We are on a path through time.  We didn’t choose this path, our ancestors did.  They have put us on a path that leads to a very dangerous societies, a dangerous future and, eventually, the end of our race.

We don’t have to go down this path. 

There are other paths we can take.

If we want to find a better path, we need to understand what is behind us on this path.  We need to understand where we came from, how we got here, and how the forces of our past pushed us to the place where we are now. 

That is what this e-book is about. 

 

Fact Based History: 
A Forensic (Fact Based) Analysis of our Past

 

How did we, the members of the human race get where we are now? 

Our societies work in strange ways:

For some reason, somehow in our past, the human race got divided into a large number of the entities that are called ‘countries.’  (There are 261 as I write this, but the number changes constantly.)  The leaders of these countries act a lot like the leaders of the troops of territorial apes that were our evolutionary ancestors:  They fight over territory using organized violence and mass murder. 

We use the term ‘wars' to refer to these ‘organized mass murder and destruction activities’.

Wars are fantastically costly, more so than any other human activity.   According to the World Economic Forum, war costs have averaged about $14.4 trillion a year over the past five years.   This is an immense amount of wealth, more than $5 per day for each person on Earth.  A large percentage of the human race lives on than $5 per day per person so if this wealth had gone to something that brought them benefits, their lives would be much, much better.  But on this little blue world, that is not the way things work.   The wealth is used to kill and cause misery, not to make life better for the human race. 

To provide resources for the wars, the leaders of the countries create, sponsor and protect organizations that work actively to rape the world of anything that might be useful to the combatants.  We call these organizations ‘multinational corporations.’ 

The administrations of these countries don’t just tolerate destructive activity.  They go to elaborate lengths to encourage it.  They often arrest their citizens when they interfere to try to protect their world from the destroyers.  They even subsidize the destruction by taxing the people under their control to generate money they give to destroyers.  According to the World Bank, subsidies paid to global destroyers total more than $10.8 trillion per year. 

This is the second biggest expense of the human race on this little blue world.  The only thing we spend more on than paying to have our world destroyed is wiping out the highest species on this world, the human race.

This is a strange way for (supposedly) intelligent beings to organize their priorities. 

We, the currently living members of the human race, didn’t create the structures that made the world work this way.  When we were born, these structures already existed.  Who did create them?  How, why, and when did they organize existence for our race this way?

The systems they built are, objectively speaking, very strange.  They don't seem to work in ways that help the human race move toward a better future.  They seem to be organized in ways that increase the amount of violence and destruction that takes place over time.  The result is a set of circumstances so incredible that it seems hard that objective beings from other worlds who might be studying us could ever guess such a system could exist.  The destructive problems are now growing worse at such an incredible rate that we may not last even a few more generations if we continue traveling down this same path through time. 

How did this situation come to exist?

What set of events took place in the history of this little blue speck of dust of a world we call ‘Earth’ that put us in this place at this time?

We really, really need to know this. 

 

The New Perspective Series

 

Fact Based History is a part of a series that look at key realities of the world from a rather unusual perspective.  We are used to looking at events here on Earth as insiders because, well, we are insiders.  This world may be nothing but an insignificant speck of cosmic dust to outsiders who might be looking at us from some remote world.  But to us, it is everything. 

We were all born here. 

Our people are from here. 

The way of life here on Earth is the only way of life we know. 

As far as we are concerned, it is all that exists.

The way the Earth works is the way all world’s with higher life works, as far as we know.  ( We don’t know of any other.)   

We can’t be objective about events here on Earth because our lives are totally tied up with the details here.  We can’t look at the big picture.

Outsiders would look at activities on Earth much differently than we do. 

 

 Are there outsiders?   With new information we get from the Webb and other space-based telescopes, we can see that worlds exist in billions of star systems in this galaxy alone.  If the other roughly 2 trillion galaxies we can see have similar composition, there would have to be more than 200 septillion worlds.  If 1 in 100 is in the ‘Goldilocks zone’ (worlds that can potentially host the kinds of life we have here on Earth) there would have to be more than 2 septillion of these ‘Goldilocks’ worlds’ 
          If we look closely at Earth based life forms (something done in another book in the New Perspective Series, The Meaning of Life) we can see that it came to exist on Earth under conditions that are very suspicious.  The first life forms around (discovered from fossils) were built on the same genetic code that is the foundation for the life functions of very advanced life, including humans.  We know that these incredibly complex life forms existed on Earth before the Earth had cooled enough to really be classified as a ‘Goldilocks world’ itself, so it is highly unlikely that these first life forms evolved here on this world.  If we accept this evidence, we must conclude that whatever forces led to life existing on Earth are almost certainly not unique to this world.  We can do the math (and I will walk you through it in The Meaning of Life) and it shows an extremely high likelihood that the type of life that exists on Earth (life that evolves) exists elsewhere.  Most people suspect this.  Many are actively seeking verification for what is, to them, a virtual certainty. 
         How might beings from other worlds look at the realities of life on Earth?  Almost certainly, they would see have a different read on these events than we have.

   

We don’t look at reality objectively. 

We look at it through a lens, the lens of insiders.  We have our families to worry about, our bills to pay, loyalties to honor.  We live in societies that are based on the division of the human race into the entities we call ‘countries’ and countries play a large role in the world around us.  We are raised and educated to believe we owe our allegiance to one of these countries (the one that controls the land where we were born).   We are obligated to defend and protect it even if we must do horrible things to do this (for example, contributing money that goes to build weapons that kill children, which we do when we pay taxes in countries that manufacture and export weapons).   We must do this even if we must make fantastic sacrifices, including sending our loved ones to the death in the wars, even when we know the wars won’t solve any real human problem or accomplish anything that will benefit the human race. 

We take it for granted that we have this obligation. 

It is the way the Earth, the only world we know, works. 

The countries that may harm us use unimaginable amounts of resources to build weapons to use against us.  So, of course, we must do the same.  Some of the companies that provide these resources also supply our enemies.  We must befriend them to make sure they are willing to supply us too. 

This would probably be seen as a very strange situation to an outsider on a world that had developed differently.  But, to us, from our perspective, it is normal.  It is the only way things have ever worked, as far as we know. 

The books in the New Perspective Series look at key aspects of human existence from the perspective of outsiders.  If there are other worlds with the same kind of life we have here on Earth (life that evolves; see text box above), we would not expect the beings on these other worlds to have made exactly the same decisions that we made here on Earth.  We have a very long history, as we will see later in this book.  Events that took place millions of years ago have impacts on the way our societies operate today.  We would not expect the exact same events to have taken place exactly the same way on other inhabited worlds.  These other beings would have been through a different history and would look at existence from a different perspective. 

The New Perspective Series is designed to look at key aspects of the realities of life for us here on Earth outsiders would look at them.  Specifically, it looks at these events from the perspective of scientists from remote worlds who happen to have access to the same general information about Earth as you and I have. 

 

          Radio waves travel at the speed of light which, as far as we know, is a fixed speed that is the same for all electromagnetic waves, including light waves.  Every signal from your smart phone, every question you ask the search engines and every response you get, all signals from your WiFi, all signals from the routers of every person on Earth, all satellite signals from both civilian and military transit goes, at some stage, through radio.  These signals all spread out in all directions from Earth at a fixed speed
          We live in a very remote part of the galaxy.  It is very unlikely there are other beings with radio technology in his remoteness.  However, about 20,000 light years away is a part of the galaxy with billions of worlds that are very close together.  The radio waves our devices emit in 2025 will start reaching these worlds in the year 22,025 AD by our calendar.  If beings on these other worlds have the right technology, they can receive and decode these messages.  If they wanted, they could recreate our internet on their world.  They wouldn’t be able to communicate with our internet, of course, but they could ask it questions and get the same answers we get here on Earth today. 

 

The New Perspective Series is an attempt to look at important realities of existence here on Earth from this other perspective.  How would beings without any vested interests in events here on this planet see events here?  

One key book in the series is Possible Societies.  It is about the different arrangements of existence, or ‘societies,’ that are possible for beings that have evolved to a level of intellect comparable to modern humans.  We may expect that evolving beings on other worlds faced entirely different realities than we faced here on Earth.  We would expect that they would evolve differently in response to these different realities.  They may not even organize the systems we call ‘countries.’   (Possible Societies shows that societies without countries are clearly possible and did exist here on Earth.  Many of the people who lived in pre-conquest America had societies without countries.’)   How many kinds of societies are possible?  Possible Societies deals with them from the perspective of scientists who live in a more densely populated part of the universe than the remote area where we live.  They therefore have data about a great many worlds with life forms that have more or less the same general capabilities of Earth humans.  It shows that such beings can organize themselves in many ways.  Some are highly destructive and dangerous.  But others work in ways that allow the beings to live in harmony with each other and the world around them.  We, living on this world that we think is everything, have a hard time imagining anything else.  Possible Societies is designed to help you gain perspective that can allow you to see that the system that now dominates the Earth is far from the only system that thinking beings with physical needs (the category of beings that includes humans) can have. 

The final book in the series is Preventing Extinction.  It builds on the information in the previous book, particularly Fact Based History and Possible Societies.  We, the members of the human race, are currently facing existential threats.  We don’t seem to see any way out.  It is easy for us to simply give up and not even try to prevent this fate.  (Many are praying for the end to come as quickly as possible, due to interpretations of holy books that claim it will herald a ‘rapture.’  Others simply give up and kill themselves:  why bother to live if there is no hope?)   If we have the right frame of reference, we can see that this doesn’t have to happen.  Preventing Extinction builds on the principles of the other books in the series to explore the steps that the beings on a world that wound up in the specific type of dangerous society we have here on Earth (one built on territorial sovereignty) may take to move them off of this path.  Again, if we look at this situation from the perspective of insiders, it seems as if we are in an impossible situation.  We think of certain realities of the world as absolutely fixed and unchangeable.  (For example, the power structures that exist today, including those in the entities called ‘countries’ and ‘corporations,’ seem so fixed and hard that no steps taken by the human race could alter their power.)   But, again, outsiders who had a full understanding of the capabilities of the human race (which they would get from an objective understanding of our history) and the different ways societies would work (which they would get from an understanding of the different ways that societies of thinking beings with physical needs could work) would see that there really are steps that we could take that could move us to a different path.

The New Perspective Series is not about a random set of observations.  It is intended to provide practical information.  This book (Fact Based History) shows very clearly that humans are not fully evolved and totally rational beings at this point in time.  We are still very primitive in many ways.  We aren’t totally rational and reasonable about many things.  We believe and want to believe that we are far more capable than we actually are.  This arrogance prevents us from looking at our situation from a perspective that would allow us to see that there are solutions to the problems that threaten us.  The New Perspective Series is designed to open mental doors that, I hope, will allow people to see that there really is hope.  This is important because if people really believe there is no hope, they will not even try to change anything and if no one tries, no changes will be made.

 

This Book

 

The book Fact Based History is a key part of the New Perspective Series.  A group of scientists on another world studying Earth, in its condition as of the 21^st century, would see the humans are in a very complicated and very dangerous situation.  They would naturally wonder how these beings got into this situation. 

They would care about history.

They would have the same records that we have.  (An assumption all books in the New Perspective Series make.)  

But they would look at them differently.  They wouldn’t have the great interest in the current makeup of each of the tribal units (the things we on Earth call ‘countries’) that we have, worrying about the personality and ‘party affiliation’ of the leaders of each of these units.  They probably wouldn’t worry much about the intricate details of the laws (who can marry whom, for example, which ‘countries’ give females the rights to control their own bodies, which allow people to use recreational drugs) of each of the more than 250 ‘countries’ of Earth.  They probably wouldn’t analyze the conflicts between these ‘countries’ from a moral perspective, to see which was ‘in the wrong’ in each of the conflicts that are ongoing at any given time. 

They would look at the big picture. 

They would see the Earth and its dominant species, the human race.  They would see the currently living members of the human race have inherited dangerous and destructive societies.  These societies divide the human race into different tribal units (the things we call ‘countries’) that compete against each other in a kind of global sport to gain special rights for the people of their tribal unit (country) at the expense of the others. 

They would wonder how this situation came to exist. 

They would be interested in Earth history.  But their history would almost certainly not pay much attention to events presented to earthling school children as ‘history.’  They wouldn’t care much about the names of the tribes and countries that fought in each of the endless wars on this little world, the dates of key battles, and the identities of the leaders who did such damage to their ‘enemies’ that they gained the right to call themselves the ‘winners’ of the wars. 

They would care more about the basic forces within the societies that Earth people had, at each point in their history, that pushed them to act the way they acted. 

They probably would not pay a lot of attention to individual destructive events and the possible moral defects of the individuals who profit from them.  This seems to be very important to people on Earth and we focus a lot of attention on it.  But the outsiders probably wouldn’t think it was even worth thinking about.   They would look at the basic nature of the forces that allow something that clearly reduces the amount of wealth that exists on Earth (destroying things of value always reduces wealth) to somehow, make the ones who destroy wealthy. 

They probably wouldn’t think in terms of ‘this is wrong with Earth societies,’ as if making some sort of moral analysis.  We seem to care a lot about this.  But they would be living thousands of light years away and, therefore, thousands of actual years after the events here on Earth had taken place.  Why would they want to make moral judgments about the defects of beings that lived so long ago and far away?   They would probably think in technical terms, saying ‘these are the characteristics that Earth societies had, at the time they sent these signals, that make violence a part of their systems’ and ‘these are the characteristics that Earth societies had that induce them to divide their land into individual tribal units (the things we call ‘countries’) to compete for…well, whatever it is Earth countries are competing to get. 

They wouldn’t have the emotional baggage we have.  They would be able to think objectively. 

That is the perspective we need if we are to solve the problems we face that threaten our existence. 

I will claim, in this book, that the human race is still primitive in evolutionary terms.  We have great abilities in some areas.  We can solve technical problems of immense complexity, splitting atoms, creating ‘messenger’ RNA sequences that, if injected into bodies, reorganize the sequences of the DNA in the cells of these beings, and sending vehicles into space beyond our solar system.  Some parts of our brains are very well advanced and fantastically capable. 

But forces behind evolution don’t affect all parts of our minds equally.  Some parts are very well developed because they have to be, for evolutionary reasons.  Our evolutionary ancestors divided themselves into tribal units and fought wars with other tribal units over feeding territory.  The tribes that gained control over the territory got food and therefore survived; the losers generally perished.  Any evolutionary advantage that helped build tools or devise tactics that were useful in war helped them in their struggle for survival.  Nature ‘selected’ the best at war for survival and ‘selected’ those not good at war for death.

The brain lobes that were helpful developed quickly. 

We currently use this fantastic mental capability to build weapons of destructive power that boggle the mind.  But this is not the only use for this mental capability. 

We have free will.  We can decide what to think about.  If we want, we can use this capability to figure out how to get onto a path that will take us, eventually, to a sane and sound society.  To do this, we need to first understand the path we are on.  To do this, we need to understand what is behind us.  We need to have an objective and unbiased understanding of Earth history.

That is what this book is about.