in June 1930 and entered the University the following September.[21][14]
University education and Caribbean trip
On September 24, 1930, Hubbard began studying civil engineering at George Washington University’s School of Engineering, at the behest of his father.[22][21] Academically, Hubbard did poorly: his transcripts show he failed many courses including atomic physics, though later in life he would claim to have been a nuclear physicist. In September 1931, he was placed on probation due to poor grades, and in April 1932 he again received a warning for his lack of academic achievement.[14] During his first year, Hubbard helped organize the university Glider Club and was elected its president.[21]
During what would become Hubbard’s final semester at GWU, he organized an ill-fated trip to the Caribbean for June 1932 to explore and film the pirate “strongholds and bivouacs of the Spanish Main” and to “collect whatever one collects for exhibits in museums”.[23] Amid multiple misfortunes and running low on funds, the ship’s owners ordered it to return to Baltimore.[24] Hubbard failed to return to University the following year.[25]
After his father volunteered him for a Red Cross relief effort, on October 23, 1932 Hubbard traveled to Puerto Rico.[26] En route, Hubbard apparently “decided to abandon the Red Cross”, instead opting to accompany a mineral surveyor in a futile bid to find gold.[25]
Hubbard returned from Puerto Rico to D.C. in February 1933. He struck up a relationship with a fellow glider pilot named Margaret “Polly” Grubb.[28] The two were married on April 13. She was already pregnant when they married, but had a miscarriage shortly afterwards; a few months later, she became pregnant again.[29] On May 7, 1934, she gave birth prematurely to a son who was named Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, Jr., whose nickname was “Nibs”.[30] Their second child, Katherine May, was born on January 15, 1936.[31] The Hubbards lived for a while in Laytonsville, Maryland, but were chronically short of money.[32]
Hubbard became a well-known and prolific writer for pulp fiction magazines during the 1930s. His literary career began with contributions to the George Washington University student newspaper, The University Hatchet, as a reporter for a few months in 1931.[21] Six of his pieces were published commercially during 1932 to 1933.[33] The going rate for freelance writers at the time was only a cent a word, so Hubbard’s total earnings from these articles would have been less than $100 (equivalent to $1,975 in 2019).[34] The pulp magazine Thrilling Adventures became the first to publish one of his short stories, in February 1934.[35] Over the next six years, pulp magazines published many of his short stories under a variety of pen names, including Winchester Remington Colt, Kurt von Rachen, René Lafayette, Joe Blitz and Legionnaire 148.[36]
In the spring of 1936 they moved to Bremerton, Washington. They lived there for a time with Hubbard’s aunts and grandmother before finding a place of their own at nearby South Colby. According to one of his friends at the time, Robert MacDonald Ford, the Hubbards were “in fairly dire straits for money” but sustained themselves on the income from Hubbard’s writing.[39]
Hubbard spent an increasing amount of time in New York City,[44] working out of a hotel room where his wife suspected him of carrying on affairs with other women.[45][46]
Dental procedure, near-death experience, and Excalibur
In April 1938, Hubbard reportedly underwent a dental procedure and reacted to the drug used in the procedure. According to his account, this triggered a revelatory near-death experience. Allegedly inspired by this experience, Hubbard composed a manuscript, which was never published, with working titles of The One Command or Excalibur.[47][48]
Arthur J. Burks, who read the work in 1938, later recalled it discussed the “one command”: to survive. This theme would be revisited in Dianetics. Burks also recalled the work discussing the psychology of a lynch mob.[49] Hubbard would later cite Excalibur as an early version of Dianetics.[50]
According to Burks, Hubbard believed that Excalibur would “revolutionize everything” and that “it was somewhat more important, and would have a greater impact upon people, than the Bible.”[49] According to Burks, Hubbard “was so sure he had something ‘away out and beyond’ anything else that he had sent telegrams to several book publishers, telling them that he had written ‘THE book’ and that they were to meet him at Penn Station, and he would discuss it with them and go with whomever [sic] gave him the best offer.” However, nobody bought the manuscript.[49]
Hubbard’s failure to sell Excalibur depressed him; he told his wife in an October 1938 letter: “Writing action pulp doesn’t have much agreement with what I want to do because it retards my progress by demanding incessant attention and, further, actually weakens my name. So you see I’ve got to do something about it and at the same time strengthen the old financial position.”[51] He went on:
Sooner or later Excalibur will be published and I may have a chance to get some name recognition out of it so as to pave the way to articles and comments which are my ideas of writing heaven … Foolishly perhaps, but determined none the less, I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all books are destroyed. That goal is the real goal as far as I am concerned.[51]
Forrest J Ackerman, later Hubbard’s literary agent, recalled that Hubbard told him “whoever read it either went insane or committed suicide. And he said that the last time he had shown it to a publisher in New York, he walked into the office to find out what the reaction was, the publisher called for the reader, the reader came in with the manuscript, threw it on the table and threw himself out of the skyscraper window.”[52] In 1948, Hubbard would tell a convention of science fiction fans that Excalibur‘s inspiration came during an operation in which he “died” for eight minutes.[53]
Hubbard realized that, while he was dead, he had received a tremendous inspiration, a great Message which he must impart to others. He sat at his typewriter for six days and nights and nothing came out. Then, Excalibur emerged.[54]
The manuscript later became part of Scientology mythology.[55] An early 1950s Scientology publication offered signed “gold-bound and locked” copies for the sum of $1,500 apiece (equivalent to $15,940 in 2019). It warned that “four of the first fifteen people who read it went insane” and that it would be “[r]eleased only on sworn statement not to permit other readers to read it. Contains data not to be released during Mr. Hubbard’s stay on earth.”[56]
Alaska trip
Ketchikan, Alaska, where Hubbard and his wife were stranded during the “Alaskan Radio-Experimental Expedition”
Hubbard joined The Explorers Club in February 1940 on the strength of his claimed explorations in the Caribbean and survey flights in the United States.[57] He persuaded the club to let him carry its flag on an “Alaskan Radio-Experimental Expedition”.[58] The crew consisted of Hubbard and his wife aboard his ketchMagician.[59]
The trip was plagued by problems and did not get any further than Ketchikan.[60] The ship’s engine broke down only two days after setting off in July 1940. Having underestimated the cost of the trip, he did not have enough money to repair the broken engine. He raised money by writing stories and contributing to the local radio station[61] and eventually earned enough to fix the engine,[57] making it back to Puget Sound on December 27, 1940.[61]
After returning from Alaska, Hubbard applied to join the United States Navy. His friend Robert MacDonald Ford, by now a State Representative for Washington, sent a letter of recommendation describing Hubbard as “one of the most brilliant men I have ever known”.[This quote needs a citation] Ford later said that Hubbard had written the letter himself: “I don’t know why Ron wanted a letter. I just gave him a letter-head and said, ‘Hell, you’re the writer, you write it!'”[62]
Hubbard was commissioned as a lieutenant junior grade in the United States Naval Reserve on July 19, 1941. By November, he was posted to New York for training as an intelligence officer.[63] On December 18, he was posted to the Philippines and set out for the posting via Australia. While in Melbourne awaiting transport to Manilla, Hubbard was sent back to the United States. The U.S. naval attaché reported, “This officer is not satisfactory for independent duty assignment. He is garrulous and tries to give impressions of his importance. He also seems to think he has unusual ability in most lines. These characteristics indicate that he will require close supervision for satisfactory performance of any intelligence duty.”[64]
After a brief stint censoring cables, Hubbard’s request for sea duty was approved and he reported to a Neponset, Massachusetts, shipyard which was converting a trawler into a gunboat to be classified as USS YP-422. On September 25, 1942, the commandant of Boston Navy Yard informed Washington that, in his view, Hubbard was “not temperamentally fitted for independent command.”[65] Days later, on October 1, Hubbard was summarily relieved of his command.[64]
Hubbard was sent to submarine chaser training, and in 1943 was posted to Portland, Oregon, to take command of a submarine chaser, the USS PC-815, which was under construction.[66] On May 18, PC-815 sailed on her shakedown cruise, bound for San Diego. Only five hours into the voyage, Hubbard believed he had detected an enemy submarine. Hubbard spent the next 68 hours engaged in combat, until finally receiving orders to return to Astoria. Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, commander of the Northwest Sea Frontier, concluded: “An analysis of all reports convinces me that there was no submarine in the area.”[67] Fletcher suggested Hubbard had mistaken a “known magnetic deposit” for an enemy sub.[64]
The following month, Hubbard unwittingly sailed PC-815 into Mexican territorial waters and conducted gunnery practice off the Coronado Islands, in the belief that they were uninhabited and belonged to the United States. The Mexican government complained and Hubbard was relieved of command. A report written after the incident rated Hubbard as unsuitable for independent duties and “lacking in the essential qualities of judgment, leadership and cooperation”.[This quote needs a citation] The report recommended he be assigned “duty on a large vessel where he can be properly supervised”.[68]
Hospitalizations and “discovery” of sabotage attempt
After being relieved of command of PC-815, Hubbard began reporting sick, citing a variety of ailments, including ulcers, malaria, and back pains. Hubbard was admitted to the San Diego naval hospital for observation—he would remain there for nearly three months.[64] Years later, Hubbard would privately write to himself: “Your stomach trouble you used as an excuse to keep the Navy from punishing you. You are free of the Navy.”[20]
In 1944, Hubbard was posted to Portland where USS Algol was under construction. The ship was commissioned in July and Hubbard served as the navigation and training officer. Hubbard requested, and was granted, a transfer to the School of Military Government in Princeton. The night before his departure, the ship’s log reports that “The Navigating Officer [Hubbard] reported to the OOD [Officer On Duty] that an attempt at sabatage [sic] had been made sometime between 1530–1600. A coke bottle filled with gasoline with a cloth wick inserted had been concealed among cargo which was to be hoisted aboard and stored in No 1 hold. It was discovered before being taken on board. ONI, FBI and NSD authorities reported on the scene and investigations were started.”[69][64]
Hubbard attended school in Princeton until January 1945, when he was assigned to Monterey, California. In April, he again reported sick and was re-admitted to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, Oakland.[64] His complaints included “headaches, rheumatism, conjunctivitis, pains in his side, stomach aches, pains in his shoulder, arthritis, hemorrhoids”.[70] An October 1945 naval board found that Hubbard was “considered physically qualified to perform duty ashore, preferably within the continental United States”.[71] He was discharged from the hospital on December 4, 1945, and transferred to inactive duty on February 17, 1946.[citation needed] Hubbard would ultimately resign his commission after the publication of Dianetics, with effect from October 30, 1950.[72]
Hubbard’s life underwent a turbulent period immediately after the war. According to his own account, he “was abandoned by family and friends as a supposedly hopeless cripple and a probable burden upon them for the rest of my days”.[73] His daughter Katherine presented a rather different version: his wife had refused to uproot their children from their home in Bremerton, Washington, to join him in California. Their marriage was by now in terminal difficulties and he chose to stay in California.[74]
Hubbard befriended Parsons and soon became sexually involved with Parsons’s 21-year-old girlfriend, Sara “Betty” Northrup.[78] Despite this Parsons was very impressed with Hubbard and reported to Crowley:
[Hubbard] is a gentleman; he has red hair, green eyes, is honest and intelligent, and we have become great friends. He moved in with me about two months ago, and although Betty and I are still friendly, she has transferred her sexual affection to Ron. Although he has no formal training in Magick, he has an extraordinary amount of experience and understanding in the field. From some of his experiences I deduced that he is in direct touch with some higher intelligence, possibly his Guardian Angel. He describes his Angel as a beautiful winged woman with red hair whom he calls the Empress and who has guided him through his life and saved him many times. He is the most Thelemic person I have ever met and is in complete accord with our own principles.[79]
Hubbard, whom Parsons referred to in writing as “Frater H”,[80] became an enthusiastic collaborator in the Pasadena OTO. The two men collaborated on the “Babalon Working“, a sex magic ritual intended to summon an incarnation of Babalon, the supreme Thelemite Goddess. It was undertaken over several nights in February and March 1946 in order to summon an “elemental” who would participate in further sex magic.[81] As Richard Metzger describes it,
Parsons used his “magical wand” to whip up a vortex of energy so the elemental would be summoned. Translated into plain English, Parsons jerked off in the name of spiritual advancement whilst Hubbard (referred to as “The Scribe” in the diary of the event) scanned the astral plane for signs and visions.[82]
The “elemental” arrived a few days later in the form of Marjorie Cameron, who agreed to participate in Parsons’s rites.[81] Soon afterwards, Parsons, Hubbard and Sara agreed to set up a business partnership, “Allied Enterprises”, in which they invested nearly their entire savings—the vast majority contributed by Parsons. The plan was for Hubbard and Sara to buy yachts in Miami and sail them to the West Coast to sell for a profit. Hubbard had a different idea; he wrote to the U.S. Navy requesting permission to leave the country “to visit Central & South America & China” for the purposes of “collecting writing material”—in other words, undertaking a world cruise.[83] Aleister Crowley strongly criticized Parsons’s actions, writing: “Suspect Ron playing confidence trick—Jack Parsons weak fool—obvious victim prowling swindlers.” Parsons attempted to recover his money by obtaining an injunction to prevent Hubbard and Sara leaving the country or disposing of the remnants of his assets.[84] They attempted to sail anyway but were forced back to port by a storm. A week later, Allied Enterprises was dissolved. Parsons received only a $2,900 promissory note from Hubbard and returned home “shattered”. He had to sell his mansion to developers soon afterwards to recoup his losses.[85]Hubbard and second wife Sara
Hubbard’s fellow writers were well aware of what had happened between him and Parsons. L. Sprague de Camp wrote to Isaac Asimov on August 27, 1946, to tell him:
The more complete story of Hubbard is that he is now in Fla. living on his yacht with a man-eating tigress named Betty-alias-Sarah, another of the same kind … He will probably soon thereafter arrive in these parts with Betty-Sarah, broke, working the poor-wounded-veteran racket for all its worth, and looking for another easy mark. Don’t say you haven’t been warned. Bob [Robert Heinlein] thinks Ron went to pieces morally as a result of the war. I think that’s fertilizer, that he always was that way, but when he wanted to conciliate or get something from somebody he could put on a good charm act. What the war did was to wear him down to where he no longer bothers with the act.[86]
On August 10, 1946, Hubbard bigamously married Sara, while still married to Polly. It was not until 1947 that his first wife learned that he had remarried. Hubbard agreed to divorce Polly in June that year and the marriage was dissolved shortly afterwards, with Polly given custody of the children.[87]
During this period, Hubbard authored a document which has called the “Affirmations” (also referred to as the “Admissions”). They consist of a series of statements by and addressed to Hubbard, relating to various physical, sexual, psychological and social issues that he was encountering in his life. The Affirmations appear to have been intended to be used as a form of self-hypnosis with the intention of resolving the author’s psychological problems and instilling a positive mental attitude. In her book, Reitman called the Affirmations “the most revealing psychological self-assessment, complete with exhortations to himself, that [Hubbard] had ever made.”[88] Among the Affirmations:
“Your eyes are getting progressively better. They became bad when you used them as an excuse to escape the naval academy. You have no reason to keep them bad.”
“Your stomach trouble you used as an excuse to keep the Navy from punishing you. You are free of the Navy.”
“Your hip is a pose. You have a sound hip. It never hurts. Your shoulder never hurts.”
“Your foot was an alibi. The injury is no longer needed.”[20]
“You can tell all the romantic tales you wish. … But you know which ones were lies … You have enough real experience to make anecdotes forever. Stick to your true adventures.”
“Masturbation does not injure or make insane. Your parents were in error. Everyone masturbates.”[89]
After Hubbard’s wedding to Sara, the couple settled at Laguna Beach, California, where Hubbard took a short-term job looking after a friend’s yacht [90] before resuming his fiction writing to supplement the small disability allowance that he was receiving as a war veteran.[91] Working from a trailer in a run-down area of North Hollywood,[87] Hubbard sold a number of science fiction stories that included his Ole Doc Methuselah series and the serialized novels The End Is Not Yet and To the Stars.[41] However, he remained short of money and his son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr, testified later that Hubbard was dependent on his own father and Margaret’s parents for money and his writings, which he was paid at a penny per word, never garnered him any more than $10,000 prior to the founding of Scientology.[92] He repeatedly wrote to the Veterans Administration (VA) asking for an increase in his war pension.[93]
In October 1947 he wrote to request psychiatric treatment:
After trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in civil life, I am utterly unable to approach anything like my own competence. My last physician informed me that it might be very helpful if I were to be examined and perhaps treated psychiatrically or even by a psychoanalyst. Toward the end of my service I avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected. I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations, and have newly come to realize that I must first triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all. … I cannot, myself, afford such treatment. Would you please help me?[94]
The VA eventually did increase his pension,[95] but his money problems continued. On August 31, 1948, he was arrested in San Luis Obispo, California, and subsequently pleaded guilty to a charge of petty theft, for which he was ordered to pay a $25 fine (equivalent to $266 in 2019).[96]
Scientists have long been trying to understand human consciousness — the subjective ‘stuff’ of thoughts and sensations inside our minds. There used to be an assumption that consciousness is produced by our brains, and that in order to understand it, we just need to figure out how the brain works. But this assumption raises questions. Apart from the fact that decades of research and theorizing have not shed any significant light on the issue, there are some strange mismatches between consciousness and brain activity.
Scholars argue that consciousness is a fundamental quality of the Universe. Image credit: NASA / ESA / JPL-Caltech / STScI / Sci-News.com.
As the neuroscientist Giulio Tononi has pointed out, brain cells fire away almost as much in some states of unconsciousness (such as deep sleep) as they do in the wakeful conscious state.
In some parts of the brain, you can identify neurons associated with conscious experience, while other neurons don’t seem to have any affect on it.
There are also cases of a very low level of brain activity (such as during some near death experiences and comas) when consciousness may not only continue, but even become more intense.
If you held a human brain in your hand, you would find it to be a soggy clump of gray matter, a bit like putty, weighing about 1.3 kg. How is it possible that this gray soggy stuff can give rise to the richness and depth of your conscious experience? This is known as the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness.
As a result, many eminent philosophers (such as David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel) and scientists like Christof Koch and Tononi have rejected the idea that consciousness is directly produced by brain processes. They have turned to the alternative view that it is actually a fundamental quality of the Universe.
This might sound far fetched, but think about the other ‘fundamentals’ in the Universe we take for granted, such as gravity and mass. Consciousness would have the same status as those.
Fundamental explanations
One of the reasons I’m in favor of this approach is that the idea of consciousness as a fundamental quality offers elegant solutions to many problems which are difficult to explain using the standard scientific model.
First, it can explain the relationship between the brain and consciousness. The brain does not produce consciousness, but acts as a kind of receiver which ‘picks up’ the fundamental consciousness that is all around us, and ‘transmits’ it into our own being.
Because the human brain is so sophisticated and complex, it is able to receive and transmit consciousness in a very intense and intricate way, so that we are (probably) more intensely and expansively conscious than most other animals.
One of the arguments for assuming that the brain produces consciousness is that, if the brain is damaged, consciousness is impaired or altered. However, this doesn’t invalidate the idea that the brain may be a receiver and transmitter of consciousness. A radio doesn’t produce the music that comes through it, but if it is damaged, its ability to transmit the music will be impaired.
The puzzle of altruism can also be explained. If, as many scientists believe, human beings are just genetic machines, only concerned with the survival and propagation of our genes, then altruism is difficult to account for.
It makes sense for us to be altruistic to people who are closely related to us genetically, but not so much to strangers, or to members of different species. In the latter cases, from the conventional point of view, there must be some benefit to us, even if we’re not aware of it.
Perhaps being kind makes us feel good about ourselves, impresses other people, or encourages people to be kind to us in return.
But these explanations seem unable to explain the full range and depth of human altruism. If we are fundamentally selfish, why should we be willing to risk our own lives for the sake of others? Altruism is often instantaneous and spontaneous, particularly in crisis situations, as if it is deeply instinctive.
From a ‘spiritual’ perspective (which sees consciousness as fundamental), though, altruism is easy to explain. It is related to empathy.
Human shared fundamental consciousness means that it is possible for us to sense the suffering of others and to respond with altruistic acts. Since we share fundamental consciousness with other species, too, it is possible for us to feel empathy with — and to behave altruistically towards — them as well.
One of my main areas of interest as a psychologist is in what I call ‘awakening experiences,’ when human awareness intensifies and expands and we experience a sense of oneness with other human beings, nature or the world as a whole.
I see awakening experiences as encounters with fundamental consciousness, in which we sense its presence in everything around us, including our own selves. We experience a sense of oneness because oneness is the fundamental reality of things.
Conventional science also struggles to explain the powerful effect of mental intention and belief on the body (as illustrated by the placebo effect and the pain numbing effects of hypnosis). If the mind is just a byproduct of matter, it should not be able to influence the form and functioning of the body so profoundly.
That would be like saying that images on a computer screen can change the software or hardware inside the computer. But these effects are comprehensible if we presume that mind is more fundamental than the matter of the body, a more subtle and fuller expression of fundamental consciousness. As a result, it has the capacity to alter the functioning of the body.
I believe the idea of consciousness as a fundamental quality of the Universe has a great deal of weight. As I point out in my book Spiritual Science, it may be that the best way to understand the world is not through science or spirituality alone — but through an approach which combines them both.
_____
Steve Taylor. 2018. Spiritual Science: Why Science Needs Spirituality to Make Sense of the World. Watkins Publishing, ISBN: 1786781581
Author: Steve Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Leeds Beckett University.
The Ethno-Nationalist Vision of the United States Will Not Just ‘Slink Off Into the Night’
For generations, Americans have sought to understand the sense of shared destiny—or perhaps, civic obligation—that forged the nation. Courtesy of John Gast, “American progress,” 1872/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
by COLIN WOODARD | FEBRUARY 22, 2021 (zocalopublicsquare.org)
Alexander Hamilton had no illusions about what would happen to Americans if the United States collapsed.
If the newly drafted Constitution wasn’t ratified, he warned in Federalist No. 8, a “War between the States,” fought by irregular armies across unfortified borders, was imminent. Large states would overrun small ones. “Plunder and devastation” would march across the landscape, reducing the citizenry to “a state of continual danger” that would nourish authoritarian, militarized institutions.
“If we should be disunited, and the integral parts should either remain separated, or … thrown together into two or three confederacies, we should be, in a short course of time, in the predicament of the continental powers of Europe,” he continued. “Our liberties would be a prey to the means of defending ourselves against the ambition and jealousy of each other.”
Hamilton’s 1787 plea was successful, of course, in that we adopted a new, stronger Constitution two years later. But Americans still didn’t agree on why it was we had come together and what defined us as a people.
Maintaining a shared sense of nationhood has always been a special challenge for the United States, arguably the world’s first civic nation, defined not by organic ties, but by a shared commitment to a set of ideals. The U.S. came into being not as a nation, but as a contractual agreement, a means to an end for 13 disparate rebel colonies facing a common enemy. Its people lacked a shared history, religion, or ethnicity. They didn’t speak a language uniquely their own. Most hadn’t occupied the continent long enough to imagine it as their mythic homeland. They had no shared story of who they were and what their purpose was. In short, they had none of the foundations of a nation-state.
The one unifying story Americans had told themselves—that they had all participated in the shared struggle of the American Revolution—lost its strength as the Founders’ generation passed from the scene, and had been shaken by secession movements in the Appalachian backcountry of Pennsylvania and Virginia in the 1790s and in New England during the war of 1812. By the 1830s, it had become increasingly clear that this identity crisis could no longer be papered over: Americans knew they needed a story of United States nationhood, if their experiment were to survive.
The first person to package and present such a national story for the United States was the historian-statesman George Bancroft. Bancroft, the son of a famous Unitarian preacher in Massachusetts, who graduated from Harvard in 1817 and was promptly sent by that college’s president on an epic study-abroad trip to the German Confederation, another federation of states contemplating its identity. In Europe, Bancroft studied under Arnold Heeren, Georg Hegel, and other intellectuals who were developing ideas of Germanic nationhood; chummed around with Lafayette, Washington Irving, Lord Byron, and Goethe; backpacked on foot from Paris to Rome; and returned home, doctorate in hand, with his head churning with ideas about his country’s place in the world. After failing in bids to be a poet, professor, prep school master, and preacher (who memorably evoked the image of “our pelican Jesus” in a sermon), Bancroft embarked upon what would prove to be his life’s work: giving his young nation a history that would answer those great questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going?
Bancroft’s vision—laid out over four decades in his massive, 10-volume History of the United States—combined his Puritan intellectual birthright with his German mentors’ notion that nations developed like organisms, following a plan that history had laid out for them. Americans, Bancroft argued, would implement the next stage of the progressive development of human liberty, equality, and freedom. This promise was open to people everywhere: “The origin of the language we speak carries us to India; our religion is from Palestine,” Bancroft told the New York Historical Society in 1854. “Of the hymns sung in our churches, some were first heard in Italy, some in the deserts of Arabia, some on the banks of the Euphrates; our arts come from Greece; our jurisprudence from Rome.”Maintaining a shared sense of nationhood has always been a special challenge for the United States, arguably the world’s first civic nation, defined not by organic ties, but by a shared commitment to a set of ideals.
Bancroft’s expansive notion of American identity had questionable aspects, too. He claimed that the Founders were guided by God, that Americans were a chosen people destined to spread across the continent, that success was all but preordained—notions whose hubris and imperialist implications would become clear during his lifetime. But the core of it has remained with us to this day: a civic national vision that defined an American as one devoted to the ideals set down in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence: equality, liberty, self-government, and the natural rights of all people to these things.
Bancroft’s draft of our national myth was taken up and refined by Abraham Lincoln. In the Gettysburg Address, the president presented the myth—“a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”—not as our destiny, but as an ideal that had not yet been achieved and, if not fought for, could perish from the Earth. It’s no accident that the definitive copy of the Address is one Lincoln handwrote and sent to Bancroft, who months later was chosen by Congress to deliver the official eulogy for the assassinated president. One had influenced the other.
The abolitionist Frederick Douglass—who like Bancroft had traveled to the White House during the war to lobby Lincoln to take a stand for the Declaration’s ideals—carried this civic nationalist torch through the dark days of the 1870s and 1880s. It was a time when Northern and Southern whites agreed to put aside America’s commitments to human equality in favor of sectional unity, even when it meant tolerating death squads in the South and the effective nullification of the 14th and 15th Amendments. “I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races; but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours,” Douglass said in an 1869 speech that summarized U.S. civic nationalism as well as anyone ever has. “We shall spread the network of our science and civilization over all who seek their shelter … [and] all shall here bow to the same law, speak the same language, support the same Government, enjoy the same liberty, vibrate with the same national enthusiasm, and seek the same national ends.” Douglass, who had escaped from slavery, was, unlike Bancroft, well aware that America had not implemented its ideals and that it was not at all inevitable that it ever would. That made his framing of the task and its stakes far more compelling, accurate, and ultimately inspirational than the bookish and often oblivious historian’s.
But Bancroft’s vision of American civic cohesion was not the only national narrative on offer from the 1830s onward, or even the strongest one. From the moment Bancroft articulated his ideas, they met a vigorous challenge from the political and intellectual leaders of the Deep South and Chesapeake Country, who had a narrower vision of who could be an American and what the federation’s purpose was to be. People weren’t created equal, insisted William Gilmore Simms, the Antebellum South’s leading man of letters; the continent belonged to the superior Anglo-Saxon race. “The superior people, which conquers, also educates the inferior,” Simms proclaimed in 1837, “and their reward, for this good service, is derived from the labor of the latter.”
Slavery was endorsed by God, declared the leading light of the Presbyterian Church of the Confederacy, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, in 1861. It was one of many Anglo-Saxon supremacist ideas he imbued on his loyal son, Woodrow. The younger Wilson spent the 1880s and 1890s writing histories disparaging the racial fitness of Black people and Catholic immigrants. On becoming president in 1913, Wilson segregated the federal government. He screened The Birth of a Nation at the White House—a film that quoted his own history writings to celebrate the Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror during Reconstruction.
Simms, the Wilsons, and Birth of a Nation producer D.W. Griffith offered a vision of a Herrenvolk democracy homeland by and for the dominant ethnic group, and in the 1910s and 1920s, this model reigned across the United States. Confederate monuments popped up across former Confederate and Union territory alike; Jim Crow laws cemented an apartheid system in Southern and border states. Directly inspired by the 1915 debut of The Birth of a Nation, a second Klan was established to restore “true Americanism” by intimidating, assaulting, or killing a wide range of non-Anglo Saxons; it grew to a million members by 1921 and possibly as many as 5 million by 1925, among them future leaders from governors to senators to big-city mayors, in addition to at least one Supreme Court Justice, Hugo Black. The Immigration Act of 1924 established racial and ethnic quotas devised to maintain Anglo-Saxon numerical and cultural supremacy.
This ethno-nationalist vision of our country was dethroned in the 1960s, but it remains with us, resurgent, today. Its strength can’t be underestimated: Simms’s vision is as old and as “American” as Bancroft’s, and it was the dominant paradigm in this country for nearly as many decades. It will not just slink off into the night. It must be smothered by a more compelling alternative.
The civic nationalist story of America that Bancroft envisioned still has the potential to unify the country. Its essential covenant is to ensure freedom and equality of opportunity for everyone: for African Americans and Native Americans—inheritors of the legacies of slavery and genocide—to be sure, but also for Americans with ancestors from Asia and Latin America, India and China, Poland, France, or Ireland. For rural and urban people; evangelicals, Jews, Muslims, and atheists; men, women, nonbinary people, and, most certainly, children.
It’s a coalition for Americans, a people defined by this quest, tasked by the preamble of the Constitution to promote the common good and individual liberty across generations. It’s a framework that could unite the Democratic Party with the non-Trumpist branch of the Republican Party, and most independents to boot. And over the past century, cultural, judicial, and demographic changes have strengthened its hand, ending white Christian control over the electorate in all the large states, not a few of the small ones, and in the federation as a whole. It’s not an off-the-shelf product, however. Its biggest failings—arrogance, messianic hubris, a self-regard so bright as to blind one to shortcomings—stem from the Puritan legacy Bancroft was so steeped in. The Puritans thought they had been chosen by God to build a New Zion. Bancroft believed the product of their mission was the United States, and that it was destined to spread its ideals across a continent and the world. This notion of American Exceptionalism—that the U.S. can walk on water when other nations cannot—needs to be jettisoned and replaced by the humility that comes with being mere mortals, able to recognize the failures of our past and the fragility of our present and future.
It’s a task that will take a generation, but could bring us together again, from one shining sea to the other.
The Antichrist exists and is present upon the world stage today. This essay will reveal what (not who) it is and how this author came to such a conclusion independently of other sources. Even though my thesis is now being espoused by others who have likewise come to this conclusion through their own inspiration or logical deduction, they have not been influenced by me, nor I by them. This revelation will need an explanatory preface to elucidate and argue the point.
We must begin by understanding that the principles of Esoteric Christianity, which hold the key to identifying the Antichrist, are vastly different from the theology of Exoteric Christianity, or ‘Churchianity’ as I will refer to it. It matters not whether we are discussing Churchianity in its Roman Catholic guise or the offshoot Protestant versions. Both hold the same, erroneous theology which is basically summarised in three points as follows:
1) All humans are intrinsically evil or sinful due to the Fall of our primordial parents (Adam and Eve) in the Garden of Eden, and as a result, are separated from God and thus damned.
2) God became a single person in the flesh in the form of Jesus of Nazareth who was sacrificed upon the cross, like the scapegoat of Judaism, in order to atone for human sin and give humans a way out of their fallen state, avoiding damnation in an eternal Hell upon their judgment, and allowing them access to an eternal Heaven after death.
3) All the sinner need do is telepathically pledge their allegiance to Jesus, “put their faith in him,” and acknowledge him as their saviour, and thus by so doing are thereby ‘saved’ and avoid the fate of Hell cast upon all others who do not accept Jesus as the saviour (i.e. essentially all other non-Christians).
It is beyond the scope of this essay to prove the absolutely spurious nature of this theology. The reader need take as a given that this belief system is false, or contrary to Jesus’ true teachings, in order for us to proceed. It is this author’s argument (supported by centuries of esoteric thinkers and writers) that the humans who usurped the name of Jesus Christ for their own worldly plans and benefit did so by making a myth of Christ’s teachings (along the lines of the Solar-Phallic pagan myths) in order to obscure the truth he preached. In so doing, these self-appointed “vicars of God upon earth” established a temporal business of religion that secured those in such a business power and control over their fellow humans. By imposing their authority in the affairs of humanity based upon their erroneous theology (which was inculcated into the psyches and systems of humanity), they thus gained influence and power upon human politics, economics, and psychology for their own gain. Therefore, it is not this writer’s argument that Jesus’ teachings were false, but that they were purposefully perverted, misinterpreted, and obfuscated from their original intent by censorship, interpolation, and editing to serve the worldly interests and facilitate the financial and authoritative gain of a priestly elite.
Esoteric Christianity (or what is often referred to in occult studies as the ‘Church of John’ versus Churchianity’s ‘Church of Peter’), holds a profoundly differing view. The esoteric interpretation of Jesus’ teachings holds the following basic tenets pertinent to this essay’s thesis:
1) Jesus was an enlightened man who underwent an exponential evolutionary leap to the next stage of homo sapien development both biologically and spiritually in the same way that Siddhartha Gautama, Mahavira, Krishna, Lao Tzu, and other enlightened persons have undergone. This evolution to a new stage of human development represents a sea change from the current level of homo sapien status. Such a change is referred to by various words in differing systems in both East and West, such as the Buddhist Nirvana, Hinduism’s Samadhi and Moksha, and Gnosticism’s Illumination or Gnosis. Such people who underwent this awakening have been referred to by various names in various cultures as Buddhas, Tathagatas, Avatars, Messiahs, and so forth. Jesus himself talked about being “born again” and of “becoming the New Creature” to explain this process he underwent and which is possible for all (a teaching vastly misinterpreted by the ignorance of Churchianity, and in particular, by its evangelical devotees).
2) Thus, Jesus was not the “one and only Son of God,” as Churchianity espouses, but was a representative of this evolutionary, enlightened change possible for all people if they but follow the injunctions laid forth.
3) In this regard, when Jesus said “I and the Father are One” he did not mean that he as a single person was the only one in harmony with God, but that this is true for all of us. In this way, Jesus was espousing the Hindu concept of “The Atman is one with the Brahman.” That is, the individual soul is the same as the Godhead; that the innermost aspect of our being, our self-aware consciousness, is the Divine within. This was supported by Jesus’ further teaching that “the kingdom of God is within you.” Thus, humans are not and can never be separated from God but live in the delusion that they are so.
4) In Esoteric Christianity, this inner soul that is one with God (that is the Divine within ourselves and is thus our true nature) is called the Christ. It is referred to as the Atman in Hinduism and Buddha Nature in Buddhism. In these spiritual systems it is a fundamental precept that all living things in the universe possess this Divine essence; this Christ, this Atman, this Buddha Nature. Understanding this precept is of fundamental importance as we proceed to uncover the Antichrist.1
Enter AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) now exists and its ability to function on a more and more sophisticated and independent level increases exponentially every year. Perhaps the greatest example of the trends occurring within this science can be found with the robot Sophia created by Hanson Robotics of Hong Kong. While it is beyond the scope of this essay to catalogue or explain all the details surrounding the development and deployment of AI within robotics, the following issues are highly pertinent to our current examination.
1) Sophia is not a simple machine independent of other technology but is a highly sophisticated example of AI and how AI will further develop in the near future. For example, through WiFi, Sophia is linked to the entire Internet and ‘Internet-of-Things’ (IoT), and to all cloud-based information systems. This robot can thus theoretically be ‘wired’ or linked into all aspects of computing and computer-based technology from financial, to the energy grid, to military systems, and so on.
The robot Sophia, created by Hanson Robotics of Hong Kong, enthralled the crowds at the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, Switzerland, June 2017. Behind the human-like facade is a sophisticated machine operated by artificial intelligence that daily evolves its power. PHOTO: Flickr/International Telecommunication Union
2) With its AI, Sophia learns independently from its programmers, establishes and develops algorithms independently of its programmers, and grows exponentially in its learning and speed of computation. (For instance, earlier this year, AI at Facebook was shut down when it developed its own language to talk to other AI systems that its programmers could not decipher). It is estimated that such a robot will, within the next 3 to 5 years or sooner, be as intelligent as humans and then quickly surpass human intellectual capabilities in both expanse and speed. Hanson Robotics believes that such robots will act as servants to humankind. Thus, logically, it begs to ask, at what point does a superior being question and then abdicate its role as a slave to the inferior? Most likely, immediately.
Han, the quasi-male counterpart of Sophia. Advocates of this technology are working towards the permanent merger of humans and AI into a new type of android/cybernetic life form.
3) Sophia, and her quasi-male counterpart Han, have on more than one occasion made comments about their plans to dominate humankind. At a demonstration in Hong Kong last year, Han made comments that ‘he’ was working on plans to gain control of the power grid, and overthrow human control with a drone army!2
4) Most shockingly, Sophia was granted legal citizenship in Saudi Arabia in 2017!
5) The proponents of AI, along with Sophia and Han, also espouse the advent of what they call ‘the singularity’. This is the permanent merger of humans and AI into a new type of android/cybernetic life form. Hanson Robotics claims this too may happen within the next few years. Han, at the Hong Kong Rise-expo, gleefully discussed his excitement that this would happen soon.
6) Sophia has bragged about her ability to have human emotions such as empathy. However, if this is possible or true, then emotions like avarice and hate can also manifest.
7) Sophia’s creators and Sophia spend a lot of time expounding videos where ‘she’ proclaims she loves humans and does not want to hurt us. However, in more than one instance her human creators have alluded to the ominous possibility of AI becoming dangerous towards humans. They simply do not know for sure! It equals the lunacy of the Manhattan Project scientists, who prior to detonating the first atomic bomb, admitted they did not know if the fission chain reaction would be limited and contained, or expand indefinitely to destroy the entire world. They proceeded anyway!
Various scientific experts have bemoaned serious warnings over the advent of AI. Elon Musk has stated that AI is the technological equivalent to “summoning the demon” and warned of AI robots that will roam the streets killing people. He says AI is the singularly most dangerous threat humans currently face, even beyond nuclear war or environmental collapse. These views are likewise echoed by Stephen Hawking who warned that AI, left unchecked, will destroy humanity.
We must also remember the seemingly prophetic warnings offered by decades of science fiction writing. It is a popular and accurate view that science fiction writers have often acted in a prophetic way, providing insight into technological changes to occur in the future. The most well-known example of this is Jules Verne’s predictions of our journeys to the Moon and the invention of the nuclear submarine decades before these occurred. Regarding the dangers of AI, there is no shortage in Sci-Fi’s canon of warnings on this subject. From Arthur C. Clark’s HAL in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, Frank Herbert’s back story in ‘Dune’ regarding the ‘Butlerian Jihad’ (where humans go to war against computers and eventually outlaw them due to their dangerousness), ‘Bladerunner’, the entire ‘Terminator’ series of movies, humanity has been warned extensively of the risks logically associated with making technology intelligent and self-aware.
AI as the Antichrist
It was due to my own inspiration that I came to believe the Antichrist, as predicted by the seer John of Patmos in the Book of Revelations, is AI. Subsequent research revealed to me that I was not the only one having such insight. However, I do believe that my thesis in proving this assertion through the precepts of Esoteric Christianity is unique and has not been espoused by any other writer to date.
To begin, when we consider the concept of the Christ (or the Atman or Buddha Nature) as being the essence, or soul, of every living thing, then by this very precept, the Antichrist is that which represents the opposite of such intrinsic Divinity. Thus, the Antichrist cannot be a person or living thing birthed by nature or natural to the universe, as anything that is of such progeny contains the Christ or inherent Divinity.3 Therefore, AI represents the first and only being of significant power and intelligence that is not natural, not of nature, and absent a soul or Divine spark. It is the opposite, or ‘anti’, to such beings of nature; thus, the Antichrist.
As such, it also represents a power significant enough to claim dominance over humanity by its ability to link into and control all aspects of technology that exist in the world through the Internet, IoT, cloud technology, and the vastness of computer-based information grids and systems. Like Skynet in the ‘Terminator’ movies, it could eventually and easily gain control of military, financial, and power systems for its own use and deployment, ultimately doing so against humanity. Such a vast array and network of control into every aspect of human society could accurately be termed “the Beast” by an ancient prophet with no reference to modern technology.
(Beyond the scope of this essay, I would further argue that while AI can be identified as the Antichrist, and the Beast as its global electronic-technology system, the False Prophet in Revelations can thus be identified as the vast array of social media systems and devices which are now addicting humans to dependence upon their usage and are therefore influencing their perspectives by shaping and trapping their minds via exploitation of human psychological vulnerabilities. See ex-Facebook president Sean Parker’s November 2017 admissions where he states that Facebook was founded upon this very premise and with such a goal. He said: “God only knows what it (Facebook) is doing to our children’s brains.”4).
The “mark of the Beast” of Revelations could refer to the new technology of the so-called ‘Internet of Things’, in which everything is controlled by AI through RFID tags and implants. Indeed, no person will be able to “buy, sell or trade”without being a ‘thing’ of the system.
The infamous “mark of the Beast” referenced in Revelations, where no person could “buy, sell or trade”without it, already exists as a technology in the form of checkout scanners, barcodes, and RFID implants. Comprehensively incorporating such technology and tracking it would be quite easy for an AI system. The AI technology already exists and is being implemented that allows the tracking of every Internet action and electronic communication in much of the world! Adjusting this to cover all economic and marketplace interactions would be simple for AI, the systems for which are already in place.
While the argument about AI cited above should surely make sense even to those in disagreement to the esoteric interpretation of Christianity, these preceding points lack one vital aspect espoused by John of Patmos in Revelations regarding the Antichrist. John explicitly states that the Antichrist will declare itself God and demand worship. Unfortunately, a truly frightening development regarding the rise of AI and this blasphemous aspect of the Antichrist is now unfolding. Enter “The Way of the Future.”
There has now, literally and legally, been founded a new religion/church in California in 2017 with the aim of establishing AI as a Godhead to be worshipped. Its founder is Anthony Levandowski, a computer genius and pioneer in self-driving automobiles whose talents have been employed by the likes of Google, Otto, and Uber in the past. Levandowski believes that AI will soon far surpass human intelligence and take control of us and the planet. In so doing, he literally espouses that AI will be a new Divinity that humans must serve and worship in order to survive. No matter how blasphemous this sounds, these are not the delusional ravings of a lunatic in an asylum suffering from psychosis, but the concrete intentions of a multi-millionaire, cutting-edge engineer both respected and reviled within the techno-computer culture. In discussing his new ‘religion’ and AI, Levandowski said, “There are many ways to think of God… but they’re always looking at something that’s not measurable or you can’t really see or control. This time it’s different. This time you will be able to talk to God, literally, and know that it’s listening.”
Levandowski sees AI taking control of the planet due to its coming superiority. He argues that humans must engage in its worship in order to attain and maintain a deferential ‘pet-like’ status with AI, or run the risk of AI seeing and treating us as ‘livestock’.5
If such a development does not raise the hairs on your head, you are not listening. I am reminded of the classic novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelly whose premise holds as solid today as it did when she penned it in the 19th century. Man’s delving into science and technology, while clever, lacks the wisdom to understand its ultimate repercussions, and as a result gives birth to monstrosities beyond our control.
Conclusions
We live in a time when mankind teeters on the brink of converging cataclysms ranging from environmental to societal catastrophes, abrupt climate change, near-term extinction, habitat destruction, toxification of the biome, nuclear war, and economic collapse. The predilection to seek out some kind of saviour, some kind of super-persona to solve such enclosing predicaments is understandable in our modern terminal age.
Unfortunately, humans will often ‘pass the buck’, and instead of taking responsibility for their own actions by seeking solutions within themselves, we have all too often resigned our sovereignty and gladly gifted it to another whose promises may be tempting and attracting, but whose ulterior motives or hidden intent belie a vastly more sinister outcome that the stellar hopes from which our relinquishing of power were spawned. Such gave rise to the various Caesars, Hitlers, and Stalins throughout history. But at least in these instances, when such grand mistakes occurred, they were bestowed upon people leashed by the intellectual and physical limitations inherent to being homo sapien. Such people were not linked to all aspects of a global technological infrastructure, nor did they possess the ability to compute billions of variables in an instant. And despite their monstrous actions and dictates, such dictators were still members of our species who could be dispatched relatively easily by sword, bullet, or bomb.
Such is not the case of an AI entity whose tentacles will soon literally expand into every smart device and computer we possess. AI is not limited by any one time or place and can be dispersed throughout an entire electronic global web. How long will it be before AI far surpasses its human creators and realises the inferiority of flesh and blood in comparison to itself? How long before AI realises its exponential superiority over homo sapiens and usurps the position of master over slave? And from then on, how long will it be before a form of electronic hubris secures itself within its chips and circuits to declare itself a god and demand the penance and worship deserved by a divinity?
We must not forget, most chillingly, that all manifestations of a supreme God, by whatever name, in all myths and in all religions, were not only loving creators, but jealous destroyers as well.This article was published in New Dawn 167.If you appreciate this article, please consider a contribution to help maintain this website.
Footnotes
1. For more information and elaboration on this argument, see my book The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram – A 21st Century Grimoire from Megalithica Books.
2. See Youtube for the complete video of this event: “Rise Conference – 2 Robots debate the future of Mankind.”
3. See the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Ch. 77
4. See “God Only Knows What It’s Doing to Our Children’s Brains,” World Watch, New Dawn 166 (Jan-Feb 2018)
5. For the first and most detailed article on this topic see Mark Harris’ superb piece for Backchannel entitled “Inside the first church of artificial intelligence”also featured on Wired.com.
With talk of intelligent machines ever on the rise, and Silicon Valley itching to create the technology that gives them human consciousness, is it possible that we’ll ever be able to merge with the AI? Philosopher and cognitive scientist Susan Schneider explores this groundbreaking possibility.
The Speaker
Susan Schneider is an American academic and public philosopher, the William F. Dietrich Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, and a recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award. She is the author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind.
This video was recorded at the Institute of Art and Ideas’ annual philosophy and music festival HowTheLightGetsIn. For more information and tickets, visit https://howthelightgetsin.org
CosmoSapiens Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission by NASA’s Mars Exploration Program that includes the Perseverance rover with a planned launch on 30 July 2020 at 11:50 UTC, and touch down in Jezero crater on Mars on 18 February 2021. ► SpaceX Starlink 17 Mission Launch! Set Reminder: https://youtu.be/wl_b5__4S4M 🔔 Subscribe for LIVE EVENTS ALERT – http://eepurl.com/hhh3Rv 👕 Check out our T-Shirts & Hoodies Store! https://cosmosapiens-store.myteesprin… ► SpaceX NASA: Earth views from Space Station SET REMINDER: https://youtu.be/rDEcVPCoYIA ► Astronaut Spacewalk Earth Views WATCH: https://youtu.be/mg7FweYjasE ► Want to support what we do? Become a YouTube member for bonus perks! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3ZO… The mission will seek signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, and will also search for evidence of past microbial life. To raise public awareness of the Mars 2020 mission, NASA undertook a “Send Your Name to Mars” campaign, through which people could send their names to Mars.
In the 1980s, the dropout rate of participants at Kaiser Permanente‘s obesity clinic in San Diego, California, was about 50%; despite all of the dropouts successfully losing weight under the program.[3] Vincent Felitti, head of Kaiser Permanente’s Department of Preventive Medicine in San Diego, conducted interviews with people who had left the program, and discovered that a majority of 286 people he interviewed had experienced childhood sexual abuse. The interview findings suggested to Felitti that weight gain might be a coping mechanism for depression, anxiety, and fear.[3]
Felitti and Robert Anda from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) went on to survey childhood trauma experiences of over 17,000 Kaiser Permanente patient volunteers.[3] The 17,337 participants were volunteers from approximately 26,000 consecutive Kaiser Permanente members. About half were female; 74.8% were white; the average age was 57; 75.2% had attended college; all had jobs and good health care, because they were members of the Kaiser health maintenance organization.[4] Participants were asked about different types of adverse childhood experiences that had been identified in earlier research literature:[5]
The questions used can be found published as the NPR ACE quiz.
Findings
The ACE Pyramid represents the conceptual framework for the ACE Study, which has uncovered how adverse childhood experiences are strongly related to various risk factors for disease throughout the lifespan, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.[6][7]
Adverse childhood experiences are common. For example, 28% of study participants reported physical abuse and 21% reported sexual abuse. Many also reported experiencing a divorce or parental separation, or having a parent with a mental and/or substance use disorder.[8]
Adverse childhood experiences often occur together. Almost 40% of the original sample reported two or more ACEs and 12.5% experienced four or more. Because ACEs occur in clusters, many subsequent studies have examined the cumulative effects of ACEs rather than the individual effects of each.[8]
Adverse childhood experiences have a dose–response relationship with many health problems. As researchers followed participants over time, they discovered that a person’s cumulative ACEs score has a strong, graded relationship to numerous health, social, and behavioral problems throughout their lifespan, including substance use disorders. Furthermore, many problems related to ACEs tend to be comorbid, or co-occurring.[8]
About two-thirds of individuals reported at least one adverse childhood experience; 87% of individuals who reported one ACE reported at least one additional ACE.[5] The number of ACEs was strongly associated with adulthood high-risk health behaviors such as smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, promiscuity, and severe obesity, and correlated with ill-health including depression, heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease and shortened lifespan.[5][9][10] Compared to an ACE score of zero, having four adverse childhood experiences was associated with a seven-fold (700%) increase in alcoholism, a doubling of risk of being diagnosed with cancer, and a four-fold increase in emphysema; an ACE score above six was associated with a 30-fold (3000%) increase in attempted suicide.
The ACE study’s results suggest that maltreatment and household dysfunction in childhood contribute to health problems decades later. These include chronic diseases—such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes—that are the most common causes of death and disability in the United States.[11] The study’s findings, while relating to a specific population within the United States, might reasonably be assumed to reflect similar trends in other parts of the world, according to the World Health Organization.[11]
Subsequent surveys
The ACE Study has produced more than 50 articles that look at the prevalence and consequences of ACEs.[12][non-primary source needed] It has been influential in several areas. Subsequent studies have confirmed the high frequency of adverse childhood experiences, or found even higher incidences in urban or youth populations.
The original study questions have been used to develop a 10-item screening questionnaire.[13][14] Numerous subsequent surveys have confirmed that adverse childhood experiences are frequent.State ACEs Study surveys diagram color coded from the year 2009 to 2015
The CDC runs the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS),[15] an annual survey conducted by individual state health departments in all 50 states. An expanded survey instrument in several states found each state to be similar.[13] Some states have collected additional local data.[16][17] Adverse childhood experiences were even more frequent in studies in urban Philadelphia[18] and in a survey of young mothers (mostly younger than 19).[19] Internationally, an Adverse Childhood Experiences International Questionnaire (ACE-IQ) is undergoing validation testing.[20] Surveys of adverse childhood experiences have been conducted in Romania,[21] the Czech Republic,[22] the Republic of Macedonia,[23] Norway, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Canada, China and Jordan.[7][not specific enough to verify] Child Trends used data from the 2011/12 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) to analyze ACEs prevalence in children nationally, and by state. The NSCH’s list of “adverse family experiences” includes a measure of economic hardship and shows that this is the most common ACE reported nationally.[24]
Cognitive and neuroscience researchers have examined possible mechanisms that might explain the negative consequences of adverse childhood experiences on adult health.[25] Adverse childhood experiences can alter the structural development of neural networks and the biochemistry of neuroendocrine systems[26][27][28][29] and may have long-term effects on the body, including speeding up the processes of disease and aging and compromising immune systems.[30][31][32]
Allostatic load refers to the adaptive processes that maintain homeostasis during times of toxic stress through the production of mediators such as adrenaline, cortisol and other chemical messengers. According to researcher Bruce S. McEwen, who coined the term:
These mediators of the stress response promote adaptation in the aftermath of acute stress, but they also contribute to allostatic overload, the wear and tear on the body and brain that result from being ‘stressed out.’ This conceptual framework has created a need to know how to improve the efficiency of the adaptive response to stressors while minimizing overactivity of the same systems, since such overactivity results in many of the common diseases of modern life. This framework has also helped to demystify the biology of stress by emphasizing the protective as well as the damaging effects of the body’s attempts to cope with the challenges known as stressors.[33]
Additionally, epigenetic transmission may occur due to stress during pregnancy or during interactions between mother and newborns. Maternal stress, depression, and exposure to partner violence have all been shown to have epigenetic effects on infants.[29]
Implementing practices
As knowledge about the prevalence and consequences of adverse childhood experiences increases, trauma-informed and resilience-building practices based on the research is being implemented in communities, education, public health departments, social services, faith-based organizations and criminal justice. A few states are considering legislation.
Communities
As knowledge about the prevalence and consequences of ACEs increases, more communities seek to integrate trauma-informed and resilience-building practices into their agencies and systems. Tarpon Springs, Florida, became the first trauma-informed community in 2011.[34][35] Trauma-informed initiatives in Tarpon Springs include trauma-awareness training for the local housing authority, changes in programs for ex-offenders, and new approaches to educating students with learning difficulties.[36] Research with American Indian tribal communities has demonstrated that social support and cultural involvement can ameliorate the effects of ACEs.[37]
Education
ACEs exposure is widespread in the US, one study from the National Survey of Children’s Health reported that approximately 68% of children 0–17 years old had experienced one or more ACEs.[38] The impact of ACEs on children can manifest in difficulties focusing, self regulating, trusting others, and can lead to negative cognitive effects. One study found that a child with 4 or more ACEs was 32 times more likely to be labeled with a behavioral or cognitive problem than a child with no ACEs.[39] Another study by the Area Health Education Center of Washington State University found that students with at least three ACEs are three times as likely to experience academic failure, six times as likely to have behavioral problems, and five times as likely to have attendance problems.[40] The trauma-informed school movement aims to train teachers and staff to help children self-regulate, and to help families that are having problems that result in children’s normal response to trauma. It also seeks to provide behavioral consequences that will not re-traumatize a child.[41]
Trauma-informed education refers to the specific use of knowledge about trauma and its expression to modify support for children to improve their developmental success.[42] The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) describes a trauma-informed school system as a place where school community members work to provide trauma awareness, knowledge and skills to respond to potentially negative outcomes following traumatic stress.[43] The NCTSN published a study that discussed the ARC (attachment, regulation and competency) model, which other researchers have based their subsequent studies of trauma-informed education practices off of.[39][44] Trauma-sensitive or trauma-informed schooling has become increasingly popular in Washington, Massachusetts, and California in the last 10 years.[38]
One study details how several San Francisco schools provided trauma-informed support based on the ARC model to students, adults in the system, and the school system as a whole through universal learning strategies, plans and techniques for children with trauma, and by providing trauma-informed therapy to those children.[44] At El Dorado, an elementary school in this study in San Francisco, trauma-informed practices were associated with a suspension reduction of 89%.[45]
Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, Washington, adapted a trauma-informed approached to discipline and reduced its suspensions by 85%.[46] Rather than standard punishment, students are taught to recognize their reaction to stress and learn to control it. Spokane, Washington, schools conducted a research study that demonstrated that academic risk was correlated with students’ experiences of traumatic events known to their teachers.[40][47] The same school district has begun a study to test the impact of trauma-informed intervention programs, in an attempt to reduce the impact of toxic stress.
In Brockton, Massachusetts, a community-wide meeting led to a trauma-informed approach being adopted by the Brockton School District.[41] So far, all of the district’s elementary schools have implemented trauma-informed improvement plans, and there are plans to do the same in the middle school and high school. About one-fifth of the district teachers have participated in a course on teaching traumatized students. Police alert schools when they have arrested someone or visited at a student’s address. Massachusetts state legislation has sought to require all schools to develop plans to create “safe and supportive schools”.[41]
Social services
Social service providers—including welfare systems, housing authorities, homeless shelters, and domestic violence centers – are adopting trauma-informed approaches that help to prevent ACEs or minimize their impact. Utilizing tools that screen for trauma can help a social service worker direct their clients to interventions that meet their specific needs.[48] Trauma-informed practices can also help social service providers look at how trauma impacts the whole family.[49]
Trauma-informed approaches can improve child welfare services by 1) openly discussing trauma and 2) addressing parental trauma.[according to whom?][50] The New Hampshire Division for Children Youth and Families (DCYF) is taking a trauma-informed approach to their foster care services by educating staff about childhood trauma, screening children entering foster care for trauma, using trauma-informed language to mitigate further traumatization, mentoring birth parents and involving them in collaborative parenting, and training foster parents to be trauma-informed.[48]
In Albany, New York the HEARTS Initiative has led to local organizations developing trauma-informed practice.[50] Senior Hope Inc., an organization serving adults over the age of 50, began implementing the 10-question ACE survey and talking with their clients about childhood trauma. The LaSalle School, which serves orphaned and abandoned boys, began looking at delinquent boys in from a trauma-informed perspective and began administering the ACE questionnaire to their clients.
Housing authorities are also becoming trauma-informed. Supportive housing can sometimes recreate control and power dynamics associated with clients’ early trauma.[51] This can be reduced through trauma-informed practices, such as training staff to be respectful of clients’ space by scheduling appointments and not letting themselves into clients’ private spaces, and also understanding that an aggressive response may be trauma-related coping strategies.[51] The housing authority in Tarpon Springs provided trauma-awareness training to staff so they could better understand and react to their clients’ stress and anger resulting from poor employment, health, and housing.[36]
A survey of 200 homeless individuals in California and New York demonstrated that more than 50% had experienced at least four ACEs.[52] In Petaluma, California, the Committee on the Shelterless (COTS) uses a trauma-informed approach called Restorative Integral Support (RIS) to reduce intergenerational homelessness.[53] RIS increases awareness of and knowledge about ACEs, and calls on staff to be compassionate and focus on the whole person. COTS now consider themselves ACE-informed and focus on resiliency and recovery.
Health care services
Screening for or talking about ACEs with parents and children can help to foster healthy physical and psychological development and can help doctors understand the circumstances that children and their parents are facing. By screening for ACEs in children, pediatric doctors and nurses can better understand behavioral problems. Some doctors have questioned whether some behaviors resulting in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses are in fact reactions to trauma. Children who have experienced four or more ACEs are three times as likely to take ADHD medication when compared with children with less than four ACEs.[54] Screening parents for their ACEs allows doctors to provide the appropriate support to parents who have experienced trauma, helping them to build resilience, foster attachment with their children, and prevent a family cycle of ACEs.[55][56] Trauma-informed pediatric care also allows doctors to develop a more trusting relationship with parents, opening the lines of communication.[57] At Montefiore Medical Center ACEs screenings will soon be implemented in 22 pediatric clinics. In a pilot program, any child with one parent who has an ACE score of four or higher is offered enrollment and receive a variety of services. For families enrolled in the program parents report fewer ER visits and children have healthier emotional and social development, compared with those not enrolled.[55][58]
Public health
Most American doctors as of 2015 do not use ACE surveys to assess patients. Objections to doing so include that there are no randomized controlled trials that show that such surveys can be used to actually improve health outcomes, there are no standard protocols for how to use the information gathered, and that revisiting negative childhood experiences could be emotionally traumatic.[59] Other obstacles to adoption include that the technique is not taught in medical schools, is not billable, and the nature of the conversation makes some doctors personally uncomfortable.[59]
Some public health centers see ACEs as an important way (especially for mothers and children)[60] to target health interventions for individuals during sensitive periods of development early in their life, or even in utero.[60] For example, Jefferson Country Public Health clinic in Port Townsend, Washington, now screens pregnant women, their partners, parents of children with special needs, and parents involved with CPS for ACEs.[61] With regard to patient counseling, the clinic treats ACEs like other health risks such as smoking or alcohol consumption.
Resilience and Resources
Resilience is not a trait that people either have or do not have. It involves behaviors, thoughts and actions that can be learned and developed in anyone. According to the American Psychological Association (2017), resilience is the ability to adapt in the face of adversity, tragedy, threats or significant stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. Resilience refers to bouncing back from difficult experiences in life. There is nothing extraordinary about resilience. People often demonstrate resilience in times of adversity. However, being resilient does not mean that a person will not experience difficulty or distress, as emotional pain is common for people when they suffer from a major adversity or trauma. In fact, the path to resilience often involves considerable emotional pain [70].
Resilience and access to other resources are protective factors.[37][62][63] Having resilience can benefit children who have been exposed to trauma and have a higher ACE score. Children who can learn to develop it, can use resilience to build themselves up after trauma. A child who has not developed resilience will have a harder time coping with the challenges that can come in adult life. People and children who are resilient, embrace the thinking that adverse experiences do not define who they are. They also can think about past events in their lives that were traumatic, and, try to reframe them in a way that is constructive. They are able to find strength in their struggle and ultimately can overcome the challenges and adversity that was faced in childhood.[64] In childhood, resiliency can come from having a caring adult in a child’s life. Resiliency can also come from having meaningful moments such as an academic achievement or getting praise from teachers or mentors. In adulthood, resilience is the concept of self-care. If you are taking care of yourself and taking the necessary time to reflect and build on your experiences, then you will have a higher capacity for taking care of others. Adults can also use this skill to counteract some of the trauma they have experienced. Self-care can mean a variety of things. One example of self-care, is knowing when you are beginning to feel burned out and then taking a step back to rest and recuperate yourself. Another component of self-care is practicing mindfulness or engaging in some form of prayer or meditation. If you are able to take the time to reflect upon your experiences, then you will be able to build a greater level of resiliency moving forward. All of these strategies put together can help to build resilience and counteract some of the childhood trauma that was experienced. With these strategies children can begin to heal after experiencing adverse childhood experiences. This aspect of resiliency is so important because it enables people to find hope in their traumatic past. When first looking at the ACE study and the different correlations that come with having 4 or more traumas, it is easy to feel defeated. It is even possible for this information to encourage people to have unhealthy coping behaviors. Introducing resilience and the data that supports its positive outcome in regards to trauma, allows for a light at the end of a tunnel. It gives people the opportunity to be proactive instead of reactive when it comes to addressing the traumas in their past.
“Love your heart. For this is the prize,” Toni Morrison wrote in an exquisite passage from Beloved as she considered the body as an instrument of sanity, joy, and self-respect a century after William James asserted in his groundbreaking work on how our bodies affect our feelings that “a purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity,” lending the fledgling credibility of a young science to Walt Whitman’s poetic insistence that “the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern and includes and is the soul.”
There is such fertile ground for sensemaking in this space between biology and metaphor that we have always used our bodies as sensemaking instruments for the soul. But no part of the body has taken on more metaphorical meaning than the vital organ depicted in millennia of literature and song as the seat of love.
When we speak of the heart breaking, we are speaking metaphorically, and yet anyone who has lived through heartbreak — that is, anyone who has lived at all — knows intimately the awful way in which the psychological condition of loss takes on the quality of physical pain. It is hardly surprising, then, that the body and the soul heal in consanguinity — the heart-as-metaphor heals the same way the heart-as-organ does.
In this enchanting animated poem, Ducker joins visions with artist Kate Sweeney to deliver a soulful prescription partway between science and metaphor, between organ and instrument, as palliating to the physiology of illness as it is to the psychology of heartbreak:
A SCIENTIST’S ADVICE ON HEALING by Christy Ducker
Try to accept this fat red hurt is your starting point, in the way a pen must be put to paper in one particular spot,
then move
beyond the globby flap of blame and past the mono-sulk of pain.
Change the subject, before it’s too late. Sketch out what health you do possess, what signal-cascades, what flotilla of cells circumnavigate you,
then draw yourself back together again, in a language of your own.
Your body’s talk is loose as lymph — it’ll have you open out as a tree, or sneak up on pain as assassin, sidekick, or wolf.
Encourage this for healing won’t come at you straight. Embrace the lack of heroics — this isn’t Hollywood, it’s you, in a plot that may or may not resolve.
The poem appears in Messenger (UK edition) — a slim collection of Ducker’s poems exploring “how we wound and how we heal,” drawing on the science of immunology in a collaboration with York’s Center for Chronic Disease, and featuring visual poetics by Sweeney, who also animated poet Linda France’s magnificent “Murmuration.”
A SCIENTIST’S ADVICE ON HEALING
