Week 4 of Occupy Wall Street

occupiers in washington square, NYC, 10-8-11

Watching the Occupiers  as their numbers mushroom, as the cities they occupy proliferate, is really a flashback to the sixties. It’s the same kind of movement – grass roots, organic, spurred by an emotional and intuitive certainty that something is very wrong in this country. And when enough people feel this, the masses take to the streets. And when the 99% take to the streets in such great numbers, the media snaps to attention, even the politicians who live on the planet Pluto can’t help but notice.

Some media outlets have criticized this movement because it doesn’t have, well, you know, an agenda. In media speak, that means: What are the talking points? What’s the declaration?  Who are your leaders? Who speaks for you? I actually think that in the beginning, the lack of an agenda was a plus. But now the movement is so much larger that it may be time to flex its political muscle.

During the protests of the sixties, the war in Vietnam was the issue. The draft still existed. People saw the draft as sanctioned murder. We also had great music that infused us with a kind of primal rage toward a system that we knew was unjust and  plain wrong.

On May 4, 1970, four college students at Kent State were murdered by the National Guard during a protest. Here’s a timeline of the events that led up to this horror. As a result of this travesty, on May 9, 1970, 100,000 marched on Washington, D.C. to protest the shootings and Richard Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia, which many of us saw as an expansion of the Vietnam War.

On the night of May 8, 1970, I drove my old VW from Utica, New York to D.C. and it was jammed with people. We were three deep in the front seat, four in the back. In those days, the trip took about eight hours. I remember that we camped that night in a park with hundreds of other protestors.  The people I was with had come well-prepared – food and water, sleeping bags, even pillows, and, more importantly, they had handkerchiefs  coated with Vaseline, which was supposed to protect you from tear gas or whatever else might be sprayed through the crowd.

That night, as I looked out across the park where we all camped illegally,  I could see pinpricks of light – cigarettes, candles, flashlights –and knew I was a witness to history, that something important was shifting. The next day, as a hundred thousand of us converged on D.C., I saw only a sea of humanity. I heard the cacophony of a collective voice that you can hear now from the occupiers of wherever you live. Their message is layered –  not just war, but economical tyranny of the 1 percent, the domination of corporatism at the expense of everyone else,  unemployment,  class warfare, corrupt politicians. But really, the bigger message is the same: the existing paradigm no longer works. Capitalism is now a monster.

Back then, we didn’t have the Internet, Facebook, cell phones, Twitter. We were a disconnected, disenfranchised group and we knew it, and it didn’t matter. We were connected by something deeper, more mysterious,  a passion that knew no bounds.  Just like the occupiers.

And yet, even after that protest in 1970, it took three more years before military involvement in Vietnam ceased and until April 1975 for the war to officially end. I was in graduate school when the military involvement ended. I remember being in the apartment of  a friend and caught a snippet on TV and thought, Wow, what was this about again? Nearly 60,000 Americans killed, more than a million others, I mean, really, what was the point?

Now, more than forty years later, what has changed? War is still big business, but there’s no more draft. The U.S. is still  the world cop,  we support dictators and supply them with weapons, only to turn against them when the tide of pubic opinion has turned. For a list of such dictators and the policies that support them, Google Naomi Klein. She wrote the definitive book about these American tactics in The Shock Doctrine. Economist Paul Krugman nails it, too. 

My hope is that the occupiers continue to occupy, that those vested in the existing paradigm keep howling about how un-American it is, and that the change doesn’t take 3-5 years. One thing is obvious: the existing paradigm won’t end with a whimper. The 1 percent will fight the 99 percent all the way. But if we’re a country of the people and for the people, change will come. The 99 percent will win.


 

 

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Wolf Medicine


Here’s a visual synchronicity related to my new novel, TIME CATCHER, that just came out. Notice the cover above, and the one below. Both have a wolf theme. Yet, wolves play a minor role in each one and the books came out under different publishers with different art directors.

While both novels are part of the same series, TIME CATCHER is a departure from the previous three in that the saga jumps ahead in time. Rather than a high-school aged student, Will Lansa is now an adult, an anthropology professor at Rocky Mountain College. About to embark on a vacation between semesters, he’s  called back the Hopi Reservation by his grandmother to pursue a metaphysical mystery related to the Hopi prophecies and Pahana, a legendary figure from Hopi mythology.

The wolf in TIME CATCHER is a seriously over-sized creature that enters the world through an inter-dimensional portal in Canyon de Chelly. In Double Heart, the wolf is a shape-shifter.

The dueling wolf covers made me wonder about wolf medicine. Here’s what I found when I made a quick on-line perusal. As a totem, Wolf is the pathfinder, the forerunner of new ideas who returns to the clan to teach and share medicine. Wolf is a wild spirit.

The senses of Wolf are very keen, and the moon is its power ally. The moon is the symbol for psychic energy, or the unconscious that holds the secrets of knowledge and wisdom. Baying at the moon may be an indication of Wolf’s desire to connect with new ideas which are just below the surface of consciousness.

I think Wolf is my new power animal!

 

 

 

 

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Kicking the Co-Exist bumper sticker

You’ve probably seen the ubiquitous Co-Exist bumper sticker that includes symbols of all the major religions. Right? Megan has one on her car. So does one of our neighbors. I’ve always thought it was one of the better bumper stickers because it doesn’t attack anyone.

But Florida Rep. Allen West has other ideas. It seems that West, who happens to represent the district where we live, thinks co-existing is bad news.

Take a look at what he says about the sticker. What’s particularly jarring is that West is black and co-existing is what blacks have been trying to do in this country for 300 years. Shame on Allen West. He should know better.

Here he is in his own words:

“Because as I was driving up here today, I saw that bumper sticker that absolutely incenses me. It’s not the Obama bumper sticker. But it’s the bumper sticker that says, ‘Co-exist.’ And it has all the little religious symbols on it. And the reason why I get upset, and every time I see one of those bumper stickers, I look at the person inside that is driving. Because that person represents something that would give away our country. Would give away who we are, our rights and freedoms and liberties because they are afraid to stand up and confront that which is the antithesis, anathema of who we are. The liberties that we want to enjoy.”

So apparently, according to West, in order to enjoy our freedom and liberty, we need to repress those who are different from us. What a guy. I’m voting against him…again in 2012.

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The Warrior: Full Moon in Aries

On October 11, there’s a full moon in Aries. So let’s see what’s in store for us.

Aries is the warrior. He’s the guy who goes to bat for the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the downtrodden. He’s Russell Crowe in Gladiator, Michael Douglas in the remake of Wall Street, Katniss in The Hunger Games. This transit taps into a kind of primal power that charges through obstacles, barriers, the impossible.

The moon represents our emotions, our inner world, intuition, our capacity for nurturing self and others. During full moons, events often reach a culmination.

Occupy Wall Street, which has been going on since September 17, began as a grass roots movement. It isn’t funded by the Koch brothers. It started with disenfranchised young people who followed the formula of  the American dream – college, loans to pay for tuition, graduation – and then faced the  desert of unemployment or underemployment. It’s the same sort of energy that was prevalent in the sixties, with protests against Vietnam, for women’s rights, for equality for blacks. It’s democracy at its finest,  revolution that eventually results in evolution of consciousness.

While the protests have been mostly nonviolent,  the night of October 5 proved otherwise:

The world is caught up in a mythic struggle between the old paradigm and the new. In the old paradigm, you graduated from high school, went to college, landed a cool job. OK, so maybe this job wasn’t the pinnacle of what you hoped for, but it paid you well enough to gain independence from your family. If you had debt, it wasn’t all that much and you were able to pay it back.

In the new paradigm, the debt is staggering – over a hundred grand for many students, who subsequently face underemployment or unemployment that essentially relegates them to the status of indentured servants. Who wouldn’t revolt against such conditions?

During the full moon in Aries,  the disparity between rich and poor in this country becomes even more obvious,  glaring.  So if you have any extra bucks in piggy banks, give it to these youngsters  who are occupying Wall Street. They’re going to need sleeping bags, food, supplies to keep  them going. They’re going to need the support of their parents and grandparents who protested against Vietnam, for Civil Rights, women’s rights.

The movement is rapidly spreading to other cities and countries. As of October 6, that number was over  800 locations worldwide.  Click here to see the current count. On or around the time of this  full moon, a tipping point of some kind may be reached.

Even the Obama administration is taking notice now. So are other politicians.

The movement describes itself in terms that fit this full moon:

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.”

So it’s going to be interesting to see how the energy of the archetypal warrior will manifest itself during the full moon in Aries.


 

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Guidestones Redux, part 2

Here’s the second part of Connie’s story. If you look closely at the photo above, you’ll see a halo around the Guidestones and also above the distant landscape. How this photo came about is part of the strange scenario that occurred at the mysterious site.

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On with my experience…..Both sons were already walking around taking photos from various angles. Kenny has a professional camera but did not at any time change the lens or adjust the light meter on his equipment.  I had specifically asked him to keep everything unaltered other than to zoom in and out as he needed to do that.

I left the vehicle and went to read the time capsule plaque, walked around the Guidestones, then read the history.  After that,  I found the stone with the Egyptian language engraved upon it, and placed my palms against the granite.

It seemed to throb into my palms with some kind of pulsating energy, so I pressed the front side of my body against that stone, including the tips of my toes and my left cheek. I also pressed my palms and forearms against the stone on either side of my head. I closed my eyes.  The stone throbbed and pulsed.  It wasn’t my heartbeat. The sensation was definitely coming from the stone.

I couldn’t pull my body away from it.  It seemed as though there was a magnetic force, or energy, that held me against that rock the way a magnet hold a piece of paper on a refrigerator.  I didn’t resist  because it felt good, not frightening. I felt as if I couldn’t speak and didn’t try.

But our three-year-old, mimicing Grandma, put his tiny body against the center stone with his little arms stretched out against it, and he shouted, “Mommy, Mommy!  It’s a drum!” I’m sure he was feeling the throbbing and pulsing.

The granite was hot, although the day was chilly.  However, there was full sun which could account for the heat.  I simply stayed there flat againt my Egyptian pillar until the heat and the pulsing gradually ceased. When it stopped, it was as if a switch was flipped and my body, of its own accord, released from the stone. I felt very light-headed and slightly dizzy; the throbbing and pulsing seemed to have transferred to the interior of my head.

I started back to our vehicle so I could sit down and wait for the others. If I hadn’t had a tall walking cane, I would have fallen to the ground. As I neared the SUV, a white pick-up truck drove up and parked in the adjacent space on the passenger side.  The pickup was new and unmarked as if it had just left the dealer’s lot. The driver got out, nodded at me, and leisurely walked towards the stones.

This fellow was about 38 or so years old, with very pleasant, attractive clean-cut features, sandy-blond hair and a nice haircut. He was perhaps 5’11” to 6′ tall, broad shoulders, an athletic body.  I sat in my vehicle with the door open, and watched him.  He wore jeans and a white polo shirt.  I somehow knew it wasn’t his first visit there.  With his hands in his jeans pockets, he meandered to the time capsule, stood there a few minutes as if reading the engraving, then made a slow circle around the stones. He looked at the historical plaque, then leisurely circled the stones again. I watched him closely.

Meanwhile, both sons continued to snap pics.  Hubby eventually came and sat beside me in the driver’s seat and the youngest son and his family got in their van.  Kenny was snapping his final pics as the fellow passed him on his way back to the pickup truck.

The stranger half-smiled at me.  I smiled back and said, “Interesting, aren’t they?”  He responded, “They are.”  I said, “I’d love to know who really had them constructed.”  He grinned and said, “Maybe Donald Trump.”  I shook my head and said, “Trump isn’t spiritual,” then added: “Some of the researchers say RC Christian took his pseudonym from a founder of The Rosicrucians.”

The man leaned towards me, pierced my eyes with his, and they were the most startling, extraordinary shade of shattered-crystal gray-blue. They were penetrating, mesmerizing. I couldn’t move my eyes from his. In a quiet voice with just a slight smile, he said,  “Maybe aliens.” I responded, “Yes?”  He held my gaze and said, “This could be a landing space for alien craft.” Then he broke the intense gaze and got into his pickup.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see his license plate because for a few moments I felt ridiculously paralyzed and couldn’t move my head, even though I desperately wanted to. There was absolutely nothing about this man to suggest craziness or any kind of off-the-wall nonsense. Just your average Joe?  Uh-uh.

Kenny was in the backseat by then, and as we drove away, heading north once again, he began to download the photos onto his laptop.  We’d driven a few miles when he suddenly exclaimed “Oh my God, Mom!”

“What? What?” I asked.  He handed me his laptop and pointed to two photos he’d taken after the stranger had walked around the entire knoll.  In those two photographs, the entire scene has a brilliant almost sapphire blue cast to it, and the Guidestones are emanating a wide light blue energy aura!  That energy aura is also emanating from the hedge all the way around the three sides of the grassy knoll.  It’s unmistakable. And there is a vague cloudy haze behind the knoll in the sky where there had only been normal mid-day clear sky.  Kenny did not do anything whatsoever to alter his pictures.  He didn’t shift his light meter or change his lens.  He simply kept snapping pictures.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  The spectacular blue tone of the entire scene, but the aura…or energy force….or whatever the heck it was….is astonishingly clear.

Who was that person?  Both my sons and my daughter-in-law were taking pictures with their different cameras, and not one of them caught an image of the man although he was all over the place moving in and out of their view-finders.  Say what? We have no picture of him, but all of us saw him, spoke to him, and I actually had a brief conversation with him!

I won’t attempt to explain the obvious shift that occurred on that knoll as he walked there, and the effects left on the photos. I’ll leave it at this, and let everyone decide what their own intuition may say.  I know what mine tells me, and am anxious to hear from others.

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I asked Connie if Kenny was using a polarizer filter. Such filters are used to enhance the blue sky on bright days to avoid a washed-out look. One twist of the filter could darken the sky. However, I don’t know if the polarizer filter would cause the halo effect. Regardless, Connie responded that Kenny was not using a filter on his lens.

As an aside, I looked over the post late last night, made a couple of minor changes, then hit the update button. The story vanished and never re-appeared. So I retrieved the original e-mail and reconstructed it.  That’s the first time a post has vanished like that. – R

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Guidestones redux



Connie Cannon, known here as MathAddict, has returned from her trip to the Georgia Guidestones and has provided a fascinating report of her experience. For those of you who missed the earlier post in which we  wrote about the Guidestones, these five slabs of granite rocks  – carved with script in several languages – are considered the most mysterious monument in the U.S. No one knows who created it or why.

While researching the Guidestones, we contacted Connie who used to live in Georgia just to ask if she knew about the monument. To our surprise, not only had she heard of them, but she was headed to see them in a few days, a stop en route to a wedding in northern Georgia.

She was hoping for something mysterious to happen, and she wasn’t disappointed. Here’s her story.

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The trip couldn’t have been more refreshing, especially for me.  A cold front ushered in the first autumn frost of the season a few hours after we arrived at our motel in Dillard, with low temperatures in the mid-thirties and highs in the mid-sixties.  Gorgeous clear skies every day, stars close enough to reach up and touch every night.

The Georgia Guidestones.  Oh geez.  I don’t even know if I can find words to adequately describe that experience, so will just jump in and try to put it all in sequence.

There were seven of us in two vehicles: hubby, me, our middle son Kenny, our youngest son, his wife, and our two little grandsons who are ages three and six.

Our usual route up U.S.1 takes us directly through downtown Elberton, and the Guidestones are located about nine miles north of there, on a piece of acreage near GA State Road 77. Driving along the two-lane road, we finally spotted the monument off to our right.

We drove up a slightly paved old country road, and there they were.

Topographically, the Georgia Guidestrones are erected on the highest point in that county.  They stand on a concrete base situated on a green grassy knoll that is perfectly level at its center.  The grass is obviously manicured, neatly mowed.  On three sides around the knoll, there is a hedge of shrubbery also obviously kept beautifully manicured to a height of about four feet.  The fourth side, where we parked our vehicles, is simply a small gravel area with space for about four vehicles, and the gravel has railroad ties preventing tires from touching the grass.  Outside the shrubbery hedge, and even behind the small parking area, there are open fields of tall grass, and no trees.

There was no one else there.  As I stepped out of our SUV, the first thing I noticed was that there was no sound.  No normal birdsongs, no insects chirping  or flying, (very unusual in such an environment), not even road noise.  The second thing I noticed was that, looking across the field towards 77 and across it, there were two white geodesic domes on  another knoll. I tried to visually measure the distance between the stones and the two domes, and it was approximately nine acres. (Later, when we left and got onto 77 again, I looked for a road to the domes but there was none. Weird.)

Our little boys were running wild after being in their van for three hundred miles, but there was nothing there to hurt them or that they could hurt, so we allowed them to play.  I stood by our vehicle for several minutes, just observing what my eyes could take in and waiting to see if I  sensed or felt anything unusual besides the utter stillness of the place.

To the right of the Stones perhaps twelve feet from the edge of the monument, there is a plaque, probably twelve feet by twelve feet square, flat on the ground. According to the inscription, underneath this marker is buried a time capsule.  No date is written on the plaque for digging out and opening up the capsule. Nor is there any kind of clue what might be inside it. It seems the only person who knows is (was) ‘R.C. Christian,’ the mysterious man who ordered the monument built and promptly disappeared, and the local businessman/granite company owner, who is deceased.   On the other side of the monolith is a tilted  pedestal holding a large plaque upon which is engraved the history of the Guidestones.

As an aside, the bible-belt evangelical graffiti, mentioned in the earlier post, has been removed.  We were told by a black gas station attendant that every time graffiti appears on the Stones, it is somehow erased.  The city has even put cameras at each corner around the knoll, but the cameras have never been able to capture who erases the graffiti. Yet they catch the people who put it there and are able to locate them.  The mysterious “erasers?” They simply have no idea, and the townsfolk seem to be afraid to go there now in spite of the fact that no one has ever been harmed or threatened at the site.

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In tomorrow’s post, Connie takes us up-close to the Guidestones, which seem to literally come alive with energy. Then, before she leaves, she encounters a man who has a startling affect on her, and who even seems to affect the photos that her son is taking. You’ll see a dramatic difference in the appearance of the Guidestones in the photo accompanying the post.

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RIP

Steve Jobs, February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011

 

 

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Live Stream for Occupy Wall Street

We’re the 99 percent!

 

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Greenbrier

Some days when I’m hoping for a synchronicity, searching for one, nothing happens.  Other days, I see a synchro only in retrospect and wonder why I didn’t recognize it as it was happening.  That’s what happened today.

My sister flew into town yesterday. She and some friends from high school – five women who have known each other more than 40 years – take a trip together every year. This year’s trip is a Caribbean cruise, that leaves out of Fort Lauderdale. So this morning, we drove Mary to Pompano Beach, picked up one of the women, then drove to yet another woman’s house in Lauderdale.

Here’s the synchro: our trip started on Greenbrier and ended on Greenbrier. What are the odds? So this would qualify as a what Wolfgang Pauli called a “word seriality” or what we’ve referred to as a cluster, where a word or phrase comes up several times.

I thought there might be something to consider in the word, greenbrier, and Google turned up some interesting references.  If, for instance, you’re ever lost in the wild and come across this plant, the stem, leaves and tendrils are edible!

The scientific name for greenbriers come from the Greek myth of Krokus and the nymph Simlax. “Though this myth has numerous forms, it always centers around the unfulfilled and tragic love of a mortal man who is turned into a flower, and a woodland nymph who is transformed into a brambly vine.” The entry in wikipedia cited the ballad of Barbara Allen:

They buried Barbara in the old church yard

They buried Sweet William beside her

Out of his grave grew a red, red rose

And out of hers a briar.

So I googled Barbara Allen and discovered that the Everly Brothers had done their own rendition of the ballad. I’m not sure if there’s a deeper synchro here, but I enjoyed listening to the Everly Brothers singing it.

 

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First Chapters, Last Chapters

 

I admit to being one of those people who often reads the last chapter of a book first or I read the first chapter and then the last chapter. It doesn’t matter whether the book is a novel or nonfiction. Part of it is that I enjoy seeing how an author carries an idea through from that first paragraph to the last.  With novels, I can’t stand not knowing how the story is going to end. With nonfiction books, I just have to know what the real point of the book is and that’s often condensed in the last chapter.

The book this time: David Wilcock’s The Source Field Investigations: the Hidden Science and Lost Civilizations Behind the 2012 Prophecies. Today at the gym, I stepped onto the treadmill and read chapter 20, the last chapter, entitled Disclosure. Here’s how it begins:

“I do believe a formal, open disclosure of the ET/UFO phenomenon is an essential aspect of our movement into a Golden Age. I have tried to avoid relying on UFO-related accounts in this book, but I do feel there is undeniable evidence that we were visited by human-looking extraterrestrials in ancient times – and that these visits have continued to this very day. Bo discussion of the Source Field is complete without an examination of UFOs and their influence on technology, ancient peoples and the 2012 prophecies.”

As soon as I read this, I felt strongly it was what Wilcock had been working up to all along. Disclosure. This chapter is fascinating in that Wilcock brings together a lot of material from other sources, much of it from India. For instance,  a report in 2006 from the India Daily Technology Team “revealed that UFOs and extraterrestrial civilizations will be announced to humanity on December 2012” and that world governments had been hiding “the truth of UFOs and ETs for decades, but secret preparations are being made to reveal the truth in 2012.” Apparently the countries that are taking the lead in this regard are Brazil, India and China.

I find it difficult to believe that China is on this list, given its repressive society. But here’s a list of countries that have released their UFO files: China is on the list; the U.S. is not.

One of the most intriguing sections of this last chapter concerns a mysterious Mr. X, who was interviewed by Project Camelot. Jerry Pippin apparently interviewed this guy. There isn’t much in the book about Project Camelot – just two references in the index, but more on the web.  Apparently the mysterious Mr. X died of a stroke before he could reveal himself,  but basically, his story is that he had access to top-secret documents that revealed the ET plans to “conduct a mass landing all over the world on December 21st or 22nd, 2012, whether our leaders like it or not….There will be a mass of information released that will shatter not of our core beliefs…If the world stays on the track it is on…we will have to be shown the truth. And if those who run the world do not do it, the ETs will.”

This last sentence intrigued me. The implication is that  the ETs are rebelling against the powers that be who have kept them under wraps. Really? Why would beings who apparently have the ability to travel through both time and space be cowed by the likes of us, who can’t even get their act together enough to conquer unemployment? Hunger in America? Health care for 50 million Americans?

At the end of the day, I am skeptical. I’m not sure why. Wilcock’s book is meticulously researched, duly footnoted, and published by Dutton, a major player in the industry.  As much as I want to believe, it’s tough to believe. I think of Avatar, where the saviors were the aliens (us), who also pretty much destroyed that world before we saved it. I think of Arthur C Clarke’s classic, Childhood’s End, and I think of V and Independence Day and The X-Files and all the other movies and books I’ve read over the years. I think of all the sightings and personal stories of abductions and encounters.  There’s no question in my mind that something is out there, that we are not alone in the universe, that others are probably here and interacting with us in ways we don’t yet understand.

While it’s certainly likely that a global paradigm shift would occur if the skies suddenly filled with UFOs one sunny morning, why is this event tied to the end of the Mayan calendar? It might  happen tomorrow or next week. Or it may never happen at all. We just don’t know. But as a species, we sure do love to speculate. And that’s the strength of this book and of we humans as a species. We always ask, Why? What if? And then what? Our curiosity as a species is what propels and defines us.

 

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