Canberra, Australia circa 2004
This will be the fourth trip down under. But unlike some of the previous ones from Canada this one originates in Japan. Sydney time is only a couple of hours off Tokyo time so jet lag will not plague my mindbody continuum. Try interviewing a man for three days about plasma science when your arse is still ensconced energetically on the other side of the planet!
Australia is ancient. The ‘white’ man’s presence here represents merely a blip on the aboriginal radar where dreamtime is most of the time. The Aboriginal peoples of Australia are believed to have inhabited the continent continuously for at least 65,000 years, making them one of the oldest cultures in the world. What percentage of roughly 250 years of colonization does this result in? ・38%! Not even half a percent of human ‘time’ on the continent is taken up by left brained Caucasians who think they know a thing or two about reality, the universe and the world we inhabit. Teleport yourself to Australia ten thousand years ago, or twenty and do your very best to imagine being so totally connected to the entirety of Nature (the universe) that you have absolutely no reason to want to ‘change’ it.
Kinship. Seen much of that recently? Identity? Better not go there. Jesus, they might send me to a woke re-education camp! Conspiracy? Take note of what has happened to the ‘leading intellectual in the West’ as he has been called often. I refer to Jordan Peterson.
“How dare you call me a he!” Says the guy with the dangling big willy in the female dressing room. There are (now) laws against that! Peterson was the only dude on the block who paid attention to what that implied regarding our sacred right to free speech. One man makes a difference. One woman makes a difference. Or did you not notice how the history of the world is dependent on ONE person (at a time) figuring stuff out. I had come to meet one like that, not the first and only of course but arguably the sanest.
Dreamtime stories? Do modern people dream of computer-generated creatures? A holistic perspective? Now that the word holistic has been so flakily hijacked by algorithm entrepreneurs of every devious type imaginable that it simply means absolutely nothing of any real consequence at all, let us pause to consider our common plight.
Try your very bestest to imagine, with all your modern might what such a rich cosmology might mean to you. Those first peoples might just as well be Arcturians as far as we are concerned since our current level of psychotic disconnect from reality has reached almost fatal proportions. Naturally you may beg to differ but hey, perforce take a cold hard look at a planet about to be very rapidly hijacked by its own technological prowess melded to cool fascist ideology. Or maybe we will all magically become new world holistics! Yipee! Another old white guy is sure to save us soon!
In a pinch I would rather be with this guy above. I asked my machine assistant for information on just how rich this man was. The affably chatty wee machine summarily disgorged the following easily confirmed skills:
Deep Environmental Knowledge: Aboriginal people possess an intricate understanding of their environment, including the ability to read subtle signs in nature for weather forecasting, finding water sources, and identifying seasonal changes that affect food availability.
Traditional Bushcraft and Survival Skills: Skills such as making tools and weapons from natural materials, building shelters, navigating vast landscapes without maps or compasses, and lighting fires using traditional methods are fundamental.
Expert Foraging and Hunting: Proficiency in tracking, hunting, and foraging for food, with a deep knowledge of plant and animal species, including which are edible, medicinal, or poisonous.
Cultural and Spiritual Connection: A profound spiritual connection to the land, animals, and plants, viewing them as kin or totems, which influences how resources are used and conserved. This includes practices that ensure sustainability and respect for the environment.
Oral Tradition and Storytelling: The ability to retain and convey complex information through stories, songs, dances, and ceremonies, which is critical for passing on laws, knowledge, and cultural values across generations.
Natural Medicine: A comprehensive understanding of medicinal plants and natural remedies for treating illnesses and injuries, accumulated through generations of observation and practice.
Community Living and Cooperation: Skills in living in close-knit communities where sharing, cooperation, and mutual support are essential for survival and well-being.
Artistic Expression: Profound skills in expressing cultural identity, history, and connection to the land through art, including painting, sculpture, weaving, and ceremonial performances.
Conflict Resolution: Techniques for resolving disputes within and between groups in ways that maintain social cohesion and respect for cultural laws.
Sustainability Practices: An intrinsic understanding of living sustainably within natural means, including practices like controlled burning (cultural or cool burning) to manage land health and prevent larger wildfires.
Humbling is it not? What can you do? What can I? What was the point of all this ‘progress’? According to J. Krishnamurti at one of his last lectures I was fortunate to attend, the Indian born sage was queried by an audience member if progress always involves violence. With unbeatable panache and in less than a second the wizened old philosopher quipped,
“The root meaning of progress means to enter the enemy’s camp fully armed!” And with that he strode off the stage triumphantly yet with total humility. That was in San Francisco circa 1975. Fast forward three decades to Canberra airport. To my amazement the subject of this extended interview has come to personally meet me. Tall, handsome and with a nifty beard giving him the look of a Nat Geo explorer. This grainy old world shot shows him outside his home with me at the time of the interview. Meet Wallace Thornhill the chief proponent of the Electric Universe theory.
Wallace left us last year. His presence will be greatly missed by all who knew him
I smelt something was afoot with the whole gamut of theories about the physics of the universe despite not having any real clue about the math involved in Einstein’s tortuously concocted ideas. I vaingloriously yet instinctively imagined he was just plain wrong. I had a deep interest in people like the iconoclastic student of Freud and author of ‘Worlds in collision’, the much aligned Immanuel Velikovsky:
Book burning does not even come close to how they treated a man who recognized (principally through psychoanalysis) that humanity has a massive psychic scar in its so-called collective unconscious. Something totally fucked us all up deep in the past.
That just happens to align itself with multiple legends and myths that globally speak of an unspeakable catastrophe in our past. But hey, they were all merry idiots, right?
Wal ended up meeting Velikovsky.
“I met him before he died and having a pretty good background in electrical engineering, I sensed that he was right. The position of the planets relative to each other is not at all in a stable, endless orbit with unchanging distances between heavenly bodies.” Over the next three days he outlined the still larval ideas that would become the backbone of an interdisciplinary approach and decades later host international EU conferences. I attended one in Las Vegas. Meanwhile the real-world scientists would say this on Rational Wiki:
Electric Universe (EU) is an umbrella term that covers various pseudo-scientific cosmological ideas built around the claim that the formation and existence of various features of the Universe can be better explained by electricity and magnetism than by gravity alone. As a rule, EU is usually touted as an aether-based theory with numerous references to tall tales from mythology. However, the exact details and claims are ambiguous, lack mathematical formalism, and often vary from one delusional crank to the next.
Oh dost not thou protesteth too much lefty brain! Ask these rationals how come most of the planets in our solar system, particularly Mars have such bizarre scarring on their surfaces. Another aboriginal group in North America, the plains Indians, always knew that the planet is called scarface despite having no telescopes.
This is called electrical machining or electrical scarring by proponents of that silly theory. Imagine massive plasma discharges (lightning so huge as to be basically empire ending) between planets approaching each other’s magnetic fields. Conceive if you can of a universe absolutely full of something that nobody talks about. They never mentioned it in my school. It is mostly composed of Hydrogen. Forget about it at most educational (indoctrination) institutions such as universities. I am willing to bet you dear reader that you cannot answer the following simple question that throws into enormous doubt the entire cosmological theoryworld you have quite possibly been entrained by.
And yet it does nothing? According to main stream science the universe might as well be the much-loved vacuum of space. The colder, the starker, the more lifeless the better for old lefty brain. That would keep the entire crackpot cosmology perfectly in accord with a soul-less, God-less, meaning-less expanding mess of nothing-ness. I am guessing all of our first nations peoples would dislocate their hips laughing at the utter absurdity of materialistic science and its ‘theories’. But I love science. Yes. Not scientism as I am oft repeating in these wee essays.
For three days I got the entire spiel. Plasma conducts electricity effortlessly as the ultimate conductor. Electricity is the source of all star light, not nuclear fusion. The electromagnetic force of such an almighty presence absolutely dwarfs the puny attraction of gravity. We are all floating on an electromagnetic ocean whose tides rise and fall thus placing stellar bodies like planets in variable orbits. Worlds in collision speaks of times when charged planets got too close and sparks flew. Mars is one. How would you know about that scarface if you had not seen the planet a lot closer? Maybe in neolithic times perhaps? Check out the petroglyphs of what they saw in the skies above. The top left image is of a plasma discharge.
Balderdash! And yet physicist Anthony Peratt of the Los Alamos laboratory re-created such plasma discharges in his lab with electrical scarring that was near identical to that found on planets throughout the galaxy. And on ancient petroglyphs too. We have a good one right here on Earth. Either a piddly little river spent billions of years eroding the Grand Canyon or it was blasted into reality in less than a second by a thunderbolt of the Gods.
“Ever wondered why Mars is covered in boulders Jimmy?”
“Obviously meteorites Willy!”
“Moon too?”
“Of course!”
“How come the bottom of the craters are all flat as if the big rocks that bashed into them all had square bums?”
“Er, time erodes the concave shapes of course!”
A plasma hit on a planetary surface would of course dislodge godzillions of tons of surface material and spread it out all over the area as it descends back to the surface thanks to a wee bit of gravity.
During my three days with Wal, I was totally enraptured by his sophisticated views and even more amazed when he told me he had been scrubbed from a major Time magazine article. The great thing about science is that for it to be ‘right’ in its theories predictions have to be made that turn out to be true. Wal predicted that when a certain Nasa probe got near the electromagnetic charge of a certain comet that there would be a considerable discharge of energy. Both the comet and the probe reacted as he predicted when NOT ONE Nasa scientist concluded the same. That is because electrical discharges do not happen in an electrically inert vacuum such as the one we are supposed to live in. But…
Wal correctly surmised that because the comet Tempel 1 carried a substantial electrical charge as it blasted through the charged plasma of plenum space it would react to the approaching Deep Impact probe with a flash of light. It happened. All the Nasa people were gobsmacked. How could that have happened? As a result, Wal was touted with a major Time article in the workings until it was all squelched. I will leave it to your rich imaginations to figure out why. Hint Galileo hint.
You want holistic? Think Hydrogen powered plasma throughout the universe always connecting to ITSELF instantly everywhere. Like the internet on speed inside an ionized gas. Now that would be a gas!
“Eh Jimmy does that mean that it is all plasma?”
Well by now you know don’t you :)