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Keep an eye on The Anomalist and Fortean Times. They have a section of "fortean" news from all around the world. Some of those news herald the proximate debunking of many scientific and historical paradigms: sunken cities thought to be legends are being discovered, mummies in Egypt have cocaine in their noses, pre-conquest mummies here in south america have been found to have tuberculosis in the vertebra which were not supposed to have had until the spanish came, quantum mechanics is permeating more and more of the thought trends in physics, more serious and critical clinical trials are being run on some sorts of new-agey therapy, even now the famous moon-landing is being critically examined and critically reconfirmed, and so on.
In sum, western knowledge has to adjust more and more to this "positive" feedback, which comes in terms of experience, data, information, reports. Negative feedback is that which supports and stabilises the system: more of the same, positive feddback is that which destabilises it, new info that challenges the old one: This is NOT that, an Electron Is Not a Particle and Is not a Wave, and thus requires dealing with to redefine the system, simply because it hampers its defintions. The critical threshold is reached then when the system has to literally define its root identifications, beliefs, call it what you like, which is called a state of chaos, the System Is Not The System, and then becomes to Be Something Else. I don't care whether it'll happen in 10 or 20 years.
A good termomether of this positive feedback is somehting that to my knowlwedge went unlooked by McKenna and is indeed very difficult to measure: Language. Think about it. How many new words are being spawned on a weekly basis, either them from a popular environemnt or an academic one or from the very streets? How many words do you know today that your parents haven't even dream about at the time you were born?
Language as we know it will have zillions of new terms from here to ten years to come, dictionaries will hardly keep thapace, as they are already loosing it, as more words and terms are borned to define new events, experiences and perceptions. And this of course, has a neurological correlation. We'll be all nuts to the eyes of the neighbor. What today are cross cultural differences will predate inter personal relationships inside of what used to be western culture. Our own individual minds will have no reason to believe in the dabblings of a Darwin or an Einstein, and collectively this will swarm nations. Control freaks will be having fits in the streets, as others more flexible and adaptative will be reconnecting to the roots of the human specie.
Oh, its just another roll of the dices. |
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