The Stoa, The Suwa, and the Washhoriwe From 'Lost World'

 This is a good report on the inspiration of the lost world.  That the local tribe has a complete tradition while those elsewhere do not pretty clearly informs us of the existence of a refugio.

The animal grouping is of the large types, who have clearly replaced their original diets successfully.  Note the hunting of tapirs.  That is a lot of meat.

Thus we have an excellent indication of a true refugio comparable to the one we discovered in northern Australia.

Why has this not been properly followed up?  The main reason is of course that it is very difficult and the animals in question will not be cooperating at all.  Like the large crypt-ids in North America, you get a glimpse in a lifetime..

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THE STOA, THE SUWA, AND THE WASHORIWE – A TRIO OF PREHISTORIC SURVIVORS FROM THE REAL 'LOST WORLD'? 

Thursday, 4 August 2016

Front and back cover from my much-read, greatly-treasured 1970s paperback edition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic crypto-novel The Lost World (Cover illustration © Pan Books – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use Policy only basis)

http://karlshuker.blogspot.ca/2016/08/the-stoa-suwa-and-washoriwe-trio-of.html

It is not widely known, but when writing his famous novel The Lost World (published in 1912), in which dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and other Mesozoic reptiles have survived into the present day amid a totally isolated realm present on the plateau at the summit of a very high tepui (a vertically-sided, flat-topped or table-topped mountain in South America), one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's inspirations was a real but still highly mysterious tepui known as Kurupira.

It was named after the curupira, a legendary Amazonian man-beast-like entity. This particular tepui stands 3,435 ft above sea level, and is situated on the Venezuelan-Brazilian border.

The curupira, as depicted in the painting 'O Curupira' by Manoel Santago, 1926 (public domain)

Conan Doyle had learnt about Kurupira from the famous, subsequently-lost explorer Lt-Col. Percy H. Fawcett. He had lately led an expedition to a much more famous tepui in the same region, Mount Roraima.

There are more than 100 tepuis in South America, and at 9,220 ft above sea level Mount Roraima is the highest (and also the largest) in the Pakaraima chain on the borders of Brazil, Venezuela, and Guyana.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (left) and Lieut-Col. Percy H. Fawcett (right) (public domain)

Although they did not encounter any prehistoric creatures on Roraima, Fawcett and his team did receive various native reports of frightening monsters said to inhabit Kurupira and its environs from the local Waiká Indians who inhabit the jungle area around the vicinity of its base. It was Fawcett's recollections of these reports that provided Conan Doyle with further plot ideas during his novel's preparation.

In particular, he was enthralled by Fawcett's tales of an exceedingly voracious bipedal reptile known to the Waiká as the stoa, which was investigated more recently by Czech zoologist Jaroslav Mareš, who documented some of his findings in his cryptozoological encyclopaedia Svět Tajemných Zvířat ('The World of Mysterious Animals'), published in 1997. Mareš spent time residing at Kurupira's base during an expedition there in 1978 (sadly, their attempts to scale this tepui's steep sides proved unsuccessful), and he learnt about the Waiká Indians' belief in the stoa and other alleged monsters here.

My copy of Jaroslav Mareš's cryptozoological encyclopaedia Svět Tajemných Zvířat ('The World of Mysterious Animals') (© Jaroslav Mareš/Littera Bohemica)

They described the stoa as measuring up to 25 ft long and superficially resembling a giant-sized caiman (several species of these South American freshwater alligator relatives are known, but all are of far smaller size). However, they also stated that it can be readily distinguished from such reptiles by way of the following major differences.

First and foremost of these was the very notable fact that the stoa is exclusively bipedal, moving entirely upon its two gigantic hind legs, because its front limbs are so short that it cannot stand upon them. Its jaws are much shorter than a caiman's too, but its head is taller, and it bears a pair of prominent horns above its eyes, which are somewhat reminiscent of those sported by the South American horned frogs Ceratophrys spp.

Horned frog Ceratophrys ornata (public domain)

The Waiká likened its body colouration to theirs too (i.e. green or golden-brown with darker markings), but its mouth is not as wide as that of these famously wide-mouthed frogs, and its skin is covered with hard, non-overlapping, tubercular scales. Above all, they affirmed that there is never any hope of escape if pursued by a stoa.

Moreover, Mareš revealed that this Indian account was confirmed by the missionaries from the Porto da Maloca settlement on the upper Rio Mapulau, located approximately 15 miles from Kurupira as the crow flies. However, they did not believe that the stoa is real. For them, it is just a part of Waiká mythology.

Artistic rendition of the possible appearance in life of the stoa, alongside a human for scale purposes (© Connor Lachmanec)

Mareš has also written three books specifically devoted to Kurupira and its mysteries - Hledání Ztraceného Světa ('In Search of The Lost World'), which documented his 1978 expedition and was published in 1992; Hrůza Zvaná Kurupira ('The Horror Named Kurupira'), published in 2001; and Kurupira: Zlověstné Tajemství ('Kurupira: Sinister Secrets'), published in 2005. In the second of these three, Mareš mentioned meeting during spring 1997 at Boa Vista (capital of Roraima, Brazil's northernmost state) a Scottish gold-prospector whose real name Mareš has not publicly disclosed, referring to him instead only by the pseudonym 'Reginald Riggs'.

Mareš had previously met Riggs in 1978, during his above-mentioned expedition to Mount Roraima. In his 2001 book, Mareš revealed that while Riggs was prospecting in the vicinity of Kurupira he had befriended a Waiká tribesman named Retewa, who supplied him with information concerning the stoa, another dinosaurian cryptid called the suwa, and a pterosaur-like beast termed the washoriwe.

Hrůza Zvaná Kurupira (2001) and Kurupira: Zlověstné Tajemství (2005) (© Jaroslav Mareš)

According to Retewa (via Riggs), the stoa's most common prey are tapirs. Apparently, it conceals itself in dense forest close to a riverbank where these large horse-related ungulates bathe, then abruptly emerges to attack them when they arrive there. It will also devour capybaras, those sizeable pig-like rodents that occur here too. One account related by Retewa to Riggs concerned a reputed confrontation between some hunters from his village and a stoa that they inadvertently encountered while it was looking out for prey. They shot at it with their arrows, but they failed to penetrate its hard, scale-protected skin, and the enraged stoa killed several of them before the others fled.

In an attempt to explain both the origin of the Waiká's firm belief in the stoa and (as he also discovered during his investigations) the complete absence of any such belief among Indian tribes living further out from Kurupira, Mareš has cautiously offered the following thought-provoking theory. He suggests that if the stoa is indeed real, perhaps its species is normally confined entirely to this tepui's lofty isolated plateau, but that a single individual may very occasionally find its way into their ground-level territory via a crack or fracture leading down the tepui from its summit to its base, after which the Waiká live in great fear of it, even after its eventual death, thereby maintaining and reinforcing its presence in their minds and lore for another generation or so until the next accidental stoa visitation occurs.

Restoration of the possible appearance in life of Carnotaurus (© Lida Xing and Yi Liu/Wikipedia CC BY 2.5 licence)

As for what the stoa may be, taxonomically speaking, if it does truly exist: in his cryptozoological encyclopaedia, Mareš noted that during the Cretaceous, South America was home to a taxonomic family of theropod dinosaurs known as the abelisaurids, which were bipedal, carnivorous, and, in some cases, extremely large. The most famous abelisaurid was Carnotaurus sastrei, which was up to 30 ft long, and as noted by Mareš it also happens to be potentially relevant to the stoa for two very different but equally intriguing morphology-based reasons. Firstly: dating from the late Cretaceous and disinterred in 1984 from the La Colonia Formation in Argentina's Chubut Province, its only recorded but exceptionally well-preserved fossilised skeleton shows that this particular abelisaurid species bore a pair of sharp pointed horns above its eyes, just like the stoa (Carnotaurus translates as 'flesh-eating bull'). Secondly: this skeleton is so well preserved that it reveals that the skin of Carnotaurus bore hard non-overlapping scales all over it, just like the stoa.

Coupled with the overall similarity in outward form and size between Carnotaurus and the stoa, these more specific, unexpectedly-matching features led Mareš to speculate as to whether this abelisaurid's lineage may have escaped the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous and has possibly lingered on through the Cenozoic Era into the present-day here in this very remote South American location, isolated atop a high tepui except for rare occasions when one might find its way down into the junglelands at Kurupira's base.

The still-classic (if scientifically-superseded) restoration of sauropods by Charles Knight, 1897 (public domain)

The stoa was not the only putative dinosaur of Kurupira spoken about by Retewa to Riggs. He also claimed that up on this tepui's plateau lives another very strange creature, known to the Waitá as the suwa, a picture of which he drew in the sand for Riggs to see, and a copy of which Riggs in turn drew in his diary, later seen by Mareš. The picture shows a bulky, long-necked, quadrupedal creature, which Riggs likened to a sauropod dinosaur or even a plesiosaur (however, its limbs were clearly portrayed in the drawing as legs, not flippers).

According to the Waiká, moreover, a third mystery creature, called by them the washoriwe, would sometimes swoop down from Kurupira's high summit into the jungle at its base, skimming through this Indian tribe's territory on huge wings that boasted a span of 20 ft or more. In addition, it bore a long bony backward-pointing crest upon its head, and sported a very long pointed beak.

Plateau on top of the tepui in The Lost World (1912) (public domain)

Waiká lore attests that this terrifying entity is the immortal forefather of all vampire bats. Yet whereas the immortal forefathers of all other creatures in their lore closely resemble their respective descendants (except for the much greater size of the forefathers), the long-beaked, bony-crested washoriwe bears scant resemblance to the short-faced, crestless vampire bats. Moreover, whereas these latter bats are strictly nocturnal, the washoriwe reputedly flies only during the daytime.

After highlighting these significant morphological and behavioural discrepancies in his cryptozoological encyclopaedia, Mareš pointed out how, in stark contrast, the washoriwe seemed to be very similar in form and lifestyle to certain pterosaurs. He also commented upon the curious coincidence of how frequently the finding of complete, perfectly-preserved fossil pterosaurs by palaeontologists had occurred in this same region in modern times.

Prof. Challenger vs the pterosaurs in The Lost World (© Richard Svensson)

Might the Waiká's belief in the washoriwe have been inspired, therefore, by their own possible finding of fossil pterosaur remains here from time to time? Or might it even be, as again pondered by Mareš, that the abundance of such remains in this region lends support to the possibility that a pterosaurian lineage has persisted here right into the present day, currently undiscovered by science but well known to the local Indians, who refer to these airborne prehistoric survivors as washoriwes?

When Mareš met Riggs in Boa Vista, Roraima (Brazil's northernmost state), during spring 1997, he learnt that, near a waterfall at Kurupira, Riggs had caught sight of a mysterious flying creature that Retewa had identified as a washoriwe. Moreover, in his cryptozoological encyclopaedia, Mareš stated that other gold-prospectors in this same area have also claimed to have seen such creatures here, flying high above the jungle's tree tops, and some have even sworn that they have been attacked by them.

Do pterosaurs swoop down to the ground from Kurupira's plateau? (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Yet amidst all of these claims of Mesozoic monsters alive and well and living in splendid isolation on Kurupira's lofty plateau, there is a key question desperately needing to be asked. For even if we actually accept that a stoa may very occasionally find its way down from this tepui's summit to its base, and that washoriwes might indeed sometimes wing their way down too, the very burly, quadupedal, sauropod-like form of the suwa unequivocally debars this cryptid from following suit – so how can the Waiká be aware of its existence? Interestingly, Riggs actually asked Retewa how his people could know what exists on the plateau at the top of Kurupira, but Retewa was unable to provide an answer. So perhaps – as surmised by the missionaries – all of their claims regarding monsters are truly based upon nothing more substantial than traditional Waiká mythology, with no foundation in reality.

Alternatively, could it be that at least in earlier days, some of the Waiká's bravest warriors actually scaled Kurupira's daunting height, explored its plateau, and then returned to their tribe back on the ground with stories (exaggerated or otherwise) of what they had seen there? And, if so, perhaps what they saw there was so terrifying that they have never returned, but the original eyewitness reports have been preserved in their tribal lore down through succeeding generations. Who can say?

Mini-poster for The Lost World, 1925 film (public domain)

I wish to take this opportunity to thank very sincerely my friend Miroslav 'Mirek' Fišmeister from the Czech Republic for so kindly translating into English for me all of the relevant passages regarding Kurupira and the stoa, suwa, and washoriwe from Mareš's books. This has enabled me to present here the most extensive, accurate coverage of these cryptids ever produced in English.

Previously, the only English-language reports concerning them that I had been aware of, all of them online, were sparse, confused, and sometimes entirely inaccurate. The principal reason for this inaccuracy stemmed from the fact that a prehistoric monster called the stoa actually appears in Conan Doyle's novel The Lost World, in which it is described as a warty-skinned, toad-like reptile, leaping on its hind legs, but larger than the largest elephant, and of frightful, horrible appearance.

+The stoa as depicted in The Lost World film of 1925 (public domain)

This has inspired some erroneous online speculation, i.e. that there is no cryptozoological basis for the stoa, that it is entirely fictitious, a baseless invention of Conan Doyle for his novel. In reality, however, as I have now revealed here, it is the exact reverse that is true. Namely, that the stoa in his novel was directly inspired by reports of Kurupira's cryptozoological stoa as told to him by Fawcett.

Yet another longstanding example of online cryptozoological confusion is finally elucidated and resolved.

What did Joseph Goebbels mean?

This is a timely debate to have.  It is forgotten that a real debate took place during and after WWII that structured and guided the development of the next sixty years until the collapse of the whole communist enterprise itself.


We have a wide range of global problems best not resolved with a global war.  Yet those problems are triggering increasing conflict.   We have commented on many individual aspects, but i need only look at another spot on the map to drum up a concern.  The world needs a global dispensation and ultimately that is described through the conceptualization of the Communion of XANADU and the Rule of Twelve established globally.


And yes, Hitler's war ended the old European Order while sacrificing the German Idea.  It was replaced in Europe by a benign non ethnic German hegemony as had to happen sooner or later.  The war made it sooner.  It will naturally expand to include Russia and Constantinople which will become  the natural capital of Europe.

It is disconcerting that Goebbels understood so much so well.

This may seem outrageous but that will be the natural outcome of conflicts now arising and pending economic changes.

What did Joseph Goebbels mean when he wrote, “The war may be lost, but at least we have the comfort of knowing we exterminated the stupidity of the European bourgeois world” in his diary in 1945?

Sunwoo Park, studies History & Political Science at Emory University (2021)

 http://www.quora.com/What-did-Joseph-Goebbels-mean-when-he-wrote-%E2%80%9CThe-war-may-be-lost-but-at-least-we-have-the-comfort-of-knowing-we-exterminated-the-stupidity-of-the-European-bourgeois-world%E2%80%9D-in-his-diary-in-1945/answer/Sunwoo-Park-5

Because if you really think about it, in an extremely disturbing and distressing sense, the Nazis won the war.

Goebbels admits that militarily, Nazi Germany had lost the war. It was utterly crushed by the might of the world’s three strongest powers, the United States, Soviet Union and British Empire. By 1945, the Soviets were rushing across Western Poland/Eastern Germany while the Anglo-American armies crossed the German-French border and invaded the Ruhr.

So in what sense did the Nazis win their war? In that the Nazis overturned the entire European social and political order. The Nazis were bent on establishing a new world order and succeeded in doing so, just not the specific one they intended.

Goebbels disturbingly acknowledged how the Nazis in a sense succeeded in one of their goals, the destruction of the old order.

World War Two finished off the work that World War One started. The European Empires were significantly weakened, with Britain losing her crown jewel, India, within 2 years after the conclusion of the war.

 The Nazis absolutely destroyed the European order. European bourgeoise no longer ruled the world. London was the seat of the world’s greatest power. Now, Washington D.C. and Moscow were competing to rule the world. Paris used to be the cultural capital of the world, where artists, writers and thinkers met to discuss, debate and unleash their passions and thoughts. Due to the war, a lot of them immigrated to the United States, safe from war, settling down in New York City.

London during the blitz, 1941

American ships carrying refugees to New York City during the war, in 1941

Don’t believe me? Look at all the political maps you’ll see of the world from the 1890s to 1945 and then the ones you see from 1945–1991. If you look at the late nineteenth century maps and early/mid twentieth century maps, you’ll see them focusing on European colonialism and the extent of European imperial rule in continents such as Africa or Asia. Almost all major maps focus more on European empires than just about any other topic.

Then look at the political world maps (and even specific) from 1945–1991. Most of them focus not on European empires (other than their disintegration). Instead, most focus on the Cold War. The conflict between the United States’ Capitalist led coalition and the Soviet Union’s Communist Internationale.

Map of the world at the end of hostilities, 1945. Anyone can see that Africa and Southeast Asia are still ruled by the European powers.

Map of the world during the Cold War. The “bourgeois” European empires have collapsed, giving way to the Capitalist United States and the Communist Soviet Unions.

Hitler and his Nazi regime did not intend for the world order to be one between the Communists and the Capitalists. Instead of the German flag raised over all of Eastern Europe, the Red Banner of Communism flew in ten European capitals. Instead of the destruction of the capitalist Western allies, it was merely weakened but left strong enough to fight the might of its new foe, the Soviet Union. The Germans did not become a strong people as Hitler envisioned, instead, the Germans lost vast territories and were divided into two states for nearly fifty years. The Jewish populations were intended to be utterly exterminated, with him nearly succeeding in killing over two-thirds of the European Jewish population. Ironically, 70 years later, the Jews have probably never been stronger in history since the fall of the first Jewish states thousands of years ago.

Regardless, he did succeed in his initial goal of tearing down European imperialism, which had been ruling the world for roughly two or three centuries, and setting forth the stage for a new world order. The very one we still live in today.

Edit: Actually, really thinking about it, I think Goebbels isn’t merely acknowledging the effect the Nazi Regime on the world. He’s mocking us. He’s mocking us, claiming that “despite what we’ve done, despite the triumph of good over evil, it was in a sense futile”. The British and French fought to save not only their nations and Western civilization but also their empires. In a sense they lost more than they won in the war.

PS: Yes I know the Allied Powers weren’t exactly “good” and did some very morally ambiguous or even outright wrong things, but do you really want to live in a world where the Nazis and Imperial Japanese won?

5 World Views that Need to Be Scrapped for us to Evolve

This is an excellent review of traditional world views that all need to be brought forward into our consciousness and understood for what they are.  We are mentally filled with the language of these worldviews and this makes it difficult for most to step back from it all and to see what is been done.



Introspection on these worldviews needs to be conducted in order to liberate ones thinking.  I have long been conscious of these views and their inherent error but also conscious that most accept them without introspection.  A simple conversation can test most folks limits.


The new idea that can be shared is that Modernity is shifting general perceptions for the better.  I have also seen this and welcome it.  Perhaps be enunciating it here we can even begin to educate our population away from these world views.


More critically grasping the physical reality of the second tier of matter and our own eternal spirit body puts us all into the proper perspective.  That is also emerging and i am merely a long ways ahead in terms of understanding the underlying science.  Even without that insight we are generally making excellent progress.

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5 World Views that Need to Be Scrapped for us to Evolve

By WakingTimes July 27, 2015

http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/07/27/5-world-views-that-need-be-scrapped-evolve/

Gilbert Ross, Staff Writer

The idea of a world view has two inherent meanings. First it is a personal view of how the world is or should be, and secondly it is a view that is shared or consented to by others not just ourselves. So a world view is both how we personally see the world but at the same time it is something that is based on consensual reality – there is a social dimension to it. In fact, most of what we call world views are not created by any one person but rather a person chooses to adopt a world view that was already supported by others in society. Perhaps this is because he or she feels emotionally inclined to do so or since it fits comfortably with his/her own existing set of beliefs. Allegiance and support for one political party or ideology is a clear example of this since the individual chooses a political view that fits in with his own ‘moral’ beliefs and values.

Adopting a world view has nothing intrinsically wrong in itself. In fact there are world views that are healthy and arise out of authentic, loving and conscious effort to improve humanity. World views can be healthy especially when they are not rooted in irrational choice and when they are open to be revised and changed, hence accepting the fact that nothing is absolute and some of our knowledge is provisional at best – therefore stands to be corrected. The last point is in fact one of the major tenets that makes Science, well, Science.

There are other ‘self-destructive’ world views on the other hand which have been widely accepted in our consensual reality and have been rooted in our psyche for a long, long time. These world views are so deeply ingrained in our framework of reality that they are unconscious and even if we can still call them world views, they are more implicit rather than explicit. This makes them even harder to detect, even more so because they are sometimes heavily guarded by our collective ego. In fact, these are world views that arise out of ego-based fear, judgment and its obsession to cling on to or identify with something. Luckily, global consciousness is moving towards greater awareness and hence away from such views.


At the same time it is good to get a quick reminder of what these world views are and why it is high time to leave behind:

1.  ‘Us and Them’

More than a world view, this is a general attitude that gives rise to other misguided world views, yet I will call it a general world view here. It is related to the idea of separation – one of the biggest sources of suffering in Man. The separation of our social tribe, our people, our nation, our political group, our ideology, our gene pool, our culture – from yours. The ‘us and them’ world view is not only divisive but self-destructive since it always seeks to cut off something, whether individuals or groups, from something else.

This ‘cutting off’ is a powerful tool of the ego to keep us from remembering a liberating truth – that we are all connected and plugged in the same cosmic wheel of life. We are all One as the spiritual adage goes and the deeper we sink into this truth, the more we realise that this is the basis of creative and constructive change as we move forward in the global evolution of consciousness. Yet the ego doesn’t want this, doesn’t it? It will fight tooth and nail to prevent it and hence has found ways of implanting the misperception of separateness which in turn fuels irrational beliefs and even political agendas. I find it crazy, in fact, how so many of us don’t see past the veneer of certain ideologies and how we try to ‘rationally’ justify an ideology that is ultimately rooted in a misperception and irrational belief.

The ‘Us and them’ world view is such a creeping malaise in us humans that it also extend beyond social, cultural and political thinking. It is also the thing that has been detaching us from our natural world. Humanity passed through a point where it stopped feeling an integral part of the earth and the cosmos and started seeing the natural world as a resource pool and playground to satisfy our growing greed. So we also became separate from nature. Both Science and religion are at fault with this but would not like to go in the detail here.

There is however hope – a shining hope I would add. There is now more and more people who are stepping out of this illusion and spreading the awareness that there is no ‘us and them’ but rather only ‘Us’ (which coincidentally might be the acronym for ‘Universal Solidarity!)

2. Materialism and the Disenchantment with the World

Modern Science is relatively young – spanning some 200 years or at least somewhere in the region. As they say, Science has brought progress and unbound us from the shackles of the dark ages, yet modern Science has also generated another world view as a side effect which is still strongly prevalent nowadays – materialism. Materialism doesn’t mean zeal for material things but rather it is the world view that the material world is the basis of the Universe. In the classical Science era, it meant that all the natural phenomena can be explained in terms of underlying physical and chemical processes. The rest is just mumbo jumbo.

This has created a ‘flattened’ view of the world which caused us to become disenchanted with the magical universe around us. Indirectly it has caused us to become colder and more cynical. We started shrugging off mystery and beauty as just fiction or something that can be later explained by some physical process. In older, more ‘primitive’ societies people were still connected to the natural wonder of the earth and the universe. We were still in awe, enchanted by the mystery. We sat around fires hearing the elders tell stories that instructed the heart and not the mind. We understood the story nature was telling us beyond the logic of words. We were fascinated by it all.

Yet materialism became the epitome of the 19th and 20th century. Our mass consciousness turned from being beautiful, organic and fractal to being mechanical just like the assembly lines of the industrial revolution. According to Carl Jung, this is the ailment of modern Man – the basis of his neurosis. Of course things have gone a long way, even in Science. The classical view of Science made way to more open paradigms brought about by Quantum physics and the integration of cross-disciplinary paths. At the same time there is an emerging undercurrent which is becoming more aware of our ancestral wisdom – a revival of some sort through teachers and people who are trying their best to keep the wisdom alive.

3. Misguided Individualism

Another by-product of the 20th century, particularly in the more ‘liberal’ west, has been individualism or the idea that the rights of the individuals stand supreme and should be safeguarded by just laws and meritocracy. Of course this is a beautiful ideal and something everyone would stand up for. The problem is that this ideal got somehow abused, distorted and devolved into a more egocentric form. As modern society is now spiraling out of control with over-consumerism and greed for material possessions and power, individualism has been given a different overtone. We have overstretched the idea to now mean that the so called perceived needs of the individual (which in reality are nothing more than ‘wants’ sold to us by the media) come before the welfare of the communities and the planet.

This distorted acceptance of individual greed over the community at large can be seen projected on the current state of the planet. We have become indifferent and lost in our small distorted worlds. We don’t feel part of the community anymore – we are disengaged with the affairs of the world. The media has desensitized us to the point that barrages of negative impressions – wars, atrocities, mass murders, violence – feel like some movie of some sort. We have been disempowered by the belief that there is nothing we can do to help the world…it’s already hard enough keeping ourselves afloat. So the world view of individualism has been distorted up to a point of making a 180 degree turn – from empowering to disempowering the individual.

4. Institutionalized Control

Another form of disempowerment of the individual comes through institutionalized control. These are the top-down hierarchical control structures of society such as schooling, media and its censorship, mass propaganda, etc. We feel the institutional pressures weighing down on us and what’s more we are becoming more aware that some of these control structures were put in place to accommodate the agenda of the few at the expense of the many. The self-defeating world view that accompanies this is a fatalist one. We have given up our control and freedom completely, feeling that this is the way things are and that there is nothing much we can do about it. This is how the world works. This is also referred to as the problem of diffused responsibility, where individuals feel that the current state of affairs in the world is not their responsibility but that of a higher power such as the governments, politicians, leaders and the institutions.

The good news is that with the advancement of technology together with the growing will and awareness of people, all this is changing. We are seeing a shift away from tight hierarchical structures to more decentralization and democratization. The media is a good example. Before we could only know what is happening around us through the news broadcasted by the same news networks. Now everyone can be a journalist and information is shared by the many to the many through the web which became more social and mobile. Education is going through its own makeover too. We are now seeing more people looking for alternative forms of schooling which move away from the traditional mainstream forms. Home schooling, online courses and community based schooling is becoming more diffused.

Technology is also helping us become more self-sustainable and independent with respect to our energy needs and waste management. The general direction of all these changes are gradually helping us get out of this fatalistic world view and empowering us to take control of our own destiny through mass collaboration and the healthy use of technology.

5. Absolutism

Absolutism is a world view that is also inherent in some other world views. It is the idea that our beliefs, laws, cultural norms and way of life are absolute in the sense that they can be applied universally in all contexts to every human on this planet. So when we see others applying their own system of beliefs and cultural way of life we see it as a threat to our own. This gives rise the ‘us and them’ world view through misogynistic reactions such as intolerance, racism, wars and conflicts. This world view has been the basis of many wars and atrocities throughout human history, particularly religious ones.

Unfortunately this world view is still very much dispersed today. We still haven’t learned to be more tolerant to diversity and the fact that cultural norms and beliefs are relative, not absolute. The idea that our reality is the only one or the dominant one is so short-sighted and egocentric that it falls into complete blindness and madness at times. If there is one world view that we need to get rid of before others, it is this one, especially now in such a fast changing world.

The more we evolve as a species, the more we have to realize that our knowledge and beliefs are always changing. It is at best provisional. Nothing is absolute and nothing is cast in stone. Hence, it is imperative for our own survival and flourishing to understand how counter-productive it is to get stuck in an absolutist world view. We need to embrace change, as the world is transforming fast, but more importantly we need to be at peace with the idea that even our world views can and will change… as so it should be.

About the Author

Gilbert has been writing about personal growth topics for a number of years on his blog Soul Hiker and on various other media. He is passionate about researching, writing, practising and teaching people how to achieve positive life transformations and unleash the limitless potential of their mind.

How the ancient philosophers imagined the end of the world

Well, they diid and actually left no stone unturned.  It is only the way more recent idea of human progress that we overcome past concepts of worlds ending.  Yet our own history is about knocking down one organized society after another in order to emplace our own form of order.

Today we have created a global civiliuzation which is still a motley mosaic of mostly cultures all now accepting what is economically best described as modernity.

We all also understand that it is unfinished and also its ultimate expression remains unclear.  I speak to the rule of twelve which is still opaque.  Yet that can stand for millions of years and really throughout space and time as accepted truth..

How the ancient philosophers imagined the end of the world

Destruction (1836, detail) from Thomas Cole’s series The Course of Empire. Courtesy Wikipedia

https://psyche.co/ideas/what-good-was-the-apocalypse-for-the-greeks-and-romans

Christopher Staris professor of Classics at Middlebury College, Vermont. His most recent book is Apocalypse and Golden Age: The End of the World in Greek and Roman Thought (2021).

Edited by Sam Dresse

https://psyche.co/ideas/what-good-was-the-apocalypse-for-the-greeks-and-romans

What are the main threats to the continued survival of humanity? What catastrophes lie ahead? These may seem like uniquely modern questions posed by contemporary thinkers in the growing field of existential risk. Yet, millennia ago, ancient Greek and Roman philosophers were already formulating and debating such questions. While these thinkers had radically different ways of looking at the world and one’s place in it, they all agreed that some form of apocalyptic catastrophe awaited humans in the future.

How can we explain this interest? One of the main reasons is that ancient philosophers realised that the end of the world is ‘good to think with’. End-of-the-world narratives allow for a form of time travel. They offer a vision of the future while permitting us to safely witness the coming catastrophe. The stories we tell about the end of the world reveal much about our current world view and how the past and present have shaped our current trajectory. Unlike the Biblical tradition, which sees the end of the world as a day of divine wrath and judgment in which the elect are saved and the rest are damned, ancient Greek and Roman philosophers saw the end of the world as a natural process that was part of the regular functioning of the cosmos. They largely posited that human development is limited, and that humanity and world catastrophe are inextricably linked. Nature has imposed fixed and inexorable limits to human growth and development. Such messages are increasingly urgent today.

In the ancient world, as today, there were many different scenarios for how the world might end, and these were often in critical dialogue with each other as well as with earlier stories about destructions by fire and water. Already in the 6th century BCE, Anaximander may have posited that all of Earth’s water will eventually dry up, leaving a parched and barren world without life. By contrast, his successor Xenophanes argued that the world will actually be destroyed by water. (He even offered evidence that there had already been a great flood, noting that seashells have been found on land far from water.) It is in Plato’s philosophy, from the mid-4th century BCE, that we find some of the first sustained attempts to envision multiple end-of-the-world scenarios: fires, floods, earthquakes and disease. He writes in the Timaeus: ‘there have been and there will be a great many destructions of humans’ (all translations are my own). Rather than understanding history as headed toward a definitive, teleological end, Plato sees human development as continually determined by various forms of world catastrophe, and these accounts make for some of his most intriguing philosophical insights. In his dialogues Timaeus and Critias, Plato used this theory to tell the story, likely of his own invention, of the destruction of Atlantis. He also adopts something of an early ecocritcal stance when describing the changes that have occurred to the natural environment around Athens as a result of these periodic disasters. In his final dialogue, the Laws, Plato imagines how these repeated terrestrial catastrophes shape the development of political life.

Plato’s student Aristotle is a problematic case. Like his teacher, Aristotle posits that human development is cyclical. Humans continually discover, develop, lose and then rediscover the same ideas and technologies. In his extant works, however, Aristotle does not explain what causes these cycles. Later writers offer evidence that, in his now-lost dialogues, Aristotle followed Plato’s theory of periodic world catastrophes, but perhaps he later rejected it.

The Road and The Walking Dead are more indebted to Plato’s theories than to Biblical apocalypses

It is often said that ancient Greek thought conceived of time as cyclical. Plato and Aristotle’s views of the repeated development of society would seem to bear out that point, at least from a human perspective: the world is never destroyed, and it persists indefinitely. But cyclicality is not always the best way to define ancient philosophical thought. Democritus and the Epicureans, for instance, theorised the end of the world in the fullest sense. While they both argued that there are multiple worlds built up of atoms, and that all worlds are headed for a definitive end, they posited different methods of destruction. Democritus, a younger contemporary of Socrates, is reported to have claimed that worlds are destroyed when one world crashes into another. This scenario anticipates the contemporary awareness of the dangers of asteroid strikes and other ‘near-Earth objects’. Epicurus, who set up his philosophical garden in Athens around 307 BCE, argued that each world dies when it eventually dissipates and scatters into the void. Again, to put things in terms of modern risks, perhaps this idea has a resonance with the loss of the protective atmosphere. The Stoics, who were the Epicureans’ great philosophical rivals during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, endorsed a strong view of cyclical time and eternal return. They argued for the periodic destruction and rebirth of the world by fire, which they called the ekpyrosis. (Some Stoics, however, rejected this theory.)

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The ancient Greek and Roman philosophical tradition lies beneath many contemporary visions of the future. Popular modern scenarios that see humanity attempting to rebuild after world catastrophe, such as Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006) or the television series The Walking Dead (2010-22), are more indebted to Plato’s theories than to Biblical apocalypses. Plato surmises that there are aways survivors left after a global catastrophe. In the Laws, Plato gives an account of how the survivors of a cataclysm would slowly rebuild society: in contrast to modern post-apocalyptic visions of scarcity and conflict, he posits that ‘civil strife and war’ would vanish and that people would ‘act kindly and be well disposed to each other’ (678e). Similarly, it might appear that the contemporary visions of a secular catastrophe based on chance rather than God’s plan represent a thoroughly modern idea, as some scholars have recently argued. Yet even this scenario has an important, if overlooked, precedent in ancient philosophy. The Epicureans were not atheists, but they did believe that the gods played no part in ordering the world. Creation and destruction of worlds was left to the random swerving of atoms through the void. In this system, even the end of the world could be a sudden, chance event. Writing in the 50s BCE, the Roman Epicurean Lucretius drives this point home in his poem On the Nature of the Universe (De rerum natura):

Perhaps the event itself will grant credibility to my words, and soon you will see everything forcefully shaken by earthquakes. I hope Fortune the helmsman will keep this far away from us, and reason, rather than the event, will persuade you that everything can be crushed and fall with a terrifying crash.

Yet ancient philosophical speculation on the end of the world was not only concerned with such big-picture cosmological questions. Thinking about the end of the world could also be put to more practical day-to-day purposes. This is particularly clear with Roman Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, who closely linked physics (the study of the nature of the Universe) with ethics and how to live a good life. Lucretius frequently uses the end of the world to help alleviate the fear of death. The Stoic philosopher Seneca (c4 BCE-65 CE) discusses how imagining the end of the world can offer consolation after the death of a loved one or alleviate feelings of loneliness.

One of the main goals of Stoic philosophy was to be able to meet with understanding, equanimity and resilience each event and challenge, including the end of the world. Even the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE) wrote about the end of the world as part of his daily practice of philosophy: ‘Everything in existence will quickly be changed: either it will be turned into vapour, if the nature of the Universe is one, or it will be scattered.’ Although Marcus Aurelius is typically seen as a Stoic philosopher, when it comes to envisioning the end of the world, he is not dogmatic. He entertains the Stoic and Epicurean scenarios. Either the world will be burned and vaporised in the ekpyrosis, or its atoms will be scattered into the void. What is on display here is not only the emperor’s acceptance of other philosophical systems but also the fact that thinking and writing about the end of the world is part of his ‘spiritual exercises’, his everyday engagement with philosophy that helps him live the good life. Modern psychological evidence seems to back up this ancient insight. Envisioning the end of the world may be good for you by aiding in developing psychological resilience.

Today, the ever-growing and multiplying threats of world catastrophe often seem overwhelming and incomprehensible. As such they may inspire fear, a feeling of helplessness and ‘doomerism’. The ancient philosophical tradition on the end of the world does not offer a panacea for our current anxieties about the future. These philosophers did not have to reckon with the anthropogenic existential risks we currently face, and no strand of Greek and Roman philosophy sought to prevent the end of the world. Nevertheless, this tradition may offer a way to reposition ourselves psychologically with respect to future catastrophes and existential risks. We could follow their advice and accept the end of the world with equanimity. Or we could build on their insights and move on to the next tasks of shaping, if not a catastrophe-free future, at least a more catastrophe-resilient one.