A Few Conclusions
All great truths began as blasphemies
George Bernard Shaw
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela
Very little in this book is original. People have been whispering variations on its theme (out of hearing of The Church) for centuries. But since Darwin seemed to have finally blown ‘religion’ out of the water, the world has been in thrall to the Materialist zealots, who have hi-jacked words like ‘sceptic’, ‘rationalist’, ‘Darwinist’, and even ‘scientist’ to mean Materialist, and most of society has gone along with this, for a hatful of reasons.
But now I think the tide is beginning to turn and people are more ready to see the fatal flaw in the Materialist ‘philosophy’. In fact, I feel confident enough of this to risk a few predictions…
***
Bad predictions are based upon dogma, ignorance and prejudice, and state with certainty that aeroplanes will never replace cavalry and that ghosts do not exist because they cannot exist. Good predictions weigh all evidence via SPIT, or similar, then use a rational paradigm to interpret all evidence.
§ Remember eugenics? Social darwinism? Neo-darwinist atheism? Epiphenomenalism! All based upon a misinterpretation of Darwin.
My number one prediction is:
Within 50 years of writing this (2022) science in general will have abandoned irrational Materialism in favour of rational Idealism. Er… maybe 100.
And thus will favour something similar to what I have called DarwinPlus.
Perhaps someone will think of a less clumsy name.
Once Materialist Science is replaced by Idealist science, and reason is reclaimed, the world will change enormously. We will see hospitals making some diagnoses by aura. We will admit rational philosophy into the education system. And when science finally admits that there are indeed more things in heaven and earth than it previously claimed, people will feel free to explore them all without fear of mockery.
§ The fear of violent persecution by The Church has passed, mercifully, largely thanks to science’s (theoretical!) insistence upon Reason.
Churches, temples and mosques will remain as focus points, but claims to exclusivity will gradually fade, and ecumenism will expand; the esoteric will gradually become exoteric, and more common to all.
Thought-ful, non-dogmatic, Buddhism will continue to rise at the expense of Belief-ful Old Time Religion, and what Eddie Izzard the comedian called ‘mumbling in cold buildings’.
And as we begin to understand the full implications of Yogic/Esoteric ‘perennial’ Philosophy archaeologists and ethnologists will be more able to connect with the minds of the societies they are studying and their rituals, myths, rock markings and juju. They will also note, for example, that the Egyptian concept of the ka, the ba, and the akh, roughly parallel the Esoteric etheric double, the astral and the spiritual bodies.
Gradually the crass materialism of the C20 will decline as people see the point of the Golden Rule and come to understand the relevance of the Laws of Karma, and internalise the fact that true happiness and a sense of purpose is achievable, but only via their own creative choices and kindly actions towards other people, and not via owning More Stuff or wielding power.
The greed of bankers will be seen as deeply anti-social; banking will change. Capitalism will be reconsidered and will be adjusted to retain its strengths while controlling its greed and suicidal irresponsibility.
§ Even US President Herbert Hoover, a great fan of the free market, once said that ‘The trouble with capitalism is capitalists: they’re too damn greedy.’
And Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of the USA, once wrote: ‘I sincerely believe… that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies..’.
Pointless consumerism will fade. Co-operatives and credit unions will revive, and will be intelligently nurtured. Small scale and local investment will increase. ‘Small is Beautiful’ will revive after decades of being ignored. And ‘happiness’ will become the target rather than seven Ferrari Priapos and a matching set of ulcers.
Farming will change. More people will want to grow their own wholesome veg, and farms will begin to let off sections of their grazing land to allotmenteers.
Planning laws will be adapted to break up some of the currently redundant half a million acres of East Anglian prairies into units of inter-relating smallholders and craftsmen, thus creatively repopulating the countryside. Organic growing and research will burgeon, as people realise that chemical farming is unsustainable and (via de-naturing and erosion) destructive of the food-producing soil itself, never mind the environment.
Insects and birds will return from the brink. If we act quickly enough, the bee may be saved from extinction, and lots of us along with it.
We will reject genetic engineering in plants because we will acknowledge that Scientists know a lot about molecules but nothing about Life Itself; we will learn from the cases of GMO’s escaping and wreaking havoc as crosspollination with other varieties inevitably occurs.
§ I also suspect that nano-technology will be reined in after a brief love affair, as we realise that this is an alien technology which will not respect the protective barriers and membranes of biology. It is possible, I think, that its effects may be seen in the same light as radiation damage. Perhaps I’m wrong about the dangers. I hope so.
We will also see vegetarian/veganism increasing, as people think through the nature of animals and the way we treat them, and the link between cheap burgers and the destruction of the rainforest, pollution of the Amazon, etc.
§ Water is set to become scarce and expensive. It currently takes 2,500 gallons of subsidised water to produce one pound of meat in the USA.
Placebos will be creatively reinstated and depression will be increasingly treated by relaxation and meditation techniques, ‘guided’ lucid dreaming, and simple discussion of the principles touched upon by D+.
§ Placebos can be astoundingly powerful. They have been successfully used to treat hypertension, diabetes, radiation sickness, asthma, cancer, multiple sclerosis, the common cold, and autism. They can also, amazingly, mimic the effects of birth control pills. In one blind experiment reported on the Discovery tv channel, placebos ‘claiming to be’ chemotherapy chemicals caused 30% of patients to vomit and lose their hair. Food for intense thought here, I would say. It can get even stranger.
Take a look at these videos if you can:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=4115610193400691959 http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-6942125248944933588&hl=en&emb=1
§ At the moment, some 20% of people on anti-depressants suffer increased anxiety. Other medicines increase thoughts of suicide by a factor of eight. In 2009 eight drugs were withdrawn for actually causing suicides (and heart attacks). How many more..?
A proper understanding of DarwinPlus would clear up a lot of the despair associated with panomie, without needing drugs at all.
§ I do wonder whether Materialists are more prone to depression than Idealists. Logic suggests that they must be, as the feeling of panomie cannot be far away when there is ultimately no point in anything for you.
Greater understanding of the ‘subtle bodies’ (etheric, astral, etc) will one day mean that schizophrenia and perhaps all forms of psychopathology might sometimes be seen as psychic attack by the ruffian end of the Astral. And the work of ‘spiritual’ healers will be carefully studied, and developed more widely.
Using the services of psychics will become more normal. In 2008-9 the British Astrological and Psychic Society said it had witnessed a dramatic increase in high-flying businessmen consulting their members, unsure of the financial future just before the great banking scandal. (Remember Thomas Jefferson, above?)
§ Consulting psychics in the business world is nothing new: ‘Millionaires do not use psychics; billionaires do.’ JP Morgan.
Television programmes like The Psychic Detectives, which relate true cases of psychics helping US police forces, are paving the way.
Greater understanding of ‘thoughtforms’ and the power of visualisation will lead to advances in self-healing, probably deriving from (self-)hypnosis. This process will be linked with the placebo effect and built upon as a positive feedback system.
§ A study in Munich in 2010 found that acupuncture works as well as drugs do for sufferers of migraine. Intriguingly, ‘sham acupuncture’, meaning ‘needle treatment, but not along the traditional acupuncture meridians’ also works well, but not as well as proper acupuncture.
Hypnosis and self-hypnosis will increasingly replace anaesthetics.
In a nutshell, the role of the Mind in all areas of healing and pain will be given serious priority.
Perhaps most importantly, medicine will cease thinking that a printout tells all that needs to be told. In previous times a bedside manner and holding someone’s hand was valued more highly than it seems to be these days, and for good reason, D+ would suggest.
§ Science will realise that really important things like kindness, love, humour and intelligence will remain the most important things whether you attempt to measure them or not; and that nobody but a psychopath (certified or academic) would ever want to try the measuring.
Zeno’s paradox states that if you fire an arrow at a target, it will at some point have travelled half the distance; then half of the remaining distance; and then another half; and so on. Thus, paradoxically, it can never actually reach the target. This has bemused great minds for millennia. Google offers 190,000 entries, frequently suggesting that there can be no resolution. However….
We can apply this paradox to the Wet Fish Test, if we can find a volunteer. Will he accept the claim that the fish will never actually hit him? We can be sure that fish will slosh chop 100% of the times it is swung, never mind halving the distance every fraction of a second. Where is the paradox, then? The problem lies in the misapplication of the tool of measurement. The ‘endless halving’ approach simply does not recognise reality, and the conclusion it comes to is thus unreal by definition. If unreal, then untrue. If untrue, then no paradox.
Another example may be Biology’s interest in fractal geometry: ie, a Materialist attempt to reduce the subtlety of organic form, which is driven by Mind and Cause and Effect, to the mechanical iterations of an equation, similar to Richard Dawkins’ biomorphs. Hamilton’s Rule, much quoted by Professor Dawkins, seeks to explain the mystery of altruism (a profound irritant to a Materialist, who can not consider ‘kindness’ as an option, but only random genetic shuffling) via mathematics that remains unproved, and which even many of his peers cannot follow. For an Idealist altruism is entirely natural, explainable.. and a fundamental principle of Being. No maths required.
Mathematicians do sometimes seem to be troubled by the nature of their calling: Benjamin Peirce once said of Euler’s Identity: ‘Gentlemen, e(iπ)+1 = 0 is surely true (but) it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don’t know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be truth.’
D+ is clear that Mind (including somebody else’s mind) can influence body very powerfully, and that the will to self-cure can be a real force. Once this has been accepted we will see more old-fashioned personal nursing, and a little less ‘target management’. All in proportion, of course. Perhaps ‘mental focussing’ or prayer groups will be encouraged in hospitals, and meditation/visualisation classes prescribed for all (suitable) patients before their release into the wild.
§ A nurse was recently reprimanded for offering to pray for a patient. Only in a Materialist world…
As people regain confidence in their own judgement, we can expect to see less willingness to blindly follow orders. I predict that a re-run of the Milgram experiments fifty years from now will turn up fewer people prepared to electrocute another person just because an expert says it’s OK.
§ …and people will feel freer to reject the conspiracy theories put about by such writers as Dan Brown, who blur fact, factoid, and fabrication. Instead, we will look into the connections that link the Essenes, Neo-Platonists, Hermeticists, Illuminati, Gnostics, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Alchemists, Martinists, Templars etc, and realise that they are all speaking dialects of the same language. Only paranoid Materialists see conspiracies in these groups. Idealists see something very different, and will perceive the links to Sufism, Kabbalah, Buddhism and Yoga instead.
As Materialism is finally accepted for the non-sense it is, more scientists will feel free to admit to their own paranormal experiences.
§ A few brave souls already do this. Dr Brian Weiss in Many Lives, Many Masters mentions four senior scientists who have spoken privately to him. One regularly talks to his ‘dead’ father, and another inexplicably already knew her way round Rome when she first visited it.
Currently they dare not, for fear of Materialist bullies, especially powerful editors and holders of purse strings. But when a few people have got it started, a snowball of personal truth and experience will thunder down the hillside of knowledge, building in volume at it goes, to finally flatten the lath and plaster bunker of Materialism at the foot of the slope.
§ Sometimes a way-over-the-top and ill-thought-out comedy metaphor is irresistible. But no more of them, I promise. Meanwhile, a 2007 survey in Nature found that 40% of US scientists believed in an ‘immortal soul’ and that a Creator was somehow involved in evolution. Despite all the blustering diktats of the Skeptics, rational or independent thought will keep breaking through….
There is already some rational research in academia. The University of Wales, Lampeter, is home to the Religious Experience Research Centre which studies thousands of accounts of ‘anomalous’ and paranormal experiences: http://www.lamp.ac.uk/aht/Personal_Stories/personal_stories.html As the ideas behind Idealism etc become better understood, we will see the emphasis shift from looking for ‘life out there’ in the cosmos, and instead switching to ‘life in here’, within the Astral and Mental words. ‘The proper study of Man is Man’, after all.
Remember ISSOL searching in outer space for the origin of Life? We may predict that they will fail to find a Materialist origination there, too.
A Few More…
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
George Bernard Shaw
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
Mark Twain
On the technology front, we will finally accept that computers are NOT going to take over the world, unless used, as explosives and words are used, by unprincipled deviants.