Catastrophism and the Ancient World (redux)

Didn’t expect to come back to this one. Five years after having blogged on this topic, I was delighted to see Graham Hancock get full Netflix documentary treatment under the title Ancient Apocalypse. No doubt streaming video is shaped in both tone and content to fit modern audiences, not modern readers. We are no longer people of the book but instead people of the screen. (An even earlier mode, displaced by the onset in the Gutenberg Era, was the oral tradition, but that was a different blog.) As a result, the eight episodes come across as tabloid-style potboilers, which regrettably undermines Hancock’s authority. Having read two of Hancock’s books exploring the subject, I was already familiar with many of the ancient sites discussed and depicted, though some reports are updated from his books. The main thesis is that archeological structures and cultural origin stories all around the world point to a major human civilization now lost but being gradually rediscovered. The phase of destruction is unaccountably saved until episode eight, namely, a roughly twelve-hundred-year period known as the Younger Dryas marked by repeated, severe climatic events, most notably the Great Flood that raised sea level by more than 400 ft. Suspected causes of these events range from the breaking of ice dams and subsequent breakup of the continental ice sheets to multiple meteor impacts to a coronal mass ejection. Could be more than one.

Several YouTube reviews have already weighed in on strengths and weaknesses of the documentary. Learning that others have been completely absorbed by Hancock’s books is a little like discovering a lost sibling. Intellectual brethren focused on decidedly arcane subject matter is quite different from mass market fandom (or as I once heard someone joke, “You like pizza? I like pizza! BFF!”). Of course, beyond enthusiasts and aficionados are scofflaws, the latter of whom come under specific attack by Hancock for refusing to examine new evidence, instead adhering blindly to established, status quo, academic consensus. Although some would argue the principal takeaway Ancient Apocalypse is filling in gaps in the story of human development (a cosmology or better origin story), my assessment, perhaps a result of prior familiarity with Hancock’s work, is that officialdom as instantiated in various institutions is an abject and unremitting failure. The Catholic Church’s persecution of numerous proto-scientists as heretics during the Middle Ages, or similarly, what has recently become known derisively as “YouTube science” (where heterodox discussion is summarily demonetized in a pointless attempt to shut down dissent) should be concerning to anyone who supports the scientific method or wants to think for themselves. Whether refusals to even consider alternatives to cherished beliefs are a result of human frailty, power struggles, careerism, or sheer stupidity someone else can decide. Could be more than one.

A couple wild suggestions came up in the reviews I caught. For instance, lost knowledge of how to work stone into megaliths used to construct giant monuments is said to be related to either activating resonance in the stone or indeed a completely different form of energy from anything now known. A similar suggestion was made about how the World Trade Center and other nearby structures were demolished when 9/11 occurred. Specially, purported “directed free-energy technology” was deployed to weaken the molecular coherence of solid metal and concrete to collapse the buildings. (Video demonstrations of iron bars/beams being bent are available on YouTube.) For megaliths, the suggestion is that they are temporarily made into a softer, lighter (?) marshmallow-like substance to be positioned, reformed, and rehardened in situ. Indeed, material phase changes under extremes of pressure and temperature are both obvious and ubiquitous. However, to novices and the scientifically illiterate, this is the stuff of magic and alchemy or straight-up conspiracy (if one prefers). I’m largely agnostic when it comes to such assertions about megalithic structures but those theories are at least as tantalizing as evidence of existence of a lost civilization — especially when officialdom instructs everyone not to look there, or if one does anyway, not to believe one’s lying eyes.

As observed in my earlier blog on this subject, the possibility nay inevitability of destruction of our present civilization, whether from forces external or internal, would make putting aside petty squabbles and getting going on preparations (i.e., prepping for human survival) paramount. Good luck getting humanity all together on that project. Are there secret underground bunkers into which the financial and political elite can flee at the propitious moment, abandoning the masses to their fate? Again, conspiratorial types say yes, both now and in the ancient past. Good luck to any survivors, I guess, in the hellscape that awaits. I don’t want to be around after the first major catastrophe.

Eight Billion Day

According to some estimates, historical trends bring us to 8 Billion Day (human population) today (November 15, 2022), despite a slowing birthrate. Took only 11 years to add the next billion from 7 Billion Day and only 4 years to add the half billion from 7.5 Billion Day. That doesn’t look to me like deceleration; perhaps the last 3 years of Covid pandemic is the hinge of the trend reversal. Previous milestones are 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1930, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, and 6 billion in 1998. Projections are 9 billion in 2037 and 10 billion in 2058. Whereas past numbers are fixed, the future is IMO quite unlikely to produce those numbers on schedule if at all. Factors are many and unpredictable, such as the rise in excess deaths a/k/a all-cause mortality already being reported (but quietly lest panic ensue).

Various economists, demographers, and business leaders bemoan that many countries have already fallen below replacement rate, which poses a dramatic reduction in skilled, experienced labor as members of the Baby Boom retire and die off. Worse than that, however, is the recognition that in growth economies (now ubiquitous across the globe), the only way forward is to have a growing population, young people at the bottom supporting old people at the top. It’s a perfect Ponzi setup, replicated many times over in various institutions and destined to fail spectacularly as more women (in particular) are educated and opt out of motherhood entirely in favor of careers. Given that the Covid era has proven to be a baby bust, one can only wonder whether birth rates will spike as fears subside (which produced the Baby Boom after WWII) or population decline will be a permanent feature of society. I offer no predictions. Further, with myriad variables competing for primacy among doomers who forecast dire consequences of human behavior accumulated over several centuries , I admit being at a loss to know what to hope for. More people (and thus, more subsequent suffering) or fewer?

Wrong Things Getting Done Anyway

The difference between right and wrong is obvious to almost everyone by the end of kindergarten. Temptations persist and everyone does things great and small known to be wrong when enticements and advantages outweigh punishments. C’mon, you know you do it. I do, too. Only at the conclusion of a law degree or the start of a political career (funny how those two often coincide) do things get particularly fuzzy. One might add military service to those exceptions except that servicemen are trained not to think, simply do (i.e., follow orders without question). Anyone with functioning ethics and morality also recognizes that in legitimate cases of things getting unavoidably fuzzy in a hypercomplex world, the dividing line often can’t be established clearly. Thus, venturing into the wide, gray, middle area is really a signal that one has probably already gone too far. And yet, demonstrating that human society has not really progressed ethically despite considerable gains in technical prowess, egregiously wrong things are getting done anyway.

The whopper of which nearly everyone is guilty (thus, guilty pleasure) is … the Whopper. C’mon, you know you eat it do it. I know I do. Of course, the irresistible and ubiquitous fast food burger is really only one example of a wide array of foodstuffs known to be unhealthy, cause obesity, and pose long-term health problems. Doesn’t help that, just like Big Tobacco, the food industry knowingly refines their products (processed foods, anyway) to be hyperstimuli impossible to ignore or resist unless one is iron willed or develops an eating disorder. Another hyperstimulus most can’t escape is the smartphone (or a host of other electronic gadgets). C’mon, you know you crave the digital pacifier. I don’t, having managed to avoid that particular trap. For me, electronics are always only tools. However, railing against them with respect to how they distort cognition (as I have) convinces exactly no one, so that argument goes on the deferral pile.

Another giant example not in terms of participation but in terms of effect is the capitalist urge to gather to oneself as much filthy lucre as possible only to sit heartlessly on top of that nasty dragon’s hoard while others suffer in plain sight all around. C’mon, you know you would do it if you could. I know I would — at least up to a point. Periods of gross inequality come and go over the course of history. I won’t make direct comparisons between today and any one of several prior Gilded Ages in the U.S., but it’s no secret that the existence today of several hundy billionaires and an increasing number of mere multibillionaires represents a gross misallocation of financial resources: funneling the productivity of the masses (and fiat dollars whiffed into existence with keystrokes) into the hands of a few. Fake philanthropy to launder reputations fail to convince me that such folks are anything other than miserly Scrooges fixated on maintaining and growing their absurd wealth, influence, and bogus social status at the cost of their very souls. Seriously, who besides sycophants and climbers would want to even be in the same room as one of those people (names withheld)? Maybe better not to answer that question.