This entry expands upon my previous prophecy concerning the outline of the New Age of Aquarius. This is not a joke, by the way. A sweeping view of history and the development of several strands over the past 1000 to 3000 years suggest in outline what is to come.
Oh come, history!
The West began with the Protestant Revolution of Martin Luther. This was about 500 years ago. An explosion and spread of knowledge happened with the invention of the printing press of Gutenberg. We cannot fathom what this means in total. For thousands of years, books cost one million dollars. Labor required scribes, carefully trained over generations, to create and copy books. The rich near centers of learning with books controlled all knowledge. The only way to learn was memorization after you had access to the books in the libraries. Most people were ignorant and really had no need to read.
Thus, now any bit of knowledge could spread to the four corners of the Earth, and cheaply. We can make paperback books for less than $5 even today and spread them far and wide. There was an elite still - those who could control the presses. However, with the invention of Internet, it seems the old guards of the press have lost their control and we are in the midst of a great struggle over who controls information - if it is even possible.
One can now live in Wyoming and read the finest books ever written in any age and in any language.
So, books launched the Protestant Revolution. It played itself out until the 1960’s when the Age of Aquarius dawned. Things truly changed at that time. Vatican II changed everything, also. Since the Catholic Church is the repository of all Western morality and ethics, this is what makes any significant changes with the Catholic Church world-changing. Ignorant people generally do not understand this, but learned people who know history understand that a civilization has a center. The center of the West is the Catholic Church, and it has been for hundreds of years. The major philosophical center of the West is Paris, because the center of all Western philosophy is Thomas Aquinas. Again, ignorant people have no concept of this, but we who have studied hard, know this to be a fact as definite as the sun rising in the morning.
The man to unite all of this Western narrative into something digestible was Jacques Barzun, in his magisterial book, “From Dawn to Decadence.” Again, an ignorant people cannot understand this, but we who have studied long and hard, know this as a fact.
One must scan the ages of time, and integrate all observed patterns into a whole. Learned people will see the same thing, although in sometimes different perspectives, but they will observe the same grand statue, as it were. In these things, there is no personal opinion; there is only perspective and taste.
What drives the West? Is it science? No! It is philosophy. The ignorant think it is science, but the worthies know it is philosophy. Philosophy answers and poses our fundamental questions, and not science. Science is a branch of philosophy, and is under the authority of Philosophy, as it always was and always has been.
So, if Aquinas was the most important philosopher in the Catholic Church, who was the most influential philosopher is the West that got everything started? Rene Descartes. Of course it is! He opened up the fundamental Western question of the Cogito, and the mind-body duality. We now know the paradox of the Mind in the Vat, which is why the Movie The Matrix is perhaps the finest in tackling and illustrating Western philosophy.
Aside from Descartes, who was the most influential philosopher? Immanuel Kant. Everyone knows this who is in the know about history. Kant’s famous opening of the question of things-in-themselves put everyone’s mind into a pretzel for a few hundred years. Hegel, the systems builder in German philosophy was simply writing footnotes to Kant. What philosopher caused several strands of inquiry that enriched outlives in the area of spirit, and even science and religion? Arthur Schopenhauer! He was the intellectual Father of Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud!
Who was the most important scientist of ALL TIME? Issac Newton. Nobody comes close, and nobody ever will in the foreseeable future of the next 1000 years. It is dazzling at the effects of everything physical we have as a result of Newton, the perfect Genius!
Who was the most influential man in law in the last 500 years? Napoleon! Read about the Napoleonic Code, and its basis of law in virtually every country in Europe.
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What does all this mean for the coming Age of Aquarius? Well, the West in one word is Hope. It is an offshoot of Christianity in the hope of creating art, and in the conquest of nature.
What shall the next age be - this Age of Aquarius? Immortality, my friends. This is the next stage and the quest of the next 2000 years. It took Christianity about 1500 years to realize the Hope on Earth itself actualized as the achievements of the West in Art, Philosophy, and Technology. We solved the problem of starvation, infant deaths, an infectious diseases. The next step is the conquest of Death itself.
Some believe in the anti-aging movement that this will come from drugs and science. And, this may play some part in it, but it will take more than that. We will still want to fuck out brains out and have tons of kids, so we will have to solve the problem of living forever and fucking and having more kids than the land masses can handle. How will we solve this? We will have to learn how to populate other areas of the universe. It will take a long time to figure out all this shit. To live on the moon is a big deal even now. Just think how long it will take us to understand how to populate Mars and some of the near Earth asteroids. 2000 years may not be long enough. But, in the quest for immortality, it will have to be done, since we cannot help but want to fuck our brains out as a species.
Immortality is a technical issue, a spiritual issue, a pragmatic issue, and several other problems come with it. It will take all the brainpower to solve in the next 2000 years. The Gods will challenge us because we are supposed to be Mortals. We will have to fight the Gods and wrestle and steal from them the Gift of Immortality. The Gods will perhaps kill off large segments of humanity is this great struggle. But, struggle we must, because the Gods will not give it to us - we will have to fucking take it!
Let us end this post. Vodka has helped in its writing, and now it is time to retire for the night!
Sleep tight. Much love to all of you out there!
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