If you could change history what would you change?

[三江源]

Very cool, ninpo, interesting. Timelines = PROVED!

 

 

I want one of those experiences.

 

Wouldnt it have been been great if in an OBE you were actually given the other kind of OBE?

 

Yes, the ladies body is a wonderful thing, and very groovy you got to experience the extension of human experience that you described. YeeHA!

[Ninpo-me-this-ninjutsu-me-that]

 

Yes, the ladies body is a wonderful thing, and very groovy you got to experience the extension of human experience that you described. YeeHA!

 

 

There is a downside Cat, after experiencing a female body my male body pales by comparison. Somewhat like driving around all your life in a Ford Fiesta 1.1 then getting to drive in an all leather interior (with fur covered steering wheel) B.M.W for day. The Fiesta is never quite the same after that.

 

Subsequent girlfriends got all the upsides

[三江源]

There is a downside Cat, after experiencing a female body my male body pales by comparison. Somewhat like driving around all your life in a Ford Fiesta 1.1 then getting to drive in an all leather interior (with fur covered steering wheel) B.M.W for day. The Fiesta is never quite the same after that.

 

Subsequent girlfriends got all the upsides

 

ninpo, get yo'self all tantric so you dont got the boundaries.

 

see - even thinking bout it makes my grammar go funny..

[Taomeow]

Personally I think we just should never evolved as a different species from Bonobos.

 

I would surely share the sentiment if I believed in darwinian evolution.

 

We didn't "evolve" though. We used to be homo aquaticus according to some anthropologists (e.g. Desmond Morris), and still retain the pattern of hair growth on the spine only encountered in aquatic mammals, not Bonobos, not any other monkeys or apes or any dry land mammalians for that matter. This pattern, with hair growing backward along the spine (humans and aquatic mammals) rather than forward (everybody else), is all that remains of our glorious past.

 

Taoists don't believe in darwinian evolution, incidentally, only in evolution-as-unfolding, i.e. things undergoing the universal four-stage cosmic process of Conception, Growth, Fruition, Consummation. Because it is universal and all-encompassing and there's no room for improvisation that wouldn't affect the whole of creation and change all of the pattern, at every stage of this process things innately know what they are. If they do not unfold into what they are, it means they have been tampered with. Without genetic engineering, mice don't glow in the dark, grains and legumes don't produce terminator seeds, and humans don't work for the overlords.

 

The timelines that have been tampered with terminate in knots in the overall fabric of space-time, in loops separate from the overall pattern, and ours is one of those. (I've seen it.) Which is why untying the knot and opening the closed-circuit loop is the real goal of cultivation. Changing this timeline, plucking the knotted distortion out of the fabric, and restoring the beauty of the design can be a personal goal, but it will change the whole of creation once accomplished. That's why the classics equate "holy sages" or "real humans" with forces of nature, cosmic events, and see them as a source of power above that of the gods.

[Samuel]

I would surely share the sentiment if I believed in darwinian evolution.

 

We didn't "evolve" though. We used to be homo aquaticus according to some anthropologists (e.g. Desmond Morris), and still retain the pattern of hair growth on the spine only encountered in aquatic mammals, not Bonobos, not any other monkeys or apes or any dry land mammalians for that matter. This pattern, with hair growing backward along the spine (humans and aquatic mammals) rather than forward (everybody else), is all that remains of our glorious past.

 

Sorry to jack the thread but could you provide some links or more info? This sounds interesting.

[Taomeow]

Sorry to jack the thread but could you provide some links or more info? This sounds interesting.

 

The theory, based on solid scientific evidence (which darwinians prefer to ignore) first proposed by a British marine biologist, Sir Alister Hardy, in the 1960s. I've come across an overview of the arguments of anthropologists in agreement with this theory in "The Naked Ape," by Desmond Morris. A more recent take:

 

Ingram, Jay. "Homo Aquaticus." The Barmaid's Brain and Other Strange Tales from Science. New York: W.H. Freeman, 2000.

[Komako]

The Tao manifests itself in mysterious ways.

 

Things are as they are.

[surfingbudda]

Everything happens for a reason, but I think that the world would be in a much better place right now if Al Gore would have been elected President, he won the election but wasn't elected, what a pity

[strawdog65]

Hi everyone!

 

Such interesting ideas!

 

While it is obvious that we can not actually change our

history, it is entertaining to think about it.

I always love a good time travel story, don't you?

 

 

I would eliminate the dark ages.

If we could have steadily made advancements through that

period of time, without the death and stagnation of such

a large proportion of the world, there's no telling how much

more advanced the world would be now.

 

Thanks for everyone participating!

 

Peace!

[strawdog65]

[SFJane]

I am pretty happy with how things eventually turned out for myself. I've seen the movie Butterfly Effect too many times to think I could try to right some wrong that happened to me in my youth and hope I could change my present for the better. If I had not been oppressed as much, I might not have grown as strong or sought as much as I did and not have any of the knowledge that I won during my desperate seeking years.

 

On a fun note, if we are just playing around. I think I would have Karl Marx quietly die of a heart attack at a young age. Marxist ideology set the stage for utopian-eyed dictators to long for collectivism which led to the senseless famines in the Ukraine and China as well as the Killing Fields of Cambodia. The body count in China, USSR and Cambodia, I don't have the figures but, millions upon millions died for an idea that did not work out so well when applied to the real world. What people did to each other during the 1900s in the name of Marxism and Communism will forever stain our human race and would be a shameful chapter of our cultural and societal evolution to have a hypothetical alien race read about.

[Ninpo-me-this-ninjutsu-me-that]

ninpo, get yo'self all tantric so you dont got the boundaries.

 

see - even thinking bout it makes my grammar go funny..

 

If that can get me feeling what they are feeling at the same time I'll definitely give it a go! Thanks for the advice, I'll look into it.

[Pietro]

I would surely share the sentiment if I believed in darwinian evolution.

 

We didn't "evolve" though. We used to be homo aquaticus according to some anthropologists (e.g. Desmond Morris), and still retain the pattern of hair growth on the spine only encountered in aquatic mammals, not Bonobos, not any other monkeys or apes or any dry land mammalians for that matter. This pattern, with hair growing backward along the spine (humans and aquatic mammals) rather than forward (everybody else), is all that remains of our glorious past.

 

The homo aquaticus and the idea that some mammals passed through a stage inside the water (elephants also if I recall) does not contradict the idea of darwinian evolution. Just the particular path evolution took. That's no big deal. There is a talk on ted about it too. Surely enough if you go back at some point we an bonobos have a common ancestor. Now that's where things went crazy!

 

Taoists don't believe in darwinian evolution, incidentally, only in evolution-as-unfolding, i.e. things undergoing the universal four-stage cosmic process of Conception, Growth, Fruition, Consummation. Because it is universal and all-encompassing and there's no room for improvisation that wouldn't affect the whole of creation and change all of the pattern, at every stage of this process things innately know what they are. If they do not unfold into what they are, it means they have been tampered with. Without genetic engineering, mice don't glow in the dark, grains and legumes don't produce terminator seeds, and humans don't work for the overlords.

(bald mine)

 

I am not sure what other taoists do, but I am a taoist and I am a scientist, and I research in the topic of evolution. SO there is at least one taoist who considers darwinian (actually neo-darwinian) evolution as a workable premise. What taoists of our tradition usually don't do is to "believe". In our tradition we don't believe in things, in fact we have been also given practices to help us "not believing" things. The word believe for a person who does those practices (which incidentally are usually taoists, but obviously not all taoists do, since you seem not to) has a different meaning. More similar to how a scientist (an honest scientist) would use it:

I have looked at it from all possible angles and my best guess at this is that...

[三江源]

If that can get me feeling what they are feeling at the same time I'll definitely give it a go! Thanks for the advice, I'll look into it.

 

It could be a lot of fun and very beneficial.

 

Thanks for you humour ninpo, you make me laugh, I'm glad you are here.

[Ninpo-me-this-ninjutsu-me-that]

The homo aquaticus and the idea that some mammals passed through a stage inside the water (elephants also if I recall) does not contradict the idea of darwinian evolution. Just the particular path evolution took. That's no big deal. There is a talk on ted about it too. Surely enough if you go back at some point we an bonobos have a common ancestor. Now that's where things went crazy!

 

 

(bald mine)

 

I am not sure what other taoists do, but I am a taoist and I am a scientist, and I research in the topic of evolution. SO there is at least one taoist who considers darwinian (actually neo-darwinian) evolution as a workable premise.

 

 

As I understand it Pietro, Darwin never actually proposed that we were descended from apes, he simply said there was a point up to which it seemed it was going that way and then something happened which couldn't be accounted for. There is a break in the theory of evolution. It was the royal society that lambasted him at the time and actually made fun of the idea that we came from apes, but he never directly stated that in any case. The theory that has been taught was not in fact what he stated.

 

I'd like to find the reference link for that but honestly Pietro I'm a bit drunk and that's a bridge too fat at this precise moment in time.

 

 

It could be a lot of fun and very beneficial.

 

Thanks for you humour ninpo, you make me laugh, I'm glad you are here.

 

Awww, thanks Cat, that's nice of you, Merry Christmas to you

[Pietro]

As I understand it Pietro, Darwin never actually proposed that we were descended from apes, he simply said there was a point up to which it seemed it was going that way and then something happened which couldn't be accounted for. There is a break in the theory of evolution. It was the royal society that lambasted him at the time and actually made fun of the idea that we came from apes, but he never directly stated that in any case. The theory that has been taught was not in fact what he stated.

 

I'd like to find the reference link for that but honestly Pietro I'm a bit drunk and that's a bridge too fat at this precise moment in time.

 

 

Hi, do you refer to The Descent of Man ?

Darwin's book where he explores the question of evolution applied to the human species.

 

There is a key point in evolutionary theory that is hardly understood. The point is that it is easy to assume that a species A (existing now) derives, from a species B (existing now, also). This is usually incorrect. Because if you go back you can find that the species A derives from a species C that existed x million years ago. And that also the species B derives from the same species C. But C is neither A nor B. Because while A made its evolutionary trip, in those x millions of years going from C--->A. B also made its evolutionary trip from C--->B. So that x million years ago we had no A or B, but only C, and now we have no C, but only A and B. C is usually called the "common ancestor" of A and B. Now it is in fact incorrect to say that Human evolved from modern days apes. Because if we go back to the common ancestor, this was of a species that is now (probably) long extinct. I think this is clear now as it was for Darwin. I a not so sure if it was so clear to the people that were attacking Darwin. In any case the common ancestor between a human and a bonobo, if it was alive today would probably be categorized as an ape, so maybe the royal society were right in feeling threatened. Uh! Uh!

 

In any case we are still far from drawing the evolutionary tree correctly, and we now have information of metabolic pathways, DNA, DNA of extinct species, carbon dating, ... that expecting Darwin to be able to give this kind of informations correctly would be preposterous. His great intuition was that species are not fixed in time. And that a recursive process where we have a casual element (mutation), selection of advantageous traits, and reproduction can bring on an emergence of complex trait is one of the greatest intuition in the history of science. It totally turned around the edifice of intellectual understanding of the world, where we assumed that there must have been a God because if not where did complexity came from.

 

We still have a lot to learn (luckily, or I would be without work ;-) ). Now the fact that selection is based on competition or collaboration, that works at the level of individuals or of groups, tht human beings evolved through an aquatic species, or not, that uses only DNA or also other protein... all this does not negate Darwin, but just polishes his work.