We live in a strange time. Many have forgotten the power of imagination and are instead bogged down with the reality of ‘practicality’. The reality of ‘the budget’, and the reality of ‘what is deemed useful and what is deemed useless’. Many have come to the conclusion that the study and exploration of space is a useless endeavour and that we cannot afford to waste our time on something that is more akin to a child’s fantasy, our immature dreams from our ancient past.
Beautiful, Cynthia, I learn so much from you and Matt, and in such a diversity of fields! I've been talking about The Dawn of Everything in some recent episodes, by anthropologist David Graeber and archeologist David Wengrow. They also talk about the sophisticated understanding of the heavens and the large earth structures used to mark their movements. I think you would like their book. Here's my comments on it: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/muskrat-love-and-anarchy
"In large suns—small circular nebulae—when hydrogen is exhausted and gravity contraction ensues, if such a body is not sufficiently opaque to retain the internal pressure of support for the outer gas regions, then a sudden collapse occurs. The gravity-electric changes give origin to vast quantities of tiny particles devoid of electric potential, and such particles readily escape from the solar interior, thus bringing about the collapse of a gigantic sun within a few days. It was such an emigration of these “runaway particles” that occasioned the collapse of the giant nova of the Andromeda nebula about fifty years ago. This vast stellar body collapsed in forty minutes of Urantia [Earth] time.
As a rule, the vast extrusion of matter continues to exist about the residual cooling sun as extensive clouds of nebular gases. And all this explains the origin of many types of irregular nebulae, such as the Crab nebula, which had its origin about nine hundred years ago, and which still exhibits the mother sphere as a lone star near the center of this irregular nebular mass."
When observing, the imagination isn’t in play. That’s a future sense . Just taking it in without imagining anything is a treat and the experience is without judgement of a conclusion.
One does not imagine what one is seeing in my books.
Nice discussion of astronomy, but sending people to Mars or mining asteroids, far ahead of sufficient technological progress or attainment of globally cooperative and peaceful societies is light years away, ideologically speaking, from putting a telescope in space to observe the universe. We should not be doing the former while the planet is on fire, wars erupt every five seconds, and oligarchic maniacs are pushing the exhaustion of resources to feed egos expanding faster than the universe.
Look out at the night sky and wonder.
No more is necessary.
In other words, all life is imagination.
Imagine...
enjoyed the article!
Beautiful, Cynthia, I learn so much from you and Matt, and in such a diversity of fields! I've been talking about The Dawn of Everything in some recent episodes, by anthropologist David Graeber and archeologist David Wengrow. They also talk about the sophisticated understanding of the heavens and the large earth structures used to mark their movements. I think you would like their book. Here's my comments on it: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/muskrat-love-and-anarchy
"In large suns—small circular nebulae—when hydrogen is exhausted and gravity contraction ensues, if such a body is not sufficiently opaque to retain the internal pressure of support for the outer gas regions, then a sudden collapse occurs. The gravity-electric changes give origin to vast quantities of tiny particles devoid of electric potential, and such particles readily escape from the solar interior, thus bringing about the collapse of a gigantic sun within a few days. It was such an emigration of these “runaway particles” that occasioned the collapse of the giant nova of the Andromeda nebula about fifty years ago. This vast stellar body collapsed in forty minutes of Urantia [Earth] time.
As a rule, the vast extrusion of matter continues to exist about the residual cooling sun as extensive clouds of nebular gases. And all this explains the origin of many types of irregular nebulae, such as the Crab nebula, which had its origin about nine hundred years ago, and which still exhibits the mother sphere as a lone star near the center of this irregular nebular mass."
The Urantia Book, Paper 41, Section 4
When observing, the imagination isn’t in play. That’s a future sense . Just taking it in without imagining anything is a treat and the experience is without judgement of a conclusion.
One does not imagine what one is seeing in my books.
Gatekeeper, without footnotes.
Nice discussion of astronomy, but sending people to Mars or mining asteroids, far ahead of sufficient technological progress or attainment of globally cooperative and peaceful societies is light years away, ideologically speaking, from putting a telescope in space to observe the universe. We should not be doing the former while the planet is on fire, wars erupt every five seconds, and oligarchic maniacs are pushing the exhaustion of resources to feed egos expanding faster than the universe.
I don’t think humanity considered looking at the heavens as if it were a imaginative place.
It’s a unknown universe existing beyond our lives and the greatest mystery imaginable for the earliest peoples.
The unchanging North Star was called the star of heaven which will tell anyone how heaven originated and what on earth does this mean for us?
As a living one I want to live as long as this universe!
How do I do it is the question being explored and has nothing to do with the imagination.
It’s to go with observation which is independent of our social reflection in the mirror we are occupied with most of the time.
It’s a long thought looking into the heavens with questions raised lasting thousands of years across generations.
These questions aren’t learnt in school and reside in us naturally I think.
One doesn’t have to qualify with a test here to participate in opening heavens door.
The unknown beckons with romance. As the saying goes “To wander in the wonder doesn’t mean you are lost”