Saturday, June 9, 2012

Our Advanced Civilization, Really?


This is really a good morning thought, it is 6:06 a.m., and I couldn’t sleep last night, was working on an epic called “Feast of the Wolfhound,” concerning Alexander the Great. So instead of working on the Epic, after going to bed at 1: 10 a.m., here I am again, I  got back up with this thought, let me explain, for what it’s worth, and perhaps not too much, but it’s free (I think Alexander was getting to me):
       We do not have to go too far back to witness our inability to find out we are unable to move (and to know) the affairs of man beyond a certain point, at which point everything is foggy: that is, we get lost, there is a reason for this and I don’t quite know it, I doubt anyone really knows it, or can put a fixed finger on it.
       In time comparison, we get lost real quick, perhaps beyond a century or two, it starts to fade, and quickly.
       Point of fact, we can’t really remember if there was really a Great Flood?  It’s been in question for a while now, actually it wasn’t in question for a long while and in the past fifty-years it’s become more of question.  We have one book that validates it. Beyond that, we have to guess or rely on that same book: call out the geologists. I mean this is really not that far back, let’s say, 3600 BC, thereabouts, or 5600-years.  That’s not so long ago.
       Another point, we have to take the word of one man, that there was really a Trojan War, and to be frank, we don’t really know his name for sure, and he wrote it 400-years after the event took place, from memory nonetheless. In fact, we had to even give him a name, by gosh, what more can you do but write the story yourself. Anyhow, that was only 3250-years ago.  Now, archeologists have found this city or fortress, and I have even visited it. So it does exist, beyond that point it is legend. The several fortifications date back to 2900 BC, the Troy in question is 1250 BC, where a great war was fought over a woman named Helen. To be honest with you, I doubt anyone would launch 10,000-ships over a woman: and surely not one who was having marital affair with the neighboring prince, I’d had sent her packing with a: don’t come back letter—and good luck to Paris; if she can do it to a king, she can to it to prince, it’s just a matter of time.
       We have it pretty well documented on Alexander the Great, or at least two accounts that seem pretty impressive, beyond that, it is historical fiction—and there are a lot of Mr. Alexander’s translated   to pick from; these two accounts, we’ll have to take their word for it, and that was only 2324-years ago: and those two folks that wrote these accounts were of course, his most trusted, meaning his most biased.
       As we get to the Roman Empire we have more documentation of course, it indeed is: but can we take the word of Emperors tutoring, historians? We have no choice, or not much of one. At least we know they lived.
     Anyhow, we are now at the doorsteps of the Last Supper, Christ, his life has been pretty well documented also, although many people find his life hard to believe, and perhaps it would be easier for those doubters to believe in Zeus—at least for Greece did for a long while, for Rome we’ll have to do with Mars, not the planet.  Actually we probably have more evidence Christ did what scholars said he did, than what John F. Kennedy actually did, and what the FBI and CIA, said he did.
       We have a rock, actually the rock is split up in several pieces so we have several rocks, and it tells the story of a man named, Gilgamesh, of all names to pick from, how on earth did they come up with this one. Anyhow, he’s kind of the Noah of Babylon’s pre-history. We don’t know the author of this story, it is kind of the Atlantis type story, that Plato made up, Plato, that great philosopher: if we take it at full value, we get two supernatural stories, or as we call them nowadays, Science Fiction—Plato’s story dates back to 9600 BC, as for Gilgamesh, the story dates back to 2700 BC, although it again was written about a thousand years after the event—yes I know, like the Trojan War. Plato on the other hand, lived about 400 BC, writing his story, which he found in the archives of Egypt, he never really saw Atlantis, he couldn’t have it was sunk like the Titanic, 9200 years before he was born. But he created an avalanche of Steven King’s, wanting to get ever drop of sweat out of it.
       I’m not saying I don’t believe any of this, but we have so scarce a history and documentation on these matters, we have to count on rocks, and memory, and one book here,  and one book there, and emperors that want to live on as Godly men forever and ever who were no more than, creeps—what  happened back there?
       And we are now the advanced civilization: really? We are simply the only civilization we know of and we happen to be the present. I’m sure Plato said the same thing.
       The essential point is this: we are trying to control our world when we don’t know it. Trying to remake it, when we’ve just learned to adapt to it: and out of the 400-plus wars we’ve had since Adam and Eve walked the earth—and only God knows how many when Neanderthal and his buddies walked the globe took on a war here and there, perhaps we should stick with 8000 BC, we haven’t really had all that much time to put it together—the premise?  

#913 (5-27-2012)