Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Secret History #11: Dawn of the Human Imagination

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Secret History #11: Dawn of the Human Imagination ...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 So today we start a series on the entirety of human history. Well, we're going very fast. And again, what's important is for you to understand the concepts. And so if there are ideas you don't understand, it's very important that you raise your hand, challenge me, and ask for clarification. So we start off with the dawn of humanity. And this is Charles Darwin.
Starting point is 00:00:32 And arguably, he is the most influential thinker of the past 20 years. And the reason why is he wrote a book called The Origin of Species, and he presents to us the theory of evolution. And you all know the theory of evolution, because they teach this to you in school, and is embedded in our, everyday lives. And there are three main ideas to the theory of evolution. The first is that it was all accidental. So you have these genetic mutations and the mutation that is best fitted to survive in the environment would win out. Okay? So it's all a random accidental process. That's the first thing. Second thing is that it is materialistic, meaning everything that you can see is all that exists. The third thing is it is emergent, meaning that feel things build on top of each other.
Starting point is 00:01:33 It is a bottom-up process. Now the fear of evolution marked a turning point in human history because before European countries were Christian and Christians believed that there was a divine God who created us and as such we were all equal before the eyes of God. Therefore you cannot go and enslave other people. You cannot go and kill other people. As well, there were three main ideas to Christianity. The first idea is one omniscient and omnipresent God. The Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is what infuses life. It's what gives meaning and purpose to life. And the world is a mystery. We have to hold faith. There are things that we cannot understand. God has a plan, but it is a mysterious plan.
Starting point is 00:02:26 And so we must be humble and serve the purpose of God. And the theory of evolution destroys this conception of the universe and introduce a more materialistic one. So why did this happen? Well, it happened for three reasons. The main reason is that we live in the 19th century when Darwinism came into being Europeans were engaged in a process of imperialism.
Starting point is 00:02:54 They were going around the world and conquering other people and colonizing other people and essentially committing genocide. So they needed a theory to explain why this is happening. And Darwin's theory of Survelder Fiddis was the most appropriate theory. And the idea is that the world is divided into races and the white race is superior to everyone else and therefore the white race has reason, has legitimacy, legitimacy in colonizing other people.
Starting point is 00:03:25 And evolution would give rise to racism and eugenics, okay? So before Darwinism, we didn't really have a concept of race because everyone was equal in the eyes of God. And now with the rise of Darwinism, the world is divided according to race. As well, because of evolution theory, people started to believe in eugenics. which is the idea that stupid people, people who are not white, they should be sterilized. Because if we let them live, they would just, all they would do is dilute the genetic pool. And even today, guys, there are still many people who believe in racism and eugenics.
Starting point is 00:04:09 The thing about evolution that's very important is that it's a theology, okay? What does that mean? It means that it's a theory of human progress about God. So even though evolution thinks that genuitation is an accident, the theology is that, will the Sharmer survive? And that's what's right. Okay? So might makes right.
Starting point is 00:04:30 So in many ways, evolution is a rejection of Christianity. So you would think that Christians would oppose Darwinism and evolutionary theory. What was surprising is that when the book came out in 1859, only in 20 years, The theory of evolution would come to dominate the entire Western world. It became the dominant idea in schools, in universities, in the sciences. And even today, evolution is a dominant paradigm, meaning that you cannot question evolution. If you question evolution, it means you're crazy. Okay?
Starting point is 00:05:08 But I'm crazy. So we're going to question evolution today. All right. So you've said this in school, but... Evolution means we came from monkeys, apes, and then there were different species of humans, and eventually the best, our species, the homocipians, one out. Okay?
Starting point is 00:05:30 So what evolution says is that we are just a monkey guys, okay? We're just a monkey. And what do monkeys do? Monkeys like to have sex, monkeys like to eat, monkeys like to fart, that's all we are, we're just monkeys. All right? And this is the evolutionary tree, of primates.
Starting point is 00:05:51 But there are certain problems with this theory. The first problem is, if you look at evolutionary theory, what you should have is tremendous diversity as this species develops. So why is it that we only have one human species? Why aren't there many different ones? Well, the argument is that there are, There were many different species before, but we won out.
Starting point is 00:06:22 Okay? Okay, that's fine. But another problem is, why are we going all around the world? Okay? So all species of human beings like to migrate. But primates don't do that. Why is that humans like to migrate? And so the explanation often is,
Starting point is 00:06:45 well, because of climate change, because of war, because humans are chasing game, okay, byzons and food. But then how to explain these people, okay? These are people who went to populate the Pacific Islands, Micronesia. That's kind of weird. First of all, it's really dangerous to go out to Pacific for months and months, right? Also, like, how do they know that there will be islands waiting for them in the Pacific?
Starting point is 00:07:14 So that's something that's very odd about human beings. In fact, there are lots of things that are really odd about us that other animals don't do. For example, we're very religious. Okay? Okay. So the Neanderthals are supposed to be before Homo sapiens, but as you can see, what we've discovered are these religious ritual sites that the Neanderals, where they're in the anthraals engage in,
Starting point is 00:07:44 religious ritual practice. That's kind of weird. What does religion have to do with survival? In fact, you can argue that religion is a waste of time. Why aren't they hunting? Why are they using so much resources and time in building these ritual sites? Homo sapiens did cave paintings.
Starting point is 00:08:11 And these cave paintings, I will show you later on. They're extremely elaborate. As you can see, it's very time. consuming to actually do these paintings. Also these paintings are in caves, deep inside caves that's very cold and where there isn't much air. So it's kind of dangerous actually to be in these places but we know that homocipians spend a lot of time in these deep wet caves drawing these paintings. That's not very utilitarian. Why would we Why would we do that?
Starting point is 00:08:49 So that's a mystery. Okay? Also, when we drew on caves, we figured how to make it artistic. So we figured out that red ochre would give us red, yellow pigment on the caves. We also used charcoal to use black. Okay? So we were very creative. We were resourceful.
Starting point is 00:09:15 All right. So we know a lot about the ice age because as you're going to have, imagine, during the Ice Age, things freeze over, so they can be easily preserved. And actually, for most of human history, we were in the Ice Age period. Okay, and as you can see during the Ice Age, the entire world was basically frozen over. So how did we survive? Well, we survived by using the resources around us. Okay, so this is a mammoth.
Starting point is 00:09:44 And so they killed a mammoth, and they turned the mammoth into a house. Now the question is, how do they know how to do that? How did they figure it out? And we've been trying for a long time to figure this out, but my answer to you, and this is a theme that I will keep on emphasizing for the rest of the semester is they just knew it. So let's do a thought experiment. Let's just say that there's 10 of us, and I give you this wall, right? And I say to you, you cannot talk, you cannot communicate with each other. All I want you to do is draw a picture.
Starting point is 00:10:27 Now you would think that the picture would be disgustingly ugly. It would be incoherent. But if you actually do this experiment, something weird and wonderful would happen. There's 10 of you, you're not communicating. You don't have a plan. There's no draft. But one of you would draw something, okay? And then the rest of you would see that something and then you would draw something else.
Starting point is 00:10:50 Okay, so for example, maybe you draw a sun, then you draw a tree, then that other person draws a mountain. Okay, it's almost like telepathy. And that's how we are. If you put humans in a group, they would know instantly how to work together. And they would know how to share ideas together. And so that's the idea I want to present to you. All this stuff is, all this is because of intuition. Okay?
Starting point is 00:11:18 No one said, hey, there's a mammoth. Let's go kill it for food and for housing and for clothing. But if you walk together and you saw a map, all you together have had the same thought. Oh, that could be a source of food and clothing and shelter for us. And you all knew how to work together. That's the beauty of the human imagination. and the human empathy. And that's something that back then, they practiced a lot,
Starting point is 00:11:47 but we've lost because of civilization. Okay? Does that make sense to you guys? All right. And as you can see, back then, humans were just very good at working together. No, you didn't need to have a boss to say, okay, you should go and hunt bison's. You should go and you should make clothes.
Starting point is 00:12:11 You should go and you should feed kids. Everyone knew exactly what to do. And you didn't have to communicate. But also what's really interesting about this time period is the diversity of human organization. So what I meant by that, what I mean by that is that in different times of the year, in different locations, humans would form different organizations. So most of the time, maybe there'd be groups of like five to ten would go and get food, okay? But then you have some times of the year when you have these religious festivals where hundreds, possibly thousands of got together and you celebrated your God together.
Starting point is 00:12:46 It was all intuitive. You didn't have communication, but they all knew at what time what organization would best fit them. If you didn't like the situation, guess what? You'd go somewhere else and start your own organization. So early human history, it's a very diverse, very dynamic, very creative period in our life, even though we've forgotten about it. In the third example of our creativity are these cave paintings that were discovered recently,
Starting point is 00:13:17 but which stayed back 30,000, 40,000 years, okay? You can see how beautiful these paintings are. Whoever painted these paintings put a lot of care and devotion into them, okay? It's not just kids playing. It's adults who've spent a long time purposefully ensuring that every detail is in exact. Okay? Then the question then is, how do they do this? Because there's no paper, there's no planning. And again, I present to you the idea, the imagination. They dream this. They had a dream, they saw the picture in their heads, then they went and drew this in a cave because they wanted
Starting point is 00:13:58 to express themselves. They want to leave a legacy. They want to leave a memory. There's a calling in you to be creative and to be imaginative. Okay. All right. So, and you can see there's a lot of diversely. This is a story, right? Because you have these horses, but then you have these predators, lions. So this picture is telling a mythology. It's telling a story of how nature works. So people are observing nature and what they see is a cycle of life and death, of destruction and renewal.
Starting point is 00:14:35 We're all together. We're all unified. We're all one. It's balanced in harmony. And that's why if you were to kill these animals, you also had to commemorate them. Does that make sense? Because this is a word of balance and harmony. If you kill these animals and you eat their food, you must thank them for the sacrifice
Starting point is 00:14:59 by commemorating them. The same thing as later on when humans fight in battles, we build monuments to celebrate those who are fallen, right? Because you want to create balance and harmony in the world. want to commemorate those who made our lives possible. So in this world, what matters are these animals? Because these animals are what gives humans food and clothing. Okay? You can see how beautiful these pictures are.
Starting point is 00:15:32 Do you see how life-like the animals are? So clearly, we humans had all this creative potential back then. This is in Spain, in Altamara. This is a bison. And you can see the red ochre how beautiful it is. And you can see how it's not meant to be realistic. It's meant to be surreal. It's meant almost to be a mythology.
Starting point is 00:16:10 There's a story being told in these pictures. We don't know what the story is. We can imagine that the story of life and death, destruction and reaff. destruction and renewal. Okay, and you can see the struggle of humanity to get food from nature, but also a willingness to celebrate those who have fallen. And there's religious significance to everything
Starting point is 00:16:41 at these campaignings. How do we know? Because this is clearly a shaman, right? What we call a leopardman. This dates about 40,000 years in Germany. So we believe that in the early, societies, these shamans were the leaders because they had the most wisdom, because they had a connection to the vibe.
Starting point is 00:17:00 Also what's really important is that music, this instrument, was really important to these civilizations. Now there's a lot of mystery as to how we first spoke. And as I said, actually we don't really need to speak because we can all understand each other. So why do we speak? we want to sing. Does that make sense? Singing, creating music, was a way to express ourselves in the same way as painting was. And music, once you add words, it becomes storytelling. And that's where you created language. Okay? Not for economic reasons,
Starting point is 00:17:39 not in order to create a hierarchy, but for creative reasons, to celebrate our humanity together. And these pictures, as you can see, there are religious elements okay so you can see how there are two almost bird figures and back then the birds signify mother earth okay so the bird figure is very important and you can see almost like the bird figures are leading the animals hurting the animals across so then ask yourself why are they why these paintings appearing in caves well for these These people, they all believed that nature was connected, right?
Starting point is 00:18:30 And the spirit world and material world were connected together. So the question then is, how does the spirit world connect with the material world? Well, for caves, right? For portals, rivers, caves, mountaintops. And that's why these places were considered appropriate sites for religious ritual. And that's why you painted these pictures in caves. because these caves, it's almost like you're summoning the spirit all these animals to return. Right?
Starting point is 00:19:02 You've killed these animals how to get them to return by calling for them in these caves. All right, so as you can see, it's a complex but a complete mythology of how the world works. And for them, this was very real. Okay. You can see how these shamans would actually turn themselves into these bees in order to better communicate. order to better communicate with them. Because these bees, these animals, these byzons, were the basis for all life on earth.
Starting point is 00:19:33 If you didn't have them, then you would die off. So you dressed up like them in order to communicate with them in the spirit world to draw them back. Okay? So this is another religious depiction. All right, so these cave paintings, there's always three questions associated with these K paintings. The first is,
Starting point is 00:19:56 how are they painting K paintings? what are they painting and where and why are they doing this okay and I've explained to you there is religious significance to what they're doing they're trying to complete the cycle of life and death if you kill an animal you have to thank the animal okay you do that by making a religious sacrifice okay by sorry by making a religious ritual what are they painting they're painting the story of life itself right they're trying to paint a picture of how life works a cycle of death and life, destruction, and renewal.
Starting point is 00:20:31 And everything's connected together. The stars, the caves, or our portals into the spirit world, and that's why you celebrate them. And how are they painted in the caves? They're painted together and they're using red ochre and charcoal. What's most important is that because these caves actually lack oxygen, when they're painted When they're painting these paintings, it's almost like they're in a trance state. Does that make sense?
Starting point is 00:21:03 Because you don't have enough to breathe. So it's almost like you're on the precipice, the edge of life and death. And it's almost as though you are actually communicating with the spirit world as you're doing this. So it's all divine inspiration, all divine intuition. Okay? So what they believe is that when they paint the channeling the power of the spirit world, It's not about us using our experience of paint, it's we are channeling actually the divine when we do so.
Starting point is 00:21:33 And the same thing when we sing or when we tell stories. We're not doing this out of our own will. We are only a portal or a mechanism or channel for the divine to communicate with everyone else. So does this make sense? Yeah. Okay. All right.
Starting point is 00:21:51 The other thing that's really interesting about these cake paintings is, We find symbols inside these cave paintings. So this is Genevieve von Pitziger, who is a Canadian archaeologist. She spent decades going to different caves in Europe and she catalogued all the different symbols. So these are not pictures, they're symbols. And as you can see, there's a lot of them, okay? So why would they have these symbols? And also what's interesting is, if you think about it, this is a writing system.
Starting point is 00:22:28 In other words, they have the capacity to write, but they chose not to write. Why? Because if you think about it, in this world, writing is a corruption, right? When you speak, you're channeled the vine. So when you are writing something down, you're actually counterfeiting the divine. Also, remember that for them, what's talking is like singing, right? You cannot capture music in the written form. So it's almost like a corruption of the song.
Starting point is 00:23:01 And also for them, this is really important. All everything is meant to be a communal experience. When you sing, when you talk, when you paint, we do it together. When you write, it's a solitary experience. And that's why even though we humans from a very, um, Like right from the beginning, we had the capacity to write. We chose not to write. Okay, this is really important for us to understand.
Starting point is 00:23:28 Writing was a conscious decision. It was not a technology that was invented later on. We just chose not to do it because we thought it was a corruption of the natural world. Okay? All right. Doesn't make sense. Okay? So this is a, these are all the geometric signs of Ice Age Europe.
Starting point is 00:23:47 It's very similar to alchemy, okay? Alchemy is trying to figure out the secrets of, the universe. So the question then is, where do they get these signs? And the answer, of course, is it came to them in a dream or they were inspired with these signs. This is a world of inspiration, of intuition, of imagination. It's not something that's deliberate. They don't plan this out and discuss it. It just comes to them. And when they draw it out, it makes sense to people. Oh, I know what this means. Okay. All right. So let's summarize. Okay. Why are the symbols in art?
Starting point is 00:24:25 Well, because there's some abstractions, certain concepts you cannot draw out, right? So for example, energy is a very important concept. Life force, cycle, repetition. Well, then you have to use symbols in order to express these ideas if you want to tell the story. Second is you are trying to visualize the language of the spirit world. So the spirit was talking to you, but they come to you in images. So you use the symbols in order to express what they're talking about. And when you draw the symbols on a stone, you're making the stone divine and sacred, right?
Starting point is 00:25:05 You're storing a memory inside the stone. Maybe something wonderful happened here. Maybe you gave birth to a child here, right? Then you commemorate the stone with a symbol. Does that make sense? So what you're doing this is, well, first of all, you're trying to bring beauty to the world. That's why we humans were created, right? To make this world a more beautiful place, a more imaginative place, to celebrate the divine.
Starting point is 00:25:32 We're showing God or the spirit world or the underlying soul of reality, okay? We're trying to figure out how the spirit world works inside our reality. The third reason is we're trying to tell a story about who we are. We're trying to combine our imagination together to create society. to create belonging, to great community. Does that make sense? Yeah? Sorry.
Starting point is 00:26:00 So you said about human trying to connect with the divine spirits, right? So do they consider... Okay, sorry, so let me clarify out, okay? This is really important. We're not trying to connect with the divine spirit. Why? Because the divine spirit is all around us. We coexist with the divine. everything around us is divine.
Starting point is 00:26:21 But what we're trying to do is we're trying to be in harmony with the divine. Okay. Do you understand? Yeah. Okay? Because in this world, there's no separation between the material and the spiritual. It's all one world together. The spiritual is all around us.
Starting point is 00:26:36 But there are certain things that we do in order to reconcile our existence with the spirit world. For example, when we kill an animal, we need to commemorate the animal through paintings and through songs. Okay, does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Okay, good, okay.
Starting point is 00:26:54 All right. And even today, we still do this, okay? So let's see examples. This is graffiti, okay, street art. But you can see what's happening where this is Spain, and you can see how beautiful this is, okay? It's the same concept as the cave paintings, where we're trying to give meaning to our community.
Starting point is 00:27:13 We're trying to tell a story of who we are, where we came from and where we're going. And it's designed to build a common imagination. No different from the Cape Patings. We still do this today. And this is another example. And you can see different communities might have different focus. But you can see how the painting, what it does is it unifies the imagination of the people.
Starting point is 00:27:40 So for this community, what matters is the family. So the matriarch, the mother, is the question. cornerstone of this community. And that's what you do with this painting. You can see how beautiful these buildings have become because of the paintings. So that's what art does. Art gives purpose, meaning to our world.
Starting point is 00:28:04 All right? So some really important concepts I need you guys to understand. And we'll go over this as a semester progresses. And these concepts are going to be counterintuitive for us. intuitive for us okay but the first concept I want to understand is pre-literate people okay people who could not read and write they were more intuitive they were more imaginative and they were more empathic okay meaning I can know your emotions right away I don't have to ask you anything I don't ask you how you're
Starting point is 00:28:46 feeling today I know exactly how you're feeling right away okay all right all right so we can see this this is enuit art okay so this is art by native people. So even in communities of today that hold to this tradition, you can see how they perceive the world, right? They perceive the world as unified. The gods are with
Starting point is 00:29:10 us. In fact, everything we do is a salvation of the gods. So our house is our temple. Okay? The temple is not a place you go and celebrate the gods. You celebrate the gods in your house. If you have
Starting point is 00:29:26 enough faith to turn your house into a temple. So this is Inuit art. And if you go to like many native communities, communities that maintain the traditions of the Ice Age, they're all like this in their perception. But the problem is they cannot communicate it using modern language. So we just think they're stupid. Okay?
Starting point is 00:29:46 They can't write essays. They can't give speeches. And so therefore we think they're stupid. But they're not stupid. It's just that they're focusing their energies on empathy, on imagination, on intuition. All right, so let's give examples of empathy in action. And this is true for the entire world, okay?
Starting point is 00:30:10 So once there's a horse in America that could do math. All right, so the horse would go on stage, and then the trainer would ask the horse a question, like, what's 2 plus 2? And the horse would be like, nay, me, may, may, may. and then it would be like, oh, the horse can do math, okay? So the horse cannot do math, okay?
Starting point is 00:30:35 I'm telling you right now the horse cannot do math. So what the horse is doing, you think about it, is the horse is reading the room, right? Because the people who pay the money to go into the theater watch the horse do math, obviously believe the horse can do math. Okay, so what happens is when the trainer says the horse, what's two plus two, The horse is nay, nay, and the horse is watching everyone, okay? And as the horse comes to the answer, the horse sees that the people are like really excited. Their eyes are bulging.
Starting point is 00:31:13 Their breathing is faster because people are in anticipation, right? The horse says, oh, now I know the answer. This is empathy. Animals can do it, we can do it as well. It's actually our super superpower. Does that make sense? Right? Second example is telepathy.
Starting point is 00:31:30 So in America right now, there's a very popular podcast called the telepathy tapes. You might have seen it, you may have heard of it, okay? The idea is that kids of autism are able to read the minds of their parents. Guys, I'm telling you right now, the autistic kids cannot do that. They do something else, okay? So let me tell you a story of how they do this. In China, there's also a similar case where a mother in the countryside, okay? So she's not educated, she has no money, but her son is autistic.
Starting point is 00:31:58 It's an autistic boy, doesn't really speak, can I make eye contact? Okay, lots of issues. Can I go to school? So one day, the mother contacts CCTV, the national broadcaster, says, hey, my son can read my mind. And, you know, these are TV people. So like, okay, this will make a good documentary. So they fly all the way down to this village, this poor village, and the mother is, you know, doesn't speak great Chinese. So they have to film this process, okay?
Starting point is 00:32:24 So what happens is the boy is put into a room by himself. And then the mother is given a number, okay, like maybe five. Then the mother goes and asks the boy, please read my mind. And the boy says, you saw the number five. And it's pretty amazing. And of course, is that really believable? So this documentary team spent days and days figure out what happened. Okay, finally they brought in artificial intelligence, AI.
Starting point is 00:32:53 Well, the AI figured out is it's the pitch of the voice that gives the answer, okay? So, another is saying, read my mind, read my mind, okay? And the difference in the pitch, there's a different number in that pitch. But the problem is it's so subtle that only the boy can hear the difference in pitch. We humans, ordinary humans, cannot hear the difference. And so the documentary crew confronted says, listen, we, the AI, artificial talent system tells us that what you're doing is you're cheating. You are using pitch to give signals to your son.
Starting point is 00:33:32 Is that true? And the mother is like, yes, I'm sorry. Yes, it's all a lot. We're poor. My son is autistic. I want my boy to go to school. I want my boy to get professional help. And that's why we devise the scheme in order to trick you.
Starting point is 00:33:46 So we can get some television coverage. And then maybe we can get some donations. maybe some people will help us, okay? And that's why we did the scheme. And so that's it. But think about this. Think about how amazing it is that the two together were able to devise a scheme, right?
Starting point is 00:34:06 Think about how amazing it is that they were able to devise a scheme that was so creative that it tricked people. Only an artificial intelligence system could figure the system out, okay? So this mother is not educated, but she loves her son, and she wants the best for her son.
Starting point is 00:34:23 So she figured out what her son's special ability is, pitch. She's able to hear different sounds. And devise a scheme to make full use of the son's ability. Okay? So that tells us the power of the human imagination if we truly love someone. Okay? So they created a hidden emotional language together,
Starting point is 00:34:49 which again is amazing. And it's something that you will see when two people actually love each other. They will create their own language that only they can understand. And the last example is some cooperative painting, right? So we discuss this where if I put 10 of you in a room and I give you a blank wall and I ask you to draw, the pictures you're going to create are going to be pretty amazing, okay? You're not allowed to speak, you're not allowed to cooperate. You're not allowed to plan it ahead.
Starting point is 00:35:15 But I guarantee you when the 10 of you get together and you start drawing together, you will draw a great picture. And the reason why is not because you want to draw a great picture, it's because you all want to help each other. You don't want to let each other down. Because of cooperation, because of empathy, you want to be at your very best. You want to be at your creative best.
Starting point is 00:35:42 That's the secret to creativity. When you're able to find a purpose and meaning in other people, your creative potential will be fully released. Does that make sense? Okay? All right. So back to the horse example. If you write a horse, one thing that you will learn over time is the horse can read your mind.
Starting point is 00:36:06 Okay? And so this is a polo game. And if you've watched a polo game, it's pretty amazing. Because you can't speak to the horse, right? But the horse will know exactly, instantaneously, what you want to do. If you're not turn right, the horse knows, turn right. Even before you think the thought, the horse will know. Okay?
Starting point is 00:36:24 And this is why throughout human history, warriors and horseback were the greatest warriors. They were invincible. Why? Because what happened was basically the man had four legs, okay? Because in these pneumatic societies where people fought on horseback, they were born on horses, and they were riding horses since they were. were early or since they were young and so they developed this emotional connection with the horse so the horse knows exactly what you think even before you think it okay and there are lots of
Starting point is 00:37:00 examples like this if you have a dog you know that dogs have telepathy right so you go away for a week and then when we come back the dog is waiting for you at the door then the dog knows you're coming back that's the emotional connection that's telepathy okay so telepathy exists but it's an emotional connection. There's no way that I can actually read your mind but I know how you feel, even at long distances. Does that make sense? All right. Another important fact about human beings that is not really understood is we are obsessed with being creative and expressing ourselves. That's who we are. We are the imagination, personified, manifested, made tangibly. made visceral, but we are imagining its imagination itself.
Starting point is 00:37:53 Our imagination is resilient and will always find a way to shine. Okay, so you may know of people who lose a sense, right? So if you can't see, your hearing improves, or these people are deaf, okay? So they can't hear, but then they're able to see much stronger, okay? And they use sign language to communicate. And one thing that I've noticed in China is that when I go to restaurants, now and then there will be groups of deaf people communicating with each other.
Starting point is 00:38:28 They're always happy. In fact, they're the happiest people you will ever meet in China. And it's not because they're doing sign language, it's because deaf people have a deeper emotional intelligence. And so when they're together, they communicate emotionally, and that brings tremendous joy, tremendous joy and comfort to them. Does that make sense? All right, let's give another example. This is a great composer, one of the greatest composers in human history, Beethoven. His music is startling. His famous, his music is extremely famous. Problem is, he was deaf. That's kind of strange. How is it possible
Starting point is 00:39:11 for you to be deaf at the same time compose some of the world's greatest music? The answer is he saw the music. The music came to him in dreams and was able to see the picture. Because what is music? Music is vibrations, right? So, oh, uh, e, oh, oh, but they're like vibrations, they're waves, right? So you can actually see for yourself a movie of vibrations. And the more symmetrical these vibrations are, the more beautiful the music is.
Starting point is 00:39:46 Doesn't make sense. So because he saw the music, he was able to create music that was unique in human history. Others hear the music, but he saw the music and it turned into a movie. Okay? Of movement. All right. This is John Milton. He wrote Paradise Laws.
Starting point is 00:40:09 Problem is, he wrote it while he was blind, okay? How did he do that? Because he heard the songs. He turned Paradise Laws into a musical, into music. So he actually didn't need to speak it out. He just heard it out, okay? So he had secretaries who wrote out whatever he sang out. And that's why when you read Periodise Law,
Starting point is 00:40:32 it's actually like music. It's beautiful. It's probably the most beautiful poetry ever composed in the English language. So you can see how resilient the human imagination is. If you want to express yourself, you'll find a way. It's all about will. Do you really want to express yourself?
Starting point is 00:40:48 Because if you do, you'll always find a way. Okay? Alright, so this is another lesson that you will learn the semester. We are socialized into mundanity. Our true selves are divine. You're normal, you're boring, you're not talented because you believe what others tell you, okay? Society does not want talent people.
Starting point is 00:41:16 Society does not want interesting people. society just wants robots and slaves. So schools, companies, organizations socialize you into mundanity, into nothingness. But if you look at your true self, it is divine. Now give you examples of this. A lot of people have Alzheimer's. So what literally happens is they're losing their minds.
Starting point is 00:41:44 And this is a self-portrait of an artist who documented himself. documented himself losing his mind. So when he was first diagnosed, he drew a picture of himself, okay? And then a year later, he drew another picture of himself, and on and on and on. As you can see, by this time, he's completely lost his sense of being, okay?
Starting point is 00:42:06 So you can use this picture as a metaphor for Alzheimer's, and you can see for yourself what it means to lose your mind. But there's another way to understand this picture, which is what's really happened, is that the artist, he's shedding his artifice. He's shedding his clothing and revealing his true self. What Alzheimer's is is losing your socialization. Because you're losing your ability to speak.
Starting point is 00:42:37 You're losing your ability to verbalize your ideas. You're losing your ability to communicate with others. And what's left behind are three things. First is your spiritual desire. So a lot of people with Alzheimer's, for whatever reason, they go to church suddenly. They're not religious. Maybe they grow up in an atheist household. They don't have any associative of religion.
Starting point is 00:43:02 But once they develop Alzheimer's, they have this spiritual desire to go to church and pray. It's really amazing, okay? That's number one. Number two is they love to sing. They don't talk, but they sing. The third thing is they draw. Okay, this is a painting by an Alzheimer's patient, okay? Not great, but guess why, guys?
Starting point is 00:43:23 He did this one, is like 80 years old and he never painted before. Okay? That's pretty amazing. Never painted before, but the moment he had Alzheimer's, his true divine self opened up and he wanted to express himself, okay? So what they say about Alzheimer's is you hear voices. you see things that aren't there. It's hallucination.
Starting point is 00:43:54 But guess why, guys, I told you this. During the Ice Age era, we all did this. We all believed that we were, we coexisted with ghosts, with spirits, with fairies. And this was true throughout most of human history. So even though, yes, medically speaking, psychologically speaking, these people with Alzheimer's, they are hearing voices. But the reason why is the voices were always there.
Starting point is 00:44:18 We just forgot about it because we're socialized to forget about the different forces, the different voices that exist along us, okay? This is a person who used psychedelics. Like, she's an artist, but she's using psychedelics. And the thing about psychedelics is, it's almost similar to having Alzheimer's where you shed away your socialization
Starting point is 00:44:41 and you almost enter a spiritual realm, okay? As you can see, this is a picture of a cat. What she's doing is she's showing a cat that's the divine cat. She's seeing the energy field of the cat. She's seeing the memory. She's seeing the aspiration. She's seeing the intuition, the imagination of the cat,
Starting point is 00:44:56 and embedding it into the artwork. This is another person on psychedelics. What's interesting is there's no time and space in art, in this art. So it becomes almost incomprehensible to us. Why is there a helicopter, then? Why is there a cat? Well, that's how we truly are. We don't have a concept of space and time.
Starting point is 00:45:20 We see things as they are. And this picture shows you that. And we can see how the pictures are, it's a heightened reality, okay? Much more vibrant colors. Another psychedelic painting. As you can see, no concept of time and space. It's all just one unity of things.
Starting point is 00:45:53 Ventra Vengue, okay? The greatest painter who's ever lived. His paintings are utterly unique in human history. This is Starry Night, and this is sunflower. But you can see how he has shedded away his socialization. He doesn't care how this is communicated to other people. All he cares is about the picture itself.
Starting point is 00:46:17 So it glows with life. All right, so let's summarize the concepts that we've learned, okay? So you've been brainwashed into thinking certain ideas about who we are. They're not true. The first myth is we humans are driven by material desires. Okay, so why do we want, so what do we want? We want a lot of money, okay? We want to pass on our genes.
Starting point is 00:46:43 We want to marry a lot of beautiful women who are young and so they can give us a lot of a lot of babies because we want to pass on our genes, okay? And we want to maintain our status. All we care about is power. Fundamentally, we humans are fundamentally imagination and we care about three things. The first is we want to to express our religion through art, music, and rituals. We want to know where we came from,
Starting point is 00:47:13 why we're here, where we're going. That's who we really are. That's the first thing. Second thing is, we are diverse and want to differentiate ourselves. We want to stand out. We want to be different. We want to be creative.
Starting point is 00:47:25 The third thing is, we are curious and want to explore. And that's what explains why we go everywhere, okay? This has been true throughout human history. We may not have documents saying that we were traveling, but we were traveling, because there's always some of us who want to go and see a new world, even though it may not exist. That's who we are fundamentally. So don't believe people when they say, okay, you just care about money, you just care about power, you just care about sex.
Starting point is 00:47:52 That's not who we are. What we are are fundamentally religious spiritual beings that want to create and to love and to connect. Okay, that's the first myth. Second myth is the most natural unit is a family and men want to protect their property, which includes women, okay? So maybe you've been taught that, okay,
Starting point is 00:48:15 men are in charge and women are just animals to breed babies, okay? That's not true. For most of the human industry, it was women who had control of their bodies. Women could choose who to sleep with
Starting point is 00:48:32 and how many men would sleep with, and they often chose to sleep with everyone. Why? Because sleeping with other men, first of all, women enjoy it, okay? But second of all, it allows women to create social cohesion. So for most of human history, early civilization, women were the core and center of all societies. And the third thing is,
Starting point is 00:48:55 there's actually a strategy in sleeping with many different men because now everyone is responsible for raising a child. It doesn't make sense. If I'm the father and I know exactly who my children are, then I'm going to protect my children and discard everyone else, okay? But if no one knows who the fathers are, everyone who starts for taking care of every single child. And that's the best strategy that they can have.
Starting point is 00:49:21 Because that ensures that every child becomes successful. Does that make sense? So the second myth that we will discuss later on. myth. Humans follow the iron rule of nature, survive with the fittest. That's just taught by Darwin. That's what evolution is. But that's wrong. For most of the human industry, humans cared for each other. We were compassionate, empathy, right? We believe that every creature has divinity and those who are weakest have the most divinity. That's why when we kill an animal, we still thank the animal, because we're all part of the same life cycle.
Starting point is 00:50:01 Number four, humans have gone smarter over the century, civilization is far superior to primitive cultures. Again, this is wrong. Okay? The truth is that with development of civilization, the human imagination has decreased. Our brains can be supercomputers if we allow them to be. But if people are more creative, which means they have better memories than we do, okay? They're able to recall more stuff. They're able to store more information.
Starting point is 00:50:29 They're more sensitive perception. They have more empathy, okay? Then exactly how you're feeling, why are you feeling it, and how to make you feel better. And greater emotional resilience, okay? So they're much more mature than we are. Number five, we evolve from apes. The truth is that we are uniquely imaginative and we can choose our own evolution. Don't believe we're apes, okay?
Starting point is 00:50:54 If you believe you're an ape, then you're an ape, then you're like to go beat people up and like have sex with like a lot of women, okay? But we're not apes. We're imaginative first and foremost, and as such we have control over our lives. And it's something that you have to learn for yourself. All right? So let me give an example of this to conclude the class. This is Romato 2. And we discovered him 10,000 years ago in a burial site.
Starting point is 00:51:24 This is an Ice Age bureau site. He's a dwarf, guys. Okay? He's a dwarf. You can see how small he is. He's a dwarf. And you would think that dwarfs don't really contribute. to the community, so maybe he's born, it's clearly he's deformed, so just kill the guy,
Starting point is 00:51:45 okay? Because he's not going to have a great life anyway. Instead, what we found is, first of all, he lived to a pretty old age, and he was buried with jewelry. He was buried elaborately, and you only do that for people who you really prize. That's kind of strange, right? The people who we think that are most worthless, dwarfs that actually don't do anything, they actually thought was divine and deserved an extremely elaborate, ritualized funeral.
Starting point is 00:52:18 Why? So, this is a book that Don Everything by David Graber and David Wrengrove, great book. So what they say is this, when archaeologists undertake balance of praisos of hunter-gathered burials from the Paleothic, They find high frequencies of health-related disabilities, but also surprising high levels of care until the time of death and beyond since some of these funerals were remarkably lavish. This is an amazing idea to think about. But if you were deformed, if you were ill, they didn't throw you out.
Starting point is 00:52:51 They spent all the time to take care of you, even though from their perspective it was a waste of time and energy because you're going to die anyway. So why would they do that? Well, there are three possibilities, okay? The first possibility is it's really about maintaining constant balance and harmony. Everything is a cycle. Meaning what?
Starting point is 00:53:12 Meaning we're all part of God. And if you suffer, then we have to make you better because we're all part of God together. So the concepts are unity of all, as above, so below. Set a good example to others. So it's the first possibility. Second possibility is because this is a pre-litered society, people have a stronger sense of empathy and morality. So they didn't want to see other suffer. Okay?
Starting point is 00:53:39 And the third possibility is they appreciate diversity, indifference in a way we don't anymore. Our entire school system is designed as to survive the fittest. If you can't do math, goodbye. You're worthless. You can't get 100 on a test. Goodbye. You're worthless. Okay?
Starting point is 00:53:58 But back then, they saw a difference and diversity as gifts from God. Right? So if you're a dwarf, it meant you had something special to offer. If you're strong, yeah, you can go hunt animals and you can protect the family. But if you're a dwarf, it meant that you might have something else to offer. And if we just celebrate you as someone who has something special offer, then you can offer it to us, okay? And often, what they could do is, well, they could probably seem better. they could probably tell better stories,
Starting point is 00:54:28 they had more wisdom, they had more intuition, their connection with the divine. That's true even today where the best storytellers, the best musicians, often those who are marginalized from society,
Starting point is 00:54:38 those who are strangers, those who are outsiders, those who society persecutes, they probably have greater imagination, greater intuition, greater empathy. And today, we don't celebrate these things, but back then,
Starting point is 00:54:50 they did celebrate those things. So if you were different, if you're deformed, if you were ill, they saw you as, blessed rather than cursed. And that's what we've forgotten today. Okay? All right. So that's it. This is just an introduction into the entirety of human history, okay? We're going to go pretty fast. Any questions? Yeah. So would you say that because you made the examples using, let's, you said Alzheimer's,
Starting point is 00:55:22 autistic people. So would you say that people with cognitive disability in like modern age are, are like closer to the divine. We're like, we're returning to the divine by abandoning our cognitive, so-called, like, you know, the logic and everything that the civilization is. Would you say that makes us closer, would bring us closer to the divine? Yeah, great question, okay?
Starting point is 00:55:52 So first of all, we're all connected to the vine, but we just, choose to forget what can enter the vine. Why? Because society, mass society, needs you to be obedient, needs you to be a machine, needs you to work, to be obedient, okay? So the entire point of school is to separate you
Starting point is 00:56:13 from the divine. Why? Because at an early age, you remove from your parents. And in school, you're taught all sorts of really strange knowledge, like 1 plus 1 equals 2. Like, who cares 1 plus 1 equals 2? But you're taught this is what matters. And before, we would just like kids run around nature and learn resilience, learn courage,
Starting point is 00:56:35 learn creativity. Okay? So the entire point of society is to brainwash you or remove you from the divine. But there are certain members of society who can't be removed from the vine because we don't want them, right? So kids who are autistic, kids with disabilities, kids who are just different, okay? Once you discard it, they actually return the vine. Does that make sense? Yeah, so, for example, a lot of people develop cognitive disabilities after a lot of, like, is it being put into schools, being kind of limited by the civilization?
Starting point is 00:57:16 Would you say that in that circumstance by developing or be given a cognitive disability? We're actually reconnecting with the divine? Okay, yeah, okay. So let's clarify, okay. So in China, in the United States, everyone in the world, we're seeing a massive surge in mental illnesses, right? So depression, eating disorders, suicidal tendencies, anxiety, fear. So, I mean, like, it's just an explosion these past 20 years, especially with the advent of mobile phones, social media, the Internet, okay? So, kids' lives suck.
Starting point is 00:57:58 Okay? So why are kids so miserable? And the answer is that when you're born, you have an other connection with divine. So, and as you lose this connection, you grow more, more confused, which leads to anxiety and doubt. And over time, if this confusion is not addressed properly, then it will lead to depression. Okay? So another simple way of saying this is we crave human connection. We crave knowledge of the divine. We crave purpose and meaning in our lives. But the social media system
Starting point is 00:58:41 has created this fake system in which you are in prison, our imagination is in prison in pursuing activities that absolutely have no purpose. Right. So on social media, all you care about is likes. how do I get my friends to like me, like me, like me, okay? So you do sorts of silly things like, I know, post, pictures of you, dancing, and Hawaii or whatever, even though it gives you no meaning, okay? So what's happening is before we care about what makes us happy, and now we care about what we think would make other people happy, okay? And that's not who we are.
Starting point is 00:59:16 Okay, once you lose that connection to the vine, then you can only get lost. So if you deny your intuition, if you deny your emotions, then you'll just become more and more miserable. Does that make sense? Okay? Like the strong empathy that you just mentioned, I thought that I'm curious
Starting point is 00:59:36 where the strong empathy come from because I usually thought that the empathy is shaped by the socialization and social norms by the society. Yeah, actually that's a really good question. Okay. So empathy just means our connections with others, okay? And this is something we're born with.
Starting point is 00:59:54 So a mother is born with emotional connection with a child, right? And a child has an emotional connection with a mother. And over time, as this connection grows, their empathy develops. And this empathy almost becomes telepathic. So that even if the child is in school and the child is bullied, the mother is washing her clothes. He's like, you know, I don't feel right. Maybe I should call the teacher and ask how my child is doing, okay?
Starting point is 01:00:21 So that's what empathy is. Empathy just means a natural emotional connection that we're all born with. But it's entirely possible, and we know this from our society, to break that connection by setting the child off to school, by having a child online too much, by having a child watch television too much, okay? Severeering, bringing that emotional connection. Once the emotional connection is broken, remember empathy, we crave empathy. We crave emotions more than we crave food.
Starting point is 01:00:51 So it's as though we're becoming zombies almost, right? If you don't have empathy, you don't feel connected with other people, it's as though you become a zombie. You don't have any direction. You don't have any purpose. You don't have any meaning in life anymore. That's what leads to tremendous depression, okay? Does that make sense? So we are not socialized into empathy.
Starting point is 01:01:11 We are socialized out of empathy. We're born into empathy. Okay? All right. Great questions. Okay, any more questions? Wait, great, guys. So I will see you next time.
Starting point is 01:01:24 All right? We'll continue this next time. Okay?

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.