About Quality and Quantity

Today most people think our ancestors were dumb. The further in the past the dumber they were. We on the other hand are extremely intelligent and will become even more intelligent with time. We know so much things about our world that it is actually impossible to count all these things we know.

Well, this last sentence is actually true. We really know much much more about our world than our ancestors did. So, were they really dumber than us modern men? The answer is of course: No. The key to this problem is quality and quantity. Let us take a look about the things we know and the things they knew.

We know how to buy things in a super market. We know how to turn on an electrical machine. We know many things about science, e. g. physics, chemics, maths. We know that stars are actually suns and that temperature is the movement of particles. We know how to deal with money. We know how to watch TV to compensate the time we spend to work for people we do not know. We know how to create medicine that heals all kind of illnesses. Et cetera, et cetera. Now, what would happen if electricity would dissapear overnight (This is indeed possible, if a big solar storm hits the earth.)? 90 % of people would die within half a year.

What did our ancestors know? They did not know what lied behind the next mountain that they saw from their hut. They did not know how to use electricity. They did not know much about science. They did not know how to deal with money and therefore they did not invent it. What they did know was how to get food from the nature. How to hunt animals, how to find plants, how to breed animals and plants themselves. They knew, how to make fire when they are alone in the wilderness. They knew how to make clothes and little huts and how to dry food, so that they survived the dark winters. This was pretty much all they knew. Well, what would have happened to them though, if a great solar storm would have hit the earth? Well, nothing. Some of them would have wondered what the strange lights in the sky meant, nothing further.

This is proof enough that this modern world makes us weak. But it does not only make us weak, it also makes us sick (and that is spiritually and emotionally sick). From all things of this modern world the thing I detest the most can be said with one short sentence: There is no more magic. The magic is lost. It has gone. You will maybe ask “Which magic? There is no such thing as magic!” Well, you only think this because of your modern attitude to world. Science says there is no magic, but there actually is (or rather was, but it can sometimes awaken, as explained here: https://forestsmountainsrivers.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/sleep-or-death/   ). Imagine a life without electricity and modern technology, a world as explained above. You wake up in the morning as soon as the sun rises and the cock crows and you have no idea what lies behind the mountain you see everyday in the horizon. About 90 % of your world is covered by forests. Not forests how most of the forests are today, planted by humans to get wood, but real thik untouched forests that have stood there for 10,000 years since the last ice age. You wander under trees under which your forebears let’s say 5,000 years ago wandered. You hear the sounds of animals and you know most of them, because you are used to the forest, but now and then there is still a sound that you do not know. There is a little brook with clear water that often satisfied your thirst. You do not know where it has its spring or whiter it flows. In the summer there are often storms. Thunder breaks the silence and lightnings lit the sky. When there are not storms, the night is really a night. There is no more night today. The night used to be a time of absolute darkness, no little spark of light whatsoever, except of the stars and the moon when they were visible. The winter was cold, there was no gas oven or modern isolated houses, only a little wood hut with a fireplace. The winter was a time of waiting, waiting for the summer, sometimes it felt like an eternity, but eventually spring came and this brought a great amount of happiness. Likewise autumn was a time of sadness and preparing for winter. The whole life had a rythm and a meaning. The meaning of life was staying at life and if you did not die you achieved this meaning of life. And even if you died, as long as you had children you would simply live on within them and their children and so forth.

This was a truly poor live regarding quantity, our modern life on the other hand is rich of quantity. But, now the quality is lost, there is almost none, back then the life was truly rich regarding quality. The summer came and this was a thing that made everyone happy, the winter made everyone sad. Now noone cars about anything, because we have everything anyway.

For me this modern age is also a time of sadness and of waiting, of waiting that seems to have no end, just like a winter was back then. But eventually even this big Fimbul-winter will come to its end, maybe sooner than expected (The last one has been in 1859 and some people asume that there will be one about every 150 years. 1859 is already 155 years ago…). The sun always makes the snow melt at the end of winter. This winter it will make the metal of all the electric cables melt instead.

Hail the sun!

Solen har fått sin kraft tilbake.
Eikeånden er født påny.
Solen har fått sin makt tilbake.
Sommeren har kommet

The sun has got its power back.
The oak-spirit is reborn.
The sun has got its might back.
Summer has come.


Posted by Wídanaz, from Forests, Mountains and Rivers:
https://forestsmountainsrivers.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/abut-quality-and-quantity/