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We humans are hopelessly obsessed with death.  We expend an incredible amount of time and energy wondering about, worrying about, and preparing for that inevitable end to each of our lives.  All of our religions are founded upon the idea that there is an afterlife, an existence beyond our corporeal selves.  It’s been that way for a long time, too.

One of the primary indicators of early human culture is whether or not the people in question undertook to bury their dead.  This happened as far back as 100,000 years ago, but the mindset that lead to it is likely much older than that.  As a species, our preoccupation with death and its attendant features is likely as old as our ability to comprehend what it means to be dead.

But, for as long as we’ve believed that there is a place, or several places even, that our loved ones travel to in their long, dark sleep, we’ve also tried to find ways to reach that place without the mess of dying.  This has been done in a number of ways; from mediation and chanting, to psychedelically induced spirit journeys, and to the physical embodiment of portals between this world and the next.  Those portals offer an interesting look at the impact of afterlife belief on our cultures.

In March 2013, a team of archaeologists from the University of Salento (Italy) stumbled across what has been dubbed ‘the gate to hell’ in southwestern Turkey.  It is believed that this portal to the afterlife, in this case the Greek Underworld, is a temple used to worship the Greek god Pluto.  Its traditional name is Pluto’s Gate or the Plutonium, and it was used by priests to demonstrate the power of Pluto and Kore – the lords of the underworld – to steal the life of whomever entered the portal.

A part of the World Heritage site of Hierapolis (now called Pamukkale), the Plutonium (which is Latin for Pluto) consisted of a shallow pool in which priests would sit to prepare themselves for rituals, a series of steps which served as an observatory for congregants, and a crude doorway into a natural underground chamber, from which deadly poisonous gases emanated.  The ceremonies at this site often included animal sacrifices, such as bulls, wherein they would lead the animals into the cave and then drag them back out once the fumes had overtaken them.

There are other, less morbid examples of portals to the afterlife in our history though.

Long have we known that the ancient people of what is now Bolivia and Peru in South America, had a penchant for elaborate temple construction and ritual, all in an effort to please and sometimes to communicate with their gods.

One spectacular example of ancient architecture dedicated to the transition between the here-and-now and the hereafter is the Gate of the Sun in what is now called Tiwanaku (also Tiahuanaco) in Bolivia.  The peoples who built and occupied Tiwanaku are largely unknown, as the settlement is dated to the pre-Incan era of 300-1000 AD, and the culture responsible apparently had no written language.  The Gate of the Sun is a 4 meter wide by 3 meter high stone archway that stands on an open terrace.  The arch is adorned with 48 carved squares, each with an effigy or winged figure looking toward a central character whose identity is unknown.  That central character is a carved figure of a man, with 24 radial lines surrounding its head, which may represent sunlight.  This figure also holds two staffs, which some believe represent lightning and thunder.

As mentioned, we know next to nothing about the Gate of the Sun, but some have presented theories about its use.  From an astrological observation post and primitive calendar, to a portal to the realm of the sky gods.  Author and famed ancient alien proponent David Childress points to similarities between Tiwanaku’s Gate of the Sun and the legendary H-blocks at Pumapunku and claims that these sites are evidence of lost fund-knowledge from unknown prehistoric civilizations, such as Atlantis or Lemuria.  He and others proclaim that the archway of the gate may have been, and perhaps still is, an actual portal to another realm.  The precision of the carvings and block cuts at Pumapunku are widely held to be much too advanced to have been the product of a culture as primitive as the Incas or those before them.  Childress also draws parallels between the Gate of the Sun and the Gate of the Gods.

The ruins of the ancient city state of Tiwanaku, where the Gate of the Sun stands prominently, is situated near the southern shore of Lake Titicaca, which is where the Aramu Muru portal is located.

Aramu Muru is actually found on the outskirts of a small town called Juli in the Hayu Marca hill.  It and Tiwanaku are within the province of Chucuito, which is commonly known as The Rome of America.  Aramu Muru is actually a rock face in the high-altitude mountains of Lake Titicaca that has been smoothed to a nearly flat surface with a roughly six foot high T-shaped alcove cut out of its centre at ground level.

That alcove is called Puerta de Hayu Marca, or in English, the portal of Hayu Marca, or more popularly, the Gate of the Gods.  Most in mainstream archaeology view Puerta de Hayu Marca to be an unfinished construction project, as it consists only of the single rock face and alcove, and has no obvious purpose.  There are traditional stories about the Gate, however, that show it to be quite important in Peruvian/Bolivian culture.

It’s said that the Gate of the Gods is a portal to the underground, and that it was used by a priest to travel to the underworld in order to hide the great golden disc of Coricancha away from the invading warriors of other lands.  Locals have long told stories of strange looking beings – tall, slender and not of this Earth – coming through the portal.  Some think, namely Childress and other ancient alien proponents, that the disc of Coricancha was actually some sort of alien technology used to activate and control the portal, which they believe is some kind of star-gate.  In fact, paranormal writer Jerry Willis claims to have travelled through the gateway himself during his own investigation of the area, though that should be taken with a grain of salt.

Lake Titicaca itself, being the highest altitude freshwater lake on the planet, is the subject of a great many stories involving strange lights, UFO’s and other odd phenomenon.  In fact the whole area of Chucuito holds a wealth of strange stories and archaeological mysteries, and when you add in the various theories about this culture being a remnant of lost cultures the world over, it’s hard not to romanticise the findings and the people of the area.

Did ancient human cultures not only hold a belief in other realms of existence but also find a way to access those realms through some sort of lost knowledge, or perhaps knowledge offered by ancient visitors to Earth?  Mainstream science says, probably not, and that’s based on the lack of evidence for the existence of such knowledge and/or visitors, but there are learned men and women who disagree.

[Don’t miss the updates at the bottom]

Ica, Peru is an exciting place, if you happen to be interested in ancient cultures and archaeology.  Many old world curiosities have come out of this region of the world, like the Ica Stones for instance, and in fact, one of the most impressive collections of ancient textiles came from Ica.  That may seem quite the opposite of exciting to you, but to those of us who study such things, the findings of Peruvian archaeologist Julio C. Tello in the Paracas peninsula of the Pisco province of Ica, have been ground-breaking in terms of understanding at least one lost culture of Peru.

In 1925, Julio Tello, the father of indigenous Peruvian archaeology, felt he was close to exposing the lost Paracas culture, and after a few years in field, he finally cracked the case for the Paracas when in 1927 he uncovered a necropolis in the desert that contained 429 ancient mummy bundles.  This find proved the case for the Paracas culture, and it opened up vast avenues for research, including a study of the various patterned textiles used in the burial bundles.

The Paracas people, for whom the entire Paracas peninsula is named, inhabited the coastal region from 800 BC to 100 AD, which makes them one of the oldest known Andean cultures.  They had an aptitude for irrigation and water management, and their culture was rich in art and spiritual practices.

This is all well and good, it’s interesting but hardly headline worthy, at least not 87 years after the discovery, but there’s more to this situation than meets the eye.

The Paracas culture were one of the ancient Andean peoples who practised skeletal modification.  They would bind the heads of their infants with rope, cloth and wooden boards in order to elongate their skulls.  This was done for spiritual or religious reasons, and scholars believe it was an effort to make themselves look more like their deities.

The resulting skull shape does indeed seem otherworldly, and they’ve captured the attention of a great many Fortean researchers and Ancient Alien theorists.  World famous Ancient Aliens proponent and author David Childress has long theorised that these elongated skulls are the product of contact between extraterrestrial beings at or before the height of the Paracas culture.  He has alternately asserted that the Paracas skulls are either the result of attempts by humans to emulate these alien visitors, who may have been perceived as gods, or that they are the actual aliens.

Owner/curator of the local Paracas History Museum, Juan Navarro, has a collection of some 35 preserved examples of Paracas elongated skulls, as well as many other historical artefacts related to the Paracas culture.  The skulls are said to have a cranial capacity of 24-40% larger than a regular human skull, which some claim is evidence that their brains were bigger and they were thus more intelligent than modern humans or humans of the same era.  This is not necessarily true, but we’ll get to that.

In 2011, alternative history author Brien Foerster, and self-proclaimed expert on ancient elongated skulls, apparently convinced Navarro to allow several samples to be taken from the museum for analysis.  Hair samples, including roots, a tooth, skull bone and skin samples were taken from five different skulls and were given to the late Lloyd Pye, of the Starchild Project fame, who then allegedly passed them on to an unnamed geneticist in Texas for DNA analysis (we can only hope it wasn’t DNA Diagnostics). [See update below]

Well, it seems Foerster would like us all to believe he has preliminary results of that analysis in hand, and through an appearance on JustEnergyRadio, he has released some rather spurious details that on first glance seem quite intriguing, but upon closer inspection, aren’t really all that impressive.

Several bloggers who specialize in the paranormal, have published posts telling of these preliminary conclusions, claiming that the DNA offered unexpected results.  Headlines such as ‘Initial DNA analysis of Paracas elongated skulls released – with incredible result’ are giving people the wrong impression of the situation.

Foerster is claiming that mitochondrial DNA was found in at least one sample and that analysis of that DNA showed mutations that don’t conform to mutations known in humans or other animals.

“It had mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) with mutations unknown in any human, primate, or animal known so far. But a few fragments I was able to sequence from this sample indicate that if these mutations will hold we are dealing with a new human-like creature, very distant from Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans.”

What does that mean?

Not much really.  At best it’s inconclusive.  The DNA would be identified as human, but with anomalies; anomalies that could be caused by any number of contaminants or procedural flaws.  It could be that this DNA really does provide unusual results, but the only thing that can be said of it at this point is that it requires further study.  The sensational release of unconfirmed and unverifiable information such as this on a radio show, is not worthy of the attention this story is receiving.

The problems don’t stop there, though.

Who is doing this analysis and where/when can we expect peer-reviewed publication of these results?  Foerster isn’t telling, which sends up a huge red flag.  In the quote above, Foerster refers to himself as doing the “sequencing”.  Is this a slip of the tongue?  He’s definitely not a geneticist.  Secondary to this is the way in which he has “released” these findings, which is reminiscent of Melba Ketchum’s Bigfoot debacle of 2012.  This is not the way science is done, though some might argue that he is not a scientist, and not much argument would be found in response.

Some people are buying into what seems to amount to Foerster’s latest effort to sell books, without really thinking about the situation critically.  The Paracas elongated skulls are strange, but the features people like Foerster and Childress hold out as evidence that they have an other-worldly origin doesn’t really hold up to close scrutiny.

There are fossilized skulls of a race of proto-humans called the Boskop Man.  They were found near a small town in South Africa of the same name, and these skulls sparked a heated debate among anthropologists and archaeologists when they were presented in 1913.  They were given as evidence for a species of human that had a significantly larger brain and therefore greater intelligence than contemporary species.  The Boskop skulls offered a cranial capacity of 40-50% larger than any other known humanoid species, but it’s been demonstrated that this doesn’t necessarily equate to greater intelligence.  More isn’t always more.

The Paracas skulls, aside from looking strange, are anatomically identical to regular skulls, and since we know how and why their culture undertook skeletal modification, it seems credulous to inject conspiracy where none exists to begin with.

Where ever you see this story posted in the next couple weeks, be sure to ask how the poster verified the information Foerster is offering.

UPDATE:

As mentioned above, at the time of writing Brien Foerster hadn’t publicly identified the Texas geneticist that was processing these DNA samples, but Sharon Hill over at Doubtful News, along with some other sleuths, have determined that it is indeed Melba Ketchum of DNA Diagnostics who is performing the analysis.  This information places this story squarely into the ‘seriously sketchy’ category, if it wasn’t there already.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:

This story is turning into a circus over at Doubtful News, as Foerster has threatened legal action against Sharon Hill (who used this post as the basis for hers), and has now directly denied the involvement of Melba Ketchum…sort of.  He says he is working with her on this project, but that she didn’t work on the samples in question.

On top of everything, it’s been suggested that he may have violated international import/export laws, or at the very least Peruvian export laws, which require credentialed permits to remove any kind of archaeological material from the country.  It appears Foerster had no such permit, though this is as yet unconfirmed.

There are many ways one can express oneself in today’s world.  I choose the written word, others choose song, still others choose dance, photography, sculpture, paint, and even graffiti, and that last one presents some interesting, if cryptic, works for us to ponder.

Even within that…genre…of art, there are many types, styles, and motivations.  There are many perspectives on its value as a medium of art, and as a method of communication, but it can hardly be denied that as a form of self-expression, graffiti is as effective as any other, perhaps more so.

Of course, there are forms of graffiti that are more difficult to classify as a form of art, even though much effort goes into its design and execution, and its impact on our culture is undeniable.  The issue seems to be that the controversial and sometimes political nature of the form gets in the way, but as many would argue, myself included, the message conveyed by art is nearly always political, and if successful, is always intended to be controversially transformative.

There are works of graffiti that you might not readily identify as a work of art, though they are, undeniably.

Very recently, reported through a YouTube video, a series of markers has been found spray painted on the ground in West London, UK.  The markers, which take the form of symbols – a square center dot, surrounded by radiating narrow triangles, causing the entire marker to appear as a stylized sun or possibly a windmill – appeared suddenly on the roadway near the intersection of Grove Road and Grove Way in Uxbridge, London.  The YouTube video, shot and uploaded by an English woman going by the name Maria Speechley, clearly shows the symbols or markers as found, which are all white and apparently quite fresh.  Speechley reported the find to the Uxbridge news outlet getwestlondon, who published a public call for more information and further sightings on March 26.

Speechley, through the video, offers commentary and excited speculation about the appearance and purpose of the markers, claiming that no one knows who made them, or when.  She briefly theorises that they could have some secret purpose, possibly related to aliens or a secret society, but Alan Hayes of getwestlondon wisely reminds that local police have warned of these symbols, citing that they are sometimes used by nefarious types to mark possible locations for burglary.

One thing is perfectly clear, however, and that is that such graffiti, as this could only be described, serves its purpose well, in that it has caught the attention of passers-by, and has conveyed a message, inaccurate as it may be.

The strange and cryptic nature of the Uxbridge symbols reminds of other, much more mysterious works of graffiti art around the world.  Specifically, the Toynbee Tiles.

The Toynbee Tiles are a series of placards that have somehow been embedded into the pavement of roadways in various cities across the US.  They typically consist of a rectangular sign, often about the size of an American license plate (30cm by 15cm), and they display some variation of the text below.

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN MOViE `2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER

So what, exactly, does that mean?  No one really knows, but there are several theories.

Just based on the text alone, there is a definite reference to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Both through the words “movie ‘2001” and by the reference to Jupiter.  Some versions of the tiles actually name Kubrick directly, but this might be explained away.

There’s also the clear reference to Arnold J. Toynbee, who was a prolific British historian best known for his study of the rise and fall of 26 different civilizations throughout human history.  Some argue that this isn’t a direct reference to Toynbee, but rather is a reference to Ray Bradbury’s short story called The Toynbee Convector, which was inspired, at least in name, by A.J. Toynbee.

Those references, however, are the only parts of the Toynbee Tile mystery that are clear, or relatively clear, as the case may be.  What they mean, either the tiles or the references, is still totally open for debate.  As anyone who’s seen 2001 can tell you, the reference to Jupiter and resurrecting the dead comes straight from Kubrick’s imagination, but what it means with respect to Toynbee or the purpose of the tiles remains a complete mystery.

The originator of the tiles remains unidentified, even though a Toynbee Tile researcher claims to have uncovered several letters written by the maker in the early 1990’s, which apparently allude to a passage from Arnold Toynbee’s book Experiences (Pages 139-142):

“Human nature presents human minds with a puzzle which they have not yet solved and may never succeed in solving, for all that we can tell. The dichotomy of a human being into ‘soul’ and ‘body’ is not a datum of experience. No one has ever been, or ever met, a living human soul without a body… Someone who accepts—as I myself do, taking it on trust—the present-day scientific account of the Universe may find it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead, can come to life again; but, if he did entertain this belief, he would be thinking more ‘scientifically’ if he thought in the Christian terms of a psychosomatic resurrection than if he thought in the shamanistic terms of a disembodied spirit.”

The possible connection to Bradbury’s The Toynbee Convector, might suggest that the originator wished to convey the message that humanity needs to, in his or her view, strive for greater achievements in order to successfully move into the future.  Some have said that the reference to Jupiter means that the message is to travel to and colonise the planet.  A lofty goal indeed.

There are others who believe that there are connections to Arthur C. Clark’s Jupiter V, and at least one person believes that the tiles are an homage to playwright David Mamet and his 1983 play titled 4A.M.  Namely Mamet himself, who has often claimed to be greatly flattered by the honour.

Most of the tiles, of which there have been many over the years, first appeared in Philadelphia in the early-to-mid 1980’s, but they continue to appear across the US even today, and at least one has appeared in South America.  Though most if not all of the more recent examples are certain to be copy-cat tiles, placed by enthusiasts in order to honour the originator or to commemorate certain associated dates.

So far, the most compelling theory of how they are created and applied to the pavement as they are, was advanced by tile enthusiast Justin Duerr, who claims that they are a composite form made of layers of linoleum and some form of asphalt glue (whatever that may actually be), wrapped in tar paper.  Others claim that this composite construction is laid on roadways, inside the tar paper, and the action of vehicles driving over them crushes the form into the pavement and wears away the paper, ultimately revealing the tile.

There are, at least superficially, some parallels between the Toynbee Tiles and the Uxbridge markers, but perhaps we’re reading a bit much into it.  Whatever they are, in either case, the mystery may be worth more than any answers.  As it is, we are free to imagine that the tiles or the markers are some strange vestige of a world hidden away from us, a romantic and perhaps dark connection to a storyline beyond our understanding, and in that way it inspires our imaginations to conjure a reality that is larger than our own.  If, through finding answers to this mystery, we find that the elements of these things lie in something mundane, or nefarious, or – heaven forbid – commercial and manipulative, we would be worse off for it.

For now we can say that we do not know what they are or why they exist, we can revel in the idea that they hold a meaning worth protecting, and that makes them precious in their own right.

I recently brought you some discussion on the concept known as senescence, or in layman’s terms, the process of ageing.  My last post on this topic was focused on transhumanism and the potential that the transhumanist movement has to deepen the divide between the social classes.  That has been a contested position, but I maintain that the fruits of the fight against ageing will likely be held for the elite in our society, with unequal distribution of this artificial longevity for the rest of us.

Today though, I wanted to focus on some of the ways senescence might actually be defeated, and even within our lifetime – if such a term could be applied to this discussion.

I previously mentioned that work is already being done in the realms of DNA/RNA telomere reinforcement, which is believed will stop or reverse the ageing process.  Efforts are also being undertaken in the biotech arena, wherein researchers are attempting to develop nano-technology that would be capable of policing a person’s cellular function via their bloodstream, thereby removing ill-functioning cells and even replacing them with substitutes, whether artificial or not.

Those specific pursuits come from scientists working with the specific goals of transhumanism in mind, but there are others whose research in this venue is more…pragmatic, if you will.

Published in the science journal Cell in December of last year, is a study on the effect of varied NAD⁺ levels in mice, and its relation to pseudohypoxia in cellular communication.  The study bore some surprising results that, despite your current confusion about what you just read, is quite impressive.  I’ll explain.

One of the leading theories about the cause of senescence is embodied in the term pseudohypoxia.  Hypoxia is the term that described the process of cellular oxygen starvation, but pseuohypoxia refers to a different kind of cellular starvation.  All of the cells in our bodies require certain things to remain functional and efficient.  Oxygen is one of those things, obviously.  Other nutrients and chemicals are also necessary, but optimal cellular function depends on maintaining very specific ratios of various compounds, and the reduction of certain compounds, NAD⁺ for instance, has the effect of impairing communication between mitochondria and the cellular nucleus.  (NAD⁺ is an acronym representing the chemical compound nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, but for the purpose of understanding what’s happening, knowing what that compound really is, isn’t necessary.)

The paper, titled Declining NAD+ Induces a Pseudohypoxic State Disrupting Nuclear-Mitochondrial Communication During Ageing served to confirm the relatively long held idea that a decrease in the efficiency of nuclear-mitochondrial communication was at least partially responsible for the effects of ageing.[1]  This study demonstrated that NAD⁺facilitates communication between cellular mitochondria and the cell nucleus.  It turns out that this communication is imperative for regulating the body’s circadian clock, which in turn is regulated through the underlying process of senescence.  As we age there is less NAD⁺ available and thus that communication begins to break down.  The researchers in this case have found a direct correlation between the breakdown of that communication and the progress of ageing.  Basically, less NAD⁺ means further progression of age; more NAD⁺ means a reversal of age.

Well sure!  When you put it that way!

Once you get past the scientific mumbo jumbo, this story gets really fascinating.

What’s truly incredible about this study is how they went about confirming the above hypothesis.  Essentially, they fed NAD⁺ to mice, and what happened is nothing short of amazing.

Within a week of administering the first dosage of NAD⁺ to the mice, they demonstrated a marked reversal of senescence.  They got younger!  The mice exhibited significantly increased muscle tone, both in musculo-skeletal structures as well as cardiovascular and respiratory structures, and their metabolic processes were found to be the same or better than that of younger mice.  The scientific language used to describe this – that mitochondrial dysfunction contributes to ageing through postmitotic tissues that rely heavily on oxidative phosphorylation – is certainly a lot to take in, but in layman’s terms, what this means is that we now have a laboratory verified reversal of the ageing process.

These researchers defined what causes us to age as time passes.  And they reversed it!

There have since been a number of follow-up studies and papers, most of which serve to confirm the original conclusion and in some cases even further the potential.  It’s is predicted that human trials with NAD⁺ supplements will begin as soon as mid-to-late 2014, and while that’s an exciting prospect, there are some parts of this that are unclear, and some that are concerning.

What they’ve achieved, while impressive, is actually somewhat superficial.

Increasing mitochondrial-nuclear communication apparently results in increased cellular function in muscle fibre, but it isn’t clear what effect that change would have on immune responses, or neural processes, or even DNA replication.  How would artificially altering senescence through these means affect fertility or embryonic development?  Would a person who underwent NAD⁺ therapy end up an old mind trapped in a young body?  Would their immune systems become too efficient, ultimately attacking healthy cells, in much the same way that many autoimmune diseases already do?

Or, in keeping with my earlier remarks, what if this does prove to be an effective way to reverse the ageing process?  Sounds great on the surface, but this might be an idea that looks better on paper than it does in the real world.  Sure, it would be nice to keep our parents around longer, or our pets even, but there are other considerations.  Biological attrition is an important, nay, an imperative part of human society.  How could we, as a society already encumbered by massive unemployment, homelessness, starvation, and mental illness, ever justify prolonging the life of one while virtually ignoring the poverty of another?

It may seem, from these words and from others I’ve written, that I’m opposed to the goals of transhumanism, or to the scientific effort to combat ageing, though I assure you, I’m not.  I see the value in this endeavour.  I see the potential of the research.  And I feel the same excitement as everyone else at the prospect of gaining control over senescence.  Where I stand apart though, is in feeling free to proceed with this journey before we, as a people, are ready to deal with the repercussions.  We should not be taking this step forward, not yet.  Not until we have eliminated poverty, eradicated inequality, decimated illiteracy, and at least begun to be able to live among each other without violence, and jealousy, and fear of the differences between us.  Our general bigotry and indifference toward the plight of others is a giant neon sign on the horizon, telling us in flashing day-glow colours, that we aren’t ready to become immortal.

“The principal and indeed the only thing wrong with this world is man.” – Carl Jung

With all of the pyramids around the world, it seems clear that the ancients had an affinity for lasting architecture.  They built things to withstand the winds of time.  At least, they built certain things to last.  Temples, tombs, ceremonial chambers and all kinds of sacred sites litter the landscape all across this planet, each one from an age lost to antiquity.  Often, though, what didn’t survive alongside these megaliths, was any notion about what they were, why they were built, or how they were built.  Sure, scholars are relatively certain that they’ve deciphered lost texts and cryptic hieroglyphics, and thus believe they have a decent grasp on answers to those questions, but there are many people who don’t agree that conventional wisdom in this regard is all that solid.

All this confusion (though either side of the argument will tell you they aren’t confused at all), stems from one single aspect of ancient architecture, and that is that we have to guess at their significance.  Whether we’re on the mark with that guess or not, we will still never know for certain that we’re right.  These buildings and monuments that were built as long as 5000 years ago (or older, in some cases) are enigmatic shadows of cultures past, but what will happen in another 5000 years?

Will our legacy civilizations be just as perplexed by the purpose and significance of our buildings, should any survive that long?  Will they argue amongst themselves about whether we had the technical expertise and engineering prowess to construct the wonders of our ancient time?

Perhaps not.  Record keeping is the primary mitigator in this war of attrition.  Most of the records we use to study ancient culture and architecture are fragments of texts written in lost languages, and our understanding of their meaning is pieced together through a process of comparison to other better known artefacts.  Our records, it could be argued, are much more complete and decipherable than those of ancient cultures.  At least they are now, but who’s to say what will happen over five millennia or more?

In a strange parallel to the pyramids of old, there are similar structures, built in recent years, with modern technology, and for modern purposes, that might serve as a future analogue to the questions posed above.

In the early 1970’s, as a part of the United States Army Safeguard anti-ballistic missile program, the US military built an early-warning detection and defence compound near Grand Forks, North Dakota.  The facility, known as the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex, achieved operational status on September 28, 1975, but its lifespan was short lived.  It was decommissioned on February 10, 1976, less than a year after it all began.

The site consists of the large pyramid shaped building, which was the missile control building and PAR “backscatter radar” station, as well as 100 ICBM-launcher inside some 70 missile silos, and some service buildings.  There is a vast underground tunnel network associated with the site, which was flooded following its decommissioning, presumably to discourage unauthorised use.

The SRMSC has sat empty, in the wastes of North Dakota for nearly four decades, unused and untouched.  It is a ghost of the cold war and of our government’s fear of intercontinental attack by competing world powers, but it lays there, impotent and broken, and when you look at pictures of this vestige of our military past, it’s hard to miss the resemblance to certain ancient megalithic sites.

Those similarities, while striking, are superficial, but will the effect such structures have on the imagination of future archaeologists be any different if records of its construction and use don’t survive the ages?  Can you imagine a group of wide-eyed tourists walking among the monolithic buildings, gazing at the huge pyramid in the distance, wondering why it was built and what it meant to those who used it?  Will future curiosity seekers marvel at our advanced understanding of radar technology, electronics, and ballistics?  Will some element of their society cling to the notion that we were more – or less – than their own conventional wisdom suggests?

Cultural evolution progresses at a startling rate; in a matter of 300 years, whole language systems can become almost unrecognisable.  Iconography becomes distorted and knowledge bases shift between world powers.  War, emigration, social and financial collapse, natural disaster, all of these things could change the course of our cultural evolution en-route to unimaginable places in the future, and once our progeny reach their destination, will they recognise what they see behind them, or will they be just as baffled by their past, as we are by ours?

The SRMSC is named after a US Military hero, the former commander of the US Army Air Defense Command, Lieutenant General Stanley R. Mickelsen.  He enjoys a certain renown among military historians as the force behind the US air defense artillery’s development from an era of guns to an era of missiles.  Of all the ways such a man’s legacy could have been carried into the future, joining the Mayan chiefs and Egyptian Pharaohs as a historic character forever tied to an enigmatic monument may not have been in the original design plan.

I’ve had a computer nearly my entire 33 years. In fact, I still remember the command line sequence to boot up games on my long dead Commodore 64(LOAD”*”,8,1 if you cared). I’ve had imbedded in me the idea that a simple command line, or the pressing of ‘start’ can call into existence, rather quickly, an entire new reality in which I could exist. And, because of Commodore 64, I think Chaos Magick matters in this, the “New Aeon.”

If you’re not familiar with the “New Aeon,” it’s simply the newest stage in humanity: The Age of Aquarius; The Satya Yuga; The New Age; there’s quite a few more names for it, but you get the idea. I use the “New Aeon,” as coined by occultist supreme Aleister Crowley because he is seen as the last great mage of the old age, or the first of the new… either way he’s on top of the pyramid of the secret and the arcane.

But what does a command line from an ancient computer have to do with Chaos Magick and Aleister Crowley, you ask? Nothing really, it’s called a metaphor, deal with it.

What I’m getting at is that my generation and the ones following me have an innate sense and capability to enter into altered states with nothing more complex than a few keystrokes, or hitting ‘start.’ We’re a fast thinking and reacting lot who have come to accept the ease at which a suburban basement could change into a battle ground on which the forces of the evil King Koopa could be vanquished by a humble human plumber and some magic mushrooms. We don’t need to know how to program a computer, or build it from scratch to understand how warp zones work, or how to play Summer Games… we just know it works and how to get to the action as expediently as possible.

Traditional ceremonial magick is like the old guard computer programmers steadfastly claiming that knowing binary is key to knowing computers… and you know what? They’re pretty spot on, except for one small point: we don’t need to know how it works to make it work. Traditional ceremonial magick, and to beat this metaphor to death slightly more, computer programmers are excellent at what they do… they’re amazing. I wish I knew Assembler/binary, and I wish I knew how to chart my exact horoscope including all the arcane overlaps, ascensions, descensions, and whatever else goes into it. That stuff is pretty amazing. But, as with my trusty commodore, I can type a few words and get the same result… Ah, there’s the rub, chaos magick.

It’s as easy as you want it to be: get yourself in a magickal mindset, ,8,1, ENTER, and the world can be changed… so long as you believe it can be changed. That’s the tricky part, and where the binary starts to hurt: you have to believe… well, that’s easy if you play acted being Link, Mario, Kung Fu, or Panama Joe(from the horribly named Montezuma’s Revenge) you’re built for the sort of altered states magickal practice needs to be effective. However, some people need vast charts of zodiacal signs and alchemical symbols; they need the perfect date for the perfect spell; they need the right herbs burning and the right angels watching or the mood won’t be right, the altered state of the magician doesn’t come. But the new Aeon seems to be screaming to us, the short attention span magicians; the eaters of fire-flowers and magic mushrooms; the children of a quantum age that have been raised to accept that something called ‘spooky action at a distance’ is a real thing- That a new reality is just a click or two away. We are a generation that accepts a mutable reality as the norm; just as our forefathers accepted the then accepted mechanistic/Newtonian reality. The rituals and structures of any given time reflect the understandings of that time. Just as you’d not expect an ancient Egyptian to preach democracy; you’d not expect a modern physicist to preach an A to B linear description of reality.

I’m not trying to dismiss traditional ritual magick. In fact I think it’s damn fantastic. I love the ceremony; I love the pomp; I love the arcane symbols; I love it all… but I don’t have time to wade through generations of magickal technique just to realize all you’ve learned is symbolic psychedelia: you’ve just taken 30 years of study to achieve that magickal trance-like state where real magick can happen.

Well, the computer made everything faster, from information gathering, to dating, to magick. Please, follow your hermetic traditions; be Gnostic; draw pentagrams and call forth guiding angels; I’ll be happy when you do. But I’m fine listening to binaural beats with a head full of video game logic and semi-legal marijuana, changing my personal reality to fit my personal sense of magic. We’re gifted the ability to enter into the magickal state much more easily than our more learned forefathers, those of the ancient arts of binary coding, and those of the eldritch libraries full of arcane texts.

The Greater Keys of Solomon are perfect in all their ancient grimoire glory; but I think that I’ll stick to that old 8bit reality- called forth with a simply keystroke, and a more modern form of magickal awareness.

Why do we assign so much importance to coincidences?  Let me paint a picture for you…

It’s been a busy day so far, you’ve been working hard all morning, completing tasks, planning, sorting, creating, and all this time you’ve really been so focused on your work that you have hardly noticed the passage of time since you started.  But in a sudden moment of clarity, you glance at the clock and wouldn’t you know it, the digital readout says 11:11!

You think to yourself ‘Hey!  That’s cool!’ and then you remember…the same thing happened last Tuesday.  Does this mean something?  Was I supposed to notice this?

That’s an experience many people have had, and you can substitute pretty much any time of day, perhaps 3:33, or even swap in the hand positions on an analog clock.  What makes it significant though?

Does it have an inherent meaning, or are we assigning that meaning out of some psychological need to find order in our world?  I lean toward the latter, but I think it has more to do with perspective than anything else.

Think about this scenario.

You work hard and save up your pennies, and after an unreasonably long time saving, you finally have enough for a down payment on a brand new car!  You choose the car you want for various reasons; it looks nice to you, you like the brand, it gets good mileage, maybe it’s even a status symbol of sorts.  But whatever caused you to buy it, it’s yours.  It’s uniquely you, and you’re proud to be seen driving around town in it.  And then you notice something…these cars are everywhere!  It seems like everyone has one; same colour, same model…same car!  Suddenly your personal statement of individuality doesn’t seem so unique.

Why did everyone, including your neighbour three doors down – who you could have sworn drove an old jalopy last week – go out and buy the same damn car as you?  Well, my friend…they didn’t.

It might be easier to see what’s happening in that second scenario than in the first, but I assure it, it’s precisely the same mechanism at work.

Our brains are amazing organs.  They might just be the most complex structure in the universe (though this isn’t limited to our brains, it applies to all brains), and they work exceedingly well considering all that complexity.  Though they aren’t perfect.  There are a lot of things that can go wrong in a brain, and of the many, many ways they can misbehave, there are even more ways that such misbehaviour can manifest in the creature that owns it.  But let me make perfectly clear; the mechanism that causes us to see significance in random and even mundane events is not an imperfection.  In fact, we couldn’t live without it.

Patterns.  That’s the root of all coincidence.  Our brains have evolved to be very good at one particular thing, a thing that allows us to comprehend the reality in which we live; we are experts at recognising patterns.

Pattern recognition is often thought of in terms of visual stimulus.  There are many fun so-called brain teasers that challenge our perceptions through pictures that offer not-so-easily recognised patterns.  But the habit of sorting elements of our reality is an inherent process that is fundamental to the act of navigating life.  We do it with all of our senses, however many there may be, and that ability is tied in a very fundamental way to the fabric of space-time, believe it or not.  It is the very foundation of cognition, it is what we use to recognise the difference between people, things, sounds, feelings…everything.

Here’s the thing though, we’re so good at recognising patterns that we perceive them where they don’t actually exist.  That’s called false pattern recognition, or more commonly, apophenia.  That word has a simple meaning, a multifaceted meaning actually, but still simple.  We see patterns where none exist.

Apophenia – a term coined by German neurologist and psychiatrist (and Nazi), Klaus Conrad, in his principle work Die beginnende Schizophrenie. Versuch einer Gestaltanalyse des Wahns (1958) – manifests in several ways, whether seeing faces or shapes (often anthropomorphic shapes) in amorphous media, such as the man in the moon, or shapes in clouds, or, as has recently become quite popular, figures in the mist of ghost photography.  This, specifically, is called pareidolia, which is a form of apophenia that specifically relates to sensory stimulus, i.e. sights and sounds.

Pareidolia is responsible for the vast majority of paranormal type experiences in the realm of ghosts and hauntings, despite what some may prefer to believe.  As mentioned, so-called ghost photography is predominantly the result of persons looking at images that often don’t make sense visually.  There are typically photographic anomalies present in the image(s) that, when studied, begin to take form, often that of a face or apparition, but when viewed impartially or independent of context, those forms are conspicuously absent.  Electronic Voice Phenomenon, or EVP, is another popular example of pareidolia, but as with other forms of sensory apophenia, pareidolia doesn’t act alone.

Other common psychological mechanisms join with apophenia to solidify our incorrect perceptions.  Confirmation bias is one, which is the tendency we have to seek out and accept information that serves to confirm our already held beliefs, and also to reject information that in any way denies our beliefs or our perception of experience.  Confirmation bias also works on the suggestion of what should be seen/heard in the presented media.  When someone shows you a picture or plays an audio recording, and they tell you what it is you should be seeing/hearing, your brain will try to fulfill that expectation.

These aren’t the only ways apophenia affects our perceptions though.  As good as we are at detecting patterns, there are a few things we’re really quite bad at, on the whole.  We, as a general rule, suck at statistical analysis.  That isn’t to say that we don’t have the mental apparatus to perform the task, or that some people don’t have a better grasp on it than others, but when it comes to judging the significance of an event statistically (without doing the math outright), we will almost always err on the side of greater importance than not.

There’s a very simple reason for that too.  It’s far less costly to designate an event or occurrence significant and be wrong, that to deem it insignificant and be wrong.  At least, that was the case for our ancestors on the plains of Africa 50,000 years ago.  In today’s world, however, we have different concerns than did our ancestors.  This, in fact, is precisely why recreational gambling even exists.  All who endeavour to win their fortune in the lottery or in casinos, drastically misjudges the odds of their winning against the house.  Gaming houses of all kinds are capitalising on your inherent inability to accurately understand the significance of various events during game play, to their great profit, I might add.

Your brain, it seems, is not to be trusted.  Its friends, your eyes and ears, aren’t exactly beacons of truth either.  When you combine the effects of apophenia with mechanisms like confirmation bias and the inherent flaws in our sensory equipment (the retinal blind spot for instance), it’s a wonder we can make any sense of our surroundings at all.  Of course, all of those apparent failings are in fact the very reason we can make sense of our surroundings.

If we didn’t have the power to see faces where they don’t exist, we might be prone to miss them where they do exist, and where they could be integral to our survival.  All of these aspects of our greater mind, which may seem fatally flawed, are in fact perfectly adapted to ensure our survival in this world.  The problem is, our world has changed, is changing, at a pace far in excess of our ability to adapt.  What worked for us 200 years ago, isn’t necessarily going to work in another 200 years, unless we begin to take control, and realise our failings, perhaps with the goal of using them to our advantage.

Some time ago I wrote a post titled Cornerstone UFO Cases.  It was what I call a ‘filler piece’, or what other’s might call fluff.  Not exactly breaking news or unique among the UFOlogy crowd.  It basically recapped or summarised the seven most famous or most important cases in UFOlogical history; from Roswell, to Rendlesham, to Zeta Reticuli.

One of the cases I highlighted was the Belgian Wave Incident.  That was a series of some 2000 UFO reports from Belgium in 1989-1990.  It is considered by many to be the quintessential triangle UFO case, (mainly because it’s actually the first mass triangle UFO case).  The Belgian Wave flap, as some call it, is characterised by a single photograph.  That photograph is known as the Petit Rechain photo – so named for the Belgian town in which it was taken, allegedly.

The Petit Rechain photo was taken by an anonymous photographer known to the world only as “Patrick”.  It became a worldwide sensation just four months following the height of the Belgian Wave incident, and according to original assessments it shows, in unprecedented clarity, a large craft, triangle in shape, illuminated at its three corners by some type of light source, with a fourth light at its center.  The photo is distorted, and seems to show movement blur that at first blush seems consistent with the aerial characteristics of an aircraft.  As a result of all this apparent clarity and detail, the photo has been the subject of a great deal of speculation and study over the 24 years since it first came to light, and it is often labelled the best photographic evidence for UFO’s in history.

The Petit Rechain photo has been subjected to photographic analysis, spectral analysis, and an in-depth study of its movement characteristics, and as a result, it has been held out as, not only 100% genuine and real, but it’s been claimed that it shows evidence of high powered electromagnetic energy surrounding the craft.

When it was released in 1990, the photo was analysed by a team at the French National Space Research Center (CNES) and later, former NASA scientist Dr. Richard Haines, and then by physicist Dr. Andre Marion.  All of whom agreed that the photo was not only genuine, but that it showed a real craft of unknown origin and with unique characteristics.

Seems like a ringing endorsement, doesn’t it?  Well, there are some problems, not the least of which is the fact that the photo is an admitted hoax.

Several months after I posted the Cornerstone UFO Cases piece, I received a comment on the article informing me that the Petit Rechain photo is a hoax; something of which I was unaware.  That comment provided a link to an article expounding on this hoax, and which in turn linked to a French language news article from RTL.be (a Belgian online news paper).  This article makes an astounding claim; a claim that’s made its way into the Belgian Wave incident as fact – it’s even now referenced in the Wikipedia page for the incident.

The article states that “Patrick” has, after 21 years of complete anonymity, come forward to admit that he hoaxed the photo and the entire sighting (just his, not all 2000, obviously).  RTL.be’s article suggests, very matter-of-fact-ly, that “Partick”, at the time of the Belgian Wave Incident, was a pipe fitter at a small shop in Petit Rechain, Belgium.  He claims that he and two friends were amused by the furor over the recent UFO hoopla and they decided to prank their coworkers by creating a small UFO out of polystyrene and several unnamed objects, and then taking a picture of it when suspended from the ceiling.

“Patrick” claims that he didn’t intend to fool the entire planet, and that he expected someone to figure out the hoax soon after it broke in the world press, but no one ever did.

That isn’t entirely true though.  Skeptics have been attacking the Petit Rechain photo since day one, and more than one person has suggested exactly what RTL.be claims is the truth of the matter.  The only thing lacking in the matter was the proverbial smoking gun, which it seems we now have in hand.

It seems that way, but that’s not really the case.

Critical thinking is a two way street.  Not only should we be skeptical of wild claims and extraordinary evidence, treating nothing as the truth until it can be confirmed and verified, but we also need to be skeptical of claims made by those who say they’ve solved the mystery!  Sometimes common sense is enough, but other times, these situations require a close look at details and scientific interpretation.  When that is the case, the solutions also require a close look at the details and scientific interpretation.

Here’s the problem.

RTL.be offers no detail whatsoever.  Not only is the author of the article not listed, neither is the researcher involved (though presumably they are one and the same).  They also provide zero evidence to corroborate the claims they make in the article.  “Patrick”, since day one, has been identified by that single anonymous monker.  No other information about who he is, where he comes from, what he did/does, or how he captured the photograph in question exists.  He is as much a mystery as the photograph.  Yet we’re now asked to believe that the intrepid reporter from RTL.be not only found him, but cracked the case by interviewing this man, reviewing the evidence he has in hand, and printing the results.  But…no they didn’t.

“Patrick” is still anonymous.  We still have no idea who he is.  We still have no idea how he made the photo, aside from his seemingly flippant admission of hoax.  And as for that admission, without any of the information I just listed, how can anyone who claims to employ logic and reason believe that this man being referred to in this article is in fact, “Patrick”?  Someone please explain to me how we can accept the unsupported assertions of yet another voice in this debate from an article that consists of no more than five paragraphs of writing.  How are we supposed to know that the “Patrick” mentioned even exists, and isn’t just this reporter trying to fool everyone himself?  Nothing is offered in that article that can be considered solid information.  If this situation were reversed, wherein the claim that the photo is genuine were to come in the form of the RTL.be article, the skeptical community would be falling out of their chairs in laughter at the idea that they should take it seriously.  So why are we supposed to accept the claim of hoax with so little credibility?

I have doubts about the validity of the Petit Rechain photo, but when I consider the intellectual weight of those who have performed in-depth analysis of it, I can’t help but think that the issue is a slight bit more complicated than the capital ‘S’ Skeptics would have us believe.  However, the doubts I have about its validity are massively outweighed by my doubts about this claim of hoax.  Yet, as is evidenced by the comment made on my previous article, and by the inclusion of this information in the Wikipedia page on this issue, it seems very few people have really given the issue any thought or attention.

Is the Petit Rechain photo hoax a hoax itself?  I think the odds are far better for that possibility than they are for the idea that “Patrick” has come forward after all these years to reveal that we’ve all been duped.  Call me skeptic, I dare you.

I’m reading a book.  It’s a book written by a friend.  I call him a friend even though I’ve not met him, nor, likely, will I ever meet him.  That isn’t why I’m reading it though.  I’m reading it because it covers a topic that is dear to me, a topic that has vexed me for many, many years: Death.

No, I’m not a brooding and morbid existentialist.  Actually, now that I think about it, yes I am, but that’s neither here nor there.  It isn’t the spectre of death that interests me.  It isn’t some dark obsession with evil or gore or fear that has me vexed.  It is, as I think my previous writings have demonstrated, the mind-body question that has my attention.  It is the divide between the deterministic world view and the spiritualist world view.  It’s an intellectual pursuit driven by a single question: what’s next?

I mentioned the book I’m reading, which is Greg Taylor’s Stop Worrying! There Probably is an Afterlife (Daily Grail Publishing 2013), because even though I really just started it, my friend has gotten me to thinking – not a terribly difficult thing to achieve, I’ll admit.  The second chapter is dedicated to one particular aspect of the mind-body question, or more specifically the question of “what’s next?”  It deals with the idea of death-bed visions.

If you are at all familiar with my writings on this subject, you’ll probably already know my take on these matters, but I will say that Greg’s thoughts on the subject have affected my view.  It should be known that I intend to provide an in-depth review the book upon finishing it, what follows, however, is not a review, but rather is my take on one aspect of its contents.

Death-bed visions are, much like near-death experiences, almost archetypal to the process of dying.  At first glance they seem like an esoteric experience based in delusion, or hallucination, but upon further reading, one inevitably finds that not only are death-bed visions far more common than most anyone realises, but they are surprisingly similar among accounts.  There are literally thousands of documented death-bed vision experiences, and, even by the most conservative estimates, millions of undocumented experiences.  Depending on who you ask, these experiences seem nearly ubiquitous.

I will be dedicating an entire post (perhaps two) to the topic of death-bed visions, as it holds much potential to understand what happens to us when/as we die, for now though, I’d like to focus on an issue that, according to some, predicates all other issues on the topic of the mind-body question: Determinism.

Don’t run away just yet!  I know, determinism is a dirty word.  I know that the philosophy of life is one of the topics our betters have warned us not to discuss in polite company, amongst other subjects like politics and religion, but come on…take a risk with me.

Determinism says that acts of the will, occurrences in nature, or social or psychological phenomena are causally determined by preceding events or natural laws.  Which means, in simpler terms, that there is a physical cause or origin, rooted in nature, for all aspects of reality.

Greg Taylor, a wiser man among many wise men, has asserted in his book that a deterministic world view is flawed.  He says that it’s inadequate, and that experiences like death-bed visions are evidence that determinism is an infantile pet concept of aggressive atheists and modern philosophers of mind.

It’s true, many so-called angry atheists subscribe to the deterministic view of biology.  P.Z. Meyers is quoted as saying:

“If many object to the idea that human identity emerges gradually during development, they’re most definitely going to find the idea of soullessness and mind as a by-product of nervous activity horrifying. This will be our coming challenge: to accommodate a view of ourselves and our place in the universe that isn’t encumbered by falsehoods and trivialising myths.”

Richard Dawkins has made similar statements, as have several other popular atheists in the limelight.  Meyer’s words embody the argument, but don’t really counter it.  He seems to dismiss, or conveniently omit one very important aspect, one that features prominently in Greg Taylor’s argument, and that is that consciousness appears to be pointedly non-deterministic.

This position is valid.  It’s demonstrated in the phenomena associated with the afterlife, though in the interest of intellectual honesty, that phenomena isn’t readily accepted by those who don’t subscribe to any kind of religious tradition.  It is largely unquantifiable, which is precisely why it sits in opposition to determinism.  That doesn’t mean it should be dismissed, it means only that it should be recognised as less valuable to the discussion than some would prefer.  It doesn’t end there though.

A non-deterministic view of consciousness is also supported through quantum physics.  Some might suggest that this is no more measurable than afterlife phenomena, and to those unfamiliar with the complex ideas and theories held in quantum mechanics, that might be true, but concepts like entanglement, uncertainty, and even zero point fields are quite real and measurable.

But we needn’t go that far in our pursuit of ways to quantify consciousness.

I recently wrote about some (relatively) new and exciting brain scanning techniques emerging from the field of biomedicine in neuroscience.  In an unrelated post, I discussed the possibility that geomagnetic energy might be affecting our brains and causing hallucinations of a sort; hallucinations that are in turn perceived as paranormal experiences.  As a result of that post, and the commentary that followed, I came to realise that the evidence for determinism is now stronger than ever, and the reason is much simpler than quantum physics.

It’s true that there really is no disconnection between people.  In fact, there is no real disconnection between anything that exists.  All matter – and energy – are made of up fundamental particles.  This is true for what we would call solid sovereign objects; they exist in relative separateness from all other objects, but this is an illusion.  It’s easy to visualise the connectedness of objects that exist inside a medium like water, wherein the idea that the water acts to connect objects is somewhat intuitive.  The idea, of course, is that the molecules, the atoms that make up the water, are in constant contact with the molecules and atoms of the objects in question, thereby forming an unbroken – and some might say unbreakable – chain between object, medium and object.

The same is true for any object that exists in any medium, such as the atmosphere of the earth for instance.  What we call air is no different than water, in that it is made up of fundamental particles; molecules and atoms, and as a result, those things that exist within it are fundamentally connected to any and all other objects that exist within the same medium.

But are we talking about anything more than just atomic proximity?  The determinist would probably argue no, we are not; while the dualist might argue the opposite.  Myself, I side with the dualist; standing next to a light post, no more makes me a light post than it makes the light post me.  Proximity alone is not enough confer connectedness in the sense offered by dualists.

Interaction is the key factor in demonstrating the connectedness of two (or more) objects or entities.  This is embodied in my geomagnetically induced hallucinations post.  As I mentioned in that post, the new brain scanning technology called transcranial electrical stimulation, or TES, and its variants, uses electrical impulses to affect specific areas of the brain as may be targeted for medical or research purposes.  Those effects are varied and of themselves are quite interesting, but what’s important here, is the fact that an outside device can affect the cognitive function of a human brain.  It does this by projecting electromagnetic energy into the brain in finely tuned ways and frequencies.  In fact, as this technology develops, in conjunction with other technologies and techniques, researchers are able to more finely target specific brain regions, allowing them to pin point and map what regions of the brain are responsible for what cognitive or behaviour processes, on an almost one-to-one scale.

It may not need to be said at this point, but the very fact that this can be done, stands as the strongest evidence yet that cognition – that is thoughts, feelings, motives, etc – are the product of nothing more than the biomechanical nature of the brain.  It says that consciousness is not only housed directly in the brain, but also originates there.

Obviously, this idea is diametrically opposed to the dualism of mind philosophy, and some of its proponents would argue, as an analogy, that my television depends on both its internal components and the signal provided by my cable company in order to work properly.  Disrupting either will cause problems.

I agree, that seems reasonable, but our brains are not TV’s.

The false analogy between televisions and brains offers an inaccurate picture of the issue.  Firstly, a TV has an obvious connection to the signal provider – a cable, or in some cases a wireless transceiver – but our brains do not.  Mammalian brains, or even lower order brains for that matter, have no apparatus for sending or receiving signals of any kind.  In the case of a television, if you physically disconnect the source of the signal, the set will not work (properly).  You can even go so far as to enclose the TV in a Faraday cage, and the effect will be that no signal of any kind can reach its transceiver, thus it will not work.

This isn’t so in the case of a human brain.  A person can be isolated in every way we can imagine, and yet their brain continues to function; we see no interruption in consciousness whatsoever.  If you were to place a human inside a Faraday cage – which will block any electromagnetic signal or field, depending on the size of the mesh – there is no effecton consciousness.

You might argue that there are fundamental energies that we don’t yet understand, so it’s possible that such energies require receiving/transmitting apparatus that we might not recognise.  It’s also possible that whatever signal or energy might be responsible for consciousness isn’t electromagnetic in nature, thus wouldn’t be affected by shielding.  However, as I’m sure you’re aware, there are only four fundamental forces (read energies) in the universe: electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces.  So there is little else to work with, even when you factor in the mysterious zero point energy, the existence of which is as yet still only an untested hypothesis.

I can already hear the argumentative machinations of the dualists winding up.  “But there could be an energy that we just haven’t discovered yet!”  Sure, there could, but we’ve seen zero evidence of such an energy in all other endeavours.  Nature isn’t that wasteful.  The four fundamental forces are found everywhere.  They have an effect on everything…all four of them.  How could it be that there is another energy that only affects consciousness and which doesn’t interact with the other four in any way?

There are other counterarguments though, such as the universality of near-death experiences and the related imagery, not to mention death-bed visions as mentioned above.  Though, the outside influence of a controlling or supplying energy isn’t required to explain those phenomena.  Even if you dismiss the delusion/hallucination explanations typically offered by those pesky determinists, there is still room for explanations for those experiences that doesn’t invoke mysterious new energies, magic, or omnipotent deities.

For the record, I’m still on the fence, which is a position I wish more people would take up.  This issue, among all others, is the one issue that does not warrant certainty from either side.

Happy Birthday Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, you were a giant on whose shoulders many currently stand.  A pity you weren’t more like your title character, Sherlock Holmes.

The above paragraph may read as a little inflammatory, perhaps snide as well, but it’s not without reason.

Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, born 22 May 1859 in Edinburg, Scotland, was, as some would like to claim, the father of modern crime writing.  He wasn’t, actually, as that honour goes to Edgar Allen Poe, but it’s a small quibble.  In popular culture, the uncontested, most famous literary detective is, quite obviously, Sherlock Holmes.  Holmes was the main character in Conan Doyle’s magnum opus, which consisted of four books and more than 50 short stories.

Of course, we all know exactly who Sherlock Holmes is – with his recent popularisation on the big screen by Robert Downey Jr. – his characteristic logic, astute observation, and keen intellect and his impressive memory (along with his hat and pipe) have become a symbol in our culture for intelligence and well-reasoned inquiry.  Conan Doyle crafted, not only a character, but a mythos; unfortunately it wasn’t a self-portrait.

You see, while Conan Doyle was a brilliant author and could rightly be considered a genius in his own right, deductive reasoning and logic weren’t his strong suits, not by a long shot – despite evidence to the contrary.  Even though he is most famously known as a classical author of fiction (across multiple genres), it’s true that his focus wasn’t always on writing novels.  He was a trained physician, and, for a time, a political activist, a keen footballer and cricketer, and a husband and father.  He was knighted by King Edward VII in 1902, was a member of the Venerable Order of St. John, and held the military commission of Deputy Lieutenant.

In addition to all of the above, he was also a leading voice in the Spiritualist movement of the turn of the 20^th century.  Following the deaths of his first wife in 1902, and the death of his son, Arthur Kingsley, in 1918, as well as other deaths in his immediate circle, Conan Doyle became obsessed with spiritualism and the afterlife.

In fact, he was one of the original members of the renowned, and possibly the first ever paranormal research society: The Ghost Club.

Conan Doyle’s spiritualist exploits are colourful, to say the least.  He wrote in support of spiritualism in his Professor Challenger (another of his detective characters) novel The Land of Mist (1926) – this was a companion to his earlier novel The Lost World (1912). That book was essentially his coming out in support of what he believed to be an extremely important, but undervalued part of life.  Although his predilection for spiritualism wasn’t exactly a secret prior to this book.

Perhaps his most famous foray into the weird, was his rather loud endorsement of the Cottingley Fairies, which carried the story of Elise Wright and Frances Griffiths around the world, making their fairy photos famous.  Unfortunately, the photos were a hoax; and looking back, it’s seems difficult to see how anyone believed the story in the first place, let alone the mind that brought us Sherlock Holmes.

In his quest for answers, Conan Doyle befriended the one and only Harry Houdini. Oh the conversations those two must have had!  Though, Houdini wasn’t a man to be fooled by the trifling ploys of little girls; he was arguably the most successful debunker of charlatan psychics, mediums, and flim-flam artists that there ever was.  Despite his reputation as possibly the best magician and escape artist that ever lived, Houdini was an avowed skeptic, and was vocal about the fraud being perpetrated by those in the spiritualist movement.  And thus, their brief friendship came to an embarrassing and very public end when they couldn’t reconcile their philosophical differences.  Interestingly, Conan Doyle continued to assert that Houdini himself had supernatural or divine powers, most notably in his book The Edge of the Unknown (1930).  Not surprisingly though, Houdini vehemently denied this, and even tried to show Conan Doyle how the various tricks were done, but was apparently unsuccessful in convincing the great writer of the truth.

Conan Doyle once teamed up with fellow writer and spiritualist William Thomas Stead, and the two of them began promoting the psychic powers of Danish stage magicians and occult authors, Julius and Agnes Zancig.  Though, the husband and wife team later confessed that their entire act was fake.  He was also responsible for popularising the world famous tale of the ghost ship Mary Celeste, through his short story titled J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement.

Perhaps the most interesting factoid about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – one that is relatively unknown in popular culture – is his status as one of the prime suspects in the Piltdown Man hoax.

If you’re unfamiliar, the Piltdown Man hoax is the name given to the situation that unravelled out of a submission to the Geological Society of London in 1912, wherein amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson presented what he believed was fossilised bone evidence in support of a previously unknown early hominid species.  This created quite a stir in the paleoanthropological community, as you might imagine, and the find was heralded as one of the greatest in modern history.  That is until, in 1953, it was determined that the bones were a deliberate hoax.

Now, while the case is still officially unsolved, as to who perpetrated the hoax, most believe it was Dawson.  Some people claim though, that Dawson didn’t have the expertise needed to pull it off.  Some believe that Conan Doyle was better suited for the crime, and with the fact that he lived near Piltdown, and had the relevant and necessary knowledge and skill, he seems a decent candidate…but why?

Well, American historian of science, Richard Milner, claims that, not only did Conan Doyle have the expertise, he had the motive – he wanted to embarrass the scientific community as revenge for debunking his favourite psychic – and he apparently wove cryptic clues to his involvement with the hoax into his novel, The Lost World.

“If you are clever and know your business you can fake a bone as easily as you can a photograph.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World

Arthur Conan Doyle certainly isn’t the only name on the suspect list for the Piltdown Man hoax, and there are holes in that particular theory, but his name is still on the list.  It would seem, too, that if he did in fact perpetrate the most successful paeleoanthropological hoax ever conceived, then perhaps his mind was more logical than one might think.

Conan Doyle died of a heart attack at the age of 71 on 7 July 1930, he would today be 155 years old.  So, Happy Birthday Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and thank you for all you did to entertain us.