PALEOSOPHY

PALEOSOPHY The Great Adventure of Humanity in the Technological Whirlwind and our necessary reconnection to Nature and to our primordial nature Catherine Reine THOMAS Université de Bordeaux et Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Équipe SPH (Sciences, Philosophie et Humanités), EA 4574. _______________________________________________________ English version 18/06/2020 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.19513.39528 Published in French on Research Gate the 8th of february 2020 Personal reference : PALEOSOPHY-CRT201-V1 Keywords: paleosophy, ecopsychology, hominization, Technical Process, technique, Ellul, Living Process, Homo sapiens, hominids, ecological crisis, ecotherapy, paleoecopsychology, paleoecotherapy, deep ecology, Covid-19, coronavirus, collapse. Summary of my remarks: Ecopsychology observes that we are alienated from nature and that this generates most of the ills of our civilization. It follows the idea, central to ecopsychology, that if we return to our connection with nature, we will find the ecological sensitivity indispensable in order for us to escape the ecological crisis. If such a measure appears to me essential, it also appears to me to be insufficient. In fact, we come from nature: therefore, something alienated us from nature. What is this “something”? I feel it essential to understand what happened to us to make us feel divorced from our primordial nature. To answer to this question, I propose here a new understanding of human nature and a new theoretical framework to find our way. I am going to examine the decisive factor Page 0 / 49 which in the first step makes us human, and which secondly plunged us into an ecological crisis: We are “technicians”. I suggest that what took hold of us and dangerously turned us away from “Life” both within ourselves and around us, is what I like to call “The Technical Process”. The difficulty is that this “Technical Process” which influences us, makes us talented humans possessing unique skills within the animal kingdom. All of this makes one believe that humans are the brilliant inventors of the bomb and the pesticides, which pollute the entire earth….Such a vision renders us powerless when faced with such an ecological crisis. I propose to see that we are not the authors of technological developments on Earth but the consenting craftsmen of a Technical Process with its own dynamic and which manifests itself concretely, in the matter, thanks to us and our smart hands. As such, in the course of humanity’s evolution, and especially since a few centuries, we are bestowed with amazing creativity, but are guided by its development. A synergy on Earth between the Living Process and the Technical Process reveals the hominids and gradually leads to Homo habilis, and several other human species, which all acquire a great technical intelligence. However, only the “Homo Sapiens” species will allow the technical adventure to unfold on Earth; the other lines did not continue on this path that turns out to be very perilous. We are therefore at a turning point in the history of humanity, a key moment where we must see the autonomy of the Technical Process so that we might learn how to master it. Becoming aware of this means to reach a state of “modified” consciousness in order to find within ourselves the possibility of not only protecting from the excess of the technical system, but also the possibility of loving ourselves as humans. Humans? To love us as we are; human beings and technicians at the same time, powerful beings, thanks to technology, but becoming more and more fragile also. The goal is that we can again become masters of Technology rather than blind slaves, and at the same time get out of the ecological crisis. The first step in transformation will be difficult. It requires humility in recognizing our submission to the Technical Process, even if it has not always been this way. In order to understand this, I am going to trace back to the prehistoric period in order to explain the present and inform our future. From this more lucid vision of our humanity may be born, I believe, new means of guiding us in our human epic towards a new wisdom that I call paleosophy. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 1 sur 49 Definitions: Paleosophy - Paleoecopsychology - Paleoecotherapy Paleosophy : The wisdom of human beings for several million years, when they were able to maintain the balance, into themselves and around them, between the Living Process and the Technical Process. A wisdom that we will be able to find again thanks to the theoretical bases of paleosophy and paleoecotherapeutic practices, but above all by a multitude of ways that remain to be imagined and lived. It was also the wisdom of the “First People” before their contact with Western Civilisation. We have certainly much to learn from those who survived. The paleosophy we must imagine now cannot be the same than that of ancient times, but the one we must find today. We will never go backward. Paleoecopsychology : Knowledge of the human psyche in the light of the hominisation Process seen as the development of a balance between the Living Process and the Technical Process into human beings. Shedding light on the psyche of humans from the Paleolithic to the present. Practices to be implemented to operate a radical transformation of our highly technical civilization towards a technically soft society, both on the psychological and practical level. Paleoecotherapy : Therapeutic modalities put in place which allow us to remain human whilst restoring equilibrium both within and around ourselves, between the Living Process and the Technical Process. The paleoecotherapist should be able to take into account the individual level as well the collective (and political) level. Its specific goal is to restore dialogue between (i) humans and nature, and (ii) also between humans and the Technical System. A paleoecotherapist will clearly take into account not only our human need to find once again our dialogue with nature, but also our need to manifest in the material world our technical intelligence and the power, which it confers to us whilst mastering it at the same time. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 2 sur 49 “Nietzsche determined the task of philosophy when he wrote:" Philosophers must no longer be content to accept the concepts that are given to them, only to clean them up and make them shine, but they must begin with them. Fabricate, create, pose and persuade men to use them. », Extract from « What is philosophy? “, (Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F., 1991). PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 3 sur 49 Preliminary: methodology and general framework I. hominization: a marriage between Life and Technology 1. Fundamental hypothesis on the nature of man: Living Process and Technical Process 2. How we became human: hominization II. How the technical system balances us and tries to control nature: from the Neolithic to the present day 1. The Neolithic and the Great Swing 2. The injured and parasitized man of warlike societies 3. Humanity dizzy from his capacity for abstraction and his technical power III. The foundations for a new perspective on humans and their capacity for transformation: paleoecopsychology 1. Ecopsychology 2. Paleoecosophy in action and paleoecopsychology 3. Rediscovering the balance between FRAGILE and POWERFUL 4. Rediscovering the balance between LIVING Process and Technical Process 5. Rediscovering the meaning and enjoyment of life in awareness of our living and technical double nature 6. Living in a living body (getting out of too big an abstraction, become concrete again) 7. Rediscovering a culture that celebrates life and seals human communities 8. Living lovingly IV. A paleoecopsychotherapeutic approach V. General conclusion Annex: MATHEMATICS ARE THE LANGUAGE OF THE Technical Process -------------------- PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS ----------------------- Page 4 sur 49 INTRODUCTION It appears to me to be impossible to escape the ecological crisis until humans have regained some self-esteem of themselves. However, objective observation of ecological disasters rather leads us to doubt the human being and even to judge him severely. Ecological discourses are full of negative judgments about ourselves as a species and thus spreads a form of hatred of ourselves. Such a perception of who we are has a destructive effect in itself. I believe that, faced with the ecological crisis, the first remedy we should put into place is one which would allow us to love ourselves just as we are, including as the main actors of the "sixth extinction of species", if this is the case. A human being healthy when he is able to stop judging himself. A civilization is in good health when it is capable to stop making judgments on its human members. Individually and collectively, I think that it is enough to simply observe and become aware of what is happening for a transformation to occur. However, the essential challenge is to "become aware" of what is happening. My work’s purpose is to provide some elements of response to overcome this difficulty by (a) implementing a radically new theoretical framework and (b) by proposing transformation practices. So, I propose in the following, a narrative that would allow us to see ourselves individually and collectively as a species that we can love. We can love ourselves because we are beings in the making: the ecological crisis challenges us to become more human by continuing the process of hominization in the respect of the equilibrium living on Earth. We need to find a balance between fragility and power, and as I will develop in this narrative, a balance between Life and “Technique”, both in and around us. I will begin my article with a few points of methodology and I will situate my approach in the context of ecopsychology. After which, I will set forth my work in three parts: The first part [History of the Paleolithic revisited] will be devoted to describing the dawn of humanity and hominization, in order to understand what makes us human. By observing human evolution, I find an answer to one of the questions that interests me most: At what point and in what way have some human beings on planet Earth cut themselves off from nature? I will introduce the concept of the "Technological Process ". In a second part [History of the Neolithic revisited and brief history of the West], I will indicate the key moments leading to the current ecological imbalance. I see it as an imbalance between two aspects of ourselves: our living part and our technical part. The third part will use the ideas introduced in the first two parts to propose the foundations of a paleosophy and paleoecopsychology. It mean to understand our current humanity and the ecological crisis in the light of our deep nature - living and technical - can silence any negative judgment on humanity and give us the direction to follow in order to escape the lethal grip of the Technical Process. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 5 sur 49 These considerations will allow me in a fourth part (to be developed in an another paper) to propose a paleoecotherapeutic approach to accompany humans towards the restoration of a balance between Life and Technique both individually and collectively. The goal is to suggest ways of escaping the ecological crisis with the result of having become more MATURE and more human, from the ecological crisis My entire thesis aims at envisaging the human being as a being who is “still in the making” and challenged by the ecological crisis (and very recently by the Covid-19) in order to become MORE human. We are simply summoned to ask the fundamental question once again: who are we? Here is a new narrative Prerequisite: methodology and general framework The general framework, which generated all my research and gave rise to the hypothesis that I formulate in this article, is that of the current planetary ecological crisis and the question: how to get out of it? The ecological crisis: a story that describes human beings as destructive. In the last 10 years, scientific reports on climate change have raised most people’s awareness. Ecological footprint concepts (Wackernagel, 2017), IPCC reports on climate change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2018), studies on biodiversity loss and destruction of natural habitats (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Program) , ed. 2005), all highlight our responsibility in a major ecological crisis. This awareness in the Western scientific world has even led to the concept of the Anthropocene (Crutzen, 2000): the age of man. However, he is a man who has become able to modify the climate, accelerate soil erosion, reduce the flow of rivers, melt polar and continental caps, altering ocean currents and ocean pH, making genetically modified organisms and new viruses. Capable and therefore guilty ➝ denial. All ecological discourse shows us that our way of life has a major negative impact on the entire biosphere and our health. It seems obvious that we are responsible for a catastrophic situation, which potentially leads us to a collapse of our civilization (Read for example Diamond, 2018 or Dupuy, 2004 or Barrau, 2019). All people with an ecological discourse agree to emphasize our considerable responsibility and even our guilt. In particular, we are guilty of doing nothing when we know the causes of the ecological crisis. We will be guilty in the eyes of our children if we leave them an Earth that has been devastated. We will also be guilty of the disappearance of the elephants and large blue whales, guilty of the disappearance of wilderness in favor of an artificial world. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 6 sur 49 However, it is psychologically very difficult to admit that we are the destroyers of our own planet. Such discourse therefore provokes very strong protective reactions (Macy, 2008). The most observed reactions are as follows:  Denial (the escape): there is no ecological crisis or “It is not that bad" or "We will always find technical solutions to our problems"  Powerlessness (and “inhibition of action”, cf. Laborit, 1994): "Anyway I can't do anything about it".  Guilt (and repression): “We are responsible for the disaster, humans are crazy", (Roszak, 2001).  The accusation of others: "It is the industrialists, the multinationals, the wealthy, the political power, the WTO (World Trade Organization), the banks, who are responsible, the culprits". Often these feelings are mixed up in varying proportions according to individuals. In all cases, they generate suffering and therefore violence that we inflict upon others and ourselves. Only denial is a comfortable position, at least in the short term. Such psychological states are not conducive as a way to emerge from the crisis. Is it possible for us to look at the ecological crisis in a way that is more able to help us? Ecopsychology inspired me deeply and I would like to make my contribution here to a better understanding of what is happening to us. The limit of ecopsychology that I would like to overcome: Many writings in ecopsychology and ecotherapeutic practices make the assumption that the return to contact with nature will restore an affinity and even a fraternity with it, and that it will allow us to adopt new attitudes in our life, more ecological and respectful of Life on Earth. These writings show that this is the case to a certain extent (references, xxx). But such an approach seems to me quite insufficient if one considers the following question: how is it that one day we lost this connection with nature? As long as we are unable to answer this question, there is a strong likelihood that whatever has cause us to disconnect from nature in the first instance may very well prevent us from ever returning to it or maintaining the connection even if we do return? >>> I propose in this article a theory concerning what has really alienated us from nature so that we might be able to choose, if necessary, to escape from its grip. >>> Moreover, I propose a vision of the ecological crisis that makes it possible to avoid making negative judgments on humans, on Western humanity in particular, but invites to an understanding, benevolent and optimistic look. In a word, a loving look at ourselves, regardless of our current way of life and our apparent part in the ecological crisis. What new perspective can we bring to humanity that is capable of enlightening us about our current situation and guiding us? For that, I invite you to consider a new narrative about our history just as plausible as other stories, but which seems to me better able to guide us in the future. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 7 sur 49 I. Hominization: a marriage between Life and Technology 1. My Fundamental hypothesis on the nature of man The Technical Process and the Living Process combine to make us HUMANS: I propose to see (to consider or to make the hypothesis) that we have in us an animal part, but also something that radically distinguishes us from all other animals. This "something" is what makes us human. This "something" is our technical skills, and prehistorians often think them as a kind of "spontaneous generation," an intelligence that has come to humans, and only to humans, through a transformation for which no one can find the root cause despite its magnitude. Life on Earth would give birth to a living being with extraordinary abilities but one who is also capable of destroying Life on Earth. This deep contradiction bothers me ... Life in the service of the destruction of life? Could it be something else that cause of the destruction of Nature? Now, what I do observe absolutely everywhere is that the destruction of Life on Earth is the result of technical developments. Let us look! What makes life go back, what makes natural habitats and living creatures disappear? Roads for cars, bulldozers to uproot the forest, chemicals that poison the land, rivers, seas ... Factory ships that roam the oceans, plastics that suffocate turtles and birds, satellite and antennas everywhere that disturb the electromagnetic field of the earth. It is the technical objects and more generally the Technician System that is at the heart of the ecological crisis. However, as we firmly believe that we are the author-creator-controllers of the Technician System, we therefore endorse the fault of the destruction of Nature. The techniques (machines, molecules, organizations) make the world artificial and largely determine our way of life ... But who decides? Everything happens as if the technical developments were "irresistible" and it is common to think that "Everything that is technically possible will be done". This leads me to formulate a bold hypothesis, however it will illuminate so many elements of human life that remain incomprehensible without said hypothesis that I believe will be impossible to reject it without argument! What if the increasing technical developments were not due to human choices but the product of a process unfolding on Earth, just as Life unfolds on Earth? The techniques (machines, technical processes, technical organizations), much as Life, unfold on Earth by diversifying, reproducing, inventing new forms capable of occupying new "ecological niches". Nothing really distinguishes living dynamics from technical dynamics. In both cases, I see a kind of momentum that manifests itself in the material world and creates conditions that are increasingly conducive to its materialization and diversification. There is certainly an essential difference: humans can live without machines (at least "could"), but machines need humans to exist (at least that is still the case in 2020). It is because of this particular fact that the belief is unanimously shared that humans are the creators of machines. However, a logical mistake may have crept in here. If there is a Technical Process in the Universe that needs living things to manifest, then it develops on Earth through humans. It means that humans are not the authors; they are the craftsmen, the intelligent hands who put themselves at the service of a Process that gives birth to tools, then machines and technical processes. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 8 sur 49 Seen in this way, it is not humans who invent techniques, but the opposite: the Technical Process "invents" humans. By developing inside of us to express itself through us, the Technical Process made us become human. Following the ideas of Jacques Ellul (Ellul, 1990; Ellul and Porquet, 2012) or Simondon (Simondon G and Simondon N., 2012; Guchet, 2010), the Technique has a certain autonomy because a Technique is always a system open interacting with other technical objects and/or with humans. Men are designing new techniques to articulate them with those that already exist. Existing techniques therefore partly determine the new techniques. The techniques are physically linked, and they are linked in the logic that governs their invention too. That is why they seem to be autonomous. My thinking is more radical: I propose that there is a real autonomy of a process that I will refer to as the Technical Process or "Technique" which, like the Living Process (or "Life"), is a dynamic growth process, multiplication, spatial expansion and evolution over time. However, unlike Life, this Technical Process cannot manifest itself in matter without passing through living beings already incarnated. Life is a mystery to humans and it seems daring to add a second that will not receive more enlightenment than the first. However, to see that the Technical Process manifests itself in the form of machines and a Technician System just as Life manifests itself in the form of living beings and ecosystems is a simple hypothesis that deserves attention and to be considered seriously. Indeed, I do not know any arguments that can invalidate it and it allows an analysis of what happens to us by suspending the negative judgments in the respect of ourselves, humans. Moreover, if we see that technological developments are the expression of a process that escapes us but has no consciousness, no intention, but only a tendency to unfold on Earth, we cannot pass judgment on the technique. It is simply a dynamic at work, neither good nor bad. And here it is and we must "live with it", but “to live with it” does not necessarily mean to let it overwhelm us. However, its intrinsic power now puts us in danger and we must, for our safeguard, master it. The ecological crisis: another story is possible So I propose creating another narrative concerning the ecological crisis: a narrative that does not portray humans in a bad light or suggest that they are inherently “bad” but rather places them at the heart of a “dangerous” adventure. The current danger forces us to become more aware of who we are, to rethink the nature of the Technique and its evolution since the beginning of its manifestation in us. The "Technique" has organized the relationship of man to the world since the beginning of humanity. However, the techniques have evolved enormously between prehistoric times and today. The long period of technical transformations has not allowed us to see the passage from a world where techniques serve humans without destroying nature, to a world where they serve humans less and less and destroy nature more and more. When the tractor replaces the horse, for example, we move from techniques that take into account the natural reality of our planet to a mode of existence that breaks all dialogue with nature and dominates it in a violent way. The introduction of techniques increasingly decoupled from the living reality of the earth induces serious disorders in nature and among humans. The arrival of the tractor on farms (between 1910 and 1920 in the United States, see Berlan, 2005) for example, forced to draw wider, more straight PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 9 sur 49 paths, even to clear the hedges, cut old trees, redraw the limits of fields, destroy the springs, and kill the horses of course. Peasants in debt from the purchase of the tractor become dependent on this machine and oil to make it work. The tractor will allow for very deep plowing that destroys the soil, modifies the water cycle, compacts the land and causes runoff from the fertile soil, etc. The farmers AND the Earth are wounded, weakened and some will disappear over time. Everything happens as if the machine had an intrinsic power to win despite the damage. I propose in the following an examination of the essential place of the Technique in the ecological crisis. Our Western civilization, for about four centuries, has allowed for a society where Technique no longer stimulates human intelligence. It is in fact, doing quite the reverse and plunging us into almost inextricable difficulties. This does not belong to the Technique itself, nor to the animal that we are, but to the relationships that have been woven through us and within us, between our "animal" part and our technical part. The ecological crisis is an imbalance between these two aspects of ourselves. A number of techniques that no longer take into account the nature of Nature causes ALL ecological disasters. Excessive development of techniques which are incompatible with life is occurring and even accelerating dangerously to the point of constituting an ubiquitous Technical System, a technosphere intermixed with the biosphere, but highly toxic to life. However, my thinking is not technophobic. Indeed I deeply believe that the Technique is a part of ourselves; it makes us human, very different from other animals. On the other hand, I observe that technological developments (a) bring with them more and more fears and hatred between humans (surveillance systems, controls, reified humans, purely functional interactions, wars, etc.), (b) cut us off from nature, (c) deprive us of a lot of freedom, and (d) removes our joy of living (which results in an epidemic of depression across the western world and a depressed immune system for many people). The lack of self-esteem, the guilt and the hatred towards ourselves, at the heart of the dizzying expansion of technological systems, destroys us as surely as the technologies themselves when they are so overwhelming. In fact, both are linked. My vision in terms of Living Process and Technical Process has many advantages, in particular that of removing any feeling of guilt vis-à-vis the ecological crisis. Let's see what it changes: What we usually believe - especially in the “ecological” discourse : Humans destroy their vital natural environment, they suffer from mental health issues. They destroy their environment because of the power of their technologies of which very often they lose control: the technical developments prove globally disastrous for nature. For example, we believe we are the perpetrators of climate change on a planetary scale, a change leading to ecological and human disasters (cyclones, droughts, heat waves, floods, human migrations, etc.). Because we emit greenhouse gases in large quantities and in ever-increasing quantities, because we deforest the Amazon, because we eat too much meat, we are the culprits: we are the cause of major ecological disorders and human tragedies that accompany them (famines, rising waters, loss of biodiversity, etc.). My thesis is the following (and constitutes another “ecological” discourse): The technological developments of Western civilization pose serious PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 10 sur 49 ecological problems and quickly drag us into infernal circles of destruction. They are the expression of the unfolding of a Technical Process with its own dynamic, a fundamental autonomy. This process can manifest itself in matter only with the help of living beings willing to lend it their intelligent hands to build machines and all that goes with it. We are animals who accepted, a few million years ago, to have hands to make tools. We let ourselves tempted by this adventure, which makes us both more powerful and more fragile, as the myth of Prometheus recalls. 2. How we became human: hominization 1) The starting point Now let us take the time to go back, to the first days of the symbiosis between The Living and The Technique to see what happened next in order to elucidate on the present. Think of the implantation of a Technical Process inside a great ape that accepts it giving birth within him, will allows us to review the whole history of prehistory in a radically new light. In addition, in this perspective everything becomes clear: a process is at work that comes to transform the being who becomes human by providing new capabilities that cause the deep transformation of his body and his psyche. The incarnation of the Technical Process IN US causes transformations of our body, because it makes its own body: a technical body. We accepted this host inside of us. We have become technologically intelligent. Our agreement was required because otherwise our immune system would have rejected it. Moreover, the Technical Process has tried an insertion in many animal species, but all in vain: only a few basic technical gestures appeared and persist, but the process was absolutely stopped in the other living species from the very first signs of its activity. It is notable, however, that the Technical Process seems potentially present since distant times and waited for the situation to become favorable for its manifestation to come and influence the course of Life on Earth. Its manifestations on Earth are very old and very gradual and begin conspicuously with anthropoid primates. The primates who fully accepted the implantation and expression of the Technical Process in them very quickly acquired new skills, which made them anthropoids and then hominids. This cooperation allows the rise of several kinds of hominids, for example Australopithecus, many Homo species, but also their extinction (because certain species renounced to pursue this increasingly “unnatural” alliance?). The "Homo" quickly became intelligent in a new way, having a new form of creativity, and becoming more and more aware that they were no longer quite animals like any other. The development of new faculties may have been very rapid and continues to be accelerated. 2) New behaviors The Technical Process waited for biological evolution on Earth to give it the opportunity to gain momentum. It manifested by stimulating a completely new and very intense PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 11 sur 49 neural activity, which favored a curious and exploratory behavior. Initially, the entire body of certain primates is called upon so they can adopt a new mode of locomotion: walking in the subvertical position and on the two hind limbs. They gradually leave the tree-lined sphere, venture on the ground only during the day, and continue to live largely in the trees ... then gradually they adapt their musculoskeletal system to the standing position which allow them to acquire a large capacity for movement. But curiosity pushes at the same time the development of agile hands to explore what is within their reach…. The two morphological changes go hand in hand: leaving the trees, the hands no longer have to grasp the branches to move or keep themselves in balance and are free to explore the world. Bipedalism frees the hand, it is not a new idea, but it is a defining moment in our human becoming. This was the start of the great human history (around -7 million years ago). A risky adventure from the earliest times: these anthropoids must take care to stay alive while now being much more exposed and likely to become the feast of other animals. To stay alive, they will have to become even smarter and more creative… a “virtuous” loop is being set up. A bifurcation in the tree of evolution takes place: while some primates evolve to become the current Great Apes (orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees), another branch will lead to human beings. While they are already bipedal, use rudimentary tools and live in society, their cranial volume increases still little; moreover, reorganizations of the brain allow an evolution of the cognitive capacities without change of volume (observed on a fossil old of 2 million years: Australopithecus sediba, hominid having a hand rather close to the hand of the modern man). As the walk becomes easier, the Australopithecus begin to make chipped stone tools. The oldest prehistoric tools discovered to date are knapping debris resulting from knapping activity at the archaeological site of Lomekwi in northern Kenya and are dated around 3.3 million years BP (Harmand S., Lewis J., et al., 2015). They need to exchange, share their discoveries, their inventions and help each other. They live in small and organized tribes. The brain needs to develop even more and increases in volume. However, a more assertive bipedalism, a more complex brain, more skillful hands are not specific characters of the human line. Robust Australopithecus, for example, also has these characters but will disappear. What distinguishes those who "succeed" in becoming human? They are explorers stimulated by the Technical Process: something in them pushes them to walk, then to run with great endurance so that they can travel great distances… They learned to build shelters, to hunt in groups, then invent hunting weapons, domesticate the wolf, learn to control fire and cook their food. They transform their environment thanks to their new cognitive capacities and in return, their condition of life allows them to increase their intelligence: a symbiosis between Life and the Technical Process allows positive feedbacks loops that accelerate the manifestation of the Technical Process thanks to the intelligent hands of men. At a time that we cannot date exactly - around 400,000 years ago - humans also use dyes, perhaps to paint their bodies or their shelters? The excavations of Twin Rivers, in Zambia, made it possible to discover in 1999, in layers dated between -260,000 and PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 12 sur 49 400,000 years BP, 176 fragments of dyes, of five different colors, bearing traces of use (F. D'Errico, 2006). This event is important: it is probably the manifestation of the most remarkable human character: its capacity for abstraction and symbolic expression. For a long time several human lines coexisted on the planet, in particular modern men ("Homo") and Australopithecus. It is now clear that the traits we recognize as "modern" have appeared in different regions and in different human groups (D'Errico, 2006). It is important to emphasize that the Australopithecus who seem to have reached the same cognitive level as modern men have disappeared. However, there is a difference between them: the Australopithecus does not produce adornments. A gradual evolution, with sometimes faster innovations, leads to Homo Sapiens, the only species still existing: Homo sapiens appeared 200,000 years ago (according to genetics data), he can sing, dance and speak with a articulated language. He makes jewelry. 3) The emergence of articulated language and the first tools The first parietal representations date from 75,000 years (the moderns of Africa). The best known and most accomplished are 38,000 years (the oldest figurative painting discovered in Europe is one of the rhinoceros from the Chauvet cave (France) painted in charcoal, which dates from 35,300 to 38,800 years). At that time, men engraved the rock, made ornaments, sculpted figurines. The first humans of the genus Homo did not need articulated language to understand each other’s and live together – as it is the case for monkeys and other animals. However, the Technical Process needed to give them a language made of articulated terms to make humans able to access its own logic (a technical logic). In addition, articulated language will then allow us to access mathematical language and then computer language... Increasingly large human tribes are forming at the same time: the intelligence that the Technical Process confers to humans is accompanied by modifications of social behaviors, which aim to harmonize the presence of the Technical Process with the Living Process. The Technical Process is probably embodied in two simultaneous ways thanks to the stimulation of new cerebral areas and the capacities of abstraction, which result from it: the creation and the manufacture of tools and the birth of language. Language and technical skill develop at the same time because both are the expression of the same Technical Process. This Process manifests on Earth in two forms, a material form and an intangible form. Material forms are tools, paintings, shelters. The intangible forms are language, technical creativity, the capacities of abstraction, symbolization, representation. 4) Paint Little by little, the Technical Process give rise to behaviors that are completely unknown in the animal kingdom. Human-in-the-making, while following the impulses, which come from the Technical Process in action in him, becomes aware himself. It is a discovery in action: human beings discover bodily, thanks to the synergy between the enlarged brain and the hands, which now have an opposable thumb, the possibility of painting with ease. The act of painting will allow men to anchor in matter what is going on PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 13 sur 49 in their brain: this amazing marriage between the Living Process, which offers an adaptable body (plastic), and a Technical Process, which infuses a completely new creativity. We often look for what humans wanted to express with the paintings that we find in ornate caves: it is thinking backwards. Human-in-the-making paint because the Technical Process unfolds in them. They probably feel a kind of euphoria that leads them to paint a lot. In this euphoria of themselves, they will go to paint in the depths of the caves, in the deepest, in the furthermost places from the reality of ordinary Life, to explore this faculty of representing what is not in front of their eyes. Therefore, they exercise their capacity for abstraction and become more and more human, and at the same time more and more apt at becoming major players in the development of the Technical Process, because this process requires a great capacity for abstraction. The incredible beauty of the paintings of Lascaux or the Chauvet cave often astonishes us. The reason for their beauty is that human beings are just beginning to be capable of abstraction, and when they paint "abstract" animals, these animals are inscribed in them first as a body inscription, and not as in the form of mental images. (To understand this, imagine that you want to imitate someone's way of speaking: you do not make a sound diagram of his voice that you try to reproduce! No, the imitation is immediate, because it is a deeply visceral feeling that allows you to really "know" the voice of that person. With all your body, you are able to reproduce it, even if you have not seen the person for months The capacity of abstraction and representation is first of all a capacity of the whole body, not a purely mental function (Varela et al., 1996; Varela et al., 2017). The paintings are physical evidence of the balance in this animal-human body. The act of painting involves the entire body incorporating and utilizing all of the living functions, that is to say the capacity to walk, to move one’s limbs in order to approach the wall of the cave, the ability of sight, respiration, the skill of sneaking into the cave, to seize colored stones or stones to cut for the engraving. The Technical Process do inspires and animates the "painter", stimulates his curiosity, and his faculties of abstraction. In this act of painting, the Technical Process manifests and takes more and more power inside human beings, while this ability to paint is absent in all other living creatures on Earth. Our dual nature, living and technical, finds its first full expression here: skill and manual intelligence, abstraction and self-awareness in the same act, painting. Painting is even more: it is the way that Life finds to keep up our vital strength despite the growing place of Technique. Life in us perceives the risk that the Technique breaks the harmony of the living. Therefore, we become human and at the same time intensely alive: alive, conscious of being alive and artists, that is to say protectors of the balance between Life and Technique. 5) Human culture and art What I say about painting is also true for engraving and sculpture, dancing and singing, making ornaments: all these activities have as their main reason of removing the danger of becoming "servants" of the Technical Process. They constitute the foundations of our culture. The culture thus understood is a resistance against the risk of being enslaved by the Technique. Building a spear is a technical act in the strict sense because its purpose is a tool for technical use. Making a necklace, or a painting, or a tattoo are acts PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 14 sur 49 that require technical skill, but whose purpose is not technical. They are a way of mastering the Technique so that it remains a human expression in balance with the life in us. In these deep times, human beings knew how to contain technological developments by the force of their culture. Cultural developments made us more and more human: explorers, seekers of meaning and beauty. The birth of human being therefore presents two faces: one side we have been the curious and enthusiastic agents of the Technical Process. We have become brilliant technicians, with “intelligent hands”. At the same time, our ancestors developed techniques without technical aims: a culture that made them artists. The goal of their art is not the production of artistic objects… art was an act of resistance to the inner thrust of the Technical Process, a way to stay alive and in balance with other forms of life on Earth - and sometimes it still is today. 6) The power that gives us the technique In those prehistoric times, the already-human being enjoyed its creativity, its capacity for abstraction, and plays with it. Like a child who plays, he discovered what he is capable of doing and feeling inside him. And what did he feel? What did he explored? He paints and feels his power to paint: he is capable of the gesture of painting, but above all, he is able to give birth to a representation of the animal. This ability is an immense POWER. Moreover, the being who is “already human” feels the power associated with an awareness of himself and that makes him different from their animal ancestors. He feels his creative power, his physical delicacy (his hands are so special) and the new POWER which is conferred to him. With the awareness of the gifts that the Technical Process instills in him, the taste for experimenting and the taste for discovering himself grows. The first territory that the human beings explore is inside, and this exploration is done primarily through action. HUMAN BEING acquires a taste for exploring, a taste for ADVENTURE. His selfawareness allows him to appreciate adventure and the feeling of living an adventure. This adventure is that of the implementation of the Technical Process ON EARTH, nestled in the hollow of humans. The Technical Process itself only exists as a potentiality in the Universe. It really only exists when it can take root in the animal-being-who-will-become-human. The LIVING animal preexists the manifestation of the Technical Process. The Technical Process has no hands, no intention, and no conscience. Only the human being, through the synergy between Living Process and Technical Process, acquires these attributes. In these primordial times for humanity (-200,000 years, the beginnings of Homo sapiens, -37,000 years, cave paintings of Chauvet, -18,900 years paintings of Lascaux), the feeling of the new power that is in us cannot imbalance humans. On the contrary, this synergy between the living and the technical skill is done in a balanced way; otherwise, the implantation would not have been the success that it was during one or more millions of years, and until the recent past. 7) The diverse talents of craftsmen (artisans) PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 15 sur 49 The Technical Process penetrates the body and psyche of humans as a species, but it settles with variations from one individual to another. Because this experience, both collectively and individually, is at every moment a delicate exercise: it is the search for each human being of a balance between what his living part is and what his technical part is. At each moment of this coupling, the balance must be respected. It is a living equilibrium because it is Life that hosts the Technical Process. Moreover, because the nature of life is its flexibility, fluidity and diversity of expression, every human acquires personal technical qualities. Individuals will acquire varying dispositions and express their emerging technical capacities and their taste for human adventure in many ways. Some like to explore "inside" and paint in caves (these caves represent two different methods of exploration: going ‘within’ themselves and going inside the actual physical cave). Others love exploring outside and are adventurers-explorers of new territories or adventurer-hunters inventors of new hunting techniques. Those who enjoy feeling the intelligence blossom in their hands become skillful stonecutters, jewelers and manufacturers of clothing or musical instruments (bone flute were discovered in the cave of Hohle Fels, oldest instrument of music known so far, dated 40,000 years ago). Finally, others explore this awareness of consciousness and carve human figurines (the Venus of the Hohle Fels, the oldest female representation, also dates back 40,000 years). They often represent the fertile body of women and the female vulva in their feeling of being connected to the source that makes them “BE”. They do explore what I call the ‘Great Connection’. This Great Connection that humans experience is that of malefemale mating and the emotion of being an active part of the Fecund Earth from which all life was born. 8) Maintain balance by making Life more intense: the role of sexuality The more powerfully the Technical Process expresses itself within these “beings-inbecoming”, the more there is a risk of imbalance. That is the reason why Life pushed humans to explore and feel Life inside them with a desire as strong as the desire to explore their technical creativity. While only sculptors feel like carving the vagina of the women and pregnant females, all humans have the opportunity to find an inner balance through sexuality. While animals have rutting periods only when females are fertile, humans will mate for the pleasure of feeling Life playing inside themselves. They will mate so that Life never loses its creative power despite the implementation of the Technical Process. This is why sexuality will have such an important place in all cultures - and that is why the current imbalance of humanity with unprecedented technological development is announced in human history by a considerable degradation of sexuality. The necessary balance between Living Process and Technical Process also manifests itself in all other spheres of life. Already-very-human beings will celebrate Life in multiple circumstances and even in every act of ordinary Life. Special celebration also serve to weld the community as different technical talents individualize behaviours. Moreover, these ceremonies, rich in dances and songs and music, allow humans to experience in them the creativity of the living, the beauty of the life, and this gives them a satisfactory balance while they also develop their technical creativity. 9) Living in communities PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 16 sur 49 It is probable that at this stage of human evolution the songs are still not articulated. It is likely that humans like to live in groups of closely-knit individual. The caves serve as shelter during rituals to stand together in the heat of their HUMANITY without risk of being cold, of being caught in bad weather or surprised by hungry animals. HUMANITY is born in every human and is born in the community of human beings. This feeling of human beings in community is also one of the essential characteristics of our hominization. We are deeply human when we experience the emotional and bodily experience of being together, present with each other, present for each other. Yes, so is born our HUMANITY, and our beauty, and the feeling of our inner beauty too. It is this beauty, associated with awareness of ourselves, that we see in the paintings of Lascaux or elsewhere. The caves therefore have many functions: - They are the physical support of paintings and engravings - They are the privileged place for the exploration of our abstraction capacities. - They are a shelter for warm community rituals. - They are also, according to the seasons and times, the privileged place for couplings, which are no longer fast acts of reproduction, but long periods of exploration closelyknit individual through the experience of Life dancing in us and the experience of an intense connection with the Universe. 10) Semi-sedentarization: huts and caves The construction of the first huts and the domestication of fire took place around 450,000 years ago according to the traces we found and analyzed. There are hardly any traces of perishable works such as wooden huts. Around -38,000 years, the caves came to be widely used. They lend themselves perfectly to their inner research. Painting, sculpting, making love are balancing exercises essential to stay alive at the heart of this alliance between Life and Technique. It is quite possible that the prehistorical humans of this era began to build specific huts to continue their explorations, pictorial and sexual. Other increasingly developed activities also require shelters, at least during the colder seasons: making fishing and hunting tools, making clothes, jewelry, ritual objects, hunting weapons, but also taking care of children, treating skin, caring for the wounded or sick. This semi-sedentary way of life, still very connected to natural rhythms, allows human life to be in harmonious balance with the Technique. 10) The awareness of our power and our fragility I would now like to talk about another fundamental balance that is set up during this hominization. Human beings feel their own power, their new creative power inspired by the Technical Process. They make paintings, make efficient hunting weapons; they domesticate the fire and discover the comfort of the heat of the fire and the protection of the caves. They are already experiencing a new and very different POWER from that of animals. In the emerging consciousness of themselves, they experience at the same time their fragility and the feeling of their mortality. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 17 sur 49 Human beings therefore have this double CONSCIOUS experience of fragility and power. Our dual nature is not only living beings and technicians, but also of being FRAGILE AND POWERFUL, and aware of being so, thanks to the qualities that the Technical Process has given to us. We must not be powerful, we have to find our balance between fragility and power. It is a dynamic equilibrium that sets us in motion and at the same time constantly puts us to the test. This search for a balance that is always unstable, between the feeling of fragility and the feeling of power, is going to be the major issue of the human adventure. 11) The long time of human balance and the feeling of beauty As long as this equilibrium held, the techniques remained extremely simple and often correspond to what our prehistorians call the Stone Age, among sedentary, semisedentary or nomadic peoples. Humans then worked to maintain these two balances: the life-technical balance, and the fragile-powerful equilibrium. The technology of those time was serving life : looking for water, hunting, picking, cooking sometimes, eating, carving stones, painting, engraving caves or bones or antlers or antlers, dancing, singing, rejoicing together to be alive, to perform ceremonies to celebrate life, to mate and make babies, to take care of children, to build caves, to build shelters. The adventure was probably nice! The feeling of beauty grew within us and expressed itself externally by making jewels: necklaces, bracelets, hair ornaments, paintings and body marks, to honor our beauty in connection with Nature and our technical intelligence. Depending on the regions, the ability to manufacture clothing made of plant or animal material was born too. Human beings had to learn how to cut up the skins, to tan them, to dry them, to cut them and to assemble them, sometimes adorn them with pearls. These peoples are not violent or the violent emotions are ritualized and kept within strict limits (Patou-Mathis, 2013). 12) The Technical Process continues to progress: the beginning of the Neolithic The first signs of settlement appeared around -10,000 years ago (or perhaps -8000 years ago) in the Middle East, then in the rest of Europe towards -6000 years. What pushes certain populations to accept all the disadvantages of a sedentary life? This sedentarization or semi-sedentarization linked to the inner exploration of what we became imposes new TECHNICAL developments. Here was set up a virtuous circle in the development of our craft skills in harmony with nature that will provide us with various materials, the easiest to access and also the most hidden and rare. The challenge was to stay in balance between the Life in us and the Technical Process, the development of which could have been harmful if not contained. However, PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 18 sur 49 sedentarization opened the door to a wider development of the craft activities. Humans needed to build huts, houses, ceremonial places perhaps, but they had to find food in sufficient quantity and quality, without following the herds of animals they used to eat before. Climate change also required adaptation to changing natural conditions. The human beings thus created communities (villages), and mainly practiced horticulture, while still practicing gathering and hunting. The Technical Process continued to transform us deeply. The horticultural Neolithic was generally a peaceful period. The axes were polished, and the arrows armed with flint points cut for hunting. The Technique then took the forms of stone millstones, flint sickles, canoes, basketry, weaving looms. 13) The feeling of danger. The megaliths. This balance was very threatened, and men certainly had the intuition that something could switch. The IV millennium is where megalithic drawn up. My hypothesis (a new direction for research, not a documented idea) is that they build imposing technical works without technical finality in order to channel the energy of the Technical Process towards "non-tools", non-dangerous achievements: an attempt to maintain the balance between the Technical Process and the Living Process. The great danger was foreseen, but apparently inevitable…. Indeed came more difficult times. II. How the Technician System unbalances us and tries to control nature: from the Neolithic to the present day The Neolithic: how the wild in us is domesticated. Here is explained how - according to my hypothesis - the wild in us has been domesticated by the Technical Process and why we committed the First Crime and experienced war. The Neolithic began around -10,000 years depending on the region, and ended with the beginning of the metal age (-3500 years). During this period appeared, in several regions of the world, and with no apparent link, a production economy based first on agriculture (cereals, corn, taro, etc.), to which livestock (sheep, goat, pig) was added. 1. The Neolithic and the Dramatic Change The beginning of the Neolithic thanks to settlement seems to have favored births. This situation gradually favors an ever-increasing development of new techniques. Indeed an increase in the population caused an increased need for food. People had to grow more, hunt more and to raise animals. Techniques that are more effective appeared: weaving, ceramics, new architectures, methods of preserving food, plow hitched to oxen, etc. One of the very first “traps” was set up. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 19 sur 49 Another very important thing happened. Humans had to protect themselves from wild animals. As long as they had to hunt them, human beings still shared their “territory”. They were living in the same territory, the same forest for example: the first humans lived as animals with wild animals. Their psychic territory was the same as that of the beings with whom they cohabited. With domestication, everything shifted. Humans took power over animals. The domestication of goats began around 8000 BC and continued with that of sheeps, cattle, pigs (Vaquet, Encyclopedia Universalis). The situation was completely new and different: Hunters who kill can be killed; there is a symmetrical relationship between humans and animals, a reciprocity: hunters are as likely to eat as to be eaten. Hunting is therefore always an interaction of equals with nature in the sense that nothing is ever played in advance. With domestication, humans attached or enclosed animals, which, therefore, was no longer able to defend their lives: humans could kill them without putting their own lives in danger. Humans became very different from any other animal species. It was the Dramatic Change. At this stage, we have been radically transformed: We were no longer in balanced dialogue with nature. We could kill without taking risks. We were already conscious of having immense power over animals and nature. However, at this stage of development, Life on Earth still set up “safeguards” to prevent the Technical Process from overwhelming us. The main safeguard created by life is the diseases that will affect livestock and are likely to be transmitted to humans. Thus men experienced smallpox, plague, influenza (the first 3 causes of death then), and also measles, typhus, rubella. A way for life to remind humans that they cannot be the "masters" and that they must give up this project of domestication. However, it is all in vain, a small part of humanity was "captured" by the Technical Process and continued his efforts to control animals. However, the domestication of animals was also the domestication of our own animalistic nature. The more we deprived animals of the freedom to hunt, eat, gallop and breed as they pleased, the more we prevented ourselves from living in freedom. We were also more and more "domesticated" and chained. (The Covid-19 virus can be explain in the same way. Life try to resist to the uncontrolled spreading of the Technical System and urges us to become conscious of the real danger we must face: we are losing our freedom and becoming more and more the slaves of the Technical System) Human culture This loss of freedom began to rise great tensions in our psyche and gave birth to what we call culture: culture is – since the very beginning - the attempt to remain free animals despite the influence of the Technical Process. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 20 sur 49 Far from confirming our distancing from our environment, culture is indeed an attempt of our living part to resist the grip of the Technical Process. This wild and free part of us wants to remain in the intimacy of nature and preserve our capacity to feel "animal", instinctive, immediate, all that we share with the living as a whole. Our Living nature wants to participate fully in life and preserve our freedom, despite the fact that another part of us has already accepted the implementation of the Technical Process. The domestication stage therefore introduced an immeasurable distance between humans and animals. The combined power of fire, weapons and domestication completely changed the dialogue with nature, which was yet no longer a dialogue. This dialogue nevertheless continued in culture. Even if human beings did not maintain a dialogue as respectful as in the past, the dialogue remained symbolically in art, dances, songs, myths, etc. This also gave rise to our ability to create symbols. The first paintings, and then the abstract drawings, the first symbols, was the tenuous threads that kept us in touch with animals. Moreover, the “shaman” (or wizard) was one who still knew how to experience his animal nature 100%. He was the last to keep the power to be deeply in communion with Nature - a Living Nature. The subsequent evolution of human societies can be, from my point of view, described as a growing abstraction, a widening gap between us and animals, a separation between us and Nature and a growing symbolic capacity. Symbolic thinking helped to distance us from the material, living and changing reality of the world. Abstraction is for me the essential characteristic of human beings compared to other animals. This capacity is a gift that was "offered" to us by the Technical Process operating in us. This gift is what made us human. Unfortunately, it has recently made us more and more inhuman: more and more abstract beings ourselves (and now dreaming to become more and more abstract, virtual beings, like “Artificial Intelligences”). Note, however, that women, through motherhood, are still able to experience our animality more than men are. That is why, from the beginning, the Technician System has a harder time making them submit. But males will cooperate enthusiastically with the technician system. Human societies, which previously were neither patriarchal nor matriarchal, became unquestionably patriarchal societies. From now on, the masculine became dominant almost everywhere in our European countries and in the Near and Middle East. 1) The First Crime I mentioned the domestication was a Dramatic Change and I would like to come back to this fundamental point. To kill a domestic animal in its enclosure is to be aware of killing safely. To take the Life of an animal that has no defense is not to kill it fairly. It is taking one's life without giving anything in return, without risking anything. It is what I want to call the First Crime. I name it this way because it instilled in the human mind something radically new in its relation to death: it created a relationship between TO HAVE POWER-OVER and TO GIVE DEATH. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 21 sur 49 I believe that it is from this moment that it became possible for a human being to commit another Crime: to kill another human being VOLUNTARILY in order to have more power. The door was then open to war, slavery and all the inequalities generated by the "law of the strongest". 2) War is emerging and the sexual life impoverished Between -4000 years and -600 years BC, war is accompanied by violent sexuality. From -4000 years BC, wars became more and more numerous. Weapons were diversifying and perfecting themselves. We started to build fortifications in the Middle East. It is possible that climate change occurred and that agriculture had already impoverished some regions, causing social tensions or the temptation to move elsewhere... Some richer regions may have felt threatened. Meetings with other peoples who had also developed their technical intelligence and their weapons was a source of anxiety and encouraged the construction of strongholds. The time and energy put at the service of the war (war itself, invention and manufacture of weapons in particular, training of warriors, military organization) diverted more and more the "males" from the sexuality. They conceived – I can imagine - an unconscious and powerful frustration. However, Life fought: anger rose in them. At some point, they had to release the enormous tensions accumulated in their bodies. They redoubled energy where the Technical Process drove them and spurred them: wars and conquering new territories. At the same time, they became violent towards women because of their sexual urges that were no longer flowing in making love. They were no longer able to honor women as Goddesses for lack of time, due to the wars. They are "engaged” elsewhere. Then women could no longer honor them as Gods and the rupture was severed. Human beings were no longer able to honor Life: it was giving way to the technical power that was imposed by the force of wars. In addition, women were often considered as objects and were part of the booty confiscated from the enemy. Sexuality lost its spontaneity and its essential role of balancing. Not all the people of the Earth were concerned by this serious imbalance. Others, elsewhere on the planet, continued to live harmoniously. However, the Indo-European populations were becoming very repressive on the sexual level. At the same time they were more and more adept at developing ingenious techniques ... The two went hand in hand. They are inhabited by the Technical Process that now irremediably had a hold on them: men need more and more effective weapons, to defend themselves or to attack, fortifications to protect themselves, military organizations to go on conquests. War becomes necessary to allow repressed sexual energy to flow somewhere. 3) Metal and purification operations, homogenization. 4,500 years ago, the metal appeared in the societies that developed agriculture and animal husbandry in the Middle East, but also in Europe, sometimes a little later. The metal used to make mainly weapons, but also tools and jewelry was first copper, then a PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 22 sur 49 mixture of tin and copper, an alloy that is easier to melt, bronze. The objects were poured into molds (pins, bracelets, jewelry, axes, and weapons). The fusion operation which extracts the metal from its earthy matrix, is the very first purification developed by humanity. This process obtains pure copper (that is to say an extract: it is no longer mixed with other materials). Copper and tin mines were not present everywhere, and therefore the Bronze Age was the beginning of an intense trade: the trade in raw materials and the trade in manufactured objects. This is important because trading means producing more than you need for yourself. Men very quickly sought new ways of manufacturing identical objects in ever-increasing quantities. A homogenization of the objects produced occurred. The purification of copper is the counterpart, in the material world, of what is happening in the mind of man: an ABSTRACTION. The more man is able to cut ties in nature (between copper and earthy gangue for example), the more he is capable of mental abstraction, and the more his creative capacity and his technical inventiveness increase. For the Technical Process, war is the most effective way to stimulate the technical creativity of humans. Therefore, an explosion of inventions occurred between -4000 and -3000 years BC in the Middle East: for example, the wheel was used to make carts that were pulled by animals, and sailboats allowed travels by sea. 4) The birth of writing: an even greater abstraction New complex alphabets, numeral systems and the calendar were now able to emerge in the Life of human beings. The cuneiform writing in Lower Mesopotamia between 3400 and 3300 BC was made of small stylized drawings. This writing was made by incision on a wide variety of supports such as clay tablets, probably wood and stone... At the same time, in Egypt appear hieroglyphs, a writing based on drawings that are more complex. These two scripts also contained symbols representing sounds. This novelty was an important step in the Technical Process, which led human beings to a degree of abstraction even greater. While a hieroglyph for saying hawk is a stylized hawk, in the modern Arabic language it is written ‫ صقر‬and in English "hawk". Phonogrammatic hieroglyphs were never used to write the Egyptian language, but only to transcribe foreign languages or terms. However, it is believed that it is the source of writing systems using letters. Alphabetic writing stems from a high degree of abstraction and accompanies profound upheavals in our relationship with the world (Abram, 1997). 5) Taking power is the dominant behavior In Europe, with writing, we also discovered iron. The metallurgical communities acquired a power (a power-over) that the other communities did not have: the Technical Process found in metalwork a first-rate development agent. Knowledge of metallurgy led to the search for richer veins and struggles for the possession of metalliferous deposits. Because iron tools and weapons provide an undeniable superiority, PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 23 sur 49 an increased capacity to transform the world and to fight, it is a decisive step in the embodiment of the Technical Process on Earth and its hold over human beings. At this stage, human societies entered into rivalry and their power was essentially measured in terms of their technical power, that is to say their ability to take power-over metal, take power-over the fire of forges, take power-over other tribes. Not all the peoples of the Earth are concerned by this imbalance Let us recall that not all the peoples of the Earth worked metal and many remained in the Stone Age and lived much more peacefully. These peoples were not captured by the Technical Process with the same ferocity. They kept a harmonious balance with the Living and did not give in to the temptation of more power. Why? It is likely that these peaceful peoples all lived in dialogue with nature by setting up safeguards against technical temptations. These safeguards were "taboos". "Tapu" means prohibited in the Polynesian language from which French borrowed it to make the word “tabou” (“taboo” in English). This word applies to anything that is forbidden to touch or any act that is forbidden to commit. Taboos are the most rigid elements of culture because they are the guarantors that the Living Process will not be destabilized by the Technical Process. (Unfortunately nowadays we no longer have any taboos and we believe that we are "free") 6) Between -600 years and -300 years BC: the technical explosion Between 600 years and 300 years BC, barbarian invasions disrupted Europe and laid the foundations of what it is today. The great religions were born in this context and caused great transformations in human relationships. Note again that this evolution did not affect all human beings everywhere on earth. There was nothing written in advance in the evolutionary journey of human beings, nor in the history of the manifestation of the Technical Process on Earth. Wars are not inevitable. In many cases, humans continued to live peacefully for millennia after millennia. They often remained ignorant of the use of metal for the manufacture of weapons. The Neolithic era in Malta gave birth, according to some historians, to the most peaceful society of all time. In Crete too: equitable sharing of goods, no oppression of the opposite sex. In many other places, it appears that horticultural communities have lived in peace for a very long time. Archaeological excavations show that they had no weapons. One can imagine that they were also at peace with nature and led a balanced life with simple and non-invasive techniques. In such societies, there are many sexual symbols and their sexual practices were probably devoid of any shame or censorship. Besides, a fulfilled sexual life is probably a source of great balance for the whole of society and as the manifestation of the voluptuous fulfillment of human life. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 24 sur 49 2. The wounded and parasitized man of warrior societies 1) We are all injured After the First Crime, human beings are psychically injured: those who kill and those who are attacked, killed or physically injured. In addition, with sedentarization, women had too many children to be able to take care of them properly, children were neglected, breastfed for less time. They became psychologically insecure human beings. So because of the wars during the Neolithic times, we became (in Europe) wounded and insecure human beings. It was the beginning of the disintegration of our humanity, in the sense that we ceased to be able to keep in balance the Technical Process with the Living Process. In addition, Neolithic humans had to breed more and more animals, which meant castrating the males. This operation was traumatic for human males. They overcame these traumas by attitudes that became typically masculine: acts of heroic courage, warlike or chivalrous acts, and great exploits ... in the hope of remaining attractive males for the females of their species. It is likely that this complex issue gradually led to a sexuality full of obstacles and fears. 2) From symbiosis to parasitism While humans are mortal, machines are not. Their destruction by wars ensures their dynamism: they can thus evolve! Wars serve the development of new techniques, their proliferation and their improvement ... and stimulate human technical creativity. Here is the dawn of our humanity seized in a dangerous way by a Technical Process which subjects it to a type development parasitic: it benefits the Technical Process and weakens Life. However, not everything was decisively played for humanity. In the many centuries that followed, many options were still possible, but I will not talk about it here. I am going to jump, in the next paragraph, into the period that plunged us into an imbalance that could be irreversible. Another great shift occurred during the fifteenth century in Europe. 3. Humanity dizzy with its capacity for abstraction and its technical power From the dawn of humanity, the Technical Process gave humans the articulated language that no other animal has. This language allowed humans to communicate on a technical level and to cooperate to develop efficiently their technical intelligence. Another language developed among several human civilizations, even more apt to allow the technical developments: the mathematical language. Later, writing, and especially printing, allowed technical knowledge and mathematical knowledge to spread effectively. The technical novelties became more rapid, very rapid, and increasingly rapid. In the twentieth century the computer language, coupled with the huge computer’s memory and an extremely fast computing capacity consolidate the technician dynamic and give birth to the cult of information. Human life is more and more disembodied and even seems to be able to be reduced to coded "information". This is in any case the idea widely shared since the discovery (or invention?) of the genetic code. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 25 sur 49 Our knowledge is no longer rooted in experience, but becomes pure abstractions disseminated in books, and in schools, where children are forced to learn the technical languages and how to serve the Technical System. Nowhere else do I see freedom reduced miserably with as much intensity as there: on the school benches, children deprived of contact with nature, deprived of the free exercise of their bodies, prohibited from being able to exercise and develop their creativity, forbidden to cooperate to solve the problems that are submitted to them. All that make the adults of the next generation, more and more acculturated, more and more rootless, therefore more and more abstract people. We become, generations after generations, more and more intellectual beings and knowledge is no more than a pure abstraction disconnected from natural reality and personal experience: a large part of the transformations of the world on a planetary scale comes from the development of ideas, the intense brain activity of researchers and engineers seating in offices or leaning on machines…. So far from Nature, all human creativity is captured for the benefit of technical developments and the artificialization of our living environment. 1) How did it happen to us? MATHEMATICS have long been a place of fascination for me and a great mystery. A large part of all my work was born from this fundamental question, which has not left me from all my years of studies at universities in mathematics and physics: how is it that we are able to describe physical and chemical phenomena with mathematical symbols, mathematical equations? Here is, for example, the law of gravitation discovered by Newton. It is written: Or the Navier-Stokes equation, supposed to describe the behavior of Newtonian fluids: Another beautiful formula: the very famous formula E = mc2 whose author is unanimously celebrated as a genius - except perhaps by Feyerabend (1987). Have we discovered the language of nature? Are we great inventors of a language with this incredible ability? The two options always seemed to me equally improbable. In addition, there is this most disturbing of all « reality »: since the technological systems, that we build ought to the knowledge acquired with mathematics work, it is because everything is "right". Technological success appears to be concrete proof that mathematics describes the way things do work. My car is running, my phone allows me to talk to a friend on his sailboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, my GPS takes me to the desired destination! In appearance… However, I propose to consider mathematics differently: we have neither discovered nor invented them. Mathematics is not the language of Nature; moreover, they cannot describe natural processes. They only describe experimental devices and again, not always well. On the other hand, they describe technical objects very well. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 26 sur 49 Here are some points to see more clearly about mathematics: · Mathematics is not able to describe the reality that I knew as a child: blooming meadows and shimmering butterflies. · Mathematics generates technical systems that destroy blooming meadows and shimmering butterflies of my childhood (monoculture of grapes with lots of synthetic chemicals, straight rows as far as the eyes can see, stakes mathematically aligned, replaced the flowery meadows full of butterflies). · Mathematics is powerful, but does not serve humanity: it serves the technological, artificial, cold logic and accounting notebooks. · They cannot describe nature, nor predict its behavior. The largest computers in the world full of mathematical equations, the most elaborate, try to predict the weather for tomorrow ... in vain. Predict an earthquake? A volcanic eruption? A tsunami??? No mathematical model even if ran in the best computers can do it! Predict the tides? At the slightest gust of wind, levels announced turn to be inaccurate false. · They are a language that allows you to count what is countable and make everything that matters to me disappear. What is their true nature? My answer is simple: mathematics is the language of technical objects and processes. They make it possible to describe them, to construct them, to analyze them, to transform them, to assemble them, to invent others, but they are radically "unnatural". Mathematics brings us into a growing abstraction: into a world that does not exist, at least not before the Technical Process creates it. When humans became able to use this mathematical language, their topics of interest became "abstract" and they lost contact with the reality and the common sense. For example, Newton states his first law as follows: Newton's first law or principle of inertia (initially formulated by Galileo): In a Galilean frame of reference, the center of inertia G of a solid subjected to a set of forces whose vector sum is zero is either at rest or animated by a rectilinear and uniform movement (the speed vector remains constant). The more humans acquire this abstract language, the more they themselves lose contact with the Living kingdom. They are capable of mentally entering in very abstract universes (the world of algebra and geometry, analysis, probability, statistics, the world of physics, quantum mechanics, etc.). The problem is that with this language is irrelevant to the Living, and it will spread in a very concrete way in matter on our planet (in technical objects and organizations, and way of thinking…..), and invade it in its smallest interstices. From the beginnings of mathematics, but even more from Galileo, humanity entered a modified state of consciousness under the influence not of hallucinogenic drugs, but of the illusion of knowledge, that nourishes mathematics. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 27 sur 49 Mathematics hypnotizes us, makes our mind confused and gleefully deceives us. Some artists showed it in a grandiose way, but we did not understand what it was about (see for example, the work of Escher, (Escher, M. C, and J. L Locher, 1972)). In addition, we have continued, particularly in France, to teach mathematics as the number one discipline, which supplants all the others, and serves as a selection tool to train servile but powerful elites. Today we have researchers and scientists, engineers and technicians, computer scientists and programmers, and many more people “well trained”. They are legions. We are this legion at the service of the Technical Process. We do serve it very well because we have adopted his language: mathematics. 2) Summary of my remarks and intermediate conclusion Mathematics is the language of the Technical Process and we teach them to our children from an early age. They show an astonishing descriptive power of the physical world and suggest that they constitute the language in which "the great book of nature" was written (idea that we attribute to Galileo 1564-1642). In reality, mathematics is capable of describing some inert aspects of the planet quite well, the physical systems not disturbed by living activity, but they turn out to be unable to describe living creatures or living processes. On the other hand, they are of a formidable efficiency to disarticulate matter, to manipulate it and to develop machines and other technical objects. Westerners are fascinated by their own technological power and in the middle of the twentieth century, successfully launches program to go onto the moon! However, I wonder for whose benefit. For the benefit of what? As the ecological crisis, a crime against Nature and against humanity, monopolized almost all my attention, came to me during my research this nagging question: "Who benefits from the crime? ». In this technical dizziness, the meaning of life is sometimes forgotten. The presence of life on Earth too: scientific and technical developments lead to increasingly unbearable ecological and human disasters: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then Chernobyl and Fukushima are not enough to make us understand that we no longer have the control…. Explosions from factories full of toxic chemicals (Seveso in 1976 and Lubrisol in 2019), oil spills, explosions from oil platforms, etc., etc. do not stop the "progress" of technologies. 3) Could we effect change in the state of consciousness? Worse, we accuse ourselves of being the perpetrators of these crimes, and we build the general feeling that humans are destroying themselves and nature, thus fueling a deep hatred for ourselves. It is the worst thing that can happen to us to weaken us and leave Technician System free to continue its expansion. I think we should urgently rediscover the feeling of our beauty and of our power as Living, in order to firmly limit technological threats. At this point, good intentions and hard work will not be enough, but we need to change our state of consciousness. (Added in May 2020: Could a virus open our eyes on what is happening?) The Technique captured and hypnotized us; we must find the means of bewitching ourselves to regain an awareness of our living nature and of our radical interdependence with all life on Earth. An intellectual understanding of our situation as presented in this PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 28 sur 49 article is not enough; it can only be an invitation to implement practices that help shifts of consciousness - as will be detailed in another paper. Note that “shift of consciousness” easily lets imagine trance states or mystical experiences, and I would like to dispel a misunderstanding: shifts of consciousness can be done in simple manner through contact with Nature and by reconciling ourselves with our animal nature. We also need, I believe, to rediscover the enjoyment of our primordial manual technical intelligence in contact with raw natural elements. III. The foundations for a new perspective on humans and their capacity for transformation: paleoecopsychology and paleosophy The Technical process implemented into our ape ancestors makes us human beings. But, for some time now, this alliance between the Living Process and the Technical Process has taken a turn and dangerously imbalances us. I believe that the Technique has made our human wealth for hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years, and that it is currently making us rushing toward our own destruction. Or, it challenges us. Instead of fearing catastrophe or a collapse, I see a situation which requires us to better know ourselves, to discover our dual nature, living and technical, in order to be able to become even more fully human. This challenge is twofold because we must find in us the strength to free ourselves from the excessive power of technology and its growing autonomy, and - in the same time - discover how the Technical Process endows us with qualities that we can now develop for the benefit of Human Life and Life on Earth. 1. Ecopsychology Fundamental questions such as "Where do we come from?", "Who are we?”, and "Where are we going?” determine our physical relationship to the world. This is why it is so important to return to these questions to face the ecological crisis. This is why ecopsychology integrates knowledge of the human psyche and environmental issues in the same approach. 1) main ideas I found in ecopsychology Among the important points that ecopsychology invites to consider, there are the following ideas (see for example “What is ecopsychology?”, John Davis, 2006):  We are part of nature.  We behave as if this was not the case and this leads to suffering for humans (alienation, despair, depression, addictions, health problems...) and for nature (major destructions of all kinds). PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 29 sur 49  We have an essential need to situate ourselves in a cosmos in which we have our place. We need to situate ourselves in a natural place of the earth that we know better than any other place. A place to root ourselves into the Earth. 2) The specificity of ecopsychology The specificity of ecopsychology is to include the mental health of humans and the environmental cause in the same approach. Consequently, it states that:  Reconnecting humans to nature is essential for healing both. This reconnection includes to be able to reconnect the natural world and also, doing work on our pain about the ecological destruction (see Joanna Macy, “The work that connects”, 2008), transforming therapeutic approaches into ecotherapeutic approaches ; it means to take into account that the psyche is anchored in the Earth, it emerges from the Earth. If we separate the psyche from the Earth, then we are amputating something vital.  To protect nature, let's stop playing with people's fear and anguish (by showing images of destruction: pollution, destruction of nature, global warming, loss of biodiversity, etc.), blame our way of life, guilt and coercive nature conservation programs; and rather appeal to joy, our love for the Earth and for humans, our taste for life, for adventure, appeal to Love. 3) Political dimension of ecopsychology The most radical ecopsychology (Fisher, 2002) also questions the political, economic, sociological causes of the human and ecological crisis. Modern Western society generates a lot of stress and favors addictions: humans become frustrated consumers; they consume a lot of things but they find no meaning in their lives. To understand us - humans living in the XXI century - in our western society, we must understand capitalism, because it participates in shaping our psyche. Capitalism transforms all that exists into merchant and empty objects. Our materialistic civilization denies any intangible dimension and considers anything like dead things made of dead particles. We become frustrated and servile because we are unable to take care of our aspiration to feel alive (in contact with the mystery of being alive). Instead, we are serving a political, economic and financial "system" that violates the laws of Life. 4) The question of technique Some authors have emphasized the technical dimension of this capitalist society and the responsibility of our technological power in the ecological crisis (Glendinning, 1992 and Gledinning, 1995). However, from my point of view these authors do not push the analysis far enough to be able to measure the full extent of the grip of the Technician System on our lives, and not far enough to glimpse the autonomy of the Technical Process which is at work, nor the way it makes us humans. Paleoecopsychology wants to complete the ecopsychological approach by examining more deeply the relationship between all the components already highlighted (divorce PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 30 sur 49 between humans and Nature, stress, depression, ecological disasters, feeling of helplessness, etc.) and the astonishing development of modern technologies, not to say their "tech-infestation" in our lives (Tibon-Cornillot, 2003). 2. Paleosophy in action and paleoecopsychology 1) The new ideas brought by paleosophy  We are, from the origins of humanity living beings and hosts of the Technical Process. We are human because of this hybridization, but it puts us in a challenging situation because we must constantly maintain a fragile balance between Life and Technology, in us, and on Earth.  We must also take into account in our psychological approach to the ecological crisis that since the beginning of the Neolithic the Technical Process pushed us in traumatic situations, which also participated in forming our psyche, in particular, what I called the Dramatic Change, and then the First Crime and the wars which have since punctuated Human Life on Earth. This is why I propose to add several important components to ecopsychology and therefore to ecotherapeutic practices. I think we must experience our deep technical part to become able to know who we are and choose the type of technology we want in our lives and on earth. With that objective in mind, that I suggest that we develop therapeutic practices which allow in particular:  To reconnect with our technical nature with love. The ultimate goal is to find in us and on Earth a balance between the Living Process and the Technical Process.  To reconnect with the creative dimension of human life, including technical creativity when it participates to life.  To escape the liberticidal constraints of the Technician System to experience other states of consciousness and then be able to make free choices for our life (quite simply by “disconnecting” from our multifunction mobile phone for a week or more).  To rediscover the love of our body and a natural sexuality In any case it seems interesting to keep in mind that we are always in a precarious balance: that is the nature of life!! We must find a balance between our fragility and our power, and find a balance between our living intelligence and our technical intelligence. Today we have deviated dangerously from these two balances. 2) Rediscovering the balance between FRAGILE and POWERFUL Like all living beings, we are far from being in a stable equilibrium: at any moment, we can die, and life consists first in staying alive: eating, resting, protecting oneself from the cold or from predators, and feel the joy to be together. To feed and protect ourselves, we must experience hunger and danger: we must feel and take into account our fragility. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 31 sur 49 We can (could) also experience our infinite power: because we are part of Nature. “We are” also the power of the lion lurking and which can count on his flair and his muscular power to catch the gazelle. “we are” the giant sequoia populated by a multitude of animals which resists the most powerful wind, “we are” the bench of tunas and dolphins that hunt together in the Great Pacific Ocean, “we are” the baby squirrel carried in the arms of its mother… But humanity knows other forms of weaknesses and powers that the other living beings of the Planet do not know, because we have become ingenious. Our power has become enormous and our fragility too, in the same proportions. We can fly at 10,000 meters above sea level and we can easily fall too. We control nuclear reactions in reactors, and sometimes we no longer control them. But a drama is playing out because what we take for our power is the power of the Technician System, and our fragility is the fragility of all Life on Earth. In the midst of an ecological crisis, we must regain the humility of the living and once again feel our natural fragility, but we must also dare to see and feel our fragility induced by the technical environment in which we live. And take the necessary measures to protect ourselves. 3) Rediscovering the balance between LIVING Process and Technical Process We are always seeking to keep our balance, and this is what life is all about. The game - the adventure of being human beings - consists in cultivating our technical part modestly in order to always respect our living part. If we are not able to keep the balance, the human adventure will end to give way to the adventure of robots (living robots: not purely technical objects, but living beings reduced to their technical functions). Why not? But, for my part, I love human beings, and living nature, and I can see the ecological crisis as the opportunity to become more aware of who we are, and become more aware of the beauty of life on Earth. And feel the joy of being alive in a living world. 4) Rediscover the meaning of life and enjoyment of life Who are we? What is our deepest desire? To serve the Technical Process or to serve the Living Process? The two are not exclusive, if the Technical Process is contained within certain limits by developing only “soft” technologies. We have the possibility to live our living part (which is much more than our animal part): our capacity to experience the sense of harmony, beauty and to participate in a creative way of organizing the world. We can paint, sculpt, and build circles of huge stones, giant statues facing the ocean, giant lines on the mountains, engraving stones in the mountains. We have the capacity to honor life, the beauty of creation. We have the gift of celebration: we know how to honor the gods and goddesses, plants and animals, rivers and mountains; we know how to honor our own beauty and our magnificent body. We know how to tell stories. We are poets. Western civilization by giving in to the desire to become powerful through technology has almost completely lost this ability to be happy by simply honoring the natural beauty PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 32 sur 49 of life on Earth and our craft intelligence (the power we have in our clever hands and actually in our whole body). It is not a question of rejecting the technique, on the contrary: I propose that we become aware of our technical intelligence as a gift, which we can also honor as a great gift. We can build canoes, lures to catch octopuses and flutes to sing with the wind. We can build cathedrals! But the question is now urgent: do we want to participate in the unlimited unfolding of the Technical Process even if it means becoming its slaves, or do we want to save this unique gift in the living kingdom of being able to celebrate the beauty of being alive and human? I believe that poetry will save the world (Siméon, 2015). A poetic attitude is the art of feeling intensely the beauty of our dual nature when we remain in balance, the art of rejoicing to be able to live this adventure: a human life on Earth, aware of being the hosts and the Guardians of a balance between the Living Process and the Technical Process. "I was invited to the party of life and I played as much as I could." Rabindranath Tagore Our imbalance has only one cause: we forgot to live as poets (read the excellent and humorous book by Pierre Thuillier "La grande Implosion" (Thuillier, 1995). We are not in the world to succeed in a professional life, a life as a couple, a life of this or that, and even less to build technical objects and serve them!!! We are here only to experience with our whole being, in our skin body, in our natural body, the fragile and powerful beauty of life, and its amplification by our conscious presence. To experience its deep beauty and joy, it is necessary to live in Peace and Love. And to live completely embodied. 5) Living in a living body "Knowledge is only a rumor, as long as it is not in the muscle". New Guinea proverb a) to be more aware of our bodies We can choose to live consciously in contact with our own body, the body of other humans, and the body of the Nature. We can be more conscious of our technical intelligence that manifests itself through our hands and our whole body. To be successful, to be able to feel our intelligent body in relation with all the bodies of the earth, in order to feel the joy of being humans, we must become more embodied. So we need to: · Reconnect to nature: to our skin body and to our larger body, that is to say Nature: the trees close to me, the wind that caress my skin, birdsongs… PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 33 sur 49 · Favor manual activities in contact with nature and the manufacture of soft technologies which really serve human life and do not conflict with the life of other living species. · Develop a human culture, which is an essential and incessant reminder of our belonging to the living world, and a resistance against the temptation to let the Technical Process take up too much power. To reach this aim, we can dance and sing, play percussions and other musics, sing lullabies to babies, sculpt, paint, weave, build houses, make jewelry, make seasonal rituals to honor the cycles of life, etc… · Deeply love our body, take care of it. · Cultivate the refinements of love for a fulfilling sexuality. Make love with love for ourselves. b) Our body: a creative constraint We have a body. It imposes many constraints. But the creativity of the natural world is made possible by the presence of constraints. The magnificent constraint that the universe gives itself is matter. Many fabulous materials are found on Earth (molecules, water, warmth, and a mysterious power to assemble molecules and to transform them). They generate life, which generates its own new constraint: a living body. What could be more restrictive than a living body that must resist against destruction at every moment by breathing, drinking, eating, and searching food and shelters? But is it a resistance against death or could we consider that it is a body which generates its own forces: to maintain itself, to grow and to evolve!!! But sometimes also die, the pinnacle of renewal. To be embodied in a human body means to have the opportunity to know happiness and joy and love, but ALSO to experience fear, hunger, cold, doubt ... That is why our experience on Earth is a dance and a risk. Risk of dying or growing up, risk of singing or leaving, risk of sinking or embellishing, at any time playing with light and shade. It is to enjoy every dawn and every night (‘Because the night belongs to us!’ (Patti Smith, 1978), fortunately there are still poets). In order to find a harmonious way of living in our body, it seems to me that the simplest way is to find the pleasure of dancing and singing. And it will easier to find this pleasure within a community that shares songs and dances. And if this community lives in a space of beloved nature, in dialogue with nature, the dances and songs will be anchored in the earth, in nature and will nourish humans and the Earth itself. Living in a living body means above all for human beings, staying in inner balance with the Technical Process. That means devoting time, attention to it. It is not an individual process, it is above all a collective journey, it means we need to rebuild a culture. 6) Rediscover a culture which celebrates life and binds together human communities We need to rediscover the primary meaning of the word culture, which is a living anchor in the Living Earth. To know what it is, we just have to look at the dances of peoples not unbalanced by the Technical Process. Particularly all the "savages" that we encountered during our distant expeditions over the past centuries. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 34 sur 49 Our culture, as I explained about our prehistory, is the expression of this ABSOLUTELY vital need to remain connected to Life with the presence in us of the Technical Process which tends to separate us from it since the Neolithic. I like to see human cultures as an expression of the Earth itself and a hymn to the Life who became aware of itself thanks to the implantation of the Technical Process in us. However, during the last few millennia, and especially during the last 4 centuries, the meteoric progress of the Technical Process and its invasion in all aspects of human life have transformed the western culture into a vehicle of the Technician System to the glory of the Technician System... It is not the case for many traditional cultures but they are more and more destroyed by the western culture empowered by the technical system. 7) Live lovingly What distinguishes animals from humans is that love becomes a "conscious" act, and in particular it is present in the mind of humans that making love is only rarely for reproductive purposes, but mainly consists in "taking pleasure”, that is to say to honor life by doing “the beast with two backs”. Making love gives a unique answer to our existential questions: "Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?" (Gauguin, 1897). To make love!!! To love to make love! To make love with love! To put it at the center of one’s life: to make love with other humans and make love to the Earth: it is to mimic the act that one day allowed a man and a woman to give birth to us. In addition, the female genital is very sacred: that is where we snuck one day to come to earth! For a man sexuality is not only penetrating the woman of his taut sex: it is to penetrate her with its whole body and his soul too. That is why making love is impossible for a robot. An act requires awareness, involvement, and absolute presence. However, more and more men make love as robots because they have a simplified and very wrong idea of what is love due to the repeated assaults of the Technician System, especially via porn videos. I wish people could rediscover how to make love genuinely, deeply, is fully committed. For a man it is to take a narrow, soft and warm passage, a sacred passage that can lead to peace, love and to a feeling of total plenitude if the man is fully committed in this act. Fully committing means to leave the dualistic spirit of Western civilization and rediscover the complementarity of male and female poles: to penetrate then does not consist in forcing a passage, but on the contrary to unite as closely as possible with the other - and the Universe. Penetrate without violating. Engage in mystery. Honor women as goddesses so that they can honor men as gods: why do men no longer know this? Making Love is a powerful act: it is a way of connecting with oneself, with another human, with Nature, with Life and with the whole cosmos. And you don’t need any tool to make love: NO TECHNICAL tools at all. Not even words, not even thoughts. Nothing. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 35 sur 49 We do not need anything to make love. Above all, we need NOTHING to make love. Just inhabit our body and let the desire dance in us. It is the most rebalancing activity that exists. And as we have seen, it is a specifically human activity since we are the only living species that has frequent sexual intercourses without reproductive aims (women are fertile only a few days a month, but most of us have the desire to make love much more often than that). It is not surprising that sexuality is an area strongly impacted by technical developments since the Neolithic. It is the most serious dizzying and vicious circle: the more the men develop the techniques, the less they are fulfilled sexually and vice versa. We talked about the impact of wars on libido and the availability of men since the Neolithic. However, if we look today, in France among others, countries having recently gone through a sexual liberation (?), we can observe a huge uneasiness in sexuality of which certain symptoms are:  The massive number of visits of the pornographic Internet sites  The decline in male fertility  The number of problems sexual: erection problems, premature ejaculation, lack of pleasure, painful sexual intercourse, etc.  Fear of sexual intercourse  Pedophilia  Rape, domestic violence Etc… Reconnecting with a loving and poetic approach to human life constitutes the basis of a paleoecosophy to invent and a paleoecopsychological perspective. It means committing to new practices in our lives, according to our choices. For human beings who suffer too much because of the current imbalance, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to find a balance alone. In this case, it would be desirable, from my point of view, for psychologists, psychotherapists, doctors to be able to take into account the root causes of the ecological imbalance that is discussed in this article to welcome and listen to these people. IV. A paleoecotherapeutic approach A paleoecotherapist is a therapist who welcomes his client with the tools that are his as a therapist, while integrating the elements of paleosophy and paleoecopsychology in his listening to the clients. Techniques specific to paleoecotherapy: paleoecotherapy may include new practices which sometimes resemble art therapy, but in a different spirit. Painting, dancing, singing, sculpting, modeling the earth, weaving fibers, but also building bows, going trout fishing, lighting a campfire, digging a well, making jewelry, raw mud houses, bamboo bikes, all these activities will be regenerative and likely to bring about states of consciousness more anchored in matter, life and our manual intelligence. It all depends on how they are guided. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 36 sur 49 The specificity of paleoecotherapeutic practices will be deepened in another article. V. General conclusion to this article Life on Earth is a self-creative process whose dynamics allow life to perpetuate, diversify, evolve and occupy more and more space on our planet. I call it Living Process. There is another self-creative process with these same qualities; it is the “Technical Process”. It established itself in a primate species, which agreed to become its host. This hybridization are hominids, and humans. The manifestation of the Technical Process in us makes us humans. And for a long time this hybridization was a successful symbiosis, a fine balance which gave rise to our human specificities: the development of technical skills, the development of different cultures, the taste for sexual relations, self-awareness, the sense of beauty, poetic attitude. A wonderful adventure took off on planet Earth. However, all adventure is spiced with dangerous situations and we are currently in a dangerous episode of the human epic: the Technical Process tends to become autonomous and enslave us for the benefit of its development, to the detriment of basic human needs, and at the expense of other forms of Life on Earth. We must quickly restore a balance; otherwise, we will become slaves of the Technician System on an ecologically ravaged planet. Once aware on this, we have a choice for our future. And this situation constitutes a good test: what is our deep desire? A good test to evaluate our true freedom. Conceiving the ecological crisis in this way makes it possible to avoid moralizing and guilt-inducing ecological discourses, which ultimately are counterproductive because they lead more or less explicitly to hate humans. My essential assumption is that if we simply observe that “human being” now consists in crossing an area of great danger. And if we cross it without judgments, then the ecological crisis will resolve itself. For when we are able to listen to the Earth weep in us and listen to the Homo habilis playing in us, we are able to consciously nourish these aspects of ourselves with Love. Then we now have to overcome the worst trap of the Technical Process that unsettles and overwhelms us: it is accusing ourselves of being the destroyers of nature when it is “it” that transforms the biosphere into a technosphere unfit for complex life forms. Listen to what we feel, focus on our abilities to love: love our body, love us as a whole, love others, love the Earth, love Life, love our technical intelligence and love love, and then we will find the balance that allows human life to be a fabulous experiment that is worth living. The difficulty is to find what can trigger the transformation: paleoecopsychology offers the theoretical framework and practices likely to trigger a behavior "in love" for oneself and Nature while being respectful of our hybrid nature. The aim is a paleoecosophy: to PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 37 sur 49 find a new balance, in us and in relation with all living creatures and with the earth, between our living momentum and our technical creativity. Paleoecopsychology and what could be paleoecotherapeutic practices are explored in the article following this one (to appear). ANNEX MATHEMATICS ARE THE LANGUAGE OF THE Technical Process I. How did they impose themselves on us without us realizing anything?! At the beginning the simple calculation was used to measure: to measure the area of a field, to weigh sacks of wheat, to measure pieces of fabric, to estimate the volume of a jar... Calculating simple things remains a concrete action, related to the tangible reality of living things. Around 30,000 BC excavations attest to the emrgence of the ability to "count". However, counting devices have been discovered in South Africa and date from the beginning of the Stone Age (D'errico et al, 2012). Some humans have therefore shown early dispositions to count from an age that cannot yet be specified. Ultimately, the dates do not matter: the event took place and the beings-in-the-process-of-becoming-humans know how to count. At least some of them. At any point in the history of humanity some individuals more than others allowed the development of the Technical Process in their brains and developed quite exceptional mathematical abilities. Often these human beings were more disconnected from terrestrial and bodily reality than most people were and capable of great abstraction. Mathematicians can escape natural and bodily contingencies to put all their energy into an immaterial activity, a kind of automatic writing under the dictation of the Technical Process. For Plato, geometry, no more than the other mathematical sciences, is not an end in itself, but only a prerequisite intended to test and develop the capacity of abstraction of the student, i.e. his aptitude to go beyond the stage of sensations that keep us in contact with the natural and material world to rise to the pure intelligible. Obviously, Plato was seized and very inspired by the Technical Process. So much so that for him the essential reality is invisible and that our senses deceive us…. WHY would the essence of the invisible world be geometric? Where does such an idea come from? It seems strange to me because it is not something that all humans easily share. Despite the education of all kindergarten children in geometry, the learning of arithmetic, then the math lessons, there is a large number of people who remain radically recalcitrant to all of this… As if it were a question of a foreign element, which tries to impose itself. Actually, I believe that is what it is. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 38 sur 49 Mathematics makes it possible to build theories on the ultimate "reality", that which seems to escape our common sense, and build experimental devices to prove that the theory is right. For example, we build particle accelerators to find the strange particles produced by mathematical theory…. In fact, accelerators, which are TOTALLY ABSOLUTELY ARTIFICIAL tools built on mathematical bases, produce conditions that do not exist on Earth and probably not in the universe. And in these 100% technical conditions we find the predicted particles… and science claims to describe the world as it is “objectively”, that is to say independently of the presence of the observer. Actually the observer is not only present, but he has built everything he describes! For me it proves indeed that the mathematical language is the language of the Technical Process: it allows the construction of theories and the construction of machines to prove that the theory is right. What happens is that the theory and the experimental machines belong to the Technician System and that the "natural" language of the Technician System is mathematics, therefore, "it works". However, what does this have to do with life on Earth, with my life, with the reality that is mine in each of my gestures, my hopes, my meditations in nature? What connection with the nature of Nature? It is clear to me that the technique brings about a reality in conformity with ITS TECHNICAL NATURE thanks to a language, which is ITS LANGUAGE (mathematics). However, this reality at the current stage of its development is very incompatible with human realities and Life on Earth in general. Unfortunately, the Technical Process has locked us in its technological and mathematical logic, and here is what we can read these days in a popular science journal (spring 2019): THE PLACE OF MATHEMATICS IN THE WORLD TODAY Below are three extracts from a text by G. Métivier published in a CNRS journal (2010). Extrait n°1 – Métivier, 2010. I repeat what the text says: "the playground of mathematics has become the whole world". I do not know what the author of this sentence really means, but I find it very correct. I give to it the following meaning: mathematics is installed in some welcoming brains. They spread thanks to the help of the precursors who wrote great mathematical PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 39 sur 49 treatises (Thales, Pythagoras, Euclid and some others), allowed to found schools to teach this language to other receptive humans. Then mathematics began to take shape in very particular places, sheltered from the gaze of ordinary people: scientific laboratories. There, they were embodied in experimental devices and theories, then in measuring instruments (the clock for example), of observation (the microscope). Then mathematics came out of the laboratories: when for example everyone could have a watch to count time…. Extrait n°2 – Métivier, 2010. Could it be otherwise? Mathematics is the language of the Technical Process and is largely the means by which computers came to exist. So yes, mathematicians are comfortable with their computers! But mathematics could continue to lead us astray: Extrait n°3 – Métivier, 2010. The Technical Process is very strong: it advances as a seducer and its language is always mathematical! While they are strictly unable to account for the Living Process on Earth, they coo us that they can make models to quantify and make predictions… Yes quantify! Mathematics has only done this from the start: quantify. And we still let ourselves be seduced. I am flabbergasted. II. Growing abstraction Mathematics is the language of the Technical Process. The Technical Process is just a "mystery" like life that finds a way to manifest itself on Earth. But it is not part of the living reality of the Earth. This is why when it is implanted in the brains of certain PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 40 sur 49 humans, and these humans start to speak this language, their words are "abstract": they do not fit with the reality that we experience. And the more humans acquire this abstract language, the more they themselves lose contact with the Living. They are able to mentally entering in very abstract universes. This is not the case for elementary calculations which remain linked to the real life (measuring a field), but all the subsequent mathematical developments seem to produce very abstract worlds. We welcomed the language of the Technical Process in our brain and it actualizes in us. The beginning of modern science: how the Technical Process opens up ways to enter the reality of the living world The decisive "progress" of the Renaissance will be technical progress, which will allow the expansion within Europe and throughout the world of technical progress, in other words the rapid invasion of the entire planet by the Technical Process. The two major advances are printing and navigation. a) Maritime power From the Renaissance, Western Europeans had a great naval superiority over the rest of the world, and they had weapons on their ships that are more effective than other countries. They have not only a military superiority, but also a scientific and technical superiority which gives them confidence and pushes them to adventure on the seas. A spirit of conquest and the prospect of enriching themselves of course drive them. The discovery of America and the conquest of the great colonial empires marked the beginning of considerable prosperity and power for Flanders, France, Germany, England and especially Spain. However, what makes their journeys possible is their technical superiority with the caravel and the stern rudder. Moreover, ships are equipped with rifles and cannons. Countless peaceful cultures inhabited Earth with respect for life and lasted for millions of years, but when the West acquires the power to kill with guns and armed ships set off to explore the rest of the planet, they set out with cannons and rifles. In what state of mind are the navigators to go meet other peoples on the planet? I believe that we have destroyed many of the cultures that we have encountered without even having really encountered them. Obviously, for our brave sailors, it was urgent that these savages be converted and disciplined. We were already rigidified by our technical culture and everything that accompanies it (shameful and abused body, desire to be able to be safe, greed, arrogance and above all ignorance because we had for several millennia already lost the memory of a life in balance and we were blinded by our technical powers). b) Printing The printing press constitutes a decisive step in several respects in the expansion of the Technical Process. Written language is becoming common and here are the corollaries of its success:  Oral transmissions will gradually disappear.  There is a weakening of human contact in education between teacher and pupil, whereas it was formerly essential. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 41 sur 49  A very large part of the messages is lost …because all that cannot be written disappears (body language for example which always has an important part in an oral communication cannot be transcribed).  The significant dissemination of the same information ensures the homogenization of society.  There is a petrification of knowledge, since, once it is written, its transmission is always identical (without transformation during the passage of knowledge from one man to another).  Exchanging words with a human means entering into a dialogue with the other (even if only one of the two speaks with articulated words). With the printing press, the dialogue disappears. When I speak to someone, what I say is largely determined by their reactions to what I say: the encounter is always a creative adjustment between the human beings. The content of my "message" therefore does not come from me, but from our meeting. Such a dialogue is not possible with a book. The evolution of knowledge with printing, traveling around the world and the Renaissance (As a reminder): ⇨ 1451: beginnings of printing ⇨ 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in America. ⇨ Copernicus (1493-1543) ❖ 1560-1580: Peak of the witch hunt. ⇨ Kepler (1571-1630) ⇨ Descartes: 1596-1650 ⇨ Newton (1642-1727) ▪ 1522, Magellan, first circumnavigation. ⇨ 1610 Galileo publishes his book c) During this “Renaissance” period many will die. Indeed, the Renaissance and the birth of modern science is done by violently eradicating the proponents of popular knowledge and beliefs, to leave room for the new man, inspired by the Technical Process, but above all blinded by the Technical Process. Because at this time when our great “geniuses” were born and worked, it is not a new knowledge that was added, or came to dialogue with other human knowledge, it is a "knowledge" which imposed itself as the only legitimate one. Tens of thousands of women were executed, accused of witchcraft, tortured, murdered, men also, much less numerous. Witchcraft trials began in the 15th century (in the 1430s) and developed in the 16th and 17th centuries. Between 1430 and 1630, the European continent experienced 110,000 witchcraft trials (uncertain number, maybe more?), Half of which ended in a death sentence. Midwives have been responsible for birth for centuries and female knowledge will be marginalized. Women are accused of killing children at birth, and they are accused of killing children without baptism and of cooking evil to make ointments and magic filters. Most of the "witches" were actually midwives and healers. They were chased because they held a pharmacopoeia and ancestral knowledge that the theologians who then tried to establish the foundations of science and knowledge, did not recognize. In the name of science and "reason" the Technical Process at the maximum of its destructive power were seeding medieval culture and were sweeping the "superstitions". The PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 42 sur 49 obvious reason is a cold and devastating reason, disconnected from the reality of the vast majority of human beings. It is widely imposed AGAINST HUMANS. But it won the game. Why can't we see what is going on? The women in charge of natural knowledge to welcome human life on Earth (babies) and take care of Life was destroyed by men who lived in the era when modern sciences were born ... And we talk about “humanism”. d) Witches will be burned but not Galileo, nor his successors Our scientific approach is 400 years old: the founders of modern science Galileo, Descartes, Mersenne, Pascal, Gassendi are totally in the grip of the Technical Process. Galileo managed to sow confusion, including in the mind of the Grand Inquisitor, and convinced his time that the world could be mathematized. He was aware that nature could not be, just as Aristotle was aware of it. Galileo agreed with the neo-Aristotelians that it is impossible to find mathematics in the ordinary world. It is impossible to account for the undulating reality of the physical world. But Galileo is an ambitious man and, above all, in the absolute grip of the Technical Process, this is why despite the arguments that he cannot refute, he succeeds in a sort of extraordinary sleight of hand: instead of studying nature, he will study small manipulated extracts from nature. Like a ball on an inclined wooden board. And the illusion is perfect: the ball seems very concrete, the inclined board too…. However, they actually are geometric beings who are embodied fairly well and seem to be “real”. They are between two worlds: not perfectly mathematical, but more completely natural. They will be the tunnel to pass from mathematical abstraction to the concrete reality of the natural world. Galileo dug a tunnel, a point of contact between the very abstract world of mathematics and the concrete world of the living. Once the path opened, mathematics rushed. Many other mathematicians will agree with the idea that mathematics cannot account for the immense complexity of reality (René Thom for example). Nevertheless, those who are "inspired" by the Technical Process participate in their development. Galileo's work is a very large opening, a giant tunnel: an inclined plane ordered from the best craftsmen, a most perfectly spherical sphere, a compass for calculate the angle of the inclined plane, all sheltered from wind, sun, rain, dead leaves ... in short, in a small enclosed place well protected from the Living… Then, thanks to this experimental device, Galileo establishes a relationship between weight, inclination and distance traveled: the first mathematical equation. The scientific laboratory was born. It is a place physically protected from the living world, but it is also theoretically protected from criticism by a second sleight of hand. The scientific laboratory can only study elements of reality that are cut from the rest of reality to make "objects of study": these elements become non-natural objects, but scientists will claim they discovered the true nature of things because they have an objective method. In addition, while their method destroys the natural reality of which they claim to account, they base all the legitimacy of their approach on the very fact of having cut the links between what they are studying and the larger reality. As if the links did not belong to reality. This is also why science is said to be "objective": it only studies objects. Science will break natural bonds and study detached, that is to say abstract, objects. She will deny that the nature of Nature are these very links…. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 43 sur 49 From then the paradox keeps us in the illusion because the laboratory takes the form of concrete objects apparently because materialized. We create a society which is said to be “materialist”: in truth the laboratory is completely abstract and it brings about a TECHNICAL reality. The so-called materialist society destroys nature, and through the tunnel opened by Galileo, it is dead matter that enters our lives and stifles us. The paradox is extremely trapping: today we pride ourselves on all the connected objects that we make while in our lives we suffer from our disconnection from the living world. We are deeply disconnected and increasingly “abstract beings” ourselves. In addition, the technical discourse explains to us that we are more and more connected and "augmented". Who benefits from the illusion? You just have to see what is proliferating on Earth: internet connections, cables, telecommunication satellite, electromagnetic waves carrying information: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth… We are indeed connected: but connected to the technical world that we serve. The scientific laboratory is a world separate from the real world. In addition, it is the place for the reconstruction of links of a new kind. It is the entry point to the Technical Process and the beginning of the general reconstruction of the world. III. Who benefits from the crime? What benefits from the crime? The witches have been burned and Galileo can continue his quiet work in his exile in Florence and Siena. The land is cleaned and ready to welcome the Technical Process in the form of new scientific discoveries, in very large numbers. Moreover, all of them are intimately linked to new techniques, which participate in making other scientific discoveries thanks to the means of observation, which are being built, and to the technological transformations, which will shake up the whole world…. 1637 Du discours de la méthode, R. Descartes (1596-1650) 1643 Invention du baromètre par E. Torricelli (1608-1647) 1687 Principe d’attraction universelle, I. Newton (1642-1727) Descartes' thinking, among others, will have a major impact on the rest of our history. DESCARTES René Descartes (1596-1650): French mathematician, physicist and philosopher is considered one of the founders of modern science and philosophy. In the eyes of Descartes and his time, philosophy encompasses science and the study of all nature. Descartes thinks that philosophy is like a tree; the roots are metaphysics and the trunk is physics. The branches of the tree represent all the other sciences. - Physics, the science of nature is mechanistic because all the objects of nature come under the laws of extension and movement. In other words, the world has no soul, it is matter and functions. - Matter is reduced to geometric extent and not to a set of sensitive qualities (it is not in its essence, hard, heavy, colorful…): this is one of the aspects of abstraction that science operates. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 44 sur 49 - Matter designates a substance extended in length, width and depth. (x,y,z) !! Space therefore becomes a mathematical datum represented by three axes. It is now geometric and mathematical space that appears to constitute matter. It is an abstract, homogeneous, isotropic space, without quality. - The living body is a machine that we can understand according to a mechanical model. - The animal is nothing other than a pure mechanism, devoid of sensitivity, thought and language, the automata produced by nature. It does not suffer if it is tortured. This is his thesis on the animal-machine. Descartes defines thought as the means by which to access what he called truth. The body is excluded. He conceives a very abstract knowledge, which only passes through the functioning of the brain. From this way of seeing the world we have built a civilization which abandons the body in favor of brain functioning (as if brain functioning could be correct in a body which is not full of life, but this indeed still constitutes, today, the foundation of the education we give to our children, even if other philosophers had stated a more balanced vision with the famous " Mens sana in corpore sano " which means “A healthy mind in a healthy body.”) Descartes wants to help us escape the arduousness of life and the efforts it takes to stay alive. It inaugurates a new era where the concern of humans is the well-being of humans without further consideration for other living creatures, which are only machines. This will be an important element of our modernity and things have not changed much since, or even worsen (if we think of the living conditions of animals in industrial farms for example). It is an attitude of withdrawal and fear that leads to extreme selfishness that is called anthropocentrism and sometimes humanism. Such a conception of man destroys solidarity between humans, breaks the bonds of brotherhood with animals and lets the Technician System take on a great power. But the grip of the Technical Process gives rise to more and more techniques: Sciences and Techniques progress on the same bases and with the same logic. _______________ The eighteenth century _______________ With the technical progress of navigation, the exploration of the planet continued more intensely than ever in the 18thcentury. Westerners indeed set off to explore the entire planet. The 18 th century will be the century of scientific explorations with the mapping of the world: measuring it and representing it on maps, which essential documents for the future) and the establishment of colonial empires. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 45 sur 49 - 1766-1769 World tour of Bougainville - 1768-1779 World tour of Cook - 1785 The Expedition of La Pérouse Then the world is racing (I was going to write "the machine is racing" ...). Technical progress very decisive for the future is made, in particular the development of the steam engine, but also the cinema that will be a major instrument of the Technical Process. 1776 Steam engine by J. Watts (1736-1819) 1828 First synthesis of an organic molecule: urea, by F. Wöhler (1800-1882) 1859 On the Origin of Species (published in 1859), written by Charles Darwin (18091882) 1865 Publication of the discoveries on the genetics of Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) 1869 Isolation of DNA 1895 Invention of cinema by the Lumière brothers 1905 Photoelectric effect. That year, Einstein offered four articles that were to revolutionize physics! The first puts forward an astonishing hypothesis. While for several decades, physicists have admitted that light is a wave, Einstein suggested that light had to be considered as a particle. This allows, he says, to explain a still mysterious phenomenon - the photoelectric effect. Then… impossible to list the advances of the Technical Process in the XXth century: it's a tsunami!! The Earth we live on is disfigured. The Technical Process get the upper hand over the Living Process. Human beings live in an increasingly abstract world, that is to say cut off from natural reality making us mostly uprooted beings: we no longer live in a natural place but in "non-places", anonymous working and living spaces unrelated to the land, fields, streams, or the changing colors of the seasons, which until recently punctuated the lives of our ancestors. CONTACT All your criticism or kind questions are welcome: please send them to me at the following address: catherine.thomas@u-bordeaux.fr Anyone interested in research and experiments in the spirit of paleosophy is welcome to participate to living experiments. Contact me at: catherine.thomas@u-bordeaux.fr ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to everyone who supported me when I was discouraged from getting to write something. Thank you also to those who have read and corrected me. Thank you to the university and the research team to which I belong, because they allowed me to conduct not very academic research in an academic setting. Thank you also to all the students I have had who challenged me in one way or another. PALEOSOPHY – Catherine R. THOMAS Page 46 sur 49 BIBLIOGRAPHY Abram, D. (1997). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-thanhuman world. Vintage Books. Barrau, A. (2019). 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