Time Travel? Or an early evolutionary quirk?

Copyright 2013, InterAmerica, Inc.

The History Channel recently aired Werner Herzog’s 2010 documentary The Cave of Forgotten Dreams about the 32,000+ year-old drawings found deep inside.

Information about the cave -- Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc in Southern France – and Herzog’s 3-D film about it can be read at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams

I want you look at a few of the drawings found in the cave walls:

And a flute, using diatonic tones because of the placement of the holes on the reed, was found nearby; this too, from 32,000 years ago or so:

As you can see from the images and flute-find, the Neolithic artists were hardly primitive and rather advanced, aesthetically.

One interesting (troubling?) aspect of the drawings and others like it found in other caves is the absence of drawings of plants, fish, or the environment, or the heavens, in this cave particularly -- the drawings made mostly in the deepest recesses of the cave where light was virtually non-existent or seen through minute openings for brief periods of the day.

I find that strange: the artistic lacunae – no flora, no fowl, no marine life, no moon or sun.

Some of you are familiar with Michael Moorcock’s intriguing science fiction novel, Behold the Man, wherein a man travels back in time to the time of Jesus and because of extenuating exigencies assumes the role of Jesus for his last day on Earth.

Moorcock’s man is bereft of modern technology so he has to cope within the time-frame in which he finds himself and with only the tools at  his disposal.

Let’s look at those images from the cave again.

Don’t they bespeak an artist or artist from a time well beyond the Neolithic or Paleolithic eras?

Someone familiar with art and music created images and sounds out of sync with the age in which they found themselves.

Or the artists were part of a creative quirk which was bestowed upon them many years too soon it seems, only to disappear until the time of the Greeks 31,000 years later, give or take.

The film intrigues, and if seen only for its cataloguing of early art renderings, is a must- see for those of you with a yen about early man (and woman).

RR

The Pursuit of Attention….

The Pursuit of Attention is the title of this book by Charles Derber [1979]:

It also is a fixation by the people we deal with, including ourselves (I’m sad to write).

Mr. Derber provides a concise, unpsychologic approach to attention-getting and needs.

Using quotes, such as these, opening Chapter 5 [Page 87], he succinctly shows how individuals, abetted by the vicissitudes of society preys upon attention:

“We know well enough that the isolation of the individual – a narrow minded egotism – is everywhere the fundamental principle of modern society … The disintegration of society into individuals each guided by his private principles and each pursuing his own aims, has been pushed to its furthest limits…” 

 [Frederick Engels from The Condition of the Working-Class in England]

“The compulsive preoccupation with being seen, or simply with being visible, suggests that we must be dealing with underlying fantasies of not being seen, of being invisible.”

  [R.D. Laing, from The Divided Self]

Or this from Chapter 3 [Page 43]:

“Pray, what are you laughing at?” inquired the Rocket…

“I am laughing because I am happy,” replied the Cracker.

“That is a very selfish reason,” said The Rocket. ‘What right have you to be happy? You should be thinking about others. In fact, you should be thinking about me. I am always thinking about myself, and I expect everybody else to do the same.” 

 [Oscar Wilde from The Remarkable Rocket]

One can see the extreme need to be seen, to be heard, via Facebook and Twitter currently.

Several venues we use, to get our own attention, is fraught with persons extolling their prowess, no matter how inane or banal, suffocating readers with their boring onslaught of personal detritus or ideas.

We cite UFO Updates and Kevin Randle’s blog particularly, where ego is manifest, more than unique thinking or presentations.

Our MediaWatch Facebook page is a exemplary example of ego on parade, and idiotic postings which often apply to a personal few but end up being cascaded, because of the Facebook format, to everyone.

Even though fame is elusive for many of us, we keep drilling for that fortuitous oil that may make it otherwise.

But with all the insipid posterings, online, the drilling is futile, and an every increasing need to go louder, to be wilder takes place.

And stupidity becomes the content of the day.

The UFO community is flush with dolts who pummel fellow UFO mavens with effluvia that is accepted as words from on high, when all we are being offered is merde from on low.

Discernment is not the sine qua non of what we’re finding online.

RR