Posts Tagged ‘Western Europe’

The Age of Commercial Space Exploration is Near

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

I am involved in a new company that is selling a new product of Richard Branson called Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic is selling suborbital spaceflights for the price of $200.000.

Our principal aim behind this is not to make money. The principal aim is to reinvest any money we make into space exploration,” Branson said. “We expect to double, triple, quadruple the number of astronauts in the next few years that have currently experienced space,” he said.

To date, Branson said, about a 100 pioneers have been willing to pay $200,000 to be the first people to go into space via Virgin Galactic. “These are the kinds of people who are going to enable us to bring the cost of space travel down,” he stated.

Space Tourism is not the primary target of the Company. It wants to be the first commercial company involved in Space Exploration.

Space Exploration is a major theme of Science Fiction. When I was young I read all the books in this Genre I could find. Science Fiction has stimulated Science extensively. Many Scientist got their inspiration out of explorations of the Future. When the Theme was set it was only a matter of time when somebody would realize the Inspiration of the Author.

The step from Idea to Realization is mostly not the issue of a Science Fiction novel. In most cases we have realized all the technology and our just “doing it”. Most of the time the final realization takes much longer than the writer could imagine. Jules Verne put a Man on the Moon about a hundred years ago.

The major theme of Space Exploration in Science Fiction is War. We meet Extraterrestrials and they or we don’t like each other. We are part of a Federation (mostly the Good Ones) and in the end we beat the Bad Ones. Interesting enough many of the Stories related to UFO’s look a lot like the Science Fiction Stories. The only difference is that THEY are visiting US.

In the Renaissance the people in the West started to explore Earth like we want to explore Space. After The Renaissance the Age of Exploitation started, The Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution followed by the Age of Information made Space Exploration finally possible.

History repeats itself so I can imagine what will happen next. Both stages are part of a bigger cycle, the Cycle of Culture. It takes about 1250 years to turn around.

At this moment we are in a situation comparable to the year 758. The only thing that is different from that time is that we have moved to another Level, Earth.

What happened around 750?

At 750 we are in the Middle of the Middle Ages called the Dark Ages. It was the time when the Great Empire of Rome was collapsing because of a huge movement of hungry people. The world was struggling with a sudden change of the Climate. Everywhere States were fighting to expand and defend their territories. Around this time a new Spiritual Leader, Mohammed, created a new Religion. It was the start of the expansion of the Arab World and the Arab Empires..

Conditions in Western Europe slowly began to improve after 700 as Europe experienced an agricultural boom caused by a substantial increase in solar radiation. About 600 years later the Renaissance started.

The Great Empire of the West is currently collapsing because of a huge movement of hungry people. Just like the Roman Empire we are really not aware of the collapse. In the last days Romans spend all their time playing very expensive games and were enjoying life to the extremes. They forced all the other states to pay enormous amounts of taxes to keep the Entertainment Business running. In the End their stable infrastructure collapsed.

I hope you see the relationship.

Replace the Arab Expansion in the Middle Ages by the coming Chinese Expansion in you will know Who’s gone Win.

Millions of people are waiting for the Coming of the new Messiah, the new Spiritual Leader of the World. According to the Cycle He (or She!) will come soon.

In the West we are playing Games. Leslie Benzies, the producer of Grand Theft Auto IV recently revealed in an interview that the amount of money spent on the development of the game was right around $100 million. The budget of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean was $300 million. The development costs of all the movies and games exceeds the budget of the World Food Organization with ease.

Why do we need to move into Space?

The first reason could be to escape Earth. We need another place to live because life on earth is not the way it was. If we do this and Science Fiction is Right at the long term we will move into a comparable situation, Competition on the Level of the Galaxy. We have to learn who are our friends and who are our enemies.

The second reason could be “Spin-Off”. Space Exploration has boosted Science and Technology.

The last reason could be to see Earth as it is. A Beautiful Blue Slowly Turning Globe without any Borders. From Space Earth looks like a Paradise. I imagine the Extraterrestials are seeing this also! This could be the reason they are here!

The Cycle of Civilization is a slow cycle but there are cycles with a much longer periodicity. Many “Old Civilizations” found the Cycle of the Precession of the Equinox and “calculated” the Center of this Cycle, The Mother Goddess situated in the Pleiades.

The coming Years the Very Long Cycle and the Cycle of Civilization are coming into a Conjuction. The Effect of this Conjunction is unknown. Human Civilization has not gathered enough data to make an understandable prediction. The only thing we know is that we are living in a Very Special Time of History.

One of the people that analyzed the very Long Cycle (Terrence McKenna) predicted Time/Space-Travel as a major Novelty that would soon appear. Just like the Mayas and many other Civilizations he knew there is a very cheap alternative, DMT (a psychedelic drug).

The Old Civilizations predicted a return of the (Virgin!) Mother Goddess of the Pleiades (Ises, Mary Magdalene, The Black Madonna, Alcyone). Perhaps She is the New Spiritual Leader many religions are waiting for. I hope the Male Religions don’t mind She is a Female!

Perhaps Richard Branson should start a new Company soon, Virgin TimeTravel. She Will Love It.

Wait and See.

About the Renaissance

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

The Renaissance was a Cultural Movement that spanned roughly the 14th through the 17th century. It started in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spread to the rest of Western Europe.

 After the Dark Middle Ages, controlled by the Church of Rome, aimed at the Inside (Spirit and Soul), many people wanted to discover the Outside.

The Renaissance is the Age of Discovery. It is the time of Columbus.

T704836_23The printing press, invented in 1450, made it possible to distribute all the new knowledge all over the known world.

The new knowledge is in reality very old knowledge. Renaissance means re-birth and the Renaissance is the re-birth of the knowledge (and wisdom) of the Greek and the Romans.

This knowledge was forbidden and destroyed by the Rulers in Rome. It came back because of renewed contacts with the Arab Culture. At that time Arab Culture was at the top of its cycle.

Art (Leonardo Da Vinci) and Science (Copernicus (1514)) exploded. Both of them were funded by the rich merchants (Medici, Venice).

Scientists started to experiment and used advanced tools (Microscope, Telescope) to study the external world and the internal world (the Body). They looked with their own Eyes and not with the Eyes of the Bible.

renaissanceperIn the Arts the Perspective was invented. Artist used advanced tools (“camera’s) to support their own eyes to project the outside world on a flat surface.

Another Re-Birth was the Reformation (Luther, 1517). The Bible was translated in many languages and distributed by the printing press to many people.

For the first time people outside the Church could read and study Religious documents and compare them with Scientific Evidence  from Greece, Arabia and Rome.

columbus_taking_possessionThe need to convert others to the Christian faith was huge. Many expeditions, Crusades,  were send out to unknown territory to find convertible humans.

The missionaries used the old fashioned trick learned from the Huns to force people to accept  the Faith by violence. Millions of people were tortured and killed.

At the outside of the Christian Empire the Arabs were attacking all the time. They were also very wealthy.

The search for Gold stimulated the weapon-industry of the west.

Not only the weapon industry flourished also the transport industry (Maps, Navigation, Big Ships) made a lot of progress.

The combination of both of them (The Navy, “War-Ships”) helped the West to Rule the Sea.

mercatorProduction in the Renaissance was carried out by the Guilds, a Cooperation of Craftsman. They were almost in total control of every craft in the big cities.

The Renaissance (Creation) is part of the Cycle of Western Culture.

In this Cycle it was preceded by the rule of Roman Church (Control) and followed by the Industrial Revolution (Social).

The rebirth was fuelled by an Expansion Phase (Fire).

In this phase not only Arabic Culture expanded and rose to a high point also the new rulers of the West (Celts, Germans), the descendants of the Huns, created new Kingdoms and build the Cathedrals. The Cathedrals contained all the occult knowledge of that time (Sacred Geometry, The Spiral, The Light, The Four Forces,.).

On a macro level we see an interesting pattern.

The phase of Fire (Expansion, Practice, Summer, Sensory, …) fuels the phase of Creation (Up, Spirit, Idea, Eye, Winter, Mythic,…).

Ideas are put into Practice or Practice generates Ideas. The combination of Sensory and Mythic (A Game) is called Invention or Exploration by Will McWhinney.

The game of Exploration is an Infinite Game. Infinite games are about continuing the Game.

Going Back to Jump to another Level is also a pattern that is visible in the most advanced theory about ecologies promoted by the Resilience Alliance (RA).

The Ecology of the Roman Church dominant in the Dark part of the Middle Ages collapsed. It collapsed because of many factors.

In this time the Plague killed millions of people. The Climate was very instable (An Ice-Age) and the new Kingdoms of the Huns and Celts were heavily expanded. They started to fight for dominance.

According to the theory of RA a collapsing ecology reverts to a previous stage to rise again.

What does this say about Innovation?

Innovation is fuelled by an earlier (expansion) stage in history. It is triggered by a collapse of an Ecology.

If we look at the current state of the world we see a Collapse (a Compression) of the World Wide Ecology. It will certainly generate a stage of Ideas and Creativity.

This is needed to solve the current problems. In contrary to many ideas about Innovation the only way to solve the problems is to Look Back and Learn from History.

We can learn from the Control Stage of the Middle Ages where one paradigm was enforced. At this moment Science is enforcing again one paradigm, the paradigm of Control, Abstraction, Technology, the Computer, Statistics and the Factory.

They were created during the Industrial Revolution that was aimed at creating Unity (Every Thing is the Same).

At this moment we are moving into the stage of the Center, Balance and Harmony.  In this stage we always jump to a new level of Conscioussness. In the last Center-Stage the Religion of the Islam was born so the chances are high that a new World Religion will appear or re-appear.

People that explore contradicting paradigms are excluded from the scientific community. This community controls the world of Inspiration just like the Guilds were controlling the crafts in the Renaissance. To innovate we need Freedom of Paradigm.

We can learn from the Idea stage of the Renaissance. It teaches us that a Union of Art, Science and Spirituality is needed to support real innovation.

We can also learn from a comparable phase in the Cycle, the phase of Harmony. In this phase the old is completely destroyed by an invasion of people outside its territory (The Huns).

The West is trying with all its force to block a huge part of the Earth (the “Under-Developed” countries) to take part in its innovation. It creates (Economic and Legal) Walls just like the Roman Empire and the Chinese Empire created Walls to protect their territory from the Huns and The Celts when they were in their end-stage.

The Under-Developed countries are of a Lower Culture. Perhaps these cultures carry something the West desperately needs. In these cultures the collective is more important than the individual. In these cultures the sick, the poor and the old are still taken care of.

Funny.

I believe this was the message Christianity wanted to bring to the World.

Something went wrong in the West don’t you think?

LINKS

About the Perspective

Lectures about the Renaissance part 1

Lectures about the Renaissance part 2

Lectures about the Renaissance part 3