It's a hundred years in the future. Civilization is gone. Venice is under water but people still live in the tops of buildings, surviving by fishing and trying to avoid the slavery pirates. It's a post-apocalyptic novella but it's also a future that is just as likely as any other right now.
A song by the late David Crosby. Lyrics below the video.
A quote from Meher Baba on the efficacy of genuinely believing in oneself.
"If an individual has no faith in himself, he cannot develop those qualities that invite and foster faith from others. The confidence that you can remain loyal under all sorts of trying circumstances to your own perception of what is right is the very foundation of the superstructure of a reliable character.
"Unshakable faith in oneselfis as rare as implicit faith in some other person. Few have developed it to the degree that ensures effective and constructive control of oneself. In most persons faith in oneself is always being challenged and undone by the constant experience of one's own frailties and failings, which often prove to be unyielding, even when one knows what is right. Self-confidence, which is thus in perpetual danger of being shattered, can be securely established only when the individual has before him the vision of a living example of Perfection, and has faith in it."
The full and untold story of human evolution is a tantalizing mystery that may never be truly known.
I spent the fall and winter studying the movement of modern humans, formerly known as Cro-Magnons, as they survived a 30,000 year period of occupation on the European continent during a time of glacial maximum, from about 45,000 years ago to about 15,000 years ago. I think of these people as my ancestors in a psychological sense, if not in a direct or strict genetic descent.
And what I took away was the simple insight that they were an indigenous species, with perhaps much the same orientation to the world and life that indigenous peoples continue to hold today. That's an important thought to me, in this day of rampant, runaway global culture hell-bent on destroying a planet it sees as nothing more than fodder, grist for its money-making mill. I'm talking about the effects of the imperialistic European mindset that has dominated the past 500 years. We didn't always have this approach or orientation to life. Yes, capitalism may be just another form of colonial conquest. And no, I'm not a Marxist. I'm an evolutionist.
I want to know where we went wrong -- when did we shift from our original indigenous mindset to the toxic one we hold today? I hope to examine that question more fully in the future.
An initial shift appears to have begun in the waning millenia of the Ice Age's freezing grip upon the world, in the years from about 15,000 to about 12,000 years before the present, just prior to a massive global warming. A climatic and human transition seems to have already been in effect. As this video states, the return of a more humid climate in northern Africa and the Mediterranean gave birth to a relatively stable and somewhat sedentary human culture which was still largely comprised of hunter gatherers, but now had a new emphasis upon gathering the grains that, domesticated, would become one of the foundational cornerstones of the more settled human culture that eventually evolved.
As the video states, in these years vegetation spread over almost the entire Sahara, a vast savannah of grass, shrubs and trees. Lakes and rivers expanded and animals moved back into the region. Humans, of course, followed the migration of animals there. An evolutionary jump in the form of weapons fashioned took place at this time in the Sahara. Cave and rock art appeared, as did forms of portable art. Depictions on cave walls show humans swimming along with many other forms of animals -- in the Sahara, as recently as 12,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Agriculture and animal husbandry appear not to have entered the Sahara until sometime after 7,000 years ago, which is when it also began to move across continental Europe, although its appearance in the Levant came somewhat earlier. Cattle were domesticated in northern Africa, which provided a form of wealth and may be when social distinctions based upon the control of that wealth and the power it endowed also became a lasting element of human life. Wealth rather than skill became a dynamic in the evolving cultural ethic.
The gradual drying of the Sahara may have induced people to begin to congregate along the Nile and set the scene for the further development of culture along that watery lifeline. This gathering of humans along rivers also began to happen elsewhere on the globe at this time, indicating another climatic change to which humans were forced to adapt.
So, a glimpse of the transition post-Ice Age as it happened in the Sahara.
One of the most interesting phenomenons that I've encountered over the past couple of years has been the video game, Outer Wilds. No, I don't play video games and the few snippets from the game that I've seen left me confused and bamboozled. It's all quite beyond my multi-tasking capabilities.
Despite the success of the game, it has engendered a tangential phenomenon -- the evident love of gamers who play Outer Wilds, not just for the game itself, but also for the various musical themes from the soundtrack.
Aficianados who are musically inclined apparently feel compelled to recreate the many different musical themes of the game. They then post them to youtube. Not only that, but composer Andrew Prahlow is delighted that people feel drawn to do so and has encouraged it. This all makes for an open-heartedness and special bond amongst the gaming community surrounding Outer Wilds.
And so here again is another gamer doing his rendition of a theme. In the game, the little space-suited people like to camp out amidst the pines on various minuscule planets, roast marshmallows over a campfire, and play their banjos. Who can resist an image like that?
I suppose one of the reasons people are drawn to replicate the musical themes of the game is that they're somewhat simple and reproducible. All it takes is a good ear. But there's something else going on here. Why would I, not a gamer, and not a musician, feel so drawn to the musical themes of the game? What is this feeling they elicit? I can't quite put my finger on it, but I love it. That's the innate charm of music, I guess -- it sidesteps the brain.
Here's Paolo Munier's version of the musical theme, Timber Hearth. The crackling sound you hear is supposed to be the fire.
