<html>
<body>
<div align="center"><font color="#FF00FF"><b>TURN ON</font> COMPUTER //
<font color="#FF00FF">TUNE IN TO</font> <font color="#008000">FREED
SPIRIT OF INTERNET</font><font color="#99CC00">
</font><font color="#800080">// TAKE OVER!<br><br>
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=5 color="#808080">
\\)))))/<br>
_____,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,,</b>__</font>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">fraser<br>
</font></div>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=5 color="#808080">the tawdry,
hypocritical lynching of saddam (or anyone) makes me ashamed to be a
member of the human race. <br>
but let the dead bury the dead.<br>
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">UP!<br><br>
</font><div align="right"><font size=1 color="#FF00FF"><b>(\o/ (\o/)(\o/)
(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)<br>
</font>Get <font color="#FF00FF">UP!</font>
<font color="#339966"><i>Stand Up For Your Rights!</font>
<font size=1>(and everybody’s too of course! :)<br>
</font><font size=1 color="#993366">u can’t understand the world without
innerstanding yourself<br>
</i></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=7 color="#FF00FF">
UP!</font><font color="#FF00FF">
</font><font size=6 color="#FF00FF">240</font><font color="#FF00FF">
</font><font color="#808080">// 4 01 07<br>
</font><font size=1 color="#FF00FF"><i>LA- LA- LA- LAP-TOPPLING DA
SYSTEM!<br>
</font><font size=1 color="#993366">u cant innerstand yourself without
understanding the world<br>
</i></font> Get <font color="#FF00FF">UP!</font>
<font color="#339966"><i>Don’t Give Up The Fight!</font>
<font size=1>(only we don’t mean violence, ok?
:)</font><font color="#993366"> <br>
</i></font><font size=1 color="#FF00FF">(\o/ (\o/)(\o/)
(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)<br>
<br>
<br>
</font></div>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF"><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab>\\)))))/<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>
___,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,,</b>__</font>fraser<br>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=6 color="#FF00FF"><b>2007.</b>
<x-tab> </x-tab>homing in
<dl>
<dl>
<dd>on heaven
<dd>on
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=6 color="#99CC00">
earth<br><br></font>
</dl>
</dl><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=5 color="#808080">happy new
year!</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=4 color="#808080">and i
think it will be
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">for the whole
human race, including those pathetic denatured super-rich whose era is
passing but whose mental health will vastly
improve</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">
:)<br><br>
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">it looks to me
like the first 6 years of what should have been the
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=4 color="#FF00FF">new
3</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF"><sup>rd</sup>
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=4 color="#FF00FF">
millennium</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">
have had to be devoted to seeing off the
2</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=1 color="#808080"><sup>
nd</sup></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">
millennium dinosaurs who just didn’t ‘get it’.<br><br>
but, now their last stand has failed, hugely, before the eyes of the
whole planet, we can begin to turn our attention to our
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=4 color="#FF00FF">new
future</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">.
we, or i anyway, have spent the last decades fighting against the
direction the dinos were offering (ordering) and have been offering
for the past 4 thousand years.<br><br>
but now we must and can begin to work out what exactly we, on ‘this
side’, actually agree about.<br><br>
so, as we enter the first year of our
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=4 color="#FF00FF">new
young society of the
future</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">, the
first
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">UP!</font>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080"> offers 2
inspirational/informational pieces,
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=4 color="#FF00FF"><u>THE
MOST IMPORTANT, INSPIRING AND FASCINATING NEWS I HAVE LEARNED IN
2006.<br><br>
</u></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">the first,
</font><font color="#993300"><b><i>Crete, the
</font><font color="#FF6600">Goddess</font><font color="#993300">
-Worshipping Key to our
</font><font color="#FF6600">Lost</font><font color="#993300"> Evolution,
</i></b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">peers
into our ancient
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica"><u>Past</u></font>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080"> and explains how the
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">Goddess</font>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080"> was stolen from the
people by </font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF0000">war
lords</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080"> and
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF0000">male ego
monsters</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">,
cold, ruthless and calculating as
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF0000">reptiles</font>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080"> (the ones who are
only now losing their grip).<br>
</font><font color="#993300"><b><i><x-tab>
</x-tab>‘We find this
firm confirmation from our past that our hopes for peaceful human
co-existence are not, as we are so often told, “utopian
dreams.”’<br><br>
</i></b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">in the
second, </font><font color="#33CCCC"><b><i>Intelligent Life Is The
Architect Of The Universe!,
</i></b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">
scientists peer with opening eyes into the not-so-distant
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica"><u>Future</u></font>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080"> as their latest
‘discoveries’ force them towards recognising the
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">Goddess</font>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080"> as the
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">Unifying
Theme</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080"> beyond
the
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">
Singularity</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">
.<br>
</font><font color="#993300"><b><i>“The more I examine the universe and
study the detail of its architecture, the more evidence I find that in
some sense it knew we were coming.”<br>
</i></b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">UP!<br>
<br>
<br>
</font><font color="#800080"><b>my wish 4 us all in 2007</font> <br>
<font color="#800080">is a mannafestation of earth as heaven;</font>
<br>
<font color="#800080">the levels of ecstasy bliss & vitality</font>
<br>
<font color="#800080">that we experience as our daily reality</font>
<br>
<font color="#800080">increase ever onwards exponentially <br>
2 heights never b4 reached by humanity.</font> <br>
<font color="#800080">we r not waiting any more</font> <br>
<font color="#800080">the revolution is live 4 sure.</font> <br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" color="#800080">
xxx*magic*luvin*xxx</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times"> <br>
</b></font>kate, brighton.<br>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">UP!<br><br>
</font><div align="center">
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=6 color="#999999">..
<u>contents</u>...<br>
</font></div>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">p.03
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica">
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><b>Crete, the
</font><font size=4 color="#FF6600">Goddess</font>
<font size=4 color="#993300">-Worshipping Key to our
</font><font size=4 color="#FF6600">Lost</font>
<font size=4 color="#993300"> Evolution </font><font color="#FF0000">THE
PROOF!</font><i> The Dinosaurs stole it from us!<br><br>
</i></b><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">p.11</font>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica">
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=5 color="#000080"><b>
Biocosm
-</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=4 color="#33CCCC">
</b>Intelligent Life Is The <i><u>Architect</u></i> Of The Universe!
</font><b><i>Scientists catch up with hippy mystics!<br><br>
</i></b><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#808080">
p.14 </font><font size=4 color="#FF6600"><b>A Box That
See Into the
</font><font size=4 color="#99CC00">Future</font>
<font size=4 color="#FF6600">?
</font><font size=4 color="#FF0000"><i><u>FEEDBACK</u></font> we
shoulda seen it coming :)<br>
</i></b><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">UP!<br><br>
<br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=6 color="#993300"><b>Crete, the
</font><font size=6 color="#FF6600">Goddess</font>
<font size=6 color="#993300">-Worshipping Key<br>
to our
</font><font size=6 color="#FF6600">Lost</font>
<font size=6 color="#993300"> Evolution<br>
</b></font></div>
<div align="right">by<b> Riane Eisler <i>‘The Chalice and the
Blade’<br><br>
</b><font size=4>“We find this firm confirmation from our past<br>
that our hopes for peaceful human co-existence<br>
are not, as we are so often told,
“</font><font size=4 color="#FF6600">utopian
dreams</font><font size=4>.”<br><br>
</i></font></div>
<font size=4 color="#993300"><b>Prehistory
</font><font color="#FF6600">is like a giant jigsaw puzzle with more than
half its pieces destroyed or lost. It is impossible to reconstruct
completely. <br><br>
But the </font><font size=4 color="#993300">greatest
obstacle</font><font color="#FF6600"> to an accurate reconstruction is
not that we are lacking so many pieces; it is that
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">the prevailing warrior-male
paradigm</font><font color="#FF6600"> makes it so hard to accurately
interpret the pieces we have and to project the real pattern into which
they fit.<br><br>
For example, when Sir Flinders Petrie first reported on the excavations
of the tomb of Meryet-Nit in Egypt, he automatically assumed Meryet-Nit
was a king. Later research, however, established that Meryet-Nit was a
<i>woman</i> and, judging from the richness of her tomb, a queen. The
same mistake was made about the gigantic tomb discovered at Nagadeh by
Professor de Morgan. He, too, assumed it was the burial place of a
king, Hor-Aha of the First Dynasty. But later research showed that
this was the sepulchre of Hor-Aha’s mother.<br><br>
Such examples of our current cultural bias has led to mistakes that are
only exceptional in that they were later
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>corrected</u>.
</font><font color="#FF6600">Indeed, when art historian Merlin Stone
travelled all over the world, looking at excavation after excavation,
archive after archive, and object after object, re-examining primary
sources and then checking how they’d been interpreted, she found that, by
and large, when there was evidence of an earlier time
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">when women and men lived as
equals</font><font color="#FF6600">, it was simply
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>ignored</u></font>
<font color="#FF6600">. <br><br>
As we examine the remarkable and </font><font color="#993300">utterly
surprising</font><font color="#FF6600"> ancient civilisation discovered
on </font><font size=4 color="#993300">Crete</font><font color="#FF6600">
at the turn of the 20th century, we will see how this bias has
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">hopelessly
distorted</font><font color="#FF6600"> our view of
<dl>
<dd>a)<x-tab> </x-tab></font>
<font size=4 color="#993300">our cultural evolution.</font>
<dd><font color="#FF6600">b)<x-tab>
</x-tab></font>
<font size=4 color="#993300">the development of Higher
Civilisation</font><font color="#FF6600">.<br>
<br><br></font>
</dl><div align="center"><font size=5 color="#993300">The Archaeological
Bombshell<br>
</font></div>
<font color="#FF6600">The discovery of the technologically advanced and
socially complex ancient culture of
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">Minoan
Crete</font><font color="#FF6600"> - named by archaeologists after the
legendary King Minos - was something of a bombshell. As the
archaeologist Nicolas Platon put it in 1980, after excavating the island
for over 50 years: </font><font color="#993300"><i>“Archaeologists were
dumbfounded. They could not understand how the very existence of such a
highly developed civilisation could have remained unsuspected until
then.”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> <br><br>
</font><font color="#993300"><i> “From the
start,”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> writes Platon, who for many
years was Superintendent of Antiquities in Crete,
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“amazing discoveries were
made.”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> As work progressed,
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“vast multi-storied palaces, villas,
farmsteads, districts of populous and well-organised cities, harbour
installations, networks of roads crossing the island from end to end,
organised places of worship and planned burial grounds were brought to
light.”<br><br>
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">Four scripts
(</font><font color="#993300">Hieroglyphic, Proto-Linear, Linear
A</font><font color="#FF6600">, and </font><font color="#993300">Linear
B</font><font color="#FF6600">) were discovered which actually brought
Cretan civilisation, by archaeological definition, into the historic or
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">literate
period</font><font color="#FF6600">. And perhaps most strikingly, as
excavations progressed and more and more frescoes, sculptures, vases,
carvings, and other works of art were unearthed, there came the
realisation that here were the remains of an artistic tradition unique in
the annals of civilisation.<br><br>
The story of Cretan civilisation begins around
</font><font color="#993300">6000 B.C.E</font><font color="#FF6600">,
when a small colony of immigrants, probably from Anatolia, first arrived
on the island’s shores. It was they who brought the
</font><font color="#993300">Goddess</font><font color="#FF6600"> with
them, as well as an agrarian technology that classifies these first
settlers as
</font><font color="#993300">Neolithic</font><font color="#FF6600">
. For the next 4000 years there
was</font><font size=4 color="#993300"> <u>slow and steady technological
progress</u></font><font color="#FF6600">, in
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">crafts</font><font color="#FF6600">
like pottery making, weaving, metallurgy, engraving and architecture, as
well as increasing
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">trade</font><font color="#FF6600">
and the gradual evolution of the lively and joyful
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">Art</font><font color="#FF6600"> so
characteristic of Crete. Then, around
</font><font color="#993300">2000 B.C.E</font><font color="#FF6600">.,
Crete entered what archaeologists call the Middle Minoan or Old Palace
period.<br><br>
This was already well into the </font><font size=4 color="#993300">Bronze
Age</font><font color="#FF6600">, a time when in the rest of the then
civilised world the
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">Goddess</font><font color="#FF6600">
was steadily being displaced by warlike male gods. Though she was
still revered - as Hathor and Isis in Egypt, as Astarte or Ishtar in
Babylon, or as the sun Goddess </font><font color="#FF9900">of Arinna in
Anatolia</font><font color="#FF6600"> - it was now only as
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>a secondary
deity</u></font><font color="#FF6600">, described as the consort or
mother of more powerful <i>male</i> gods. The human species was
being moved into a world where </font><font color="#993300">male
dominance</font><font color="#FF6600"> and
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">wars of conquest and counter-conquest
</font><font color="#FF6600">were everywhere becoming the norm.<br><br>
</font><font size=4 color="#FF6600">Right up till today, see?!<br><br>
</font><font color="#FF6600">However, and here’s the critical point, on
Crete where the
</font><font color="#993300">Goddess</font><font color="#FF6600"> was
still supreme, </font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>there are no signs
of war</u>.</font><font color="#FF6600"> Here the economy
<i>prospered</i> and the arts continued to <i>flourish</i>. And
even when in the </font><font color="#993300">15th century
B.C.E</font><font color="#FF6600">. the island finally came under Achaean
dominion, the
</font><font color="#993300">Goddess</font><font color="#FF6600"> and the
way of thinking and living she symbolised still appear to have held
fast. And evolution continued, uninterrupted by the fall into
brutality that was going on everywhere else.<br><br>
The new
</font><font color="#993300">Indo-European</font><font color="#FF6600">
overlords of the island seem to have adopted much of the Minoan culture
and religion. In the pictures on the Hagia Triada sarcophagus of
the fifteenth century B.C.E., already more stiff and stylised but still
unmistakably Cretan, it is still the
</font><font color="#993300">Goddess</font><font color="#FF6600"> who
bears the dead man to his new life. And it is still the priestesses
of the </font><font color="#993300">Goddess</font><font color="#FF6600">,
not the priests in long women’s robes, who play the central role in the
rituals depicted on its plastered limestone frescoes, leading the
procession and extending their hands to touch the altar.<br><br>
Thus, at the great palace of Knossos it is a woman - the Goddess, her
high priestess, or perhaps, as cultural historian Jacquetta Hawkes
believes, the </font><font size=4 color="#993300">Cretan
queen</font><font color="#FF6600"> - who stands at the centre while two
approaching processions of men bear tribute to her. And
<i>everywhere</i> one finds female figures, many with their arms raised
in blessing, some holding serpents or double axes as symbols of the
</font><font color="#993300">Goddess</font><font color="#FF6600">.<br><br>
<br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=5 color="#993300">The Love of Life
and Nature<br>
</font></div>
<font color="#FF6600">These gestures of reverent blessing seem in many
ways to capture the essence of Minoan culture. For, as Platon puts
it, this was a society in which
</font><font size=5 color="#993300"><i>“the whole of life was pervaded by
an ardent faith in the goddess Nature, the source of all creation and
harmony.” <br><br>
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">In Crete,
</font><font size=4 color="#FF6600"><u>for the last time in recorded
history</u></font><font color="#FF6600">, a spirit of harmony between
women and men as joyful and equal participants in life appears to
pervade. It is this spirit that seems to shine through Crete’s
artistic tradition, a tradition that, again in Platon’s words, is unique
in its </font><font color="#993300"><i>“delight in beauty, grace, and
movement” </i></font><font color="#FF6600">and in
its</font><font color="#993300"><i>
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">“enjoyment of life and closeness to
nature.”<br><br>
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">Some scholars have described Minoan life
as </font><font color="#993300"><i>“perfectly expressive of the idea of
homo ludens” - </i></font><font color="#FF6600">of “humans” expressing
their higher human impulses through joyful and at the same time
mythically meaningful ritual and artistic play. <br><br>
Others have tried to sum up Cretan culture with words and phrases like
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“sensitivity,” “grace of life,”
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">and
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“love of beauty and
nature.”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> The great majority of
scholars, and certainly those who have done any extensive fieldwork on
the island, seem quite unable to contain their
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">admiration</font>
<font color="#FF6600">, and even
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">astonishment</font>
<font color="#FF6600">, in describing their finds.<br><br>
For here we have a rich, technologically and culturally advanced
civilisation in which </font><font color="#993300"><i>“all the artistic
media - in fact, life in its totality as well as death - were deeply
entrenched in an all-pervasive, ubiquitous
religion.”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> (Archaeologists Buchholtz and
Karageorghis.) </font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>In marked
contrast to other high civilisations of the
time</u></font><font color="#FF6600">, this religion - centring on the
worship of the
</font><font color="#993300">Goddess</font><font color="#FF6600"> -
seems to have both reflected and reinforced a social order in which, to
quote Nicolas Platon, </font><font size=4 color="#993300"><i>“the fear of
death was almost obliterated by the ubiquitous joy of living.”<br><br>
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">Archaeologists and art historians from
all over the world have used phrases like
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“the enchantment of a fairy
world”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> and
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“the most complete acceptance of the
grace of life the world has ever
known.”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> And it is not only Cretan
<i>art</i> - the magnificent frescoes of multicoloured partridges,
whimsical griffins, and elegant women, the exquisite golden miniatures,
fine jewellery, and gracefully moulded statuettes - but also Cretan
<i>society</i> that has struck scholars as unique.<br><br>
For example, one remarkable feature of Cretan society, sharply
distinguishing it from other ancient high civilisations, is that there
seems to have been here </font><font size=4 color="#993300">a rather
equitable sharing of wealth.</font><font color="#FF6600">
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“The standard of living - even of
peasants - seems to have been high,”
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">reports Platon.
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“None of the homes found so far have
suggested very poor living conditions.”<br>
</i></font><font color="#FF6600"><x-tab>
</x-tab><br>
This is not to say that Crete was richer than, or even as rich as,
</font><font color="#993300">Egypt</font><font color="#FF6600"> or
</font><font color="#993300">Babylon</font><font color="#FF6600">.
But in view of the economic and social gulf between those on top and
bottom that characterised other
</font><font color="#993300">“high”</font><font color="#FF6600">
civilisations, it is important to note that the way Crete used and
distributed its wealth was apparently markedly different.<br><br>
The Island’s economy was basically agrarian from the start. As time
passed, stock breeding, industry, and particularly trade - through a
large mercantile fleet that sailed, and apparently commanded, the entire
</font><font color="#993300">Mediterranean</font><font color="#FF6600"> -
assumed increasing importance, greatly contributing to the economic
prosperity of the country. And although the basis of social
organisation was at the beginning the matrilineal clan, somewhere around
2000 B.C.E. Cretan society became more centralised. During later
stages there is evidence of centralised governmental administration at
several Cretan palaces.<br><br>
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>But here centralisation did not
bring with it autocratic rule.</u> Nor did it entail restricting
the use of advanced technology for the benefit of <u>a powerful few</u>
or the kind of exploitation and <u>brutalisation of the masses</u> that
is so striking in other civilisations of the
time</font><font color="#FF6600">. For though there was in Crete an
affluent ruling class, there is no indication (other than in <i>later</i>
Greek myths) that it was backed up by massive armed might.<br><br>
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“The development of writing led to the
establishment of the first
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">bureaucracy</font>
<font color="#993300">”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> writes Platon,
who then comments on how governmental revenues from the island’s
increasing wealth were judiciously used to improve living conditions,
which were, even by Western standards, extraordinarily
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“modern.” “All the urban centres
had perfect drainage systems, sanitary installations, and domestic
conveniences.” </i></font><font color="#FF6600">He adds that
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“there is no doubt that extensive public
works - paid for out of the royal coffers - were undertaken in Minoan
Crete. Although only a very few remains have so far been cleared,
these have been revealing: </font><font color="#FF6600">viaducts, paved
roads, look-out posts, roadside shelters, water pipes, fountains,
reservoirs</font><font color="#993300">, etc. There is evidence of
large-scale irrigation works with canals to carry and distribute the
water.”<br><br>
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">Despite recurring earthquakes, which
completely destroyed the old palaces and twice interrupted the
development of the new palace centres, Cretan palace architecture is also
unique in civilisation. </font><font size=4 color="#993300">These
palaces are a superb blend of life-enhancing and eye-pleasing features,
rather than the <u>monuments to authority and power</u> characteristic of
Egypt and other ancient warlike and male-dominant societies.<br><br>
</font><font color="#FF6600">There were in Cretan palaces vast
courtyards, majestic facades, and hundreds of rooms laid out in the
organised
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“labyrinths”</i></font>
<font color="#FF6600"> that became a catchword for Crete in later Greek
legend. In these labyrinthine buildings were many apartments laid
out over several stories, at different heights, arranged asymmetrically
round a central courtyard. There were special rooms for religious
worship. The courtiers had their own quarters in the palace or
occupied attractive houses nearby. There were also quarters for the
domestic staff of the palace. Long lines of store-rooms with
connecting corridors were used for the orderly safekeeping of food
reserves and treasures. And vast halls with rows of elegant columns
were used for audiences, receptions, banquets, and council
meetings.’<br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> this was an extremely evolutionary
society WITHOUT the male/military/exploitive dominance that the other
so-called ‘civilisations’ claim to have CAUSED evolution.<br><br>
</font><font color="#FF6600">Gardens were an essential feature of all
Minoan architecture. So were the design of buildings for privacy,
good natural light, and domestic convenience and, perhaps above all, the
attention to detail and beauty.
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“Both local and imported materials were
used,”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> writes Platon,
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“all worked with meticulous care: gypsum
and tufa pilasters and tiles, perfectly bonded composed facades, walls,
light-wells and courtyards. Partitions were decorated with plaster,
with murals in many cases, and with marble facings... Not only the
walls but often the ceilings and floors were decorated with paintings,
even in villas and country houses and simple town dwellings... The
subjects were drawn mainly from marine and land plants, religious
ceremonies, and the gay life of the court and the people. The
worship of nature pervaded everything.”<br>
</i></font><font color="#FF00FF">>> there were NO depictions of
arms or battles.<br><br>
<br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=5 color="#993300">A Unique
Civilisation<br>
</font></div>
<font color="#FF6600">The great palace of
</font><font color="#993300">Knossos</font><font color="#FF6600">, famous
for its grand stone staircase, its colonnaded verandas, and splendid
reception suite, is also typical of Minoan culture in the aesthetic
rather than monumental emphasis of its throne room and royal apartments,
perhaps expressive of what the cultural historian Jacquetta Hawkes calls
the </font><font color="#993300"><i>“feminine
spirit”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> of Cretan architecture.<br><br>
Knossos, which may have had </font><font size=4 color="#993300">a hundred
thousand inhabitants</font><font color="#FF6600">, was connected to the
south coast ports by a fine paved highway,
</font><font color="#993300"><u>the first of its kind in
Europe</u></font><font color="#FF6600">. Its streets, like those of
other palace centres, were paved and drained, fronted with neat 2- or
3-floor houses, flat-roofed, sometimes with a penthouse for use on hot
summer nights.<br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> sounds better than Rome today after
2000 years of male supremacy.<br><br>
</font><font color="#FF6600">Hawkes describes the inner towns surrounding
the palaces as </font><font color="#993300"><i>“well designed for
civilised living,”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> and Platon
characterises the “private life” of the period as having
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“attained a high degree of refinement and
comfort.”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> As Platon sums it up:
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“The houses were adapted to all practical
needs of life, and an attractive environment was created around them. The
Minoans were very close to nature, and their architecture was designed to
let them enjoy it as freely as possible.”<br><br>
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">Cretan clothing was also typically
designed for both aesthetic effect and practicality, allowing freedom of
movement. Physical exercise and sports involved both men and women
and were enjoyed as entertainment. As for food, a wide range of
crops were cultivated, which along with
</font><font color="#993300">stock breeding, fishing,
beekeeping</font><font color="#FF6600">, and
</font><font color="#993300">wine pressing</font><font color="#FF6600">
made available a healthy and varied diet. <br><br>
Entertainment and religion were often intertwined, making Cretan leisure
activities both pleasurable and meaningful.
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“Music, singing, and dancing added to the
pleasures of life,” </i></font><font color="#FF6600">writes Platon.
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“There were frequent public ceremonies,
mostly religious, accompanied by processions, banquets, and acrobatic
displays performed in theatres built for the purpose or in wooden
arenas.”<br><br>
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">Another scholar, Reynold Higgins, sums
up this aspect of Cretan life as follows:
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><i><u>“Religion for the Cretans was a
happy affair</u></font><font color="#993300">, and was celebrated in
palace-shrines, or else in open-air sanctuaries on the tops of mountains
and in sacred caves... Their religion was closely bound up with
their recreation. First in importance were the bull-sports, where
which young men <u>and women</u> working in teams would take it in turn
to grasp the horn of a charging bull and somersault over its back.”<br>
</i></font><font color="#FF00FF">>> we wouldn’t even let them play
football till a few years ago.<br><br>
</font><font color="#FF6600">The equal partnership between women and men
that seems to have characterised Minoan society is perhaps nowhere so
vividly illustrated as in these sacred bull-games, where young women and
men performed together and entrusted their lives to each other.
These rituals, </font><font color="#993300"><i>“which combined
excitement, skill, and religious
fervour”,</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> also appear to have been
characteristic of the Minoan spirit in another important respect; they
were </font><font size=4 color="#993300">designed not only for individual
pleasure or salvation but <u>to invoke the divine power to bring
well-being to the entire society</u>. <br><br>
</font><font color="#FF6600">Once again, it is important to stress that
Crete was not an ideal society or utopia but a
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">real human
society</font><font color="#FF6600">, complete with problems and
imperfections. It was a society that developed thousands of years
ago, when there was still nothing like science as we know it, when the
processes of nature were still generally explained - and dealt with -
through animistic beliefs and propitiatory rites. Moreover, it was
a society functioning and continuing to evolve
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">amidst an increasingly warlike
world</font><font color="#FF6600">.<br><br>
We know, for example, that the Cretans had weapons - some, like their
beautifully adorned daggers, of great technical excellence. Most
probably as warfare and piracy increased in the Mediterranean they also
fought sea battles, both to preserve their vast maritime commerce and to
protect their shores. But, in contrast to other high civilisations
of the time, Cretan art does not idealise warfare. Even the
Goddess’s famous double axe symbolised the bounteous fruitfulness of the
earth. Shaped like the hoe axes used to clear land for the planting
of crops, it was also a stylisation of the butterfly, one of the
Goddess’s symbols of transformation and rebirth.<br><br>
Neither are there any indications that Crete’s material resources were -
as they are in our modern world, and daily more overwhelmingly so -
heavily invested in technologies of destruction. On the contrary,
the evidence is that Cretan wealth was primarily invested in living
harmoniously and aesthetically. As Platon writes:
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“The whole of life was pervaded by an
ardent faith in the goddess Nature, the source of all creation and
harmony.<br><br>
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>“This led to a love of peace, a
horror of tyranny, and a respect for the
law.</u></font><font color="#993300"> Even among the ruling
classes personal ambition seems to have been unknown;
</font><font size=5 color="#993300">nowhere do we find the name of an
author attached to a work of art nor a record of the deeds of a
ruler.”<br>
</i></font><font color="#FF00FF">>> this reduced (or elevated) me
to tears when i read it.<br><br>
</font><font color="#FF6600">In <i>our</i> time, when
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“a love of peace, a horror of tyranny,
and a respect for the law”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> may be
required for our survival, the differences between the spirit of Crete
and that of its neighbours are of </font><font color="#993300"><u>more
than academic interest</u></font><font color="#FF6600">. In the
Cretan </font><font color="#993300"><u>towns without military
fortifications</u></font><font color="#FF6600">, in the
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“unprotected”</i></font>
<font color="#FF6600"> villas on the edge of the sea, and in the lack of
any sign that the various city-states within the island fought one
another or embarked on aggressive wars (in sharp contrast to the walled
cities and chronic warfare that were elsewhere already the norm),
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>we find this firm confirmation
from our past that our hopes for peaceful human coexistence are not, as
we are so often told, “utopian
dreams</u>.”</font><font color="#FF6600"> <br><br>
And in the mythical images of Crete - the Goddess as Mother of the
universe, and humans, animals, plants, water, and sky as her
manifestations here on earth - we find the recognition of our oneness
with nature, a theme that is rapidly also re-emerging today as
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">a prerequisite for ecological
survival.<br><br>
<br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=5 color="#993300">The Power of
Power?<br>
</font></div>
<font color="#FF6600">But what is perhaps most noteworthy in terms of the
relationship of society and ideology is that, particularly in its earlier
Minoan period, Cretan art appears to reflect a society in which
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>power is not equated with
dominance, destruction, and
oppression</u></font><font color="#FF6600">. In the words of
Jacquetta Hawkes, </font><font color="#993300"><i>“the idea of a warrior
monarch triumphing in the humiliation and slaughter of the enemy is here
absent. In Crete, where hallowed rulers commanded wealth and power
and lived in splendid palaces, there was hardly a trace of these
manifestations of manly pride and unthinking cruelty.”<br><br>
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">A remarkable feature of Cretan culture
is that there are here </font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>no statues
or reliefs of those who sat on the thrones of Knossos or of any of the
palaces</u></font><font color="#FF6600">. Besides the fresco of the
Goddess - or perhaps a queenly priestess - at the centre of a
gift-bearing procession, there seem to be no royal portrayals of any kind
until the latest phase. And even then, the sole possible exception,
the painted relief sometimes identified as the young prince, shows a
long-haired youth, unarmed, naked to the waist, crowned with peacock
plumes and walking among flowers and butterflies.<br><br>
Equally striking, and revealing, is the absence in Minoan art of any
grandiose scenes of battle or of hunting, a total absence of the
manifestations of the all-powerful male ruler that are so widespread at
this time and at this stage of cultural development as to be almost
universal <br><br>
This too is the conclusion of the cultural anthropologist Ruby
Rohrlich-Leavift. Writing of Crete from a feminist perspective, she
points out that it is modern archaeologists who have dubbed the young man
just described as the </font><font color="#993300"><i>“young
prince”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> or the
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“priest-king”</i></font>
<font color="#FF6600"> when, in fact, no single representation of a king
or a dominant male god has yet been found. She also observes that
the absence of idealisations of male violence and destructive power in
Cretan art goes hand in hand with the fact that this was a society where
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><i>“peace endured for 1,500 years
both at home and abroad in an age of incessant warfare. “<br><br>
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">These still largely ignored data about
pre-patriarchal civilisation provide us with some fascinating clues on
the origins of much that we value in Western civilisation.
Especially fascinating is how our modern belief that government should be
representative of the interests of the people seems to have been
foreshadowed in Minoan Crete </font><font color="#993300"><u>long before
the so-called birth of democracy in classical Greek
times</u></font><font color="#FF6600">. Moreover, the emerging
modern conceptualisation of </font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>power
as responsibility rather than domination</u></font><font color="#FF6600">
likewise seems to be a re-emergence of earlier views.<br><br>
For what the evidence indicates is that in Crete
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>power was primarily equated with
the responsibility of motherhood</u></font><font color="#FF6600"> rather
than with the exaction of obedience to a male-dominant elite through
force or the fear of force. This is the definition of power
characteristic of the </font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>partnership
model of society</u></font><font color="#FF6600">, in which women and
traits associated with women are not systematically devalued. And
this is the definition of power that still prevailed in Crete as its
social and technological evolution became more complex, profoundly
affecting its cultural evolution.<br><br>
The assertion that the city-state, or what some modern scholars call
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“statism,”</i></font>
<font color="#FF6600"> structurally requires warfare, hierarchism, and
the subjugation of women is thus
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><u>not borne
out</u></font><font color="#FF6600">. In the city-states of Crete
legendary for their wealth, superb arts and crafts, and flourishing
trade, it is notable that new technologies, and with them a larger and
more complex scale of social organisation including increasing
specialisation, </font><font color="#993300"><u>did not bring about any
deterioration in the status of women.<br><br>
</u></font><font color="#FF6600">On the contrary, in Minoan Crete role
redistributions accompanying technological change appear to have
<i>strengthened</i> rather than <i>weakened</i> the status of
women. Because here there was no fundamental, social and
ideological change, the new roles required by technological advances did
<i>not</i> bring about the kind of historical discontinuity we see
elsewhere. In the societies of southern Mesopotamia we find rigid
social stratification and constant warfare by about 3500 B.C.E., along
with the declining status of women. In Minoan Crete, although
urbanisation and social stratification existed, warfare was absent and
the status of women did not decline.<br><br>
<br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=5 color="#993300">The Invisibility
of the Obvious<br>
</font></div>
<font color="#FF6600">Under the prevailing paradigm, where <i>ranking</i>
is the primary organisational principle, if women have high status the
inference is that men’s status must be lower. Evidence of
matrilineal inheritance and descent, with a woman as supreme deity, and
priestesses and queens with temporal power, is interpreted as indicating
a
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“matriarchal”</i></font>
<font color="#FF6600"> society. But this conclusion is wholly
unwarranted by the archaeological evidence. Nor does it follow from
the high status of Cretan women that Cretan men had a status comparable
to that of women in male-dominant social systems.<br><br>
In Minoan Crete the entire relationship between the sexes - not only
definitions and valuations of gender roles but also attitudes toward
sensuality and sex - was obviously very different from ours. For
example, the bare-breasted style of dress for women and the skimpy
clothes emphasizing the genitals for men demonstrate a frank appreciation
of sexual differences and </font><font size=4 color="#993300">the
pleasure made possible by these
differences</font><font color="#FF6600">. From what we now know
through modern humanistic psychology, this
</font><font size=4 color="#993300"><i>“pleasure
bond”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> would have strengthened a sense of
mutuality between women and men as individuals.<br><br>
The Cretans’ more natural attitudes toward sex would also have had other
consequences equally difficult to perceive under the prevailing paradigm,
wherein religious dogma often views sex as more sinful than
violence. As Hawkes writes, </font><font color="#993300"><i>“The
Cretans seem to have reduced and diverted their aggressiveness through a
free and well-balanced sexual
life.”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> Along with their enthusiasm
for sports and dancing and their creativity and love of life, these
liberated attitudes toward sex seem to have contributed to the generally
peaceful and harmonious spirit predominant in Cretan life.<br><br>
In going through most of the literature on Crete, one is chronically
reminded of Charles Darwin’s curious footnote to <i>The Descent of
Man</i>. When writing a section on racial differences for this
scientific classic, Darwin recalled that when he was in Egypt he had
thought that the features of a statue of the pharaoh Amunoph UI were
remarkably negroid. But having said this, even in a mere footnote,
he immediately qualified what he had seen with his own eyes - and which
has since been firmly established - that there were in Egypt
</font><font size=4 color="#993300">black
pharaohs</font><font color="#FF6600">. Though by his own account
his observations were further verified by two people who were with him at
the time, he felt compelled to cite two well-known authorities on the
subject, J. C. Nott and George R. Gliddon, who in their book <i>Types of
Mankind</i> had described the features of pharaohs as
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“superbly
European”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> and maintained that the statue
in question was definitely not of </font><font color="#993300"><i>“Negro
intermixture.”<br><br>
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">We have already remarked similar
incidents of this kind relating to the evidence for women pharaohs, for
example, Meryet-Nit and Nit-Hotep. But while in Egyptology one
finds this kind of authoritative blindness here and there, in most of the
scholarly literature about Crete it is all-pervasive, at every turn
deflecting, rendering invisible or at best trivialising the exceptionally
clear message of Cretan art. Long after Darwin, when more statues
and much more clear visual evidence of the historical existence of black
rulers was discovered, the experts (overwhelmingly white males, of
course) still asserted there definitely could be no
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“Negro
intermixture.”</i></font><font color="#FF6600"> In the same way,
the striking evidence of the essential difference that sets Crete apart
from other societies is still regularly either denied or glossed over by
most scholars.<br><br>
The central role played by women in Cretan society is so striking that
from the very first discovery of Minoan culture scholars have been unable
to ignore it completely. Like Darwin, however, they have felt
compelled to fit what they saw with their own eyes into the prevailing
ideology. For example, when Sir Arthur Evans began excavating on
the island in the early 1900s he recognised that the Cretans worshiped a
female deity. He also saw that Cretan art portrayed what he called
</font><font color="#993300">“scenes of feminine
confidence.”</font><font color="#FF6600"> But in commenting on
these scenes, Evans felt compelled to immediately equate them with
nothing more than what he termed the feminine
</font><font color="#993300"><i>“tittle-tattle”</i></font>
<font color="#FF6600"> of </font><font color="#993300"><i>“society
scandals.”<br><br>
</i></font><font color="#FF6600">So again and again we see how under the
prevailing paradigm our real past - and the original thrust of our
cultural evolution - can only be seen as through a glass darkly.
But once we are face to face with the full import of what this past
foreshadowed - what we, at our level of technological and social
development, could have been and still can be - we confront a haunting
question. </font><font size=4 color="#993300">What brought about
the radical change in cultural direction, the shift that plunged us from
a social order upheld by the
</font><font size=4 color="#FF6600">Chalice</font>
<font size=4 color="#993300"> to one dominated by the
</font><font size=4 color="#FF6600">Blade</font>
<font size=4 color="#993300">? When and how did this happen?
And what does this cataclysmic change tell us about our past - and our
future?<br>
</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">UP!<br><br>
</font><div align="center">
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=7 color="#000080"><b>
Biocosm</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=7 color="#33CCCC">
-
</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=6 color="#33CCCC"><i>
Intelligent Life</i> Is The <i>Architect</i> Of The Universe!<br>
</font></div>
<font color="#808080"><b><x-tab>
</x-tab><x-tab>
</x-tab>\\)))))/<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>
___,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,,</b>__</font><font color="#FF00FF">fraser<br>
</font><b><i>I became an atheist when i reached my teens in the late
1950s. Though I’ve known for the last 3 decades that there’s an
Intelligent Creator behind this world I think I made the right decision
at that time, based on the <u>facts available</u>. Why?
Because nothing in the news at that time pointed towards anything
remotely resembling a white bearded Creator who watched over his
creations. Nothing - except maybe a Dad, of course, but I wasn’t
looking there.<br><br>
So I consider I made a sensible decision at that time, and so did
everyone else, if they did.<br><br>
BUT the situation today is <u>entirely different</u>, and I do not
believe, if I was a teenager now, I would become an atheist. More
likely I would have grown up steeped in atheism. Indeed I would
have studied in a school which was more or less prohibited from teaching
any world model other than the purely materialistic. For, during my
lifetime, atheism has established itself as more or less the smart
established religion of the day which people rarely bother to
question indeed it’s become the conformist position.
<br><br>
If I looked at the news, however, and the latest discoveries coming in
every day (largely through the internet), the sensible conclusion would
be that we live in a world created by a Higher Intelligence.
</i><font size=1>[SEE ARTICLE BELOW]<br><br>
</font><i>For consider: are not humans daily taking control of the
creation business themselves, from genetically modified foods and
animals, test tube births, cloning, virtual reality and so on? But
is it not particularly clear that humanity is on the edge of creating
worlds and peopling them with inhabitants which can be observed (and
experimented with)? Already computer programs exist within which
‘entities’ have been evolving for generations. You may argue about
time but the idea of Science creating worlds wherein actual people will
live and evolve, without awareness of our Creator Observation, seems
inevitable.<br><br>
</i>(Where would the space be to allow people like us to experience a
whole universe around them? It will probably be through a program
in their brains which projects a virtual model of reality. And who
would deny that the universe <i>we</i> experience ‘out there’ is not
exactly the same thing?! Certainly the cosmological edge of Science
is reaching these situations.)<br><br>
<i>Today, therefore, if I looked at the world and the information coming
in, I think the most obvious assumption would be that, if our species can
create and observe Life, then <font color="#FF00FF">WE ARE PROBABLY IN
THE SAME POSITION!</font> I mean, this would be the sensible
conclusion. And anyone with a different view would have the task of
persuading a reasonable person otherwise.<br><br>
Since today’s scientists rarely attempt this, of course, I have come to
perceive them as equivalent to the army of well appointed, comfortable
priests who felt under no obligation (moral, and certainly not legal!) to
question or justify their fundamental philosophical positions. Or
even as rebels who hide their personal conclusions for fear of anathema
and excommunication from their ‘church’ with loss of funding,
social prestige, and all the rest of it. <br><br>
<font size=4 color="#FF00FF">But here’s the STORY.</font> Today’s
cosmologists have been observing the world we live in for centuries now,
with increasingly powerful lenses. And, despite the fact that the
‘scientific’ method is so restricted as to be <u>incapable</u> of PROVING
anything about the Cosmos that’s deeper than the speed of a falling
apple, you will <font color="#FF00FF">EVENTUALLY</font> begin to
<font color="#FF00FF">bang up against its hard edges</font>, its
fundamental foundations. <br><br>
For the world is NOT relative that’s just the outdated einsteinism
that’s finally captured the public imagination, much to its
detriment. No, for scientists are now hitting up against the sides
of the bowl of the extremely carefully modelled world in which we are
confined. AND, far from seeing this and reconsidering their view in
the light of these amazing discoveries, THEY ARE STRUGGLING IN EVER MORE
DESPERATE WAYS TO KEEP AN INTELLIGENT CREATOR OUT OF THE
PICTURE.<br><br>
Whether you’re an atheist or not, of course, this must be regarded as
GOOD NEWS! To freely discover (not being TOLD by corrupted Old Tyme
religions which had to go!) that we live in an Intelligent Universe is
much saner & healthier for our society than the current mass
‘education’ in an Accidental World without Purpose. Look at the
alienation which surrounds us today, the blatant materialism, the greed,
the cult of celebrity, the scorn for the most disenfranchised fellow
souls among us. <br><br>
Yes, if the new information </i><font size=1>[BELOW]</font><i> is
pointing to a world that is possibly NOT Accidental, then it is surely
healthier (for everyone) to <font size=4><u>assume</u></font> that it is
Intelligent.<br><br>
<br>
</i><div align="center">
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=7 color="#33CCCC">Biocosm -
</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=6 color="#33CCCC">
Intelligent Life’s the <i><u>Architect</u></i> of the Universe!<br>
</font><font size=4 color="#000080"><i> ‘60s mystics welcome the
arrival of the latest scientific theory of evolution and of a new breed
of scientists who are bumping up against the hard foundations of the
World, and are now facing the Question we mystics have been exploring
these past 50 years. The
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">Biocosm</font>
<font size=4 color="#000080"> theory, their latest attempt, comes
closest, though it’s designed to keep Goddess out of the picture.<br>
</i></font></div>
<div align="right">by <font color="#0000FF"><b><u>James N.
Gardner</u></font> [remix]<br><br>
<font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><i>“The more I examine the universe and
study the detail<br>
of its architecture, the more evidence I find<br>
that it in some sense knew we were coming.”<br>
</i></font><font color="#FF00FF">>> i have long suspected that the
Supreme Intelligence <i>sketched</i> in our universe,<br>
but, as we its inhabitants search deeper into the foundations,<br>
She is forced to fill in greater and greater detail.<br>
Molecules not the smallest bits? Well, here’s atoms.<br>
They’ve seen past atoms, chuck in some quarks. Still coming?<br>
Then give ‘em dark matter, that should slow ‘em down for a
while.<br><br>
</font><font size=4 color="#FF0000"><u>IMPORTANT
ADVICE:</u></font><font color="#FF0000"> WHEN READING THIS ARTICLE,
DO NOT BE OVERWHELMED BY YOUR LIFELONG<br>
CULTURAL CONDITIONING THAT THIS KINDA STUFF IS BEYOND YOU.
THE <i><u>OPPOSITE</u></i> IS THE CASE. YOU ARE FAR MORE LIKELY TO
UNDERSTAND HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS THAN SOME SCIENTIST IN A WHITE APRON
LOOKING INTO A COMPUTER SCREEEN. HONEST.<br>
DON’T LET THEIR LANGUAGE INTIMIDATE YOU :)<br><br>
</font></div>
<font color="#000080">Cosmologist Paul Davies calls it the
</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#33CCCC">Biggest of
the Big Questions</font><font color="#000080"><b>. Columbia
physicist Brian Greene says it's the deepest question in all of
Science. <br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> and hippies exploring Reality in
the ‘60s KNEW it was the Greatest of them all, and turned their research
towards Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies which had been exploring
the area for thousands of years.<br>
</font><font color="#000080">The question is more profound, more
fundamental, less tractable than the mystery of life’s origin, or the
inscrutable manner in which consciousness emerges from the interaction
and interconnection of neurons in the human skull, or even the future
course of biological and cultural evolution on planet Earth.<br>
The Question is this: <br>
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">By what Accident or Design does the
Universe turn out to be so life-friendly? <br>
</font><font size=6 color="#000080">Life-friendly?!</font>
<font color="#000080"> I hear you ask incredulously. The
universe is <i>life-friendly</i>? Like hell it is!<br>
Due to our official diet of Un-intelligence & Meaninglessness, we
have been taught since childhood that the universe is a hostile
place. Violent black holes, planets and moons searing with
unbearable heat or deep-frozen at temperatures that make Antarctica look
tropical, and the vastness of interstellar space dooming us to perpetual
physical isolation from our nearest starry neighbours - this is the
depressing picture of the cosmos that dominates the popular
imagination.<br>
But it’s
</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#33CCCC">profoundly
wrong</font><font color="#000080"><b> at a
</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#33CCCC">
fundamental</font><font color="#000080"><b> level. As astonished
scientists are now beginning to realise, the truly amazing thing about
our universe is how strangely and improbably
</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=4 color="#33CCCC">
anthropic</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF9900">
</font><font color="#000080"><b>(life-friendly) it is. Indeed a
multitude of factors are actually fine-tuned with
</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#33CCCC"><u>
fantastic exactitude</u></font><font color="#000080"><b> to a degree that
renders the cosmos almost
</font><font size=4 color="#000080">spookily</font><font color="#000080">
bio-friendly.<br>
As Cambridge evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris puts it in his
new book <i>Life’s Solution</i>, </font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“On a
cosmic scale, it is now widely appreciated that even trivial differences
in the starting conditions of the Cosmos would lead to an
</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#33CCCC"><u>
unrecognisable and uninhabitable universe</u>.”<br>
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=4 color="#33CCCC">
1.</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#33CCCC">
</i></font><font size=4 color="#000080"><b>The Rate Of Cosmic
Expansion.</font><font color="#000080">
</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#33CCCC"><u>I</font>
<b>f the Big Bang had detonated with slightly
<font color="#000080"><i>greater</i></font><font color="#33CCCC"> force,
the cosmos would be essentially empty by now. Had the primordial
explosion propelled the initial payload of cosmic raw materials outward
with slightly
</font><font color="#000080"><i>less</i></font><font color="#33CCCC">
force, the universe would long ago have re-collapsed in a Big
Crunch</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#33CCCC">
. In neither case would human beings or other life forms have had
time to evolve.<br>
</u></font><font color="#000080"><b>As Stephen Hawking asks,
</font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“Why is the universe so close to the
dividing line between collapsing again and expanding indefinitely?
In order to be as close as we are now, the rate of expansion early on had
to be chosen fantastically accurately.”</i> <br>
</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=4 color="#33CCCC"><i>
2.</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF9900">
</i></font><font size=4 color="#000080"><b>Stellar
nucleosynthesis</font><font color="#000080">,
</font><font color="#33CCCC">the process by which simple elements like
hydrogen and helium are transmuted into heavier elements in the hearts of
giant supernovae - to yield copious quantities of
</font><font color="#000080">carbon</font><font color="#33CCCC">, the
chemical epicentre of life as we know it.<br>
As British astronomer Fred Hoyle pointed out, in order for carbon to
exist in the abundant quantities that we observe throughout the cosmos,
the mechanism of </font><font color="#000080">stellar
nucleosynthesis</font><font color="#33CCCC"> must be exquisitely
fine-tuned in a very special way.<br>
</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=4 color="#33CCCC"><i>
3.</i></font><font color="#000080"><b> Physical dimensionality of
our universe. Why are there just 3 extended dimensions of space
rather one or two or even the ten spatial dimensions contemplated by
M-theory? As has been known for more than a century, in any other
dimensional set-up, </font><font color="#33CCCC"><u>stable planetary
orbits would be impossible and life would not have time to get started
before planets skittered off into deep space or plunged into their
suns</u>.<br>
</font><font color="#000080">For centuries, it seemed that the
dimensionality of the universe - 3 dimensions of space plus one dimension
of time - was a matter of axiomatic truth. Rather like the
propositions of geometry. In fact, <i>precisely</i> like the
propositions of geometry. That was before the birth of
</font><font color="#33CCCC">superstring
theory</font><font color="#000080">, and its successor,
</font><font color="#33CCCC">M-theory</font><font color="#000080"> which
insist on the fact that there are, in fact, <i>ten</i> dimensions of
space and one dimension of time. The mystery is why only three of
the spatial dimensions got inflated into cosmic proportions by the Big
Bang while the remaining seven stayed inconceivably minuscule. If
anything else had happened - if only 2 spatial dimensions had been
inflated or if 4 had been inflated - then <u>the universe would not have
been set up to allow the emergence of life and mind</u> as we know
them.<br><br>
</font><div align="center">
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=5 color="#33CCCC">The Anthropic
Cosmological Principle<br>
</font></div>
<font color="#000080">Collectively, this stunning set of coincidences
render the universe </font><font size=4 color="#000080"><u>eerily fit for
life and intelligence</u>. <br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> u could just call it Intelligent,
of course, but scientists are now busily scurrying around to explain why
a Higher Intelligence who planned the whole thing for a purpose is not
the <i>‘simplest and most obvious explanation’</i> requiring the least
assumptions.<br>
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><i>“There are deep connections
between stars and atoms, between the cosmos and the microworld.... Our
emergence and survival depend on very special ‘tuning’ of the
cosmos.”</i></font><font color="#000080"> British Astronomer
Royal Sir Martin Rees.<br>
For all the above coincidences (and more!) are built into the fundamental
fabric of our reality. WE COULD NOT BE HERE IF THEY WERE NOT IN
PLACE!<br>
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><i>“It is not only that man is
adapted to the universe. The universe is adapted to man. Imagine a
universe in which one or another of the fundamental dimensionless
constants of physics is altered by a few percent one way or the
other? Man could never come into being in such a
universe.”</i></font><font color="#000080"> Princeton physicist
John Wheeler.<br>
Scientists have been uneasily aware of this set of puzzles for decades
and have given it name - </font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">the
anthropic cosmological principle -</font><font size=4 color="#FF9900">
</font><font color="#000080">but there’s a new urgency to the quest for a
plausible explanation because of two very recent discoveries. One
of these is at nature’s largest scale and the second at its tiniest.<br>
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">Dark
Energy</font><font color="#33CCCC">.
</font><font color="#000080">The discovery of dark energy, which resulted
from the observations of supernovae at extreme distances, showed,
<i>contrary to all expectations</i>, that the expansion of the universe
was <u>speeding up</u>, <i>not</i> slowing down. No one knows what
is causing this phenomenon.<br>
But for our purposes, what is <i>particularly</i> puzzling is why the
strength of dark energy - which the new Wilkinson microwave probe has
revealed to be the predominant constituent of our cosmos - is so
vanishingly small, yet not quite zero. <u>If it were even a tad
<i>stronger</i>, you see, the universe would have been emptied long
ago</u>, scrubbed clean of stars and galaxies well before life and
intelligence could evolve.<br>
The second discovery occurred in the realm of
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">M-theory</font><font color="#000080">
, whose previous incarnation was known as
</font><font color="#33CCCC">superstring
theory</font><font color="#000080">. M-theory posits that subatomic
particles like quarks, electrons and neutrinos are really just different
modes of vibration of tiny one-dimensional strings of energy. But
what is truly strange about M-theory is that it allows a vast landscape
of possible vibration modes of superstrings, only a tiny fraction of
which correspond to anything like the sub-atomic particle world we
observe and that is described by what is known as the
</font><font color="#33CCCC">Standard Model</font><font color="#000080">
of particle physics.<br>
Just how big is this landscape of possible alternative models of particle
physics allowed by M-theory? According to Stanford physicist and
superstring pioneer Leonard Susskind, the mathematical landscape is
horrifyingly gigantic, permitting
10</font><font size=1 color="#000080"><sup>500</sup></font>
<font color="#000080"> power different and distinct environments, none of
which appears to be mathematically favoured, let alone foreordained by
the theory. And </font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><u>in virtually
none of those other mathematically permissible environments would matter
and energy have possessed the qualities that are necessary for stars,
galaxies and carbon-based living creatures to have emerged from the
primordial chaos.<br>
</u></font><font color="#000080">This is, as Susskind says, an
intellectual cataclysm of the first magnitude because it seems to deprive
our most promising new theory of fundamental physics -
</font><font color="#33CCCC">M-theory</font><font color="#000080"> - of
the power to uniquely predict the emergence of anything remotely
resembling our universe. As Susskind puts it, the picture of the
universe that is emerging from the deep mathematical recesses of
</font><font color="#33CCCC">M-theory</font><font color="#000080"> is not
an </font><font color="#33CCCC">“elegant
universe”</font><font color="#000080"> at all! It’s a Rube Goldberg
device, cobbled together by some unknown process in a supremely
improbable manner that just happens to render the whole ensemble
miraculously fit for life. <br>
In the words of University of California theoretical physicist Steve
Giddings, </font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“No longer can we follow the
dream of discovering the unique equations that predict everything we see,
and writing them on a single page.”</i>
</font><font color="#000080">Or a tee-shirt!
</font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“Predicting the constants of nature
becomes a messy environmental problem, with the complications of
biology.”</i></font><font color="#000080"> <br>
This really is, as Brian Greene says, the deepest problem in all of
science. It really is, as Paul Davies says,
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">the biggest of the Big
Questions</font><font color="#000080">: <br>
</font><div align="right"><font size=1 color="#808080">
(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)
(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)<br>
</font><font size=1 color="#993300">T</font><font size=1 color="#FF6600">
E</font><font size=1 color="#3366FF">X</font><font size=1 color="#FF6600">
T
</font><font size=1 color="#993300">J</font><font size=1 color="#339966">
O</font><font size=1 color="#FF00FF">C</font><font size=1 color="#3366FF">
K</font><font size=1 color="#FF00FF">E</font><font size=1 color="#3366FF">
Y //</font><font color="#FF00FF"> </font><font size=1 color="#FF00FF">TJ
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</font><font size=1 color="#993300">KEYBOARD<br>
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</font><font size=1 color="#993300">Ideas Per Paragraph<br>
</font><font size=1 color="#CC99FF"><u>TO SUBSCRIBE
SOMEONE</u></font><font size=1 color="#FF00FF">,
WRITE</font><font color="#3366FF"> </font><font size=1 color="#FF00FF">I
wanna get UP!</font><font color="#3366FF">
</font><font size=1 color="#FF00FF">TO</font><font color="#800080">
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<br>
</font></div>
<div align="center">
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=5 color="#33CCCC">Why <i>Is</i>
The Universe Life-Friendly?<br>
</font></div>
<font color="#000080">If we put to one side theological approaches to
this ultimate issue, three basic approaches are available. Two are
familiar while the third is radically novel.<br>
The </font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><u>first
approach</u></font><font color="#33CCCC"> </font><font color="#000080">is
to continue searching patiently for a unique final theory - something you
really could write on your tee-shirt like E =
mc</font><font size=1 color="#000080"><sup>2 -
</sup></font><font color="#000080">which might yet, against the odds,
emerge from
</font><font color="#33CCCC">M-theory</font><font color="#000080"> or one
of its competitors aspiring to the status of a so-called
</font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“Theory of
Everything.”</i></font><font color="#000080"> This is the fond hope
of virtually every professional theoretical physicist, including those
who have been driven to desperation by the horrendously messy and complex
landscape of
</font><font color="#33CCCC">M-theory</font><font color="#000080">
-allowed universes which distresses Susskind and other superstring
theorists. Perhaps the laws and constants of nature will, in the
end, turn out to be uniquely specified by mathematics and thus subject to
no conceivable variation. Perhaps the ultimate equations will
someday slide out of the mind of a new colossus of physics as slickly and
beautifully as E =
mc</font><font size=1 color="#000080"><sup>2</sup></font>
<font color="#000080"> emerged from Einstein’s brain. Perhaps,
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><u>but that appears to be an
increasingly unlikely prospect.<br>
</u></font><font color="#000080">A
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><u>second
approach</u></font><font color="#000080">, born of desperation, is to
overlay a refinement of Big Bang inflation theory called eternal chaotic
inflation with an explanatory approach that has been traditionally
reviled by most scientists which is known as the weak anthropic
principle. The weak anthropic principle merely states in
tautological fashion that since human observers inhabit this particular
universe, it must perforce be life-friendly or it would not contain any
observers resembling ourselves. Eternal chaotic inflation, invented
by Russian-born physicist Andrei Linde, asserts that instead of just one
Big Bang there are, always have been, and always will be, zillions of Big
Bangs going off in inaccessible regions all the time. These Big
Bangs create zillions of new universes constantly and the whole ensemble
constitutes a multiverse.<br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> this was perfectly obvious to most
psychedelicists in the 60s when everyone else swore allegiance to one Big
Bang.<br>
</font><font color="#000080">Now here’s what happens when these two ideas
- eternal chaotic inflation and the weak anthropic principle - are joined
together. In each Big Bang, the laws, constants and the
physical dimensionality of nature come out differently. In
some, dark energy is stronger. In some, dark energy is
weaker. In some, gravity is stronger. In some, gravity
is weaker. This happens, according to
</font><font color="#33CCCC">M-theory</font><font color="#000080">-based
cosmology, because the 10-dimensional physical shapes in which
superstrings vibrate evolve randomly and chaotically at the moment of
each new Big Bang. The laws and constants of nature are constantly
reshuffled by this process, like a cosmic deck of cards.<br>
And here’s the crucial part. Once in a blue moon, this random
process of eternal chaotic inflation will yield a
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">winning
hand</font><font color="#000080">, as judged from the perspective of
whether a particular new universe is
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">life-friendly</font>
<font color="#000080">. That outcome will be pure chance -
one lucky roll of the dice in an unimaginably vast cosmic crap shoot with
10</font><font size=1 color="#000080"><sup>500</sup></font>
<font color="#000080"> unfavourable outcomes for every winning turn.<br>
Our universe was a big winner, of course, in the cosmic lottery.
Our cosmos was dealt a royal flush. Here is how the eminent Nobel
laureate Steve Weinberg explained this scenario in a <i>New York Review
of Books</i> essay a couple of years ago:
</font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“The expanding cloud of billions of
galaxies that we call the big bang may be just one fragment of a much
larger universe in which big bangs go off all the time, each one with
different values for the fundamental constants. It is no more a
mystery that our particular branch of the multiverse exhibits
life-friendly characteristics than that life evolved on the hospitable
Earth rather than some horrid place, like Mercury or Pluto.”<br>
</i></font><font color="#000080">To most scientists, offering the
tautological explanation that since human observers inhabit this
particular universe, it must necessarily be life-friendly or else it
would not contain any observers resembling ourselves is anathema.
It just sounds like </font><font size=4 color="#000080">giving
up.</font><font color="#000080"> <br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=6 color="#33CCCC">A <u>Third
Approach</u> - <br>
The Biocosm<br>
</font></div>
<font color="#000080">The situation that confronts cosmologists today is
eerily reminiscent of that which faced biologists before Charles Darwin
propounded his revolutionary theory of evolution. Darwin confronted
the seemingly miraculous phenomenon of a fine-tuned natural order in
which every creature and plant appeared to occupy a unique and
well-designed niche. Refusing to surrender to the brute mystery
posed by the appearance of nature’s design, Darwin masterfully deployed
the art of metaphor to elucidate a radical hypothesis - the origin of
species through </font><font color="#33CCCC">natural
selection</font><font color="#000080"> - that explained the apparent
miracle as a natural phenomenon.<br>
The metaphor furnished by the familiar process of artificial selection
was Darwin’s crucial stepping stone. Indeed, the practice of
<i>artificial</i> selection through plant and animal breeding was the
primary intellectual model that guided Darwin in his quest to solve the
mystery of the origin of species and to demonstrate in principle the
plausibility of his theory that variation and natural selection were the
prime movers responsible for the phenomenon of speciation. <br>
So, too, today a few venturesome cosmologists have begun to use the same
poetic tool utilised by Darwin - </font><font size=5 color="#33CCCC">the
art of metaphorical thinking</font><font color="#000080"> - to develop
novel intellectual models that might offer a logical explanation for what
appears to be an unfathomable mystery:
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><u>the apparent fine-tuning of the
cosmos.<br>
</u></font><font color="#000080">The cosmological metaphor chosen by
these iconoclastic theorists is Life itself.
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">What if Life were not a cosmic
accident but the essential reality at the very heart of the elegant
machinery of the universe?</font><font color="#000080"> What if
Darwin’s principle of natural selection were merely a tiny fractal
embodiment of a universal life-giving principle that drives the evolution
of stars, galaxies, and the cosmos itself?<br>
This, as you may have guessed, is the headline summarising the
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><u>third
approach</u></font><font color="#000080"> to answering the biggest of the
Big Questions: why is the universe life-friendly? It is the
approach outlined at length in my new book
</font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>BIOCOSM</i></font><font color="#000080">
.<br>
Before I get into this third approach in more detail, I want to say
something upfront about scientific speculation. The approach I am
about to outline for you is intentionally and forthrightly
speculative. Following the example of Darwin, I have attempted to
crudely frame a radically new explanatory paradigm well before all of the
required building materials and construction tools are at hand.
<br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> what we ‘nonscientist’ scientists
are doing all the time in fact.<br>
</font><font color="#000080">Darwin had not the slightest clue, for
instance, that DNA is the molecular device used by all life-forms on
Earth to accomplish the feat of what he called
“</font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>inheritance.”</i></font>
<font color="#000080"> Indeed, as cell biologist Kenneth R. Miller
noted in <i>Finding Darwin’s God</i>,
</font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“Charles Darwin worked in almost total
ignorance of the fields we now call genetics, cell biology, molecular
biology, and biochemistry.”</i></font><font color="#000080">
Nonetheless, Darwin managed to put forward a plausible theoretical
framework that succeeded magnificently despite the fact that it was
utterly dependent on hypothesised but completely unknown mechanisms of
genetic transmission.<br>
As Darwin’s example shows, plausible and deliberate speculation plays an
essential role in the advancement of science. <br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> it is the leading edge and always
will be. Art, interestingly enough, <i>always</i> presages
technological change.<br>
</font><font color="#000080">Another important lesson drawn from Darwin’s
experience is important to note at the outset. Answering the
question of why the most eminent geologists and naturalists had, until
shortly before publication of <i>The Origin of Species</i>, disbelieved
in the mutability of species, Darwin responded that this false conclusion
was </font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“almost inevitable as long as the
history of the world was thought to be of short
duration.”</i></font><font color="#000080"> It was geologist
Charles Lyell’s speculations on the immense <i>age</i> of Earth that
provided the essential conceptual framework for Darwin’s new
theory. Lyell’s vastly expanded stretch of geological time provided
an ample temporal arena in which the forces of natural selection could
sculpt and reshape the species of Earth and achieve nearly limitless
variation.<br>
The central point is that collateral advances in sciences seemingly far
removed from cosmology can help dissipate the intellectual limitations
imposed by common sense and naïve human intuition. And, in an
uncanny reprise of the Lyell/Darwin intellectual synergy, it is a
realisation of the vastness of time and history that gives rise to the
crucial insight. Only, in <i>this</i> instance, the vastness of
which I speak is </font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><u>the vastness
of</font><font color="#000080">
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">future time and future
history</u></font><font color="#000080">. <br>
In particular, sharp attention must be paid to the key conclusion of
Princeton physicist John Wheeler: <u>most of the time available for life
and intelligence to achieve their ultimate capabilities lie in the
distant cosmic future, not in the cosmic past</u>. <br>
As cosmologist Frank Tipler bluntly stated,
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><i>“Almost all of space and time lies
in the future. By focusing attention only on the past and present,
science has ignored almost all of reality. Since the domain of
scientific study is the whole of reality, it is about time science
decided to study the future evolution of the universe.”<br>
</i></font><font color="#FF00FF">>> see megatripolis@forever of
course.<br>
</font><font color="#000080">That is exactly what I have attempted to do
in
</font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>BIOCOSM</i></font><font color="#000080">
in order to explore, in a tentative way, a possible third pathway to an
answer to the biggest of the Big Questions. I call that third pathway the
</font><font color="#33CCCC">Selfish Biocosm</font><font color="#000080">
hypothesis.<br>
Originally presented in peer-reviewed scientific papers published in
<i>Complexity</i>, <i>Acta Astronautica</i>, and the <i>Journal of the
British Interplanetary Society</i>, my
</font><font color="#33CCCC">Selfish Biocosm</font><font color="#000080">
hypothesis suggests that in attempting to explain the linkage between
life, intelligence and the anthropic qualities of the cosmos, most
mainstream scientists have, in essence, been peering through the wrong
end of the telescope. The hypothesis asserts that life and
intelligence are, in fact, </font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">the
primary cosmological phenomena</font><font color="#000080"> and that
everything else - the constants of nature, the dimensionality of the
universe, the origin of carbon and other elements in the hearts of giant
supernovas, the pathway traced by biological evolution - is
</font><font color="#33CCCC"><u>secondary and
derivative</u></font><font color="#000080">. In the words of Martin
Rees, my approach is based on the proposition that
</font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“what we call the fundamental constants -
the numbers that matter to physicists - may be secondary consequences of
the final theory, rather than direct manifestations of its deepest and
most fundamental level.”<br><br>
</i></font><div align="center"><font size=5 color="#33CCCC">The Selfish
Biocosm<br>
</font></div>
<font color="#000080">I began developing the
</font><font color="#33CCCC">Selfish Biocosm</font><font color="#000080">
hypothesis as an attempt to supply two essential elements missing from a
novel model of cosmological evolution put forward by astrophysicist Lee
Smolin. Smolin had come up with the intriguing suggestion that
black holes are gateways to new </font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“baby
universes”</i></font><font color="#000080"> and that a kind of Darwinian
population dynamic rewards those universes most adept at producing black
holes with the greatest number of progeny. Proliferating
populations of baby universes emerging from the loins (metaphorically
speaking) of black hole-rich </font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“mother
universes”</i></font><font color="#000080"> thus come to dominate the
total population of the </font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“multiverse” -
</i></font><font color="#000080">a theoretical ensemble of all mother and
baby universes. Black hole-prone universes also happen to
coincidentally exhibit anthropic qualities, according to Smolin, thus
accounting for the bio-friendly nature of the
</font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“average”</i></font><font color="#000080">
cosmos in the ensemble, more or less as an incidental side-effect.<br>
This was a thrilling conjecture because for the first time it posited a
cosmic evolutionary process endowed with what economists call a
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">utility
function</font><font color="#000080"> (i.e., a value that was maximised
by the hypothesised evolutionary process, which in the case of Smolin’s
conjecture was black hole maximisation).<br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> don’t scientists make u laff?
if God created us he must have had a USE for us :) or did u think
She just did it for a laff?!<br>
</font><font color="#000080">However, Smolin’s approach was seriously
flawed. As the computer genius John von Neumann demonstrated in a
famous 1948 Caltech lecture entitled </font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“On
the General and Logical Theory of
Automata,”</i></font><font color="#000080"> any self-reproducing object
(mouse, bacterium, human or baby universe) must, as a matter of
inexorable logic, possess four essential elements:<br>
1. A
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><i>blueprint</i></font>
<font color="#000080">, providing the plan for construction of
offspring;<br>
2. A
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><i>factory</i></font>
<font color="#000080">, to carry out the construction;<br>
3. A
</b></font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><i>controller</i></font>
<font color="#000080"><b>, to ensure that the factory follows the plan;
and<br>
4. A </font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><i>duplicating
machine</i></font><font color="#000080">, to transmit a copy of the
blueprint to the offspring.<br>
In the case of Smolin’s hypothesis, one could logically equate the
collection of physical laws and constants that prevail in our universe
with the
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">blueprint</font><font color="#000080">
and the universe at large with a kind of enormous von Neumann
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">factory</font><font color="#000080">
. But what could possibly serve as a von Neumann
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">controller</font>
<font color="#000080"> or a von Neumann
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">duplicating
machine</font><font color="#000080">? <br>
My goal was to rescue Smolin’s basic innovation - a cosmic evolutionary
model that incorporated a discernible utility function - by proposing
scientifically plausible candidates for the two missing von Neumann
elements.<br>
The hypothesis I developed was based on a set of conjectures put forward
by Martin Rees, John Wheeler, Freeman Dyson, John Barrow, Frank Tipler,
and Ray Kurzweil. Their futuristic visions suggested
collectively that the ongoing process of biological and technological
evolution was sufficiently robust, powerful, and open-ended that, in the
very distant future, a cosmologically extended biosphere could
conceivably exert a global influence on the physical state of the entire
cosmos. Think of this idea as the
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">Gaia</font><font color="#000080">
principle extended universe-wide.<br>
A synthesis of these insights lead me directly to the central claim of
the </font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">Selfish
Biocosm</font><font color="#000080"> hypothesis: that the ongoing process
of biological and technological emergence, governed by still largely
unknown laws of complexity, could function as a von Neumann
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">controller</font>
<font color="#000080"> and that a cosmologically extended biosphere could
serve as a von Neumann </font><font size=5 color="#33CCCC">duplicating
machine</font><font color="#000080"> in a conjectured process of
cosmological replication.<br>
I went on to speculate that the means by which the hypothesised
cosmological replication process could occur was through the fabrication
of baby universes by highly evolved intelligent life forms. These
hypothesised baby universes would themselves be endowed with a cosmic
code - an ensemble of physical laws and constants - that would be
life-friendly so as to enable life and ever more competent intelligence
to emerge and eventually to repeat the cosmic reproduction cycle.
Under this scenario, the physical laws and constants serve a cosmic
function precisely analogous to that of DNA in earthly creatures: they
furnish </font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">a recipe for the birth and
evolution of intelligent life and a blueprint, which provides the plan
for construction of offspring.<br>
</font><font color="#000080">Now, at this point you are probably saying
to yourself, </font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“Wow, with a theory that
crazy and radical, this Gardner fellow must have been shunned by the
scientific establishment.” </i></font><font color="#000080">And
indeed some mainstream scientists have commented that the ideas advanced
in my book
</font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>BIOCOSM</i></font><font color="#000080">
are impermissibly speculative or impossible to verify. A few have
hurled what scientists view as the ultimate epithet - that my theory
constitutes metaphysics instead of genuine science.<br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> and all the rest of it isn’t?!<br>
</font><font color="#000080">As I continue to explore this hypothesis in
the future, what will be of utmost interest to me and my sympathisers is
whether it can generate what scientists call falsifiable
implications.
</font><font color="#33CCCC">Falsifiabiliy</font><font color="#000080">
or </font><font color="#33CCCC">testability</font><font color="#000080">
of claims, remember, is the hallmark of genuine science, distinguishing
it from metaphysics and faith-based belief systems.<br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> but for that u gotta explore
INSIDE, that’s what u guys keep missing.<br>
</font><font color="#000080">I believe that the
</font><font color="#33CCCC">Selfish Biocosm</font><font color="#000080">
hypothesis does qualify as a genuine scientific conjecture on this
ground. A key implication of the hypothesis is that the process of
progression of the cosmos through critical thresholds in its life cycle,
while perhaps not strictly inevitable, is relatively <i>robust</i>.
One such critical threshold is the emergence of human-level and higher
intelligence, which is essential to the scaling up of biological and
technological processes to the stage at which those processes could
conceivably exert an influence on the global state of the cosmos.<br>
The conventional wisdom among evolutionary theorists, typified by the
thinking of the late Stephen Jay Gould, is that the abstract probability
of the emergence of anything like human intelligence through the natural
process of biological evolution was vanishingly small. According to
this viewpoint, the emergence of human-level intelligence was a
staggeringly improbable contingent event. A few distinguished
contrarians take an opposing position, arguing on the basis of the
pervasive phenomenon of convergent evolution and other evidence that the
appearance of human-level intelligence was highly <i>probable</i>, if not
virtually <i>inevitable</i>. The latter position is consistent with
the </font><font color="#33CCCC">Selfish
Biocosm</font><font color="#000080"> hypothesis while the Gould position
is not.<br>
I suggest that the issue of the robustness of the emergence of
human-level and higher intelligence is potentially subject to
experimental resolution by means of at least three realistic tests: SETI
research, artificial life evolution, and the emergence of transhuman
computer intelligence. The discovery of extraterrestrial
intelligence, the discovery of an ability on the part of artificial life
forms that exist and evolve in software environments to acquire autonomy
and intelligence, and the emergence of a capacity on the part of advanced
self-programming computers to attain and then exceed human levels of
intelligence are all falsifiable implications of the
</font><font color="#33CCCC">Selfish Biocosm</font><font color="#000080">
hypothesis because they are consistent with the notion that the emergence
of ever more competent intelligence is a robust natural phenomenon.
These tests don’t, of course, conclusively answer the question of whether
the hypothesis correctly describes ultimate reality. But such a
level of certainty is not demanded of any scientific hypothesis in order
to qualify it as genuine science.<br>
Let me conclude by asking whether the
</font><font color="#33CCCC">Selfish Biocosm</font><font color="#000080">
hypothesis promotes or demotes the cosmic role of humanity. Have I
introduced a new anthropocentrism into the science of cosmology? If
so, then you should be suspicious on this basis alone of my new approach
because, as Sigmund Freud pointed out long ago, new scientific paradigms
must meet two distinct criteria to be taken seriously: they must
reformulate our vision of physical reality in a novel and plausible way
and, equally important, they must advance the Copernican project of
demoting human beings from the centrepiece of the universe to the results
of natural processes.<br>
At first blush, the </font><font color="#33CCCC">Selfish
Biocosm</font><font color="#000080"> hypothesis may appear to be
hopelessly anthropocentric. Freeman Dyson once famously proclaimed
that the seemingly miraculous coincidences exhibited by the physical laws
and constants of inanimate nature - factors that render the universe so
strangely life-friendly - indicated to him that
</font><font color="#33CCCC"><i>“the more I examine the universe and
study the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the
universe in some sense knew we were
coming.”</i></font><font color="#000080"> <br>
This strong anthropic perspective may seem uplifting and inspiring at
first blush but a careful assessment of the new vision of a bio-friendly
universe revealed by the </font><font color="#33CCCC">Selfish
Biocosm</font><font color="#000080"> hypothesis yields a far more
sobering conclusion.<br>
To regard the pageant of life’s origin and evolution on Earth as a minor
subroutine in an inconceivably vast ontogenetic process through which the
universe prepares itself for replication is scarcely to place humankind
at the epicentre of creation. Far from offering an anthropocentric
view of the cosmos, the new perspective relegates humanity and its
probable progeny species (biological or mechanical) to the functional
equivalents of mitochondria - formerly free-living bacteria whose special
talents were harnessed in the distant past when they were ingested and
then pressed into service as organelles inside eukaryotic cells.<br>
The essence of the </font><font color="#33CCCC">Selfish
Biocosm</font><font color="#000080"> hypothesis is that the universe we
inhabit is in the process of becoming pervaded with increasingly
intelligent life - but not necessarily human or even human-successor
life. Under the theory, the emergence of life and increasingly
competent intelligence are not meaningless accidents in a hostile,
largely lifeless cosmos but at the very heart of the vast machinery of
creation, cosmological evolution, and cosmic replication. However,
<u>the theory does not require or even suggest that the life and
intelligence that emerge be human or human-successor in nature.<br>
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC">The hypothesis simply asserts that
the peculiarly life-friendly laws and constants that prevail in our
universe serve a function precisely equivalent to that of DNA in living
creatures on Earth, providing a recipe for development and a blueprint
for the construction of offspring.<br>
</u></font><font color="#000080">Finally, the hypothesis implies that the
capacity for the universe to generate life and to evolve ever more
capable intelligence is encoded as a hidden subtext to the basic laws and
constants of nature, stitched like the finest embroidery into the very
fabric of our universe. A corollary - and a key falsifiable
implication of the </font><font color="#33CCCC">Selfish
Biocosm</font><font color="#000080"> theory - is that we are likely not
alone in the universe but are probably part of a vast, yet undiscovered
transterrestrial community of lives and intelligences spread across <br>
billions of galaxies and countless parsecs. Under the theory, we
share a possible common fate with that hypothesised community -
</font><font size=4 color="#33CCCC"><i>to help shape the future of the
universe and transform it from a collection of lifeless atoms into a
vast, transcendent mind.<br>
</i></font><font color="#000080">The inescapable implication of the
</font><font color="#33CCCC">Selfish Biocosm</font><font color="#000080">
hypothesis is that the immense saga of biological evolution on Earth is
one tiny chapter in an ageless tale of the struggle of the creative force
of life against the disintegrative acid of entropy, of emergent order
against encroaching chaos, and ultimately of the heroic power of mind
against the brute intransigence of lifeless matter.<br>
</font><font color="#0000FF"><u>
<a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=1%23656" eudora="autourl">
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=1%23656<br>
</a></u></b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">
UP!<br>
</font><div align="right"><font size=1 color="#FF00FF"><b>(\o/)(\o/)(\o/
(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o<br>
</font><font size=1 color="#800080">the</font><font color="#FF00FF">
</font><font size=1 color="#FF00FF">UP!</font>
<font size=1 color="#800080">is a global edutainment round-up, broadcast
weekly to </font><font size=1 color="#808080">=[14,520]=<br>
</font><font size=1>Alternative// Activist// Zippy// Trance// New Age//
Peace folks<br>
</font><font size=1 color="#800080">recommended to the
</font><font size=1 color="#808080">Parallel
YOUniversity</font><font size=1 color="#FF99CC">// Megatripolis Dance
Dept</font><font color="#800080">
</font><font size=1 color="#800080">as<br>
</font><font size=1 color="#008000"><i>"showing signs of
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we conservatively estimate</font><font color="#808080">
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</font><font size=1 color="#800080">direct recipients.<br>
A further 40,000 read it on the YOUniversity's site.<br>
And,</font><font color="#FFFF00">
</font><font size=1 color="#800080">because</font><font color="#FFFF00">
</font><font size=1 color="#800080">of its 'mix' of 'specialist' &
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it's increasingly being posted on a variety of sites
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making an estimated total weekly readership of
</font><font size=1><u>=[275,000]=<br>
</u></font><font size=1 color="#FF00FF">(\o/)(\o/)(\o/
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</b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF00FF">up!<br><br>
<br>
</font></div>
<font size=4 color="#FF6600"><b>Can This Box See Into the
</font><font size=4 color="#99CC00">Future</font>
<font size=4 color="#FF6600">?
</font><font size=4 color="#FF0000"><i><u>FEEDBACK<br><br>
</u></i></b></font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" color="#FF6600">
Fraser<br>
You really writ a goodun here with the xmas UP!!!<br>
Lots of love<br>
XXXXXXX<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times">Jackie, London.<br>
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=1 color="#FF00FF">up!<br>
<br>
</font><font color="#0000FF"><b>Yet again, the science you constantly
deride suddenly becomes ok as soon as it 'appears' to support some
airy-fairy non-science stuff you dig up from the outer reaches of the
internet. <br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> naturally. when science begins to
nibble around the VAST AREAS where it never managed to reach before (and
hence dismissed as nonexistent) i shall give praise. i reckon in, oh,
another 200 years its understanding of the world will reach ruffly where
u and i are now.<br><br>
</font><font color="#0000FF">Where is the proof of any of this?
Which sites did it comes from? Who are these people? Have you
done the most basic of research and found out if any of them even exist,
let alone work in the institutes quoted? I could spend a week
debunking if I could be arsed, but it is surely your responsibility to do
the minimum of checking as any journalist <br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> am NOT a journihilist! and it’s
your life not mine.<br><br>
</font><font color="#0000FF">worthy of the term would do before
publishing a 'story'. This below is just one small bit I want to
answer.<br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> the address is clearly given in the
usual place</font>.
<a href="http://noosphere.princeton.edu/" eudora="autourl">
<font color="#0000FF"><u>http://noosphere.princeton.edu/<br>
</a></u></font><font color="#FF00FF">and anyway it's not the first time
i've heard about this. <br>
u sound shaken peter? if not entirely stirred :(<br><br>
</font><x-tab> </x-tab>
<font color="#FF6600">They might help provide a solid scientific
grounding for such strange phenomena as
</font><font color="#99CC00">'deja vu',
intuition</font><font color="#FF6600"> and a host of other curiosities
that we have all experienced from time to time. <br><br>
</font><font color="#0000FF">Deja Vu has been identified as a phenomenon
caused by the fact that the two sides of our brain work differently, one
being slightly slower, and therefore one side receives the input and then
the other side and the consciousness 'perceives' it as already having
happened/this is familiar. It's well established<br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> yer naive trust in 'science' is
touching :)<br>
that's about 20 years old. and nobody has 'established' it since. for
example, where else did u ever hear about the 2 hemispheres going at
different speeds? wouldn't it be cropping up in other important contexts
if this was really true?<br><br>
</font><font color="#0000FF">and only those ignorant of science think
there's still a mystery to it. No intellectual rigour Fraser, you
must doubt before you can arrive at any conclusions that stand up to
scrutiny. <br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> i did, for decades. and then i
reached some clear conclusions and put aside my childish toys.<br><br>
</font><font color="#0000FF">I just don't believe these little black
boxes all going wild just before events [ignoring the fact that they
can't tell what the event will be or how long, thus are totally useless
for any practical purposes <br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> again u mistake technology for
science. Science is about knowing the world not about going faster and
destroying the planet cos they missed a few connections. surely this must
have begun to dawn these past few years on even u :)<br><br>
</font><font color="#0000FF">even if they do exist and do react as you've
outlined, something I'm extremely doubtful of. There are plenty of
maverick scientists who go off on fantasies and court publicity with
hairbrained ideas. <br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> the article clearly explains the
opposite, that they're afraid to publish because closed minded persons
like yourself will jump all over them. check the website.<br><br>
</font><font color="#0000FF">And especially if there's a whacking big
grant and a nice salary for playing about with stuff for a few years even
if the results at the end of it are 'inconclusive'. ;-) <br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> NOW you're describing accurately
the vast majority of so-called 'scientists' who have more interest in
money than truth, i mean Truth, NOT a better can opener.<br><br>
</font><font color="#0000FF">There you go again, putting your faith in
science and scientists, whereas I, the sceptic, examine everything
everyone claims with an open mind, including scientists. <br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> that's Real Science, pete! but it's
NOT what u do am afraid. u long ago closed your mind to the 99% of
Reality that Science can't reach (and hence assumes doesn't exist)
<br><br>
</font><font color="#0000FF">Yuletide greetings, wassailing anyone?<br>
</font><font color="#FF00FF">>> don't be dirty. and anyway am still
hobbling along on my slipped disk and unable to go anywhere these past 2
months now. worrying.<br>
</b></font>Pete, SW England.<br>
<font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=1 color="#FF00FF">up!<br><br>
</font><font color="#CC99FF"><b>Frase,<br>
May you have much PEACE, LOVE, & HAPPINESS in the New Year... And
continued energy and success with your wonderful news letter....<br>
Peace & Love Always,<br>
</b></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times">Jerry Abrams, San
Francisco.<br>
</font><font face="Arial Black, Helvetica" size=5 color="#FF00FF"><b>a l
l g o o d t h i n g s c o m e t o a n e n d<br>
<div align="right">which don't justify nuttin'<br><br>
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