I do this research of humanity’s philosophy earliest sources and read through Plato’s works again and again. It’s amazing and I want to share some “shower thoughts” about Plato. Couldn’t imagine I would say like that ever. But it will be a small input into Fermi paradox discussion. First I’ll tell you a short story from the ancient times and at the end I’ll give you new interesting reason why some Intelligent Life forms all over the world might be extremely introvert and solipsistic and not technically developed. Why there might be Intelligent civilizations but they never reach essential technical and philosophical progress. Here goes:
Socrates: “George Lucas” of 2300 years ago.
Have you heard about Theuth? The ancient philosopher who sort of “invented” main sciences earlier than 7000 years ago. During the times 100-200 years before Ancient Kingdom of Egypt.
That info comes from Plato’s dialogue “Protagoras.” In the dialogue, Socrates recounts a tale about Protagoras meeting with a king named Amanthus. During this meeting, Protagoras tells the king a story about a mythical figure named Teuth or Theuth (sometimes spelled as Thoth or Thouth), who was a deity associated with writing, wisdom, and knowledge in ancient Egyptian mythology.
According to the story, Theuth presented the king with various inventions, including mathematics, astronomy, and the alphabet. Theuth claimed that his inventions would improve the wisdom and memory of the people who used them. However, Socrates raises questions about the true nature of these inventions and whether they would truly benefit humanity as Theuth claimed, leading to a discussion about the nature of knowledge and its effects on society.
When reading original “Protagoras” you can find interesting dialogue of the King Amanthus and Theuth. King Amanthus gives a very interesting thought: “When Theuth presents him a technique of writing, to preserve knowledge, Amanthus asks him a question: Do you think you invented a good thing to preserve knowledge and make future generations wiser? You are wrong. By writing down the real knowledge we all keep inside our minds now, by taking it out of your head and your real experience, you will give birth to “wise men” that got their knowledge from written texts, they really know nothing about real life, their knowledge will become useless, and they will lose the true connection with gods. So you think you bring goodness by that, but you only make people loose real believes and knowledge.”
Now a new thought why some civilizations from other star systems might never reach our level of development:
Becoming complex and developed, people are still focused on real knowledge of “here and now”, “See it with your own eyes” living only “now” moment and having only a personal “bag” of knowledge in their heads. Almost for 10k of years ancient humans lived developed society style, but without using any good written symbol language. Complex rituals and social activity was ruled buy structure that still passed from parents to children directly “in motion” without distortion on the way.
By becoming “wise” by writing books and computer codes we opened a “demon box” of eternal knowledge and opportunities but we are doomed to have a lot of “fake” “false” “disguised” knowledge, events and information around us that we can never be sure for 100% to be real. Though partially this info brings you benefits if you work it out enough and you are lucky enough.
Maybe a lot of “wiser” that us aliens on other planets already understood that “extra knowledge” brings this stress of creating a goal to become God. (know all) Maybe they chose to live happily without inventing printed word and alphabets. So they have no signals to send to us. Like humanity did for thousands of years before some crazy mushroomed guys started to draw symbols on those stones and caves.
Maybe our written and spoken language is a type of interdenominational parasite that occupies the mind of “good feeling fella” and makes him create all this stupid dramatic life stories to feed with its energy or something like that.
And in this world there are. lot of conscious life forms but they all are born in balance with nature, and only guys like us with story creating parasites in our heads start to develop technically for maybe a single reason: to blow up the world. And this infected types of developed civilizations are much less represented in the world. That’s why Fermi paradox.
If you want to check more of same framework thought experiments about story telling nature of our reality and interdenominational alien intrusion in our every day life through story creating machine, try my other posts on Reddit or a book about basics of quantum dramaturgy.
PS: for all down voters, please remember the slogan of this sub: “We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism.” and don’t minus out the post that you just don’t agree with, that might be interesting to people who are ready to hear out unusual hypothesis. If you don’t agree, better leave a comment why!
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