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0.0.0.0 Would Our Legacy Survive?, page 1
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Would
Our
Legacy
Survive
Richard Graupner
Copyright © 2012 Richard Graupner
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-5549-2 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4525-5550-8 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4525-5548-5 (e)
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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012913005
Balboa Press rev. date: 7/25/2012
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Afterword
Note to the References
References
21 December 2012 – Year 5125 in the Mayan long-count calendar ends and resets to 0.0.0.0 – the end of an age and the beginning of another.
Preface
As I am an engineer and a very practical person, you may find it strange that I would be interested in human history. My interest was piqued many years ago by the books of Graham Hancock, and I subsequently became fascinated with past civilizations, along with the anthropology surrounding religion and other human practices. With the help of numerous other authors and special people who came into my life, I have come to a number of conclusions on many diverse topics and viewpoints that challenge the status quo.
Within all this, I became intrigued by the age-old process of a civilization rising to what seems like an unassailable position of knowledge, power, and comfort only to seemingly fall off the face of the earth, with mankind then taking an exceedingly long time to recover to any semblance of the original knowledge and expertise. So why does mankind take so long to recover from whatever befell it?
Through the story I have outlined here, I explore the process that possibly leads to such a situation, along with the difficulties mankind may face in the aftermath of a catastrophe large enough to effect the entire global civilization and his attempts to retain both the knowledge and the civilized level he once had attained. The story entwines how we live today with possible alternative viewpoints and approaches. A smattering of other issues allows readers to explore and decide for themselves other questions: Are we as civilized as we would like to believe? How would I react in such a situation? How far would I go to retain knowledge? How far would I go to remain alive?
These questions may seem a little bizarre in our current level of comfort and lifestyle, but would they be so in the appropriate circumstances of a mammoth catastrophe striking the earth? Are you not intrigued to find out what circumstances might arise, to consider how you might possibly react, and in so doing, perhaps find a deeper understanding of yourself and others? I was. In writing this book I had many intense moments as my mind simply went with the flow of the story. I was often surprised by what arose when allowing my mind to free-range. How much is simply story? How much stems from my deeper self and is hence an actual reflection of how I would react? The manner in which the story unfolded for me provoked many a deep contemplation around the situations that arose. I believe you will encounter a similar contemplation of your Self.
It is intriguing to speculate, to wonder how we would react in any given situation. But we will never know for sure until the actual occurrence of the event. I say this as I know how many times I have planned a scenario in my mind and knew absolutely how I was going to react – only to find out that the reality played out very differently. All of us, I am certain, have experienced this at least once in our lives.
In addition to the potential behaviour of mankind in a global catastrophe, the story has lessons within itself, powerful lessons, lessons that I and many others believe mankind is ignoring at its peril. Certain of these lessons or pointers will resonate with you more than others, as is the norm. All of us have different life experiences to draw from. Regardless, it will not leave you unaffected. It will be simply up to you to decide what you will take away with you and how much more you will wish to explore.
I have taken the liberty of telling the story through the eyes of a beautiful and amazing young woman. The fact that she happens to be my daughter has absolutely nothing to do with my description of her. She is who she is, and in her own way will leave a positive mark on this world. My wife and I are supremely blessed to have her in our lives.
Acknowledgements
My eternal gratitude is given to my sentient wife Irene and daughter Sam for their constant support and inspiration.
To all those wonderful and diverse authors, teachers, and personal contacts who have shaped my life, a special thank-you.
To my Self, a debt of gratitude for finally putting me into motion regarding the materialisation of this book.
Introduction
The story unfolds around a global catastrophe, one that collapses society as we know it. It follows a small group of people, providing insight into their lives before the event and the struggles, physically, mentally, and spiritually, which they encounter and must overcome if their intent to retain knowledge and to reconstitute humanity is to be fulfilled. Many of the decisions and actions required during their journey will leave the reader pondering how he or she might have reacted, and whether there are in fact alternatives which could be explored. There are, naturally, always alternatives in life but as always, they are associated with alternative outcomes. The question we always encounter therefore is simply this: ‘What outcome am I prepared to accept?’
In your journey through this book, you will be challenged to consider how you may react to situations that may transpire after a global catastrophe. You will almost certainly ponder whether the behaviour of people will differ much between cultures and continents, regardless of how civilized some may believe they are. The questions are numerous and a number surround our current lifestyles and norms.
The sudden regression of human society after this global catastrophe is simply termed herein as the Fall.
Chapter 1
I jerked awake, making a strange sort of snuffling sound in my nose as my head came up. I had managed not to feel embarrassed anymore at these not-so-subtle indications of my increasing fragility. Sitting still for these long periods at a time was taking its toll on my now frail – and in today’s terms, very old – body. The people around me accepted this, allowing me this indulgence as I was considered a ‘wise one’, what someone many years ago might have called a sage. Today, no one really understood what that meant, other than that I possessed knowledge not held by many others, and that this knowledge was of enormous benefit to the fledgling society I was now a part of. Belonging to the last of a small minority of such people was a burden that I may not have been able to carry had it not been for the training, coaching, and preparation that my father had insisted on. I understood now just how important his foresight had been. It was still strange to me, however, and I continued to struggle to reconcile the fact that I was now sought after for what I knew against the fact that in my youth I was simply an above-average student.
At seventy-one years old, I was one of a very few on the planet who not only knew their age but who also understood what age actually meant; I was many years the senior of the oldest people around me. They gathered to hear as much of my relative wisdom and knowledge as they could before I passed over. It was tiring though, and I dearly wished I could be left alone to just enjoy the sun, nature, and the fact that in this small portion of the earth, humanity finally seemed to be coming together, understanding the need to work together, and seeing the benefits obtained from doing so. For too long – it seemed to me an eternity, actually – mankind had existed as small, roving bands of virtual savages, intent only on their immediate survival needs, even at the expense of other humans. The fear of scarcity, of being predated by other humans – and I use the word human here loosely to describe Homo sapiens sapiens in these times – had driven human beings to become singularly self-serving, with little to no conscience with respect to what they became capable of doing.
I was daydreaming a little, something that had come to me more and more over the past months. This was pretty much what had happened to my grandmothers, as I recall. It was interesting to notice how much better I now understood them. My parents were the anomaly, though. They had been singularly purposeful during the first thirty-one years or so since the Fall, not taking time for self-pity or indulgence as they protected me and instilled in me all they knew about people, life, engineering, science, and general knowledge. They worked tirelessly, believing against the odds and the actions of man then that this day would come and that what I knew would aid mankind in returning the prefix hu- to the species known as mankind.
Indications were promising that this time had come – in this little corner of the planet, in any event – and I needed to get back to passing on what I could.
The group at my feet waited patiently, knowing I would continue as I always had over the past few years. I could not help thinking about how different we were now. In my young days, there was simply no way that a group would have sat and patiently waited as these dear souls were capable of doing. Had we always been so intent on having our personal needs and gratification provided by others that we were simply incapable of being quiet and remaining within ourselves in simple inner contemplation? Sadly, that appears to have been the case.
We had been working through so many topics over the years, repeating them as new members joined the community and younger members became capable of participating. It was fascinating to see how soon young children picked up the many aspects we discussed, completely negating the old paradigm that young children can only go to school at certain ages and are only capable of learning certain things at specific ages. When they were still young, we did not restrict their time and allowed them to come and go, but while they were present, they continued to astound me with their capacity to absorb and understand. The older members had not experienced the previous school-going methodologies, and so, having no other reference point to relate to, I was unable to effectively discuss this phenomenon with them. I simply left it as it was, allowing them to work with what they now experienced. I had decided some years back that it was probably prudent not to contaminate their thinking with unnecessary past follies.
The learning sessions over the years had predominantly revolved around the primary survival requirements, with a few touching on the more esoteric aspects. These survival requirements had included basic engineering, home building, hygiene, health and basic first aid, food cultivation, animal husbandry, working together, personal relationships, choosing competent leaders (not just the strongest, most aggressive thugs as we had witnessed in the roving bands of renegades), protection methods from wild animals (which had become a significant threat as nature repopulated itself in the absence of the previous overpopulation of humans), and caring for each other.
We had recently finished some further work on basic geography and astronomy, and I was proud to have been able to see that the Stonehenge facility we had spent the past three years setting up and checking yearly had proved successful, and it could now be used to predict the seasons and the calendar year. It was not as impressive in size as the original was, but it was functional. We had a flat stone on which we had begun to inscribe the years, a function I had passed on to three others in the community. To match the knowledge base in the books predominantly collected by my father, I had used my age, matched to my birth date, to recommence the Gregorian calendar. Although tracking the date had seemed such an automatic, natural thing to know when I was twenty-one years old, it now became a chore and required some diligence to maintain the focus. Some had asked me why we bothered, and I recalled the many times I had undergone the explanations from my father.
‘Knowing the timing of the seasonal variations is essential to man’s survival and return to humanity, to his feeling of control over his environment,’ he had said. ‘When to plant crops, when to prepare for winter, and so on, all give man a sense of control, a greater sense of purpose, rather than simply surviving.’
It seemed incredible how fast the world could change and how the things that had seemed important back before the Fall had so swiftly become superfluous. Currently it was the year 2062, and contrary to the science fiction films we had seen when I was young, we were not engaged in space travel and exploration of other worlds. Instead, we were actually fighting for survival – survival of ourselves and of our knowledge base – and we were threatened with obscurity if we slackened on our drive to retain as much as we could.
I sighed, looking up at those wonderfully expectant faces, and continued, hopefully where I had stopped when I’d dozed off, on the topic of energies of the earth: how to use our inbuilt sensitivity and other simple tools to find and utilise the good energy zones whilst avoiding the bad ones. To give them credit, they had soaked up what I had been saying to date ever since we initiated our young community. It seemed my father was right when he said that we had to try to get our knowledge back into mankind as soon as possible. If we, and possibly others like us elsewhere on the planet, died before we managed to do this, mankind could be set back thousands of years. It would be forced to go through the same growing pains, learning curve, and widespread fear of people with knowledge that had characterized the human race over the eons. I remember my father discussing his reasoning behind this critical timing, gleaned from the large number of books he had begun to read soon after I was born and which were featured in his life right up until he finally succumbed to his ageing and abused physical body and moved on. To this day, I still do not know how he managed to keep going, having had to endure what he did to get us to this point.
Understanding the use of knowledge for power from those discussions with my father and the numerous books on the topic, I had managed to get the community to agree that the greater and more diverse the number of people who heard what I had to say, the faster the community would develop and the less likely someone would use the information for personal power. My father had coached me incessantly on this aspect even at a young age, pointing these things out and describing the ‘reason behind the reason’. Even prior to the Fall, he had said that most of our problems in the developed world stemmed from the abuse of power by a minority over the masses. This went from religion, through politics, and into commerce and industry. Where, in earlier years, the control had come from fear of violence, it developed into fear of God, (in general fear of those in religious control), and then moved on to the previously modern fears of poor health and lack of anything, in essence, but primarily money.
