This is a book called "Ascent of humanity" by Charles Eisenstein.

It is not fiction, it is a partly scientific, partly philosophic book about humanity, technology, language, progress, development, culture and most of all it is about seperation. The underlying thread of the chapters is the increasing seperation of living things - especially within humans. While it also explores prehuman life, the main focus is how "technologies" like symbolic language, symbolic art, numbering things, fire, linear time ... up to modern science, photography, digitalization, the modern virtual reality of 3D movies and computer games represent an increasing trend of seperation.

I stumbled across this after the recent discussions and debates I had here in the forum and tried to express a couple of shortcomings I see in the way this culture sees science, nature, the world, human activity and so on. Specifically the mechanistif and reductionist world view that "scientism" holds, but also the trouble I have with the ideas of progress.

So this book seems to formulate many of the concepts I tried to explain in a coherent and hopefully understandable way and I had almost my ears pop out when I listened to an audiobook version of the first chapters because I was going like"YES! this is what I am trying to say, EXACTLY this!"

I suspect there are some things that I would differ, probably especially towards the end of the book that I have not yet read or heard, but the beginning shows very much what I am trying to say here.

So here is a link to an audio recording of the yet most interesting chapter about language, written words, virtual realities, the estrangement from individual beings by numbering then, the problems of using language at all and much more:
464 - Naming, Numbering and the Control of Time (Ascent of Humanity 4) - UnwelcomeGuests
It is a two part free download, one hour each. This is just one episode in a sequence of readings from the book, starting at:
461 - Technology and Control - The Paradise that Never Came (Ascent of Humanity 1) - UnwelcomeGuests
- the whole series is 24 parts in length, two hours each. I dont know if one has to listen to it all, but episode 464 is really what I am talking about.

I will not be here for a week starting now, so enjoy Charles Eisenstein in the meantime, he seems to say the same things that I do, so maybe you dont need me for a couple of days

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"Phantasy is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited" (Albert Einstein)

Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress)

"Humans or their tools are not inherently destructive - it is a lack of wisdom & respect in the ways the two relate to each other & to earth, that turns into destruction. A lack of these in interactions between humans is the foundation of this destruction. To change these ways, a new foundation has to be laid, even if that means to shake the building standing on it."

WOW!

Definitely looks worth a read, .. adds to top of list ...

I think I heard about this a while back, thank you very much for bringing it to our attention!

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The last thing this world needs is more pundits and prophets!

What this world really needs is more artists and environmentalists!


"Its only 'here' that we lose perspective, out at the Cosmic Consciousness Level things get a lot clearer. For example, there is an actual star pattern that is traced in the shape of a Willow Tree, across the breadth of the Milky Way! And no wonder Indigenous peoples refer to the 'here after' as the Happy Hunting Grounds! Has it ever occured to anyone why the bioluminescence dots, on the Na'vi!"

I am halfway through about and I have to recommend it again. Its another one of these books where I frequently go "YES, this is what I have said or thought so often and again and again!" - He very much perfectly connects the ideas of control, seperation and the world becoming a machine. He adresses it all - science, technology, culture, society, violence, agriculture, technofixes, education, ...
Here is a new link to the audiobook that is better because it is a version that really is an audiobook and not a sequence of podcasts.
Category:Audiobooks - UnwelcomeGuests
The audiobook in this case is divided by chapters and downloadable as a complete ZIP file.

And the best of it for many of you here is that his idea of "returning to nature" does not equal the abandoning of technology. At least this is what he hints to in the chapters I heard.

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"Phantasy is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited" (Albert Einstein)

Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress)

"Humans or their tools are not inherently destructive - it is a lack of wisdom & respect in the ways the two relate to each other & to earth, that turns into destruction. A lack of these in interactions between humans is the foundation of this destruction. To change these ways, a new foundation has to be laid, even if that means to shake the building standing on it."

Why is abstraction wrong, or something to be discouraged?

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...but in purple blue, I'm stunning!

Oh I saw - there are translations of the book in
"Chinese . Finnish . French . German . Hungarian . Romanian . Russian . Serbian . Spanish " on the website of the free online version of the book:
ascentofhumanity.com

__________________
"Phantasy is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited" (Albert Einstein)

Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress)

"Humans or their tools are not inherently destructive - it is a lack of wisdom & respect in the ways the two relate to each other & to earth, that turns into destruction. A lack of these in interactions between humans is the foundation of this destruction. To change these ways, a new foundation has to be laid, even if that means to shake the building standing on it."

Haha, and then Clarke was totally ignored.

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