The little progress that the humanoids made, took place over thousands of
centuries. With mankind’s gift of imagination, the swell of ideas became a flood. The rate
of progress that took thousands of centuries before, increased tremendously after the
transformation.
All the animal instincts humanoids needed to survive before, remained intact after
the transformation. Our territorial instincts, sex drive, hunger satisfaction, need to
dominate, cunning, ambition, greed, jealousy, envy, anger, courage, cowardice, affection,
etc. all remained intact. Only now, imagination was added to these old instincts. It
increased their power a thousandfold.
We may have a "free will" but we also have all
these other God given instincts stirring in our mind and hormones surging through our
body. These things along with the ubiquitous storytellers attempting to influence our
thinking; dominate and control every aspect of our life.
Sexuality is a basic animal instinct that was greatly enhanced by imagination.
Although many animals have complicated courting rituals, the actual sex act is very
matter of fact and the courting rituals never change. They could never fantasize. Our
imagination has made experimenting and fantasizing about sex possible. Mankind, over
the centuries, has probably fantasized and tried just about every sexual experiment
possible. Fantasizing about sex is enhanced through novels, magazines, stories, plays,
motion pictures etc. At the cutting edge of sexual fantasizing is interactive multimedia
computing.
The "hunger satisfaction instinct" coupled with our imagination has made possible
the domestication of animals and the invention farming and all its technology (the plow,
artificial fertilizers, irrigation, etc.). These innovations have increased the supply and
variety of food available to mankind immensely. Our imagination has given us millions of
new ways (recipes) to prepare our food and satisfy our hunger. Mankind has scoured the
planet searching for delicious new foods and spices. We have developed new genetically
altered foods, both plant and animal. We have invented new ways to preserve and
distribute our food. Giant industries have evolved just to satisfy this most basic of all
animal instincts.
The difference in lifestyles that had already began to show up between the
humanoids and other animals grew swiftly after the transformation into an everwidening
canyon. One of the big differences between animals, humanoids and mankind is that
mankind has the ability to parlay its creative ideas, to pass its innovations and ideas on
from generation to generation and so to progress. Mankind progresses step by step in
every direction at the same time always adding to the imaginative ideas of its
predecessors.
The animals also have the ability to teach their young but since they have no
creative imagination they never come up with an innovation and so do not progress,
(although if their conditions change they may be able to adapt). The lions and tigers live
the same way now as they did when they shared the lands with the humanoids. They are
very successful, intelligent animals but have no creative imagination.
These great animals who had once shared the lands with the humanoids could no
longer compete with these "new predators" for food and territory. Their ranges were
slowly pushed back further and further, their habitats destroyed, until today only a
concerted effort by mankind can save some of them from extinction. A hundred years
from now there will probably be no great animals in the wild.
The development of farming after the last ice age gave mankind much more time
to pursue other interests (as I touched upon in Chapter 2). The farmers had discovered
how to cultivate the wild grains that could be stored and used when needed. Instead of
constantly hunting and gathering food, always following the wild herds, people could now
settle down in permanent settlements and grow enough food to support larger populations.
(At the present time a very small percentage of our population grows enough food to feed
the rest of us with plenty to spare).
Now there was more leisure time and more people
living closer together with which to exchange their ideas. It made civilization possible.
Since there were more imaginations, with more time to interact, the power of the Mind of
Mankind increased greatly.
About five thousand years ago villages, towns and cities began to spring up in the
fertile river valleys. People now had time to specialize, develop their specific talents to a
greater degree. The new conditions created by this style of living challenged mankinds'
imagination. New inventions and concepts were constantly needed to solve these ever
changing problems. Early civilizations were born.
Man could now began to develop more
of his creative talents such as art, commerce, philosophizing, storytelling, etc.
Around 2600 years ago the truly great imaginative thinkers of all time suddenly
began coming on to the scene with their innovative ideas and philosophies. First came the
great religious mythical philosophies, The Hebrew tribes', Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah,
followed by Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) in India and Confucius in China.
The early
Greek civilization produced a whole slew of great creative thinkers including; Homer,
Thales, Solon, Pythagroas, (he taught that the Earth rotated on its axis and the planets
revolved around the sun more then 2000 years before Copernicus came up with the same
idea), Aeschylus, Socrates, Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, and
Eratosthenes (he calculated the Earth's circumference in the third century BC).
These
great men introduced the world to creative philosophical reasoning. Their curiosity and
imagination was enormous. They questioned everything. It was the golden age of
reasoning. It set the course for western civilization to follow. Most of these men are as
famous today as they were back in their era. They are almost as amazing as the cave artists
who burst upon the scene more then twenty-five thousand years previous to these Greek
philosophers and originally introduced the world to mankind's mysterious mental powers.
¨
At the present time mankind's imagination and its resulting progress is threatening
the existence of animal life in the oceans. Some of the large whales are presently facing
extinction if quotas are not set on the number of these animals that can be killed annually.
The fisherman nets are so large and efficient now a days that they are vastly over fishing
and are threatening to deplete the oceans' fish population. Canada has been forced to
prohibit fishing in one of the world's prime fishing areas, the Grand Banks area off the
coast of Newfoundland, due mainly to vast over fishing.
Where there was at one time over
three billion cod fish their is now estimated to be less then three hundred million. This
was once, one of the best fishing areas in the world. As mankind's population increases
there will be ever more pressure to increase the amount of fish harvested.
It seems as though mankind's imagination has not been very successful in
establishing a long term compatible relationship with nature.
Unlike our cousins, the great
apes who live in complete harmony with nature, mankind is slowly crowding out and
destroying its environment and the habitat of the other animals with whom he shares the
planet. The enormous success of our imagination has caused a world wide human
population explosion.
If this explosive growth continues unabated it will eventually
overwhelm the environment and the existence of the other animals.
At the present time mankind is in the midst of carrying out a holocaust in Brazil
and to a lesser extent in Africa by destroying millions of acres of animal habitat to be
turned into farms for its own use.
The animals quietly die, no one notices or cares. Most
of mankind does not acknowledge the right of the other animals who share this planet
with us, to exist. This type of holocaust has existed throughout mankind's history. It is just
an inevitable component of mankind's natural progress and an example of its
incompatibility with nature.
The current population explosion brings the possibility of our surviving far into the
future into serious doubt. Looking down the road of chaos one hundred years into the
future (if they are anything like the last one hundred) may be possible, one thousand years
highly unlikely, ten thousand years impossible.
One hundred years from now, all land on Earth suitable for farming and raising
domesticated animals will be in use. Every available acre of land in Africa and South
America will by then, be converted into farmland. There will be no wild habitat left
except for dedicated reserves. The animals who lived there will no longer exist in the
wild. The ocean's bountiful harvest of wild fish will have been depleted by over fishing.
Japan, the worlds most economically industrious country will have a population of
three hundred million people crowded on to its tiny islands.
China, India and most other
countries population will have doubled by that time. (At least these countries are now
trying to keep their population growth in check). War, disease, and famine can no longer
control our surging population. War alone, in this century, although it probably killed over
one hundred million people, did not stem human population growth one bit. Billions of
additional people have come into existence in the last one hundred years. A much more
humane way to control population is by birth control.
Unless we stabilize our population the Earth will be comprised of large
overcrowded cities and vast commercial farms. This scenario is only "projecting into the
future" one hundred years. Its hard to imagine any good scenario for one thousand years.
Its like we are all in a rudderless boat rushing down the river of chaos, clearly able to "see"
what lies ahead but unable to do anything about it. If we are going to establish control over
our future some hard decisions will have to be made soon.
God gave us the gift of an imagination to use as we see fit for better or worse! By giving
us this great power he has challenged us to control our own destiny.
Its up to us to utilize Our Special Gift for the mutual benefit of all of the Earth's
inhabitants and its environment so that we all will have a future on this planet. Mankind's
only hope and greatest challenge if it wants to maintain a high standard of living for its
future generations is to stabilize its population growth and establish a compatible
relationship with nature. We have the imagination to know what needs to be done, all we
need now is the resolve to accomplish it.
If we meet this challenge and do stabilize the world's population at about five
billion people we have yet another tremendous challenge. That is to raise the the standard
of living of the rest of the people in the world to that of ours. It should easily keep us busy
for the next hundred years; just to create the infrastructure for this new world, create
billions of new machines, manufacture a couple of billion non-polluting automobiles,
homes, computers, TVs and all the other goodies and then find new sources of energy to
run all these additional machines. It is a tremendous positive challenge for our
imagination; it should keep us occupied for at least a hundred years. Its also better then
having the next century occupied by a series of terrible wars and famines.
Imagination fills in the blanks. - when our scientists find some ancient bones buried in the
earth, whether they are human, dinosaur or what ever, our storytellers using the evidence
and their imagination come up with all sorts of stories on how these creatures looked and
lived in their times. This process is used any time a story is needed to fill in the blanks.
Go to Chapter 5
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