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Happiness and relativity

Written by Juliet Bennett
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Yesterday I had a bit of a rant about the money people earn and spend in the world I live in comparison to the money people earn and spend in the developing world. Here people work around 8-10 hours a day, 5-6 days a week behind a desk (by one’s own choice) and spend their income on clothes and chocolate and cars and properties and parties and holidays. There people spend 12-14 hours a day, 7 days a week behind a sewing machine or picking cocoa beans (no choice) just to put basic food on the table and hope their children can have some form of education so that they can enter our rat race too. We really have set up a horrible system that makes economic slaves of everyone… is it making anyone happy?

Sure nice cars, boats, holidays, parties etc are pretty awesome and fun. But are they making us happy? Why is the suicide rate so high in our “rich” world? Does the couple of weeks of skiing make up for the other 48 weeks spent doing a job we don’t really enjoy, that feeds the system’s ugly poverty/environmental consequences, and that leaves us too tired to do much else other than get pissed on the weekend and try to forget… is that happiness??? Does the result actually justify the means?

And when we get that car or have that holiday, does it actually bring us the happiness we expect it to? What about one month later when our friends tell us their buying an even better car than ours, or going on an even better holiday? Then are we jealous and resentful? How long does the happiness gained from materialistic pursuits actually last?

Psychologists and economists have found that the ‘correlation between absolute income and happiness extends only to a certain threshold’ – after that, it’s only our status relative to peers that determines how happy people see themselves.[1]

Buying an expensive car brings with it a message of status. It tells people whose opinions you care about, and it sends a message to yourself, that says “I am worthy”. But without that car we are obviously still worthy. I wonder where our lack of self-worth comes from? Why do we feel we need to compete and be seen by others as this or that?

I guess a perception of self-worth goes further than just material wealth. The relativity of self. We can only judge ourselves as relative to everyone else: How does our body shape compare to others? How about our eyes, our face structure, our skin? Our intelligence? Our creativity? We are constantly judging ourselves – where we sit compared to the people that surround us.

We are all beautiful, we are all special, we are all worthy. I believe this and yet I still find myself victim to the self imposed oppression that comes from societal superficiality’s. Why do I question myself?

Why do we feel a need to justify our worth, and have others confirm it? Where does this need for external (and sometimes the internalised need) for external justification come from? And how can we transcend it?

Photo credits:

Photographer: Gilbert Rossi

Styling: Erin Blick

References:

[1] ‘How We Kicked out Addiction to Growth’, New Scientist (October 2008). p. 53.

Peace, Truth,

Free Documentaries: The Truth Is Free

Written by Juliet Bennett
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Bored? Never! Check out this website: http://freedocumentaries.org/index.php

In particular I recommend:

Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky … if you haven’t seen this one you better watch it NOW!

The War on Democracy – The US manipulates politics of South America

The Power of Nightmares – The rise of the Religious Right in America, and Islamic Fundamentalists.

Jesus Camp – SCARY!

The Story of God – explores the history of humanity’s search for our creator.

Zeitgeist – as I mentioned yesterday – a must see.

The Corporation – Damn corporations.

The 11th Hour – Leonardo Dicaprio carries on from “inconvenient” message Al Gore shared with us.

And I’m sure heaps more are great. Check it out!!!

Photo credit:

I sneakily snapped this photo in a museum in Peru or Ecuador (no cameras allowed) – they are little Inca statues in erotic positions… You can actually buy packs of cards that each have a picture of a different statue in a different tantric-sex-like pose. I bought some as a gift, now wish I had them to show hehehe funny stuff. How fun is exploring different cultures! I wonder what India has in store for me next month…. okay, I gotta stop yabbering. Enjoy your weekend!

Peace, Truth, , ,

The Spirit of the Times (Zeitgeist)

Written by Juliet Bennett
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In the hidden-away tranquility beneath the branches of large shadowy trees, in the Secret Garden hostel in a mysterious little town called Vilcabamba, in Ecuador December 2008, I met a man with white hair and a white beard. It was from this man that I first learned of the Zeitgeist…

The word “Zeitgeist” comes from the German word Zeit, which means time, and Geist, which means spirit.

So basically Zeitgeist means the “spirit of the times” and according to wikipedia this means the “general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambience, morals, and sociocultural direction or mood of an era (similar to the English word mainstream or trend).”

The first part of the first movie (entitled The Greatest Story Ever Told) looks at religion, describes the worship of the Sun, the anthropomorphism of astrological constellations, of an ancient and ongoing battle between Horus and Set, or Light and Darkness, with each morning Horus winning and providing us warmth and vision, and Set conquering as our nights set in. The celebration of the birth of the Sun would occur on the Winter equinox (the 25th of December), where from then on the days would get longer.

The second part (entitled All The World’s a Stage) looks at the theory that September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center were an inside job.

Part 3 (entitled Don’t Mind the Men Behind the Curtain) looks at the waging of war for the economic gain of international bankers.

The sequel to the movie is called Zeitgeist: Addendum explains “fractional reserve banking”, shows how debt makes us economic slaves that must submit to employment in order to live. How’s this for a quote:

“Physical slavery requires people to be housed and fed. Economic slavery requires people to feed and house themselves.”

A confronting lens from which to interpret reality, isn’t it.

The second part of the sequel is mainly interviews with John Perkins, the ex-CIA economic hit man and the author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”, a New York Times best seller that is now also a film). Perkins writes:

Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly-paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources.

The final part of the Zeitgeist sequel leaves some points of hope, with futurist Jacque Fresco providing a vision of a “resource-based economy” based on abundance rather than the current monetary-based economy based on scarcity. The vision is known as The Venus Project, and it involves the use of magnetic and geotechnologies that have allegedly been suppressed for political and monetary gains that could help us adapt to environmentally friendly and sustainable lifestyles. These technologies sound fantastic, but they need more research and development and hence more funding, which the capitalist system prevents them getting as it gives preference to policies like carbon tax which bandaid a solution rather than looking to solve the actual cause. I don’t know if all that is said is possible, but it’s refreshing and powerful to visualise and imagine.

The last part of this movie turns to our society’s values, oppressive laws, and irrelevant superstitions, and points to a collective ignorance that leads it.

The films have been criticised for containing material that is partially true, and some that is complete bogus, used mainly to ‘maximize an emotional response at the expense of reasoned argument’ which as a result undermines ‘legitimate questions about what happened on 9/11, and about corruption in religious and financial organizations.’[1]

Still even if some details are added for emotional oomph, it seems to me that the core issues they discuss are real issues. They may not have referenced all of their sources but finding sources to support the gist of what they talk about is not hard to find. This documentary is available for free online and is absolutely worth watching, as long as all it’s details are not taken as gospel.

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

The core messages in the film are strong, I think it does a good job to capture the spirit of our times, and provide at least some direction and vision as to where we are going. It is for sure that humanity together must seek the emergent and the symbiotic. Throughout history people have desired to fit and uphold the norm, otherwise they are ostracized by their society. But the perpetuation of a closed worldview is not positive for society. It is destructive. Fundamentalist religions are psychologically distorting the idea of faith. The new is ignored in favor of outdated beliefs. We misinterpret myths as literal events. Consider the paradigm shifts of the last two millennia: heliocentric to geocentric and beyond. What we know today was unimaginable 2000 years ago. To be proven wrong should be celebrated. Fluid perpetual change must be embraced. There is no such thing as static knowledge. Nothing is ever static.

We have to stay open to new information at all times; even if challenges our present beliefs.

When the pupil is ready, a teacher will show up. Read a Zen proverb on a gift card in a little art shop in a small Vilcamamban street. It is overwhelming to consider the problems of our worldwide system and their deep historic roots. But what matters is not how we can change the world, but how we can change ourselves. It starts with being ready to learn. I am ready.

And on that note, guess what teacher is showing up in town (my town, ie Sydney)???… JACQUE FRESCO!!! Next Friday the 23rd April 2010, for the Venus Project World Lecture Tour. He’s speaking at my uni – Sydney University – and tickets are open, just under $30, and available here … I hope to see you there!


[1] ^ Chapman, Jane (2009). Documentary in Practice: Filmmakers and Production Choices. Polity Press. p. 171–173.

Peace, Truth, , ,

Big History Blog Series: Ch2 – Star Formation and Another Big Explosion

Written by Juliet Bennett
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To recap, in our first chapter of this Big History Blog Series, we learned that the Big Bang theory is based on the observation that our universe is expanding and hence that it must have once been smaller. Winding back time we imagined the infinitesimally small point of singularity. At the point in time we can call the beginning of time, we went from nothing or a something that lays beyond our understanding, to the existence of quarks and the laws of gravity and electromagnetism. This combination caused quarks to explode and become protons and electrons. Protons and electrons in turn combined to make hydrogen and helium atoms.

In chapter two of the Story of Us, we will look at how we transformed from hydrogen and helium atoms, to bunch more types of elements that make up all the atomic matter and energy in our universe.

First let’s put atomic matter and energy in perspective.

DarkMatterPie

You can see in the diagram above, that only 0.4% of our universe is atomic matter and atomic energy that comprises stars, planets, and lifeforms such as ourselves. Most of our universe is dark energy and dark matter, two hypothetical forms of energy and matter that are largely undetectable but are inferred from their gravitational effects and from the increasing rate of the universe’s expansion. (Basically, I gather, dark energy and dark matter are names given to the who-knows-what and the who-knows-how that permeates and permutes the incomprehensibly huge universe.)

Okay, so now that we know what tiny slice of the universe the rest of Our Story is located in, let us continue. How did we get from a point of singularity to the complexities we observe around us today?

The first step (about 200 years after the Big Bang) was the formation of stars, a creation we owe to gravity.

After millions of years of floating around in clouds hydrogen and helium, gravity pulled some clouds together. The huge clouds contracted and heated causing atoms inside to move faster and collide. Hydrogen atoms fused to create pure energy – creating massive atomic bombs – which became the first stars.

Again thanks to gravity, these stars collected into galaxies (like our Milky Way), which collected into “clusters” of galaxies, and the universe kept expanding and creating new clusters further apart, as it still continues to do today.

The second step in this process of increasing complexity was the appearance of new elements, like carbon and iron, to which we can thank the death of large stars.

When hydrogen atoms ran out the center of stars collapsed, temperatures escalated and now it was the helium atoms turn to fuse together to create elements up to iron, number twenty-six (ie it has twenty-six protons in its nucleus.)

The third step (probably within a billion years of the Big Bang) was the explosion of stars who had new elements floating around inside – a “supernova”.

Out of this ‘colossal explosion’ (as David Christian calls it), the supernova gave us another new sixty-six elements, giving us the periodic table (remember it from science class?) with ninety-two elements for the universe to now play with.

In sum, the elements from hydrogen to uraniumall our elements are made from different combinations of protons and electrons, which are all made up of quarks pulled together by gravity. These different combinations were created by the explosion of dying stars that contained elements from the death other stars that came from clouds of hydrogen and helium pulled together by gravity.

Where did the law of gravity come from? Who knows! But we should “thank God” that it did, because without law of gravity no-thing would exist.

And so, children of the stars, I bid you goodnight and leave you with this time-line. One billion years down, just thirteen billion years to go. Have a nice weekend!!!

cosmos

References:

David Christian, This Fleeting World: A short history of humanity, Berkshire Publishing Group (Massachusetts 2008), pp. xx-xxi.

Picture credits:

Dark matter pie – pulled from wikimedia commons and which originally came from NASA online.

Periodic table – electrical resources.com (http://www.electrical-res.com/families-of-the-periodic-table/)

Cosmic time-line – I’m not sure where I got this, I found it in my old computer files, so if anyone knows its source please let me know.

Truth, ,

Happy Ishtar!

Written by Juliet Bennett
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Easter is celebrated at Spring equinox, a time that for thousands of years was a celebration of the goddess Ishtar resurrecting the god of food and vegetation (Babylonian god Tammuz / Sumerian god Dumuzid).

Ohhhh, it makes so much sense!

The burgeoning of spring: a time of fertility, when rabbits lay eggs, flowers come out, seeds sprout and our food grows. Easter is a wonderful celebration of the sun’s warmth returning to us, a celebration of new life, and best of all – CHOCOLATE EGGS!!!

Springtime means summer is on it’s way – the SUN has been resurrected!

I love the sun. I worship the sun. After an amazing sunset on the beaches in Salvador, Brazil, one claps and cheers the sun as it retires for the day. Without the sun, there would be no life on earth, so it does deserve a little appreciation.

When spring begins and the sun’s rays get stronger, we are talking about a pretty important resurrection! But not a literal one.

Just like Christmas, early Christians adopted and adapted this pagan tradition to be their own. NO WHERE in the bible does it talk about Easter. Just like NO WHERE in the bible does Jesus ask to be worshiped.

It may be worth mentioning that the Bible does refer to the Ishtar tradition: in see Ezekiel 8:13-14 a woman weeping for Tammuz is seen as an “abomination”!

It seems strange that Easter has been adopted – in both dates and traditions (ie spring equinox and with exchange of Easter eggs) – by religious followers of the same holy book that describes the tradition as an abomination…

Rather than celebrating the resurrection of the sun, Easter is has become a celebration of the resurrection of the Son. Hm.

Tell me, what makes more sense:

a) that Jesus was sent by God to die on the cross and  “save you from your sins” and then physically rise back to being human and 40-days later ascend into heaven;

or

b) that Jesus (or other men of the late 1st century BC / early 1st century AD) heard the Buddhist philosophies of love and non-violence, and created movement toward the “kingdom of heaven” ie peace on earth. In time those rebelling against Roman rule were killed by the religious/political leaders of the day who saw the growing movement as a threat.

Is it possible that after the horrific death the early Christians felt Jesus energy come to them and “tell them” to continue with the peace movement? After my Opa died I felt his energy outside the hospital, I could see his energy around me, in the trees, in the air, everywhere – I suppose that is a form of resurrection.

Is it possible that the idea of Christ’s resurrection being physical, with a missing body, was added to the Christan gospels in order to synthesize Judaism with Paganism and gain momentum for this movement? Was this even intended to be understood as physical?

Scholars, both Christian and secular, agree that the part about the resurrection in the gospel of Mark was added a few hundred years after the writer of Mark finished documenting the story. Hmmm… I wonder where else has been added?

Enough enough enough – Easter, I mean Ishtar, is time for celebration.

I do have one final question: now that we have re-established the underlying meaning of Ishtar/Easter, can someone please explain to me why in Australia – as leaves turn orange, as the sun is retiring earlier and its intensity slowly dying – am I eating this chocolate bunny??? I’m not complaining, I love chocolate maybe even more than I love the sun. But still, shouldn’t it be spring?

Truth, ,

To do, or not to do? Avoiding regret.

Written by Juliet Bennett
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When making a decision I ask myself :

1. Will I regret doing it?

If I answer “yes”, I don’t do it. (Reason being, if I am pretty sure I’m going to regret something I think it would be pretty silly to disregard that intuition.)

If the answer is “maybe” or “no” I ask myself:

2. Will I regret not doing it?

Now if I answer “yes” then I do it. (For the same reason as above.)

Now the selection criteria gets a little more confusing:

If the answer to both questions is “maybe” then I do it. (Reason being I think it better to regret something you did, the regret something you didn’t do.)

If the answer to question 2 is “no” and the the answer to the question 1 is “maybe” then I don’t it. (If I know I’m not going to regret not doing it, then it’s not worth the chance of regretting doing it.)

If the answer to question 2 is “maybe” and the answer to the question 1 is “no” then I do it. (If I know I’m not going to regret doing it, then it’s not worth the chance of regretting not doing it.)

If the answer to both questions is “no” then I will have a cold shower. (I need to wake up – if the consequences are so trivial I should have done it already.)

Hmmm I wonder if my new little criteria makes sense to anyone other than me…?

And I guess it doesn’t always apply – especially if you tend to do before you think, eg shaving my head.. that wasn’t exactly a planned out decision but I didn’t regret it (at least not after the first day or two)… That being said I have no plans to do it again any time soon.

 

Truth

How to create a world war

Written by Juliet Bennett
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creation2Among my Internet surfing I came across a “creationist” website – the belief that the world is around 6000 years old – a figure derived from tracing back the genealogy in the bible from Jesus to Adam, and the seven-day creation. This belief is growing so much that more than 40% of Americans believe this and do not believe in evolution!

Obviously this creation story clashes with the Story of the Universe I am presenting in my Big History Blog Series. I think it is always important to read other views with the most open mind you can possibly have, and I have tried, but serious – this is pretty destructive stuff…

This website was advertising a book called:

WAR OF THE WORLDVIEWS

“What do aliens, dinosaurs and gay marriage have in common?

They are all part of the culture war—a war between two worldviews…

How are we to respond when we hear of the latest “argument” for evolution? How can we prepare our children to face the evolutionary indoctrination of our public schools and universities? What are we to make of “Christian” organizations who teach the big bang and millions of years? How can we build a truly biblical worldview?

In this powerful book, you will find ammunition for the war: answers to some of the most common arguments for evolution, analyses of Christian compromise and a call for a return to true biblical authority.”

This is a quote from a corresponding article:

“This story of origins is entirely fiction. But sadly, many people claim to believe the big bang model. It is particularly distressing that many professing Christians have been taken in by the big bang, perhaps without realizing its atheistic underpinnings. They have chosen to reinterpret the plain teachings of Scripture in an attempt to make it mesh with secular beliefs about origins.

There are several reasons why we cannot just add the big bang to the Bible. Ultimately, the big bang is a secular story of origins. When first proposed, it was an attempt to explain how the universe could have been created without God. Really, it is an alternative to the Bible; so it makes no sense to try to “add” it to the Bible. Let us examine some of the profound differences between the Bible and the secular big bang view of origins.

The Bible teaches that God created the universe in six days ( Genesis 1; Exodus 20:11). It is clear from the context in Genesis that these were days in the ordinary sense (i.e., 24-hour days) since they are bounded by evening and morning and occur in an ordered list (second day, third day, etc.). Conversely, the big bang teaches the universe has evolved over billions of years.

creation

The Bible says that Earth was created before the stars and that trees were created before the sun.1 However, the big bang view teaches the exact opposite. The Bible tells us that the earth was created as a paradise; the secular model teaches it was created as a molten blob. The big bang and the Bible certainly do not agree about the past.

Many people don’t realize that the big bang is a story not only about the past but also about the future. The most popular version of the big bang teaches that the universe will expand forever and eventually run out of usable energy. According to the story, it will remain that way forever in a state that astronomers call “heat death.”2 But the Bible teaches that the world will be judged and remade. Paradise will be restored. The big bang denies this crucial biblical teaching.

See the full article here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/wow/does-the-big-bang-fit

Some thoughts:

First of all I have to ask: wasn’t the book of Genesis written by Jews? And don’t Jews believe the Genesis story is MYTH? So what are these Christians thinking when they decide to interpret is as LITERAL???

Secondly, referring to the parts of the quote I have highlighted in red, this article appears to be highly manipulative propaganda. It appeals to people’s fear of death and offers a reward of eternal life – you have a choice: be a part of a universe that might one day, in billions of years, cease to exist; or be a Christian and live forever. But what of this choice is based on anything real?

If we are part of a universe that might one day cease to exist, maybe we should accept it and stop fearing it. Maybe it’s a good thing? Life is pretty good, but to live forever in the same consciousness would get pretty mundane. Especially if there this eternal life was somewhere that everything was perfect… urgh! Nope – I think “God” made a pretty good world with this play of opposing forces – it’ keeps life interesting. Change is great! Maybe we should enjoy the billions years this universe has left to offer. Now we are in a stage of expansion, one day the universe may contract and billions of years later start to expand again… who knows! It’s a pretty exciting idea, and at least it’s a real possibility as opposed to a fairytale told to make us feel good and turn our consciousness from creative and peaceful to one that is conforming and destructive …

Thirdly, this article polarizes non-believers and falsifies who they are and their motives. Maybe Christians who believe in evolution and not creationism are NOT “compromising” their religion – isn’t it possible that they are THINKING FOR THEMSELVES? Isn’t it possible that they are READING THE BIBLE IN THE CONTEXT THAT IT WAS WRITTEN? Isn’t it possible that “GOD” WANTED THE BIBLE TO CONTAIN MYTH, WHICH IS WHY GENESIS IS A MYTH???

I really cannot understand how people can abuse a historical book, cherry pick and take parts out of context, and use it to hate certain groups of society, to deny the dinosaurs, polarize worldview rather than look for the lessons that can be learned from each other, increasing tensions, and calling for war. Yep – that’s a great way to create a world war. Good one guys.

Truth, , ,

Big History Blog Series: Chapter 1 – The Big Bang

Written by Juliet Bennett
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Once upon a time, in the land of Quantum Nothingness, there was a BIG BANG and an infinitesimally small something started to expand, possibly faster than the speed of light.

For some unknown but much talked about reason, matter in the form of quarks (the basic building blocks of protons and electrons) and dark matter (we don’t actually know what this is) appeared, and with it came two forces: gravity (that draws everything together) and electromagnetism (that draws opposites together and pushes the similar apart). At first this combination caused the quarks to annihilate themselves – turning into pure energy. It was from this hot chaotic mixture of quarks, energy, and electromagnetic and gravitational forces, came positive charged protons and negative charged electrons.

As the universe expanded it cooled and the protons and electrons joined to create the first atoms – Hydrogen atoms (made up of one proton and one electron) and Helium atoms (two protons and two electrons). These were electrically neutral and so they were no longer affected by electromagnetic radiation.

Cosmologists estimate the beginning of the expanding singularity, when measured in our earth-centric concept of time, to have occurred around 13.7 billion years ago. Since this time our universe has grown to contain 100 billion galaxies, which contains (taking a conservative number of 100 billion stars per galaxy) approximately 10 sextillion stars (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) – that’s more stars than grains of sand on earth. Traveling at the speed of light it would take 20 years to travel to our sun and 5 million-years to travel to the nearest star. Ok, you get the picture, our universe is huge! How we got from the first appearance of matter and energy, to this massive universe, will be the subject of chapter 2. For now let’s return to the Big Bang.

It seems it is at this point of singularity that we discover “the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything”. That would be NUMBER 42. What was the question again? (You’ve seen Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy haven’t you?) What does the number 42 that mean??? Hmmm… absolutely nothing…?

For me, the “Ultimate Question” is: how the heck did something come from nothing? What caused “the big bang” to occur? And WHY? Scientists are yet to answer these questions.

Ok, so if we do not how or why the big bang occurred, then how do we know it actually happened?

1. Because we know our universe is expanding. Astronomers observe and measure other galaxies moving away from us – detecting it with the “absorption line” of frequencies in a light spectra. This is called a Red Shift (red light shows parts of the galaxy moving away while blue light shows objects moving closer to us.)

2. You can still actually see the CBR energy released about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Turn on an old television set – the static you see is “CBR” – Cosmic Background Radiation.

3. The universe is still largely Hydrogen and Helium (99% of all atomic atoms); looking into the universe stars appear “younger”; also nothing seems to be older than around 13 billion years. (It is interesting to note that atomic matter is only a small slice of the universe – the rest of it is dark matter and dark energy.)

If something is getting bigger it must have previously been smaller, right? That’s the key logic behind the Big Bang. Winding back time we imagine our universe contracting back down to an infinitesimally small point of singularity.

Did something exist before this point of singularity? Maybe.

Does something exist outside all that we know exists? Maybe.

Maybe the universe we experience is version of “multiverse” – with all possibilities existing in universes sitting side by side.

Maybe Big Bangs are happening all the time – creating new universes in a space we will never know.

Maybe our universe is like a computer game programmed from inside another universe. Maybe a group of such programmers are competing to see whose universe self-destructs first. Maybe there’s just one programmer to whom some people call “God”.

Maybe the universe is “God”, continually going through a process of expansion and contraction – “God” breathing in, and “God” breathing out, with each breath taking billions or trillions of years.

We may speculate as much as we like, I do not believe I shall ever know these answers. Does that matter? Not to me. I would rather focus on what we do know. What do we know? We know that we are inside a beautiful expanding universe. We know we are a part of a magnificent process of increasing complexity, and the fact that we are intelligent enough to be aware of it, to observe it and discuss it, puts us in (if I do say so myself) the most exciting place any human has ever been.

An extra little interesting note on the Big Bang:

Attempts to observe the early stages of the big bang are occurring at The Hadron Collider on the border of France and Switzerland and also at Fermilab in Illinois – using “Accelerators” to make sub-atomic particles move at close to the speed of light, and smash together… what will this reveal? We have to wait and see.

References:

David Christian, This Fleeting World: A short history of humanity, Berkshire Publishing Group (Massachusetts 2008), pp. xx-xxi.

Picture credits:

The Birth of the Universe, The Kingfisher Young People’s Book of Space, TIME Graphic by Ed Gabel.


Truth, , ,

Big History Blog Series: Introduction – Our Story

Written by Juliet Bennett
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I wish to share with you a story: The Story of the Universe. My Story. Your Story. A True Story – well as true as true can be. Our Story has gone through many filters: of limited human knowledge developed through our limited human senses, mental constructions, and even our “impressive” technologies. Our Story, as I tell it, will be filtered through my personal perspectives, which have developed through my own past experiences, my limited education, and the general time pressures I face in writing such a narrative.

But this story, I believe, is an important one.

All societies throughout history have had a story of origins – generally using myth – to give a sense of who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going. Science and logical deduction has now replaced myth in our mental constructs, and so our story of origins must also be a scientific one.

The Story of Our Universe is an important story because it gives us a sense of identity that is not based on difference – different nationalities, races, religions, sex, or species – but is based on our intrinsic connection to the each other and our planet.

Each individual person may be small but each one of us is a valuable piece of an awe-inspiring entity of infinitely creative expanding puzzle – call it the Soul of the Universe, personify it as God, or talk about it as a complex combination of protons and electrons – whatever terms you wish to use doesn’t really make a difference as either way we can know we are part of an incredible process.

I share this story as I journey through David Christian’s Big History course at Macquarie University whilst reading a number of fantastic (albeit challenging) books on evolution, quantum physics and process theology. I have a feeling that a trip to India in May, will enlighten my understanding in different ways, and finally as I begin some kind of MPhil/PhD in July, the story will continue.

Our Story is about evolution, and the story itself is evolving. Our Story will always be held tentative to new insights and discoveries. Our human minds shall continue to expand, engaging with the gaps in Our Story, asking questions and seeking answers. As time progresses great thinkers, scientists and gurus will make profound realisations, each which shall bring us closer to the great unknowable “Truth” – an unachievable objective that shall always be our aim.

Our Story is about adaptation. Our Story is about process not results. Our Story is about “conscientization” – awareness of self-in-context, allowing for perception and renouncing all forms of mental, social and political oppression.

Through this journey I hope to understand more about our humble unknown beginnings, the awe-inspiring process of our evolution, the incredible birth of human self-reflective consciousness, and the relevance of these three factors on our lives today and into the future.

My key reference points for now are Prof. David Christian’s two books: Maps of Time and This Fleeting World, his lecture notes, Richard Dawkin’s The Ancestor’s Tale (audio book), Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything (audio book), Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, Garry Trompf In Search of Origins, John Polkinghorne’s Exploring Reality, and the late Charles Birch’s Biology and the Riddle of Life. Alongside another hundred or so titles from experts I’m yet to discover.

We will step through four stages: the cosmos, earth, life and humanity, each with probably fair few posts spread over a fairly long time as I learn the information, process it, and finally get around to sharing it with you. I will try to provide a rounded perspective that combines my (relatively limited) knowledge of the sciences, philosophy and religion. Please remember all “facts” remain tentative to new discoveries. The first chapter of our story – the “big bang” will be posted tomorrow 🙂

Picture credits:

I’m not sure where I got this artwork – I found it amongst my old computer files that I believe I took from random websites –  if anyone knows its source please let me know so I can credit them…

Truth, , ,