 sj |
||
|
||
BS: Gaia is dying of cancer
|
|
|
Subject: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 06 Jan 09 - 11:37 AM Gaia (Earth, seen as an organism or a deity) is dying of cancer, which cannot be surgically excised. The name of the cancer is "mankind". Dave Oesterreich |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 06 Jan 09 - 11:40 AM She's not dying, Uncle DaveO, she's just a bit ill at the moment. She has a fever. I predict that in this case the host will outlive the parasitic infestation and will return to full health after a period of rest and recuperation. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: John MacKenzie Date: 06 Jan 09 - 11:47 AM All it will take to make her well again, is another world war, or a pandemic of some sort. Once the population is reduced to a sensible size, the healing process will begin. How can people believe in reincarnation when the population is increasing at a faster pace than people are dying? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Richard Bridge Date: 06 Jan 09 - 11:50 AM virtuous ants are reborn as rabbits virtuous rabbits are reborn as dogs The rate things are goin extinct there must be plenty of spare souls. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 06 Jan 09 - 11:58 AM "How can people believe in reincarnation when the population is increasing at a faster pace than people are dying?" John, I will PM you with a simple (and no doubt unexpected) answer to that. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Amos Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:10 PM Oh, LH post it here! We all want to know the truth about where individual souls come from!! I expect "the total number of soul-driven organisms in existence from yesterday back to the big bang" is FAR greater a number than "the total number of soul-driven organisms on this planet today". If so, there is a huge SURPLUS, not scarcity, of souls capable of driving an organism ar one or another level of the complexity hierarchy. Whether they drive it well, or not, is another question. In my experience the Peter Principle of Reincarnation applies: "beings rise to their level of incompetence". People who should be operating three-toed sloth bodies are entrusted with human bodies and end up cluttering up the slums with them. Sigh... ;>) A A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Stilly River Sage Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:13 PM Cockroaches will rule the next time around. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:14 PM Yeah, right. You're being funny with me, Amos? ;-) I don't feel like wrangling with a whole bunch of conventional minds at the moment about something like that, I'd rather just discuss it one on one. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:24 PM Amos said: I expect "the total number of soul-driven organisms in existence from yesterday back to the big bang" is FAR greater a number than "the total number of soul-driven organisms on this planet today". If so, there is a huge SURPLUS, not scarcity, of souls capable of driving an organism ar one or another level of the complexity hierarchy. Amos, I think you're missing something there (assuming I understand what you said). When a soul is reincarnated (assigned to another body after the death of the previous host) there is no net increase. So when the soul of Ughh, the caveman, was reborn as Urgha, the cavewoman, that soul would no longer be available until Urgha's demise. As that soul comes progressively down the line of beings, to become Uncle DaveO today, we'll say, all of that previous line of beings is now unavailable as a source of souls. Only after I kick off is my soul available for reassignment. Put another way, Adam and Eve accounted for two souls. Where did Cain and Abel get theirs, since Adam and Eve were still using what they had until their death a long time later? If indeed there are souls, independent of bodies but attached to persons during earthly life, there has to be a continuous supply of new souls to keep the process going. Dave Oesterreich |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Sleepy Rosie Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:27 PM Oh, I don't know about cluttering up the slums! Here in the UK sloths passing as humans end up cluttering up very big houses with equally big drives filled with equally big motors... They also clutter up jobs in the city whose soul purpose is to encourage other sloths to clutter up their big houses with lots of pointlessly churned out mass produced crap from factories in China and India. These same people unfortunately reproduce themselves, cluttering up yet more big houses etc. And they clutter up their brains with the shite that passes for thought, which clutters up the newspapers (the production of which has helped to de-clutter our planet of trees). As a consequence of reading said newspapers, these people also vote! And the governments they vote for invariably like to clutter up our world with weapons of mass destruction by selling them all over the place... Apart from that I agree, there are indeed a lot of sloths cluttering up human bodies. ;-) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: John MacKenzie Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:30 PM Archy and Mehitabel rule OK! |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Amos Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:37 PM Oh, Dave, well penetrated! You have caught me completely off base. However there are many other possible arguments for the ntoion that a large surplus of souls exists. One is th enotion, partly supported by physics, that the Big Bang was actually the collapse of an earlier Universe. That would temporarily explain a lot! :D Another is all individual souls are merely empowered "segments of infinity", and as such, they are not exactly numerical in theior behaviour. This is hard to argue, because all our language is born in measurmeent and force, and ill-fitted to describing soulhood, an immeasurable potential of whatness and whoness rather than how-muchness. A third possibility is that Little Hawk generates them, as many as needed, by an act of will. A fourth is that there is a moment in time T0 at which a larger number of souls permeated the overall space-time continuum -- say by reason of a much larger number of life-bearing planets than exists now-- than the number of soul-driven organisms on planet Earth at any moment since T0+1...n etc. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:43 PM If humans are the cells of the cancer on the body of Gaia, a. Despite what John McKenzie said, there is not likely to be a radical humanectomy. A lot of cells are going to be left behind by the surgery, and the humanoma will balloon again. And Gaia's ability to heal herself has been radically lessened by mining, petroleum pumping, etc., and it takes a LOONNNNNNNNNG time for Gaia to grow such new organs, if indeed it is possible at all. b. Not only do the cancer cells multiply asymptotically and consume the available food supplies, but they starve and extinctify (medical term there) many other beneficial cell (animal) lines. And the human cancer cells create large quantities of toxins, in the form of industrial waste, etc., many of which Gaia cannot nullify before they kill off still other valuable cell lines. Dave Oesterreich |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Amos Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:43 PM Rosie: Brilliant analysis--it definitely indicates my Peter's Principle of Reincarnation is hard at work, generating a cascade of ineptitudes, mediocrities, apathetic resignations, and neurotic viral dramatizations to the detriment of the future of Planet Earth. Intervention is mandatory!! A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Jack Blandiver Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:47 PM Where man is not, nature is barren - William Blake |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: wysiwyg Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:47 PM People are not cancer. The accumulated emotional and mental damage done to them, tho, is toxic. I think it is a mistake to separate ourselves from the planet, in such an equation as this thread's premise... it's more powerful to see and address the conectedness-- the single-organism nature of humankind and earth. ~Susan |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: PoppaGator Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:58 PM I firmly believe that the planet is more likely to survive ~ or, more precisely, that the planet is likely to survive much longer ~ than the human race. The crap we're collectively doing may be making the planet less able to accommodate us, and lead to our extinction, but there will very probably still be a third rock from the sun, with or without lifeforms of some sort scattered over its surface and/or submerged in its waters (perhaps only very rudimentary at first). If life is not completely extinguished, evolution may occur all over again ~ perhaps with somewhat better results. Of course, it hurts one's head to even try imagining such huge spans of time. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Paul Burke Date: 06 Jan 09 - 12:59 PM Spot on Rosie. It's not Gaia that's dying, but it could be humanity if we don't watch it. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: bobad Date: 06 Jan 09 - 01:05 PM "...the single-organism nature of humankind and earth." Earth existed long before man and will continue to exist long after man has disappeared. Mankind is but an insignificant pimple upon the planet earth. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: john f weldon Date: 06 Jan 09 - 01:11 PM By my friend, Nina Paley... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyexBlqFo-U |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 06 Jan 09 - 01:15 PM Dave.... ;-) Please don't be a literalist, okay? The Adam and Eve story is a parable. It is a symbolic tale that was told a very long time ago to make some kind of a point to the audience. I think it extremely probably that "Adam and Eve" are symbols for the overall male gender and the overall female gender in the earliest stage of homo sapien emergence on this planet. I also think they totally screwed up the bit about Eve being made out of Adam's rib...due to the fact that it was a bunch of old patriarchs in a patriarchal order who put together that story, and their view of the place of females in the social hierarchy was...oh...just a tad prejudiced and out of whack! (hoo boy! and how. Makes yer head swim just thinking about it. We've come a long way.) Amos, I don't have to generate souls at will. They do it all by themselves. ;-) But I do happily create fictional characters to entertain myself. Perhaps they exist somewhere on some spiritual plane? Gosh! I'd like to think so. But, okay. If you want it, here it is. I think there are an absolutly limitless number of non-incarnated souls out there right now (you don't HAVE to be in a body at any given time)(you don't have to return to physical life immediately after one incarnation ends)(you might not have to...or decide to... incarnate, period, in some cases)...and furthermore that there are an unlimited number of places where souls can incarnate...not just on this one tiny little planet here. This place is a sideshow in the Galactic theatre. Its inhabitants take themselves and their isolated little world way too seriously, they fight their stupid little wars here which is disgraceful, and their pretensions of exclusivity are as laughable as their old religious stories about a woman being made out of a man's rib. Earthlings think they invented the wheel and everything else too. They're wrong about that. The just re-discovered all the things they presently know...like Columbus "discovering America". Ha! The Indians already knew it was there, didn't they? And so did some of the Vikings, long before Columbus. People's present store of knowledge is, I think, comparable to a thimblefull of water sitting alongside an ocean of untapped possibilities. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Amos Date: 06 Jan 09 - 01:16 PM I dunno about that one, Bobad--ALL my major concerns are tangled up with mankind and its various highjinks! The perspective of Grand Schemes can be a slippery slope if allowed to run untempered. When attention gallops outward from an assumed viewpoint, locus Terra, and then tries to embrace the scale and magnitude of things in the universe at large, iti s easy to be stricken by the Sagan Syndrome, reeling among the billions and billions of lociii as though each were an object of view, and needing to be tabbed and tracked in the endless cosmic array. You might as well try to name all your favorite electrons. It is unlikely the average hooming has any idea how many of those little critters he is breathing, carrying, walking through, and using in any given instant. But I want to offer a big HUZZAH for the simple declarative sentence in WYSIWYG's post upthread: humans are not cancer. Viva! That is the real deal made manifest, friends and neighbours! A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 06 Jan 09 - 01:27 PM Okay, I'm gonna name my favorite electrons. I have just a few of them. Ahem! Winona. Joan. Morgan. Julie. All females, not surprisingly. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Amos Date: 06 Jan 09 - 01:36 PM Little Hawk is having coffee with a friend at a sidewalk cafe. LH: "Whoops!! Winona, Joan, Morgan and Julie just walked out on me!!!!" Friend: "Oh, my God, Hawkster!! That's awful. Are you SURE?" LH: "Sure? Of course!! I'm positive!!!" A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Sleepy Rosie Date: 06 Jan 09 - 01:59 PM Anyone ever read Danah Zohar? I read her Quantum Mind years ago. Can hardly remember any of it now, but I think she based her work on Penrose's Quantum Mind theory - all matter being latent with with potential self-consciousness, and it's 'just' a case of subatomic particles agreeing to dance together which catalyses that latent potential into effect... Maybe someone else could tell me what I'm talking about!? Cos I can't remember! Just did a YouTube on her out of interest. She sounds just like Krisnamurti now. As far as humanity's relationship to Gaia is concerned. I also do not see how we can divide ourselves from what created us. But that's the legacy of Cartesian Dualism for you. I believe The Earth generated us as a part of It's own evolution into consciousness, we are the individual manifestations It's dawning intelligence. Baby touching fingers to toes. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Amos Date: 06 Jan 09 - 02:03 PM Penrose is a gfine ioutstanding thinker indeed, IMHO. Wish I had more time to follow up on the things he explored. also do not see how we can divide ourselves from what created us. You can divide yourself from anything except that which you are being. The invisible assumptions of beingness are the hardest things in the world to get over, because they are in so close. But they can be reviewed, one way or another; nothing is mandatory. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: olddude Date: 06 Jan 09 - 02:06 PM 2012 that is all I can say and I won't have to give another dime to the gas company or plumbers!! Everything has a bright spot to it HA |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 06 Jan 09 - 02:11 PM Yes, well, I do try to stay positive, Amos. I sent a lengthy PM to John McKenzie explaining how souls can reincarnate wherever and whenever they bloody well want to...not just on this one planet here....and some other stuff... He's not been back. Probably still shaking his head and muttering "What a nutcase..." to himself. ;-) Heh! Just tell them what you really think if you want them to go away, right? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Megan L Date: 06 Jan 09 - 02:14 PM Naw yer wrang son dead wrang wance yer deed yer deed. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: GUEST,Billy the Bunnie Date: 06 Jan 09 - 02:17 PM Who says "virtuous rabbits are reborn as dogs"? I was brought up to believe we get reborn as hares if we've been good, and cats if we've been bad. Anyway, I'm surprise no-one has come up with the "brute creation lacks souls" assertion. B the B |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 06 Jan 09 - 02:20 PM Once this scrawny body of mine is dead, it's dead, Megan. We agree on that. Only thing is, love, I am not this scrawny body. I'm just inhabiting it at the present time. I am the consciousness living in this scrawny body, and one day I will leave it behind. Now, why couldn't I be living in a 25-year-old body with the build and reflexes of an Olympic athlete and still have this scintillating consciousness? Why?!? It just isn't fair! ;-) By God, would I have some fun... |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Megan L Date: 06 Jan 09 - 02:22 PM Easy son nae 25 year old body wie ony sence wid aloww an auld curmudgeon like yersel or Mackenzie onywhere near it. :p |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Amos Date: 06 Jan 09 - 02:35 PM LOL!!!! There's the rub, Meg!!! A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 06 Jan 09 - 02:35 PM Awww...darn! |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: gnu Date: 06 Jan 09 - 02:51 PM Amos... or not. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 06 Jan 09 - 05:20 PM It's someone who doesn't know how to spell the word "phoenix". Also apparently someone who has no appreciation for the lovely sound of Scots dialect. People like that were drawn and quartered in the good auld days when justice was administered in a swift and effective fashion to knaves, cutpurses, and other feckless varlets of that ilk. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Megan L Date: 06 Jan 09 - 05:28 PM aye lad yer no wrang :) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Amos Date: 06 Jan 09 - 06:07 PM I think it is someone who flunked out of "Learn to Read Through Phonics" class... A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Bobert Date: 06 Jan 09 - 06:17 PM Yeah, I heard that our solar sytem is down to about 5 million years before the sun craps out and blows the heck up so... ...repent now while you still can... B~ |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 06 Jan 09 - 06:35 PM Little Hawk, I will quote to you what some famous philosopher said to me once: Please don't be a literalist, okay? The Adam and Eve thing is on a par with the Ugh, the caveman thing. It's a parable or fable, I suppose one would say, to illustrate the silliness of the reincarnation-from-a-fixed-pool-of-souls theory (if one can call it that). Actually, I'm not sure that reincarnation on any other basis is any better. And I really do believe that that parable/fable status should be obvious on its face. So, "Please don't be a literalist, okay?" Dave Oesterreich |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Gurney Date: 06 Jan 09 - 06:36 PM NOW I'm beginning to worry.... |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 06 Jan 09 - 06:48 PM Which Ugh, the caveman thing? I've never believed in reincarnation from a fixed pool of souls either, but I have seen a good deal of rather convincing evidence to support the idea of reincarnation on some basis or another. It's not the sort of thing one finds if one doesn't look for it or remain open to the possibility, and it's like that with anything else too. This is why people who say they "don't believe" in something (whatever it is) so seldom come across anything that would change their mind. They don't look for it in the first place. They're not even interested. It's not a question of whether someone believes or not. It's a question of whether they know or not. If they don't know, then they are in no position to state categorically that they either "believe" or "do not believe" in something, though they may have some opinions on the relative likelihood of the concept. They may consider it likely. Or unlikely. I consider reincarnation quite likely. You (I assume) don't. What has belief got to do with it? Neither one of us is in any position to categorically either believe or disbelieve in reincarnation...because that can only be done on the basis of direct personal experience or verifiable and indisputable evidence. I've had personal experiences which strongly suggest there is reincarnation, but those experiences are not on the scale of what can be called indisputable evidence. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Lizzie Cornish 1 Date: 06 Jan 09 - 06:55 PM Gaia is struggling because of Apathy, not because of Cancer. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Donuel Date: 07 Jan 09 - 01:03 AM The sun is supposed to go another 3 to 5 billion years. But it is currently so underactive at a time when the 11 year cycle says it should be at maximum, scientists are puzzled. possibly a calm before the storm Gaia's been totally frozen, totally molten and totally stoned by asteroids and comets. After half a dozen near total extiction events, life has found a way, even if it sometimes takes 200 million years. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 07 Jan 09 - 06:22 AM Cockroaches will rule the next time around. They've been ruling us for a long time. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: GUEST,Prince A Date: 07 Jan 09 - 07:24 AM I don't see how the way you style some of your body-hair has any effect on how you're governed. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 07 Jan 09 - 04:12 PM Little Hawk, you commented, inter alia, "I consider reincarnation quite likely. You (I assume) don't." Why would you assume that, L.H.? I certainly didn't say that. I made fun of the fixed-pool-of-souls idea in my post, and was careful to go no further. Since you don't have knowledge of my belief, by your own argument you have no basis for belief or assumption about it. As you point out, neither of us has any direct personal knowledge of reincarnation. Further, I haven't had the advantage(??) of having "seen a good deal of rather convincing evidence to support the idea of reincarnation on some basis or another", as you tell us you have. I'm not expecting to see such evidence in my time, since I haven't come across it in my 78 years so far, but I suppose it's not beyond possibility that I will. Your understanding of the nature of belief is not the same as mine, it appears. I can well logically say that "I don't believe" in something when I have no direct experience in it. That merely, in the case of reincarnation, is the same as "I have not seen anything that induced me to believe" in it, which is the case with me. Note the difference between that statement and the possible statement, "I believe there is no such thing as reincarnation." It's like being an atheist. "I don't believe there is a god" is not the same as "I believe there is no such thing as a god." If you were perchance to say, "Dave, you've said in other threads that you're an atheist, and so you must not believe in reincarnation either," that would be an unjustified assumption also, because there is nothing about one of those beliefs that necessarily implies or refutes the other. What I DO believe in (although I don't see evidence of it as much as I'd like) is precision in the use of language. Dave Oesterreich |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Bill D Date: 07 Jan 09 - 05:12 PM "What I DO believe in (although I don't see evidence of it as much as I'd like) is precision in the use of language." a Hearty Amen! (well...an 'atta boy', anyway, Dave!) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 07 Jan 09 - 05:57 PM Dave - Excellent post! I understand you perfectly now, and I see no reason for disagreement with anything you have said. My earlier assumption about what I thought you (probably) meant was incorrect. (I too am very appreciative of precision in the use of language.) My interest in reincarnation was spurred by various personal experiences. Prior to that, I had no interest in it. After having become interested I read a lot of different books relating to reincarnation and read about various recorded instances of people having recalled previous lives, etc. On that basis of all that, I now consider reincarnation to be quite likely. Even if it does occur, though, I wouldn't necessarily take that to mean that it must occur in every case. There might be a number of different possibilities in terms of "afterlife" situations (or there might not). Not for me to say, because I don't know. In Bill D's case, for example, he, like Jimmy Hoffa, might simply cease entirely to be when he kicks the bucket... (That's a joke, Bill! Sorry...I just couldn't resist.) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Bill D Date: 07 Jan 09 - 06:12 PM "I think I think, therefore I think I am!" I will, like Hoffa, continue in the memories of my friends (and in MY case, a VERY few enemies)....and if Max is correct, I will live on in Mudcat forever! Folks will be arguing with me long after I am gone! (heh, heh!) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 07 Jan 09 - 06:13 PM I fully appreciate your enjoyment of that fact, Bill. ;-) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Lizzie Cornish 1 Date: 07 Jan 09 - 06:15 PM I've always believed in reincarnation. Never had a problem with it at all. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Donuel Date: 07 Jan 09 - 06:17 PM I appreciate Bill more than the facts. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Amos Date: 07 Jan 09 - 06:31 PM neither of us has any direct personal knowledge of reincarnation. Well, Dave, that's something to ponder, I reckon. What would constitute such knowledge? Do you have any direct personal knowledge of the home you grew up in? What does it comprise? Mental images f sounds, smells, sights, motion, feelings? If you found yourself looking at equally vivid mental recordings of sounds, sights, smells, motion, etc. from a battle of smelly men swinging crude iron weapons at each other in a field somewhere in Scotland, what would it mean? A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Ythanside Date: 07 Jan 09 - 07:42 PM If Gaia is dying then chances are that is is by indigenous causes. How inflated does our collective ego have to be for us to imagine that we have the capability to inflict any damage whatsoever comparable to that of the Siberian comet/asteroid of the early 20th century or the Yucatan peninsula comet/asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago? Even the eruption of Krakatoa in the late 19th century, a single natural event, had more global impact than we could possibly muster if we ran all of our vehicles and factories at once whilst simultaneously triggering every nuclear device in the world today. Come on guys, get real. This planet, as is commonly known, has experienced numerous and more horrific environmental changes than we could ever survive or even imagine. This precedes any human impact, real or imagined, on our environment. However, anyone with the merest hint of awareness knows that the our race has a limited time in which to develop a means of colonising host planets if we have the determination required to secure the future of our descendants. The alternative is that our species, along with 99% or more of all others here, will join our unwritten and forgotten ancestors. This, despite Hollywood, scaremongers and sci-fi writers, seems unlikely to come about over the next week, day, month, year, decade or even century or so, and therefore we do have a comfort zone of time in which our technos can or may organize our escape. Our immediate concern, as current front-runners in the food chain on Earth, relates only to our ability to adapt to the changes promised in the immediate future. With our proven ingenuity this should not be an insurmountable problem. Reincarnation is both a separate issue and an irrelevance to humanists like myself. The concept of mass extermination of our fellow humans by pandemic or world war, two 'saving' possibilities embraced by an earlier poster, was an antiquated view when I heard it first in the 1950s and shows, at best, a limited imagination and, at worst, a solution acceptable only to those without future or progeny. That my children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren should die in such a futile sacrifice would be not only unacceptable but unthinkable. When we have left this planet it may freeze, boil, or just stumble along in its own way, unaware and uncaring that we have been here or that we have left. Man, IMO, will merely have 'abode his hour or two'. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Ythanside Date: 07 Jan 09 - 07:51 PM Amos, for me it would mean that I'd stumbled upon a crowd of Rangers amd Celtic supporters whose coaches had pulled up at the same bushes for a 'pee' stop. :0) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Amos Date: 07 Jan 09 - 08:44 PM Sounds pretty mental, all right! :D A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 07 Jan 09 - 09:23 PM Amos asked: neither of us has any direct personal knowledge of reincarnation. Well, Dave, that's something to ponder, I reckon. What would constitute such knowledge? You quoted only part of what I said, Amos. I said, "As you point out, neither of us has any direct personal knowledge of reincarnation." He had said that he didn't; I agreed, that I didn't either. Now, I've read that there have been instances where, through hypnotic regression, individuals have "remembered" other lives. And if that had happened to me, I suppose I might consider it my direct personal knowledge. But to the rest of us (to me, that is) this kind of "knowledge"--coming from someone who claims to "know" by extraordinary, unprovable means--is called revelation, and no one other than the person concerned is obliged to believe that the individual even perceived the experience, let alone that it reflects anything of ultimate reality. As to your medieval armored ruffians, I don't know, because I haven't experienced it. But I'd probably give first consideration to the idea that I was (a) tricked in some manner, (b) drunk, or (c) taking leave of my senses, such as they are. All of those possibilities fit within my general worldview. Only if the quality of the experience was such that none of those was supportable would I start to consider reincarnation. How difficult that set of decisions would be to meet is beyond anything I can specify under the present circumstances. But my worldview has been formed over a period of 78 years now, and it would take a lot, I think, to set it aside. Dave Oesterreich |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Amos Date: 07 Jan 09 - 09:44 PM Fair 'nuff, Dave. See, I have met scores of people who have run into such pictures/mental recordings and have had the impression they were as real (with respect to clarity, etc.) as memories from grade school or childhood. Of course, from a physics perspective, memory cannot be construed as evidence! :D A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Lonesome EJ Date: 08 Jan 09 - 12:17 AM Ah, horse apples Uncle Dave! I have heard this view stated somberly by others. If we are a plague on the planet, we are a plague that's responsible for the Taj Mahal, the Ninth Symphony, the Mona Lisa, Vincent Black Lightning, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Mandolin, Twelfth Night, the Gettysburg Address, Blackberry Blossom, Mudcat, and stuffed crust pizza. Nature would do just fine without us, and we have proved poor stewards of the planet, but the Earth will outlive us, and one million years from now will show only the slightest traces of us, like the dinosaurs. We really aren't that important in the eternal scale of things. We are as a poor player who struts his brief hour upon the stage and then is no more. Try to enjoy your brief hour. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Little Hawk Date: 08 Jan 09 - 12:38 AM "my worldview has been formed over a period of 78 years now, and it would take a lot, I think, to set it aside" Yes. That's exactly what makes most people very hard to convince of anything that doesn't already match their general set of views. I don't say that in any intent to criticize you, Dave, I'm merely mentioning it as a general observation about humanity. Most people's minds are very hard to change, because their sense of identity is based to a great extent upon their existing worldview. I have experienced some hypnotic regression experiences which were totally convincing to me regarding previous lives I've lived...but I don't expect them to convince anybody else, and that's why I haven't brought them up on this forum. They would make interesting stories to listen to perhaps, but they are really of no use to anyone but me...or to someone else who's had similar regression experiences and is open to the idea. You have to experience something like that directly to appreciate just how convincing it is. The same applies to witnessing a ghostly apparition or a flying saucer or a miraculour healing or anything else that is very unusual and unexpected. You have to be there yourself and experience it firsthand to be fully convinced. And if you have, well, that's enough to convince you. Not much doubt after that, if any. But I don't expect to convert anybody else to my way of thinking about it. They have to have the experience themselves. Or else they have to hear it from a mainstream "authoritative source"....(and I find that really amusing!...people's naive trust in the official powers that be around them)... For instance, if the government and all the news services decided to openly say one day "There are indeed aliens visiting the Earth in space ships, we've known it for years, and we are now declassifying it and telling all of you about it..." ...well, then all of a sudden virtually everybody would believe it, including the usual crew of diehard skeptics. It amazes me that they trust their own governments and their news media with such childlike faith. Don't they realize that governments and media often deliberately lie and mislead their own public in order to manipulate an event or put a program forward or start a war? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Megan L Date: 08 Jan 09 - 03:54 AM The problem with citing hypnotic regression as proof is the complexity of the human brain and its capacity to weave information. There have been several cases where some poor soul has been accused of sexual abuse after such therapy only for it to be discovered later that quite without malice the person in therapy had woven together things they had not even realised they had learned from various sources into a memory, a totally false memory and one that destroyed life and relationship but they were certain after hypnosis that it was thier memory. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: GUEST,Jeremy Clarkson II Date: 08 Jan 09 - 04:03 AM I hope global warming hurries up, took ages to scrape frost off the windscreen this morning! Mind you, the reason why I needed to go out was to get on with work, which, with the global economy as it is, needs all hands to the pump. Don't worry though. With my gas guzzling Jag, my frequent flyers card and consumer lifestyle, there is one benefit. Those who can do, and those who dream can get on with hugging trees and pretending to believe in stuff and nonsense. The earth is NOT a sentient being. It goes through phases, always has and until the sun grows, always will. We have been around 0.000001% of the time. It is supreme arrogance to think our effect will have any lasting effect. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: SINSULL Date: 08 Jan 09 - 12:42 PM "The same applies to witnessing a ghostly apparition or a flying saucer or a miraculour healing or anything else that is very unusual and unexpected. You have to be there yourself and experience it firsthand to be fully convinced." And how many times have ghostly apparitions and flying saucers been debunked and proved to be something totally "normal"? Experiencing it first hand is not necessarily proof. If you see a magician make the Statue of Liberty disappear, are you convinced it is gone? Charlatans make a living off people who are "convinced" by what they "experience". Presumably, you agreed to undergo hypnotic regression. If so, you were receptive to the suggestion before you were even hypnotized. Have you been able to confirm the existence of the people you once were? Can you prove that you had no idea of their existence before you regressed? If they did in fact exist, how do you know something else was not at work - channeling an entity, maybe? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 08 Jan 09 - 01:42 PM If they did in fact exist, how do you know something else was not at work - channeling an entity, maybe? Sinsull, would you explain what you mean by "channeling an entity"? I have no idea what that means. Dave Oesterreich |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: VirginiaTam Date: 08 Jan 09 - 01:43 PM The earth is NOT a sentient being. It goes through phases, always has and until the sun grows, always will. We have been around 0.000001% of the time. It is supreme arrogance to think our effect will have any lasting effect. This statement loses validty in light of how and by whom it was presented. While it is true that we have only been here miniscule amount of time, in that time we have done a huge amount of damage. The effect of our activity may well wipe us out and could very easily wipe out all life (not just human), producing a once again dead planet that cannot recover. The Gaia hypothesis has been around since the 1960's. It has morphed numerous times since Lovelock started publishing his veiws. Every so often it appears on the radar again and comes around with new ideas and new evidence. Etc and so forth. The thing is we need to stop being so acquisitive. We need to demand responsible behaviour from politicians and industry. We need to do it for our children. NOW! |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Gaia is dying of cancer From: Amos Date: 08 Jan 09 - 02:55 PM The plasticity of the human mind and its ability to convince itself of realities is indeed a big subject; there have been cases recorded of major diseases completely reversed in their tracks by a simple placebo, for example, as well as many other varieties of "psychosomatic" healing through one means or another. It is also true that the same plasticity can lend itself to the generation of negative conditions, prompted by the same power of induced agreement or suggestion. This includes "false memory syndrome" whereby overly suggestive questions from social workers, for example, can bring about memories of abuse that did not in fact occur. But the fact that this kind of creative power does exist in the mind does not by any means imply that all mental recordings are arbitrarily generated, and there are interesting differences in the way mental records behave that can be used to differentiate "dubbed in" memories from actual experiential ones. From a therapist's point of view, the difference usually does not matter. Discovering the pictures one is carrying around and recovering the ability not to carry them around is sufficient benefit to the individual regardless of their provenance. When past-ligfe regressions bring about a relief from some affect or other, who cares in detail why they worked, anymore than one cares about ther shell-states of the atoms in an aspirin as it relieves a headache? It's outside the scope of concern. That does not mean that the study of these things is not in itself a fascinating and possibly useful one. But it is a tricky subject, full of little pitfalls, such as the plasticity mentioned above. A |
