On Whose Shoulders.

A tale of times of yore, the Younger Dryas

No Aliens in this story….

Just imagine:

Once upon a time man lived much differently than we do today, and not as found in the annals of history. He lived proudly and with dignity for countless millennia. Some cultures were so great that they enjoyed the most impressive achievements: they mastered the oceans and developed impressive technologies as well as gaining great knowledge of the heavens and the earth.

Of course they knew adversity as well. They had weathered many catastrophes and ages. They even witnessed the destruction of great regions and whole populations. But, they learned and understood the cycles and signs of impending catastrophes and mitigated their impacts rather well. In short, their spirit and faith withstood the periodic wrath of the heavens and earth undefeated and with panache.

Then came something new and most horrible: a catastrophe greater than they ever knew from their oh so long history. This catastrophe was not just regional, but global, and it destroyed half of their world. Nonetheless they held together and the strongest of them and the most fortunate of their cities survived — albeit traumatised. And the greatest cultures remained intact.

Just the same the earth had turned harsh and as a result they themselves turned hard and troubled over a millennia of unprecedented hardship.

In these troubled times, the heavens turned against them with still greater wrath so that even the strongest among the peoples of the earth lost their great cities completely. In consequence, the survivors of even those greater and strong cultures were reduced to the most basic life.

Lost were their fabulous cities and most of their fellow men, all their economy and constructions. Their civilisation was reduced to rubble and mostly submerged beneath the oceans. Never in their so long history was there a lesson that could explain what had now happened to their world. But at least they understood that this was indeed part of the cycle of catastrophes that they knew already, but now at a scale that no one had dared to imagine.

Shaken was their belief that God, the great unknown, the universal creator, looked upon them benignly and with favour. Nature, the world, was crushingly harsh now. Had God, the driving force of the universe, forsaken them?

Their despair was immense and it was even more so for those survivors of the most advanced civilisations. Such peoples had the best preserved and most conscious memory of their history and the history of mankind. And they had fallen the furthest by losing their magnificent cities and economies and culture. Most importantly, they best understood the pattern of nature's celestial events that foretold these catastrophes and which predicted more to come. For the first time in their history they understood explicitly, that there was no limit to the destruction nature could bring. The next cycle might bring an even more complete destruction of their world.

On top of this trauma — that all humans were dealing with — came a loss of purpose and connection to and faith in the great unknown, God. The people's concept of their purpose, of a glorious destiny, and of their relationship to the cosmos, the foundation of their proud culture, was invalidated. They saw no way forward. The depth of the pain and suffering was immense.

This was an ultimate collective trauma.

II

But humanity did go forward — as our biological existence dictates and what our trauma mechanism provides for, collectively as well as individually. Universally the catastrophe was moralized. Whether priest or farmer, they blamed themselves for natural events for which no one could have been responsible. They told themselves: God was angry with them, God had punished the earth because humanity had displeased Him. Man had sinned. And further, if man amended his ways from now on, he could avoid such calamity of God's wrath.

But what exactly was man's sin? Or better: what must man do to please God? This would be the elusive, puzzling, even confusing question which could only prompt mystical responses at best and, at worst, perversities for the many millennia to come.

As much as any, the leaders were also under the spell of the trauma. Although often striving in correct directions, they acted with incomplete or unclear reasoning — mostly chaotic in result. Like the force of gravity, this ultimately led to a formation of an elite and a society so susceptible to corruption and self-deception like never before in their history.

This crisis of shared meaning and purpose persisted. Humanity's previously so natural and explicit understanding of the world and their place in it was now elusive. What was the use of it all? Of man's existence? Of rebuilding their great cultures? One thing was obvious and clear — to the wisest at least: the way forward was to be different, a new direction, a break with much of their traditions. Their old, so proud technology lost its magic and magnetism. It lay in pieces. It would not mitigate any ultimate destruction, which they could now conceive as being within the realm of possibilities. The most visionary argued: the way forward lay up there, in the stars, in the heavens. The solution and meaning was to be found in the heavens — this was to be man's new destiny.

Others countered: the heavens were not for man; up there was no place for man, only the utmost hostility. It was God's world. God had bound man to earth, sweet so lovely earth. And as earth's gardener, man had fulfilled his task well until then and in turn had been rewarded with beauty and a strong love for this earthly garden — or at least what had been their ever perfecting garden.

Was God calling his gardeners to the heavens? Into heavens??!! To garden the heavens?? To master the heavens?! But how? God had not equipped man for the great harshness of the heavens… did he? Man's technology, as great as it was, had never moved toward the heavens. Even the wisest trance navigators amongst man could not explain even vaguely, let alone concretely, how to proceed practically toward realising such visions.

Alas, with no solution to this existential threat to be found within his intellect, man's trauma mechanism took over more comprehensively and held its grip for as long as (and when) his intellect and spirit failed. This mechanism would persist, awaiting a resolution. It would wait for the day when the solution was within grasping distance of the intellect, when the trauma could be released, when man could reach for that sword of Damocles dangling above his head. Then those utmost horrible repressed events that their ancestors had experienced could resurface into the consciousness of humanity. And the catastrophes would be properly mourned, their ancestors venerated — and we forgiven. Man would forgive himself. He would know and embrace his long history once again and become whole.

III

And so man plodded forward over the millennia propelled under the hypnosis of the trauma mechanism, unconsciously and consciously suppressing memories of the traumatic events and of his great past in order to get on with the practical things of life: rebuilding, recreating their new existence. And somehow, more or less unconsciously, working toward visions of his place in the heavens.

Man could and would take actions such as constructing shelters like underground tunnels to mitigate the lesser of what he knew now to be possible catastrophes. But these were poor and incomplete insurance against such threats — not to mention a catalyst of societal stratification and corruption. There was no economy with which to build such shelters at a scale to accommodate the whole or even the majority of the populations.

The history of the catastrophes receded into legends, into mere fairy tales which were handed down as persistent "superstitions" — all in the name of getting on with the minimal existential part of life.

The sense of destiny, pride and purpose of the ancestors diminished greatly — as did the image of Damocles' sword over the fate of man; all repressed from the collective psyche.

But in its wisdom, the trauma mechanism did not let man completely forget the catastrophes, but rather provided for periodic reminders of the trauma — reenactments if you will — so as to keep some of man's attention on finding a solution to this existential problem.

As perverse as these traumatic reenactments of the catastrophes appeared, and as perverse as the history man invented to suit his practical needs became — and they were of great perversity, perversity upon perversity — these new horrors reminded man indirectly (subconsciously) of the old, original horrors their ancestors faced. And these horrors would insist on persisting until man ultimately found solutions to the existential threat that those catastrophes revealed to our ancestors. These unconscious reenactments and harsh self-imposed austerity (fortifying man's psyche to better focus on the martial challenges of the heavens) were, just the same, inexplicable in the consciousness of the traumatized. And were fertile ground for guilt, shame, demoralization.

Nonetheless man did reach for the heavens: first in his religious mythicism, then in his dreams, and then in deed — but never conscious of his ultimate motivation and interest.

Think of mountain spring water finding its way to the sea, following a seemingly random, chaotic path through the landscape, but always dominated by nature's authoritative law of gravity. So was man's path, obviously not direct, but it did lead inexorably to the heavens.

And here our tale comes to a pause, and the question arises: What comes next in our story?

For example: then, as the solution came within reach of man's intellect, he could finally awaken from his trauma state — even the most deeply entranced! Maybe it was the presence of a solution within the conscious grasp of man's intellect that dissolved man's most adamant denials, his seemingly impenetrable amnesia, which had until then protected and shielded his intellect from that visceral threat of extinction, giving him some needed peace in order to dream those visions of a new destiny.

Now it would become once again apparent to man that he is unavoidably part of a global collective and destiny. All of humanity could now focus its newly awoken and freed powers (mind you, with a good dose of adrenaline) in a holy and conscious manner towards concrete realizations of solutions to this existential problem.

Or maybe the tale takes a sad turn: man gave up; he refused to break with the perverse habits with which he lived so long. Just because. Because that is the way he had lived for so many millennia. For as long as he could "remember". Because he couldn't find the spark of his former pride and panache that would free him from his demoralized consciousness. And guardians of their "history", blinded and caught up in their own trauma-upon-trauma, ignorant of any original motivation for protecting the consciousness of man from the catastrophes. Plagued with a subconscious guilt which they would not or could not confront, they would continue to successfully and avidly guard that proverbial can of worms, the Pandora's box of their true history, from the masses, from the "uninitiated".

Or do you think we left out an important chapter?

Or is there even a different story here?

Come and put your pen to our story. Do you believe in that spark? Do you remember that — oh so faint as it may be — pride of these ancestors, who lived for a destiny? A glorious destiny.

Or, do you believe, as some, that man is only that sad image of his traumatized consciousness?

What do YOU think makes for a good or better story?