The End of Western Civilization
2/9/25
I don’t want Western civilization to end but I would like to see it replaced by something better. Unfortunately, to introduce a new covenant to replace a civilization you have to get rid of the old one, and I have been predicting the end of the old one for most of my life. I just hoped I would die before it happened. Even so, in every election I voted to prolong our way of life, knowing that it was unsustainable.
When I was much younger, I predicted the end of our civilization because I was painfully mentally ill, and I didn’t think I was smart enough to have done that to myself. I didn’t think my parents were smart enough to have done it to me either; as it turned out, I was right. Today I am a broad autism phenotype with manageable symptoms and I am in recovery. In the past, I was cyclothymic and a personality disorder with no specified features; I was addicted to pain, shame, drugs and sex. I have long since learned that I am not alone, not unique, and by far not the most affected by a society in trouble. The fact is, I live in a society that believes nonsense.
With autistic tenacity I researched questions that illustrated the nonsense my society believed. Predictably, I have found very few respectable people interested in my ideas. You have to understand, I have no interest in fueling lunatic conspiracy theories. I will spark an intelligent conversation, or my research will die with me. I also have to say that I shy away from posturing and controversy.
For more than forty years I conducted thought experiments on the fourth dimension, first with the model of Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, later with my own model that rejects the use of integral calculus to derive the three-dimensional “surface volume” of a four-dimensional hypersphere. Abbott considered the fourth dimension a metaphor for spirituality and so did I, since I first learned about it at a conference of high school religious discussion groups.
After forty years of pondering the fourth dimension like a Zen koan, I had a moment of satori with far reaching consequences. I realized that the fourth dimension is a mental concept with no corresponding material reality or any other kind of reality. My thought experiment had taken me to a mathematical reductio ad absurdum; my satori experience expanded that absurdity to the entire realm of mental and material reality.
Material reality has a corresponding mental reality; mental reality has no corresponding material reality. That is why mathematicians and physicists have made such a mess of cosmology. That is why we make such a mess of our lives.
The fourth dimension is still a marvelous metaphor for spirituality, and it can help us sort out the mess in cosmology and our lives. We just have to realize that there is no such thing as a real dimension, but we can use it to think without thinking.
In “Shakespeare” by Another Name Mark Anderson describes how an illiterate theater hustler came to be associated with Edward de Vere’s plays and sonnets. After both men died, de Vere’s friend Ben Johnson created a memorial in Stratford to perpetuate the charade and protect de Vere’s children from political retribution. Over the years another charade was perpetuated that a common man with literary genius came to London from the countryside and described intricacies of a lifestyle he knew nothing about. For me, this charade represents the stubbornness and stupidity I think spells the end of Western civilization.
The long history of Ripperology represents a different kind of charade in which a solution to the mystery is not desired because the search for an answer is itself rewarding. Now that Aaron Kosminsky is identified as the killer and Walter Sickert is identified as the hoaxer who created the Ripper name and mystique, Ripperologists can put themselves out of business by deconstructing their own mystique.
The charade of Kennedy assassination research is a more serious business with the potential to end Western civilization. In 1989 I started collecting books about the Kennedy assassination, and I now have sixty books worth reading (plus a dozen or so that are not worth reading). I spent many hours researching the assassination on the Internet and for two years I concentrated exclusively on the shot sequence in Dealey Plaza. I visited Dealey Plaza in 2010 and again in 2011 when I presented my shot sequence to the annual JFK Lancer conference. At that conference I learned that JFK researchers are much like Ripperologists; they don’t want to end the excitement of the chase by finding a final solution.
People rarely ask me for the solution, but when they do I tell them, “When you are ready to know the answer, you won’t need me to tell it to you.” I’m not going to tell it here either, but not knowing the solution, in my opinion, is another reason why Western civilization is in trouble and may not survive.
A New Covenant
I grew up in Cranford, NJ in the 1950’s when religion still informed a majority of people in the country. I saw all the big budget movies about religion, I loved everything about Christmas, and I joined my mother’s PCUSA church even though she only attended church on Christmas and Easter. In high school I was co-chair of the religious discussion group, and eventually I got a BA in religious studies. As long as I can remember, I wanted to know who the historical Jesus was.
For forty years I read books about Jesus and the early church, including theological heavyweights and attention-grabbing theorists. In 1994 I discovered The Unfinished Gospel by Evan Powell. Powell’s theory is that John 21 is the missing ending of Mark 16. Powell explores the thematic and linguistic implications of his theory; without his knowledge, I explored the historical and political implications (after I published, Powell told me he was not offended by my work).
Albert Schweitzer said that finding a historical Jesus was contrary to faith and irrelevant; he did not say what it would mean if a historical Jesus was found. I have since found a way to broaden the Christian covenant, keeping the original for those who are drawn to it, but offering a new interpretation for those who are not.
I actually am a Christian because I believe in the Hypostasis of God and the universal significance of the man on the cross; I never question what parts of Christian faith a person chooses to believe. For those who are overwhelmed by the complexities of doctrine, I suggest paring it down to a mystical presence taken on faith, and what the man on the cross says about what kind of creature we are and what happens when we die.
To return to the mess in cosmology handed to us by physicists and mathematicians, let me start by being sympathetic to our intellectual brothers and sisters. I don’t believe there is a scientific answer to the most perplexing scientific questions. That is, the answer to these perplexing questions is faith in something beyond understanding.
The starting point of everything is just that – everything, which has no age or size or number. I believe it is a light we cannot see, because if we could see it, we couldn’t see anything else. I believe we will see it (or be seen by it) when we die. What we can see are lights in the night sky where everything has become something. These lights are hypostases (if you care to look up the Nicene creed). They are also points of contact where science and theology will disagree forever.
Velikovskian Heresy
I discovered Immanuel Velikovsky in 1970, and I have been an avid follower ever since. I do not think accepting or rejecting Velikovsky’s ideas will make or break Western civilization, but I think rejecting them will keep us in eternal ignorance. Velikovsky died in 1979, and his ideas have undergone radical revisionism, which is unfortunate, but also meaningful expansion, which is good. The underlying principle in Velikovskian heresy is that the solar system has looked like it does today for only a short time. For all of its history, the solar system has had cataclysmic interactions between its spheres. These cataclysmic interactions suddenly and repeatedly changed the surface features and topography of all the rocky planets and moons, including Earth. On Earth the DNA of all species suddenly and repeatedly changed simultaneously, hence the striking differences in flora and fauna from one geological period to the next.
My fascination with Velikovsky stems from my curiosity as a child about ancient mythology. I wondered why the ancients worshiped planets no one can see very well. I wondered if all mythologies were the same, and I wondered why the stories in the Bible were exempt from the category of mythology. After a lifetime of pondering the writings of Velikovsky and his colleagues and successors, it all came together for me in 2013. I created a scenario of the solar system to incorporate Velikovsky’s scenario and the period before Velikovsky. Myth after ancient myth fell into place and I wove the myths and religions of twenty traditions into a coherent narrative.
Velikovsky’s ideas will not save Western civilization, but they will promote a sweeping revision of Earth sciences and the study of ancient societies; they will let us make sense of them instead of nonsense.