Noah's Ark being the most famous Antediluvian tale.
Antediluvian means before the great deluge or before Noah's flood. I first heard this term my senior year of high school, and I never gave it much credence simply because Noah's account in the Bible happened in the sixth chapter of Genesis, so there wasn't a whole lot before that. I've heard of other flood tales such as The Epic of Gilgamesh and various mythologies, but I never really considered them antediluvian. The word only had some prominence with me because in my head I thought that maybe the "sinking" of Atlantis could have been related to the very same global flood. Little did I know that I was on to something.
So thoughts linking Atlantis with the Noachian (another new word I learned meaning of Noah) Deluge have been with me for several years, but I never gave them much serious thought until I discovered a man named Graham Hancock. I watched one of his interviews with Joe Rogan and became hooked with him instantly. Learning about him has been like discovering the missing link for me linking my obsession with Atlantis with anachronistic artifacts with ancient mysteries with the great deluge. Thanks to this man and subsequently Randall Carlson, the term 'antediluvian' has taken on an entirely new meaning for me.
The basic hypothesis that Graham Hancock purports is that an ancient global cataclysm occurred about 12,800 years ago. His theories on the cause of the cataclysm has changed over time, but now he purports the theory that a comet may have been the cause of worldwide devastation including a global flood that may have reset society. He goes on to suggest that the antediluvian society may have been a proto-civilization responsible for helping build various ancient megalithic structures around the world and forging the ancient civilizations we know from history. More, these people from the remnants of this proto-civilization may have been confused as gods.
Gobekli Tepe, discovered by Klaus Schmidt
Due to the dating of sites such as Gobekli Tepe (9000 BC!?!) and increasing geological evidence of a global cataclysm, Hancock points out that the timing seems to line up with Plato's Atlantis. In the Critias, Atlantis is said to have sunk beneath the waves around 12,800 years ago which is roughly the same time as when geologists such as Randall Carlson have found evidence of a global cataclysm. This correlation has fascinated me beyond reproach. Before these revelations, my theories concerning Atlantis could only be supported by unusual anachronistic artifacts. Now we have a possible timeline. Hancock suggests that after this global cataclysm destroyed the Atlanteans, the survivors spread out and found various hunter gatherer groups in order to survive. In order to preserve their culture, they taught these hunter gatherer groups how to construct the various megalithic structures.
Could the Sphinx have lost more than its nose?
Gobekli Tepe also helps support the hypothesis that the Great Sphinx of Giza may be older than the Great Pyramids. Stranger still before the discovery of Gobekli Tepe, a few archaeologists point to signs of water erosion on the walls of the Sphinx giving it a new date of about 5000 - 6000 BC. The reason why I point out these facts is because these challenge our timeline of human history more so than anachronistic artifacts ever could. They give credence to the idea that human civilization may be older than we give it credit. The oldest anatomically modern human fossil has been dated to about 200,000 years ago. Think about how much mankind has evolved technologically in the past 200 years. 1000 years. 5000 years. Now imagine 100,000 years.
Why This Matters
Curiosity over the greatest mystery certainly drives me more than anything else and perhaps drives the men I've mentioned as well. Where did we come from? Our origins are something that defines us. Whether you ascribe our origins in a religious way or in a secular way, you cannot deny that trying to answer this question has shaped the whole of human history since it deeply ties with figuring out our purpose and place in the universe.
What did we forget?
Answering the greatest mystery compels me, but what also equally compels me is wondering about what we may have forgotten. The construction of these megalithic structures requires great skill and technology. Fortunately, these stone structures have survived nearly ten thousand years. We have fossils dating back over two hundred thousand years. What could've survived over ten thousand years prior?
Ancient Sanskrit epics refer to ancient flying machines called vimanas. Shamans in the Amazon having been using an ancient brew called Ayahuasca to reach new levels of consciousness for thousands of years. Ayahuasca works by using a chemical called DMT working in tandem with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor allowing it to be ingested orally something that is next to impossible to be combined by mere chance. These examples along with anachronistic artifacts I've discussed previously, convince me that there is knowledge out there that begs to be rediscovered. While flying machines may be interesting, our understanding of consciousness is still very much in its infancy. I wonder if brews like Ayahuasca may be handed down ancient knowledge, but the science behind it has been lost over the ages.
The search for lost knowledge may be a motivator in my life, but the fact that this knowledge was so easily lost also has affected me. I've had a dream that I've wished to accomplish for most of my life. The idea that this dream could be shattered in an instant by a natural global cataclysm burdens my very soul. This revelation has actually caused a form of depression within me fraught with nihilism. The truth is that my dream entrances me, motivates me, and supports me. Randall Carlson points out how lucky we are that our current civilization has been living in a relatively stable environment for so long. It almost seems like we are overdue for some calamity. Perhaps my interest in this topic is motivated by the desire to transcend our current situation and to look beyond the infinite for the sake of my dream.
Back in August, I listened to the Rubin Report interview with Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute. He -of course- talked about Objectivism, but then he brought up some interesting dilemmas about morality particularly from the christian perspective. He claimed that the notion of "loving thy neighbor as thyself" was not achievable even by the most altruistic. He posed the horrible hypothetical situation where you are forced to choose between saving the life of your child versus your neighbor's child. Admittedly, this took me a back, but I think I now have a response.
Before I give my response, I may need to describe what Objectivism actually is. If you recognized the name Ayn Rand, then you may also know that she is the author of books such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The latter is considered her magnum opus on the philosophy of Objectivism. This relatively new philosophy's basic premise is the rejection of altruism or -to put it simply- any charity whatsoever. I have personally never read The Fountainhead, but I have read the epic tome that is Atlas Shrugged which formed my opinions on Objectivism.
Greed is a moral good whereas charity is a moral evil. It is fine to be kind to one another if the intent is to get something in return. This may sound less than virtuous, but it tries to rationalize the common perception that people only do nice things for their own gain such as celebrities making sure they bring a camera crew with them as they do charity work or politicians doing nice things in order to get elected. In this essence, objectivists call out the altruists' hypocrisy. In Atlas Shrugged, the protagonist could not receive any help without subjecting herself into servitude. Maybe it would be kinder to simply help her out, but again, the objectivist will ask what their moral obligation is to help another. A question which runs contrary to Christian morality.
Not to be confused with anarchocapitalism, objectivists still believe in a role for government, but any government function that doesn't directly provide a service to the objectivist would be bad. In the podcast, Yaron Brooks actually went into detail basically saying that the free market should never allow violence to be a market, so the government has a justification to have a monopoly on that. If the free market managed violence, then violence would only grow (like the military industrial complex). However, social programs such as welfare would obviously be against their mindset since an objectivist may never directly benefit from that service. Atlas Shrugged literally had a character that would steal from the poor and give to the rich!
As Christians, we reject Objectivism since Christ teaches us to help those in need. With regards to Mr. Brook's hypothetical situation. I think it is safe to say that most people would choose their own child, but this doesn't mean that this discredits the notion of "loving thy neighbor as thyself". He argues that since people would naturally choose their own child, then the cornerstone of Christian morality is essentially meaningless. My retort is that this is not a fair question. Both outcomes would be emotionally horrible to any christian (and I imagine others as well). A fairer hypothetical situation would be: if you would sacrifice your own life for your own child, would you sacrifice your own life for your neighbor's child? Having served in the military, this is a very easy question for me to answer. Without hesitation, I would give the same amount to save my child's life as I would my neighbor's life. Both lives are valuable. Forcing me to choose implies that one life is more valuable than the other when in reality they aren't. Since my child's life is not mine to give, it is not fair to condemn my choice.
I think Objectivism does a fair job pointing out certain hypocrisies; however, I do believe that people will help others without expecting anything in return. An objectivist may argue that I'm only helping others to make myself feel good, but the truth is that I'll probably forget about helping another person in a day or so or maybe in even less time. One of the most beautiful messages of the classic movie, It's a Wonderful Life, is that the main character doesn't realize just how much he has helped his town through his small deeds until his guardian angel shows him. I can be rather pessimistic at times, but I am certainly not as pessimistic as an objectivist in the motivations for people to do good.
Admittedly I just wanted an excuse to post eclipse pics
On August 21, 2017; I finally got to see an eclipse with my own eyes. I vaguely remember an eclipse when I was really young, but I wasn't old enough to appreciate it. Now I couldn't see a total eclipse in Texas, but it was still pretty cool to see the moon cover the sun even just a little bit. We got about 60% coverage in El Paso. I really wanted to blog about the eclipse, but what is there really to blog about? The moon went in front of the sun for a little bit. I can't really post pictures because my camera couldn't really take any good pictures of the eclipse. To my misfortune, I did find an interesting excuse to talk about the eclipse: the flat earthers. Or rather I just fell for some clickbait and want to explain a pet peeve that is a common misconception.
Flat Earthers on the Eclipse
So to start things off, the video above is what triggered this whole blog post because I am sick and tired of people thinking that flat earth people are serious. Before you watch the video, let me save 20 minutes of your life by explaining their two main arguments:
1. The eclipse path doesn't make sense if the Earth rotates from west to east. The video purports it should actually be going east to west if the Earth was round.
2. The shadow cast on the Earth is too small.
Objection to 1 is very simple to explain. The moon moves around the Earth a lot faster than the Earth rotates. The moon travels around the Earth at about 3400 km/hr while the Earth rotates at about 1700 km/hr, thus explaining this path. Objection 2 can be best debunked by the following photo:
This was evidently obvious for anyone who was looking at maps of the shadow of the eclipse and noticed that people outside of the path could still see an eclipse.
Flat Earthers are the Biggest Trolls on the Internet
After the video is done talking about the eclipse, it goes into Flat Earth theories that are crazier than the craziest conspiracy theories. It also breaks my heart that some flat earthers use the Bible as a means to justify their "theory", but again this is just religious trolling. While the Bible does mention a firmament, there is nothing in the Bible to suggest a flat Earth. If you are interested in seeing all of the different theories, I found a compilation in the subreddit /r/theworldisflat. Now I don't like ad hominems, so I'll tackle a few of the points they bring up but not all of them.
Starting off with space hoaxes. This is unfortunately a very true thing. NASA has in the past given space rocks that are fake and released photos that are fake as well. I don't know the reasoning behind these, but these neither prove or disprove anything. Ancient people knew the Earth was round well before we could take pictures from space.
Now let's start getting to the actual trolling: the assertion that the burden of proof is on "round earthers". Never mind the mathematics, gravity, and what the Greeks did with measuring shadows; allow me to introduce exhibit A:
Exhibit A: the curvature of the Earth from a plane.
Now I didn't personally take this photo, but I see the curvature of the Earth all the time whenever I get a window seat and a long enough flight. Heck I can see some curvature if I'm at a high enough elevation.
Despite a modern misconception, even ancient people knew about this because ships or caravans would disappear from the horizon yet obviously those people would return and not mention anything unusual about their trip. Believing in a flat earth was never a prevailing thought amongst ancient people let alone during the days of Columbus.
A lot of the other "evidence" for a flat Earth requires an extraordinary extensive conspiracy whose purposes are just as extraordinary. They claim that gravity cannot explain how all of the water stays on the Earth if it were round. They assert the only way our oceans can exist is on a flat Earth with ice walls holding it in. You could ask for evidence of an ice wall, but they'll point to a conspiracy blocking evidence of such a wall. The reality is that a lot of the arguments will ultimately boil down to this.
While the Flat Earth Society is filled with trolls, it is also filled with people who simply like to test their argumentative skills. Admittedly, this is why I first explored the society. The main problem is that none of these arguments were compelling enough to dissuade me from what I could actually see with my own eyes. The other problem -like the ones I debunked earlier- is that they are so easy to debunk. Take the speed of the moon for example, point out how fast the moon moves relative to Earth's rotation, and then they'll ask you to prove how you know the moon moves that fast. Show them astronomical calculations, and they'll ask how you know you didn't make any errors. These are the flat earthers in a nut shell. After exploring it for a while, you'll get bored because in order for any "controversy" to be interesting, there has to be a compelling argument. Even political arguments that I fundamentally disagree with still have compelling arguments. Flat Earth has none although I doubt anyone is surprised by that. Aside from perhaps a handful of people, no one seriously believes in a flat Earth. It's mostly people who like to question conventional knowledge very similar to Descartes.
This should be my only political post for a while, so I may as well and get it over with. While I am glad I didn't spend countless hours writing several blog posts covering the election, I still feel the need to recollect my thoughts on the entire journey to where we are now. The truth is that there has been a lot of disinformation. Some from President Trump's political enemies and some from his apologists.
The other important aspect has been the evolution of the political divide. Right and Left, Republican and Democrat certainly don't mean the same as they did before the 2016 election. I won't bother giving a history of the two sides, but I'll at least give my perspective since when I got into politics. During the Bush administration, the political divide seemed to be about war and upholding traditional values for the Right and the reverse for the Left. During the Obama administration, the political divide seemed to be more economically based. The Right seemed to be more Libertarian -especially when it came to Healthcare and other entitlements- but was still very traditionally based fighting against gay marriage and LGBTQ+ issues whereas that practically defined the Left. While those issues still persist, with the election of Trump my suspicion of a nationalism versus globalism political divide seems to be confirmed. Of course this recent divide had a very confusing rise to prominence.
The Alt-Right
Milo Yiannopoulos, most famous for covering Gamergate and for being an infamous twitter troll, promulgated the Alt-Right. He is how I first heard of this movement and for the longest time thought that Milo defined them. While false, I believed as well as probably many others who identify as alt-right believed that the movement was simply anti-SJW. This meant they rejected the race-based politics and supported the notion that the US government should focus more on the US than the rest of the world. Breitbart and Donald Trump seemed to embrace this notion and the former even claimed to be an alt-right news network. Horrifyingly, the term alt-right was actually invented by a man named Richard Spencer who is best described as a white nationalist (not a supremacist as his Wikipedia article would have you believe). The true alt-right may be very against social justice warriors, but only because they support identity politics of white people rather than rejecting the notion of identity politics entirely.
This confusion regarding what the alt-right actually believes -I believe- is the source of a lot of the racist charges against the president and his supporters. Milo and Breitbart associated themselves with the alt-right and brought the alt-right to high prominence. The media was already very quick to sensationalize any comments made by then-candidate Trump that were remotely racist and this association only exasperated the issue. I still find it strange that I only found out about the alt-right's true origins until around late spring, early summer 2016. I blame this on the term 'racist' being diluted to the point of absurdity. No longer does 'racist' simply mean treating someone differently due to the color of their skin, but now it's just a "shut up" word meant to silence anyone on the right who disagrees with leftists or is unfairly used as a means to bully white people or any non-white Republicans. White nationalists are certainly racist but so are anyone else who supports race-based politics such as social justice warriors.
The Media
Trump may have said some dumb things, but to suggest he or the vast majority of his supporters are racist is just nonsense. Apologies for linking Vox, but here is a list of every racist thing that President Trump has supposedly committed. Vox lists the damning reasons of why they are justified in calling the President a racist, but read them for yourself. While some are troubling, many are not racist at all. The ones that are racist seem to be either unsubstantiated (he said, he said), or there is another plausible explanation. Regarding the section of Trump as a candidate, many of the instances are just patently false or severely misrepresented. Check out the embedded video. Trump did not call Mexican immigrants rapists. He simply pointed out that many illegal immigrants coming from the Mexican border are generally not good people. He even said that some may be good people. This example alone is why I don't take charges of racism seriously anymore. Even calling people Nazis doesn't mean anything anymore.
Fake News. A pejorative used famously by the president when referring to CNN was actually started by mainstream outlets like CNN when referring to news that served as apologists for Trump. I first heard this term shortly after a fake article was trending on Facebook regarding the Pope endorsing Trump. I can't find the actual article, but here's the Snopes article debunking it. Trump supporters were quick to turn this term against mainstream news against them. Every mistake the press made was exasperated as "fake news" for example the Russian-Trump dossier. Pushed by CNN and originating from Buzzfeed, once these documents were outed as fakes, CNN and Buzzfeed were instantly branded as Fake News much to their dismay. These lies among others from "anonymous sources" helped perpetuate the whole false Russian narrative that the government is still unfortunately wasting millions of tax dollars investigating.
Trump's Real Problem isn't the Media
Trump's real problem is alienating his potential political allies. I'm surprised no one I listen to minus Ben Shapiro even addresses this. While Trump's candidness and lack of political gravitas helped him win the Republican primary (people generally have a negative opinion of politicians), this simultaneously alienated a lot of his potential political allies on both sides of the political aisle. Very apparent now, even as a candidate I knew this would be my biggest concern for his success in the oval office. The reality is that the President is not nearly as powerful as people think he is. The only major thing the President has direct control over is foreign policy. Congress controls the money and the laws, and -of course- the Supreme Court will prevent the president from enacting any unconstitutional executive orders despite what Leftists fear. In other words, the President cannot build a wall, repeal Obamacare, or anything else to make America great again without support from the Congress. Obama and Hillary were able to mend fences after the 2008 election, but it is really bad on President Trump to continue insulting his political colleagues including those in his same party in a very public way.
Another problem with the Trump administration is that he still has Obama appointees in his administration. With all of the leaks, I'm amazed that this hasn't become a higher priority for him. There's no guarantee that this would solve everything because there are thousands of people working for the federal bureaucracy many of whom probably dislike the president for the same reasons I mentioned earlier. Despite my disbelief with conspiracy theories, a new term referred to as the Deep State effectively is serving as a conspiracy of sorts against the Trump administration. I doubt there is any real coordination within the government, but the Deep State refers to those in the government bureaucracy that function through different administrations particularly the intelligence agencies like the CIA, FBI, and NSA.
Twitter
Candidate Trump on twitter wasn't a huge problem, but President Trump on twitter has become one. At first following him on twitter was nice because I was able to get an unfiltered view of the candidate and then president. The problem is that President Trump is now using the platform to announce policy and to attack his political colleagues. Interestingly, with the way the media has been lately, I don't need to watch the news anymore since they usually just report on the President's tweets.
Recently, the President announced a ban on transgenders serving in the military over twitter. At the time, I had just received transgender training on President Obama's transgender policy that was supposed to take place on July 2017. Disregarding the merits of the transgender policy, there was no actual official policy created by President Trump when he made that twitter announcement. Naturally this created a lot of confusion among the ranks especially on an already very controversial issue.
While using twitter to prematurely announce new policy decisions is bad enough, it's his attacking his political colleagues and apparent "whining" on twitter that annoys me the most. One of my biggest criticisms of the Obama administration was him holding press conferences and making speeches about how bad Republicans were and why he couldn't get his policies implemented. If you are the President, you have more power than any single person on the planet. You don't get to whine and complain if you can't get something done. It means that you aren't trying hard enough. However, Obama didn't do this on twitter which means that Trump has the ability to be more compulsive with his complaints. Now I will admit that the media over blows Trump's tweets, but the truth is that the president's tweets are still in the public even though it may not feel like it.
The Most Underrated Aspect of the Trump Presidency
The election of Barack Obama did it for me, but Trump's election certainly proved without a shadow of a doubt that some shadow cabal does not secretly manipulate our elections. Heck, President Trump seemed like really good friends with Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist. It was actually really disturbing how much the media was shilling for Hillary Clinton, but Donald Trump still won despite all odds.
While I thought Penn Jillette's point was pretty funny, let's be honest here. While I will maintain that the globalist vs. nationalist ideologies is the new debate that will define the political spectrum, Trump won because his main political rival, Hillary Clinton, was truly despised by moderates. Trump was seen as a giant middle finger to the establishment, and Hillary Clinton became a symbol of the establishment that was seen as corrupt and above the law. Former FBI director James Comey's statement regarding Hillary's emails pretty much sealed her fate. In his statement, he made some BS statement about needing to have proven intent to mishandle classified information when that has never been the case in the past. Even worse he states, "To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a
person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences." That statement alone really ticked off people like me (who work with sensitive information) and other Americans who felt that Clinton committed treason. While we would prefer to see her in jail for her misconduct, seeing her not be president was a small consolation prize.
Nationalism vs. Globalism
While my commentary on the media and twitter had little to do with my original point, the reason I brought it up is becausethe nationalism vs. globalism debate isn't as apparent as it was when Trump was still a candidate. Nationalism has been conflated with racism. Social justice appears to be a smokescreen for globalism. None of this would have been possible without the aforementioned sections I commented on.
SJW's want Muslim refugees to integrate with America
and Europe so that they too can enjoy the fruits of Western Civilization
- a more globalist attitude. Another point of contention is
representation in government. When Leftists see the racial or gender makeup
in Congress, they see systemic racism and sexism instead of people
being simply chosen by their geographical constituents. It would seem as
though they are incapable of seeing borders of any sort except through race, gender, and sexual orientation. In fact, Leftists will refer to people who advocate for stronger borders and enforcement of immigration laws as racists. There is no nuance with them. Take the video I posted previously of Trump talking about Mexican immigration. Leftists will see racism whereas people like myself see him talking about the negative side effects of illegal immigration.
No Agenda refers to this divide as Dimension A vs Dimension B
It's worse than confirmation bias or blatant propaganda. I have Leftist friends who would agree with Vox's conclusions without any sort of malicious intent. The No Agenda Show humorously asserts -although with some seriousness- that this divide can only be explained with alternate realities. Funny enough several mainstream commentators use the description of a split in alternate realities to explain the discrepancies on both sides.
Why this is important is because the media exasperates this divide in a very unhealthy way. While I still think globalism versus nationalism is the underlying political divide, people literally believe that the President is a new Adolf Hitler and his supporters are Nazis. This is why you see such animosity within the federal bureaucracy and the media being besides themselves to make that connection. If you truly believe that your political opponents are Nazis, then you are likely to react violently against them which I believe explains groups like Antifa. The President alienating any potential political allies and publicly humiliating them on twitter only gives them an excuse to fan the flames of this hyperbolic vitriol. The political elite may not believe Trump is a Nazi, but why defend him if all he's done is humiliate and insult you? I may not be able to rationally explain the discrepancy in how people view current events, but the President's behavior is certainly not allowing any healing of the divide.
Maybe the Illuminati doesn't exist, but my fear is that this divide may seriously culminate into a civil war. We already have a failed political assassination of a Republican congressman. With Antifa violently attacking conservative speakers on college campuses and commentators on the Left defending them, it goes to show that all of the things I have mentioned may be culminating into a powder keg. The events in Charlottesville are only the beginning of my fears. While I certainly don't support white nationalists any more than social justice warriors, I certainly don't want to see either of them react violently towards each other. Instead of demagoguing the poor woman who was murdered by the man in the car, how about condemning all violence? Of course the president did that and that was lost on all in the media. My only hope is that by making people aware of this developing situation can we prevent a lot of people from dying.
I haven't blogged in almost two years minus a movie review I did for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie last year (thank you Alamo Drafthouse). The reason for this was due to a new Army policy against posting political opinions on social media. Retrospectively, this may have been a good thing because I imagine
most of my blog posts may have been very politically driven just judging
from my tweets and Facebook posts. Since I am getting out of the military and due to other events in my life, I have decided to revive my blog mostly as an outlet and recording of my more prominent thoughts. Fortunately, I have been learning how to "hack" (ethically mind you), and by searching through the Google cache, I have recovered most of the blogs that I had deleted in the interim.
Restoring my blog posts mostly involved a lot of cutting and pasting, and it was admittedly fun reading through a lot of them. Some I was surprised I deleted, but I probably deleted everything that didn't have the word 'review' in the title and of course my blogs about the filibuster. It's interesting seeing how many of my views have changed in such a short time and how many views stayed the same.
I doubt I will post any more movie reviews simply because I won't have
the ability to see movies early anymore. That was a benefit in the Army
and with the Alamo Drafthouse. I'll still post mini reviews on my
twitter using the same movie score logic I use in this blog.
I am planning on posting at least monthly although I have a few posts that I have been working on while reviving my blog. Fortunately, I have been reading and researching more than just politics, so that may be a relief to many (especially to myself). I mostly really want to blog about my findings as a means of organizing my thoughts. I have learned so much more on a lot of topics that I have been passionate about and even blogged about particularly Atlantis and anachronistic artifacts. I have also been exposed to so many podcasts that have increased my thinking on topics that I've either forgotten about or didn't necessarily find particularly interesting. Many of the philosophers that I blogged about previously apparently all have podcasts which I still am listening too. My mind is racing on a myriad of information.
My blog won't be as dark as the latest season of Rick and Morty nor will it involve that Mulan McNugget sauce.
