atlas84: Did you know that the Mayans never even predicted the world was going to end?
Gnarlodious: Yeah, that whole apocalypse obsession is strictly Christian.
atlas84: I think it’s a disgraceful that the media has latched onto it and distorted the facts. And I feel bad for the Mayans. They're still around today, you know. I met one.
Gnarlodious: Yeah.
atlas84: They laugh at how gullible our society is.
Gnarlodious: Well listen, Americans have been inventing hysterical stories for decades. It’s part of our culture.
atlas84: This one tops them all.
Gnarlodious: No not really, I think the Y2K scare was the biggest fiasco.
atlas84: I blame the New Age movement. Some of those writers came up with anything to sell books.
Gnarlodious: Yeah, that's what it’s all about: selling books, getting interviewed and publicity. Whipping up fear of the unknown.
atlas84: That’s the formula.
Gnarlodious: But look, we are still better off than Medieval Europe, when the church was the prime disseminator of fear.
atlas84: True. I'll never be satisfied.
Gnarlodious: If you preached a gospel they didn't approve of they would kill you.
atlas84: I just can’t believe the media would ignore blatant facts that most archaeological scholars know.
Gnarlodious: So, in a way, these are all imitators of Catholicism. Human beings are inherently ignorant and fearful.
atlas84: If I’d lived in the Middle Ages, I probably would have committed suicide.
Gnarlodious: Look, I live in Santa Fe, a real hotbed of wackos. People here cook up all sorts of weird belief systems.
atlas84: It’s cult central out there?
Gnarlodious: People need that to believe in. It’s the reality distortion field.
atlas84: I guess we all suffer from reality distortion, whether it be on a personal or sociological level. Clearly, I’m guilty of the personal one.
Gnarlodious: The human race is essentially ignorant; all our beliefs are a result of that one overriding fact. Once you accept that about people, suddenly they are a lot easier to understand.
atlas84: Other animals don’t even need beliefs. We are cursed with reason.
Gnarlodious: I am sorry I have to be the one to break your bubble. Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden.
atlas84: Never read it. He wrote The Jungle Book.
Gnarlodious: Yes. The original sentimentalist. He sought solace from his neurotic roots by adopting the wilds of the jungle.
atlas84: Well he wasn’t the original; he must have been inspired by Rousseau.
Gnarlodious: It’s like, if you can just reduce existence to day-to-day living then there is nothing to be neurotic about. That's the appeal of the sentimentalist movement, and it sold lots of books. It was a gimmick, like the Garden of Eden story.
atlas84: Yeah, it did. That was before Kipling though. It was part of Romanticist philosophy. He just carried the torch.
Gnarlodious: Yes, the Noble Savage philosophy. Civilization has ruined everything.
atlas84: I guess "the Enlightenment" was good for something. Funny how they call it an Enlightenment when society went in the opposite direction. Well, in some ways it did.
Gnarlodious: The Enlightenment was a reaction to the Catholic Church.
atlas84: Yes, and it’s association with monarchy. It gave rise to scientific advancements, but at the same time it led to the Industrial Revolution and overpopulation. The good the bad and the ugly. The Noble Savage was a reaction to that trend.
Gnarlodious: I would add that the sentimentalist movement never really flourished in America, but rather we became sedated by visions of the impending apocalypse.
atlas84: Yeah.. The fear it generated has always been used to sedate the masses. That’s why they tweaked the Bible.
Gnarlodious: Apocalypse is a uniquely American preoccupation.
atlas84: Really? Maybe now it is, but I think it was recognized in Europe a while ago.
Gnarlodious: No, it never really took hold in Europe.
atlas84: That would make for some interesting research- the history of the apocalypse.
Gnarlodious: Yeah, start with Isaac Newton. He is said to have been the first apocalyptic Christian, when the Catholic Church called it blasphemy.
atlas84: What about Revelation? Wasn’t that in the Bible during the Middle Ages? Maybe they interpreted it differently.
Gnarlodious: Yes, but the Church told followers it described an apocalyptic battle between Satan and God. They didn't let on that they were the evil beast. But all brilliant literature can be interpreted any way you like.
atlas84: The Bible has been translated so many times that it’s hard to know what was actually written 2,000 years ago. Things get lost in translation.
Gnarlodious: Confirmation bias. Everything we interpret supports our own fantasy. There's very little actual science going on.
atlas84: Evolution and the ability to fantasize go hand in hand; it makes you wonder if we’re really evolving.
Gnarlodious: It’s a little odd. Nobody can seem to imagine what the next species will be like. Science tells us we must go extinct and be replaced by a newer model.
atlas84: The next species will probably exist in a fantasy-constructed VR system, like the Matrix.
Gnarlodious: But see, even that statement denies the actuality of the next species. Do you think that like death, we are denied the ability to imagine the next species?
atlas84: Yes. It's like the inability to imagine higher dimensions. Logically you know there are more, but you can't see them.
Gnarlodious: It would mean admitting that the next species dooms us to extinction.
atlas84: Maybe the next species will live entirely inside their own heads.
Gnarlodious: Well the direction of human evolution only tells us one thing- that we will be replaced by a superior species.
atlas84: And all that will be left of us are our bones, like the dinosaurs.
Gnarlodious: Pretty much. Just a decaying old boneyard of obsolete biology.
atlas84: Talking to you always lifts my mood, lol.
Gnarlodious: Lol. Yeah, that was a doozie of optimism.
atlas84: As usual. I know our species will end. And you don’t believe in reincarnation, but I think souls can jump species. We could have been dinosaurs in the past, we just can’t remember that far back.
Gnarlodious: Sure, yeah.
atlas84: So, you might have the answers to all your questions thousands of years from now, when you are reincarnated as a hyper-humanoid. There’s some optimism for ya.
Gnarlodious: Yeah, when we evolve some more brainpower, because I definitely see a ceiling to it. I think we have hit the limit. We just don't have the hardware to know much more.
atlas84: No doubt. We've hit the logarithmic curve. All that's left are imaginary numbers, and we can't see those either.
Gnarlodious: So close and yet so far.
atlas84: All quantum physics is based on imaginary numbers- more fantasies that are rooted in reality.
Gnarlodious: The mysteries of the universe are slipping away... I think all this new physics is just a way of consoling ourselves that we can't figure it out.
atlas84: You’re right, it is. They have 500 level college courses devoted to things we can’t even observe.
Gnarlodious: No wonder Einstein rejected quantum physics. This is the intellectual apocalypse.
atlas84: A lot of the most vivid dreams I have are apocalyptic.
Gnarlodious: Really?
atlas84: Epic storms, like “The Nothing” from The Never-Ending Story; storms that totally wipe out the planet.
Gnarlodious: Huh.
atlas84: Yeah... The moon fell to Earth in one of them. It just further confirms that I am mentally ill.
Gnarlodious: I'd deny that. When I was your age, I was cursed by constant dreams that I was flying into power lines. We all have something that symbolizes fear.
atlas84: I remember you telling me that. You were electrocuted in a dream.
Gnarlodious: Yes and I ended up in outer space.
atlas84: What do you mean, outer space?
Gnarlodious: Sons of Seth.
atlas84: I wish I had more about outer space. That would be cool. I do remember one about aliens following me home, but it was set on Earth.
Gnarlodious: I think we have been abusing the word apocalypse. In fact, I think the Catholic Church has been abusing it for millennia. Right-click on the word apocalypse and select "Look Up in Dictionary". It says Greek apokalupsis, from apokaluptein- ‘uncover, reveal,’ from apo- ‘un-’ + kaluptein ‘to cover.’ How does that mean total destruction of the Earth? Go ask the Pope.
atlas84: ‘Uncover, reveal’. It could be that it has more in common with the word 'Revelation' than anything else. But the Greek language was established before Revelation was written- well before the birth of Christ, which can only mean that apocalypse meant something entirely different before the rise of Christianity.
Gnarlodious: Then the Roman Catholics commandeered the word. It was invented to scare the shit out of people. I probably wouldn't have lasted long in the 1400s.
atlas84: That’s part of how the Bible was used to control people. “Fear and wonder- a powerful combination” (Gladiator). These were the tools they used to control massive mobs of people with mind control. I wonder what the origin of the word cataclysm is.
Gnarlodious: Greek kataklusmos ‘deluge,’ from kata- ‘down’ + kluzein ‘to wash’.
atlas84: How about Armaggeddon?
Gnarlodious: Hebrew. Har Megiddo is a small mountain in Northern Israel.
atlas84: So it was made up too. There don’t seem to be any Greek or Latin roots connected to any real cataclysmic events.
Gnarlodious: Cataclysm itself refers to the Biblical flood. I guess there were no severe disasters after that.
atlas84: The first translations of the Bible must have been written in Latin. If they didn’t borrow a Latin root for apocalypse, the word must have been made up when it was translated at some point- by someone who thirsted for power.
Gnarlodious: It was probably St. Jerome. He messed up the first translation in a lot of ways. He basically invented Satan and Lucifer. Originally, they weren’t entities, but rather ideas. Then when he translated the Bible into the Vulgate, he turned them into evil entities, which is totally consistent with Roman mythology and their pantheon of gods. Every attribute was thought to be possessed by a God.
atlas84: Was St. Jerome alive during the time of Constantine?
Gnarlodious: 400 AD, I think. Oh yeah, and that was also the time that manichaenism was merged into Christianity, i.e., the theology of good versus evil.
atlas84: Sorry, Constantine was a century before.
Gnarlodious: The term "manichean" is widely applied (often disparagingly) as an adjective to a philosophy or attitude of moral dualism, according to which a moral course of action involves a clear (or simplistic) choice between good and evil, or as a noun to people who hold such a view, which reads exactly like Catholicism.
atlas84: So the word "evil" was invented by them too?
Gnarlodious: Not sure. Good and bad are definitely in the early Hebrew Bible, but "evil" is much stronger- more of a morality word.
atlas84: Yeah, it seems like every culture that’s ever existed had terms for good and bad, but evil's a bit different. To me it denotes someone who’s spiritually damned, or something that causes them to be so.
Gnarlodious: You could argue that entropy is bad, but "evil" is willfully bad, and only humans have free will. "Evil" itself is uniquely human.
atlas84: It’s hard to trace the origin of “evil”- my source says it’s German.
Gnarlodious: In any case, they translated the Hebrew Bible as an exercise in confirmation bias, so you can't believe any part of it. My entire thesis is that the civilized world was commandeered by mean old men who saw devils on everyone's shoulder.
atlas84: I think the translations were ordered by political figureheads who saw it as an opportunity to control people easier.
Gnarlodious: Hmmm... That's a good theory
atlas84: Did you see The Book of Eli?
Gnarlodious: No, but it was made here in New Mexico.
atlas84: That’s where I got that idea from. It’s a post-apocalyptic film in which a futuristic prophet tries to deny a warlord from gaining control of a world in chaos. This warlord’s plan is to use the Bible to kindle a fear in the people he’s trying to control. “It’s not a book, it’s a weapon!”, he says. My point is that words like apocalypse and evil were either invented or twisted around to use the fear they ignited to control people more.
Gnarlodious: Sure, makes sense. I have this wacky theory that as population increases a "thought vacuum" is created; that there are only so many thoughts that a culture can have, and it is just enough to fill every mind. But as more minds are created, there aren't enough thoughts to fill them all, and so left to their own devices, people conjure up all sorts of injurious thoughts that take root in their minds; that society, to ward off this entropic trend, must proactively invent tropes to fill that empty space.
atlas84: A great irony is that the more our population increases, the lonelier people feel. It’s because there are so many more people, and so much more information now, that it makes it harder to attach to certain things. That’s why it’s so easy to invent new beliefs and start cults these days. It’s like what we were talking about the other day; people want to feel like they belong.
Gnarlodious: It's as if to say, there must be a certain minimum number of people in a culture to support a certain abstraction of a cultic meme. Wow, that really sounded academic. I must be brilliant, or mentally ill.
atlas84: Haha, yeah, you’re on a roll tonight. Is that why the power of the Bible is losing its momentum? Overpopulation.
Gnarlodious: Could be.
atlas84: In that movie the population had dissipated considerably. Maybe you're onto something.
Gnarlodious: My main inspiration for this theory is Santa Claus, a recent invention.
atlas84: Lol, Santa Claus and movies. What academic sources we have.
Gnarlodious: I think a mass abstraction like Santa Claus was not possible until fairly recently. When population hit a certain density, the idea took off like wildfire. You could apply the same principle to all of mythology. It's a scary idea.
atlas84: Oh, just think about branding and the media. Now people will believe anything you tell them as long as it’s on a television screen or in a book. Just like with the Mayan calendar fiasco. If you were to show an 8th century Native American all the bullshit on television right now, he’d walk away from it in disbelief. There’s that sentimentality of the Noble Savage again.
Gnarlodious: Especially if some blonde bimbo is saying it. I just want you to know, it wasn't always like that. Like back in the 1960s you had Walter Cronkite on the evening news. That was factual and informative news.
atlas84: I’m just helping out your theory. As the population has increased it has gotten easier to deceive masses of people with trendy tropes, whereas in olden times it was much easier to deceive them with one firm belief system.
Gnarlodious: That may be, if only because people are starved for original memes. This agitprop TeeVee is a recent invention. And social networking is even worse. Facebook is the antichrist.
atlas84: Soon people won't know what to believe anymore. Our brains will be swarmed with a monsoon of lunatic ideas.
Gnarlodious: Soon? I would say it’s already underway.
atlas84: Well it'll get worse. The information age may be crumbling at our feet. These are dangerous times.
Gnarlodious: Seems like it. I actually maintain that humans are losing the power of cognition. We are victims of our own evolutionary success.
atlas84: Right! That ties into what we talked about earlier, about fantasies; overpopulation leads to a surplus of fantasy.
Gnarlodious: Surrendering to a world of virtual excesses. And most of those fantasies involve simplistic life and death conflicts straight out of recidivist memories.
atlas84: I wonder when we should have put on the breaks. The Age of Enlightenment? Just after the American Revolution?
Gnarlodious: Reagan, 1984. According to my math, civilization peaked in 1984. The year you were born.
atlas84: What an honor :p But yeah, there was a spike in the 80s... The 60s and 70s were just a lull though. You’re lucky you grew up in them. Think about World War 2- those were despicable times. I blame that whole century of war on the Industrial Revolution, which itself was caused by overpopulation.
Gnarlodious: Yeah.
atlas84: I just had deja vu, hmmm.
Gnarlodious: Cool. When you said that there was a flip. A flip is something that happens in time. I can hear it. Every time someone has a deja vu it is at a flip.
atlas84: You can hear deja vu?
Gnarlodious: Sort of.
atlas84: What the flip are you talking about?
Gnarlodious: The sectrum of time rearranges itself to the lowest energy state. When it happens, I can hear it.
atlas84: It’s like time gets as flexible as possible. That’s what it feels like to me- as if I’m reaching back and isolating it.
Gnarlodious: Yes, the harmonics de-resonate and time needs to adjust to a resonant state. When that happens, you have deja vu. If you are asleep that is when you have an orgasm. I've proven all this mathematically.
atlas84: Haha, far out man.
Gnarlodious: It’s pretty weird for sure. Anyway, that was a rather large and loud flip. If you look at my website, the orange numbers represent de-resonant harmonics
atlas84: Caused by the ruckus of introducing World War 2 into the conversation, of course.
Gnarlodious: Yes, where were we?
atlas84: I don’t remember. All the sudden I got obsessed with trying to remember the deja vu. It’s always futile, but I try to remember anyway.
Gnarlodious: It’s probably a sort of ESP. Well, I should explain that weird things happen during a flip; that time itself is in a sort of indeterminate state for a fraction of a second. I imagine some sort of trans-dimensional motion is possible during a flip.
atlas84: Wow, yeah. It’s like something from the future or the past comes into the present, and you’re not sure which it is.
Gnarlodious: But I have no proof.
atlas84: I wonder if deja vu tends to occur in clusters. Like, if many people experience them at the same time.
Gnarlodious: I believe if many people compared the times of their deja vus we would discover they are eerily coincident.
atlas84: Same here.
Gnarlodious: Fortunately, nobody has ever thought to do it.
atlas84: We should all start recording the times of our deja vus and send them to you.
Gnarlodious: Naw, the world shouldn't know this stuff.
atlas84: A psychiatrist would just scoff it off as some form of mental illness.
Gnarlodious: Yup.
atlas84: Ok, I think I've had enough magical thinking for one evening. It’s been a delight.
Gnarlodious: Too much knowledge.
atlas84: Exactly. It’s driving us all crazy.
Gnarlodious: Good night.
atlas84: Bye.
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