Thank you Thom for bringing us robert wolff's Original Wisdom some years ago on your radio program. I have several copies and they've made their way around my family. One of the better books I've read, period.
You too are a bomoh, and I am something beyond grateful for your presence in this world.
Thanks, Thom. For linking us to cultures that are in harmony with Nature.
The Indian culture resonates with me.
In the 80’s, I dreamt I was in a dark cave holding a burnt piece of wood.
I stepped outside the cave and saw an American Indian woman with long white hair. I handed her the wood and after she touched it, she handed it back to me as a Piece Pipe. Then I noticed she was me.
Synchronicity, a week later a friend had me watch the movie RETURN OF A MAN CALLED HORSE. Richard Harris played the main character who had a similar experience while doing a sweat lodge in an Indian camp.
Harris was also in the previous movie 🎥 A MAN CALLED HORSE.
The 2 movies are about an English aristocrat, in 1825, who is captured by Native Americans. He lives with them and begins to understand their way of life. Eventually, he is accepted as part of the tribe and aspires to become their leader.
Harris rejects his white culture and wealthy wife to marry an Indian woman.
I experienced being an American Indian woman in my past life.
Not sure what my experiences mean, but curious to find out.
My past life as an Indian woman happened when I was looking at the source of my anger. My therapist asked me when the anger began. I replied that I didn’t know. She had me lay down and do some uncomfortable, heavy breathing. After a few minutes, I was in a receptive state. Then she counted backwards the years of my life, with me responding NO to each year. When I said NO to year one, to my surprise, she said zero.
I was in a green forest.
I looked at my feet and saw moccasins and an Indian dress.
Suddenly, my five or six year old daughter runs out from around a wide tree 🌲 telling me the love ❤️ of my life is dead. I have a faint impression he was killed.
My therapist asked what else I saw 👀.
I said, I see some wood dwellings.
Round logs standing side by side.
I asked if Indians made wooden dwellings.
She said some did.
Then I said I do not want to see anymore.
I can’t take the overwhelming sorrow 😭.
So much worse then anything I had experienced in this life.
My anger in this life was from the loss of my love 💔 in that past life.
Reincarnation was NOT something I believed in at that time.
A few weeks ago a friend emailed me an interview of an actor I was not familiar with. Terrence Howard explained that while he was in the womb he remembered his choice to do in this life what he failed to get done in his past life.
To bring to humanity the understanding of how the universe works.
Since childhood he expressed interest in science and disagreed with teachers.
Terrence’s view that everything is ALIVE, coincides with mine.
Humans are part of ONE living system.
Hopefully, we will have the humility to respect our place within the whole. 😉
Mr. Hartmann, when I was younger I taught the "Contract Theorists" to my students. They read excerpts from Hobbs, Locke and Rousseau, the three contract theorists usually taught in the social Sciences of Anthropology, Sociology and Political Science. All three of these men viewed Humankind's group existence as a kind of agreement we all make with one another. An agreement to live together in groups, a "social contract."
Thomas Hobbs believed humans were fundamentally combative; this tendency is born into them and they must learn to live with their fellow humans in some kind of agreement. They must learn to abide by rules: norms and formal laws, according to the values of the group. The alternative is for humans to live in constant combat, one against another, one against all others. Hobbs said all men are at war with all others. This was their natural state. By living in society, abiding by the rules, we are able to survive and live a tolerable existence. In other words; society is necessary for man to continue to exist. Hobbs is notorious for saying "the life of man is solitary, nasty brutish and short."
Jean-Jacque Rousseau believed Man was born naturally as an innocent being who is basically kind and free. But the vicissitudes of daily life are dangerous to human kind. Thus humans make an agreement, a contract, to live together in groups in order to survive. This agreement, this social contract, degrades humans, but it is a necessary contract they must make with one another if they are to survive.
Myself, I reject both of these views. Human kind has neither goodness nor combativeness born into it. There is no " natural state" of Man. Furthermore, the greatest harm our Judeo-Christian heritage has played on us is the idea of Man's original sin;. the idea that we are born as sinners, born evil. And we must spend our lives trying to expiate this evil in service to an all powerful, universal god. This sounds a bit like Hobbs doesn't it?
I think John Locke came closest to an acceptable view of human nature. He believed we come into this world with nothing in our heads, neither combativeness nor kindness, neither good nor evil. We learn everything we are. Or alternatively, we are what we learn. Locke said we are born as a blank slate, a tabula rasa. Our heads are empty. Living in society is what makes us what we are. We can be either combative or kind, either good or evil. Or we can be both combative and kind or both good and evil.
I do not entirely agree with Locke. I think we are in fact born with something social already built into us. We are born with the ability to use language; except for the individual who is born with an actual deficit of some kind in their central nervous system. Which almost never happens. Just as it is reasonable to believe that fish are born with the ability to swim and take oxygen through the gills, and some birds are born to fly; it is reasonable to believe that evolution has created humans with the ability to use language. [along these lines, the Autobiography Of Hellen Keller is revealing here]. I do not go so far as to agree with Chomsky in his claim that there is one human language and all languages are a variant of it. Instead, I agree with the hypothesis of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is that the reality we live in is created by our language. The particular language we use creates the particular reality we live in. Different linguistic groups live in different realities, to a large extent.
However, the nature of language itself is such that paradoxically; anything which can be expressed in one language, can be expressed in any other language. It may be difficult to do the translation, but it can be done. Some things are expressed better or easier in one language than in another, it is true. Why this is true of the nature of language is another topic which I cannot go into here. However, any Cultural Anthropologist or Linguist knows what I am saying here.
The man you refer to, robert wolff who I have never heard of [thank you for this gift] probably falls closest to Rousseau and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Graeber and Wengrow's recent book THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING makes the same claims as wolff. I am eager to read his stuff.
Although I do not agree with Rousseau, I also do NOT doubt Graeber and Wengrow. And I suspect I shall have NO reason to doubt robert wolff either. There have been indigenous people who lived in harmony and were much happier than modern man. The big question is: what happened? Is there something we can identify which is responsible for eliminating these kinds of people and their kind of social organization over the last several millennia?
I believe for the answer we must turn away from all of the theorists mentioned so far and we must turn away from the brilliant Franz Boas as well. I think it might be useful to turn toward Leslie White for the beginning of an answer. He pointed out that with the passage of time Man has developed ways of increasing the production of energy in society. Each succeeding generation of society produces more energy per capita than the preceding one. Never does this process reverse. It is always in the direction of more, never less. We may generalize White's claim and say that man produces more INFORMATION each succeeding generation. The written word, man's technological development of energy producing engines like steam petroleum and nuclear, the printing press, electronic devices, movies, TV and now computers and iphones, etc., are all examples of the ineluctable increase in information and energy created in an orderly fashion by Man. This trend is an extension of another process we see in the universe: organic life. Life itself is the only thing in the universe which runs counter to the universal second law of thermodynamics: entropy. Entropy tells us that as time passes more energy and information are lost into the ambience of the universe, never to be recovered by man. It is impossible to ever recover that energy and information which have been lost into the roaring chaos of the celestial environment. Life is the only process known which seems to run counter to entropy. Life evolves into more complicated forms, not less complicated ones. The single cell creatures which first appeared on Earth billions of years ago have gradually, over time, evolved into more complicated, larger organisms. This has required a production of more ENERGY per capita in the living organisms, more INFORMATION per capita in the living organisms, not less. This reverses the process of entropy. I do not currently have an explanation for how these processes of "reverse entropy" account for the appearance of the kinds people robert wolff and others write about. But I suspect the technological innovation which goes hand in hand with these "reverse entropy" processes holds the key.
Leslie White was on the faculty at the University of Michigan. He wrote a short book with Beth Dillingham THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE 1973 Burgess Publishing which is a very concise explanation of his ideas. I took courses from White and Beth and Harry Dillingham as an undergraduate.
The question of how intelligent life and life itself, appeared on this planet in the first place is another discussion all together. Let me say briefly that I do not believe life ORIGINATED on Earth as a spontaneous development from the chemical elements located here. Nor do I believe that evolution is a spontaneous random process. I believe there is a strong mathematical argument to support the hypothesis that there is PURPOSE behind evolution. It is by its nature teleological. The best place to look for this argument is EVOLUTION FROM SPACE by Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe Simon and Schuster 1981. I have read almost all of Hoyle's stuff. He is infamous among astronomers for having said: the probability that life was created on earth is the same as the probability that a tornado could blow through a scrap yard and assemble a Boeing 747.
Considering recent fatal aviation accidents involving Boeing planes, the words scrap yard and Boeing seem to be related by ghoulish common parlance in some macabre fashion.
Thank you Thom for bringing us robert wolff's Original Wisdom some years ago on your radio program. I have several copies and they've made their way around my family. One of the better books I've read, period.
You too are a bomoh, and I am something beyond grateful for your presence in this world.
Thanks, Thom. For linking us to cultures that are in harmony with Nature.
The Indian culture resonates with me.
In the 80’s, I dreamt I was in a dark cave holding a burnt piece of wood.
I stepped outside the cave and saw an American Indian woman with long white hair. I handed her the wood and after she touched it, she handed it back to me as a Piece Pipe. Then I noticed she was me.
Synchronicity, a week later a friend had me watch the movie RETURN OF A MAN CALLED HORSE. Richard Harris played the main character who had a similar experience while doing a sweat lodge in an Indian camp.
Harris was also in the previous movie 🎥 A MAN CALLED HORSE.
The 2 movies are about an English aristocrat, in 1825, who is captured by Native Americans. He lives with them and begins to understand their way of life. Eventually, he is accepted as part of the tribe and aspires to become their leader.
Harris rejects his white culture and wealthy wife to marry an Indian woman.
I experienced being an American Indian woman in my past life.
Not sure what my experiences mean, but curious to find out.
Thank you so much for sharing this part of your story with us. I shall look at the movies!
Thank you Lee.
My past life as an Indian woman happened when I was looking at the source of my anger. My therapist asked me when the anger began. I replied that I didn’t know. She had me lay down and do some uncomfortable, heavy breathing. After a few minutes, I was in a receptive state. Then she counted backwards the years of my life, with me responding NO to each year. When I said NO to year one, to my surprise, she said zero.
I was in a green forest.
I looked at my feet and saw moccasins and an Indian dress.
Suddenly, my five or six year old daughter runs out from around a wide tree 🌲 telling me the love ❤️ of my life is dead. I have a faint impression he was killed.
My therapist asked what else I saw 👀.
I said, I see some wood dwellings.
Round logs standing side by side.
I asked if Indians made wooden dwellings.
She said some did.
Then I said I do not want to see anymore.
I can’t take the overwhelming sorrow 😭.
So much worse then anything I had experienced in this life.
My anger in this life was from the loss of my love 💔 in that past life.
Reincarnation was NOT something I believed in at that time.
A few weeks ago a friend emailed me an interview of an actor I was not familiar with. Terrence Howard explained that while he was in the womb he remembered his choice to do in this life what he failed to get done in his past life.
To bring to humanity the understanding of how the universe works.
Since childhood he expressed interest in science and disagreed with teachers.
Terrence’s view that everything is ALIVE, coincides with mine.
Humans are part of ONE living system.
Hopefully, we will have the humility to respect our place within the whole. 😉
https://youtu.be/g197xdRZsW0?si=EBpZuCfmh4RVsRFN
Mr. Hartmann, when I was younger I taught the "Contract Theorists" to my students. They read excerpts from Hobbs, Locke and Rousseau, the three contract theorists usually taught in the social Sciences of Anthropology, Sociology and Political Science. All three of these men viewed Humankind's group existence as a kind of agreement we all make with one another. An agreement to live together in groups, a "social contract."
Thomas Hobbs believed humans were fundamentally combative; this tendency is born into them and they must learn to live with their fellow humans in some kind of agreement. They must learn to abide by rules: norms and formal laws, according to the values of the group. The alternative is for humans to live in constant combat, one against another, one against all others. Hobbs said all men are at war with all others. This was their natural state. By living in society, abiding by the rules, we are able to survive and live a tolerable existence. In other words; society is necessary for man to continue to exist. Hobbs is notorious for saying "the life of man is solitary, nasty brutish and short."
Jean-Jacque Rousseau believed Man was born naturally as an innocent being who is basically kind and free. But the vicissitudes of daily life are dangerous to human kind. Thus humans make an agreement, a contract, to live together in groups in order to survive. This agreement, this social contract, degrades humans, but it is a necessary contract they must make with one another if they are to survive.
Myself, I reject both of these views. Human kind has neither goodness nor combativeness born into it. There is no " natural state" of Man. Furthermore, the greatest harm our Judeo-Christian heritage has played on us is the idea of Man's original sin;. the idea that we are born as sinners, born evil. And we must spend our lives trying to expiate this evil in service to an all powerful, universal god. This sounds a bit like Hobbs doesn't it?
I think John Locke came closest to an acceptable view of human nature. He believed we come into this world with nothing in our heads, neither combativeness nor kindness, neither good nor evil. We learn everything we are. Or alternatively, we are what we learn. Locke said we are born as a blank slate, a tabula rasa. Our heads are empty. Living in society is what makes us what we are. We can be either combative or kind, either good or evil. Or we can be both combative and kind or both good and evil.
I do not entirely agree with Locke. I think we are in fact born with something social already built into us. We are born with the ability to use language; except for the individual who is born with an actual deficit of some kind in their central nervous system. Which almost never happens. Just as it is reasonable to believe that fish are born with the ability to swim and take oxygen through the gills, and some birds are born to fly; it is reasonable to believe that evolution has created humans with the ability to use language. [along these lines, the Autobiography Of Hellen Keller is revealing here]. I do not go so far as to agree with Chomsky in his claim that there is one human language and all languages are a variant of it. Instead, I agree with the hypothesis of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is that the reality we live in is created by our language. The particular language we use creates the particular reality we live in. Different linguistic groups live in different realities, to a large extent.
However, the nature of language itself is such that paradoxically; anything which can be expressed in one language, can be expressed in any other language. It may be difficult to do the translation, but it can be done. Some things are expressed better or easier in one language than in another, it is true. Why this is true of the nature of language is another topic which I cannot go into here. However, any Cultural Anthropologist or Linguist knows what I am saying here.
The man you refer to, robert wolff who I have never heard of [thank you for this gift] probably falls closest to Rousseau and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Graeber and Wengrow's recent book THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING makes the same claims as wolff. I am eager to read his stuff.
Although I do not agree with Rousseau, I also do NOT doubt Graeber and Wengrow. And I suspect I shall have NO reason to doubt robert wolff either. There have been indigenous people who lived in harmony and were much happier than modern man. The big question is: what happened? Is there something we can identify which is responsible for eliminating these kinds of people and their kind of social organization over the last several millennia?
I believe for the answer we must turn away from all of the theorists mentioned so far and we must turn away from the brilliant Franz Boas as well. I think it might be useful to turn toward Leslie White for the beginning of an answer. He pointed out that with the passage of time Man has developed ways of increasing the production of energy in society. Each succeeding generation of society produces more energy per capita than the preceding one. Never does this process reverse. It is always in the direction of more, never less. We may generalize White's claim and say that man produces more INFORMATION each succeeding generation. The written word, man's technological development of energy producing engines like steam petroleum and nuclear, the printing press, electronic devices, movies, TV and now computers and iphones, etc., are all examples of the ineluctable increase in information and energy created in an orderly fashion by Man. This trend is an extension of another process we see in the universe: organic life. Life itself is the only thing in the universe which runs counter to the universal second law of thermodynamics: entropy. Entropy tells us that as time passes more energy and information are lost into the ambience of the universe, never to be recovered by man. It is impossible to ever recover that energy and information which have been lost into the roaring chaos of the celestial environment. Life is the only process known which seems to run counter to entropy. Life evolves into more complicated forms, not less complicated ones. The single cell creatures which first appeared on Earth billions of years ago have gradually, over time, evolved into more complicated, larger organisms. This has required a production of more ENERGY per capita in the living organisms, more INFORMATION per capita in the living organisms, not less. This reverses the process of entropy. I do not currently have an explanation for how these processes of "reverse entropy" account for the appearance of the kinds people robert wolff and others write about. But I suspect the technological innovation which goes hand in hand with these "reverse entropy" processes holds the key.
Leslie White was on the faculty at the University of Michigan. He wrote a short book with Beth Dillingham THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE 1973 Burgess Publishing which is a very concise explanation of his ideas. I took courses from White and Beth and Harry Dillingham as an undergraduate.
The question of how intelligent life and life itself, appeared on this planet in the first place is another discussion all together. Let me say briefly that I do not believe life ORIGINATED on Earth as a spontaneous development from the chemical elements located here. Nor do I believe that evolution is a spontaneous random process. I believe there is a strong mathematical argument to support the hypothesis that there is PURPOSE behind evolution. It is by its nature teleological. The best place to look for this argument is EVOLUTION FROM SPACE by Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe Simon and Schuster 1981. I have read almost all of Hoyle's stuff. He is infamous among astronomers for having said: the probability that life was created on earth is the same as the probability that a tornado could blow through a scrap yard and assemble a Boeing 747.
Considering recent fatal aviation accidents involving Boeing planes, the words scrap yard and Boeing seem to be related by ghoulish common parlance in some macabre fashion.
Life did NOT originate on earth 🌍!
Earth 🌎 is one tiny speck of a living UNIverse.
Robots 🤖 and spirits 😇 are aspects of the unfolding and enfolding of life.
We see enfolding or decay as death ☠️.
But death is really transFORMation.
From one substance or place in to an other.
Round and round is the dance 💃🏻 of existence.
Every thing is related and has its purpose and place.
Because every thing FITS.
Everything that exists belongs…
A friend has ordered the book for me and for another friend. Can hardly wait till Monday when it arrives.