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Video Description
The textbooks tell us early humans were brutish survivors grinding slowly toward civilization. Professor Jiang offers a very different first chapter — spiritual, artistic, and wildly imaginative people who painted caves, sang before they spoke, and buried the disabled with love. The evidence, he argues, has been hiding in plain sight all along. Civilization didn’t make us human; it just trained us to forget what we already were.
Full Video Transcript
So today we start a series on the entirety of human history.
Well we’re going very fast and again what’s important is for you to understand the concepts.
And so if there are ideas you don’t understand, it’s very important that you raise your hand,
challenge me, and ask for clarification.
So we start off with the dawn of humanity and this is Charles Darwin.
and arguably he is the most influential thinker of the past 20 years and the reason why is he wrote
a book called the origin of species and he presents to us the theory of evolution and you
all know the theory of evolution because they teach this to you in school and is embedded in
our everyday lives and there are three main ideas to the theory of evolution the first is that it
it was all accidental so you have these genetic mutations and the mutation that
is best fitted to survive in the environment would win out okay so it’s
all a random accidental process that’s the first thing second thing is that it
is materialistic meaning everything that you can see is all that exists the third
thing is it is emergent meaning that feel things build on top of each other
It is a bottom-up process.
Now, the fear of evolution marked a turning point in human history
because before, European countries were Christian,
and Christians believed that there was a divine God who created us,
and as such, we were all equal before the eyes of God.
Therefore, you cannot go and enslave other people.
You cannot go and kill other people.
As well, there were three main ideas to Christianity.
The first idea is one omniscient and omnipresent God.
The Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is what infuses life.
It’s what gives meaning and purpose to life.
And the world is a mystery.
We have to hold faith.
There are things that we cannot understand.
God has a plan, but it is a mysterious plan.
And so we must be humble and serve the purpose of God.
And the theory of evolution destroys this conception of the universe
and introduce a more materialistic one.
So why did this happen?
Well it happened for three reasons.
The main reason is that we live in the 19th century when Darwinism came into being, Europeans
were engaged in a process of imperialism.
They were going around the world and conquering other people and colonizing other people and
essentially committing genocide.
So they needed a theory to explain why this was happening.
And Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest was the most appropriate theory.
And the idea is that the world is divided into races, and the white race is superior
to everyone else, and therefore the white race has reason, has legitimacy in colonizing
other people.
And evolution would give rise to racism and eugenics, okay?
So before Darwinism, we didn’t really have a concept of race, because everyone was equal
the eyes of god and now with the rise of darwinism the world is divided according to race as well
because of evolution theory people start to believe in eugenics which is the idea that
stupid people people who are not white they should be sterilized because if we let them live they
would just all they would do is dilute the genetic pool okay and even today guys there are still many
people who believe in racism and eugenics. The thing about evolution that’s very important is
that it’s a theology, okay? What does that mean? It means that it’s a theory of human progress
about God. So even though evolution thinks that genetic mutation is an accident, the theology is
that will the strong survive? And that’s what’s right, okay? So might makes right. So in many ways,
evolution is a rejection of Christianity. So you would think that Christians would
oppose Darwinism and evolutionary theory. What was surprising is that when the book
came out in 1859, only in 20 years the theory of evolution would come to dominate the entire
Western world. It became the dominant idea in schools, in universities, in the sciences.
and even today evolution is a dominant paradigm meaning that you cannot question evolution
if you question evolution it means you’re crazy okay but i’m crazy so we’re gonna question
evolution today all right so you’ve said this in school but evolution means we came from monkeys
apes and then there were different species of humans and eventually the best our species the
The homo sapiens won out, okay?
So what evolution says is that we are just a monkey, guys, okay?
We’re just a monkey.
And what do monkeys do?
Monkeys like to have sex.
Monkeys like to eat.
Monkeys like to fart.
That’s all we are.
We’re just monkeys, all right?
And this is the evolutionary tree of primates.
But there are certain problems with this theory, okay?
The first problem is if you look at evolutionary theory,
what you should have is tremendous diversity as this species develops.
But so why is it that we only have one human species?
Why aren’t there many different ones?
Well, the argument is that there were many different species before, but we won out.
That’s fine.
But another problem is, why are we going all around the world?
So all species of human beings like to migrate.
But primates don’t do that.
Why is that humans like to migrate?
And so the explanation often is,
well, because of climate change, because of war,
because humans are chasing game, okay,
bisons and food.
But then how do you explain these people, okay?
These are people who went to populate
the Pacific Islands, Micronesia.
That’s kind of weird.
First of all, it’s really dangerous
to go out to the Pacific for months and months, right?
Also, how do they know that there’ll be islands
waiting for them in the Pacific?
So that’s something that’s very odd about human beings.
In fact, there are lots of things that are really odd
about us that other animals don’t do.
For example, we’re very religious, okay?
So the Neanderthals are supposed to be before Homo sapiens,
but as you can see, what we’ve discovered
are these religious ritual sites
that the Aetheros, where the Aetheros engage
in religious ritual practice.
That’s kind of weird.
What does religion have to do with survival?
In fact, you can argue that religion is a waste of time.
Why aren’t they hunting?
Why are they using so much resources and time
in building these ritual sites, okay?
Homo sapiens did cave paintings.
And these cave paintings, I will show you later on,
very extremely elaborate as you can see it’s very time consuming to actually do these paintings also
these paintings are in caves deep inside caves that’s very cold and where there isn’t much
air so it’s kind of dangerous actually to be in these places but we know that homo sapiens spend
a lot of time in these deep wet caves drawing these paintings that’s not very utilitarian
why would why would we do that so that’s a mystery okay also um when we drew on caves we figure out
how to make it artistic so we figured out that red ochre would give us red yellow pigment on the
caves we also use charcoal to use black okay so we were very creative we were very we resourceful
all right so we know a lot about the ice age because as you can imagine during the ice age
things freeze over so they can be easily preserved and actually for most of human history uh we were
in the ice age period okay as you can see during the ice age the entire world was basically frozen
over so how did we survive we’ll survive by using the resources around us okay so this is a mammoth
and so they killed a mammoth and they turned the mammoth into a house okay now the question is
how do they know how to do that how did they figure it out and we’ve been trying for a long
time to figure this out but my answer to you and this is a theme that i will uh keep on emphasizing
for the rest of the semester is they just knew it, okay?
So let’s do a thought experiment.
Let’s just say that there’s 10 of us
and I give you this wall, right?
And I say to you, you cannot talk,
you cannot communicate with each other.
All I want you to do is draw a picture.
Now you would think that the picture
would be disgustingly ugly.
It would be incoherent.
But if you actually do this experiment,
something weird and wonderful would happen, okay?
There’s 10 of you, you’re not communicating, you don’t have a plan, there’s no draft,
but one of you would draw something, okay?
And then the rest of you would see that something, and then you would draw something else, okay?
So for example, maybe you draw a sun, then you draw a tree, then that other person draws a mountain, okay?
It’s almost like telepathy, and that’s how we are.
If you put humans in a group, they would know instantly how to work together,
and they would know how to share ideas together.
And so that’s the idea I want to present to you.
All this stuff is, all this is because of intuition, okay?
No one said, hey, there’s a mammoth.
Let’s go kill it for food and for housing and for clothing.
But if you walk together and you saw a mammoth,
all of you together have had the same thought.
Oh, that could be a source of food and clothing and shelter for us.
And you all knew how to work together.
that’s the beauty of the human imagination and the human empathy and that’s something that
back then they practiced a lot but we’ve lost because of civilization okay does that make
sense to you guys all right um and as you can see back then humans were just very good at
working together no you didn’t have need to have a boss to say okay you should go and hunt
bisons you should go and you should make clothes you should go and you should feed kids everyone
knew exactly what to do and you didn’t have to communicate but also what’s really interesting
about this time period is the diversity of human organization so what i meant by that what i mean
by that is that in different times of the year in different locations humans would form different
organizations so most of the time maybe there’d be groups of like five to ten would go and get food
okay but then you have some times of the year when you have these religious festivals where
hundreds possibly thousands got together and you celebrated your god together it was all intuitive
you didn’t have communication but they all knew at what time what organization would best fit them
if you didn’t like the situation guess what you’d go somewhere else and start your own organization
so early human history it’s a very diverse very dynamic very creative period in our life
even though we’ve forgotten about it.
Okay, and the first example of our creativity
are these cave paintings that were discovered recently,
but which date back 30,000, 40,000 years, okay?
You can see how beautiful these paintings are.
Whoever painted these paintings
put a lot of care and devotion into them, okay?
It’s not just kids playing.
It’s adults who’ve spent a long time purposefully
ensuring that every detail is exact, okay?
Then the question then is, how do they do this?
Because there’s no paper, there’s no planning.
And again, I present to you the idea, the imagination.
They dreamt this.
They had a dream, they saw the picture in their heads,
then they went and drew this in a cave
because they wanted to express themselves.
They wanted to leave a legacy, they wanted to leave a memory.
There’s a calling in you to be creative
and to be imaginative, okay?
All right, and you can see there’s a lot of diversity.
This is a story, right, because you have these horses,
but then you have these predators, lions, okay?
So this picture is telling a mythology.
It’s telling a story of how nature works, okay?
So people are observing nature,
and what they see is a cycle of life and death,
of destruction and renewal.
We’re all together, we’re all unified, we’re all one.
It’s balance and harmony.
And that’s why if you were to kill these animals,
you also had to commemorate them.
Okay, does that make sense?
Okay, because this is a word of balance and harmony.
If you kill these animals and you eat their food,
you must thank them for the sacrifice by commemorating them.
The same thing as later on when humans fight in battles,
we build monuments to celebrate those who were fallen, right?
Because you want to create balance and harmony in the world.
You want to commemorate those who made our lives possible.
So in this world, what matters are these animals.
Because these animals are what gives humans food and clothing.
You can see how beautiful these pictures are.
Do you see how lifelike the animals are?
So clearly, we humans had all this creative potential back then.
This is in Spain.
In Altamira, this is a bison, and you can see the red ochre, how beautiful it is, okay?
And you can see how it’s not meant to be realistic.
It’s meant to be surreal.
It’s meant almost to be a mythology.
There’s a story being told in these pictures.
We don’t know what the story is, but you can imagine that there’s a story of life and death, destruction and renewal, okay?
and you can see the struggle of humanity to get food from nature but also a willingness to
celebrate those who have fallen. And there’s religious significance to everything that these
paintings. How do we know? Because this is clearly a shaman, right? What we call a leopard man. This
dates back to 40,000 years in Germany. So we believe that in the early societies, these shamans
were the leaders because they had the most wisdom because they had a connection to the vibe also
what’s really important is that music okay this instrument was really important to these
to these civilizations now there’s a lot of mystery as to how we first spoke and as i said
actually we don’t really need to speak because we can all understand each other so why do we speak
because we want to sing okay does that make sense singing creating music was a way to express
ourselves in the same way as painting was and music once you add words it becomes storytelling
and that’s why we created language okay not for economic reasons not in order to create a hierarchy
but for creative reasons to celebrate our humanity together and these pictures as you can see there
are religious elements okay so you can see how there are two almost bird
figures and back then the birds signify Mother Earth okay so the bird figure is
very important you can see almost like the bird figures are leading the animals
hurting the animals across so then ask yourself why are they why these
paintings appearing in caves? Well, for these people, they all believed that
nature was connected, right? And the spirit world and material world were
connected together. So the question then is, how does the spirit world connect
with the material world? Well, through caves, right? Through portals, rivers, caves,
mountaintops. And that’s why these places were considered appropriate sites for
religious ritual okay and that’s why you painted these pictures in caves because these caves you
it’s almost like you’re summoning a spirit all these animals to return right you’ve killed these
animals how do you get them to return by calling for them in these caves all right so as you can
see it’s a complex but a complete mythology of how the world works and for them this was very real
okay you can see how these shamans would actually turn themselves in to these bees in order to
better communicate with them because these bees these animals these bisons were the basis for all
life on earth if you didn’t have them then you would die off so you dressed up like them in
order to better communicate with them in the spirit world to draw them back okay okay so
this is another religious depiction all right so these cave paintings there’s always three questions
associate with these cave paintings the first is how are they painting caves what are they painting
and where and why are they doing this okay and i’ve i’ve explained to you there is religious
significance to what they’re doing they’re trying to complete the cycle of life and death if you
kill an animal you have to you have to thank the animal okay you do that by making a religious
sacrifice okay by sorry by making a religious ritual um what are they painting they’re painting
the story of life itself right they’re trying to paint a picture of how life works a cycle of death
and life destruction and renewal and everything’s connected together the stars the caves are portals
into the spirit world and that’s why you celebrate them okay and um how are they painted in the caves
um they’re painted together and they’re using um red ochre and charcoal what’s most important
is that because these caves actually lack oxygen when they’re painting when
they’re painting these paintings it’s almost like you’re in a trance state it
doesn’t make sense because you don’t have enough to breathe so it’s almost
like you’re you’re you’re on the precipice the edge of life and death and
it’s almost as though you are actually can we can communicate spirit world as
you’re doing this so it’s all divine inspiration all divine intuition okay so
So what they believe is that when they paint, they’re channeling the power of the spirit world.
It’s not about us using our experience to paint.
It’s we are channeling actually the divine when we do so.
And the same thing when we sing or when we tell stories.
We’re not doing this out of our own will.
We are only a portal or a mechanism or a channel for the divine to communicate with everyone else.
So does it make sense?
Okay. All right. The other thing that’s really interesting about these cave paintings is
we find symbols inside these cave paintings. So this is Genevieve von Pitzger, who is a
Canadian archaeologist. And she spent decades going to different caves in Europe and she
cataloged all the different symbols. Okay. So these are not pictures, they’re symbols.
And as you can see, there’s a lot of them. Okay. So why would they have these symbols?
And also, what’s interesting is, if you think about it, this is a writing system.
In other words, they have the capacity to write, but they chose not to write.
Why? Because if you think about it, in this world, writing is a corruption, right?
When you speak, you’re challenging the divine.
So when you are writing something down, you’re actually counterfeiting the divine, okay?
Also, remember that for them, talking is really like singing, right?
And you cannot capture music in the written form.
So it’s almost like a corruption of the song, okay?
And also, for them, this is really important,
all everything is meant to be a communal experience.
When you sing, when you talk, when you paint,
we do it together.
But when you write, it’s a solitary experience.
And that’s why, even though we humans,
from a very, like right from the beginning,
we had the capacity to write, we chose not to write.
Okay, this is really important for us to understand.
Writing was a conscious decision.
It was not a technology that was invented later on.
We just chose not to do it because we thought it was a corruption of the natural world, okay?
All right, does that make sense?
Okay, so this is a, these are all the geometric signs of Ice Age Europe.
It’s very similar to alchemy, okay?
Alchemy is trying to figure out the secrets of the universe.
So the question then is, where do they get these signs?
and the answer of course is it came to them in a dream or they were inspired with these signs okay
this is a world of inspiration of intuition of imagination it’s not something that’s deliberate
they don’t plan this out and discuss it it just comes to them and when they draw it out it makes
sense to people oh i know what this means okay all right so uh let’s summarize okay why are the
symbols in art well because there’s an abstraction certain concepts you cannot draw right so for
So for example, energy is a very important concept,
life force, cycle, repetition.
Well, then you have to use symbols
in order to express these ideas
if you want to tell the story, okay?
Second is you are trying to visualize
the language of the spirit world, okay?
So the spirit world is talking to you,
but they come to you in images.
So you use the symbols in order to express
what they’re talking about.
And when you draw the symbols on a stone,
you’re making the stone divine and sacred, right?
You’re storing a memory inside the stone.
Maybe something wonderful happened here.
Maybe you gave birth to a child here, right?
Then you commemorate the stone with a symbol, okay?
Does that make sense, okay?
So what you’re doing is, well, first of all,
you’re trying to bring beauty to the world.
That’s why we humans were created, right?
To make this world a more beautiful place,
a more imaginative place, to celebrate the divine.
We’re showing God or the spirit world or the underlying soul of reality, okay?
We’re trying to figure out how the spirit world works inside our reality.
The third reason is we’re trying to tell a story about who we are, okay?
We’re trying to combine our imagination together to create society,
to create belonging, to create community.
Does that make sense?
Yeah?
Sorry.
So you said about human trying to connect with the divine spirits, right?
Okay, sorry.
All right, so let me clarify, okay?
This is really important.
We’re not trying to connect with the divine spirit, why?
Because the divine spirit is all around us.
We coexist with the divine, okay?
Everything around us is divine.
But what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to be
in harmony with the divine.
Okay.
Okay, do you understand?
Yeah.
Okay, because in this world there’s no separation
between the material and the spiritual.
It’s all one world together.
The spiritual is all around us.
But there are certain things that we do
in order to reconcile our existence with the spirit world.
For example, when we kill an animal,
we need to commemorate the animal
through paintings and through songs.
Okay, does that make sense?
Yeah.
Okay.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah.
Okay, good, okay.
All right, and even today, we still do this, okay?
So let’s see examples.
This is graffiti, okay, street art.
But you can see what’s happening where this is Spain,
and you can see how beautiful this is, okay?
It’s the same concept as the cave paintings,
where we’re trying to give meaning to our community.
We’re trying to tell a story of who we are,
where we came from, and where we’re going, okay?
And it’s designed to build a common imagination, okay?
No different from the cave paintings.
We still do this today, and this is another example.
And you can see different communities
might have different focus.
But you can see how the painting,
what it does is it unifies the imagination of the people.
So for this community, what matters is the family, okay?
So the matriarch, the mother, is the cornerstone of this community.
And that’s what you do with this painting, okay?
You can see how beautiful these buildings have become because of the paintings.
So that’s what art does.
Art gives purpose, meaning to our world, all right?
So some really important concepts I need you guys to understand, okay?
And we’ll go over this as the semester progresses.
and these concepts are going to be counterintuitive for us okay but the first concept i want you to
understand is preliterate people okay people who could not read and write they were more intuitive
they were more imaginative and they were more empathic okay meaning i can know your emotions
right away i don’t have to ask you anything i don’t ask you how you’re feeling today i know
exactly how you’re feeling right away okay all right so we can see this this is the inuit art
okay so this is art um by native people so even in communities of today that have hold to this
tradition you can see how they perceive the world right they perceive the world as unified the gods
are with us in fact everything we do is a celebration of the gods so our house is our temple
okay the temple is not a place you go and and um separate gods you celebrate the gods in your house
if you have enough faith to turn your house into a temple, okay?
So this is Inuit art, okay?
And if you go to like many native communities,
communities that maintain the traditions of the Ice Age,
they’re all like this, okay, in their perception.
But the problem is they cannot communicate it using modern language.
So we just think they’re stupid, okay?
They can’t write essays.
They can’t give speeches.
And so therefore, we think they’re stupid.
But they’re not stupid.
It’s just that they’re focusing their energies on empathy, on imagination, on intuition.
All right, so let’s give examples of empathy in action.
And this is true for the entire world, okay?
So once there was a horse in America that could do math, all right?
So the horse would go on stage, and then the trainer would ask the horse a question,
like, what’s two plus two?
And the horse would be like,
nay, nay, nay, nay.
And I would be like, oh!
The horse can do math, okay?
So the horse cannot do math, okay?
I’m telling you right now, the horse cannot do math.
So what the horse is doing, you think about it,
is the horse is reading the room, right?
Because the people who pay the money
to go into the theater and watch the horse do math
obviously believe the horse can do math, okay?
So what happens is when the trainer says to the horse, what’s two plus two?
The horse is nay, nay, and the horse is watching everyone, okay?
And as the horse comes to the answer, the horse sees that the people are like really excited, okay?
Their eyes are bulging.
Their breathing is faster because people are in anticipation, right?
The horse says, oh, now I know the answer.
This is empathy.
Animals can do it.
We can do it as well.
it’s actually our super superpower it doesn’t make sense right second example is telepathy so
in america right now there’s a very popular pro podcast called the telepathy tapes you might have
seen it you may have heard of it okay the idea is that kids with autism are able to read the minds
of their parents guys i’m telling you right now kids the autistic kids cannot do that they do
something else okay so let me tell you a story of how they do this in china there’s also a similar
case where a mother in the countryside okay so she’s not educated she has no money but her son
is autistic it’s autistic boy doesn’t really speak cannot make eye contact okay lots of issues can i
go to school so one day the mother contacts cctv the national broadcaster says hey my son can read
my mind and you know these are tv people so like okay let’s make a good documentary so they fly all
the way down to this village this poor village and the mother is you know doesn’t speak great chinese
so they have to film this process okay so what happens is the boy is put into a room by himself
and then the mother is given a number okay like maybe five then the mother goes and asks the boy
please read my mind and the boy says you saw the number five and it’s pretty amazing and
of course is that really believable so this documentary team spent days and days to figure
out what happened okay finally brought on they brought in artificial intelligence ai
what the ai figured out is it’s the pitch of the voice that gives the answer okay so what they’re
saying read my mind mine okay and the difference in the pitch there’s a different number in that
pitch but the problem is it’s so subtle that only the boy can hear the difference in pitch
we humans ordinary humans cannot hear the difference and so the documentary crew
confronted and says listen we the ai artificial talent system tells us that what you’re doing is
is you’re cheating. You are using pitch to give signals to your son. Is that true? And the mother
is like, yes, I’m sorry. Yes, it’s all a lie. We’re poor. My son is autistic. I want my boy to go to
school. I want my boy to get professional help. And that’s why we devised a scheme in order to
trick you so we can get some television coverage. And then maybe we can get some donations. Maybe
Maybe some people will help us, okay?
And that’s why we did this scheme.
And so, that’s it.
But think about this.
Think about how amazing it is
that the two together were able to devise a scheme, right?
Think about how amazing it is
that they were able to devise a scheme
that was so creative that it tricked people.
Only an artificial intelligence system
could figure this system out, okay?
So, this mother is not educated,
but she loves her son, and she wants the best for her son.
So she figured out what her son’s special ability is, pitch.
She’s able to hear different sounds
and devised a scheme to make full use
of the son’s ability, okay?
So that tells us the power of the human imagination
if we truly love someone, okay?
So they created a hidden emotional language together,
which again is amazing.
And it’s something that you will see
when two people actually love each other.
They will create their own language
that only they can understand.
All right, and the last example
is some cooperative painting, right?
So we discussed this where if I put 10 of you in a room
and I give you a blank wall and I ask you to draw,
the pictures you’re gonna create
are gonna be pretty amazing, okay?
You’re not allowed to speak, you’re not allowed to cooperate,
you’re not allowed to plan it ahead,
but I guarantee you, when the 10 of you get together
and you start drawing together,
you will draw a great picture.
The reason why is not because
you wanna draw a great picture,
It’s because you all want to help each other.
You don’t want to let each other down, okay?
Because of cooperation, because of empathy,
you want to be at your very best.
You want to be at your creative best.
That’s the secret to creativity, okay?
When you’re able to find a purpose
and meaning in other people,
your creative potential will be fully released.
Does that make sense?
Okay.
All right, so back to the horse example.
If you ride a horse, one thing that you will learn
over time is the horse can read your mind, okay?
And so this is a polo game, and if you watch a polo game,
it’s pretty amazing, because you can’t speak to a horse,
right, but the horse will know exactly, instantaneously,
what you want to do.
If you want to turn right, the horse knows, turn right.
Even before you think the thought, the horse will know.
Okay, and this is why, throughout human history,
warriors on horseback were the greatest warriors.
They were invincible.
Why? Because what happened was, basically, the man had four legs, okay?
Because in these nomadic societies where people fought on horseback,
they were born on horses, and they were riding horses since they were early,
or since they were young, and so they developed this emotional connection with the horse.
So the horse knows exactly what you think, even before you think it, okay?
And there are lots of examples like this.
If you have a dog, you know that dogs have telepathy, right?
So you go away for a week and then when you come back, the dog is waiting for you at the
door and the dog knows you’re coming back.
That’s the emotional connection.
That’s telepathy, okay?
So telepathy exists, but it’s an emotional connection.
There’s no way that I can actually read your mind, but I know how you feel, even at long
distances.
Okay?
Does that make sense?
All right.
Another important fact about human beings that is not really understood is we are obsessed
with being creative and expressing ourselves.
That’s who we are.
We are the imagination, personified, manifested, made tangible, made visceral.
We are imagination itself.
Our imagination is resilient and will always find a way to shine.
You may know of people who lose sense, so if you can’t see, your hearing improves.
all right, these people are deaf, okay, so they can’t hear,
but then they’re able to see much stronger, okay?
And they use sign language to communicate.
And one thing that I’ve noticed in China
is that when I go to restaurants,
now and then there’ll be groups of deaf people
communicating with each other.
They’re always happy.
In fact, they’re the happiest people
you will ever meet in China.
And it’s not because they’re doing sign language,
is because deaf people have a deeper emotional intelligence.
And so when they’re together,
they communicate emotionally,
and that brings tremendous joy and comfort to them.
Okay, does that make sense?
All right, let’s give another example.
This is a great composer,
one of the greatest composers in human history, Beethoven.
His music is startling.
Okay, his music is extremely famous.
Problem is, he was deaf.
That’s kind of strange.
How is it possible for you to be deaf,
yet at the same time compose
some of the world’s greatest music?
The answer is he saw the music, okay?
The music came to him in dreams
and was able to see the picture, okay?
Because what is music?
Music is vibrations, right?
So, oh, oh, ee, oh, oh.
But they’re like vibrations, they’re waves, right?
So you can actually see for yourself a movie of vibrations.
And the more symmetrical these vibrations are, the more beautiful the music is.
Does that make sense?
So because he saw the music, he was able to create music that was unique in human history.
Others hear the music, but he saw the music and it turned into a movie, okay, of movement.
All right, this is John Milton.
He wrote Paradise Lost.
Problem is, he wrote it while he was blind, okay?
How did he do that?
because he heard the songs, okay?
He turned Paradise Lost into a musical, into music.
So he actually didn’t need to speak it out,
he just heard it out, okay?
So he had secretaries who wrote out whatever he sang out.
And that’s why when you read Paradise Lost,
it’s actually like music, it’s beautiful.
It’s probably the most beautiful poetry
ever composed in an English language.
So you can see how resilient the human imagination is.
If you want to express yourself, you’ll find a way, okay?
It’s all about will.
Do you really want to express yourself?
Because if you do, you’ll always find a way, okay?
So this is another lesson that you will learn this semester.
We are socialized into mundanity.
Our true selves are divine, okay?
You’re normal, you’re boring, you’re not talented
because you believe what others tell you, okay?
Society does not want talented people.
Society does not want interesting people.
Society just wants robots and slaves.
So schools, companies, organizations socialize you
into mundanity, okay?
Into nothingness.
But if you look at your true self, it is divine.
Now I’ll give you examples of this.
A lot of people have Alzheimer’s.
So what literally happens is they’re losing their minds.
And this is a self-portrait of a artist
who documented himself losing his mind.
So when he was first diagnosed,
he drew a picture of himself, okay?
And then a year later he drew another picture of himself
and on and on and on.
As you can see, by this time,
he’s completely lost his sense of being, okay?
So you can use this picture as a metaphor for Alzheimer’s
and you can see for yourself
what it means to lose your mind.
But there’s another way to understand this picture.
Which is, what’s really happening is that
the artist, he’s shedding his artifice.
He’s shedding his clothing and revealing his true self, okay?
What Alzheimer’s is, is losing your socialization.
Because you’re losing your ability to speak.
You’re losing your ability to verbalize your ideas.
You’re losing your ability to communicate with others.
And what’s left behind are three things.
First is your spiritual desire.
So a lot of people with Alzheimer’s, for whatever reason, they go to church suddenly, okay?
They’re not religious.
Maybe they grew up in an atheist household.
They don’t have any association with religion.
But once they develop Alzheimer’s,
they have this spiritual desire to go to church and pray.
It’s really amazing, okay?
That’s number one.
Number two is they love to sing, okay?
They don’t talk, but they sing.
The third thing is they draw, okay?
This is a painting by an Alzheimer’s patient, okay?
Not great, but guess what, guys?
He did this when he was like 80 years old,
and he never painted before, okay?
That’s pretty amazing.
Never painted before, but the moment he had Alzheimer’s,
his true divine self opened up
and he wanted to express himself.
So what they say about Alzheimer’s is you hear voices.
You see things that aren’t there.
It’s hallucination.
But guess what, guys?
I told you this.
During the Ice Age era, we all did this.
We all believed that we coexisted with ghosts.
with spirits, with fairies, okay?
And this was true throughout most of human history.
So even though, yes, medically speaking,
psychologically speaking, these people with Alzheimer’s,
they are hearing voices, but the reason why is
the voices were always there.
We just forgot about it because we’re socialized
to forget about the different forces,
the different voices that exist along us, okay?
This is a person who used psychedelics, okay?
She’s an artist, but she’s using psychedelics.
And the thing about psychedelics is
it’s almost similar to having Alzheimer’s
where you shed away your socialization,
you almost enter a spiritual realm, okay?
As you can see, this is a picture of a cat.
What she’s doing is she’s showing a cat
that’s the divine cat, okay?
She’s seeing the energy field of the cat,
she’s seeing the memory, she’s seeing the aspirations,
she’s seeing the intuition, the imagination of the cat
and embedding it into the artwork.
This is another person on psychedelics.
What’s interesting is there’s no time and space in art,
in this art, so it becomes almost incomprehensible to us.
Why is there a helicopter, why is there a cat?
Well, that’s how we truly are.
We don’t have a concept of space and time.
We see things as they are, and this picture shows you that.
And we can see how the pictures are,
it’s a heightened reality.
Much more vibrant colors, another psychedelic painting.
As you can see, no concept of time and space.
It’s all just one unity of things.
Vincent van Gogh, the greatest painter who’s ever lived.
His paintings are utterly unique in human history.
This is Starry Night, and this is Sunflower.
We can see how he has shedded away his socialization.
He doesn’t care how this is communicated to other people.
All he cares is about the picture itself.
So it glows with life.
All right, so let’s summarize the concepts
that we’ve learned.
So you’ve been brainwashed into thinking certain ideas
about who we are.
They’re not true.
The first myth is, we humans are driven
by material desires, okay?
So why do we want, so what do we want?
We want a lot of money, okay?
We want to pass on our genes.
We want to marry a lot of beautiful women who are young,
and so they can give us a lot of babies
because we want to pass on our genes, okay?
And we want to maintain our status.
All we care about is power.
Fundamentally, we humans are fundamentally imagination.
And we care about three things.
The first is, we want to express our religion
through art, music, and rituals.
We want to know where we came from,
why we’re here, where we’re going.
That’s who we really are, that’s the first thing.
Second thing is, we are diverse
and want to differentiate ourselves.
We want to stand out, we want to be different.
We want to be creative.
The third thing is we are curious and want to explore.
And that’s what explains why we go everywhere, okay?
This has been true throughout human history.
We may not have documents saying that we were traveling,
but we were traveling because there’s always some of us
who want to go and see a new world,
even though it may not exist.
That’s who we are fundamentally.
So don’t believe people when they say,
okay, you just care about money,
you just care about power, you just care about sex.
That’s not who we are.
we are are fundamentally religious spiritual beings that want to create and to love and to
connect okay that’s the first myth second myth is the most natural unit is a family and men want to
protect their property which includes women okay so you maybe you’ve been taught that okay men are
in charge and women are just uh animals to breed babies okay that’s not true for most of human
human history, it was women who had control of their bodies. Women could choose who to
sleep with and how many men to sleep with, and they often chose to sleep with everyone.
Why? Because sleeping with other men, first of all, women enjoy it, okay? But second of
all, it allows women to create social cohesion. So for most of human history, early civilizations,
women were the core and center of all societies. And the third thing is, there’s actually a
strategy in sleeping with many different men because now everyone is responsible
for raising a child it doesn’t make sense if I if I’m this father I know
exactly who my children are then I’m gonna protect my children and discard
everyone else okay but if no one knows who the fathers are everyone is responsible for
caring for for taking care of every single child and that’s the best
strategy that they can have okay because that ensures that every child becomes
successful okay does that make sense okay so the second myth that we will
discuss later on third myth humans follow the iron rule of nature survive
with the fittest okay that’s that you taught by Darwin that’s what evolution
is but that’s wrong okay throughout most of human history humans cared for each
other we were compassionate empathy right we believe that every creature
has divinity and those who are weakest have the most divinity that’s why when
when we kill an animal, we still thank the animal
because we’re all part of the same life cycle, all right?
Number four, humans have gotten smarter over the centuries.
Civilization is far superior to primitive cultures.
Again, this is wrong, okay?
The truth is that with the development of civilization,
the human imagination has decreased.
Our brains can be supercomputers if we allow them to be,
but if people are more creative,
which means they have better memories than we do, okay?
They’re able to recall more stuff.
They’re able to store more information.
They’re more sensitive perception, they have more empathy, okay?
They know exactly how you’re feeling, why you’re feeling it, and how to make you feel better.
And greater emotional resilience, okay?
So they’re much more mature than we are.
Number five, we evolve from apes.
The truth is that we are uniquely imaginative and we can choose our own evolution.
Don’t believe we’re apes, okay?
If you believe you’re an ape, then you’re an ape, okay?
If you’re an ape, then you like to go beat people up and like have sex with like a lot of women, okay?
But we’re not apes.
We’re imaginative first and foremost.
And as such, we have control over our lives.
And that’s something that you have to learn for yourself.
All right?
So let me give an example of this to conclude the class.
This is Romatol II.
And we discovered him 10,000 years ago in a burial site, okay?
This is an Ice Age burial site.
He’s a dwarf, guys, okay?
He’s a dwarf.
You can see how small he is.
He’s a dwarf.
and you would think that dwarves don’t really contribute to the community so maybe you know
he’s born it’s clear he’s he’s deformed so just kill the guy okay because he’s not gonna have a
great life anyway instead what we found is first of all he lived to a pretty old age and he was
buried with jewelry he was buried elaborately and you only do that for people you really prize
that’s kind of strange right the people who we think that are most worthless dwarfs that actually
don’t do anything they actually thought was divine and deserved a extremely elaborate ritualized
funeral why okay so this is a book um the dawn of everything by david grabber and david wangro
great book okay so what they say is this when archaeologists undertake balance appraisals of
hunter-gatherer burials from the Paleolithic, they find high frequencies of health-related
disabilities, but also surprisingly high levels of care until the time of death and beyond since
some of these funerals were remarkably lavish. This is an amazing idea to think about, but if
you were deformed, if you were ill, they didn’t throw you out. They spent a lot of time to take
care of you, even though from their perspective, it was a waste of time and energy because you’re
to die anyway. So why would they do that? Well, there are three possibilities, okay? The first
possibility is it’s really about maintaining cosmic balance and harmony. Everything is a cycle.
Meaning what? Meaning we’re all part of God. And if you suffer, then we have to make you better
because we’re all part of God together, okay? So the concepts are unity of all, as above, so below.
Set a good example to others, okay? So that’s the first possibility. Second possibility is
because this is a pre-literate society,
people have a stronger sense of empathy and morality.
So they didn’t want to see others suffer, okay?
And the third possibility is
they appreciate diversity and difference
in a way we don’t anymore, okay?
Our entire school system is designed
as to survive the fittest.
If you can’t do math, goodbye, you’re worthless.
You can’t get 100 on a test, goodbye, you’re worthless, okay?
But back then, they saw difference and diversity
as gifts from God right so if you’re a dwarf it meant you had something special
to offer if you’re strong yeah you can go hunt animals and you can protect the
family but if you’re a dwarf it meant that you might have something else to
offer and if we just celebrate you as someone who has something special offer
then you can offer it to us okay and often what they could do is well they
could probably seem better they could probably tell better stories they had
more wisdom they would have more intuition the connection with the divine
And that’s true even today where the best storytellers, the best musicians are often
those who are marginalized from society, those who are strangers, those who are outsiders,
those who society persecutes.
They probably have greater imagination, greater intuition, greater empathy.
And today we don’t celebrate these things, but back then they did celebrate those things.
So if you were different, if you were deformed, if you were ill, they saw you as blessed rather
than cursed.
And that’s what we’ve forgotten today.
Okay?
All right.
So that’s it.
This is just an introduction into the entirety of human history.
Okay?
We’re going to go pretty fast.
Any questions?
Yeah.
So would you say that because you made the examples using, you said Alzheimer’s, autistic
people.
So would you say that people with cognitive disability in like modern age are like closer
to the divine?
like we’re returning to the divine
by abandoning our cognitive so-called logic and everything
that civilization is.
Would you say that makes us closer,
would bring us closer to the divine?
Yeah, good question.
So first of all, we’re all connected to the divine.
But we just choose to forget we’re connected to the divine.
Why?
society, mass society, needs you to be obedient, needs you to be a machine, needs you to work,
to be obedient, okay? So the entire point of school is to separate you from the divine.
Why? Because at an early age, you’re removed from your parents, okay? And in school you’re
taught all sorts of like really strange knowledge, like one plus one equals two,
like who cares one plus one equals two, okay? But you’re taught this is what matters.
And before, we would just let kids run around nature and learn resilience, learn courage,
learn creativity, okay?
So the entire point of society is to brainwash you or remove you from the divine.
But there’s certain members of society who can’t be removed from the divine because we
don’t want them, right?
So kids who are autistic, kids with disabilities, kids who are just different, okay?
Once you discard it, they actually return to the divine.
does that make sense yeah so it’s like for example a lot of people develop
cognitive disabilities after a lot of like is it being put into schools being
a kind of limited by the civilization would you say that in that circumstance
by developing or be given a cognitive disability we’re actually reconnecting
with the device okay yeah okay so let’s clarify okay so in China in the United
States, everywhere in the world, we’re seeing a massive surge in mental illnesses, right? So
depression, eating disorders, suicidal tendencies, anxiety, fear, okay? So, I mean, like, it’s just
this explosion these past 20 years, especially with the advent of mobile phones, social media,
the internet okay so kids lives suck okay so why are kids so miserable and
the answer is that when you’re born you have an automatic connection with the
vine okay so and as you lose this connection you grow more more confused
which leads to anxiety and doubt and over time if this confusion is not
address properly and it will lead to depression okay so another simple say
another simple way of saying this is we we crave human connection we crave
knowledge of the divine we crave purpose and meaning in our lives but the social
media system has create this fake system in which we’re in prison our imagination
is in prison and pursuing activities that I’ve said to absolutely have no
purpose right so on social media all you care about is likes how do i get my friends to like
me like me like me okay so you do sorts of silly things like i don’t know post pictures of you
dancing in hawaii or whatever even though it gives you no meaning okay so what’s happening is
before we cared about what makes us happy and now we care about what we think would make other
people happy okay and that’s not who we are okay once you lose that connection to the vine then
And you can only get lost.
So if you deny your intuition, if you deny your emotions, then you’ll just become more
and more miserable.
Okay?
Does that make sense?
Okay?
Like the strong empathy that you just mentioned, I thought that I’m curious where
the strong empathy come from because I usually thought that the empathy is, our empathy is
shaped by the socialization and social norms by the society.
Yeah, actually, that’s a really good question, okay.
So empathy just means our connections with others, okay?
And this is something we are born with.
So a mother is born with an emotional connection with a child, right?
And a child has an emotional connection with a mother.
And over time, as this connection grows, their empathy develops.
And this empathy almost becomes telepathic.
So that even if the child is in school and the child is bullied,
the mother is washing her clothes.
She’s like, you know, I don’t feel right.
maybe I should call the teacher and ask how my child is doing okay okay so that’s what empathy
is empathy just means a natural emotional connection that we’re all born with but it’s
entirely possible um and we know this from our society to break that connection by setting the
child off to school by having a child online too much by having a child watch television too much
okay severing breaking that emotional connection and once the emotional connection is broken
Remember, empathy, we crave empathy.
We crave emotions more than we crave food.
So it’s as though we’re becoming zombies almost, right?
If you don’t have empathy,
you don’t feel connected with other people,
it’s as though you become a zombie.
You don’t have any direction.
You don’t have any purpose.
You don’t have any meaning in life anymore.
And that’s what leads to tremendous depression, okay?
Does that make sense?
So we are not socialized into empathy.
We are socialized out of empathy.
We’re born into empathy, okay?
All right.
Great question, okay, any more questions?
Okay, great guys, so I will see you next time, all right?
We’ll continue this next time, okay?
So I’m just introducing these concepts,
but we’ll expand them and use more examples
and learn more about human history from this framework.
All right, okay, thank you.
Source: Predictive History