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So today we start a series on the entirety of human history. We'll be going very fast, and again, what's important is for you to understand the concepts. And so if there are ideas you don't understand, it's very important that you
Explores Darwin's theory of evolution, its impact on society, and mysteries of human imagination and behavior.
Key Takeaways
- Darwin's theory revolutionized understanding of human origins but also fueled racism and imperialism.
- Evolutionary theory is widely accepted but should be critically questioned.
- Human behaviors such as religion, art, and migration are unique and not fully explained by evolution.
- Early humans demonstrated creativity and resourcefulness beyond mere survival needs.
- The video challenges materialistic views of human history, suggesting deeper mysteries.
Summary
- The video introduces a fast-paced series on human history focusing on key concepts.
- It explains Darwin's theory of evolution, emphasizing its accidental, materialistic, and emergent nature.
- Discusses how evolution challenged Christian beliefs and justified European imperialism and racism.
- Highlights the rise of eugenics and racial divisions post-Darwinism.
- Questions the dominance of evolutionary theory and encourages critical examination.
- Points out peculiar human traits like migration, religion, and artistic expression that challenge evolutionary explanations.
- Describes Neanderthal religious rituals and Homo sapiens' cave paintings as evidence of complex imagination.
- Explains human survival during the Ice Age through resourcefulness and creativity.
- Raises questions about how early humans knew to use resources like mammoths for shelter.
- Suggests a theme of innate human knowledge and creativity to be explored further.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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raise your hand, challenge me, and ask for clarification. So we start off with the dawn of humanity, and this is Charles Darwin. Arguably, he is the most influential thinker of the past 200 years, and the reason why is he wrote a book called The
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Origin of Species, and he presents to us the theory of evolution. You all know the theory of evolution because they teach this to you in school, and it is embedded in our everyday lives.
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And there are three main ideas to the theory of evolution. The first is that it was all accidental. So you have these genetic mutations, and the mutation that is best fitted to survive in the environment would win out. Okay? So it's all a
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random, accidental process. That's the first thing. The second thing is that it is materialistic, meaning everything that you can see is all that exists. And the third thing is it is emergent, meaning that real things build on top of each
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other. It is a bottom-up process. Now, the theory of evolution marked a turning point in human history because before, European countries were Christian, and Christians believe that there was a divine God who created us, and as such, we
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were all equal before the eyes of God. Therefore, you cannot go and enslave other people. You cannot go and kill other people as well. There were three main ideas to Christianity. Okay?
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The first idea is one omniscient and omnipresent God. The spirit, the Holy Spirit, is what infuses life. It's what gives meaning and purpose to life. And the world is a mystery. We have to hold faith. There are things that we cannot understand.
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God has a plan, but it is a mysterious plan. And so, we must be humble and serve the purpose of God. Okay? And the theory of evolution destroys this concept, this conception of the universe, and introduces a more materialistic one. So
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why did this happen? Well, it happened for three reasons. The main purpose, the main reason is that we live in the 19th century when Darwinism came into being. Europeans were engaged in a process of imperialism. They were going around the
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world and conquering other people and colonizing other people and essentially committing genocide. So they needed a theory to explain why this was happening, and Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest was the most appropriate theory. The idea is that
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the world is divided into races, and the white race is superior to everyone else, and therefore the white race has reason, has legitimacy in colonizing other people. Evolution would give rise to racism and
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eugenics. Okay. So before Darwinism, we didn't really have a concept of race because everyone was equal in the eyes of God. And now, with the rise of Darwinism, the world is divided according to race as well. Because of
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evolution theory, people started to believe in eugenics, which is the idea that stupid people, people who are not white, should be sterilized because if we let them live, they would just all they would do is dilute the
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genetic pool. Okay? And even today, guys, there are still many people who believe in racism and eugenics. The thing about evolution that's very important is that it's a theology. Okay?
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What does that mean? It means that it's a theory of human progress about God. So even though evolution thinks that genetic mutation is an accident, the theology is that well, the strong survive, and that's what's right. Okay, so might
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makes right. So in many ways, evolution is a rejection of Christianity. So you would think that Christians would oppose Darwinism and evolutionary theory. But what was surprising is that when the book came out in 1859, only in 20 years,
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the theory of evolution would come to dominate the entire Western world. It became the dominant idea in schools, in universities, in the sciences. And even today, evolution is a dominant paradigm, meaning that you cannot question evolution. If you question
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evolution, it means you're crazy. Okay, but I'm crazy. So we're going to question evolution today. All right. So you've said this in school, but evolution means we came from monkeys, apes, and then there were different species of humans, and eventually the
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best, our species, the Homo sapiens, won out. Okay. So what evolution says is that we are just a monkey, guys. Okay. We're just a monkey. And what do monkeys do? Monkeys like to have sex. Monkeys like to eat.
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Monkeys like to fart. That's all we are. We're just monkeys. All right. And this is the evolutionary tree of primates.
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But there are certain problems with this theory. Okay. The first problem is if you look at evolutionary theory, what you should have is tremendous diversity as the species develops. But why is it that we only have one human species?
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Okay, why aren't there many different ones? Well, the argument is that there were many different species before, but we won out. Okay.
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Okay, that's fine. But another problem is why are we going all around the world?
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Okay. So all species of human beings like to migrate, but primates don't do that.
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Why is that? Humans like to migrate. And so the explanation often is, well, because of climate change, because of war, because humans are chasing game. Okay, bison and food. But then how do you explain these people? Okay, these are people who went to populate the Pacific islands, Micronesia. That's kind of weird. First of all, it's really dangerous to go out into the Pacific for months and months, right? Also, like, how do they know that there'll be
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islands waiting for them in the Pacific? So, that's something that's very odd about human beings. In fact, there are lots of things that are really odd about us that other animals don't do. For example, we're very religious. Okay.
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Okay. So, the Neanderthals are supposed to be before Homo sapiens. But as you can see, what we've discovered are these religious ritual sites, the Neanderthals where the Neanderthals engage in religious ritual practice. That's kind of weird.
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What does religion have to do with survival? In fact, you can argue that religion is a waste of time. Why aren't they hunting? Why are they using so much resources and time in building these ritual sites? Okay,
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Homo sapiens did cave paintings, and these cave paintings I will show you later on.
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They're very, extremely elaborate. As you can see, it's very time-consuming to actually do these paintings.
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Also, these paintings are in caves, deep inside caves, that's very cold and where there isn't much air. So, it's kind of dangerous actually to be in these places. But we know that Homo sapiens spent a lot of time in these deep, wet
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caves drawing these paintings. That's not very utilitarian. Why would we do that?
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So, that's a mystery. Okay. Also, when we drew on caves, we figured out how to make it artistic. So, we figured out that red ochre would give us red-yellow pigment on the caves. We also used charcoal to use black. Okay? So, we were
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very creative. We were very resourceful. All right? So we know a lot about the Ice Age because, as you can imagine, during the Ice Age, things freeze over, so they can be easily preserved. And actually, for most of human history,
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we were in the Ice Age period. Okay, and as you can see, during the Ice Age, the entire world was basically frozen over. So how did we survive? We survived by using the resources around us. Okay, so this is a mammoth, and so
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they killed a mammoth and they turned the mammoth into a house. Okay, now the question is how did they know how to do that?
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How did they figure it out? And we've been trying for a long time to figure this out. But my answer to you, and this is a theme that I will keep on emphasizing for the rest of the semester, is they just knew
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it. Okay. So, let's do a thought experiment. Let's just say that there's 10 of us and I
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it. Okay. So, let's do a thought experiment. Let's just say that we there's 10 of us and I give you this wall, right? And I say to you, you cannot talk. You cannot communicate with each other. All I want you to do is draw
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a picture. Now, you would think that the picture would be disgustingly ugly. It would be incoherent.
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But if you actually to do this experiment, something weird and wonderful would happen. Okay, there's 10 of you. You're not communicating. You don't have a plan. There's no draft. But one of you would draw something. Okay?
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And then the rest of you would see that something and then you would draw something else. Okay? So for example, maybe you draw a sun, then you draw a tree, then that other person draws a mountain. Okay? It's almost like
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telepathy. And that's how we are. If you put humans in a group, they would know instantly how to work together. They would know how to share ideas together. And so that's the idea I want to present to you. All this stuff is all all this is
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because of intuition. Okay? No one said, "Hey, there's a mammoth. Let's go kill it for food and for housing and for clothing." But if you walk together and you saw a man, you all of you together had the same thought. Oh, that could be
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a source of food and clothing and shelter for us. and you all knew how to work together. That's the beauty of the human imagination and the human empathy.
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And that's something that back then they practice a lot, but we've lost because of civilization.
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Okay? Does that make sense to you guys? All right. Um, and as you can see, back then, humans were just very good at working together.
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No, there you didn't have need to have a boss to say, "Okay, you should go and hunt bisons. You should go and you should make clothes. You should go and you should feed kids." Everyone knew exactly what to do and you didn't have
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to communicate. But also, what's really interesting about this time period is the diversity of human organization. So, what I meant by that, what what I mean by that is that in different times of the year, in different locations, humans
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would form different organizations. So most of the time maybe there'll be groups of like five to 10 would go and get food. Okay. But then you have some times of the year when you have these religious festivals where hundreds
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possibly thousands got together and you celebrated your god together. It was all intuitive. You didn't have communication but they all knew at what time what organization would best fit them. If you didn't like the situation, guess what?
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You'd go somewhere else and start your own organization. Okay? So mo early human history it's a very diverse very dynamic very creative period in our lives even though we've forgotten about it. Okay. And the third example of our
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creativity are these cave paintings that that were discovered uh recently but which date back 30,000 40,000 years.
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Okay. You can see how beautiful these paintings are. Whoever painted these paintings put a lot of care and devotion into them. Okay, it was it's not just kids playing. It's adults who spent a long time purposefully ensuring that
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every detail is exact. Okay, then the question then is how do they do this?
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Because there's no paper, there's no planning. And again, I present to you the idea the imagination. They dreamt this. They had a dream. They saw the picture in their heads and they went and drew this in a cave because they wanted
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to express themselves. They wanted to leave a legacy. They wanted to leave a memory. There's a calling in you to be creative and to be imaginative.
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Okay. All right. So, and you can see there's a lot of diversity. Um, this is a story, right? Because you have these uh horses, but then you have these predators, lions. Okay. So this picture is telling a mythology. It's a telling a story of
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how nature works. Okay? So people are observing nature and what they see is a cycle of life and death, of destruction and renewal. We're all together. We're all unified. We're all one. It's balance and harmony. And that's why
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if you were to kill these animals, you also had to commemorate them. Okay, does that make sense? Okay, because this this is a word of balance and harmony. If you kill these animals and you eat their food, you must thank them for the
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sacrifice by commemorating them. The same thing as later on uh when humans fight in battles, we build monuments to celebrate those those who were fallen, right? Because we want to create balance and harmony in the world. We want to
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commemorate those who made our lives possible. Okay. So in this world, what matters are these animals because these animals are what gives humans food um and clothing.
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Okay. Okay. You can see how beautiful these pictures are. Like you do you see how lifelike the animals are? Okay. So clearly we humans had all this creative potential back then.
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All right. Okay. This is in Spain when Alamera. This is a bison. And you can see the red ochre how beautiful it is. Okay.
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Okay. And you can see how it's not meant to be realistic. It's meant to be surreal. It's meant almost to be a mythology. There's there's there's a story being told in these pictures. We don't know what the story is, but you
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can imagine that there's story of life and death, destruction and renewal. Okay? And you can see the struggle of humanity to get food from nature, but also a willingness to celebrate those who have fallen.
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Um, and there's religious significance to everything these campaignings. How do we know? Because this is clearly a shaman, right? What we call a leper man.
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This dates back to 40,000 years in Germany. So we believe that in the early societies the shamans were the leaders because they had the most wisdom because they had a connection to the vine. Also what's really important is that music
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okay this instrument was really important to these to these civilizations. Now there's a lot of mystery as to how we first spoke and as I said actually we don't really need to speak because we can all understand each
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other. So why do we speak? Because we want to sing. Okay, does that make sense? Singing, creating music was a way to express ourselves in the same way as painting was.
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And music once you add words, it becomes storytelling. And that's why we created language. Okay? Not for economic reasons, not in order to create a hierarchy, but for creative reasons to celebrate our humanity together.
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And these pictures as you can see there are um religious elements. Okay. So you can see how there are two almost bird figures and um back then the bird signify mother earth. Okay. So the bird figure is very important. You can see
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almost like the bird figures are leading the animals uh hurting the animals across. So then ask yourself why are they why are these paintings appearing in caves? Well for these people they all believe that um nature was connected right and the
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spirit world and material world were connected together. So then the question then is how does the spirit world connect with the material world? Well through caves right through portals rivers caves mountaintops. And that's why these places were considered
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appropriate sites for religious ritual. Okay? And that's why you painted these pictures in caves because these caves you it's almost like you're summoning the spirit of these animals to return, right? You've killed these animals. How do you get them to return? By calling
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for them in these caves, right? Right. So, as you can see, it's a complex but a complete mythology of how the world works. And for them, this was very real.
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Okay? And you can see how these shamans would actually turn themselves into these bees in order to better communicate with them. Okay? Because these bees, these animals, these bisonens were the basis for all life on Earth. If you didn't
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have them, then you would die off. So you dressed up like them in order to better communicate with them in the spirit world to draw them back.
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Okay. Okay. So this is another religious depiction. All right. So these cave paintings, there's always three questions associated with these cave paintings.
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The first is how are they painting caves? What are they painting? And where and why are they doing this? Okay. And I've I I've explained to you there is religious significance to what they're doing. They're trying to complete the
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cycle of life and death. If you kill an animal, you have to you have to thank the animal. Okay? You do that by making a religious sacrifice. Okay? By sorry, by making a religious ritual. Um what are they painting? They're painting the
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story of life itself, right? They're trying to paint a picture of how life works. a cycle of death and life, destruction and renewal and everything's connected together. The stars, the caves are portals into the spirit world and that's why you celebrate them. Okay? And
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um how are they painted in the caves? Um they're painted together and they're using um red ochre and charcoal. What's most important is that because these caves actually lack oxygen when they're painting when they're painting these uh paintings, it's almost
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like they're in a trans state. Okay, does that make sense? Because you don't have enough to um um breathe. So, it's almost like you're you're you're on the precipice, the edge of life and death.
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And it's almost as though you are actually communicating communicating with the spirit world as you're doing this. So it's all divine inspiration, all divine intuition. Okay. So what they believe is that when they paint, they're channeling the power of the spirit
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world. It's not about us using our experience to paint. It's we are channeling actually the divine when we do so. Okay. And the same thing when we sing or when we tell stories. We're not doing this out of our own will. We are
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we are only a portal or a mechanism or channel for the divine to communicate with everyone else. Okay. So, does this make sense?
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Yeah. Okay. All right. The other thing that's really interesting about these cave paintings is um we find symbols inside these cave paintings. So this is Genevie von Piter who is a Canadian archaeologist and she spent decades going to different uh
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caves in Europe and she cataloged all the different symbols. Okay, so these are not pictures, they're symbols and as you can see there's a lot of them. Okay, so why would they have these symbols?
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And also what's interesting is if you think about it this is a writing system.
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In other words, they had the capacity to write, but they chose not to write. Why?
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Because if you think about it, in this world, writing is a corruption, right? When you speak, you're channeling the vine. So when you are writing something down, you're actually counterfeiting the divine. Okay? Also remember that for them, what's stop
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talking is really like singing, right? And you cannot capture music in the written form. So it's almost like a corruption of the song. Okay. And and also for them, this is really important.
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All everything is meant to be a communal experience. When you sing, when you talk, when you paint, we do it together.
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Okay? But you when you write, it's a solitary experience. And that's why even though we humans from a very um like right from the beginning we had the capion to write we chose not to write.
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Okay, this is really important for us to understand. Writing was a conscious decision. It was not something it was not a technology that was invented later on. We just chose not to do it because we thought it was a corruption of the
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natural world. Okay. All right. Does that make sense? Okay. So this is a um these are all the geometric signs of of ice age Europe. It's very similar to alchemy. Okay, alchemy is trying to figure out the secrets of the universe.
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So the question then is where do they get these signs? And the answer of course is it came to them in a dream or they were inspired with these signs.
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Okay, this is a world of inspiration, of intuition, of imagination. It's not something that's deliberate. They don't plan this out and discuss it. It just comes to them and when they draw it out, it makes sense to people. Oh, I know
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what this means. Okay. All right. So, uh let's summarize. Okay. Why are the symbols in art? Well, because there are certain abstraction, certain concepts you cannot draw out, right? So, for example, energy is a very important concept. Life force, cycle,
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repetition. Well then you have to use symbols in order to express uh these ideas if you want to tell the story.
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Okay. Second is you are trying to visualize the language of the spirit world. Okay. So the spirit world is talking to you but they come to you in images. So you use the symbols in order to express what what what they're
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talking about. Um, and when you draw the symbols on a stone, you're making the stone divine and sacred, right? You're storing a memory inside the stone. Maybe something wonderful happened here. Maybe you gave birth to a child here, right?
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Then you commemorate the stone with a symbol. Okay, does that make sense? Okay. So, why you're doing this is well, first of all, you're trying to bring beauty to the world. That's that's why we're we humans were created, right? To make this
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world a more beautiful place, a more imaginative place to celebrate the divine. Um we're showing God or the spirit world or the underlying soul of reality. Okay? We're trying to figure out how the spirit world works inside our reality. The third reason is we're
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trying to tell a story about who we are. Okay? We're trying to combine our imagination together to create society, to create belonging, to create community. Okay? Okay. Does that make sense?
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Yeah. So, sorry. So, you said about human trying to connect with the divine spirits, right?
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So, do they come? Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Let me clarify. Okay. This is really important. We're not trying to connect with the divine spirit. Why? Because divine spirit is all around us.
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We we coexist with the divine. Okay? Everything everything around us is divine. But what what we're trying to do is we're trying to be in harmony with the divine.
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Okay. Okay. Do you understand? Yeah. Okay. Because because in this world there's no separation between the material and the spiritual. It's all one world together. The spiritual is all around us. But there are certain things that we do in order to reconcile our
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existence with the spirit world. For example, we kill an animal. We need to commemorate the animal through paintings and through songs. Okay. Does that make sense?
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Yeah. Okay. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Okay. Good. Okay. All right. And we even today we still do this. Okay. So, so let's see examples.
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This is graffiti. Okay. Street art. But you can see what's happening where uh this is Spain and you can see how beautiful this is. Okay. It's the same concept as the K paintings where we're trying to give meaning to our community.
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We're trying to tell story of who we are, where we came from, and where we're going. Okay. And it's and it's designed to um build a common imagination. Okay, no different from the cape paintings. We still do this today.
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And this is another example. And you can see different communities might have different focus. But you can see how the painting what it does is it unifies the imagination of the people. Okay. So for this community what matters is the
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family. Okay. So the matriarch, the mother is the cornerstone of this community and that's what you do with this painting.
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Okay? You can see how beautiful these buildings have become because of the paintings. So that's what art does.
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Art gives purpose, meaning to our world. All right. Okay. So, some really important concepts I need you guys to understand. Okay. And we'll go over this as a semester progresses. And these concepts are going to be counterintuitive for us. Okay? But
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the first concept I want you to understand is preiterate people. Okay? People who could not read and write.
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They were more intuitive. They were more imaginative. And they were more empathic. Okay? Meaning I can know your emotions right away. I don't have to ask you anything. I don't I don't have to ask you how you're feeling today. I know
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exactly how you're feeling right away. Okay. All right. So we can see this. This is Inuit art.
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Okay. So this is art um by native people. So even in communities of today that have hold to this tradition, you can see how they perceive the world, right? They perceive the world as unified. The gods are with us. In fact,
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everything we do is a celebration of the gods. So our house is our temple. Okay?
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The temple is not a place you go and and um celebrate the gods. You celebrate the gods in your house. If you if you have enough faith to turn your house into a temple, okay? So this is inward art.
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Okay? And if you go to like many native communities, communities that maintain the traditions of the ice age, they're all like this. Okay? In their perception. But the problem is they cannot communicate it using modern language. So we just think they're
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stupid. Okay? They can't write essays. They can't give speeches. And so therefore we we think they're stupid.
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But they're not stupid. It's just that they're focusing their energies on empathy, on imagination, on intuition.
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All right. So let's give examples of empathy in action. And this is this is true for the entire world. Okay? So once there was a horse in America that could do math. All right? So the horse would go on stage and then the trainer would
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ask the horse a question like what's 2 plus two? And the horse would be like nay nay nay nay. And it would be like oh the horse can do math. Okay? So the horse cannot do math. Okay? I'm telling you right
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now, the horse cannot do math. So what the what what the horse is doing, you think about it, is the horse is reading the room, right? Because the people who pay the money to go into the theater, watch the horse do math, obviously
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believe the horse can do math. Okay? So what happens is when the trainer says to the horse, "What's 2 plus two?" The horse is nay nay. And the horse is watching everyone. Okay? And as the as the horse comes to the answer, the horse
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sees that the peoples are like really excited. Okay, their eyes are bulging, their breathing is faster because people are anticip anticipation, right? The horse is, "Oh, now I know the answer." Okay, this is empathy. Animals can do it. We can do it as well. It's actually
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our super superpower. Okay, does that make sense? Right. Second example is telepathy. So in America right now there's a very popular pro podcast called the telepathy tapes. You might have seen it. You may you may have heard of it. Okay. The idea is that kids with
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autism are able to read the minds of their parents. Guys I'm telling you right now kids the autistic kids cannot do that. They do something else. Okay.
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So let me tell you a story of how they do this. In China there's also a a similar case where a mother in the countryside. Okay. So she's not educated. She has no money but her son is autistic. It's an autistic boy,
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doesn't really speak. Can I make eye contact? Okay, lots of issues. Can I go to school? So, one day the mother contacts CC CCTV, the national broadcaster, says, "Hey, my son can read my mind." And you know, these are TV
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people. She like, "Okay, this will make a good documentary." So, they fly all the way down to this village, this poor village, and the mother is, you know, doesn't speak great Chinese. So, they have to film this process. Okay. So what
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happens is the boy is put into a room by himself. And then the mother is given a number, okay? Like maybe five. Then the mother goes and asks the boy, "Please read my mind." And the and the boy says,
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"You saw the number five." And it's pretty amazing. And of course, it's not really believable. So this documentary team spent days and days figure out what happened. Okay. finally brought on they brought in artificial intelligence AI.
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What the AI AI figured out is it's the pitch of the voice that gives the answer. Okay. So now they're saying read my mind. Read my mind. Okay. And the difference in the pitch there's a different number in that pitch. But the
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problem is it's so subtle that only the boy can hear the difference in pitch. We humans ordinary humans cannot hear the difference. And so the documentary crew confronted her and says, "Listen, we the AI artificial intelligence system tells
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us that what you're doing is you're cheating. You are uh using pitch to give signals to your son. Is that true?" And the mother is like, "Yes, I'm sorry.
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Yes, it's all a lie. We're poor. My son is autistic. I want my boy to go to school. I want my boy to get professional help." And that's why we devised this scheme in order to trick you. So we we can get some television
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coverage and then maybe we can get some donations. Maybe some people will help us. Okay? And that's why we did the scheme. And so that's it. But think about this. Think how amazing it is that the two together were able to deise a
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scheme, right? Think of how think of how amazing is that they were a that they were able to devise a scheme that was so creative that it tricked people. Only an artificial intelligence system could figure the system out. Okay, they so
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this mother is not educated but she loves her son and she wants the best for her son. So she figure out what her son's special ability is pitch. she able to hear different sounds and devis a scheme to make full use of the sun's
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ability. Okay, so that tells us the power of the human imagination if we truly love someone.
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Okay, so they created a hidden emotional language together which again is amazing and it's it's something that that you will see when two people actually love each other. they will create their own language that that only they can
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understand. Like in the last example is some cooperative painting, right? So we discussed this where if I put 10 of you in a room and I give you a blank wall and I ask you to draw the pictures
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you're going to create are going to pretty be going to be pretty amazing. Okay? You're not allowed to speak.
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You're not allowed to cooperate. You're not allowed to plan it ahead. But I guarantee you when the two 10 of you get together and you start drawing together, you will draw a great picture. And the reason why is not because
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you want to draw a great picture. It's because you all want to help each other.
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You don't want to let each other down. Okay? Because of cooperation, because of empathy, you want to be at your very best. You want to be at your creative best. That's the secret to creativity.
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Okay? When you're able to find a purpose and meaning in other people, your creative potential will be fully released. Does that make sense?
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Okay. All right. Um, so back to the horse horse example. If you ride a horse, one thing that you will learn over time is the horse can read your mind. Okay. And so this is a polo game. And if you watch
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a polo game, it's pretty amazing because you're not you can't speak to the horse, right? But the horse will know exactly instantaneously what you want to do. If you want to turn right, the horse knows.
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Turn right. Even before you think the thought, the horse will know. Okay? And this is why throughout human history, warriors on horseback were the greatest warriors. They were invincible. Why?
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Because what happened was basically the men had four legs. Okay? Because because in these um uh pneumatic societies where people fought on horseback, they were born on horses and they were riding horses since they were early or since
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they were young. And so they developed this emotional connection with the horse. So the horse knows exactly what you think even before you think it.
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Okay? And there are lots of examples like this. If you have a dog, you know that dogs have telepathy, right? So you go away for a week and then and when you come back, the dog is waiting for you at
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the door. Then the dog knows you're coming back. That's the emotional connection. That's telepathy. Okay. So te telepathy exists, but it's an emotional connection. There's no way that I can actually read your mind, but I know how you feel even at long
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distances. Okay, does that make sense? All right. Um, another important fact about human beings that is not really understood is we are obsessed with being creative and expressing ourselves. That's who we are.
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Okay? We are the imagination personified, manifested, made tangible, made visceral. Okay? We are imagination itself. Our imagination is resilient and will always find a way to shine.
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Okay? So you may know of people who lose uh sense right so if you can't see your hearing improves or these people are deaf okay so they can't hear but then able to see much stronger okay and they
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use sign language to communicate and one thing that I've noticed in China is that when I go to restaurants now and then there'll be groups of deaf people communicating with with each other They're always happier. In fact, they're the happiest people you will
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ever meet in China. And it's not because they're doing sign language. It's because deaf people have a deeper emotional intelligence. And so when when they're together, they're communicate emotionally and that brings tremendous joy and comfort to them. Okay? Does that
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make sense? All right. Let's give another example. This is a great composer, one of the greatest composers in human history, Beethoven. His music is startling. Okay, his famous, his music is extremely famous. Problem is, he was deaf.
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That's kind of strange. How is it possible for you to be deaf at the same time compose some of the world's greatest music? The answer is he saw the music. Okay? The music came to him in dreams and was able to see the picture.
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Okay? Because what is music? Music is vibrations, right? So, [Music] but they're like vibrations. They're waves, right? So, you can actually see for yourself a movie of vibrations.
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And the more symmetrical these vibrations are, the more beautiful the music is. Does that make sense? So because he saw the music, he was able to create music that was unique in human history. Others hear the music, but he
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saw the uh music and it turned into a movie. Okay. Of movement. All right.
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This is John Milton. He wrote Paradise Lost. Problem is he wrote it while he was blind. Okay. How did he do that?
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Because he heard the songs. Okay. He turned Paradise Lost into a musical, into music. So he actually didn't need to speak it out. He just heard it out.
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Okay. So he had um secretaries who wrote out whatever he sang out. And that's why when you read periodiz law, it's actually like music. It's beautiful. One of the most it's probably the most beautiful poetry ever composed in the
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English language. So you can see how resilient the human imagination is. If you want to express yourself, you'll find a way. Okay? It's all about will.
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Do you really want to express yourself? Because if you do, you'll always find a way.
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Okay. All right. So, this is another lesson that you will learn the semester. We are socialized into mundanity. Our true selves are divine. Okay? You're normal.
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You're boring. You're not talented because you believe what others tell you. Okay? Society does not want talent people. Society does not want interesting people. Society just wants robots and slaves. So schools, companies, organizations socialize you into mundanity. Okay? Into nothingness.
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But if you look at your true self, it is divine. And I'll give you examples of this.
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Um, a lot of people have Alzheimer's. So what literally happens is they're losing their minds. And this is um a self-portrait of a artist who documented himself losing his mind. So when he was first diagnosed, he drew a picture of
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himself. Okay? And then a year later, he drew another picture of himself and on and on and on. As you can see, by this time, he's completely lost his sense of being. Okay?
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So you can use this picture as a metaphor for Alzheimer's and and you can see for yourself what it means to lose your mind. But there's another way to understand this picture which is what's really happening is that the artist he's
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shedding his artifice. He's shedding his clothing and revealing his true self. Okay. What Alzheimer's is is losing your socialization because you're losing your ability to speak. You're losing your ability to verbalize your ideas. You're losing your ability to communicate with
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others. And what what's left behind are three things. First is your spiritual desires. So, a lot of people with Alzheimer's for for whatever reason, they go to church suddenly, okay?
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They're not religious. Maybe that maybe they they're they grow up in an atheist household. They don't have any association with religion, but once they develop Alzheimer's, they have this spiritual desire to go to church and pray. It's really amazing. Okay, that's
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number one. Number two is they love to sing. Okay, they don't talk, but they sing. The third thing is they draw.
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Okay, this is a painting by a Alzheimer's patient. Okay, not great, but guess what, guys? He did this when he was like eight years old and he never painted before.
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Okay, that's pretty amazing. Never painted before. But the moment he had Alzheimer's, his true divine self opened up and he wanted to express himself.
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Okay. So, what they say about Alzheimer's is you hear voices, you see things that aren't there. It's a hallucination.
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But guess what guys, I told you this. During the ice age era, we all did this.
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We all believe that we were we co coexisted with ghosts, with spirits, with fairies. Okay? And this was true throughout most of human history. So even though yes, medically speaking, psychologically speaking, these people with Alzheimer's, they are hearing
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voices, but then the reason why is the voices were always there. We just forgot about it because we're socialized to forget about the different forces, the different voices that exist along along us. Okay, this is a person who used psychedelics.
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Okay, he's like she's an artist, but she's using psychedelics. And the thing about psychedelics is it's almost similar to um having Alzheimer's where you shed away your socialization. You almost enter a spiritual realm. Okay, as you can see, this is a picture of a cat.
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What she's doing is she's drawing a cat that's the divine cat. Okay? She's seeing the energy field of the cat.
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She's seeing the memory. She's seeing the aspirations. She's seeing the intuition, the imagination of the cat and embedding it into the artwork.
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This is another person on psychedelics. What's interesting is there's no time and space in art in this art. So, it becomes almost incomprehensible to us.
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Okay. Why is there a helicopter? What's a cat? Okay. Well, that's how we truly are. Okay. We don't have a concept of space and time. We see things as they are. And and this picture shows you that. And we can see how the pictures
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are. It's a heightened reality. Okay. Much more vibrant colors. Okay. Another psychedelic painting. Okay. As you can see, no concept of time and space.
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Okay, it's all just one unity of things. Ventang go, okay, the greatest painter who's ever lived. His paintings are utterly unique in human history. This is Star Night. Um, and this is Sunflower.
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Okay, but you can see how he has shed away his socialization. He doesn't care what this how this is communicated to other people. All it cares is about the picture itself.
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Okay? So it glows with life. All right? So let's summarize the concepts that we've learned. Okay? So you've been brainwashed into thinking certain ideas about who we are. They're not true. The first myth is we humans are driven by material desires. Okay? So
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why do we want uh so what do we want? We want a lot of money. Okay? Okay, we want to pass on our genes. We want to marry a lot of beautiful women who are young and so they can give us a lot of lot of
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babies because we want to pass on our genes. Okay, and we want to maintain our status. All we care about is power.
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Okay, fundamentally we we we humans are fundamentally imagination and we care about three things. The first is we want to express our religion through art, music and rituals. We want to know where we came from, why we're here, where
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we're going. Okay, that's who we really are. That's that's the first thing. Second thing is we are diverse and want to differentiate ourselves. Okay, we want to stand out. We want to be different. We want we want to be
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creative. The third thing is we are curious and want to explore. And that's what explains why we go everywhere.
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Okay, this has been true throughout human history. We may not have documents saying that we were traveling, but we were traveling because there's always some of us who want to go and see a new world, even though it may not exist.
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That's who we are fundamentally. So don't believe people when they say, "Okay, you just care about money. You just care about power. You just care about sex." That's not who we are. We what we are are fundamentally religious spiritual beings that want to
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create and to love and to connect. Okay, that's the first myth. Second myth is the most natural unit is a family and men want to protect their property which includes women.
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So you maybe you've been taught that okay men are in charge and women are just uh animals to breed babies. Okay, that's not true for most of human history. It was women who had control of their bodies. Women could
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choose who to sleep with and how many men to sleep with. And they often chose to sleep with everyone. Why? Because sleeping with other men, first of all, women enjoy it. Okay? But second of all, it allows women to create social co
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cohesion. So for most of human history, early civilizations, women were the core and center of all societies. And the third thing is there's actually a strategy in sleeping with many different men because now everyone is responsible for raising a
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child. Does that make sense? If I if I'm this father and I know exactly who my children are, then I'm going to protect my children and and discard everyone else. Okay? But if no one knows who the fathers are, everyone responsible for
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caring for for taking care of every single child and that's the best strategy that they can have. Okay, because that ensures that every child becomes um successful. Okay, does that make sense? Okay, so the second myth that we will discuss later on. Third
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myth, humans follow the iron rule of nature, survival of the fittest. Okay, that's that's taught by Darwin. That's what evolution is. But that's wrong.
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Okay. Throughout most of human history, humans cared for each other. We were compassionate, empathy, right? We believe that every cre creature has divinity and those who are weakest have the most divinity.
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That's why when we kill an animal, we still thank the animal because we're all part of the same life cycle. All right.
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Number four, humans have gotten smarter over the centuries. Civilization is far superior to primitive cultures. Again, this is wrong. Okay.
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The truth is that with the development of civilization, the human imagination has decreased. Our brains can be supercomputers if we allow them to be.
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But if people are more creative, which means they have they have better memories than we do. Okay? They're able to recall more stuff. They're able to store more information. They're more sensitive, more sensitive perception, they have more empathy. Okay? They know
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exactly how you're feeling, why you're feeling it, and how to make you feel better. and uh greater emotional resilience. Okay, so they're much more mature than we are.
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Number five, we evolve from apes. The truth is that we are uniquely imaginative and we can choose our own evolution. Don't believe we're apes.
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Okay, if you believe you're an ape, then you're an ape. Okay, if you're an ape, then you like to go beat people up and like have sex with with like a lot of women. Okay, but we're not apes. We're
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imaginative first and foremost. And as such we have control over our lives and something that you have to like learn for yourself. All right. So let me give an example of this to conclude the class. Um this is Roma 2 and we
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discovered him 10,000 years ago um in a bureau site. Okay, this is an ice age bureau site. He's a dwarf guys.
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Okay, he's a dwarf. You can see how small he is. He's a dwarf. And you would think that dwarfs don't really contribute to the community. So maybe, you know, he's born. It's clear he's he's um uh deformed. So just kill
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the guy, okay? Because he's not going to have a great life anyway. Instead, what we found is first of all, he lived to a pretty old age and he was buried with um jewelry.
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He was buried elaborately. And you only do that for people you really prize. That's kind of strange, right? The people who we think that are most worthless dwarfs that actually don't do anything, they actually thought was divine and deserved a extremely
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elaborate ritualized funeral. Why? Okay, so this is a book um that done everything by David Grabber and David Wangro. Great book. Okay, so what they say is this. When archaeologists undertake balance appraisals of huntergather burials from the p
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paleothic, they find high frequencies of health related disabilities, but also surprising high levels of care until the time of death and beyond. Since some of these funerals were remarkably lavish, this is an amazing idea to think about.
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But if you were deformed, if you were ill, they didn't throw you out. They spent a lot of time to take care of you.
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Even though from their perspective it was a waste of time and energy because you're going to die anyway.
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So why would they why would they do that? Well, there are three possibilities. Okay.
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The first possibility is it's really about maintaining cosmic balance and harmony. Effing is a cycle. Meaning what? Meaning we're all part of God. And if you suffer then we have to make you better because we're all part of God
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together. Okay. So the concepts are unity of all as above so below. Set a good example to others. Okay. So that's the first possibility. Second possibility is because this is a pre-iterate society, people have a stronger sense of empathy and morality.
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So they didn't want to see others suffer. Okay. And the third possibility is they appreciate diversity and difference in a way we don't anymore. Okay. Our entire school system is designed as survive the fittest. If you can't do
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math, goodbye, you're worthless. If you can't get 100 on on a test, goodbye, you're worthless. Okay? But back then, they saw difference and diversity as gifts from God. Right? So, if you're a dwarf, it meant you had something
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special to offer. If you're strong, yeah, you can go hunt animals and you can protect the the family. But if you're a dwarf, it meant that you might have something else to offer. And if we just celebrate you as someone who has
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something special to offer, then you can offer it to us. Okay? And often what they could do is well, they could probably seen better. They could probably tell better stories. They had more wisdom. They were have more intuition. The connection with the
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divine. Okay? That's true even today where the best storytellers, the best musicians often those who are marginalized from society, those who are strangers, who are those who are outsiders, those who society persecutes.
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They probably have greater imagination, greater intuition, greater empathy. And today we don't celebrate these things.
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But back then they did celebrate those things. So if you are different, if you're deformed, if you were ill, they saw you as blessed rather than cursed.
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And that's what we've forgotten today. Okay. All right. So that's it. This is just introduction into the entirety of human history. Okay. We're going to go pretty fast. Any questions?
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Yeah. So would you say that because you made the examples using um let's you said Alzheimer's um autistic people. So would you say that people with um cognitive disability in like modern age are like closer to the divine where like we're
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returning to the divine by uh abandoning our cognitive so-called like um you know the like um logic and everything that the civilization is. Would you say that makes us closer would bring us closer to the divine?
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Yeah, good question. Okay. Yeah. So, um, first of all, we're all connected to the vine. But we just choose to forget we're connected to the vine. Okay? Why?
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Because society, mass society, needs you to be obedient, needs you to be a machine, needs you to work, to be obedient. Okay? So, so the entire point of school is to separate you from the divine. Why? Because at an early age,
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you're removed from your parents. Okay? And in school you're taught all sorts of like really strange knowledge like 1 plus 1 equals 2. Like what? Who cares? 1 plus 1 equals two. Okay. But you're taught this is what matters. Um
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and before we would just let kids run around nature and learn resilience, learn courage, learn creativity. Okay.
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So the entire point of society is to brainwash you or remove you from the divine. But there's certain members of society who can't be um removed from the vine because we don't want them, right?
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So kids who are autistic, uh kids with disabilities, kids who are just different. Okay. Once you discard it, they actually return to the vine. Does that make sense?
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Yeah. So is like for example a lot of people develop cognitive disabilities after a lot of um like you said being put into schools um being uh kind of um limited by the civilization. Would you say that in that circumstance by
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developing or be given a cognitive disability we're actually reconnecting with the divine? Okay. Yeah. Okay. So let's clarify.
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Okay. So in China, in United States, everywhere in the world, we're seeing a massive surge in mental illnesses, right? So depression, eating disorders, um suicidal tendencies, um anxiety, anxiety, fear. Okay. So, so I mean like it's just an explosion these past 20
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years, especially with the uh advent of mobile phones, social media, the internet. Okay. So kids lives suck.
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Okay. So why are kids so miserable? And the answer is that when you're born, you have an automatic connection with the vine. Okay. So and as you lose this connection, you grow more and more confused which lead leads to anxiety and doubt. And
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over time if this confusion is not addressed properly, then it will lead to depression. Okay. So another simple way of saying another simple way of saying this is we we crave human connection. We crave um knowledge of the divine. We crave
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purpose and meaning in our lives. But the social media system has created this fake system in which we're in prison.
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Our imagination is imprisoned in pursuing activities that absolutely have no purpose. Right? So on social media all you care about is likes. How do I get my friends to like me? like me, like me. Okay, so you do a sort of silly
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things like I don't know post pictures of you dancing in Hawaii or whatever even though it g it gives you no meaning. Okay, so what's happening is before we cared about what makes us happy and now we care about what we
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think would make other people happy. Okay, and that's not who we are. Okay, once you lose that connection to the vine, then you you can only get lost. So if you deny your intuition, if you d if you deny your emotions, then you'll just
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become more and more miserable. Okay. Does that make sense? Okay. Uh like the strong empathy that you just mentioned, I thought that I'm curious where the strong empathy come from because I usually thought that the empathy is our empathy is shaped by the
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socialization and social norms by the society. Yeah, actually that's a really good question. Okay. So empathy just means our connections with others. Okay. And this something we are born with. So a mother is born with a emotional connection with a child, right? And a
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child has has emotional connection with a mother. And over time as this connection grows their empathy develops and this empathy almost becomes telepathic. So that even if the child is is in school and the child is bullied, the mother is doing is washing her
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clothes. She's like, you know, I don't feel right. Maybe I should call the teacher and ask how my child is doing.
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Okay. Okay. So, that's what empathy is. Empathy just means a natural emotional connection that we're all born with. But it's entirely possible um and we know this from our society to break that connection by setting the child off to school, by having a child
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online too much, by having a child watch television too much. Okay? Severing breaking that emotional connection. And once the emotional connection is broken, remember empathy, we crave empathy. We crave emotions more than we crave food.
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So it's as though we're becoming zombies almost, right? If you don't have empathy, you don't feel connected with other people. It's as though you become a zombie. You don't you don't have any you don't have any direction. You don't
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have any purpose. You don't have any meaning in life anymore. And that's what leads to tremendous depression. Okay?
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Does that make sense? So we are not socialized into empathy. We are socialized out of empathy. We're born into empathy.
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Okay. All right. Great questions. Okay. Any more questions? Okay. Great guys. So, I will see you next time. All right. We'll continue this next time. Okay. So, I'm just introducing these concepts, but we'll expand them and use more examples and
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learn more about human history from this framework. All right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Topics:Darwinevolutionhuman historyChristianityimperialismracismeugenicsNeanderthalscave paintingsIce Age
