#trivializing

All of us walk about with our own mental operating system; this OS is not the same for all, surprisingly enough. You may already be aware of this when you’re trying to speak to someone, and they come across with a totally different interpretation of events. And I’m not talking about conspiracy theories here. Much more mundane things, explained away differently due to different educational, sociocultural backgrounds. Take for example someone trained as a sociologist, or psychologist. They see the world through “borrowed lenses” of those institutions that trained them, and over time, they make them their own.

So far, there’s no problem with that. It’s bound to happen, naturally. As long as we remember that there are multiple interpretations of these same events, it’s all good. Remember how in the past, medical doctors and psychiatrists used their own science in a most arrogant way to determine what is a human being, almost excluding the person in the process? To them, nerves were like cables, and the body was simply a machine. Modern medicine acknowledges a more holistic approach, having enough evidence of the effect of psychology and spirituality on certain conditions. Also, advances in science have shown the nerve cells to actually move and interface with others, making extremely complex processes in the way; so much more than “cables”. With these examples in mind, we should consider other disciplines, like history or archaeology. Like physicists, these types of scientists have also fallen prey to modern tactics of trying to appeal to common sentiment and using trivial expressions to reach out to the general public. In past decades, the effort was to educate the general public, instead of trying to reach out in this way; it only creates trivializing and shallowness, making it look like bad science. I still remember a documentary saying, “black holes are simply gravity gone mad”… what?!

Anyway, back to my point. I’ve seen plenty of examples of historians and archaeologists falling for these tactics. There is a problem here; whereas most people are unaware or uninterested in black holes, superstrings etc, when it comes to history and archaeology, there is a different mindset, because they supposedly show the historical Truth, based on empirical evidence. So far so good. But we have to remember that this empirical evidence is constantly updated and reevaluated, so some of what was originally thought as canon is later proved to be wrong. Remember that even in the 80s and the 90s (not to mention earlier years), the Mayans were considered to be ignorant of the Wheel? Until they discovered a child’s toy in a tomb, which was a horse with four wheels as legs…  They then said that there were no large roads or avenues in the Mayan civilization, and they tried to explain this on the fast-growing ecosystem that suffocate any such work. However, in recent years, the major discovery by modern scientific methods of the giant Mayan metropolis, along with two large roads, and a park, enrich our understanding. Similar things happen to Yonaguni monument in Japan, or the Sphinx in Egypt… I find it preposterous to say, even in the obvious evidence of examiners, that these monuments were sculpted by natural processes (two separate documentaries from “reputable sources” are out there in youtube; one showing the Yonaguni sculpted by sea and geological mineral processes… and the other showing the Sphinx sculpted by the…wind in the desert, and later customized by the Egyptians).

Why is it so difficult to embrace the fact that some ancient civilizations were extremely advanced? Sometimes we may not have an answer; I get that. But usually, when we have no answer, we end up lessening the impact, as if we are fearful to imply something mysterious or outside ordinary definitions. Why do we have to explain away the mystery in this manner? Honest scientists have confessed not knowing something; at least, at the time. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing something; it is part of the learning process, and it’s applied to everything. There are plenty of mysteries around; let me mention just a few. 

1.       Everyone knows that ziggurats were built by Mesopotamians, right? So what is that ziggurat doing inside a lake in China? Obviously, somebody with the know-how built it, or the Mesopotamians stretched much further (or migrated) than commonly thought possible.

2.       Who built the unusual ancient city in Siberia? It bears some semblance to some temples in Indonesia… but it’s thousands of miles away.

3.       The stone avenues found near Cuban waters, and in some parts of the Eastern Coast in America… someone was building roads with stone, at a time that everyone else in surrounding places were using wood only.

4.       The mysterious city in Asia Minor, currently excavated by German archaeologists, featuring strange pillars chiseled with animals facing downwards, towards the earth (each pillar has an animal). It is rather unique and it bears no connection to the well-established civilizations in the vicinity (Greeks, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Hittites etc). It is rather inverted, almost as if it’s built to hold something…down.

5.       A plethora of Indian temples, one of which being Kailasa temple, hewn out of rock with such precision and detail that confound even modern engineers.

6.       Two alphabets, bearing a striking similarity, almost identical – but there’s a problem. One is in the Indus Valley, and the other in the Easter Island; they are literally half a planet away.

7.       The Maltese Hypogeum (underground temple) Hal Saflieni acoustics, something that has got many world specialists interested due to its particular configuration.

8.       Let’s not forget our old-time favorite, the pyramid of Cheops (and others as well). As most engineers can testify, there’s no problem building temples up to a certain height, but after certain limits have been exceeded, the entire procedure becomes untenable. Many preposterous ideas have been proposed for the construction of these giant monuments, but all of them have flaws; a ramp that would require an entire forest to be chopped down, rising higher and higher (and while doing so, extending its base more and more). Or another structure using hydraulics, to move up heavy loads that would require thick base walls like a hydroelectricity dam, equally untenable. And so on.

Ugh.. people in my school who feel the need to speak on something they have no idea about always irk me. Especially when I see them passionately defend their beliefs and stance on an issue and get infuriated when others downplay it, then turn around and do the same thing to other people equally fighting to be heard.

Bruh!

How do you beg to be heard, but trivialise others’ struggle?