A newspaper headline today, unconsciously invokes imagery of the four horsemen of the apocalypse,
of doomsday. Fear and division are being whipped up globally through a compliant media and the internet
as if it were wartime. The difference this time is that the war is against nature on two fronts:
a pandemic and a human-triggered planetary heat death. And as usual in wartime, truth is the
first casualty. This is an all-too-familiar pattern. It requires the broadest possible
historical perspective to understand. The Electric Universe synthesis is the
only science that has grown from that understanding. It offers hope and inspiration for a better future.
Sadly, our 2020 conference had to be cancelled as the dreadful downward cycle
of humanity's fearfulness and irrationality headed towards its nadir.
How often do we have to repeat this destructive pattern? How grim does it have to get before we come to our senses?
Our planned theme for the conference last year was 2020 Vision. It is a theme that I am passionate about.
Since the Electric Universe has a vision of humanity, rather like that of the
Apollo 8 astronauts who first orbited the moon. Perhaps only the few humans who have
witnessed Earth from that distance in space have felt the cosmic insight that such a perspective offers.
On Christmas Eve in 1968, the Apollo 8 spacecraft with astronauts Frank Bormann,
Jim Lovell and Bill Anders entered lunar orbit. At the beginning of the fourth orbit,
their spacecraft was emerging from the far side of the moon when Earthrise, one of the most
influential images in history was taken. The image affected Bill Anders who said later
”This is the only home we have and yet we're busy shooting at each other
threatening nuclear war and wearing suicide vests. It amazes me.” He gave up his religious
beliefs because he could not imagine a judgmental deity up there,
wondering whether Billy was a good boy yesterday. With a clearer view of our world in relation to the Sun,
Moon and stars, he recognized the irrationality of our beliefs and behavior.
History shows that beliefs that acquire the character of religious dogma
are the most inhibiting and divisive influence in the world. Yet religion fills a basic need that
science felt bound to address. Sadly, the result is merely a religious story rewritten -
the lifeless and unscientific Big Bang creation myth. We must first understand human nature to
understand the world. But in this technocratic world it is a specialist subject,
not taught to scientists who need it most. In my keynote speech at the 2016
Electric Universe conference, I introduced the work of Dr. Iain McGilcrist
whose groundbreaking work on the different functions of the two hemispheres of the brain,
has shown that our education systems damage our ability to do science. By preferentially training the left
hemisphere which focuses on detail, rather than the whole picture,
you get stuck in a certain way of thinking, which is fine for a worker on an industrial assembly line,
but deadly for doing science. Left-hemisphere people exhibit denial and a need to be in control.
It has resulted in the active suppression of alternative ways of approaching problems
and accusing others of denying their beliefs about what constitutes the facts.
Instead it is they who will not contemplate ideas they deny. As a consequence, there have been no
fundamental breakthroughs in science since early last century. In complete contrast,
Dr. McGilcrist compares this with right- hemisphere people who get meaning from understanding the
whole, and are comfortable with not being able to grasp everything. That was encouraged in the
highly productive 19th century, by a more general education and openness to the self-taught,
which resulted in significant contributions to science by eminent outsiders,
like Ben Franklin, Faraday, William Herschel and many others. It has been my fortunate approach,
resulting in the Electric Universe synthesis. However, modern academia is highly
resistant to incursions, even from Nobel prize winners in other disciplines. The lack of major
breakthroughs in fundamental science in the last century, is the result. I was lucky that my early
inspiration came from the classically trained scholar, Immanuel Velikovsky who was a practicing psychoanalyst.
In the 1972 BBC Horizon documentary on his major work, Worlds in Collision, the narrator finally asks
”Why do his views attract such sympathy? Perhaps it is because what he has to say is so much fuller
than the grey conventional view of man's history and that of the solar system. And he
offers his listeners a total theory, one which appears to explain everything -
even the origins of religion.” ”Most of all he offers them a philosophy of hope;
an idea that through his view of science, rather than the orthodox view,
man can save himself, not kill himself. He offers them an understanding of man's irrationality
and thereby a chance to cure it.” Velikovsky concludes by stating, “Mankind
is irrational in everything he does.... He lives under the urge to repeat the [catastrophes of the past].
There is nothing more important than for the human race than to know the past;
to be able to face it!” His warning is clearly of utmost importance today.
As a practicing psychoanalyst Velikovsky identified the origin of humanity's subconscious doomsday fear,
originating from apocalyptic planetary close encounters. Hell, like the desolate landscapes of the
Moon, Mars and Venus was in the heavens, while the heaven on Earth was being destroyed.
Throughout history, those who wish to control others have played upon this existential fear.
The famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung also identified the subconscious nightmares that haunt all
humanity, but he couldn't explain their origin. He too warned that humanity is its own worst enemy.
Velikovsky, by explaining the archetypes, showed that our irrational post-traumatic stress behavior
is expressed cyclically in trying to somehow safely relive the experience. For example,
through watching disaster movies, involving an archetypal hero to save the world.
But in the extreme it involves visiting destruction upon others we would like to control
in our misdirected fear. The catharsis that follows the madness has people working together to rebuild.
I'm lucky to have experienced this collective behavior following World War II.
But this technological age has seen the world become progressively more
dangerous in the hands of leaders of a damaged species. This critical understanding for our long-term survival
on this extraordinary and beautiful blue planet was buried by mainstream astronomers who
had acquired the status of a priesthood, and who denied all of Velikovsky's
evidence without reading it, because it didn't satisfy their subconscious necessity
for a peaceful, clockwork solar system. The Electric Universe cosmology is built
upon Velikovsky's insights and those of the scholars who have developed his work for many decades.
The result is an unprecedented scientific and cultural vision for the future, as the
arts, humanities and sciences are combined in a phenomenal and awe-inspiring
panorama of the recent history of the living Earth. It promises to heal
our differences and restore peace on Earth. Nothing less should be the goal of ‘we
damaged survivors’ from an unremembered past. The present is not the key to the past.
Surely the idea that there is still a great deal to discover, is a more inspiring position for artists,
philosophers and scientists alike. William James shone his lantern upon
this point in his 1895 address to the Harvard Young Men's Christian Association
entitled “Is Life Worth Living?”
”I have heard more than one teacher say that all the fundamental conceptions of
truth have been found by science, and that the future has only the details of the
picture to fill in. But the slightest reflection on the real conditions
will suffice to show how barbaric such notions are.”
”They show such a lack of scientific imagination, that it is hard to see how one who is
actively advancing any part of science can make a mistake so crude.”