Memes Programming

Are YOU The 100th Monkey?

2009-12-24T12:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1311.htm

Are YOU The 100th Monkey?

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” Anaïs Nin (February 21, 1903–January 14, 1977)

In the early 1950’s, a group of Japanese scientists observing the behavior of macaque monkeys on the island of Koshima began to notice that a small number of these primates had begun washing their food before eating. As the years of observation went by the scientists began to notice that the number of these monkeys who were washing their food prior to eating was increasing, very slowly, until, for some as yet ‘unexplained’ reason, when the 100th monkey began to wash his food suddenly all 10,000 monkeys on the island of Koshima began washing theirs too. Or so this ‘story’ goes.

In the late 1990’s, some of the World’s top scientists formed a new organization they titled The Global Brain Group to discuss the possible emergence of a Global brain out of our World’s ever expanding computer networks they theorize could function as a nervous system for the human superorganism. This Global brain theory refers to the idea that “the increasing intelligence and interconnectedness of humans and computers could very well produce an emergent Global brain through the interconnectedness of humans brains facilitated by emerging technologies, or by other methods such as the Internet waking up and becoming self-aware.”

In the year 2000, American science author and former music industry publicist Howard Bloom published what many experts believe is one of the most important books of our time titled Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century which “confidently asserts that our networked culture is not only inevitable but essential for our species' survival and eventual migration into space.”

Now to fully understand the viability of the many theories which state that our human race is meant to evolve in harmony with each other, the other species which inhabit our Earth, and our Planet too, it is critical that you realize that there is an all powerful and insidious force that seeks, at all costs, to ensure that this never happens.

Let’s examine this ‘force’ further….

In the year 2002, the BBC presented a four-part award winning documentary titled The Century of the Self explaining to the viewer how “those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy” and how a man named Edward Bernays, called by the American publication Life Magazine as one of the The Most Important People Of The 20th Century has now become, even in death, one of the most powerful human beings to have ever walked the Earth.

When the 28th President of the United States Woodrow Wilson uttered the fateful words “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”, it was Edward Bernays and a man named Ivy Ledbetter Lee he spoke of, both of whom are now called the ‘fathers’ of the science of public relations.

And President Wilson’s fear of Bernays and Lee were well justified too due to his, Wilson’s, knowledge of what these men were planning since learning of their ‘master plan’ (backed by the largest and most powerful bankers and industrialists in the United States and Europe) when Lee was his student in Princeton University, and which would lead an unsuspecting American public (and soon to the entire World’s population) towards a ‘new society’ that would enslave them in a state of perpetual war.

In the 1933, US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter warned in a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Bernays and Ivy Lee were “professional poisoners of the public mind, exploiters of foolishness, fanaticism and self-interest”, a position well justified when in that same year the Reichsminister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, Paul Joseph Goebbels, stated to Hearst newspapers foreign correspondent Karl von Weigand that Bernays book, Crystallizing Public Opinion, “was the basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany.”

Unfortunately though, President Roosevelt failed to heed Justice Frankfurter’s warning and was almost removed from office by the 1933 Business Plot Coup ‘masterminded’ by Bernays and Lee and intended to ‘unite’ the United States with the newly installed Chancellor of Germany Adolf Hitler, both of which were backed by the most powerful bankers and industrialists in the United States and Germany, including US Senator Prescott Bush, who though failing to see his ‘vision’ of a United German-American Fascist Empire ruling the World realized at the time, was successful in having his son (George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st US President) and grandson (George Walker Bush, 43rd US President) continue this most insidious legacy.

Born 1891 in Vienna to Jewish parents, Bernays was a nephew of the Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology Sigmund Freud, and his most important, and influential, book, published in 1928, was titled Propaganda, and wherein he argued that “the manipulation of public opinion was a necessary part of democracy”. And in Bernays own words from this book we can read the ‘master plan’ behind the disease he, and his banker and industrialist fascist allies, have inflicted upon the American people to this very day, and his reasoning for same:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

At this point I would like nothing better than to tell you that your mind is your own, your actions are a part of your own thinking, or your views on everything have been formed by a mental process free from manipulation and coercion, but I can’t. And the reason I can’t tell you this is because your actions betray who you really are, who really tells you what to do.

Not just since you awoke this morning, but for your entire life you have been bombarded by a constant and never-ending assault upon your senses meant for only one purpose…to control you. And as evidenced by your continued lack of action against the manipulation of your mind by those very forces who seek only to destroy you (after they’ve bled you dry of course) you allow it to continue, thus ensuring an outcome that has been planned before you were even born.

Your continued holding on to the false reality that you are an ‘individual’ has now become your worst enemy and is allowing Bernays and Lee’s ‘master plan’ to finally realize its ultimate goal…a World dominated by an elite class of politicians, bankers and industrialists who see you as nothing more than a slave indebted to them from the time you are born until the day that you die.

And without your even raising one hand against these monsters you are condemning your children and grandchildren to a future so bleak that they are now committing suicide in numbers so shocking one can only lower their heads in shame.

Will your child or grandchild be next? Will your wife? Your husband? Your neighbor?

As an ‘individual’ you are taught that this isn’t your concern, but remember, your being an ‘individual’ is a lie concocted by Bernays and Lee’s ‘master plan’ for human control which means that your inaction to help your fellow human beings is condemning you to the same fate you feel justified in ignoring.

What is your hope then? It begins with your realizing that you are a part of everything, of everyone’s life you meet and that your fate is dependant upon everyone else’s. And once this most truest of life’s immutable laws is realized by you it must then be followed by action.

When you stop on a roadway to render assistance with others at a crash scene; when you and your neighbors converge upon the family that has lost their home due to fire or flood to give of what you have; when you drop all that you’re doing to gather with family at the deathbed of a loved one…all of these, and more, show you the truest ideal of who we are as a species….a race of loving souls who continually seek to show our need for family, society, communion…togetherness.

So as we enter into what may well be the last Christmas Seasons of this age, and as we all prepare for the tumultuous approach of a New Year where the pivotal decisions of our entire human race hang literally in the balance, it is our greatest hope for all of you that you reach far into the deepest part of your being and remember who you really are and why you are here on this Earth in the first place.

We also hope that in this time of giving that you remember us too and give to us what you are able to so that we can continue to provide you the all of the important information about our World possible, so that in the coming battles ahead you will be armed with the most valuable resource anyone could ever wish to have… The Truth.

Our World has too many individuals; we all need Heros now…are you the 100th Monkey? Why don’t you try and find out?

Thank you, and from all of us to you and your families, may your holiday be bright and full of peace,

The Sisters of Sorcha Faal

Dublin, Ireland

From Mind Loading to Mind Cloning – Gene to Meme to Beme: A Perspective on the Nature of Humanity

2009-10-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10684/Default.aspx

From Mind Loading to Mind Cloning – Gene to Meme to Beme: A Perspective on the Nature of Humanity
By Martine Rothblatt

Introduction

A central concern of the pro/anti transhumanist debate is whether to restrict our human bodies to a biological form or to expand our personal existence onto non-biological platforms. The anti-transhumanist position is that we are our DNA-birthed bodies. I suggest that cybernetics may very well offer a means for expanding the human being.

In Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s essay “Cybernetics Is An Antihumanism: Advanced Technologies and the Rebellion Against the Human Condition”, Dupuy misstates the cybernetics premise. Dupuy suggests that cybernetics in its quest for control is something anti-human. Alternatively, I suggest that cybernetics is simply an extension of life, much like a modern primate digging stick or insectoid behavioral pattern all of which quests for control over the environment. Failure to exert control over one's environment is tantamount to extinction, for no environment provides all the requisites for life at all times without manipulation. Even bacteria control their environment by movement through it and linking together metabolic excretions. To control is not only to be human, it is to survive.

The goal of cybernetic personal existence would be to continue human development rather than to artificially arrest it at the 20th century level, after it has developed for countless millennia. For all practical purposes, in the distant future, it is inevitable that the earth will be lost to a cosmic catastrophe of some sort, as that is the fate of all heavenly bodies in the universe. Those, such as Pickering, who oppose cybernetic personal existence, condemn humans to astrophysical excision, whereas proponents of cybernetic personal existence provide a potential vehicle for sustaining the human species. Voltaire was correct when he said that the perfect is the enemy of the good, but he did not mean that we shouldn't strive to improve ourselves. To the contrary, Voltaire meant that we ought not stop trying to improve ourselves simply because we cannot be perfect. The same point goes for humanity. We are far from perfect. Cybernetic existence will not make us perfect. But it could make us better, and that is and always has been a worthy cause.

Here I would like to turn to Katherine Hayles’ “Wrestling with Transhumanism” wherein she neglects the fact that transhumanists are actually the most socially connected culture on earth because transhumanists want to use technology to overcome the anomie-inducing isolation and desperation of spatio-temporal distance. The very goal of the transhumanist project is realization of the connective consciousness of all humanity, the noosphere (as suggested by Teilhard de Chardin), which is the epitome of social awareness. Our human tribal sense of community is frustrated by physical separation in buildings, economic separation in classes, and social separation in cultures. Is this utopian? Ted Peters in his paper “Transhumanism and the Posthuman Future: Will Technological Progress Get Us There?” seems to think so.

However Peters mistakes extrapolations for explanations. The transhumanists are no more utopian or naive than were the socio-technological pioneers of the 19th century who believed in and fought for universal education, railroads, and public health. Our antecedents in the 1800s dreamed of a day when everyone would have a quality education, when transportation would not involve degradation, and when horrifying epidemics did not sweep away our loved ones. It was that lofty — even utopian — goal that invigorated society to introduce compulsory education, the transcontinental railroad, and sanitation. We are still far from the utopian goal, but what sane person could contest the benefits that the utopian vision has created in its wake? It is the same situation with transhumanists. Of course transhumanists realize that fungible bodies are off in the future, but if that dream can motivate us to relieve the suffering of those stricken by paralysis or other bodily dysfunctions, then it is a dream well worth propagating. Utopia is not so much a place as a direction, a good direction. Transhumanists are taking us in that good direction, and cannot be fairly criticized for telling us all that we can do better that we are doing now.

Transhumanism

The larger issue of transhumanism concerns human transformation rather than what Don Ihde refers to as a superhuman fantasy in his paper “Of Which Human Are We Post?” Ihde ignores the fact that we are continually transforming, from the time we domesticated wolves into dogs and ragweeds into crops, to the times we inoculate ourselves with xenoviral fragments to protect against influenza. The difference between transhumanists and many detractors is that transhumanists are out of the closet, whereas the detractors seem to be in a type of denial. The transhumanists simply see the projection of technological trends which are augmenting and enhancing humans, while the detractors largely ignore historical trends, deny current trends, and decry many aspects of the future that do not immediately benefit them. Far from hunting for paradise, the transhumanists are simply following an age-old curve of development that goes back millions of years in human history. Ihde's view of the world seems to be lost in a romantic fantasy of nostalgia for times we would probably not have survived. In an earlier generation transhumanists would have been called progressives; anti-transhumanists would be known as reactionaries, royalists or racists. The differentiating question is as simple as this: are we to abandon individual humans, as well as human societies, to the random fate of disease and disaster? The transhumanists say “no!”, and will relentlessly aim to enhance humans and their environment until “life is fair” (because we made it so). The anti-transhumanists say “yes”, and will lift a finger to save individuals or groups only so long as there is no cognizable consequence to the kind of human body and human society with which they are familiar.

In a nutshell, for the transhumanist, alleviating suffering and avoiding extinction trumps the comfort of sameness. To the anti-transhumanist, maintenance of the status quo trumps ending pain and even human survival. Better evolve than dissolve, says the transhumanist. Nay, better dissolve than evolve, retorts the anti-transhumanist.

Mind Cloning

Returning to the concept of cybernetics, Andrew Pickering, in his paper “Brain, Selves and Spirituality in History of Cybernetics” criticizes transhumanism in regards to a goal of cybernetic immortality and perfection by trying to purify and excise humans. With this said, I turn my attention to the concept of copying the mind onto non-biological platforms. I do this not to provide fodder for unsubstantiated science-fiction, utopian thinking, but to invite those who shudder at the idea of the human not remaining an exclusively biological animal destined to die to consider a possible future post human being which could at some point in the future overcome the multiple apartheid structures of the agri-industrial world with a seamless presence in virtuality within which the mind or minds could exist.

The phrase “mind cloning” conjures weird and perplexing images. Does it mean stamping out an army of people who think the same? Also, how could a mind be cloned? We can visualize identical twins as a proxy for body cloning, but no two people have ever had the same mind. And why would any one want to clone minds? Who would want someone else running around with all of our most private thoughts?

In order to explore a world full of mind clones that is now a key R&D project of dozens of government agencies and private companies, I will briefly address the why, how, and when of mind cloning, and propose a sensible framework for its social acceptance.

Let’s start with the term “mind cloning.” It means copying the essence of a person’s consciousness. We need the wiggle room of “essence” for two reasons. First, there is no such thing as a perfect copy of anything. At least at the sub-atomic level, things change too quickly to permit any kind of a perfect copy. Even cloned sheep, for example, are not exact copies. One reason for this is that not all of the genetic information of a sheep (or a person) is in their nucleus, the part of a cell used in the cloning process. There are additional strands of genetic information floating in the cytoplasm of each cell, such as “mitochondrial DNA”, which is not susceptible to cloning using the techniques now employed. Nevertheless, a cloned sheep is certainly a copy of the essence of its mother.

The second reason we need the wiggle room of “essence” is that consciousness is not an objective quantity, like a sheep. Consciousness is subjective, or personal, to its possessor. This means there is only one of each consciousness, by definition of it being a subjective quantity. However, a person who had all of another’s mannerisms, personality traits, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values would surely be the essence of the other’s consciousness. The mind clone would know they were the same, but different, as its original – in much the same way we realize that we are the same, but different, as we were ten years younger.

With today’s technology the copy of one’s conscious essence would reside in a computer system. This means that mind cloning results in software that thinks of itself as a human being when running on an appropriate computer. With future technology it will be possible to download the software mind of a conscious computer into the brain of a fresh body. Such bodies (including brains) could be grown from stem cells the way skin grafts are today, or perhaps be built as hybrid nano-biotech hybrids the way artificial joints are today. Until this future arrives the mind clones would live in virtuality, such as future stages of secondlife.com, and rely upon the web for their social interaction.

It’s not hard for any web-savvy person to imagine how mind clones will be created. Consider first that there are finite numbers of human mannerisms, personality types, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values. The number of different combinations of these human attributes is astronomical, far greater than the number of people. And then add in recollections that are unique to each of us -- clearly, there is no problem arriving at billions of unique consciousnesses from a few finite sets of human attributes.

Let’s zoom in on these attributes. Imagine a website that permits you to create an avatar by selecting its human attributes in the way you might order sushi. A click for a certain shy grin, a click on a 1-to-10 scale for introversion, clicks for one’s beliefs about God, charity and love, and so on. As you click away, your uploaded image animates increasingly similar to you, much like a police sketch artist’s rendering takes on an increasing likeness. Spend enough time at a well designed website, and a sort of cyber-twin or digital reflection of you will arise. This is mind loading. It is a necessary, but not sufficient, step toward mind cloning.

The mind loaded version of you is a vast set of look-up tables or database preferences. It lacks the wiring of your brain, the multiple subtle inter-relationships of your thoughts, the worldly knowledge you have but can’t click, the neuro-hormonal connections that trigger sensations, the curiosity, cautiousness and conceptualizing that moves you from moment-to-moment based upon decades of living life. It’s the best puppet ever made, but it is still just a cyber-puppet.

Now, there are many smart people out there trying to digitize the brain. They are using brain scanning technology to see which parts of the brain light-up, and how they light-up, when we feel awe, brave, cuddly, dread, ecstatic, fearful, God, hatred, isolated, joyful, kind, loving, morose, neglected, outraged, pretty, quixotic, rowdy, sad, trusting, understanding, vapid, wonderment, xenophobic, yearning and zesty. For every feeling some unique set of nerves light up. There are many ways for neurons to light up with awe, or bravery, or cuddliness – but a finite number of ways. As with personality types and mannerisms, there are a finite number of ways to feel human, but an uncountable number of combinations of these ways.

Each feeling amounts to a mental filter that focuses our thoughts moment to moment in a manner consistent with the feeling. Each feeling is a sub-routine, an overlaid program on top of a larger program. If I’m sad, things seem sad, and I see the glass as half-empty not half-full. The feelings are usually temporary, and in time our macro-program reboots to its default settings. But sometimes feelings persist, and the macro-program cannot recover. Many feelings trigger sensations across our bodies via neuro-hormonal connections, or, vice-versa, sensations trigger feelings. These sensations are select sets of nerves being pinged toward positive or negative polarity. The brain interprets these along a range of ecstasy to agony, and we find ourselves thinking that we feel the brain’s interpretation.

Ultimately, feelings are nerves being more or less activated in a plethora of possible combinations. This sort of thing is tailor-made for digitization. Software circuits can be divided into hundreds of feeling elements, scaled from positive to negative, and grouped into emotional bundles. Hence, it is just a matter of time before hackers start selling awe, bravery and cuddliness modules. The mind loads will feel the emotions with ever-more authenticity to human feelings as the software engineers get ever-smarter about which neuron pools are associated in which way with which emotions.

In time mind cloning software will watch a human emote (uploaded digital video, perhaps with some biofeedback such as galvanic skin response), and auto-tune its feelings modules to match those of the human. As this is done, the mind load will morph into a mind clone. A puppet that feels is a puppet no more. Software that fears for its life, and that quests for more life, is alive.

Bemes

Here I introduce the concept of what I refer to the “beme”. The word “beme” is an adaptation of the linguist’s word “morpheme”, which means the smallest unit of meaning. A beme is the smallest unit of being, or existence. Being is usually defined as a state of existing, or as somebody’s essential nature or character. Hence, a beme is the smallest unit of someone’s essential nature or character.

Bemes are similar to “memes”, units of cultural transmission that behave like genes and were first explicated in 1976 by Richard Dawkins1. Memes span a broader field than the linguistic-bound morphemes, and are studied more for their transmissibility characteristics than for their inherent meaning. By analogy, a beme is a unit of existence, nature or character that can behaves like a gene. Hence, a beme can produce behaviors like a gene can produce proteins. Also, a beme can be replicated or combined or mutated either within a being (as occurs with genes) or in an offspring (as also occurs with genes).

“Bemes” might be thought of as specific kinds of “memes”, although not all small units of existence are also units of cultural transmission. In any event, the growing public familiarity with the concept of memes is helpful in gaining understanding of the new concept of bemes.

Humans are defined in large part by our thoughts rather than our genes. The concept of a beme, in this regard, could be mightier than the gene.

Humanity, Transhumanity, Genes and Bemes

Now, focusing on the question of our humanity, is it our genes or our bemes that are responsible for our uniqueness? Do we reproduce through our genes or our bemes? As is indicated in the above table, these questions cannot clearly be answered one way or the other. Our genes are of course responsible for the common features of our bodies, but our human essence lies in our minds not our bodies. Those who have lost their limbs are no less human; those who have lost their minds lose their human rights as well.

Our genes are also responsible for the layout of the brains that give rise to our minds, and consequently for many if not most of our basic behaviors as well. However, these genetically-determined bemes can as well be isolated from the genes, digitally coded, and separately reproduced. And there are many more bemes that arise solely as a result of our experiences in life. These bemes cannot be expressed in genes, but they too can be abstracted, digitally coded, and separately reproduced.

The central thesis of this essay is that in an Information Age the beme is mightier than the gene. This means that transmissible units of character or existence are more important than genetic information. For example, most people’s love-mate is a person with whom they share no genetic commonality outside of that which is in the general gene pool of their community. However, a lasting interpersonal relationship is only possible if the two partners share a strong appreciation for each other’s bemes, their characters, their natures, and their ideational units of existence. To say the “beme is mightier than the gene” is to disagree that “blood is thicker than water.” Most people’s strongest relationship — that with their spouse, or with a best friend, is not a blood relationship.

On the other hand, bemes are not like mere water. A person builds up his or her bemes over time, and evolves them as appears most conducive to an enjoyable life. That which we have spent time developing, like a relationship, is more valuable, and reliable, than that which just appears and claims affinity based solely upon flesh. Perhaps a better phrase is “minds are deeper than matter.”

Endnotes

1. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 1976. Though Dawkins defined the meme as "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation," memetics, the study of memes, contains a variety of definitions of meme. They share in common the concept of genetic-like properties to cultural phenomena.

Different definitions of the meme generally agree, very roughly, that a meme consists of some sort of a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution having a resemblance to the gene (the unit of genetics). Dawkins introduced the term after writing that evolution depended not on the particular chemical basis of genetics, but only on the existence of a self-replicating unit of transmission—in the case of biological evolution, the gene. For Dawkins, the meme exemplifies another self-replicating unit, and most importantly, one which he thought would prove useful in explaining human behavior and cultural evolution.

Beyond Demonic Memes

2009-10-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-07-04

Beyond Demonic Memes
Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong About Religion
by David Sloan Wilson

RICHARD DAWKINS AND I share much in common. We are both biologists by training who have written widely about evolutionary theory. We share an interest in culture as an evolutionary process in its own right. We are both atheists in our personal convictions who have written books on religion. In Darwin’s Cathedral I attempted to contribute to the relatively new field of evolutionary religious studies. When Dawkins’ The God Delusion was published I naturally assumed that he was basing his critique of religion on the scientific study of religion from an evolutionary perspective. I regret to report otherwise. He has not done any original work on the subject and he has not fairly represented the work of his colleagues. Hence this critique of The God Delusion and the larger issues at stake.

Where We Agree and Where We Part Company

In The God Delusion Dawkins makes it clear that he loathes religion for its intolerance, blind faith, cruelty, extremism, abuse, and prejudice. He attributes these problems to religion and thinks that the world would be a better place without it. Given recent events in the Middle East and even here in America, it is understandable why he might draw such a conclusion, but the question is: What’s evolution got to do with it?

Dawkins and I agree that evolutionary theory provides a powerful framework for studying religion, and we even agree on some of the details, so it is important to pinpoint exactly where we part company. Evolutionists employ a number of hypotheses to study any trait, even something as mundane as the spots on a guppy. Is it an adaptation that evolved by natural selection? If so, did it evolve by benefiting whole groups, compared to other groups, or individuals compared to other individuals within groups? With cultural evolution there is a third possibility. Since cultural traits pass from person to person, they bear an intriguing resemblance to disease organisms. Perhaps they evolve to enhance their own transmission without benefiting human individuals or groups.

If the trait is not an adaptation, then it can nevertheless persist in the population for a variety of reasons. Perhaps it was adaptive in the past but not the present, such as our eating habits, which make sense in the food-scarce environment of our ancestors but not with a McDonald’s on every corner. Perhaps the trait is a byproduct of another adaptation. For example, moths use celestial light sources to orient their flight (an adaptation), but this causes them to spiral toward earthly light sources such as a streetlamp or a flame (a costly byproduct), as Dawkins so beautifully recounts in The God Delusion. Finally, the trait might be selectively neutral and persist in the population by genetic or cultural drift.

Dawkins and I agree that these major hypotheses provide an excellent framework for organizing the study of religion, which by itself is an important achievement. We also agree that the hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. Evolution is a messy, complicated process, like the creation of laws and sausages, and all of the major hypotheses might be relevant to some degree. Nevertheless, real progress requires determining which hypotheses are most important for the evolution of particular traits. The spots on a guppy might seem parochial, but they are famous among biologists as a case study of evolutionary analysis. They can be explained primarily as adaptations in response to two powerful selective forces: predators remove the most conspicuous males from the population, whereas female guppies mate with the most conspicuous males. The interaction between these two selection pressures explains an impressive amount of detail about guppy spots — why males have them and females don’t, why males are more colorful in habitats without predators, and even why the spots are primarily red when the predators are crustaceans (whose visual system is blind to the color red), as opposed to fish (whose visual system is sensitive to the color red). Guppy spots could have been selectively neutral or a byproduct of some other trait, but that’s not the way the facts fell.

Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould: Strange Bedfellows

The late Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously criticized his colleagues for seeing adaptations where they don’t exist. His metaphor for a byproduct was the spandrel, the triangular space that inevitably results when arches are placed next to each other. Arches have a function but spandrels do not, even though they can acquire a secondary function, such as providing a decorative space. Gould accused his colleagues of inventing “just-so stories” about traits as adaptations, without good proof, and being blind to the possibility of byproducts and other non-adaptive outcomes of evolution.

Gould had a point, but he failed to give equal time to the opposite problem of failing to see adaptations where they do exist.

Suppose that you are a biologist who becomes interested in explaining the bump on the nose of a certain species of shark.

Perhaps it is just a byproduct of the way that shark noses develop, as Gould speculated for the human chin. Perhaps it is a callous that forms when the sharks root around in the sand. If so, then it would be an adaptation but not a very complicated one. Perhaps it is a wart, formed by a virus. If so, then it might be an adaptation for the virus but not the shark. Or perhaps it is an organ for detecting the weak electrical signals of prey hidden in the sand. If so, then it would be a complex adaptation.

Few experiences are more thrilling for a biologist than to discover a complex adaptation. Myriad details that previously defied explanation become interpretable as an interlocking system with a purpose. Non-adaptive traits can also be complex, but the functional nature of a complex adaptation guides its analysis from beginning to end. Failing to recognize complex adaptations when they exist is as big a mistake as seeing them where they don’t exist. Only hard empirical work — something equivalent to the hundreds of person-years spent studying guppy spots from an evolutionary perspective — can settle the issue.

Dawkins argued on behalf of adaptationism in his debates with Gould and would probably agree with everything I have said so far. For religion, however, he argues primarily on behalf of non-adaptation. As he sees it, people are attracted to religion the way that moths are attracted to flames. Perhaps religious impulses were adapted to the tiny social groups of our ancestral past, but not the mega-societies of the present. If current religious beliefs are adaptive at all, it is only for the beliefs themselves as cultural parasites on their human hosts, like the demons of old that were thought to possess people. That is why Dawkins calls God a delusion. The least likely possibility for Dawkins is the group-level adaptation hypothesis. Religions are emphatically not elaborate systems of beliefs and practices that define, motivate, coordinate and police groups of people for their own good.

For the Good of the Group?

To understand Dawkins’ skepticism about the group-level benefits of religion, it is necessary to trace the history of “for the good of the group” thinking in evolutionary theory. Groups can be adaptive only if their members perform services for each other, yet these services are often vulnerable to exploitation by more self-serving individuals within the same group. Fortunately, groups of individuals who practice mutual aid can out-compete groups whose members do not.

According to this reasoning, traits that are “for the good of the group” require a process of between-group selection to evolve and tend to be undermined by selection within groups. Darwin was the first person to reason this way about the evolution of human morality and self-sacrificial traits in other animals. Unfortunately, his insight was not shared by many biologists during the first half of the 20th century, who uncritically assumed that adaptations evolve at all levels of the biological hierarchy — for the good of the individual, group, species, or ecosystem — without requiring a corresponding process of natural selection at each level. When the need for group selection was acknowledged, it was often assumed that between-group selection easily prevailed against within-group selection. This can be called The Age of Naïve Groupism, and it ended during the 1960s and 1970s, thanks largely to two books: George C. Williams’ 1966 Adaptation and Natural Selection and Richard Dawkins’ 1976 The Selfish Gene.

In Adaptation and Natural Selection, Williams affirmed the logic of multi-level selection but then added an empirical claim: Even though between-group selection is theoretically possible, in the real world it is invariably trumped by within-group selection. Virtually all adaptations evolve at the individual level and even examples of apparent altruism must be explained in terms of self-interest. It was this empirical claim that ended The Age of Naïve Groupism and initiated what can be called The Age of Individualism, which lasted for the rest of the 20th century and in some respects is still with us.

Another theme developed by Williams was the concept of the gene as the fundamental unit of selection. In sexually reproducing species, an individual is a unique collection of genes that will never occur again. Individuals therefore lack the permanence to be acted upon by natural selection over multiple generations. According to Williams, genes are the fundamental unit of natural selection because they have the permanence that individuals (much less groups) lack.

In many respects, and by his own account, Williams was interpreting ideas for a broader audience that began with Darwin and were refined by theoretical biologists such as Sewall Wright, Ronald Fisher, and J.B.S. Haldane. The concept of the gene as the fundamental unit of selection, for example, is identical to the concept of average effects in population genetics theory, which averages the fitness of alternative genes across all of the individual genotypes and environmental contexts experienced by the genes. A decade later, Dawkins played the role of interpreter for an even broader audience. Average effects became selfish genes and individuals became lumbering robots controlled by their genes. Group selection became a pariah concept, taught only as an example of how not to think. As one eminent evolutionist advised a student in the 1980s, “There are three ideas that you do not invoke in biology: Lamarkism, the phlogistron theory, and group selection.”
Scientific Dogmatism

In retrospect, it is hard to fathom the zeal with which evolutionists such as Williams and Dawkins rejected group selection and developed a view of evolution as based entirely on self-interest. Williams ended Adaptation and Natural Selection with the phrase “I believe that it is the light and the way.” Here is how Dawkins recounts the period in his 1982 book The Extended Phenotype:

The intervening years since Darwin have seen an astonishing retreat from his individual-centered stand, a lapse into sloppily unconscious group-selectionism … We painfully struggled back, harassed by sniping from a Jesuitically sophisticated and dedicated neo-group-selectionist rearguard, until we finally regained Darwin’s ground, the position that I am characterizing by the label ‘the selfish organism…”

This passage has all the earmarks of fundamentalist rhetoric, including appropriating the deity (Darwin) for one’s own cause.

Never mind that Darwin was the first group selectionist. Moreover, unlike The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype was written by Dawkins for his scientific peers, not for a popular audience!

In reality, the case against group selection began to unravel almost immediately after the publication of Adaptation and Natural Selection, although it was difficult to tell, given the repressive social climate. In the first place, calling genes “replicators” and “the fundamental unit of selection” is no argument at all against group selection. The question has always been whether genes can evolve by virtue of benefiting whole groups and despite being selectively disadvantageous within groups. When this happens, the gene favored by between-group selection replaces the gene favored by within-group selection in the total population. In the parlance of population genetics theory, it has the highest average effect. Re-labeling the gene selfish, just because it evolves, contributes nothing. The “gene’s eye view” of evolution can be insightful in some respects, but as an argument against group selection it is one of the greatest cases of comparing apples with oranges in the annals of evolutionary thought.

The same goes for the concept of extended phenotypes, which notes that genes have effects that extend beyond the bodies of individual organisms. Examples of extended phenotypes include a bird’s nest or a beaver’s dam. But there is a difference between these two examples; the nest benefits only the individual builder, whereas the dam benefits all of the beavers in the pond, including those who don’t contribute to building the dam. The problem of within-group selection is present in the dam example and the concept of extended phenotypes does nothing to solve it. More apples and oranges.
The Revival of Group Selection

Much has happened in the four decades following the rejection of group selection in the 1960s. Naïve groupism is still a mistake that needs to be avoided, but between-group selection can no longer be categorically rejected. Claims for group selection must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, along with the other major evolutionary hypotheses. Demonstrations of group selection appear regularly in the top scientific journals.

As one example reported in the July 6, 2006 issue of Nature, a group of microbiologists headed by Benjamin Kerr cultured bacteria (E. coli) and their viral predator (phage) in 96-well plates, which are commonly used for automated chemical analysis.

Each well was an isolated group of predators and their prey. Within each well, natural selection favored the most rapacious viral strains, but these strains tended to drive their prey, and therefore themselves extinct. More prudent viral strains were vulnerable to replacement by the rapacious strains within each well, but as groups they persisted longer and were more likely to colonize other wells. Migration between wells was accomplished by robotically controlled pipettes. Biologically plausible migration rates enabled the prudent viral strains to persist in the total population, despite their selective disadvantage within groups.

As a second example reported in the December 8, 2006 issue of Science, economist Samuel Bowles estimated that between-group selection was strong enough to promote the genetic evolution of altruism in our own species, exactly as envisioned by Darwin. These and many other examples, summarized by Edward O. Wilson and myself in a forthcoming review article, are ignored entirely by Dawkins, who continues to recite his mantra that the selective disadvantage of altruism within groups poses an insuperable problem for between-group selection.
Individuals as Groups

Not only can group selection be a significant evolutionary force, it can sometimes even be the dominating evolutionary force.

One of the most important advances in evolutionary biology is a concept called major transitions. It turns out that evolution takes place not only by small mutational change, but also by social groups and multi-species communities becoming so integrated that they become higher-level organisms in their own right. The cell biologist Lynn Margulis proposed this concept in the 1970s to explain the evolution of nucleated cells as symbiotic communities of bacterial cells. The concept was then generalized to explain other major transitions, from the origin of life as communities of cooperating molecular reactions, to multi-cellular organisms and social insect colonies.

In each case, the balance between levels of selection is not fixed but can itself evolve. A major transition occurs when selection within groups is suppressed, making it difficult for selfish elements to evolve at the expense of other members of their own groups. Selection among groups becomes a dominating evolutionary force, turning the groups into super-organisms. Ironically, during the Age of Individualism it became taboo to think about groups as organisms, but now it turns out that organisms are literally the groups of past ages.

Dawkins fully accepts the concept of major transitions, but he pretends that it doesn’t require a revision in his ideas about group selection. Most important, he doesn’t pose the question that is most relevant to the study of religion: Is it possible that human genetic and cultural evolution represents the newest example of a major transition, converting human groups into the equivalent of bodies and beehives?

Selfish Memes and Other Theories of Cultural Evolution

Dawkins’ third claim to fame, in addition to selfish genes and extended phenotypes, was to coin the term “meme” to think about cultural evolution. In its most general usage, the word “meme” becomes newspeak for “culture” without adding anything new. More specific usages suggest a variety of interesting possibilities; that culture can be broken into atomistic bits like genes, that these bits are somehow represented inside the head, and especially that they can evolve to be organisms in their own right, often spreading at the expense of their human hosts, like the demons of old.

As with religion, Dawkins has not conducted empirical research on cultural evolution, preferring to play the role of Mycroft Holmes, who sat in his armchair and let his younger brother Sherlock do the legwork. Two evolutionary Sherlocks of culture are Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, authors of the 2005 book Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution.

One of the sleights of hand performed by Dawkins in The God Delusion, which takes a practiced eye to detect, is to first dismiss group selection and then to respectfully cite the work of Richerson and Boyd without mentioning that their theory of cultural evolution is all about group selection.

Consider genetic evolution by itself. When a new mutation arises, the total population consists of one group with a single mutant and many groups with no mutants. There is not much variation among groups in this scenario for group selection to act upon. Now imagine a species that has the ability to socially transmit information. A new cultural mutation can rapidly spread to everyone in the same group, resulting in one group that is very different from the other groups in the total population. This is one way that culture can radically shift the balance between levels of selection in favor of group selection.

Add to this the ability to monitor the behavior of others, communicate social transgressions through gossip, and easily punish or exclude transgressors at low cost to the punishers, and it becomes clear that human evolution represents a whole new ball game as far as group selection is concerned.

In this context, the human major transition probably began early in the evolution of our lineage, resulting in a genetically evolved psychological architecture that enables us to spontaneously cooperate in small face-to-face groups. As the great social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville commented long ago in Democracy in America, “the village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that, wherever a number of men are collected, it seems to constitute itself.” As the primate equivalent of a beehive or an ant colony, our lineage was able to eliminate less groupish competitors. The ability to acquire and socially transmit new behaviors enabled our ancestors to spread over the globe, occupying hundreds of ecological niches. Then the invention of agriculture enabled group sizes to increase by many orders of magnitude, but only through the cultural evolution of mechanisms that enable groups to hang together at such a large scale. Defining, motivating, coordinating, and policing groups is not easy at any scale. It requires an elaborate system of proximate mechanisms, something akin to the physiological mechanisms of an individual organism. Might the elements of religion be part of the “social physiology” of the human group organism? Other than briefly acknowledging the abstract possibility that memes can form “memeplexes,” this possibility does not appear in Dawkins’ analysis.

Bring on the Legwork

It is absurd, in retrospect, that evolutionists have spent much more time evaluating the major evolutionary hypotheses for guppy spots than for the elements of religion. This situation is beginning to remedy itself as scholars and scientists from all backgrounds begin to adopt the evolutionary perspective in their study of religion.

An example from my own research will show how empirical legwork can take us beyond armchair theorizing. Here is Dawkins on the subject of whether religion relieves or induces stress in the mind of the religious believer:

Is religion a placebo that prolongs life by reducing stress? Possibly, although the theory must run the gauntlet of skeptics who point out the many circumstances in which religion causes rather than relieves stress … The American comedian Cathy Ladman observes that “All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.”

One of my projects is a collaboration with the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced shick-sent-me-hi), who is best known among general readers for his books on peak psychological experience, such as Flow and The Evolving Self.

Csikszentmihalyi pioneered the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) which involves signaling people at random times during the day, prompting them to record their external and internal experience — where they are, who they are with, what they are doing, and what they are thinking and feeling on a checklist of numerical scales. The ESM is like an invisible observer, following people around as they go about their daily lives. It is as close as psychological research gets to the careful field studies that evolutionary biologists are accustomed to performing on non-human species, which is why I teamed up with Csikszentmihalyi to analyze some of his past studies from an evolutionary perspective.

These studies were performed on such a massive scale and with so much background information that we can compare the psychological experience of religious believers vs. nonbelievers on a moment-by-moment basis. We can even compare members of conservative vs. liberal protestant denominations, when they are alone vs. in the company of other people. On average, religious believers are more prosocial than non-believers, feel better about themselves, use their time more constructively, and engage in long-term planning rather than gratifying their impulsive desires. On a moment-by-moment basis, they report being more happy, active, sociable, involved and excited. Some of these differences remain even when religious and non-religious believers are matched for their degree of prosociality. More fine-grained comparisons reveal fascinating differences between liberal vs. conservative protestant denominations, with more anxiety among the liberals and conservatives feeling better in the company of others than when alone. Religions are diverse, in the same way that species in ecosystems are diverse. Rather than issuing monolithic statements about religion, evolutionists need to explain religious diversity in the same way that they explain biological diversity.

These results raise as many questions as they answer. We did not evolve to feel good but rather to survive and reproduce.

Perhaps religious believers are happily unaware of the problems that nonbelievers are anxiously trying to solve. As a more subtle point, people pass back and forth between the categories of “nonbeliever” and “believer” as they lose and regain faith.

Perhaps some nonbelievers are psychologically impaired because they are the recent casualties of religious belief. Only more scientific legwork can resolve these issues, but one thing is sure: Dawkins’ armchair speculation about the guilt-inducing effects of religion doesn’t even get him to first base.
Natural Historians of Religion

Hypothesis testing does not always require quantification and the other trappings of modern science. Darwin established his entire theory on the basis of descriptive information carefully gathered by the naturalists of his day, most of whom thought that they were studying the hand of God. This kind of information exists in abundance for religions around the world and throughout history, which should be regarded as a fossil record of cultural evolution so detailed that it puts the biological fossil record to shame. It should be possible to use this information to evaluate the major evolutionary hypotheses, which after all represent radically different conceptions of religion. Engineering principles dictate that a religion designed to benefit the whole group will be different from one designed to benefit some individuals (presumably the leaders) at the expense of others within the same group, which in turn will be different from a cultural disease organism designed to benefit itself at the expense of both individuals and groups, which in turn will be different from a religion for which the term “design” is inappropriate. It would be odd indeed if such different conceptions of religion could not be distinguished on the basis of carefully gathered descriptive information.

Of course, it is necessary to gather the information systematically rather than picking and choosing examples that fit one’s pet theory. In Darwin’s Cathedral, I initiated a survey of religions drawn at random from the 16-volume Encyclopedia of World Religions, edited by the great religious scholar Mircia Eliade. The results are described in an article titled “Testing Major Evolutionary Hypotheses about Religion with a Random Sample,” which was published in the journal Human Nature and is available on my website. The beauty of random sampling is that, barring a freak sampling accident, valid conclusions for the sample apply to all of the religions in the encyclopedia from which the sample was taken.

By my assessment, the majority of religions in the sample are centered on practical concerns, especially the definition of social groups and the regulation of social interactions within and between groups. New religious movements usually form when a constituency is not being well served by current social organizations (religious or secular) in practical terms and is better served by the new movement. The seemingly irrational and otherworldly elements of religions in the sample usually make excellent practical sense when judged by the only gold standard that matters from an evolutionary perspective — what they cause the religious believers to do. The best way to illustrate these points is by describing one of the religions in the sample — Jainism — which initially appeared the most challenging for the group-level adaptation hypothesis.

Jainism is one of the oldest and most ascetic of all the eastern religions and is practiced by approximately three percent of the Indian population. Jain ascetics filter the air they breathe, the water they drink, and sweep the path in front of them to avoid killing any creature no matter how small. They are homeless, without possessions, and sometimes even fast themselves to death by taking a vow of “santhara” that is celebrated by the entire community. How could such a religion benefit either individuals or groups in a practical sense? It is easy to conclude from the sight of an emaciated Jain ascetic that the religion is indeed a cultural disease — until one reads the scholarly literature.

It turns out that Jain ascetics comprise a tiny fraction of the religion, whose lay members are among the wealthiest merchants in India. Throughout their long history, Jains have filled an economic niche similar to the Jews in Western Europe, Chinese in Southeast Asia, and other merchant societies. In all cases, trading over long distances and plying volatile markets such as the gem trade requires a high degree of trust among trading partners, which is provided by the religion. Even the most esoteric (to outsiders) elements of the religion are not superfluous byproducts but perform important practical work.

For example, the ascetics must obtain their food by begging but their religion includes so many food restrictions that they can only accept food from the most pious lay Jain households. Moreover, the principle of non-action dictates that they can only accept small amounts of food from each household that was not prepared with the ascetics in mind. When they enter a house, they inspect the premises and subject the occupants to sharp questions about their moral purity before accepting their food. It is a mark of great honor to be visited but of great shame if the ascetics leave without food. In effect, the food begging system of the ascetics functions as an important policing mechanism for the community. This is only one of many examples, as summarized by Jainism scholar James Laidlaw in a 1995 book whose title says it all: Riches and Renunciation: Religion,
Economy, and Society Among the Jains.

How then, is it possible to live by impossible ideals? The advantage for addressing this question to Jainism is that the problem is so very graphic there. The demands of Jain asceticism have a pretty good claim to be the most uncompromising of any enduring historical tradition: the most aggressively impractical set of injunctions which any large number of diverse families and communities has ever tried to live by. They have done so, albeit in a turbulent history of change, schism, and occasionally recriminatory “reform,” for well over two millennia. This directs our attention to the fact that yawning gaps between hope and reality are not necessarily dysfunctions of social organization, or deviations from religious systems. The fact that lay Jains make up what is — in thoroughly worldly material terms — one of the most conspicuously successful communities in India, only makes more striking and visible a question which must also arise in the case of the renouncers themselves.

This example illustrates a phenomenon that I call the transformation of the obvious. Jainism appears obviously dysfunctional based on a little information, such as the sight of an emaciated acetic or beliefs that appear bizarre when taken out of context.

The same religion becomes obviously functional based on more information. This is the kind of “natural history” information that enabled Darwin to build such a strong case for his theory of evolution, and it can be used to build an equally strong case for the group-functional nature of Jainism. As for Jainism, so also for most of the other enduring religions of the world.
An Emerging Consensus?

I recently attended a conference on evolution and religion in Hawaii that provided an opportunity to assess the state of the field. It is not the case that everyone has reached a consensus on the relative importance of the major evolutionary hypotheses about religion. My own talk included a slide with the words SHAME ON US! in large block letters, chiding my colleagues for failing to reach at least a rough consensus, based on information that is already at hand. This might seem discouraging, until we remember that all aspects of religion have so far received much less attention than guppy spots from an evolutionary perspective. The entire enterprise is that new.

There was, I believe, a convergence taking place during the short period of the conference. Richard Sosis, whose previous research includes a detailed comparison of religious vs. non-religious communal movements, presented new research on the recitation of psalms among Israeli women in response to terrorist attacks. William Irons and several other participants developed the concept of hard-to-fake signals as a mechanism for insuring commitment in religious groups. Dominic Johnson reminded us that inter-group conflict, as much as we might not like it and want to avoid it, has been an important selective force throughout human genetic and cultural evolution and that some elements of religion can be interpreted as adaptations for war. In my response to this paper during the question period, I largely agreed with Johnson but pointed out that most of the religions in my random sample did not spread by violent conflict (e.g., Mormonism). Johnson is currently examining the religions in my random sample in more detail with respect to warfare, a good example of cumulative, collaborative research.

Peter Richerson and I gave a tutorial on group selection, which was especially useful for participants whose understanding of evolution is grounded on the Age of Individualism.

Lee Kirkpatrick delivered a lecture titled “Religion is Not an Adaptation” that might seem to oppose the adaptationist accounts mentioned above. What he meant, however, is that he doubts the existence of any genetic adaptations that evolved specifically in a religious context. He is sympathetic to the possibility that more general genetically evolved psychological adaptations are co-opted by cultural evolution to form elaborately functional religious systems. Similarly, other psychologically oriented talks about minimal counter-intuitiveness (beliefs being memorable when they are weird but not too weird), hyperactive agent detection devices (our tendency to assume agency, even when it does not exist), and the ease with which children develop beliefs about the afterlife, might be interpretable as non-adaptive byproducts, but they might also be the psychological building blocks of highly adaptive religions. In evolutionary parlance, byproducts can become exaptations, which in turn can become adaptations.

No one at the conference presented a compelling example of a religious belief that spreads like a disease organism, to the detriment of both individuals and groups. The demonic meme hypothesis is a theoretical possibility, but so far it lacks compelling evidence. Much remains to be done, but it is this collective enterprise that deserves the attention of the scientific research community more than angry diatribes about the evils of religion.

Real-World Solutions Require a Correct Diagnosis of the Problems

Explaining religions as primarily group-level adaptations does not make them benign in every respect. The most that group selection can do is to turn groups into super-organisms. Like organisms, super-organisms compete, prey upon each other, coexist without interacting, or engage in mutualistic interactions. Sometimes they form cooperative federations that work so well that super-super-organisms emerge at an even larger spatial scale. After all, even multi-cellular organisms are already groups of groups of groups. In a remarkable recent book titled War and Peace and War, Peter Turchin analyzes the broad sweep of human history as a process of cultural multilevel selection that has increased the scale of human society, with many reversals along the way — the rise and fall of empires. Religion is a large subject, but the explanatory scope of evolutionary theory is even larger.

American democracy can be regarded as a cultural super-super-organism. The founding fathers realized that religions work well for their own members but become part of the problem at a larger social scale. That is why they worked so hard to accomplish the separation of church and state, along with other checks and balances to prevent some members of the super-super-organism from benefiting at the expense of others. In this context I share Dawkins’ concern that some religions are seeking to end the separation of church and state in America. I am equally concerned that the checks and balances are failing in other respects that have nothing do to with religion, such as unaccountable corporations and extreme income inequality.

I also share Dawkins’ concern about other aspects of religions, even after they are understood as complex group-level adaptations. Religions can be ruthless in the way that they enforce conformity within groups. Most alarming for a scientist, religions can be wanton about distorting facts about the real world on their way toward motivating behaviors that are adaptive in the real world. We should be equally concerned about other distortions of factual reality, such as patriotic histories of nations and other non-religious ideologies that I call “stealth religions” in my most recent book, Evolution for Everyone. Finally, I agree with Dawkins that religions are fair game for criticism in a pluralistic society and that the stigma associated with atheism needs to be removed. The problem with Dawkins’ analysis, however, is that if he doesn’t get the facts about religion right, his diagnosis of the problems and proffered solutions won’t be right either. If the bump on the shark’s nose is an organ, you won’t get very far by thinking of it as a wart. That is why Dawkins’ diatribe against religion, however well-intentioned, is so deeply misinformed.

On Scientific Open-Mindedness

Toward the end of The God Delusion, Dawkins waxes poetic about the open-mindedness of science compared to the closed-mindedness of religion. He describes the heart-warming example of a scientist who changed his long-held beliefs on the basis of a single lecture, rushing up to his former opponent in front of everyone and declaring “Sir! I have been wrong all these years!”

This inspiring example represents one end of the scientific bell curve when it comes to open-mindedness. At the other end are people such as Louis Agassiz, one of the greatest biologists of Darwin’s day, who for all his brilliance and learning never accepted the theory of evolution. Time will tell where Dawkins sits on the bell curve of open-mindedness concerning group selection in general and religion in particular. At the moment, he is just another angry atheist, trading on his reputation as an evolutionist and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion.

It is time now for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work on understanding one of the most important and enigmatic aspects of the human condition.

ART-HAPPENING CALLED GLOBAL AWAKENING

2009-10-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

HTTP://WWW.AWAKENINTHEDREAM.COM/ARTIS/ART%20HAPPENING%20CALLED%20GLOBAL%20AWAKENING.HTML

ART-HAPPENING CALLED GLOBAL AWAKENING
by Paul Levy

Jung was fond of making an analogy between the formation of symbols in the unconscious and the solidification of crystals in a saturated solution. For example, if we dissolve sugar in a solution of water, the solution will eventually reach a saturation point. If a single grain of sugar is then added to the solution, a crystalline structure will spontaneously appear in the solution.

Any moment of self-reflection could be the very grain of sugar, so to speak, that initiates this process. This is true not only individually, but collectively as a species as well. Any one of us recognizing the dream-like nature of our situation, owning our shadow, doing our inner (and outer) work, and waking up to our true nature might be the very act, the very grain of sugar that initiates a change in the entire universe.

Our current planetary situation is clearly one of great instability. Chaos theory points out that times such as these, in which there is a high level of chaos, are actually ‘supersensitive’ situations, which are highly responsive to even the smallest change or fluctuation in the system. This literally means that a change in any single individual's consciousness can potentially have an amplified effect on the entire system in a way that was unimaginable and simply not possible before 9/11. Never before in the history of humankind has consciousness itself been of such importance.

Since 9/11, there is increased pressure in the alchemical vessel of both our individual and collective psyches, which means something is more accessible for us to realize now than before 9/11. A situation such as ours, Jung describes,
"involves man in a new responsibility. He can no longer wiggle out of it on the plea of his littleness and nothingness, for the dark God has slipped the atom bomb and chemical weapons into his hands and given him the power to empty out the apocalyptic vials of wrath on his fellow creatures. Since he has been granted an almost godlike power, he can no longer remain blind and unconscious. He must know something of God's nature and of metaphysical processes if he is to understand himself and thereby achieve gnosis of the Divine."

Jung continued by saying, “If ever there was a time when self-reflection was the absolutely necessary and only right thing, it is now, in our present catastrophic epoch.” Self-reflection is actually a bending backwards and is a privilege born of human freedom, in contradistinction to the compulsion of the daemonic. To self-reflect is a genuinely spiritual act, which is, essentially, the act of becoming conscious. Any one of us self-reflecting and recognizing the dream-like nature of our situation is immediately registered and invested in the ‘psi bank,’ the collective consciousness of humankind, where it gains incredible ‘interest,’ so to speak. It is truly the best ‘investment’ any of us could possibly make. The act of self-reflection activates a process of transformation in the archetypal realm, which results in the incarnation of God through humanity, i.e., the light of consciousness is born. This is why Jung said, “God becomes manifest in the human act of reflection.”

Jung asked, “But what does man possess that God does not have? Because of his littleness, puniness and defenselessness against the Almighty, he possesses, as we have already suggested, a somewhat keener consciousness based on self-reflection.” [Emphasis added] By self-reflecting, we play a key role in the divine incarnation process, as we become the medium or instrument through which God becomes aware of and reconciles, resolves and re-unites the opposites intrinsic to the totality of Its nature, which includes both light and dark. For Jung, the human act of self-reflection forces God, so to speak, to “empty himself of his Godhead” and incarnate through humanity “in order to obtain the jewel which man possesses in his self-reflection.”

This is what Jung meant when he said, “Whoever knows God has an effect on him.” We play an active, participatory, and crucial role in the process of divine transformation and incarnation. We are the aperture through which God becomes aware of Itself. Jung elaborated by saying, “God needs man in order to become conscious, just as he needs limitation in time and space. Let us therefore be for him limitation in time and space, an earthly tabernacle.”
Jung continued,

"The fact that it is precisely a process of human reflection that irrationally creates the uniting ‘third’ [what Jung calls the transcendent function, or reconciling symbol; it can also be thought of as a form of grace] is itself connected with the nature of the drama of redemption, whereby God descends into the human realm and man mounts up to the realm of divinity."

This is the inner meaning of alchemy, in which the ego (humanity) and the Self (God) mutually redeem each other. The Self (God) becomes humanized (incarnate) and the ego (us) becomes deified (blessed). An individual accepting responsibility for his role in the divine drama of incarnation, Jung said, “…means practically that he become adult, responsible for his existence, knowing that he does not only depend on God but that God also depends on man.”

One individual having the realization of the symbolic, dream-like nature of our situation makes it easier and more accessible for others to have the same realization, for we are all non-locally connected. Any one of us self-reflecting might be the very grain of sugar that tips the scales, initiating a phase shift in the collective consciousness of humankind. The hundredth monkey’s realization precipitates an expansion of consciousness in the entire species. Like the symbolic number 144,000 in the Book of Revelations, if enough of us wake up to what is being revealed, we act as so much yeast in the dough, helping the bread of this universe to leaven successfully. We are then in a position to avert a potential catastrophe and experience second-order change, which is not a change within a given system, but is an up-leveling of the very system in which we find ourselves.

We, both individually and collectively, can, in real time, the present moment, literally wake up and recognize the dream-like nature of our situation. This is to “achieve gnosis of the Divine.” Ultimately, this realization does us no good, however, unless we can share it with each other and turn one another on to this deeper understanding. When we are able to co-operatively put our realization together like this, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. A benevolent, loving, and higher power becomes activated and available to us when we co-relate to each other from the heart. Talking about the “rabbi Jesus,” Jung pointed out that he was trying “…to introduce the more advanced and psychologically more correct view that not fidelity to the law but love and kindness are the antithesis of evil.” [Emphasis added] When enough of us tap into this greater power, we can unite like T cells, healing the disease that is infecting our body politic.

When enough of us achieve gnosis of the Divine, which is to become lucid in the dream of life, we can co-inspire each other and collectively activate what in Star Wars is called The Force. The Force, genuinely benevolent at its core, has always been with us but we were unconsciously wielding it in a way that not only hasn’t served us, but we’ve been using it in a way that was destroying us. When we configure ourselves so that we can consciously use The Force, mediated through the heart and for the benefit of the whole, a power becomes available to us that we did not have access to when we were separate and dis-associated from each other. By getting into phase with each other, we are able to transduce The Force, a higher-dimensional energy, into our 3-D reality. We become a conduit for The Force to be used consciously, compassionately and constructively, in a way that is beneficial for the whole.

When channeled through the heart, The Force becomes what I call a “higher-dimensional weapon of peace.” It’s grace-waves are undetectable by the most advanced radar and more powerful than any military. The energy fueling it has greater intelligence than all the intelligence agencies on the planet combined, as its intelligence is derived from the very source of intelligence itself. It is stronger than any government on the planet and because it is empowered and blessed, it has true authority. This higher-dimensional weapon of peace has the indestructible quality of a diamond, as there is nothing that can stand up to it.

This higher-dimensional weapon of peace, once it gains sufficient momentum, becomes self-generating. It is then able to dis-arm and dis-spell any energy not in service to the whole. This higher-dimensional weapon of peace is a consciousness generator and heart-opener that is continually assimilating its environment. This is to say that once our higher-dimensional weapon of peace arsenal gains a certain strength, it will continue to enlarge itself and expand outward, which is to say that it attracts the rest of the universe into itself.

Accessing The Force is to tap into what physicists call the quantum vacuum. The quantum vacuum is anything but empty, however. It is a field of living energy that has nearly boundless potentiality, luminosity, and sentience. The quantum vacuum is a fullness, or plenum, which pervades and is not separate from all the physical forms of this universe. This quantum plenum, consciously used, expresses itself as the over-unity energy generating technology in physics (of which zero point energy is a subset). In over-unity technology, we achieve more energy out from a system than we put in. This is to go from a paradigm of lack and scarcity, where resources are limited, to a state of genuine abundance and prosperity for all. Our accessing any form of over-unity technology (whether it be zero point technology in physics or The Force in the meta-physics of consciousness) is the worst nightmare of the powers-that-be (such as the oil companies), as this is a form of energy that by its nature is sustainable, not monopolizable and instead of dividing, it unites people.

The same dreaming mind dreaming our dreams at night is collectively dreaming up the waking dream we call our universe. Something deeper than ourselves is having a dream, and we are it: both the dream, as well as the dreamer. All six billion of us are the dream characters of what I call the ‘Deeper, Dreaming Self.’ To quote Jung, “But in reality we seem rather to be the dream of somebody or something independent of our conscious ego.” And this Deeper, Dreaming Self, this something “independent of our conscious ego,” is the dreamer of the dream, and not only is it not separate from ourselves, it IS our True Self.

We are dreaming up our universe, while concurrently our universe is dreaming us up in an acausal, atemporal, non-linear feedback loop. Once we realize that we are the conduit through which the universe is being dreamed up into incarnation, we can collaboratively co-create, I imagine, what I call an “Art-Happening Called Global Awakening.” This is a creative and visionary work of living art in which we remember our true identities as creative, multi-dimensional, visionary artists and dreamers whose tool is the divine imagination and whose canvas is the universe itself. Stepping into our true nature as artists crafting this universe while simultaneously being expressions of the very universe we are crafting, we realize we can co-inspire each other in a way that helps us all.

The act of expressing and incarnating our realization of the dream-like nature of the universe is itself the medium through which we deepen our realization. This is to say that the act of giving shape and form to our realization of the dream-like nature of our universe is ‘Art’ in the deepest sense of the word, as it is truly a process transforming both ourselves and the world in which we live. For the deeper purpose of Art, to quote philosopher Friedrich Schiller, “…is not merely to translate the human being into a momentary dream of freedom, but actually to make him free.”

If you ask what exactly is the Art-Happening Called Global Awakening, I will respond by asking what you imagine it to be. If you realize right now, in this very moment, that we are all dreaming, how would you, as the artist and dreamer, creatively engage with the dream so as to dream it to its highest unfoldment? How do you imagine the dream wants to dream itself through you?

In the Art-Happening Called Global Awakening, we can become what I call an “in-phase dreaming circle,” which is actually an organism of a higher dimension. Instead of there being x number of seemingly separate, fragmented selves, in an in-phase dreaming circle we recognize our interdependence and interconnectedness. We realize that we are all on the same side, that we are not separate, but all parts of a greater being. Once we realize this, we discover that it is literally within our God-given power to collaboratively hook up with each other and put our sacred power of dreaming together in such a way that we can change the dream we are having and literally dream ourselves awake. This is a radical, revolutionary, and epochal quantum leap in consciousness that is fully capable of being imagined into being in this very moment.

The universe is dreaming itself awake, and it is dreaming itself awake through the most awake and visionary among us. To have this realization is not to go out of our minds (crazy); on the contrary, it is to find ourselves inside of our minds, which is to say we have recognized we are dreaming.

As part of the Art-Happening Called Global Awakening, we would have a team of creative ‘memetic engineers,’ I imagine.

Memes are self-replicating thought forms, like thought viruses. Memes can either be potentially fear-based and negative, or inspiring, empowering and positive. When a group of people collaboratively invest in the reality of a particular meme, they can literally evoke what the meme is both expressing and an expression of into incarnation. Memes are the instruments with which we, knowingly or unknowingly, create our reality. This is why the very first words in The Dhammapada, the Wisdom Sayings of the Buddha, are as follows: “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.” When we collectively entertain a thought-form as having a certain reality, we literally materialize that very thought-form into full-bodied incarnation; we dream it up.

When enough people invest their attention into particularly potent memes, we can not only change our consciousness, but the world as well. Certain memes are impregnated, so to speak, practically blessed with the potential to materialize themselves into full-bodied manifestation. It is as if certain memes are encoded with a higher-dimensional energy (The Force) that becomes liberated and activated when enough people collectively invest them with attention and contemplate their meaning. In other words, certain memes are invested with the energy to actualize what they are expressing when enough people contemplate them together. These empowered memes are themselves expressions of, and apertures into, a deeper process of awakening that the universe is going through.

Just like a symbol in a dream, these liberating memes are both an expression (reflects) and an actualization (effects) of what they are pointing at. These memes are like higher-dimensional portals through which we are able to change the programming of the ‘cosmic computer.’ When we collectively realize the power of memes to create our shared reality, we become like instruments in an orchestra who can collaboratively make music so beautiful, it is as if inspired by the divine.

We can create, I imagine, memes that have the power to awaken us when we collectively contemplate them. ‘The Universe is a Dream’ is an example of such a meme. Imagine what would happen as more and more of us actually consider the meaning of ‘The Universe is a Dream’ meme. If the meme is true (i.e., that the universe is a dream), then the meme itself is an expression of the dream-like nature of the universe, while simultaneously being something that we have dreamed up in this very moment so as to wake ourselves up.

Once we stop superimposing our concretized mental constructs upon the canvas of reality and contemplate its dream-like nature, we allow reality to be as it truly is and to reveal to us its dream-like nature. We don’t have to make it become like a dream, it already IS a dream. Once we stop solidifying our fluid, dream-like universe, we allow it to naturally resume its revelatory function. As more and more people contemplate memes that liberate, we will dream up a universe where more of us are truly free.

As part of the Art-Happening Called Global Awakening, I imagine we’d all connect with each other as spiritually informed political activists. We would truly understand the dynamics of shadow projection, which means we wouldn’t demonize George Bush or anyone else. I imagine that we, as a species, would recognize that wanting to destroy the evil that seemingly exists ‘out there’ is itself a reflection of the original act of turning against a part of ourselves, which is the impulse that is at the root of shadow projection. We would realize that wanting to destroy evil is the polar opposite of loving and serving God. Jung said, “If evil were to be utterly destroyed, everything daemonic, including God himself, would suffer a grievous loss, it would be like performing an amputation on the body of the Deity.”

Our realizing this means to embrace all of ourselves, which immediately dis-spells the need for having to project any shadow outside of ourselves. Because of the dream-like nature of this universe, owning and embracing our shadow will mean that we won’t have to dream up other people to terrorize us. When we project out our shadow in a dream, the dream has no choice but to manifest someone to pick up the role and embody our projected shadow; when we withdraw our shadow projection, the dream instantaneously reflects this change. When enough of us withdraw our shadow projections from the world, the world will have no choice but to reflect back this very change in our consciousness, as the world itself is nothing other than a reflection of our consciousness. In fact, more than just a reflection of our consciousness, the universe IS our consciousness, which is to say that the universe is a dream.

Instead of having a large number of progressive groups that are mostly fragmented and separate from each other, each working in their own isolated ways, in the Art-Happening Called Global Awakening, I imagine, we would connect with each other and pool together our collective, creative genius. So many well-intentioned groups are trying to be of service, but in working independently, they are only able to do limited amounts of good. When we consciously connect with each and realize our interdependence, The Force becomes available to us. This realization of our interconnectedness allows us to become a source of enormous creative power that, channeled through the heart, co-activates and co-inspires everyone. As our inspiration deepens and stabilizes, we are able to dream up The Force in even more potent ways, which inspires us even further, as we tap into the over-unity technology of consciousness itself. This is a positive feedback loop which, once it reaches a certain momentum, becomes self-generating. We need to fully step into our God-given roles as spiritually informed political co-activists. As we hook up and mutually co-activate each other towards higher and more refined levels of co-operation, The Force reveals its Divine nature.

To re-associate with each other is an expression that we are healing our state of (shamanic) dismemberment. To re-associate is to re-member, which like Humpty Dumpty, is to put ourselves back together as one. As we re-associate with ourselves inwardly, we re-connect with each other outwardly, and visa versa, as the inner and the outer are reflections of each other.
It is as though God has been suffering from a case of multiple personality disorder, with Its infinitude of parts dissociated from one another. According to a myth in the Kabbalah, God poured his divine light into vessels, some of which broke and scattered the light throughout the darkness. The universe (including ourselves) was created in order to gather, retrieve and re-collect all of the light and to repair the broken vessels. Similar imagery is found in Gnosticism. Re-collecting the light is nothing other than soul retrieval, as we both individually and collectively become the very containers that can carry the light. Instead of dis-associating from ourselves, as well as each other, we re-associate with our genuine Self and with the fellow members of our human family. We can co-operatively help each other to step out of the illusion of being separate.

This process of re-collecting ourselves and remembering who we are involves owning our shadow, which includes both a dark AND light aspect. It is not just our darkest parts we project out. We also are just as willing to project onto someone else, be it Christ, Buddha, or our Guru, our positive, or our golden shadow, which is our highest genius. It is time for us to withdraw our negative and positive shadow projections and creatively express and incarnate our genuine selves, our true genius, for God’s sake, as well as our own. The world needs, and deserves, nothing less. To own our shadow (both positive and negative), and withdraw our projections is to embrace all of ourselves. This is to heal our inner fragmentation, which becomes reflected in the outer world as we re-connect with one another. This is to see through the illusion of the separate self, which is the symbolic death of which Jung speaks.

As part of the Art-Happening Called Global Awakening, instead of a think-tank, we would have ‘imagination tanks,’ I imagine, which is an entity that I will simply leave up to your imagination. In these imagination tanks we would come together and imagine ways to collectively activate and empower the reality-creating power of our sacred imagination. To quote Jung, “All the works of man have their origin in creative imagination…The creative activity of imagination frees man from his bondage to ‘nothing but’ and raises him to the status of one who plays. As Schiller says, ‘man is completely human only when he is at play.’” I imagine we would create what I call “The Center-less Center for Non-local Disease Control,” whose location is right here and right now, which is to say that we are it.

In these imagination tanks, I imagine that we’d discover how we could co-operatively put our divine creative imagination together so as to allow it to materialize itself through us. As we get in phase with each other, we would reciprocally empower each other into deeper stages of liberation, which is to literally dream ourselves awake. We would discover that if we are truly serving God, which is to say serving what is best for the whole, we become the instruments through which the Goddessence manifests Itself and makes Itself real in time.

Jung pointed out the “world-creating significance of the consciousness manifested in man,” [Emphasis added]. Because of its ability to help to create the universe, Jung called the consciousness manifesting in humanity “a divine instrument.” We are being invited to consciously realize ourselves as apertures through which the divine imagination is able to materialize itself into, as, and through our universe. In an evolutionary leap in consciousness, we realize we can co-operate with each other and literally and lucidly change the dream we are having. What a novel idea.

How do we imagine we would dream it? No one really gets it until we all do, as we are not separate from each other. Anything less than a full and utter global awakening would be unsatisfying. The only limitation is our own lack of imagination. This collective realization could happen faster than the twinkling of an eye. Maybe the entire global awakening starts right here, in this very moment, with ourselves.

Imagine what it would be like to dream ourselves awake. I imagine that in this very moment, you would be reading a book reminding yourself that you are dreaming. Seen as a dream, you have clearly dreamed up these very words in this very moment so as to awaken yourself to the dream-like nature of the universe. But being like a dream, this will only become true if you see it that way. As Viewed, So Appears. And if you tell me I am only dreaming, or imagining that this is so, I couldn’t agree more.

A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, Paul Levy is a healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality. Paul is also a visionary artist and a spiritually-informed political activist. He is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis,which is available on his website www.awakeninthedream.com. (See the first chapter, The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis). Please feel free to pass this article along to a friend if you feel so inspired. You can contact Paul at paul@awakeninthedream.com; he looks forward to your reflections. ¬¨¬© Copyright 2009

'Infectious' people spread memes across the web

2009-08-20T15:45:00.000-07:00

There are many kinds of memes and they work many ways!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17581-infectious-people-spread-memes-across-the-web.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn17581

'Infectious' people spread memes across the web

08:45 12 August 2009 by Colin Barras
The way that certain images, videos or concepts can suddenly spread like wildfire across the web, using email and social websites to propagate, is one of online culture's most unique phenomena.

Now Spanish researchers claim to have found a way to accurately predict how quickly and widely new pieces of information, or "memes" as they are called, will spread. The ability to forecast this "viral" behaviour would be of great interest to sociologists and marketeers, among others.

The secret, they say, is to recognise the fact that people vary in how "infectious" they are when it comes to sharing content online. While some people pass on things they receive right away, others do so after some delay, or not at all.

Medical models

The viral spread of information online has conventionally been modelled using epidemiological tools developed to analyse the spread of biological viruses. One of the concepts borrowed is that of an infection's R0, or basic reproductive number, which describes how many other people someone with the virus can be expected to infect.

Knowing the R0 number help predict the likelihood and extent of real life epidemics, such as H1N1 swine flu. But models that apply the idea to online information can only indicate whether an internet meme is likely to be successful or to die out quickly, says Esteban Moro at the Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain.

Moro, working with José Luis Iribarren at IBM in Madrid, used IBM's company email newsletter to show the importance of variations between people's infectiousness in propagating memes online.

Email trail

They started a reward scheme offering prize draw tickets for recommending the newsletter by providing email addresses of other people and tracked how widely and quickly the recommendations spread. After two months it had reached 31,000 people.

But while people took 1.5 days to respond to a recommendation email on average, there was a huge variation at the individual level: some users responded within minutes, other in months, says Moro.

And only by combining some expectation of that variation with the R0 number is it possible to build a model able to predict the meme's spread. The team use a small chunk of the initial data on the content's spread to predict how many people it will reach in total, and how fast. "Our model can give predictions within 1 per cent error once secondary reproductive number and human activity are estimated," Moro says.

The model cannot predict whether a piece of content will go viral before it has been released; only its likely reach once it starts spreading. And the researchers think their approach to modelling should apply to information spreading via social networking sites and other online services as well as email.

'Remarkable result'

Statistician Claudio Castellano, at the "Sapienza" University of Rome, calls the match between prediction and real result "remarkable". He adds that there is other evidence to back up the idea people vary in online infectiousness.

For instance, David Liben-Nowell at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and colleague Jon Kleinberg at Cornell University last year traced an 11-year-old email chain letter to show up the differences between the spread of real viruses and viral information.

Moro's study agrees with his own results, says Liben-Nowell. "Many models of information propagation discount both the role of time and [differences between] people." But, there is more to discover, he says. For example, how people may vary in infectiousness depending on the type of content they receive.

Evolution's third replicator: Genes, memes, and now what?

2009-08-05T03:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327191.500-evolutions-third-replicator-genes-memes-and-now-what.html?full=true

Susan Blackmore
New Scientist
Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:11 UTC

We humans have let loose something extraordinary on our planet - a third replicator - the consequences of which are unpredictable and possibly dangerous.

What do I mean by "third replicator"? The first replicator was the gene - the basis of biological evolution. The second was memes - the basis of cultural evolution. I believe that what we are now seeing, in a vast technological explosion, is the birth of a third evolutionary process. We are Earth's Pandoran species, yet we are blissfully oblivious to what we have let out of the box.

This might sound apocalyptic, but it is how the world looks when we realise that Darwin's principle of evolution by natural selection need not apply just to biology. Given some kind of copying machinery that makes lots of slightly different copies of the same information, and given that only a few of those copies survive to be copied again, an evolutionary process must occur and design will appear out of destruction. You might call it "design by death" since clever designs thrive because of the many failures that don't.

The information that is copied, varied and selected is called the replicator, and the process is well understood when applied to biology. Genes are copied, mutated and selected over and over again. Assemblages of genes are used to build vehicles that carry them around, protect them and propagate them. These vehicles - the lumbering robots, as Richard Dawkins calls them - are animals and plants, the prolific and exquisitely designed products of the first replicator.

About 4 billion years after the appearance of the first replicator, something extraordinary happened. Members of one species of lumbering robot began to imitate one another. Imitation is a kind of copying, and so a new evolutionary process was born. Instead of cellular chemistry copying the order of bases on DNA, a sociable species of bipedal ape began to use its big brain to copy gestures, sounds and other behaviours. This copying might not have been very accurate, but it was enough to start a new evolutionary process. Dawkins called the new replicators "memes". A living creature, once just a vehicle of the first replicator, was now the copying machinery for the next.

The idea of memes as a cultural analogue of genes has been much maligned, and most biologists still reject it. Yet memetics has much to offer in explaining human nature. According to meme theory, humans are radically different from all other species because we alone are meme machines. Human intelligence is not just a bit more or a bit better than other kinds of intelligence, it is something completely different, based on a new evolutionary process and a new kind of information.

The main difference between conventional theories and memetics is this: most biologists assume that culture and language evolved because they helped humans survive and pass on their genes, and that genes retain ultimate control. Memetics challenges that assumption. Although the capacity for imitation must once have been adaptive for the apes who started it, evolution has no foresight and could not have predicted the consequences of letting loose a new evolutionary process. Nor could it have retained control of memes once they began evolving in their own right.

So memes began to proliferate. What began as an adaptation soon became like a parasite - a new evolving entity that changed the apes and their world forever. Once memes were proliferating, individuals benefited from copying the latest and most successful ones, and then passed on any genes that helped them do so. This "memetic drive" forced their brains to get bigger and bigger, and to become adept at copying the most successful memes, eventually leading to language, art, music, ritual and religion - the successful designs of human culture.

This process was dangerous. Small brains are much more efficient if you don't have to copy anything, but once memes are around you cannot survive unless you do. So brains had to get bigger, and big brains are costly to produce, dangerous to give birth to and expensive to run.

There is also danger in what is copied. If you start copying anything at all then you might copy dangerous memes, like throwing yourself off a cliff or using up all your resources in pointless rituals. This creates an arms race between two selfish replicators - memes benefiting from brains that copy anything and everything; genes benefiting from brains that are smaller, more efficient and highly selective.

Either of these dangers might have finished our ancestors off, but they pulled through. The result was a compromise, with human brains being just about as big as our bodies could stand, and yet selective enough to avoid copying lethal memes. In the same way that parasites tend to co-evolve with their hosts to become less lethal, so memes co-evolved with us. Languages, religions, skills and fashions that began as parasites turned into symbionts. Not only do we get along with our memes now, we could not live without them.

There was also a cost to the rest of life on Earth. Wherever they went humans took memes with them, spreading agriculture and changing the landscape, obliterating some species, domesticating others and changing whole ecosystems. Then, much more recently, they began to build radically new kinds of technology, and the changes they effected dwarfed anything that had gone before. Was this just more of the same or something new?

In all my previous work in memetics I have used the term "meme" to apply to any information that is copied between people, including stories in books, ideas embodied in new technology, websites and so on. The reason was that there seemed no way of distinguishing between "natural" human memes, such as spoken words, habits, fashions, art and religions, and what we might call "artificial" memes, such as websites and high-tech goods. So on the grounds that a false distinction is worse than none I stuck to the term "meme". Yet an email encrypted in digital code, broken into tiny packets and beamed around the planet does seem qualitatively different from someone shaking hands and saying "Hi". Could there be a fundamental principle lurking here? If we ask what made memes different from genes, would that help us decide what would make a new replicator different from memes?

Putting it that way makes the answer easier to see. Memes are a new kind of information - behaviours rather than DNA - copied by a new kind of machinery - brains rather than chemicals inside cells. This is a new evolutionary process because all of the three critical stages - copying, varying and selection - are done by those brains. So does the same apply to new technology?

There is a new kind of information: electronically processed binary information rather than memes. There is also a new kind of copying machinery: computers and servers rather than brains. But are all three critical stages carried out by that machinery?

We're close. We may even be right on the cusp. Think of programs that write original poetry or cobble together new student essays, or programs that store information about your shopping preferences and suggest books or clothes you might like next. They may be limited in scope, dependent on human input and send their output to human brains, but they copy, select and recombine the information they handle.

Or think of Google. It copies information, selects what it needs and puts the selections together in new variations - that's all three. The temptation is to think that since we designed search engines and other technologies for our own use they must remain subservient to us. But if a new replicator is involved we must think again. Search results go not only to screens for people to look at, but to other programs, commercial applications and even viruses - that's machines copying information to other machines without the intervention of a human brain. From there, we should expect the system to grow rapidly beyond our control and for our role in it to change. We should also expect design to appear spontaneously, and it does. Much of the content on the web is now designed automatically by machines rather than people.

Memes work differently from genes, and digital information works differently from memes, but some general principles apply to them all. The accelerating expansion, the increasing complexity, and the improving interconnectivity of all three are signs that the same fundamental design process is driving them all. Road networks look like vascular systems, and both look like computer networks, because interconnected systems outcompete isolated systems. The internet connects billions of computers in trillions of ways, just as a human brain connects billions of neurons in trillions of ways. Their uncanny resemblance is because they are doing a similar job.

So where do we go from here? We humans were vehicles for the first replicator and copying machinery for the second. What will we be for the third? For now we seem to have handed over most of the storage and copying duties to our new machines, but we still do much of the selection, which is why the web is so full of sex, drugs, food, music and entertainment. But the balance is shifting.

Outnumbered

Last year Google announced that the web had passed the trillion mark, with more than 1,000,000,000,000 unique URLs. Many countries now have nearly as many computers as people, and if you count phones and other connected gadgets they far outnumber people. Even if we all spent all day reading this stuff it would expand faster than we could keep up.

Billions of years ago, free-living bacteria are thought to have become incorporated into living cells as energy-providing mitochondria. Both sides benefited from the deal. Perhaps the same is happening to us now. The growing web of machines we let loose needs us to run the power stations, build the factories that make the computers, and repair things when they go wrong - and will do for some time yet. In return we get entertainment, tedious tasks done for us, facts at the click of a mouse and as much communication as we can ask for. It's a deal we are not likely to turn down.

Yet this shift to a new replicator may be a dangerous tipping point. Our ancestors could have killed themselves off with their large brains and dangerous memes, but they pulled through. This time the danger is to the whole planet. Gadgets like phones and PCs are already using 15 per cent of household power and rising (New Scientist, 23 May, p 17); the web is using over 5 per cent of the world's entire power and rising. We blame ourselves for climate change and resource depletion, but perhaps we should blame this new evolutionary process that is greedy, selfish and utterly blind to the consequences of its own expansion. We at least have the advantage that we can understand what is happening. That must be the first step towards working out what, if anything, to do about it.

Replicators on other planets?

We are able to ask the question "Are we alone in the universe?" because our ancestors created memes, turning Earth into a "two replicator", or R2, planet, rich in language and culture. We are able to contemplate communicating with other worlds because Earth is fast becoming an R3 planet, rich in digital technology that passes information around at the speed of light, and with the potential to send it out into the galaxy. How many other planets have taken a similar course? And why haven't we heard from them yet?

The standard approach to answering that question focuses on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In 1961 Frank Drake proposed his famous equation for estimating the number of intelligent civilisations capable of communicating with us in our own galaxy. It includes the rate of star formation, the fraction of stars with planets, the fraction of planets that can sustain life and the fraction that get intelligent life and then technology.

Perhaps intelligence and civilisation are not what we should be concentrating on. My analysis based on Universal Darwinism suggests that instead we should be looking for R3 planets. The number of those in our galaxy will depend on the probability of a planet getting a stable first replicator, then a second, and then a third. Maybe each step is hard, or maybe each is easy but dangerous. This new and simpler equation won't tell us the answers, but by posing new questions it may help us understand why - so far - we have not heard from anyone else out there.

Vision of the Book of Light

2009-04-02T12:24:00.001-07:00

This is What I SAW in My Vision of the Book of Light Last Week. Real Interesting Stuff. Even has aliens in it...

Dear Friends and Sister: A week ago, on Monday March 23, I had this Vision. It was in a Dream but it was Still A Vision. The Biggest and Longest One I've Ever Had.

In this Vision, I was in this neutral place, like in the middle of a sky. The God of the Souled was a little above me and He held this big, clean Book in His Hands. It was bound in a beige cover and had gold leaf on it but it had no title. The Book opened up and loose Pages of Pure Light started to fly out of it and fall towards me and as each Page of Light fell in front of me, I could see Writing in the Ancient Language and there were crytogram-type words that automatically showed me a holographic pictogram.

My Mind was Directly Connected to God's Mind. There were no emotions, only Intellect. I was there a Very Long Time because there were thousand and thousand of pages I was downloading into my Mind. It was an Incredible Book because of all the information and because it was so elegant and beautiful while it told a very long, dark tale.

After each page went by my face to read, it fell into a perfect stack of Light around my knees in this place of no space but seemed like sky.

God had white hair and a white beard. I've seen Him BEfore as a White Light you can't see through or one time, I was called to this place and he was having 'tea' with some Advanced Souls and He was wearing something like a business suit. These Visions happened years ago and they all had a 'Meaning' but this Vision was a BIG ONE. All Real, too.

As you many of you know, I've been researching human sacrifice and all the things related to it. Well I got my answers to this plus some other answers to other questions I couldn't find answers to and I've been looking for a long time. A real long time.

The Book was more than a history of human sacrifice on this planet. It was a History of Our Race (humanoid Souled). I always KNEW that we came from somewhere else and not from some germ or fungus on a space rock that hit this planet. I KNOW a lot of Stuff! A lot of it comes from my 'after death' experience in 1999 where I went on a Dantean Journey for a very long time and Observed how it all works in the world and the ethereal worlds. I had access to the Akashic Library and I read my ass off! I also went out and interviewed over 80,000 Souled persons in New Heaven when I was there and collected verbal histories of the earth plus verbal histories of other worlds. Way later, I made a Deal With God to come back here to this Reality and try to help people in these Last Days. And I Have.

THIS IS A LIVING MIRACLE (Best Word for It) because I always died on August 29, 1999 on the other cycles of the time-loop and here I am still living almost ten years later. All of This is NEW to ME because I never got this far...Every day I Wake UP, I realize I wasn't supposed to be here and this Changes the Energy of this last part of the last cycle of the time-loop.

So I've had a lot of questions for a long time I couldn't get answered, including, "WHERE DO WE ORIGINALLY COME FROM?" I could never find this out. I've read the stuff on the internet but my Intuition told me these histories are wrong, that there's an element of Truth but not close. The Histories and other related books of this world and this organization called 'The Intergalactic Federation' (best translation I can translate it to) were all missing. I remember pondering on the spaces on the shelves where the books were supposed to be. I argued many times with those Librarians. They were just doing their job.

Now I KNOW Where We Come From. It's two galaxies away in a far-out place that no one could find unless they had Mystical Help. I mean, it's in some kind of galactic cul-de-sac and extremely well-hidden at the end of a dark space alley. There's a brown, dead planet nearby and it covers any view of this planet from any observable place.

We come from an Emerald Planet, mostly mountainous but no snow caps as the weather is always 'Perfect'. About 72 degrees most of the time and if the temperature drops, it only drops about one or two degrees.

There are two small suns but because our Ancestors lived by this Great Lake in the middle of some of these mountains, the lake would reflect the larger sun making it look like three suns in a mirror sky. It's So Beautiful. I SAW IT as I 'Read' the Book.

Our Race was designed to Create. Our God, the God of the Souled, Designed Our Ancestors to be Pure Artists. The planet was to be our Artist Colony. We were to be left alone from the other beings living in the 'universe' (I don't believe the universe is as big as they say because it's all a hologram and the further you look out into space, the grainer the picture through the telescope just like how a hologram works). We were Our God's 'Special Project'. We were His 'Special Project' alright. Gods know all kinds of things, including the Future. He KNEW What Was Going to Happen to Our Ancestors and He Let It Happen for Scientific and Spiritual Learning, the Bitter Spiritual Learning.

The planet we're from is full of this rare mineral and its 'cousin', the rarest metal in the 'universe'. The mineral is found on the outside of this metal and both are essential to other humanoids' technologies. I was SHOWN What Both Substances Can Do. They're used with lasers to make unpenetrable shields to keep the 'dragos' out of their worlds. The 'dragos' are the serpent race that I've written about. They come from the Alpha Draconis galaxy. They are the creatures of the Snake God, Set-an.

We are all extensions of the god who Creates us. Us Souled have the White Light of the God of the Light. Those created by the god of darkness are dark creatures. They have dark light and because they vibrate on low frequencies, they can not create their own fuel/food. Thus, they must hunt Souled humanoids through out the galaxies for 'food' (races like us).

There are many other races out in the few galaxies of the hologram. Some of the humanoid races have six fingers and toes and some have seven fingers and toes. They were very advanced technologically but they had serpent race problems. The Draconian serpents went from world to world in their search for food. Yes, they can eat the Light of Souled Animals, but their preference of food is Us, humanoids. They were like locusts back then. The serps (serpent race) went from humanoid world to humanoid world, either by war or just takeover and basically ate all the Souled humanoids. They not only steal Light (Prana, Chi), but ate the people. Literally. If you've read my 'Raining Blood Over the Temple of Set' article, you will know that all this phenomena goes very deep.

So the technologically advanced humaiod Souled Alien 'Soul' Brothers had a problem with serps. It became a war and our 'Souled' Alien Brothers needed an edge. They needed the mineral and metal from our Original World. The real magick stuff. This stuff is so rare that if a woman's handful is found on a planet, it's a bonanza. Our Original World was made of this God Stuff.

No one knew of our Emerald Planet. Like I said, it was really hidden. Some of the advanced humanoids on other planets in various galaxies had oracles, highly evolved Spiritual Persons who resided in special, holy places or temples. This one group (the seven-fingered and toes group) had an Evolved Oracle System and at the top was the High Oracle, a Female. Desperate to get these Special Mineral and Metal, they had her scry. This is where it gets interesting.

She found our hidden planet and when she did, she was warned not to disclose it because it would be opening a box of evil. Sick of a long, brutal war and worried that the serpent race would eventually get through their fortresses, plus a host of other reasons, she told Loran (my arch nemesis) the Top Leader about Our Ancestors' Emerald Planet and where it was at.

She also told Loran that there were 340 humaniods living there, mostly adults because Our Ancestors lived very long lives and didn't Conceive children very often. Both She and Loran knew that the mineral and metal wasn't available to them because the planet was inhabited and theft or sale of the God Stuff was forbidden by inter-galactic laws, particularly because The Ancestors were still in a primitive state, although they were advancing fast because they were Creators or Great Artists.

A note about Loran. I hate this 'Souled' Alien Brother. I've hated him for a long time. It didn't surprise me at all that his name came up in this Holy Book that the God of the Light Showed Me and that I 'Read'. My Intuition told me for a very long time he was involved in 'The Betrayal' and that it was dirtier than I knew but couldn't find out. When I was in New Heaven, I used to stalk him so I could harass him and denounce him publically. Back then, I was angry with him and the other 'leaders' of the Inter-Galactic Federation for not helping us with the time-loop and the hidden evil problem we've suffered from for a long, long time. Now I'm pissed off because I know how deep this goes. As for harassing this alien asshole, well I spent a lot of time on house arrest because I harassed and denounced him publically (plus stalking).

Loran broke Laws, physical and Spiritual. Anxious to get his hands on the valuable mineral and metal, but not wanting to murder The Ancestors, he removed Our Ancestors at night and put them on this planet, thinking that the wild animals would kill The Ancestors. And I was shown this, too. I SAW The Ancestors being eaten by these giant birds and tigers. When over half of The Ancestors were eaten or died, they had this council meeting and decided to break off in groups and go in different directions. Many more would die but they clung on to Life here.

The Ancestors wouldn't die; conveniently disappear for Loran and his group. They had told the other Souled Alien Groups that the planet was uninhabited and thus mining could begin. Loran and the others who Betrayed Us became very famous and more powerful. Worse, they were proclaimed heroes.

Our Ancestors continued to survive (barely) and this was a problem for Loran and his group. See, we legally own all that mineral and metal because it's our Legacy. This is where Our Ancestors were to live. But the Emerald Planet is toxic now from all the mining. They trashed the planet. More, we are a legal and Spiritual problem for our Souled Brothers who Sold Us Out because we own it all. It is Our Mineral and Metal that Saved the Rest of the Humanoids (except for four planets). It is Our Mineral and Metal that was used in Defense and for their Shields and they Shielded many, many worlds with it. More, they've been living very long lives because of the Mineral. They rarely die. They owe these long lives to us. We Legally and Spiritually Have a Right to Possess All They Own and They KNOW IT.

They knew this back then, too, so they wanted to get rid of what was left of Our Ancestors. About this time, there was a big battle in space and the serpent race's ships were chased to Earth. To keep the serpent race imprisoned here, the Alien Souled Brothers blew up a small planet to form the van Allen belt. That is WHY any real space travel from this earth is impossible. Then they blew up a bigger planet to form the asteroid belt around our solar system. Then they blew up anything the serpent race could use to escape this world including star gates, worm holes, portals to most dimensions and other things. I kind of knew most of this stuff before but I SAW it in all Detail.

Imprisoning the serpents on this planet served two purposes for Loran and the other politicians. They knew that the serpents would find The Remaining Ancestors (they're predators of the Souled and smell/feel Light and Humanoid Blood) and kill them, thus no one would have a Right to the Wealth of the Mineral and Metal from the Emerald Planet plus after the serpents ate us (We Are Our Ancestors), the serpent race would die from lack of food. Two problems solved.

But the serpent race lost most of their technology in the battle before they were chased here and since they are hive non-beings (dark lights, creations of the dark god), they didn't have access to design plans because they were kept at headquarters in the Alpha Draconis galaxy. The serpents also didn't know where the metals were that they needed plus they needed miners because they had always used slaves to mine for them in other worlds. I should point out here that the serpent race can't use the Valuable Mineral and Metal from Our Original Planet. If they come near it, it automatically kills them. The Mineral and Metal gives off Excessively Strong Photon Light. And Our Ancestors had to be secretly killed for that. Loran and his bunch got greedy and were arrogant to start with. They self-corrupted. They didn't need Set-an as they did it themselves. There is more than one kind of evil and many times, it originates within ourselves.

For some reason, the serpents we were locked here with, figured it out not to eat all of us, so they decided to 'farm' us and to do this secretly. The Book of Light showed me how they've been doing this since the beginning.

Because the 'herd' was so small and because we didn't reproduce very fast, the serps tinkered with our DNA. They stole female Ancestors and accelerated their fertility. What the serpent race didn't understand was that Our Ancestors weren't really that horny. When they figured it out, the serpent race accelerated our libido through DNA genetic splicing and got Our Ancestors horny and that's WHY we're such a horny bunch. They did all kinds of experiments on Our Ancestors and their Children.

Then the serpents had another problem. They needed technology to get off this planet. They hate it here. They don't like the climate and they want to get home. But without designs, blueprints and imagination (we have it, they don't), they knew they'd never get off this planet. They knew we were a Creative Bunch and knew they would have to mine our intellect and Creativity to get the technology they needed. So they would have to find a way to use us (while feeding off us) so they could get the technology they needed.

Thus more experiments which gradually led to them putting their evil seed in us.

During this Time, the 'Head Priestess' who told about Our Original Planet started to go mad. She SAW What Was Going to Happen. A dark genie had been let out of the bottle and an evil chain reaction had begun. The Book didn't Say what happened to her but I suspect she's either in an isolated padded cell somewhere or Loran finally got his hands dirty murdering her.

Planet Earth has been dark since Our Ancestors and the Snake People had to live together. It's a Prison for them and it's a prison for us. But Snakes have been ruling the planet since they got here.

When they found that they were imprisoned, they prayed to their god Set-an to make this World evil. If he would do this, they would offer up sacrifices to him (us). That's how far human sacrifice goes back in our history. He found this pleasing so he's been helping his dark creations during their stay here.

And it's been a long stay, too. A real long one. When the serps came here, they thought they'd be off this planet in about 20,000 years. That's how long they thought it would take to get The Ancestors and Their Children evolved enough to create the technology the serps needed. But there were a lot of fuckups, delays and problems with this planet with natural disasters plus the Souled humanoid 'herd' (Us) were almost wiped out several times from disease, these natural disasters and other calamities. When this happened, the serps had to rebuild the 'herd' plus evolve them again. And this time, they tinkered with our DNA, doing all kinds of experiments to accelerate us into the model they wanted us to become so we would help them get off this planet.

Another problem the serps had was that Our Ancestors no longer lived long lives like they did on the Emerald Planet. The Mineral and Metal was what gave them long lives like it's giving our 'Souled' alien brothers now. I wondered how Loran and the other could live that long but I could never find the Answer. The Book Showed Me This Answer.

Our Ancestors and their Generations also had short lives because of DNA tinkering by the serpents. After we reach Our Prime, we are no longer valuable to them because our Light has matured and thus we are no longer tasty for the vampiric, parasitic serpent race to eat. The serpent race views this world as theirs and their Master's (their psychopathic god Set-an) and they believe that after we reach a certain age, we are wasting their resources of water and the food we eat.

Well things kept going awry for the serpent race on this planet. They'd get real close to getting the technology they needed to get off this planet but there would be super volcano or a super earthquake or something and then they would find themselves back at zero.

Then they ran out of time. The earth is destined to flip into the middle of the galaxy into the Photon Light Belt in 2012. Photon Light turns these creatures into toast. Instantaneous Death for Them. But although they almost had the technology right, it wasn't ready and they were going to die.

To save his pet snakes, Set-an put the earth and this part of the galaxy in a time-loop, and sent time back to about 14,000 B.C. I always KNEW This but now it's been confirmed. Because of my deep Anarchist hatred for them, time-loops are my speciality and I've been researching them for a long, long time.

This is HOW the time-loop began and we're in the end of the 133 cycle of this time-loop. This is also why the hologram is falling apart. The cycles of the time-loop have dug energy grooves into the time-line and they have created unstable energy - volatile energy - and it's started to melt everything.

The gods and their helpers, these beings that run the projector and look for holes in the plasma projector screen, had a problem with the 87th cycle of the time-loop but could repair it without stopping 'The Game' for it is a Game of the Gods. Then it really ripped this time and they had to shut 'The Game' down for a long time when I was on my Spiritual Dantean Journey. All us 'pawns' went back to our gods/Creators until they got it fixed. But it was too broken to fix for long. Not only did the plasma projector screen crack and tear, there were quadrillions to the 3rd power of little pin holes and although they tried to fix them, they missed some. That's why people are seeing reality melt in front of them or buildings change over night and all kinds of things! I get letters from people about this plus I've seen some real strange shit myself lately. It's like living in that movie 'Dark City'.

When they got the hologram working again, they blocked us and sent us back to our spots on the Cosmic gameboard. I didn't have to come back - I won my way out last time - but I did come back.

The hologram is collapsing so the 'universe' is collapsing. We don't have much time left. I KNEW This, too, but it was Confirmed by the Book. The serpents are trying desperately to get off this planet because they have no more help with another time-loop. Ever wonder why so much money and brain power has been spent on the Hadron CERN Collider or that Giant Laser science has developed? It's all part of research the serpent race needs to get off this rock. That's why science never researches for the good of people. It's all for the serps. Now they've got this problem that the hologram is melting, they need more technology than before because they need to get to another universe.

The Book of Light confirmed something I already KNEW but need to tell everyone: If the serpent race does get a way off this planet, they are going to blow this planet up! A final blood tribute to their god plus they hate us.

There's so much more to this. Thousands and thousands of pages more. I'm just telling you the Basic Outline. Most of the Book of Light is a list of every human sacrifice ever performed on this planet but it does also tell Our History.

For many years, I've argued with the God of the Souled WHY would He let us Suffer in this Real Hell? But my BIG ARGUMENT has always been about the time-loop because we have been forced to live the same lives (including reincarnated lives) over and over again. I have argued with Him hundreds of times about this and He's always told me, "I didn't cause it but let it happen" and then I'll argue back, "133 Times when Once Should Have Been Sufficient????"

But the Book of Light Showed Me The Answer About This. He let us be exposed to evil so many times that it's Creating a Natural Repellent to evil but it takes a long time to build it. As an Anarchist Feminist, I don't approve or believe in His Methods but this has happened and It's almost finished.

As for Loran and his bunch, well they've kept their Betrayal secret all this time. By Writing This and Popping a Little Lightning Off My Soul (I'm sending a copy of this to the Cosmos), everyone is going to know about this. I'm Creating a Magickal Meme with High Magic Tonight so all alike Souled Persons throughout all galaxies will KNOW THE TRUTH and GET THEIR MINDS RIGHT TO COME AND HELP US NOW. Otherwise, Our God will Judge them Harshly! But they'll KNOW.

Now, as bleak as it is (well it's not so bleak some of us are going to go to Heaven while the selfish ones will go to the 4th density until they get it right), there is Something Inside Us Our Ancestors Gave Us.

Although they weren't technologically developed, they were Spiritually Developed. They put Their History and Part of their Souls into Our DNA. All of Us Souled Carry It Within Us. The serps know about it and do everything they can to keep it hidden within us. The programs in this Special DNA can not be destroyed or decoded by the serps and their hell-pers (scientists with Souls).

Loran and his bunch have been watching us suffer and be needlessly sacrificed for all the cycles of the time-loop and never did anything to help us because they didn't want to be discovered for their theft of Our Original Planet and for imprisoning us here with the serpent race.

Other worlds have worried about the time-loop for a long time but Loran and the other leaders of the Inter Galactic Federation refused to help us citing all kinds of laws including the 'Law of Non-Inference' because we are not developed enough for their help. Never mind that we were kept retarded because the serpent race has been secretly ruling us (and eating us) plus we were always under their constant attacks so they could control our Minds and stop our Spiritual Development/Evolution. Now their worries are verified! Loran and his bunch of politicians are going to get us all killed. That's what happens when you do evil on that scale. Ironic, it is like a Cain and Abel tale, only on a more Cosmic Level. Our Own Kind sold us out so they could have easy Lives.

Ironic, too, is that we have legal and Spiritual Claims to Ownership of most of the Hologram but now it's melting.

We Carry This History I Just Told You Inside All of Us. By Reminding a Few People and the Magic I'm Going to Do, This Truth Will Carry Everywhere. People will start WAKING UP now instead of right before it ends like before when the cycles of the time-loop ended. This is the Gift Our Ancestors Gave Us. This Time we're Going to Use It.

As for the Magic, well that's my own idea. The God of the Souled KNOWS ME. Of course He Knows I Will Use My Power to try to do Something to Help Us. He KNEW When He Showed Me the Book and My Mind and His Mind Was Hooked Up that I would try to find Creative Ways to Use the Information to Help the Souled. I'm an Anarchist. It's My Job.

If you have any Questions, email me.

Now, I'm going to write a Second Codex. I'm Going to Reveal how to make Photon Light Music so the Souled Can Be Healed in these Darkest of Times and to how to Use this Kind of Music to Melt Dark Energy.