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Thread: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

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    Default “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    “Mouse Utopia” was a sort of new concept for me. While reading a blog of a PA-member (Bruce Charlton) with that very title – Mouse Utopia – I was reminiscing about a short science fiction story I read long time ago. Probably 50 years or so. It always “stuck to my mind”, I never forgot the zest of it.

    So, I went searching for it. I knew it had the word “Phoenix” in the title. That’s all I remembered (I had read it in a book with short SF-stories).

    It did not take long to find it back, online. The author is Fredric Brown and the story was published in August 1949.

    But first the essence of the “Mouse Utopia”. You can find it on Bruce Charlton’s blog:

    http://mouseutopia.blogspot.com/

    In essence: The so-called ‘Mouse Utopia’ experiment was conducted from 1968 by John B Calhoun

    Four healthy breeding pairs of mice were allowed to reproduce freely in a 'utopian' environment with ample food and water, no predators, no disease, comfortable temperature – a near as possible ideal conditions and space. What happened was described by the author in terms of five phases: establishment, exponential growth, growth slowing, breeding ceases and population stagnant, population decline and extinction


    If possible, please read first Bruce Charlton’s blog, where he compares that study with the situation our species is “in”, at this time. It’s worth your time reading.

    Then, after reading the above, here is the story Fredric Brown wrote (it is freely available on the internet here:
    https://www.you-books.com/book/F-Bro...r-to-a-Phoenix

    I will paste it below.

    Letter to a Phoenix
    by Fredric Brown

    There is much to tell you, so much that it is difficult to know where to begin. Fortunately, I have forgotten most of the things that have happened to me. Fortunately, the mind has a limited capacity for remembering. It would be horrible if I remembered the details of a hundred and eighty thousand years—the details of four thousand lifetimes that I have lived since the first great atomic war.

    Not that I have forgotten the really great moments. I remember being on the first expedition to land on Mars and the third to land on Venus. I remember—I believe it was in the third great war—the blasting of Skora from the sky by a force that compares to nuclear fission as a nova compares to our slowly dying sun. I was second in command on a Hyper-A Class spacer in the war against the second extragalactic invaders, the ones who established bases on Jupe’s moons before we knew they were there and almost drove us out of the Solar System before we found the one weapon they couldn’t stand up against. So they fled where we couldn’t follow them, then, outside of the Galaxy. When we did follow them, about fifteen thousand years later, they were gone. They were dead three thousand years.

    And this is what I want to tell you about—that mighty race and the others—but first, so that you will know how I know what I know, I will tell you about myself.

    I am not immortal. There is only one immortal being in the universe; of it, more anon. Compared to it, I am of no importance, but you will not understand or believe what I say to you unless you understand what I am.

    There is little in a name, and that is a fortunate thing—for I do not remember mine. That is less strange than you think, for a hundred and eighty thousand years is a long time and for one reason or another I have changed my name a thousand times or more. And what could matter less than the name my parents gave me a hundred and eighty thousand years ago?

    I am not a mutant. What happened to me happened when I was twenty-three years old, during the first atomic war. The first war, that is, in which both sides used atomic weapons—puny weapons, of course, compared to subsequent ones. It was less than a score of years after the discovery of the atom bomb. The first bombs were dropped in a minor war while I was still a child. They ended that war quickly, for only one side had them.

    The first atomic war wasn’t a bad one—the first one never is. I was lucky for, if it had been a bad one—one which ended a civilization—I’d not have survived it despite the biological accident that happened to me. If it had ended a civilization, I wouldn’t have been kept alive during the sixteen-year sleep period I went through about thirty years later. But again I get ahead of the story.

    I was, I believe, twenty or twenty-one years old when the war started. They didn’t take me for the army right away because I was not physically fit. I was suffering from a rather rare disease of the pituitary gland—Somebody’s syndrome. I’ve forgotten the name. It caused obesity, among other things. I was about fifty pounds overweight for my height and had little stamina. I was rejected without a second thought.

    About two years later my disease had progressed slightly, but other things had progressed more than slightly. By that time the army was taking anyone; they’d have taken a one-legged one-armed blind man if he was willing to fight. And I was willing to fight. I’d lost my family in a dusting, I hated my job in a war plant, and I had been told by doctors that my disease was incurable and I had only a year or two to live in any case. So I went to what was left of the army, and what was left of the army took me without a second thought and sent me to the nearest front, which was ten miles away. I was in the fighting one day after I joined.

    Now I remember enough to know that I hadn’t anything to do with it, but it happened that the time I joined was the turn of the tide. The other side was out of bombs and dust and getting low on shells and bullets. We were out of bombs and dust, too, but they hadn’t knocked out all of our production facilities and we’d got just about all of theirs. We still had planes to carry them, too, and we still had the semblance of an organization to send the planes to the right places. Nearly the right places, anyway; sometimes we dropped them too close to our own troops by mistake. It was a week after I’d got into the fighting that I got out of it again—knocked out of it by one of our smaller bombs that had been dropped about a mile away.

    I came to, about two weeks later, in a base hospital, pretty badly burned. By that time the war was over, except for the mopping up, and except for restoring order and getting the world started up again. You see, that hadn’t been what I call a blow-up war. It killed off—I’m just guessing; I don’t remember the fraction—about a fourth or a fifth of the world’s population. There was enough productive capacity left, and there were enough people left, to keep on going; there were dark ages for a few centuries, but there was no return to savagery, no starting over again. In such times, people go back to using candles for light and burning wood for fuel, but not because they don’t know how to use electricity or mine coal; just because the confusions and revolutions keep them off balance for a while. The knowledge is there, in abeyance until order returns.
    It’s not like a blow-up war, when nine-tenths or more of the population of Earth—or of Earth and the other planets is killed. Then is when the world reverts to utter savagery and the hundredth generation rediscovers metals to tip their spears.

    But again I digressed. After I recovered consciousness in the hospital, I was in pain for a long time. There were, by then, no more anesthetics. I had deep radiation burns, from which I suffered almost intolerably for the first few months until, gradually, they healed. I did not sleep—that was the strange thing. And it was a terrifying thing, then, for I did not understand what had happened to me, and the unknown is always terrifying. The doctors paid little heed—for I was one of millions burned or otherwise injured—and I think they did not believe my statements that I had not slept at all. They thought I had slept but little and that I was either exaggerating or making an honest error. But I had not slept at all. I did not sleep until long after I left the hospital, cured. Cured, incidentally, of the disease of my pituitary gland, and with my weight back to normal, my health perfect.
    I didn’t sleep for thirty years. Then I did sleep, and I slept for sixteen years. And at the end of that forty-six-year period, I was still, physically, at the apparent age of twenty-three.

    Do you begin to see what had happened as I began to see it then? The radiation—or combination of types of radiation—I had gone through, had radically changed the functions of my pituitary. And there were other factors involved. I studied endocrinology once, about a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, and I think I found the pattern. If my calculations were correct, what happened to me was one chance in a great many billions.

    The factors of decay and aging were not eliminated, of course, but the rate was reduced by about fifteen thousand times. I age at the rate of one day every forty-five years. So I am not immortal. I have aged eleven years in the past hundred and eighty millennia. My physical age is now thirty-four.

    And forty-five years is to me as a day. I do not sleep for about thirty years of it—then I sleep for about fifteen. It is well for me that my first few “days” were not spent in a period of complete social disorganization or savagery, else I would not have survived my first few sleeps. But I did survive them and by that time I had learned a system and could take care of my own survival. Since then, I have slept about four thousand times, and I have survived. Perhaps someday I shall be unlucky. Perhaps someday, despite certain safeguards, someone will discover and break into the cave or vault into which I seal myself, secretly, for a period of sleep. But it is not likely. I have years in which to prepare each of those places and the experience of four thousand sleeps back of me. You could pass such a place a thousand times and never know it was there, nor be able to enter if you suspected.

    No, my chances for survival between my periods of waking life are much better than my chances of survival during my conscious, active periods. It is perhaps a miracle that I have survived so many of those, despite the techniques of survival that I have developed.
    And those techniques are good. I’ve lived through seven major atomic—and super-atomic—wars that have reduced the population of Earth to a few savages around a few campfires in a few still habitable areas. And at other times, in other eras, I’ve been in five galaxies besides our own.

    I’ve had several thousand wives, but always one at a time, for I was born in a monogamous era and the habit has persisted. And I have raised several thousand children. Of course, I have never been able to remain with one wife longer than thirty years before I must disappear, but thirty years is long enough for both of us—especially when she ages at a normal rate and I age imperceptibly. Oh, it leads to problems, of course, but I’ve been able to handle them. I always marry, when I do marry, a girl as much younger than myself as possible, so the disparity will not become too great. Say I am thirty; I marry a girl of sixteen. Then when it is time that I must leave her, she is forty-six and I am still thirty. And it is best for both of us, for everyone, that when I awaken I do not again go back to that place. If she still lives, she will be past sixty and it would not be well, even for her, to have a husband come back from the dead—still young. And I have left her well provided, a wealthy widow—wealthy in money or in whatever may have constituted wealth in that particular era. Sometimes it has been beads and arrowheads, sometimes wheat in a granary and once—there have been peculiar civilizations—it was fish scales. I never had the slightest difficulty in acquiring my share, or more, of money or its equivalent. A few thousand years’ practice and the difficulty becomes the other way—knowing when to stop in order not to become unduly wealthy and so attract attention.

    For obvious reasons, I’ve always managed to do that. For reasons that you will see, I’ve never wanted power, nor have I ever—after the first few hundred years—let people suspect that I was different from them. I even spend a few hours each night lying thinking, pretending to sleep.

    But none of that is important, any more than I am important. I tell it to you only so you will understand how I know the thing that I am about to tell you.

    And when I tell you, it is not because I’m trying to sell you anything. It’s something you can’t change if you want to, and—when you understand it—you won’t want to.
    I’m not trying to influence you or to lead you. In four thousand lifetimes I’ve been almost everything—except a leader. I’ve avoided that. Oh, often enough I have been a god among savages, but that was because I had to be one in order to survive. I used the powers they thought were magic only to keep a degree of order, never to lead them, never to hold them back. If I taught them to use the bow and arrow, it was because game was scarce and we were starving and my survival depended upon theirs. Seeing that the pattern was necessary, I have never disturbed it.

    What. I tell you now will not disturb the pattern.

    It is this: The human race is the only immortal organism in the universe.

    There have been other races, and there are other races throughout the universe, but they have died away or they will die. We charted them once, a hundred thousand years ago, with an instrument that detected the presence of thought, the presence of intelligence, however alien and at whatever distance—and gave us a measure of that mind and its qualities. And fifty thousand years later that instrument was rediscovered. There were about as many races as before but only eight of them were ones that had been there fifty thousand years ago and each of those eight was dying, senescent. They had passed the peak of their powers and they were dying.

    They had reached the limit of their capabilities—and there is always a limit—and they had no choice but to die. Life is dynamic; it can never be static—at however high or low a level—and survive.

    That is what I am trying to tell you, so that you will never again be afraid. Only a race that destroys itself and its progress periodically, that goes back to its beginning, can survive more than, say, sixty thousand years of intelligent life.

    In all the universe only the human race has ever reached a high level of intelligence without reaching a high level of sanity. We are unique. We are already at least five times as old as any other race has ever been and it is because we are not sane. And man has, at times, had glimmerings of the fact that insanity is divine. But only at high levels of culture does he realize that he is collectively insane, that fight against it as he will he will always destroy himself—and rise anew out of the ashes.

    The phoenix, the bird that periodically immolates itself upon a flaming pyre to rise newborn and live again for another millennium, and again and forever, is only metaphorically a myth. It exists and there is only one of it.

    You are the phoenix.

    Nothing will ever destroy you, now that—during many high civilizations—your seed has been scattered on the planets of a thousand suns, in a hundred galaxies, there ever to repeat the pattern. The pattern that started a hundred and eighty thousand years ago—I think.

    I cannot be sure of that, for I have seen that the twenty to thirty thousand years that elapse between the fall of one civilization and the rise of the next destroy all traces. In twenty to thirty thousand years memories become legends and legends become superstitions and even the superstitions become lost. Metals rust and corrode back into earth while the wind, the rain, and the jungle erode and cover stone. The contours of the very continents change—and glaciers come and go, and a city of twenty thousand years before is under miles of earth or miles of water.

    So I cannot be sure. Perhaps the first blow-up that I knew was not the first; civilizations may have risen and fallen before my time. If so, it merely strengthens the case I put before you to say that mankind may have survived more than the hundred and eighty thousand years I know of, may have lived through more than the six blow-ups that have happened since what I think to have been the first discovery of the phoenix’s pyre.
    But—except that we scattered our seed to the stars so well that even the dying of the sun or its becoming a nova would not destroy us—the past does not matter. Lur, Candra, Thragan, Kah, Mu, Atlantis—those are the six I have known, and they are gone as thoroughly as this one will be twenty thousand years or so hence, but the human race, here or in other galaxies, will survive and will live forever.

    It will help your peace of mind, here in this year of your current era, to blow that—for your minds are disturbed. Perhaps, I do know, it will help your thoughts to know that the coming atomic war, the one that will probably happen in your generation, will not be a blow-up war; it will come too soon for that, before you have developed the really destructive weapons man has had so often before. It will set you back, yes. There will be darkish ages for a century or a few centuries. Then, with the memory of what you will call World War III as a warning, man will think—as he has always thought after a mild atomic war—that he has conquered his own insanity.

    For a while—if the pattern holds—he will hold it in check. He will reach the stars again, to find himself already there. Why, you’ll be back on Mars within five hundred years, and I’ll go there too, to see again the canals I once helped to dig. I’ve not been there for eighty thousand years and I’d like to see what time has done to it and to those of us who were cut off there the last time mankind lost the space drive. Of course they’ve followed the pattern too, but the rate is not necessarily constant. We may find them at any stage in the cycle except the top. If they were at the top of the cycle, we wouldn’t have to go to them—they’d come to us. Thinking, of course, as they think by now, that they are Martians.

    I wonder how high, this time, you will get. Not quite as high, I hope, as Thragan. I hope that never again is rediscovered the weapon Thragan used against her colony on Skora, which was then the fifth planet until the Thragans blew it into asteroids. Of course that weapon would be developed only long after intergalactic travel again becomes commonplace. If I see it coming I’ll get out of the Galaxy, but I’d hate to have to do that.

    I like Earth and I’d like to spend the rest of my mortal lifetime on it if it lasts that long.
    Possibly it won’t, but the human race will last. Everywhere and forever, for it will never be sane and only insanity is divine. Only the mad destroy themselves and all they have wrought.

    And only the phoenix lives forever.


    And now that you have come so far, my question to you is:

    Which one (the experiment or the story) will – most likely – prevail? Or is there – possibly – a third (and fourth…) outcome which we have not considered yet?
    Last edited by Johan (Keyholder); 25th March 2023 at 10:54.

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    One really fascinating aspect of the Mouse Utopia is that it is an example of a NON-self-correcting scenario.

    We are used to situations in which there is a negative feedback to restore the normal. But here, once the negative change had begun and the population began to decline, the process accelerated too quickly for compensatory mechanisms to compensate. The result was extinction: system collapse.

    I am not at all sure, but I think the same applies to the global civilization that is capable of sustaining seven billion plus people. Up until the middle 1800s when the industrial revolution (and agrarian revolution) began to take effect; it seems that the world population probably never exceeded one billion. Therefore, if the current civilization (agriculture, transport, trade, industry) collapses (or, more likely, destroys itself under influence of global leaders) -- then we should not expect that The System will support more than about a billion people.

    But if the population of humans has been significantly impaired by genetic mutation accumulation, as seems likely, then the sustainable population would be less than a billion - which is pretty much the same as the half-billion world population desired by the Great Reset/ Agenda 2030 totalitarians.

    It is relatively easy for the global leadership to strike severe and simultaneous blows against the global System, and once the destruction has passed a certain point then I would expect that there would be a positive feedback destruction; by which change causes further and increased change.

    This, then, would be the scenario I have called Giga-Death - i.e. death of billions - which would be utterly unprecedented in history, and therefore impossible accurately to predict or even imagine - since there have never been billions of people before.

    In sum, I cannot - logically (which of course is far from the whole story!) - see any way to escape (if that is indeed desirable - given the purposive evil of our civilization) massive global death from some combination of the deliberate Establishment-led destruction and the accumulation of mutational genetic damage as an un-anticipated (mouse utopia) consequence of the industrial revolution.

    For me; global Giga-death is a question of when, not if.

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    Quote Posted by Bruce G Charlton (here)

    For me; global Giga-death is a question of when, not if.
    With that in mind, and is in yours (mind) you are potentially contributing to the very event unfolding.

    We are so careless with our thoughts.

    Furthermore, with that thought in mind, it could be debated you are (unwittingly) supporting evil's plans.
    (You may well think that naive, that's ok I would understand).

    I might be inclined to deny that potential future with all the love I could muster in my heart, not from a point of ignorance and denial, but from a point of willing a better future into existence.

    -------------------


    And Johan, the difference between mice and men is one of rational thought, intelligence, reason, logic etc.
    (You can find criticisms of the experiment, and not just from people who didn't care for the outcome).

    Now admittedly the majority of humans in the west are helpless, reliant on the state and system to know what to do and almost trained to wait for direction, instruction.

    (The lockdowns and vaccines brought that sharply home - but I am overhearing, day to day, more and more questioning of those events. Perhaps, fingers crossed, they won't be as quick to trust again).

    The mice had no other option but to follow their way, man does have options. Whether we can make that adjustment and act requires that a few good men stand up to be counted.


    “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

    ― Margaret Mead

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    Quote Posted by Ewan (here)
    Quote Posted by Bruce G Charlton (here)

    For me; global Giga-death is a question of when, not if.
    With that in mind, and is in yours (mind) you are potentially contributing to the very event unfolding.

    We are so careless with our thoughts.

    Furthermore, with that thought in mind, it could be debated you are (unwittingly) supporting evil's plans.
    (You may well think that naive, that's ok I would understand).

    I might be inclined to deny that potential future with all the love I could muster in my heart, not from a point of ignorance and denial, but from a point of willing a better future into existence.

    -------------------


    And Johan, the difference between mice and men is one of rational thought, intelligence, reason, logic etc.
    (You can find criticisms of the experiment, and not just from people who didn't care for the outcome).

    Now admittedly the majority of humans in the west are helpless, reliant on the state and system to know what to do and almost trained to wait for direction, instruction.

    (The lockdowns and vaccines brought that sharply home - but I am overhearing, day to day, more and more questioning of those events. Perhaps, fingers crossed, they won't be as quick to trust again).

    The mice had no other option but to follow their way, man does have options. Whether we can make that adjustment and act requires that a few good men stand up to be counted.


    “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

    ― Margaret Mead
    @Ewan - But death is not the worst thing; indeed death is an inescapable aspect of this mortal life, permeating everything (i.e. 'entropy').

    Our job is to live well and learn from this mortal life for the immortal life to come (if we choose that path). And I would say that an absolute essential to us living well, one of our primary tasks, is to understand as honestly and rigorously as possible. Indeed, to understand - or more accurately, to do our honest best to understand, without fear-imposed constraints - is spiritually one of the most helpful things that anyone can do. That is exactly the kind of thinking that has the most helpful general effect on others; and makes for a better world.

    One of the key life lessons we need to accomplish (it seems to me) is to face the possibility of horrible material prospects without fear or despair. This cannot be achieved by Not Thinking About important stuff. Nor can it be achieved by only allowing ourselves to think optimistic or soothing thoughts.

    In other words, we need to distinguish between hope and optimism: hope is Good and a virtue, optimism is a prediction and neither a virtue nor sin. And distinguish between despair and pessimism - despair is a sin, while pessimism is, again, a prediction - and, of itself, neutral.

    I strive to be always hope-full, and am also often pessimistic when that seems most accurate (from what I know); whereas most people I encounter are optimistic because (it seems to me) they would otherwise be overwhelmed by despair. They are (in other words) lying-to-themselves because they fear they cannot cope with the prospect of a pessimistic future.

    But fear-full optimism is ineffective and fragile - it simply doesn't work well - and is also easily manipulated by evil persons and other beings. The global totalitarians are experts in inducing mass fear, and then providing optimistic-but-evil scenarios as the escape route. (David Icke's description of the Establishment's Problem-Reaction-Solution strategy is just this.)

    My answer is that, to be strong, despair needs to be overcome by hope; and that strong hope needs to be (realistically) located beyond this mortal life.
    Last edited by Bruce G Charlton; 25th March 2023 at 20:02.

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    Quote Posted by Bruce G Charlton (here)

    My answer is that, to be strong, despair needs to be overcome by hope; and that strong hope needs to be (realistically) located beyond this mortal life.
    Nice response, I will ponder upon this.

    Back to “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    Quote Posted by Johan (Keyholder) (here)

    Which one (the experiment or the story) will – most likely – prevail? Or is there – possibly – a third (and fourth…) outcome which we have not considered yet?
    I haven't looked at the links but these thoughts came to me about what is written in your post....

    Re Mouse Utopia - if it wasn't in a controlled, limited space I doubt there would have been actual extinction .... as the Utopia disintegrated some mice or even a couple of them would move to fresh fields and start again... I suppose Earth itself is being suggested as the confined space that humans will over populate then go into decline and extinction - but Earth's a big diverse place with many nooks and crannies that human life (and mice) could escape to and thrive -

    *****************


    The Phoenix story is about cycles of destruction/recovery and a lot of it coming from war but I think nature provides natural cycles where the human population is basically culled every 12,000 or 24,000 years (or longer) by extreme global 'changes' and this prevents humankind going too far - but even if we do go to far it will all get reset one day - this is the real Natural Great Reset in my mind...

    *****************


    Next point is related to the one before about the cycles of natural culling (environmental cleansing?) - and insanity - if a handful of humans manage to survive and start again there are going to be isolated pockets of tiny numbers of individuals who end up breeding with close relatives and interbreeding is known (generally thought?) to create potential physical and mental 'issues' - perhaps this creates a kind if insanity in humankind hovering under the surface - breeding with close relatives to get the human group going again could also explain the different Races -




    To summarize - I don't think we need to be over worried about human populations rising too high and human systems breaking down because nature will deal with it all at some point - whether we like it or not...



    Am I being too literal for this thread ..... not sure......
    Last edited by jaybee; 25th March 2023 at 19:20.

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    It's not the idea to compare mice with humans. I intend to follow Rudolf Steiner in this: mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom, human kingdom... and then...? It's a ladder of evolution, and most of the time one level needs to live on a lower one as "food", while it "becomes food" to the level(s) above.

    I agree that the experiment (with the mice) has relative value. And yes, it can be criticized too.

    What I did was putting two "events" next to each other. One is an experiment, the other is an SF-story. The question was to ponder ("what do you think?") to which of these two we are closest. Or maybe even another situation all together.

    When it is said that "the difference between mice and men is one of rational thought, intelligence, reason, logic etc.", that I can agree with in certain instances. A mouse is an animal. So is a dolphin, a whale... and the jury is still out on whether these animals are really limited to an animalistic type of consciousness. Dolphins are known to communicate, save human lives, but what do humans often do to dolphins? They are even "used" in wars. And they have not much choice in this, I am quite convinced that every single one would heavily protest (if the dolphin could, however, the military certainly would remain "deaf" to these calls).

    Ratio, intelligence, reason, logic and many other properties are potentially active in human beings, at different levels and at different times. Kardashev mentioned four types of civilizations (based on the technological advancement that allows an amount of energy to be used) and we are not yet at "level I". Kardashev's scale can also be criticized, yet it is a useful one (but not absolute at all).

    Having options. Yes, mice are very limited in any choice they can have. What about humans? No doubt you have heard about the possibility (or maybe even more than that), that this planet is "in quarantaine". I don't say it is, but it may well be and then humanity would equally be "out of options" to leave the planet, physically at least. Robert Monroe wrote about that extensively in his books.

    @jaybee: "I don't think we need to be over worried about human populations rising too high and human systems breaking down because nature will deal with it all at some point - whether we like it or not..."

    Yes, I think so too; it has happened many times before and that won't change. "All is lessons" anyway. Many people here remember all too well several of these events.
    Last edited by Johan (Keyholder); 25th March 2023 at 21:45.

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    Quote Posted by Johan (Keyholder) (here)
    It's not the idea to compare mice with humans. I intend to follow Rudolf Steiner in this: mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom, human kingdom... and then...? It's a ladder of evolution, and most of the time one level needs to live on a lower one as "food", while it "becomes food" to the level(s) above.

    I agree that the experiment (with the mice) has relative value. And yes, it can be criticized too.

    What I did was putting two "events" next to each other. One is an experiment, the other is an SF-story. The question was to ponder ("what do you think?") to which of these two we are closest. Or maybe even another situation all together.

    When it is said that "the difference between mice and men is one of rational thought, intelligence, reason, logic etc.", that I can agree with in certain instances. A mouse is an animal. So is a dolphin, a whale... and the jury is still out on whether these animals are really limited to an animalistic type of consciousness. Dolphins are known to communicate, save human lives, but what do humans often do to dolphins? They are even "used" in wars. And they have not much choice in this, I am quite convinced that every single one would heavily protest (if the dolphin could, however, the military certainly would remain "deaf" to these calls).

    Ratio, intelligence, reason, logic and many other properties are potentially active in human beings, at different levels and at different times. Kardashev mentioned four types of civilizations (based on the technological advancement that allows an amount of energy to be used) and we are not yet at "level I". Kardashev's scale can also be criticized, yet it is a useful one (but not absolute at all).

    Having options. Yes, mice are very limited in any choice they can have. What about humans? No doubt you have heard about the possibility (or maybe even more than that), that this planet is "in quarantaine". I don't say it is, but it may well be and then humanity would equally be "out of options" to leave the planet, physically at least. Robert Monroe wrote about that extensively in his books.

    @jaybee: "I don't think we need to be over worried about human populations rising too high and human systems breaking down because nature will deal with it all at some point - whether we like it or not..."

    Yes, I think so too; it has happened many times before and that won't change. "All is lessons" anyway. Many people here remember all too well several of these events.
    "I don't think we need to be over worried about human populations rising too high and human systems breaking down because nature will deal with it all at some point - whether we like it or not..."

    I think the opposite! That at some point this planet and all the beings who constitute and inhabit it must come to an end (sooner or later); because entropy has the upper hand in this corner of reality, and change and death leading to chaotic disorder are the dominant tendencies.

    The souls or spirits of us inhabitants will move to a different mode of reality. By my understanding Heaven was made possible by Jesus Christ, and it can ne regarded as a part of the creation that is completely free from entropy and where creation (rooted in love) is unopposed. Heaven is where those beings who wish to inhabit such a world will go (sooner or later) - although there are other 'options', some of which we could call 'hell', but others of which are more like 'nirvana'.

    And maybe, also, other temporary learning-experiments of the same kind as this mortal life on finite earth - if that is what is wanted.

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    Hi Bruce! When I say I agree with jaybee, I meant that I am not too worried about the rising of the human population as a factor of the detrimental state this planet is in, because Nature/Gaia/Earth will take care of it, one way or another, just as has happened in the past. This does not at all mean that I think "it's all OK", it most definitely is not!

    It is just - again - a proof that humanity as a species has a long, very long way to go yet, before it even gets "beyond" childhood and into adolescence (as a race of Beings). It could be said that humanity is "in the toddler"-phase and will need time to learn whatever it needs to learn to become more mature/spiritual/sane...

    Yes, entropy has the upper hand here. Maybe that is because one can learn so much faster (grow in Spirit) "while in entropy", which would explain the high influx of ensouled Beings? I know that one can come up with other reasons for this too.

    Heaven, Hell, Nirwana, the Elysian Fields, the Eternal Hunting Grounds... and so many more, all "do" exist, in some way, because each group (of souls) and even every individual soul càn create a "place" in the afterlife, just as It pleases.

    Jesus Christ was indeed One to "show the Way". Anyone who was "ready" (= had learned what was necessary) could follow Him. But there was a certain price to pay, that was that one had "to commit", leave everything behind (= forsake any material wish) and do as He did. It's explained a bit simply of course. I agree there is a lot more to it.
    Last edited by Johan (Keyholder); 28th March 2023 at 09:53.

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    Quote Posted by Bruce G Charlton (here)

    "I don't think we need to be over worried about human populations rising too high and human systems breaking down because nature will deal with it all at some point - whether we like it or not..."

    I think the opposite! That at some point this planet and all the beings who constitute and inhabit it must come to an end (sooner or later); because entropy has the upper hand in this corner of reality, and change and death leading to chaotic disorder are the dominant tendencies.

    The souls or spirits of us inhabitants will move to a different mode of reality. By my understanding Heaven was made possible by Jesus Christ, and it can ne regarded as a part of the creation that is completely free from entropy and where creation (rooted in love) is unopposed. Heaven is where those beings who wish to inhabit such a world will go (sooner or later) - although there are other 'options', some of which we could call 'hell', but others of which are more like 'nirvana'.

    And maybe, also, other temporary learning-experiments of the same kind as this mortal life on finite earth - if that is what is wanted.
    Hi Bruce. I think you and Johan are talking different scales of time. He seems to be talking about a resiliency of natural physical systems — our God given birthright, while you are referring to stages of evolution of our spirit — a much longer time scale.

    I have heard it said that our development to this point took “aeons”, far beyond the age of this ‘physical’ universe (through the Mineral and Plant and Animal kingdoms). Story goes, this place was created as a place for selfish souls to time-out from Heaven. With a bunch of test universes before this one, from tries “exhaling” and “inhaling” of/by the top consciousness.

    When you say “Heaven was made possible by Jesus Christ”, I understand you to mean that access to Heaven was assured by him, which I, also, take as true. Said to be a long slog tho. “God’s mill grinds slowly”.

    I don’t quite understand your meaning of entropy, but it reminds me of the idea that intention has momentum. Supposedly, the huge amount of energies spent on preparations for war constitute such momentum, and so are beyond changing by carers’ (our) thought or heart hopes. So that might be a common ground.

    Cheers, and good week to you. 👻♥️

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    "Jesus Christ was indeed One to "show the Way". Anyone who was "ready" (= had learned what was necessary) could follow Him. But there was a certain price to pay, that was that one had "to commit", leave everything behind (= forsake any material wish) and do as He did."

    That's a pretty accurate summary of the way I see it too! It's exactly about being prepared to make a commitment - and I see one of Jesus's major works as making possible a truly eternal commitment (something which is not possible in this world).

    "humanity as a species has a long, very long way to go yet, before it even gets "beyond" childhood and into adolescence (as a race of Beings). It could be said that humanity is "in the toddler"-phase and will need time to learn whatever it needs to learn to become more mature/spiritual/sane..."

    The way I see this world is as a place for learning from our experiences, as individuals - our lives being individually-tailored to this end - the value of which will only become apparent after death. So, I don't think we will ever achieve any kind of paradise during mortal life, because that isn't what this life was designed for.

    I tend to see 'modern Man' as stuck in spiritual adolescence, rather than childhood. Adolescence is supposed to be just a temporary (and short) phase - but (as a civilization, by denial of the spirit, God, creation the soul etc) we refuse to move on towards maturity.

    I would regard the ancient nomadic hunter gatherers (and their more recent descendants, which are now all culturally compromised by 'contact' - except maybe the Andaman Islanders) as equivalent to "Man's spiritual childhood" - almost unconsciously immersed-in the world and much less individualized/ much more in-contact-with each other, other beings, nature and the gods.

    ...As we all were (if we can remember) in our early childhood.

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    The reason I wrote that considering the present state of humanity is in, the "toddler-phase", is the following.

    When you tell a toddler that s/he should (better not) put her/his hand on a hot plate or it will burn and hurt him or her a lot, chances are that s/he will do it anyway.

    The next time (but in another life... and - for most people - their memories got wiped) he or she may do it again. And again. And again. That's why I would say it is toddler-like.

    Eventually the toddler will have enough residual memory (when growing up a bit spiritually) to NOT do it again.

    It is in my opinion humanity "as a species" that is like a toddler (or maybe a "preschooler", at age 4-5). There are for sure souls/Spirits of all ages at present living on our planet. And all with different lessons to learn, Life-Purposes and such more.

    But yes, different people can/may have another opinion of what childhood for a human exactly is.

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    Quote Posted by Bruce G Charlton (here)
    "Jesus Christ was indeed One to "show the Way". Anyone who was "ready" (= had learned what was necessary) could follow Him. But there was a certain price to pay, that was that one had "to commit", leave everything behind (= forsake any material wish) and do as He did."

    That's a pretty accurate summary of the way I see it too! It's exactly about being prepared to make a commitment - and I see one of Jesus's major works as making possible a truly eternal commitment (something which is not possible in this world).

    "humanity as a species has a long, very long way to go yet, before it even gets "beyond" childhood and into adolescence (as a race of Beings). It could be said that humanity is "in the toddler"-phase and will need time to learn whatever it needs to learn to become more mature/spiritual/sane..."

    The way I see this world is as a place for learning from our experiences, as individuals - our lives being individually-tailored to this end - the value of which will only become apparent after death. So, I don't think we will ever achieve any kind of paradise during mortal life, because that isn't what this life was designed for.

    I tend to see 'modern Man' as stuck in spiritual adolescence, rather than childhood. Adolescence is supposed to be just a temporary (and short) phase - but (as a civilization, by denial of the spirit, God, creation the soul etc) we refuse to move on towards maturity.

    I would regard the ancient nomadic hunter gatherers (and their more recent descendants, which are now all culturally compromised by 'contact' - except maybe the Andaman Islanders) as equivalent to "Man's spiritual childhood" - almost unconsciously immersed-in the world and much less individualized/ much more in-contact-with each other, other beings, nature and the gods.

    ...As we all were (if we can remember) in our early childhood.
    Such thinking is like chasing your tail... The “following” is not a following of some words from history, it is a response to a fundamental inner imperative that has been the order of this universe since the “It is done”.

    The idea is that we souls may each choose our way, no matter whatever anybody else does. “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” - that is talking about our all getting back to normalcy, to Heaven. All in our own good time, I take it, depending on our respective levels of curiosity — penchant for detours — as well as our kharmic obligations.

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    Default Re: “Mouse Utopia” versus “Letter to a Phoenix”. Which one comes closest to your own ideas?

    Quote Posted by jaybee (here)
    Quote Posted by Johan (Keyholder) (here)

    Which one (the experiment or the story) will – most likely – prevail? Or is there – possibly – a third (and fourth…) outcome which we have not considered yet?
    I haven't looked at the links but these thoughts came to me about what is written in your post....

    Re Mouse Utopia - if it wasn't in a controlled, limited space I doubt there would have been actual extinction .... as the Utopia disintegrated some mice or even a couple of them would move to fresh fields and start again... I suppose Earth itself is being suggested as the confined space that humans will over populate then go into decline and extinction - but Earth's a big diverse place with many nooks and crannies that human life (and mice) could escape to and thrive -

    *****************


    The Phoenix story is about cycles of destruction/recovery and a lot of it coming from war but I think nature provides natural cycles where the human population is basically culled every 12,000 or 24,000 years (or longer) by extreme global 'changes' and this prevents humankind going too far - but even if we do go to far it will all get reset one day - this is the real Natural Great Reset in my mind...

    *****************


    Next point is related to the one before about the cycles of natural culling (environmental cleansing?) - and insanity - if a handful of humans manage to survive and start again there are going to be isolated pockets of tiny numbers of individuals who end up breeding with close relatives and interbreeding is known (generally thought?) to create potential physical and mental 'issues' - perhaps this creates a kind if insanity in humankind hovering under the surface - breeding with close relatives to get the human group going again could also explain the different Races -




    To summarize - I don't think we need to be over worried about human populations rising too high and human systems breaking down because nature will deal with it all at some point - whether we like it or not...



    Am I being too literal for this thread ..... not sure......
    I totally agree, in a sense the cycles are fractal in nature. Humans create their own mini cycles of destruction and then there are the larger cycles that are essentially out of our hands. Those cycles are cleansings and a restart. This is documented in one way or another in every culture that we are are aware of. They understood this. Even though it may not play a prevalent role in their current situation, they acknowledged it.

    I have to agree, I don't lose an ounce of sleep regarding overpopulation of the human species. One way or another the population will be reduced.

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