You raise some very fascinating and deeply unsettling possibilities. I haven't heard anyone else propose that aliens come from the ocean depths, and even though it sounds bizarre, as you point out, it would be no more bizarre than many of the popular theories about how aliens and UFOs all come from space. With the major institutions and authorities having lied about so many things of late, reliable information is terribly difficult to come by, so schizoid-sounding theories and artistic visions are pretty much all we've got to go on. Thanks for putting these ideas out there.
It's the Jetsons meets the Flintstones meets The Sleestaks meets the Creature From the Black Lagoon. Hollywood won't come calling, though, since it doesn't make us seem puny and pathetic.
There was a considerable amount of speculation back in the day that aliens were just demons dressed up in space suits. You know, how Spock was made to look like a demon, pointy ears and all, as a joke. Or, was it....
If there be demons, there also be gods. Generally fear of ineffable terrors is a trait of demoralised vegetable-eaters. We uber-predators can rest easy knowing that our bros up there have got this handled until we join them on the other side to kick aliens’ extradimensional asses together.
I remember Bill Cooper recounting how he saw huge ships rising out of the ocean during his time at the Navy. He was eventually suicided, but wrote a great book Behold A Pale Horse.
Re: magic rocks, see also sunstones. And remember our first electronic semiconductors, basis for all modern computing technology, were naturally occurring crystals whose properties took decades to reverse-engineer and reproduce. An oft-forgotten chapter of our technological history, maybe because it's boring, or maybe because poking at magic crystals with electrified sticks doesn't really jive with our established narrative about how science and technology progresses.
Loved the exploration of the hypothetical nature and culture of underwater demons.
And yes I'm very much looking forward to the rest of the story about the digital demon.
Excellent points on both counts. The theorycels have redrawn the picture in their favor, to the detriment of innovation and application genius everywhere. I get the sense that will change soon, if only out of sheer necessity.
If anything, the theorycels have slowed down technological development by insisting that we have to understand things before we start screwing around with them.
I remember some time ago reading about how the Russians were drilling down to an Antarctic subterranean lake (Vostok?) and coming across biological... somethings? The next day I read an unrelated (?) article about some apparently new species of octopus someone saw while diving near Antarctica. As predicted by H.P. Lovecraft in "At the Mountains of Madness", even before it was known there were underground lakes in Antarctica. Similar to how R.E. Howard had more right about ancient history than most modern "historians"?
I've heard some interesting theories about octopi being alien species, something about genetically engineered failsafes where they die long before they have to.
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There are many ancient accounts of flying objects, with many such accounts including the object landing and people stepping out to say, "howdy!" to the locals. Most likely the accounts of low tech civs being contacted by higher tech civs that have since died out, but maybe not...
I think the best explanation for modern UFOs is that it is a government psyop, perhaps a few that are overlapping. For example, 'limited hangouts' are SOP for hiding things. You give out part of the info that is about to be found out anyway, in an attempt to distract people from the whole truth. The CIA admitted it started the MKUltra program in 1953. Which should lead to the question, why that year? It's a safe bet the CIA is lying, but why that particular year. Answer: 1952 had a massive leap in the number of UFO abductions.
One of the most egregious aspects of MKUltra was its use of unwitting test subjects; given the horrifying lengths they've admitted to it isn't much of a leap to think they kidnapped people and lead them to believe while under the effects of drugs that they were abducted by aliens. As for the anal probes, it is well-known that the CIA at that time was mostly a Yale fraternity. Yale was known as the Ivy League of choice for homosexuals. Also note the many homosexuals that just happen to come up in JFK research...
At some point, I predict that the government will use deep fake technology to lead people to believe aliens have landed. This will lead to a reason for why humanity must all come together in a One World Government. Either the aliens are hostile and require a concerted effort*, or the aliens want to help us but are horrified at the thought of our lack of unity. If we all come together they will shower us with magical gifts like the cure for cancer, infinite energy, and female sports that's entertaining for reasons other than bouncing mammaries.
* remember that a co-worker of Wernher von Braun swore that he'd once told her that was part of the plan. First the Russians would be the enemy manufactured as an excuse for authoritarianism, then terrorism, then crazy third world nations, then asteroids, then the final play would be hostile aliens. IIRC, she first said this back in the 70s.
For every artist or writer that happened to create some fiction which was later found to resemble reality, how many created fictions (and how many fictions) that didn't?
When you factor that, it no longer looks very impressive or dramatic - it just looks like a lot of monkeys throwing stuff to see what sticks.
Doesn't make the fiction worth less, in my view. "Are we not entertained?" so to speak.
No, that's a misconception. Human development has been deliberate for at least since well before the latest Ice Age, as have human development: with the narrow margins a nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe live within, randomness isn't something it can afford.
It hasn't been with a pre-conceived specific goal (asteroid mining, a pipe-dream if ever there was one), but with general goals best understood as "less of something undesirable".
Hence, better tools did not come about because someone sat down and figured out the Arkimedes Screw; better tools came about because someone had one system that they looked and thought: "How can I rebuild this so I don't have to do as much work?".
Now, for about three centuries, the most civilised part of the world (the Western civilisation) has had such a surplus of resources, that "throwing stuff at the wall" has become a viable option. As the latter half of the 20th century shows, it's not a good method.
In invention there are always at least two hypotheses: "X is a problem" and "Y is a solution to X". 99% of the time, at least one of those two hypotheses is incorrect.
A lot of Thoks spent a lot of time banging rocks together on the hypothesis that the sharp rocks they found were not sharp enough and banging them together in just the right way would make them sharper. Meaningful progress on developing better knapping methods took tens of millennia for them. There were probably some Grogs who thought the rocks they had were just fine, and some Oogas who thought some other method would work better for sharpening them. Grog passed his unmodified rocks down through the centuries and we obviously don't count that as progress, but for as long as his rocks remained the most popular you could call that success. Ooga's rocks we don't find, because his method didn't work. But sometimes a Thok's new improved knapping method turned out to solve a real-world problem, and the new style of sharp rocks made by it took off.
Nothing much has changed about technological progress since then. We've endless examples of inventions that, in hindsight, look "ahead of their time," "too late to make a difference," or "just plain stupid." And that's not to mention all the inventions that never made it out of the lab because they were obviously failures from the start. Everybody's throwing shit at the wall, all the time.
Artists are just trying to solve a different problem than engineers. What stories, images, moods, best capture what is and what should be. The ones with better insight in that have a track record of success. Others are one hit wonders. Most labor in obscurity. But all are throwing shit at the wall.
Doing things at random is throwing stuff at the wall.
Trying things out with aforethought is not.
Take a look at the first axeheads (stone): they were made not by random choice, nor were thay made by people making one of each kind of stone in some kind of double-blind empirical study.
They were made by someone trying one, then trying another to see if it was better. Same goes for the axehandle; a stonehead with a hole through it (the oldest ones, made of sandstone) needs a differently shaped handle than does a flatheaded one with an edged stone (flint, f.e).
And how to do that was made by someone who first thought it out.
That's the difference: thinking it out or just doing random stuff. The idea that our forefathers somehow discovered something by chance simply doesn't work - if they hadn't thought about what they discovered before they did, they couldn't have recognised that they had made a discovery.
Sure, some scientific research nets results that fall under "That's not what we were looking for" (penicillin, perhaps) but the thought-process itself was necessary for the discory in the first place; no-one looked at rancid youghurt and thought "I wonder if this cures colds?", nor did anyone think "Let's just stuff sick people full of whatever and see what happens", not even when they were dead wrong (using Radium as an ingredient in toothpaste f.e.).
"At some point, I predict that the government will use deep fake technology to lead people to believe aliens have landed."
I agree. That might be plan J or K, triggered as a last resort. Of course, that tactic doesn't negate the existence of psychic, subaqueous cavemen in flying pottery. It just makes them useless for gov't intrigues.
I guess I should've publicized this concept seven years ago when I had it, huh?
The difference is I presumed that - rather than our own sea - red-light dwarf stars (the most prolific class) with large water worlds would generate large black eyed greys. The eyes for the infrared spectrum. Grey for whatever reason dolphins are grey. Thus our ocean becomes the primary reason for being here.
One could also muse that they stole the ships. Or that they're waiting for our own technology to get them out of the gravity well of a sun much larger than their dwarfs.
Apr 23·edited Apr 23Liked by Mark Bisone, John Carter
Mind-boggling, expanding, blowing and otherwise the reason I am a paying subscriber to both of you👽 but damn it, I have things I need to get done today but all I wanna do is read this again and pour over the comment section. Wildly imaginative, yet on the cusp if not a step over a real possibility.
Thanks! Believe it or not, there was more I wanted to pack in there, particularly with regards to anatomy and potential fabrication techniques. I might do a followup some day, if there's any demand for one.
If your theory is correct - and it definitely seems as plausible as anything else, if not more so - would you expect the psychic cavemen to have DNA similar to every other creature on earth? If the government ever decides to release information on the "biologic samples" they're supposedly hoarding, testing for that seems a good first step towards supporting or disproving the theory.
Maybe not. Even terrestrial life can get pretty weird. Consider the platypus;
“In 2004, researchers at the Australian National University discovered the platypus has ten sex chromosomes, compared with two (XY) in most other mammals. These ten chromosomes form five unique pairs of XY in males and XX in females, i.e. males are X1Y1X2Y2X3Y3X4Y4X5Y5.[92] “
It also begs the question "what does the government know?" If there really are biological samples, I can't imagine the DNA hasn't been looked at. So someone should know if the remains are native to Earth. *Insert conspiracy theory here*
We may not even expect them to have DNA if they were extraterrestrial, though if they were anything *at all* like us we'd probably find some analogous mechanism.
If they were derived ultimately from hominids, as Mark suggests here, and broke away at around the same time our ancestors branched off from other hominid groups, we'd naively expect them to share, what, around 97%-99% of our human genetic code. But on the other hand, under constant, heavy selective pressure, things evolve much more rapidly, and more changes equals more genetic differences. But see also Mark's https://markbisone.substack.com/p/the-devil-incarnate-part-five - is DNA even the right place to look for the source of those differences?
There are scenarios where we'd expect ET to have DNA. Panspermia. More speculatively, convergent evolution at the molecular level: it could be that DNA is the optimal basic hereditary molecule, and is selected for on the basis of engineering principles.
Could be that there's no other feasible way to do the job, but even then it'd be surprising if they were exactly chemically identical. For example there are a few other alternative options for nucleotide bases that are functionally the same iirc. And they might code for a much different collection of proteins.
Personally I wouldn't be sure what to conclude if their DNA was similar (and by similar I mean uses the same 4 bases and is divided into chromosomes). If their genetic code were different (or non-existant), though, I'd think Mark's theory needs some revising, at least regarding where the bottom dwellers originally came from.
A provocative post to be sure. I am reminded of the Japanese fable of Godzilla, who is awakened from his primordial underwater slumber by nuclear bombs. In other words, the Promethean fire reaches it's zenith, destroys some Pacific islands, atolls, etc. and threatens all life both above and below the waterline, and awakens... Devil worshipping aliens from Dimension X. And STILL, it's not our own damn fault.
Yes, it's definitely a mytheme with deep roots. The Kraken, Cthlulu, Godzilla. Even Jaws, to some extent, could be seen as a demon summoned by our signals and hubris.
Apr 23·edited Apr 23Liked by Mark Bisone, John Carter
I've read some theories/ plans that if anything really bad happens on the surface (nukes, asteroid, etc.) there might be mega-rich people with underwater bunkers who would survive. Zuckerberg just spent $1/4B on a 1400 acre compound w/ underground bunker in Hawaii, so it is certainly possible. It is almost a certainty that there were high tech civilizations in the past, before the last Ice Age. In the 200-300k years that anatomically modern humans have existed, there have been something like 12-15 events that if they happened today would plunge us back to the Stone Age. For example, the Toba event ("The Road", 75k years ago). Perhaps after one such catastrophe, an offshoot of humans existed underwater long enough to evolve (or intentionally develop) the characteristics to survive in the ocean.
I understand what you're saying, and I suspect there was at least one cataclysmic event that might have hit the reset button on ancient civs. But the theory that these were "high-tech" civs in the component-driven, hyperfragile way we conceive of technology just doesn’t gel for me. Magic rocks buried by a flood seem much more likely than a manufacturing base. I think the ancestral memory of those stuck with us, which has a lot of explanatory power with regards to many demigod tales, the construction of megaliths, the pursuit of alchemy, etc.
Check out the writings of Graham Hancock. He collects a lot of anomalous stuff from ancient texts and examines ruins that are difficult to explain.
For example, there are Hindu texts that talk about a guy showing up and claiming to be the survivor of a civ wrecked by floods, and he uses a device to talk to those far away. Then he and a few leaders of that place fly off, they return with the leaders babbling about the wonders they've seen and they need to rebuild their backwards civ to be like the outsiders. Then the people get pissed at change and kill them all.
He has a whole book on maps that is fascinating. Maps that show the earth as it was during the last ice age, and in ways that weren't even known today until fairly recently. Piri Reis's being the most famous. For example, before a certain time antarctica was on maps because people didn't explore they just copied existing maps. Then when we got Science they assumed Anta was a fable because no one could sail that far south to verify it, so it was removed from maps. It wasn't discovered till the 1830's. Some of those maps show Anta as a landmass w/o the ice coverage, which we weren't able to see until IIRC the 1950s with sonar technology.
There is also some theorizing that they had tech of a different sort, for example sonic technology may have been used to shape the massive rocks that are perfectly fitted in some fortifications. Some references to weapons that may have used sound. Check out the weapon this guy is holding, which looks like a double headed tuning fork:
The story of Gilgamesh has some high tech stuff too. Some story had magic beams shooting out to kill people. Another referenced an item (mace?) that talked to its owner, giving it information and advice. Legends generally don't get passed along unless they make sense to those hearing them, so usually there is a kernel of truth that makes such things believable, at least when the legends originated. Like how Jurassic Park had to spend some time explaining how we could have dinosaurs today that is believable, but the sequels and knock-offs didn't have to, everyone knew to assume something with mosquitos and amber, or whatever.
Oh, I know. These guys survived Noah's flood because they are Nephilim, or else the offspring of Nephilim and human women (Genesis 6:4) and had the ability to breathe underwater. Genesis says every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out, but it says nothing about living things *under the oceans*, now does it?!? So they hunkered down in the Mariana Trench with their magic rocks left over from the post-Edenic days of unfathomable evil (Genesis 4:5) ... and there they still are.
As a good Catholic, I don't actually believe the Nephilim were anything more than human tyrants of unusual nastiness. But it still works as a backstory for our underwater neanderthals. We can just say they were able to survive underwater because something something super-adaptable pre-Flood DNA plus demonic assistance.
Sacrificing to Poseidon takes on a whole new meaning ...
These days i find myself in "Yes...and" mode (as opposed to "either/or" binaries). That’s particularly the case when it comes to ancient stories, and whether they are literally or figuratively true. After all, Genesis itself seems to align with "naturalist" explanations (the order order of creation, the account of the flood/Younger Dryas, etc).
I think it's likely the same when it comes to accounts of Nephilum (or Watchers, giants, etc), and similar tales in other traditions. It all points to something along the lines of "We were not alone here." And perhaps we still aren't, if my theory is in any way accurate.
Some folks look askance when demonic influence is mentioned then in the very next minute wax on about intelligent alien life. Demon worshipping deepsea frog men seems more plausible to me.
Apr 23·edited Apr 23Liked by Mark Bisone, John Carter
"But the root cause — the seed — remains incomprehensible to us, impenetrable by human reason."
Theory: it's because we are predators/ prey, and our Adversaries are parasites. I don't mean that in a pejorative term, but a biological term. There are many examples in nature of plants and animal species that have an interbreedable sub-species that parasitizes off of the majority population.
lifecycle of predator/ prey: birth, eat, screw, give birth, die.
The lifecycle of parasites is often much more complex. For example, the psite has to get eaten by the host where it gives birth and dies, then its offspring get p00ped out to get eaten by an intermediate host. Then that thing (often a slug) gets eaten by the primary host, and the cycle starts again. So part of the lifecycle requires being killed so that ones offspring gets spread to the winds. Such a sub-species of human would be both genetically and culturally prone to pushing things to the limit, because it's not about reaching a steady-state, but to bring things to the state where the host p00ps them out to spread the psite population.
The faster this lifecycle, the faster the psite population would reproduce itself in other host cultures. So it would select for groups that were the most pushy, and for individuals within that group who were the pushiest as they would be the most likely to have the resources to survive the inevitable pogrom, or "p00ping out." This would lead to a very different psychology, perhaps even biology, with a tendency towards decreased dimorphism as female behavior has much in common with parasitic behavior. Instead of the males developing completely different genes, they'd just use more of the female genetics, which is a fairly simple thing to select for, compared to waiting for completely new genes to mutate.
The above isn't my idea originally, Eustace Mullins has a great book on it.
"This effect has been largely hidden from scientific investigation because the heat and fluid release is primarily from two under explored/under monitored regions. First, earth’s Deep Oceans which contain major geological features such as Divergent Plate Boundaries (tectonic plate pull-apart boundaries), Transform Plate Boundaries (tectonic plate side sliding boundaries), Convergent Plate Boundaries (Subduction and Obduction Zones), and High Heat Flow Volcanic regions. The associated heat and fluid release from these geological features acts to alter ocean temperatures, densities, and chemical compositions. The “Altered Oceans” then influence or drive climate changes and climate related events."
As I read this post, I was reminded that the beast who wages war against God on the side of the Whore of Babylon and The Anti-Christ come from the sea. Lots of different interpretations over the years about who or what the “beast of the sea” and “beast of the earth” are.
Revelation 13
The dragon[a] stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2 The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. 4 People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”
So, satanic Nephilim living in the oceans, I might be convinced.
There are still some animal and particularly insect species which have yet to be discovered. I occasion on a few discovery write-ups from time to time. Typically coming out of places like Myanmar and dense jungles in hard to reach places. Yet, for only a portion of a fraction of the time mankind has had what I might term "reasonable" capacity and technology to explore the vast locations on earth that have never truly seen thorough exploration. I think of our South Arctic and the vast depths below, as well as the enormous expanse of the Indian ocean basin.
In our arrogance, man has declared himself as the smartest creature in creation, but are we? Certainly missing from science texts is a serious-minded approach to discern the unmistakably unique awareness of cognition and moral center. From a scriptural view, we appear to be a body-soul-spirit unity, whereas the animal kingdom appears to only have a body and soul (the personality / thinking center). Absent a spirit, what are the differing qualities of existence exist? I can certainly see that my scruffy long-haired German Shepard has a personality of sorts (anthropomorphically speaking) - he's playful, super smart and a jackass all in one. There's more to him than just animated meat.
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We've been amazed at the 'intelligence' demonstrated by various animals - all of whom are perfectly suited for their own environments - some quite foreign to our general experience. So I wonder, in our arrogance, have we determined that the demonstration of intelligence must conform to our models of intelligence? And lastly, is it possible in view of the vast reaches of this ball of spinning water and dirt that there are yet to be seen hyper-intelligent animals that are smart enough to avoid us entirely?
I think it's highly likely that we both 1) anthropomorphize most animals far too much (and too vainly) and 2) overestimate how much general intelligence really matters when it comes to pure survival. Most whales seem to be fairly smart in domain-specific ways, but their forms don't lend themselves to the kind of general intelligence that can imagine future states and problems. It's not even a problem with their "brains" per se, but with entirety of the form. The whale gestalt prevents the whale technology, but allows it to outperform us in a number of other ways.
"And lastly, is it possible in view of the vast reaches of this ball of spinning water and dirt that there are yet to be seen hyper-intelligent animals that are smart enough to avoid us entirely?"
I think it's possible. On the other hand, this theory presupposes that the Sea Monkeys are not avoiding us, but are rather investigating and (in some cases) abducting and torturing us. That's the main reason I put a cap on their supposed intelligence. Even if they ship with ESP and other woo, Mankind would likely present an existential threat like none they've ever faced before, even down in their very bad neighborhood.
Agree with you that this post bears coming back to (most posts on Barsoom do, no matter the author).
"So I wonder, in our arrogance, have we determined that the demonstration of intelligence must conform to our models of intelligence?"
Not exactly an answer or a counter-point, but:
What other metric than our own intelligence (sapience, sentience, [meta-]cognition, et cetera) is there for us to use?
I can somewhat extrapolate how another mammal thinks, since we share the basic neurological structures: fight, flight, mate, play, eat, sleep. I can to some degree recognise the equivalent behaviours to human ones, since everything follows a systemised pattern behaviour-wise (even a mentally ill person or animal will have a pattern, albeit a discrepant one from normal).
But the farther away from me an animal is, the harder it becomes to understand and the time of study needed to understand increases dramatically, especially if we are of different clades (I think it's called clades in english?), such as human/lobster or human/ant.
The belaboured attempt at an answer-point:
Any extra-terrestrial (or endo-terrestrial) would face that very problem: what can be used as a common point of reference? Sure, we have physics and mathematics, but look at ants and bees: they have math built-in as a feature to a degree few humans bother to learn, but we'd never say an ant knows math, nor does our common understanding of maths enable communication with ants.
It may simply be impossible for us to understand a non-terrestrial intelligence unless it is so close to us it borders on a copy, and vice versa, and because of this it may near-impossible for us (or Them) to even identify intelligence in a different species (for an excellent fictional example, John Caprenter's 'The Thing'; not even the "spacecraft" it seems to be trying to build is proof of intelligence, it may instead simply be a case of mimicry).
Possibly, AI would/will face the same problem. Or, AI (real AI, not the plus-sized chatbots called AI today) may be the training-wheels we need to start the path to understanding intelligence.
If you really want to creep yourself out, read Blindsight by Peter Watts, where he posits intelligence without consciousness in a cosmic horror alien species.
Watts' Starfish is also on point for the general theme of this essay.
Truly excellent. This is a proper work of "natural philosophy", and the first truly novel assessment of this theme I have read in a long time. What's more, it has that subtle ring of truth about it, at least in the solidity of the concept; it evinces a simplicity (not easiness) that speaks of a genuinely scientific treatment.
Our cosmology may be wanting in both directions. One need not believe in a flat earth to suppose that there is something basically awry in the public presentation of the construction of our place. At very least I think that the duplicity surrounding Nasa strongly implies that the purported technology, if not the astonomy, of popular science is a red herring. I am reminded of C.S. Lewis' "out of the silent planet", where space travel is supposed as the main conceit of the novel, but beyond the earth's atmosphere the protagonists find the environment utterly different from the void they had expected. You are a thinker of rare talent, sir.
As a note, there is a book called the Kolbrin which, even if a hoax or forgery, is very fascinating on many points that generate "alternative" discussion hereabouts, though mostly on race and history; but a function of semi-conscious evolutionary morphology is referred to a number of times in that book which chime just with your thesis here. "Asha Logos" has evidently read it, though has drawn a few conclusions different from my own.
You raise some very fascinating and deeply unsettling possibilities. I haven't heard anyone else propose that aliens come from the ocean depths, and even though it sounds bizarre, as you point out, it would be no more bizarre than many of the popular theories about how aliens and UFOs all come from space. With the major institutions and authorities having lied about so many things of late, reliable information is terribly difficult to come by, so schizoid-sounding theories and artistic visions are pretty much all we've got to go on. Thanks for putting these ideas out there.
Fascinating idea, isn't it? My favorite touch though was the psychic cavemen with a magic rock flying around in pottery.
It's the Jetsons meets the Flintstones meets The Sleestaks meets the Creature From the Black Lagoon. Hollywood won't come calling, though, since it doesn't make us seem puny and pathetic.
And thank you for only calling me “schizoid-sounding.” I’m stepping up in the world! 😂
It's a term of endearment! Life would be boring and our culture terribly impoverished without the schizoid-sounding!
There was a considerable amount of speculation back in the day that aliens were just demons dressed up in space suits. You know, how Spock was made to look like a demon, pointy ears and all, as a joke. Or, was it....
If there be demons, there also be gods. Generally fear of ineffable terrors is a trait of demoralised vegetable-eaters. We uber-predators can rest easy knowing that our bros up there have got this handled until we join them on the other side to kick aliens’ extradimensional asses together.
Humanity: Fuck Yeah
May the wings of liberty never lose a feather.
I remember Bill Cooper recounting how he saw huge ships rising out of the ocean during his time at the Navy. He was eventually suicided, but wrote a great book Behold A Pale Horse.
I will check that one out. Thanks.
Re: magic rocks, see also sunstones. And remember our first electronic semiconductors, basis for all modern computing technology, were naturally occurring crystals whose properties took decades to reverse-engineer and reproduce. An oft-forgotten chapter of our technological history, maybe because it's boring, or maybe because poking at magic crystals with electrified sticks doesn't really jive with our established narrative about how science and technology progresses.
Loved the exploration of the hypothetical nature and culture of underwater demons.
And yes I'm very much looking forward to the rest of the story about the digital demon.
Excellent points on both counts. The theorycels have redrawn the picture in their favor, to the detriment of innovation and application genius everywhere. I get the sense that will change soon, if only out of sheer necessity.
If anything, the theorycels have slowed down technological development by insisting that we have to understand things before we start screwing around with them.
If I insisted on fully understanding everything I screwed around with before screwing with it I'd still be delivering pizzas.
Would probably have fewer scars too, but trusting nerds without scars is like trusting skinny chefs.
Or fat public health officials.
Aliens:
I remember some time ago reading about how the Russians were drilling down to an Antarctic subterranean lake (Vostok?) and coming across biological... somethings? The next day I read an unrelated (?) article about some apparently new species of octopus someone saw while diving near Antarctica. As predicted by H.P. Lovecraft in "At the Mountains of Madness", even before it was known there were underground lakes in Antarctica. Similar to how R.E. Howard had more right about ancient history than most modern "historians"?
I've heard some interesting theories about octopi being alien species, something about genetically engineered failsafes where they die long before they have to.
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There are many ancient accounts of flying objects, with many such accounts including the object landing and people stepping out to say, "howdy!" to the locals. Most likely the accounts of low tech civs being contacted by higher tech civs that have since died out, but maybe not...
I think the best explanation for modern UFOs is that it is a government psyop, perhaps a few that are overlapping. For example, 'limited hangouts' are SOP for hiding things. You give out part of the info that is about to be found out anyway, in an attempt to distract people from the whole truth. The CIA admitted it started the MKUltra program in 1953. Which should lead to the question, why that year? It's a safe bet the CIA is lying, but why that particular year. Answer: 1952 had a massive leap in the number of UFO abductions.
One of the most egregious aspects of MKUltra was its use of unwitting test subjects; given the horrifying lengths they've admitted to it isn't much of a leap to think they kidnapped people and lead them to believe while under the effects of drugs that they were abducted by aliens. As for the anal probes, it is well-known that the CIA at that time was mostly a Yale fraternity. Yale was known as the Ivy League of choice for homosexuals. Also note the many homosexuals that just happen to come up in JFK research...
At some point, I predict that the government will use deep fake technology to lead people to believe aliens have landed. This will lead to a reason for why humanity must all come together in a One World Government. Either the aliens are hostile and require a concerted effort*, or the aliens want to help us but are horrified at the thought of our lack of unity. If we all come together they will shower us with magical gifts like the cure for cancer, infinite energy, and female sports that's entertaining for reasons other than bouncing mammaries.
* remember that a co-worker of Wernher von Braun swore that he'd once told her that was part of the plan. First the Russians would be the enemy manufactured as an excuse for authoritarianism, then terrorism, then crazy third world nations, then asteroids, then the final play would be hostile aliens. IIRC, she first said this back in the 70s.
Regarding the first part: artists frequently access reality through their imaginations. Inspiration is remarkably information dense.
For every artist or writer that happened to create some fiction which was later found to resemble reality, how many created fictions (and how many fictions) that didn't?
When you factor that, it no longer looks very impressive or dramatic - it just looks like a lot of monkeys throwing stuff to see what sticks.
Doesn't make the fiction worth less, in my view. "Are we not entertained?" so to speak.
Monkeys throwing stuff to see what sticks describes all human exploration and development.
No, that's a misconception. Human development has been deliberate for at least since well before the latest Ice Age, as have human development: with the narrow margins a nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe live within, randomness isn't something it can afford.
It hasn't been with a pre-conceived specific goal (asteroid mining, a pipe-dream if ever there was one), but with general goals best understood as "less of something undesirable".
Hence, better tools did not come about because someone sat down and figured out the Arkimedes Screw; better tools came about because someone had one system that they looked and thought: "How can I rebuild this so I don't have to do as much work?".
Now, for about three centuries, the most civilised part of the world (the Western civilisation) has had such a surplus of resources, that "throwing stuff at the wall" has become a viable option. As the latter half of the 20th century shows, it's not a good method.
I think you're guilty of survivorship bias here.
In invention there are always at least two hypotheses: "X is a problem" and "Y is a solution to X". 99% of the time, at least one of those two hypotheses is incorrect.
A lot of Thoks spent a lot of time banging rocks together on the hypothesis that the sharp rocks they found were not sharp enough and banging them together in just the right way would make them sharper. Meaningful progress on developing better knapping methods took tens of millennia for them. There were probably some Grogs who thought the rocks they had were just fine, and some Oogas who thought some other method would work better for sharpening them. Grog passed his unmodified rocks down through the centuries and we obviously don't count that as progress, but for as long as his rocks remained the most popular you could call that success. Ooga's rocks we don't find, because his method didn't work. But sometimes a Thok's new improved knapping method turned out to solve a real-world problem, and the new style of sharp rocks made by it took off.
Nothing much has changed about technological progress since then. We've endless examples of inventions that, in hindsight, look "ahead of their time," "too late to make a difference," or "just plain stupid." And that's not to mention all the inventions that never made it out of the lab because they were obviously failures from the start. Everybody's throwing shit at the wall, all the time.
Artists are just trying to solve a different problem than engineers. What stories, images, moods, best capture what is and what should be. The ones with better insight in that have a track record of success. Others are one hit wonders. Most labor in obscurity. But all are throwing shit at the wall.
Everyone alive has survivorship bias? ;)
Like this, I mean:
Doing things at random is throwing stuff at the wall.
Trying things out with aforethought is not.
Take a look at the first axeheads (stone): they were made not by random choice, nor were thay made by people making one of each kind of stone in some kind of double-blind empirical study.
They were made by someone trying one, then trying another to see if it was better. Same goes for the axehandle; a stonehead with a hole through it (the oldest ones, made of sandstone) needs a differently shaped handle than does a flatheaded one with an edged stone (flint, f.e).
And how to do that was made by someone who first thought it out.
That's the difference: thinking it out or just doing random stuff. The idea that our forefathers somehow discovered something by chance simply doesn't work - if they hadn't thought about what they discovered before they did, they couldn't have recognised that they had made a discovery.
Sure, some scientific research nets results that fall under "That's not what we were looking for" (penicillin, perhaps) but the thought-process itself was necessary for the discory in the first place; no-one looked at rancid youghurt and thought "I wonder if this cures colds?", nor did anyone think "Let's just stuff sick people full of whatever and see what happens", not even when they were dead wrong (using Radium as an ingredient in toothpaste f.e.).
"At some point, I predict that the government will use deep fake technology to lead people to believe aliens have landed."
I agree. That might be plan J or K, triggered as a last resort. Of course, that tactic doesn't negate the existence of psychic, subaqueous cavemen in flying pottery. It just makes them useless for gov't intrigues.
I guess I should've publicized this concept seven years ago when I had it, huh?
The difference is I presumed that - rather than our own sea - red-light dwarf stars (the most prolific class) with large water worlds would generate large black eyed greys. The eyes for the infrared spectrum. Grey for whatever reason dolphins are grey. Thus our ocean becomes the primary reason for being here.
One could also muse that they stole the ships. Or that they're waiting for our own technology to get them out of the gravity well of a sun much larger than their dwarfs.
TILT: Ozymandias is really at the South Pole scheming.
Mind-boggling, expanding, blowing and otherwise the reason I am a paying subscriber to both of you👽 but damn it, I have things I need to get done today but all I wanna do is read this again and pour over the comment section. Wildly imaginative, yet on the cusp if not a step over a real possibility.
Thanks! Believe it or not, there was more I wanted to pack in there, particularly with regards to anatomy and potential fabrication techniques. I might do a followup some day, if there's any demand for one.
Dude. You absolutely need to flesh that out.
I'm not demanding, but I sure would be interested in reading that.
This was exactly how I reacted when I read it :D
Amazing read, thank you!
If your theory is correct - and it definitely seems as plausible as anything else, if not more so - would you expect the psychic cavemen to have DNA similar to every other creature on earth? If the government ever decides to release information on the "biologic samples" they're supposedly hoarding, testing for that seems a good first step towards supporting or disproving the theory.
If they're native to Earth, the DNA should be similar. If not, one would expect larger differences.
Of course, that leaves aside genetic tampering, which could introduce large divergences.
Maybe not. Even terrestrial life can get pretty weird. Consider the platypus;
“In 2004, researchers at the Australian National University discovered the platypus has ten sex chromosomes, compared with two (XY) in most other mammals. These ten chromosomes form five unique pairs of XY in males and XX in females, i.e. males are X1Y1X2Y2X3Y3X4Y4X5Y5.[92] “
Are we sure the platypus is terrestrial?
Honestly, it’s weird enough that I could be easily convinced that it’s descended from some alien’s escaped pet!
It also begs the question "what does the government know?" If there really are biological samples, I can't imagine the DNA hasn't been looked at. So someone should know if the remains are native to Earth. *Insert conspiracy theory here*
We may not even expect them to have DNA if they were extraterrestrial, though if they were anything *at all* like us we'd probably find some analogous mechanism.
If they were derived ultimately from hominids, as Mark suggests here, and broke away at around the same time our ancestors branched off from other hominid groups, we'd naively expect them to share, what, around 97%-99% of our human genetic code. But on the other hand, under constant, heavy selective pressure, things evolve much more rapidly, and more changes equals more genetic differences. But see also Mark's https://markbisone.substack.com/p/the-devil-incarnate-part-five - is DNA even the right place to look for the source of those differences?
There are scenarios where we'd expect ET to have DNA. Panspermia. More speculatively, convergent evolution at the molecular level: it could be that DNA is the optimal basic hereditary molecule, and is selected for on the basis of engineering principles.
Could be that there's no other feasible way to do the job, but even then it'd be surprising if they were exactly chemically identical. For example there are a few other alternative options for nucleotide bases that are functionally the same iirc. And they might code for a much different collection of proteins.
Maybe, but then again it might be that the relevant functional aspects relate to functions we don't even know about yet.
Personally I wouldn't be sure what to conclude if their DNA was similar (and by similar I mean uses the same 4 bases and is divided into chromosomes). If their genetic code were different (or non-existant), though, I'd think Mark's theory needs some revising, at least regarding where the bottom dwellers originally came from.
A provocative post to be sure. I am reminded of the Japanese fable of Godzilla, who is awakened from his primordial underwater slumber by nuclear bombs. In other words, the Promethean fire reaches it's zenith, destroys some Pacific islands, atolls, etc. and threatens all life both above and below the waterline, and awakens... Devil worshipping aliens from Dimension X. And STILL, it's not our own damn fault.
Yes, it's definitely a mytheme with deep roots. The Kraken, Cthlulu, Godzilla. Even Jaws, to some extent, could be seen as a demon summoned by our signals and hubris.
I've read some theories/ plans that if anything really bad happens on the surface (nukes, asteroid, etc.) there might be mega-rich people with underwater bunkers who would survive. Zuckerberg just spent $1/4B on a 1400 acre compound w/ underground bunker in Hawaii, so it is certainly possible. It is almost a certainty that there were high tech civilizations in the past, before the last Ice Age. In the 200-300k years that anatomically modern humans have existed, there have been something like 12-15 events that if they happened today would plunge us back to the Stone Age. For example, the Toba event ("The Road", 75k years ago). Perhaps after one such catastrophe, an offshoot of humans existed underwater long enough to evolve (or intentionally develop) the characteristics to survive in the ocean.
also, humor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhC_KHkihKY
Ha! Brilliant scene. Perhaps it will prove prophetic.
Perhaps it already did. Alien reparations is already a thing in California.
And I agree with John. Hilarious scene!
I understand what you're saying, and I suspect there was at least one cataclysmic event that might have hit the reset button on ancient civs. But the theory that these were "high-tech" civs in the component-driven, hyperfragile way we conceive of technology just doesn’t gel for me. Magic rocks buried by a flood seem much more likely than a manufacturing base. I think the ancestral memory of those stuck with us, which has a lot of explanatory power with regards to many demigod tales, the construction of megaliths, the pursuit of alchemy, etc.
Check out the writings of Graham Hancock. He collects a lot of anomalous stuff from ancient texts and examines ruins that are difficult to explain.
For example, there are Hindu texts that talk about a guy showing up and claiming to be the survivor of a civ wrecked by floods, and he uses a device to talk to those far away. Then he and a few leaders of that place fly off, they return with the leaders babbling about the wonders they've seen and they need to rebuild their backwards civ to be like the outsiders. Then the people get pissed at change and kill them all.
He has a whole book on maps that is fascinating. Maps that show the earth as it was during the last ice age, and in ways that weren't even known today until fairly recently. Piri Reis's being the most famous. For example, before a certain time antarctica was on maps because people didn't explore they just copied existing maps. Then when we got Science they assumed Anta was a fable because no one could sail that far south to verify it, so it was removed from maps. It wasn't discovered till the 1830's. Some of those maps show Anta as a landmass w/o the ice coverage, which we weren't able to see until IIRC the 1950s with sonar technology.
There is also some theorizing that they had tech of a different sort, for example sonic technology may have been used to shape the massive rocks that are perfectly fitted in some fortifications. Some references to weapons that may have used sound. Check out the weapon this guy is holding, which looks like a double headed tuning fork:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Chaos_Monster_and_Sun_God.png/1600px-Chaos_Monster_and_Sun_God.png
The story of Gilgamesh has some high tech stuff too. Some story had magic beams shooting out to kill people. Another referenced an item (mace?) that talked to its owner, giving it information and advice. Legends generally don't get passed along unless they make sense to those hearing them, so usually there is a kernel of truth that makes such things believable, at least when the legends originated. Like how Jurassic Park had to spend some time explaining how we could have dinosaurs today that is believable, but the sequels and knock-offs didn't have to, everyone knew to assume something with mosquitos and amber, or whatever.
I immediately thought of him too.
Oh, I know. These guys survived Noah's flood because they are Nephilim, or else the offspring of Nephilim and human women (Genesis 6:4) and had the ability to breathe underwater. Genesis says every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out, but it says nothing about living things *under the oceans*, now does it?!? So they hunkered down in the Mariana Trench with their magic rocks left over from the post-Edenic days of unfathomable evil (Genesis 4:5) ... and there they still are.
As a good Catholic, I don't actually believe the Nephilim were anything more than human tyrants of unusual nastiness. But it still works as a backstory for our underwater neanderthals. We can just say they were able to survive underwater because something something super-adaptable pre-Flood DNA plus demonic assistance.
Sacrificing to Poseidon takes on a whole new meaning ...
These days i find myself in "Yes...and" mode (as opposed to "either/or" binaries). That’s particularly the case when it comes to ancient stories, and whether they are literally or figuratively true. After all, Genesis itself seems to align with "naturalist" explanations (the order order of creation, the account of the flood/Younger Dryas, etc).
I think it's likely the same when it comes to accounts of Nephilum (or Watchers, giants, etc), and similar tales in other traditions. It all points to something along the lines of "We were not alone here." And perhaps we still aren't, if my theory is in any way accurate.
Aquatic morlocks... I've heard this somewhere before.
Wait a minute, I remember now. What did Blizzard Entertainment know?! Is this why the bugmen skinsuited them?
Ha!
Some folks look askance when demonic influence is mentioned then in the very next minute wax on about intelligent alien life. Demon worshipping deepsea frog men seems more plausible to me.
Maybe not so ancient- Gunnar Heinesohn...
"But the root cause — the seed — remains incomprehensible to us, impenetrable by human reason."
Theory: it's because we are predators/ prey, and our Adversaries are parasites. I don't mean that in a pejorative term, but a biological term. There are many examples in nature of plants and animal species that have an interbreedable sub-species that parasitizes off of the majority population.
lifecycle of predator/ prey: birth, eat, screw, give birth, die.
The lifecycle of parasites is often much more complex. For example, the psite has to get eaten by the host where it gives birth and dies, then its offspring get p00ped out to get eaten by an intermediate host. Then that thing (often a slug) gets eaten by the primary host, and the cycle starts again. So part of the lifecycle requires being killed so that ones offspring gets spread to the winds. Such a sub-species of human would be both genetically and culturally prone to pushing things to the limit, because it's not about reaching a steady-state, but to bring things to the state where the host p00ps them out to spread the psite population.
The faster this lifecycle, the faster the psite population would reproduce itself in other host cultures. So it would select for groups that were the most pushy, and for individuals within that group who were the pushiest as they would be the most likely to have the resources to survive the inevitable pogrom, or "p00ping out." This would lead to a very different psychology, perhaps even biology, with a tendency towards decreased dimorphism as female behavior has much in common with parasitic behavior. Instead of the males developing completely different genes, they'd just use more of the female genetics, which is a fairly simple thing to select for, compared to waiting for completely new genes to mutate.
The above isn't my idea originally, Eustace Mullins has a great book on it.
That's an interesting theory. One with broad applications...
You don't say...https://windsorswan.substack.com/p/the-social-parasite-theory-of-liberalism
Sounds similar to the anglerfish, actually. Which is either the worst or (sneakily) best named sea monster ever.
I got a bit of a laugh (it would have been more, if your topic wasn't so serious) about the idea of hidden aliens intent on conquring Earth. That's the precise plot in my novel "The Time of The Cat" posted at https://open.substack.com/pub/ericmartell?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=d76bb
Might be fiction, but it explains a lot. In any event, those individuals behind our current mess have forfeited the right to be considered human.
If there is a human line, they may have crossed it. They're at the very least in the grip of evil.
Makes me wonder about our own origin in the water of our mother's womb. Funny how we start submerged but never return.
That is interesting, isn't it?
Combine this with Plate Climatology theory https://www.plateclimatology.com/further-proof-el-nios-are-fueled-by-deepsea-geological-heat-flow they could be using psychic or ritual control [praying or sacrificing to the Vent gods] as a way to attack us through their veil...
"This effect has been largely hidden from scientific investigation because the heat and fluid release is primarily from two under explored/under monitored regions. First, earth’s Deep Oceans which contain major geological features such as Divergent Plate Boundaries (tectonic plate pull-apart boundaries), Transform Plate Boundaries (tectonic plate side sliding boundaries), Convergent Plate Boundaries (Subduction and Obduction Zones), and High Heat Flow Volcanic regions. The associated heat and fluid release from these geological features acts to alter ocean temperatures, densities, and chemical compositions. The “Altered Oceans” then influence or drive climate changes and climate related events."
As I read this post, I was reminded that the beast who wages war against God on the side of the Whore of Babylon and The Anti-Christ come from the sea. Lots of different interpretations over the years about who or what the “beast of the sea” and “beast of the earth” are.
Revelation 13
The dragon[a] stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2 The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. 4 People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”
So, satanic Nephilim living in the oceans, I might be convinced.
There are still some animal and particularly insect species which have yet to be discovered. I occasion on a few discovery write-ups from time to time. Typically coming out of places like Myanmar and dense jungles in hard to reach places. Yet, for only a portion of a fraction of the time mankind has had what I might term "reasonable" capacity and technology to explore the vast locations on earth that have never truly seen thorough exploration. I think of our South Arctic and the vast depths below, as well as the enormous expanse of the Indian ocean basin.
In our arrogance, man has declared himself as the smartest creature in creation, but are we? Certainly missing from science texts is a serious-minded approach to discern the unmistakably unique awareness of cognition and moral center. From a scriptural view, we appear to be a body-soul-spirit unity, whereas the animal kingdom appears to only have a body and soul (the personality / thinking center). Absent a spirit, what are the differing qualities of existence exist? I can certainly see that my scruffy long-haired German Shepard has a personality of sorts (anthropomorphically speaking) - he's playful, super smart and a jackass all in one. There's more to him than just animated meat.
.
We've been amazed at the 'intelligence' demonstrated by various animals - all of whom are perfectly suited for their own environments - some quite foreign to our general experience. So I wonder, in our arrogance, have we determined that the demonstration of intelligence must conform to our models of intelligence? And lastly, is it possible in view of the vast reaches of this ball of spinning water and dirt that there are yet to be seen hyper-intelligent animals that are smart enough to avoid us entirely?
I think it's highly likely that we both 1) anthropomorphize most animals far too much (and too vainly) and 2) overestimate how much general intelligence really matters when it comes to pure survival. Most whales seem to be fairly smart in domain-specific ways, but their forms don't lend themselves to the kind of general intelligence that can imagine future states and problems. It's not even a problem with their "brains" per se, but with entirety of the form. The whale gestalt prevents the whale technology, but allows it to outperform us in a number of other ways.
"And lastly, is it possible in view of the vast reaches of this ball of spinning water and dirt that there are yet to be seen hyper-intelligent animals that are smart enough to avoid us entirely?"
I think it's possible. On the other hand, this theory presupposes that the Sea Monkeys are not avoiding us, but are rather investigating and (in some cases) abducting and torturing us. That's the main reason I put a cap on their supposed intelligence. Even if they ship with ESP and other woo, Mankind would likely present an existential threat like none they've ever faced before, even down in their very bad neighborhood.
Agree with you that this post bears coming back to (most posts on Barsoom do, no matter the author).
"So I wonder, in our arrogance, have we determined that the demonstration of intelligence must conform to our models of intelligence?"
Not exactly an answer or a counter-point, but:
What other metric than our own intelligence (sapience, sentience, [meta-]cognition, et cetera) is there for us to use?
I can somewhat extrapolate how another mammal thinks, since we share the basic neurological structures: fight, flight, mate, play, eat, sleep. I can to some degree recognise the equivalent behaviours to human ones, since everything follows a systemised pattern behaviour-wise (even a mentally ill person or animal will have a pattern, albeit a discrepant one from normal).
But the farther away from me an animal is, the harder it becomes to understand and the time of study needed to understand increases dramatically, especially if we are of different clades (I think it's called clades in english?), such as human/lobster or human/ant.
The belaboured attempt at an answer-point:
Any extra-terrestrial (or endo-terrestrial) would face that very problem: what can be used as a common point of reference? Sure, we have physics and mathematics, but look at ants and bees: they have math built-in as a feature to a degree few humans bother to learn, but we'd never say an ant knows math, nor does our common understanding of maths enable communication with ants.
It may simply be impossible for us to understand a non-terrestrial intelligence unless it is so close to us it borders on a copy, and vice versa, and because of this it may near-impossible for us (or Them) to even identify intelligence in a different species (for an excellent fictional example, John Caprenter's 'The Thing'; not even the "spacecraft" it seems to be trying to build is proof of intelligence, it may instead simply be a case of mimicry).
Possibly, AI would/will face the same problem. Or, AI (real AI, not the plus-sized chatbots called AI today) may be the training-wheels we need to start the path to understanding intelligence.
If you really want to creep yourself out, read Blindsight by Peter Watts, where he posits intelligence without consciousness in a cosmic horror alien species.
Watts' Starfish is also on point for the general theme of this essay.
Truly excellent. This is a proper work of "natural philosophy", and the first truly novel assessment of this theme I have read in a long time. What's more, it has that subtle ring of truth about it, at least in the solidity of the concept; it evinces a simplicity (not easiness) that speaks of a genuinely scientific treatment.
Our cosmology may be wanting in both directions. One need not believe in a flat earth to suppose that there is something basically awry in the public presentation of the construction of our place. At very least I think that the duplicity surrounding Nasa strongly implies that the purported technology, if not the astonomy, of popular science is a red herring. I am reminded of C.S. Lewis' "out of the silent planet", where space travel is supposed as the main conceit of the novel, but beyond the earth's atmosphere the protagonists find the environment utterly different from the void they had expected. You are a thinker of rare talent, sir.
As a note, there is a book called the Kolbrin which, even if a hoax or forgery, is very fascinating on many points that generate "alternative" discussion hereabouts, though mostly on race and history; but a function of semi-conscious evolutionary morphology is referred to a number of times in that book which chime just with your thesis here. "Asha Logos" has evidently read it, though has drawn a few conclusions different from my own.
Thanks for this. It’s humbling beyond words to be mentioned in the same breath as Lewis