The Species Guild

Ingo Swann (04Jun97)

Introductory

Although you may fall over laughing at the idea of it, Section Ten of this database has but one purpose.

This single purpose is to ATTEMPT to consider and discuss how astonishing, amazing, wonderful, creative, energetic, visionary and etc. our incredible species actually is, and to focus on these qualities and attributes ONLY in some positive sense.

*

Naturally, this ATTEMPT will require some kind of "letting go" of the utter fascination our species negative attributes hold over us.

And so this effort might result in some kind of cultural shock and thence be held as some kind of adventure into eternal realm of impossibility.

*

This attempt, however, should not be thought of as a retreat into sweetness and light -- that undulating, glittering, picture-perfect -- but foggy -- realm where fundamentals of our species can be forgotten or ignored.

*

The way to conduct this attempt is not at all clear -- except to think that a first step is to rise above all the mierda del toro found everywhere among our species, even if this rising be only momentarily or temporary.

This first step, hesitatingly taken, might itself be difficult. After all, if mierda del toro is presented as sparkling diamonds, it tends to assume the quality of being thought of as meaningful.

*

This attempt (probably a rather silly one, all things considered) means that the various negative and deplorable factors of our species will NOT be the endless, ongoing central focus of this section.

There are at least four reasons for this diminishment and possible exclusion altogether.

*

FIRST, how awful and deplorable our species is or can be is given considerable examination elsewhere in sources that are considered meaningful in mighty ways. These sources actually range from misinformation to expert opinion. Most of them are presented with robust vigor -- often approaching a condition of overwrought, drooling enthusiasm.

The availability of such sources is endemic and constant in a Big Time way, and so widespread, that it is completely unnecessary in this section to reinvent that wheel or jump on it and ride along with pride.

*

SECOND, it would seem that after 2000 years of actively considering our species negative-making factors, hardly anything has been archived regarding ways or methods to ameliorate them along with the vividly awful situations those factors inspire.

The study and examination of our negative factors has consumed enormous amounts of good will, energy, FUNDING, research, and psychological and sociological experimenting all aimed at finding ways to "cure" them.

Today our species still has no idea of how to deal with a small time pissing contest, much less cope with negative factors grown to such large panoramas that they are largely out of anyone's or everyone's understanding and control.

It would be clear that the study and examination of our negative factors should continue, but perhaps not at the price of becoming so overwhelmingly paramount as to occlude and submerge our species positive factors.

*

The THIRD reason has two parts:

1. It is quite well known that if you repeat, adumbrate, and constantly draw attention to something, then whatever that something is will take on a bigger and bigger reinforced reality. This is technically referred to as "learning" via repeated exposure, until our wonderful brains erect mental pathways for that specific kind of data and information.
   Eventually, meaning and importance will become attached to whatever is being repeated and emphasized, and which this bigger and bigger reality might not deserve -- or perhaps was nonexistent in the first place.
   It can be admitted, with some evidence to support it, that our species does have elements of gross and refined stupidity. But are those elements MORE important than other elements that tend to get lost in the confusions the stupid ones bring into existence?
2. 
   It is also fair to observe and admit that our species negative aspects ARE so widely fascinating that ways and means have been found to milk their economic potentials for all that can be gotten out of them. So this widespread fascination has become a meaningful COMMODITY replete with producers and consumers.
   It appears that little can be done about this, except to observe that our positive factors are not altogether competitive with our negative ones.

That this is so is, I think, understandable. After all, those attributes get the adrenaline, emotions and sentiments pumping whether in real, fictional, gossipy, imaginary, or illusory form.

And so we drool over them, while some opine that those very aspects are emulated so that one might get one's share of the economic pie, or shall I say drool pie.

I, however, and for better delineation, would want to rename drool pie as playground pismire with a lobotomy -- even though I, too, get off on some examples that emanate out of it. Even I like to watch examples of the good guys winning over the bad guys or ET space monsters.

But for this kind of thing to be possible, the real or imagined presence of the bad guys (or things) has to be engineered and masturbated into climaxial existing.

Of course, there is the question involving whether the good guys exist only to tackle, surmount and waste the bad guys. If so, then we absolutely NEED the bad guys so that the good ones can manifest their only purpose in being born out of the genetic pool.

*

FOURTH, our negative aspects have proven to be so charismatic that when they and our positive ones are discussed together in sort of dichotomous contexts, the negative ones attract all of the attention. Or at least various amounts of attention wander away from out positive aspects and over to the lascivious excitements promised by the negative aspects.

*

I'm NOT AT ALL suggesting that serious attention case being paid to our species disgusting, abysmal, degrading, soporific, hypnoid garbage heaps -- and all of which are thrill-making.

I'm not at all suggesting that if you "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative" our species will be on the road to and achieve the carrot on the end of so many philosophical and ideological sticks.

*

In fact, I'm not even suggesting that the positive be accentuated -- but merely be DISCUSSED.

Regarding this, I've learned via some very serious demonstrations that specimens of our species try doing what they want, and do the trying at all times and all of the time -- to the length and degree of whatever they can get away with doing.

*

Thus, since nothing will be gained or even lost by a forum exclusively to discuss our species amazing and wonderful factors, well, why not set one up?

Few will be interested in reading what appears in such a forum, and which forum anyway can't possibly a threat to any vested interests desirous of pumping our species negative factors for all they are worth.

*

For those few who MIGHT take some passing interest, it may turn out an interesting challenge to discover how to examine and discuss our species wonderful qualities WITHOUT first beating up on our deplorable ones or trying to smash them along the way.

After all, some 6,000 years of our species history on this planet, now discovered to be fragile, has shown that trying to smash our negative aspects has yielded little in the way of self-perpetuating results.

*

In any event, observations and papers from those who want to try achieving this eternally useless endeavor might be presented in this section of this database -- for this particular topic BELONGS herein more than anything else. Guidelines for doing so will be presented shortly.

Our Species

But here at the startup, some preliminary about OUR SPECIES is needed.

Along these needed lines, it is to be understood that although our sciences and philosophies have traditional definitions of what is meant by OUR SPECIES, these might radically shift about in the near future because of advances in genetic detection. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile reviewing in brief form the traditional versions.

*

The term species is taken directly from the Latin, and originally meant "of a kind" or "of one kind."

The term still means that, technically speaking. But it also transliterates neatly into "of OUR KIND" or "of THEIR KIND" -- ending up in various stereotyping "of DIFFERENT KINDS." In this sense, social forces manage to engineer programming methods effectively causing our wonderful brains to erect cognitive synapse formations so that we become enabled to recognize the differences between our kind and all other kinds. The same programming also encodes how those that are now different are to be treated.

*

In terms of science-speak, in pre-scientific times SPECIES was seized upon (about 1608) to denote "a group or class of animals or plants having certain common and permanent characteristics which distinguish it from other groups.

Much before 1608, the idea of OUR SPECIES apparently DID NOT exist. It is therefore interesting to discover how, or if, earlier peoples thought of themselves as members of a corporate species. I've not been able to uncover much along these lines, but it would appear that our ancestors thought of themselves only in the contexts of clans or nations.

*

In any event, SPECIES was thereafter seized upon (about 1711) to denote "the human race."

One of the earliest scientific criteria utilized to identify a species had to do with sexual transmission or intercourse. Only those of the SAME species could enact that activity AND produce progeny. Thus, if stalwart specimens of our species would be sexually mated to extraterrestrials AND produce progeny, then the ETs would be of our species or we of theirs -- regardless of what the progeny might look like.

*

A SPECIES is commonly thought of as a sub-set of a GENUS. GENUS refers to plants and animals that look alike or similar in some apparent way, but which, when mated, do not produce progeny, or if progeny do result the progeny cannot produce progeny.

*

It is also worth noting an obsolete usage of SPECIES, in that it once was used to refer to similarity ideas, theologies, ideologies and social classes of specimens of our species. This was convenient, once, for it enabled the higher, more powerful classes to consider their corporate selves as a different species.

This, I tend to think, still goes on -- in that at least intellectuals of the modern period have taken it for granted that they are of a different species from those deemed not intellectuals.

*

At some point between about 1790 and 1890 (I've not been able to determine just when or why), the idea of OUR SPECIES took on an egalitarian or democratic frame of reference. Somehow, it was determined that all specimens of OUR SPECIES were equivalents of each other in some philosophical sense of the idea, on no other grounds than that they were of the same species because they could produce progeny.

This concept, with slightly earlier ramifications, brought about great revolutions in many areas.

*

Our species belongs to the genus HOMO, and our species subset of the genus is referred to as Sapiens Sapiens.

In its traditional format, HOMO referred to MAN, inclusive of the two sexes needed to copulate AND produce progeny.

MAN was apparently derived from the Sanskrit MANU or MANA, referring to a combined life-energy-higher-mind principle. MAN entered English via Scandinavian and Nordic pathways, seemingly indicating that the Sanskrit-speaking peoples normally associated with India migrated to the north of Europe.

*

Since about 1890, the term HOMO has fallen onto bad times, then being adapted as a reference to males of our species who mate or fool around in some way but do not produce progeny -- this nonetheless a possibility science is in process of examining.

*

As it is, OUR SPECIES is referred to as Homo Sapiens Sapiens, the "Sapiens" part being derived from the Old French SAPIENT, and which denoted "wise man (or wise Homo in the combined sense of male/female) with further reference to being sentiently sensible.

*

The transliteration of Homo Sapiens Sapiens into plain English is fraught with difficulties. On the surface, it apparently meant HE/SHE Man who is doubly wise.

Literally, perhaps, it means MAN who thinks and knows it, and is therefore able to discriminate and accumulate knowledge by reflecting and cogitating upon the thinking. Various problems arise from this concept.

*

Even if there are transliterating difficulties here, the general gist of them makes OUR SPECIES feel quite good about its corporate self.

*

The general essence of Homo Sapiens Sapiens is true enough, at least in part. But on equally available evidence, our species might also style itself as Homo screwupiensis; Homo estupidogiganticofabuloso (this brings in a dramatic Spanish play); or, perhaps Homo thinkingmachinemagnificus (but susceptible to thinking viruses). We might also think of our species as Homo computererectus, albeit with wiring and hard drive problems.

There is a neo-possibility to restyle OUR SPECIES as Homo scientificusprogressicus. But doing so which might detach a large number of our species from our species and result in increases of socio-problems -- and which, based on some visible evidence, has already happened.

*

Aside from the wisdom and wise elements originally built into the concept of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, our species is nonetheless determined to be a species only on biological evidence that it is one.

This is convenient in several ways, essentially because our species hasn't really been able to live up to its Sapiens Sapiens connotations. Those connotations, implied to exist, are an embarrassment to those specimens who are sap saps, and so the idea that we are a biological species only comes as relief and refreshment.

*

Thus, as the modern, scientific age progressed, the term OUR SPECIES was exclusively seen in its biological contexts -- IF those contexts also result in the production of progeny.

So today, when we think of OUR SPECIES, we are thinking of our biology -- only, with our Sapiens Sapiens part retired into cultural backgrounds or undergrounds. This is precisely to say that our formerly respected (if idealized) Sapiens Sapiens parts have been relegated to the Fringes of alienated, sapient inquiry.

*

It is quite probable that only about 50 percent of the total combined specimens of our species today has ever heard of the term OUR SPECIES.

Many of those who HAVE heard of our species probably think that it refers only to our biological meat bodies.

It is quite possible that many others who have heard of our species haven't the least idea of what it means -- until they are informed via a horror flick that SPECIES refers to creatures that suck blood and energy from HUMAN BEINGS, sometimes ripping, shredding and devouring the later in the process.

It may be, however, that many equate OUR SPECIES to HUMAN BEINGS -- but only IF the subhuman elements of the latter are not too gross, visible -- or provable in a court of law, and which has almost nothing to do with conscience.

*

The foregoing has been a very brief, and probably quite inadequate Introductory. More will follow, but I'll temporarily end here with two questions:

1. What IS our species?
2. Is it possible to consider our species not as a genetically random collection of sexually produced biobodies, but as a great and wonderful collective of brains that, hypothetically speaking, form a kind of human neural network -- and which, altogether IS more sapient than any one of the produced progeny? I emphasize my use of "hypothetically."

The possibly foolhardy task of The Species Guild is hypothetically to attempt to extract and discuss indications of our species excellence.

Ingo Database | Real Story | Contributed Papers | Contributed RV Papers |
Superpowers/ET Intelligence Probabilities | RV Honor Roll | Superpowers Art
Miscellaneous | Reviews | Species Guild | Welcome | Home

Copyright © 2007, Ingo Swann. All rights reserved.