Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Wed, 26 Aug 1998 14:38:35 +0100
Mon, 24 Aug 1998 18:28:08 -0700 (PDT)
Troy Becker wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Aug 1998, glove wrote:
>
> > my question, can the MOQ account for the possibility that advanced human
> > civilizations may have indeed existed prior to our historically known times?
> > i may be the only one here that wonders this, but if humanity has existed on
> > earth for as long as we seem to have, (estimates range anywhere from 300,000
> > years to 3 million years, in our modern form) why is it we have only started
> > to evolve intellectually within the last few thousand years? actually Pirsig
> > says it has only happened in this century!
Glove & Troy and Lilacs
Glove's mega-issues always engage me, but I did not have my reply
ready before Troy's appeared. I know Velikovsky's works and have his
"Worlds in Upheaval" (?) somewhere.
To the questions of earlier and extinct civilizations. In my TIME
Atlas there's a graphic rendition of earth's age and it indicates the
origin of life at around 900 million years ago (Ediacaran), but that
leaves billions of years unaccounted for so I am open to that
possibility. Regarding the missing fossils it might have been
continental upheavals that turned everything upside down - after all
we are discussing Velikovsky!! :-)
About the Intellect's seemingly short lifespan: As we have laboured
over this enigma I think we have it's ORIGIN in a very remote past (I
am reluctant to fix a point in time). It developed further with
language, writing - still in "the service of" society - but emerged
with a life of its own around Homer's time and bloomed with the
early Greek thinkers. Finally it reached "metaphysical" proportions
with Socrates, Platon and Aristoteles (as SOM), but as LILA suggests,
it did not become a political motivating force until the last
century.
> > perhaps its not the MOQ that is mistaken, it is the point of view of who is
> > using the MOQ to make an analysis of conventional history which makes this
> > point subject to debate. the MOQ could also be used to show how the
> > collective intellect grows to a point to where it must expand in a dynamic
> > leap, and as it has grown over the last several thousand years, these
> > expansional leaps have become a continuous stream only within the last
> > hundred years or so. this may be related directly to the amount of input
> > going into the social layer which is of value to the intellect, and at some
> > point, a critical mass is reached whereby the intellect 'takes over'.
I think I agree to this even if it was a new angle, let me
think some more.
> > we can now fit a catastrophic viewpoint into the MOQ by saying the layers
> > grow continually more complex within themselves and in relation to the other
> > layers as the number of individuals grow. this in itself seems to be what we
> > call evolution. now, if a sudden tradegy wipes out most of the population,
> > the remaining individuals would be forced to regress into the biological
> > layer for their very survival. the intellect would be all but forgotten, and
> > the social layer would have to be rebuilt as well. we have mountains of myth
> > stating that this is precisely what may have happened not once, but many
> > times in the past.
Intellect may be become "devaluated" if a catastrophe shatters its
base - society - and the remaining human beings would have to revert
to the next safe latch, but for this to be BIOLOGY the whole
mammal kingdom would have to become extinct. If there were human life
left they would band together in more primitive societies, SoPoV
itself is too archaic to be "destroyed" unless, as indicated, its own
base - advanced life - were wiped out.
Troy:
> indeed, it is important that our metaphysical explanation of "reality"
> explains *everything* with or without human "thinking". MOQ does the job
> nicely; the four levels of evoltionary [static] quality provide a
> "practical" tool for our human, thinking minds.
Yes and yes again!
> the universe may have, in history, been "more advanced" than it is today,
> although "immoral" catastrophies may have wiped out such civilizations. i
> like to think that things exist "elsewhere" that are more valuable in
> intellectual quality than are we humans. ironically, catastrophies have
> also helped things progress (Darwinian evolution) and i suppose these
> catastrophies were MOQly "moral".
I don't disregard even the "more advanced" possibility, and this is
immensely interesting in a Q-perspective: Would such an advanced
civilization have progressed beyond the Intellect stage? I think -
nay, I'm convinced - that the MOQ development is mandatory, there can
be no other levels or sequence of levels.
Look how much better the MOQ approach (to the "advanced cultures"
issue) is than the SOM. It's been speculated about the powers of
these people: of different consciousness, psychic energies,
crystal and pyramidical effects and so on, but it all has
an unsatisfactory ring to it. For example. My guru of old - the
English writer Colin Wilson ("From Atlantis to the Sphinx")
says that the ancient Egyptians looked upon reality from a different
angle, and brought this example: After looking at a red spot one
sees a green afterglow inside our eyelids. We regard the
afterglow as illusory and the red spot real, while the ancient
Egyptians had a completely inverted view.
This is a good metaphor, but does it bring any understanding?
(except stars in the eyes of nu-agers). No, it's as stale as the
rest of the SOM-generated models, so I'm thrilled by the MOQ
because it (for the first time in this civilization) offers a
totally different perspective.
Thoughts from all whom this may concern.
Bodvar.
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