Lord Shadow

Chapter 1924: Straw Dogs

Humans, like to think that the tide of history is an inexorable march from barbarity to civilization, with humans “progressing” from one stage to the next through a gradual process of enlightenment.

Azief believe that the concept of “progress” is closer to an illusion. The delusion of the modern age.

Civilization was never a permanent state of being but something which can quickly recede during a time of stress

Outside of science, progress is simply a myth

There is many dogmas to those humanist who like to think they have a rational view of the world, however their own course belief in progress is a superstition, further from the truth about human

And what are these dogmas. The central one must be that the human march of science and technology creates good for the world.

science and technology is more like a magnifying glass….for humanity “warts and all”.

The tools that humanity has created allow us to go to the Moon but also murder each other with great alacrity.

They have no morality attached to them.

In science, the growth of knowledge is cumulative.

But human life as a whole is not a cumulative activity; what is gained in one generation may be lost in the next.

In science, knowledge is an unmixed god; in ethics and politics it is bad as well as good.

Science increases human power and magnifies the flaws in human nature.

It enables us to live longer and have higher living standards than in the past.

At the same time, it allows us to wreak destruction on each other and the Earth on a larger scale than ever before.

The idea of progress rests on the belief that the growth of knowledge and the advance of the species go together, if not now, then in the long run.

The biblical myth of the Fall of Man contains the forbidden truth.

Knowledge does not make us free.

It leaves us as we have always been, prey to every kind of folly.

The same truth is found in Greek myth. The punishment of Prometheus, chained to a rock for stealing fire from the gods, was not unjust.

no one really controls its development or use; making humanity as a group closer to subjects than masters.

Technology is both a giver of good and an ongoing source of tragedy, because it is used by fallible human beings.

Those who ignore the destructive potential of future technologies can do so only because they ignore history.

Pogroms are as old as Christendom; but without railways, the telegraph and poison gas there could have been no Holocaust.

There have always been tyrannies; but without modern means of transport and communication, Stalin and Mao could not have built their gulags.

Even before the Fall, there was a sign that the world is about to descend into some kind of madness

Azief had seen countless of worlds and some of them are the parallel of this Earth. A world where in 2011, an Earth that did not get attacked by a meteor shower that brings about the Fall and rise of a new world that he lives on

He once saw a world that did not have such a thing. And one could imagine that the technology in this new world has increased and reach a higher level

And it did

But humanity is still tribal. It is not a flaw. It is a feature. It is a feature that allow humanity to survive and thrive.

But at the same time, it also has its cons.

Azief saw for himself how in that world, AI is flourishing.

But humanity did not get better.

Consumerism become the perfection of slavery and artificial intelligence and progress of the human mind was then used to kill more people, genociding a race. More and more information is conveyed, but none of it is true.

An age of lies and deceit fell on that Earth.

Progress does not mean a good thing for humanity.

Humanity’s worst crimes were made possible only by modern technology. The so-called progress

There is a deeper reason why “humanity” will never control technology.

Technology is not something that humankind can control. It as an event that has befallen the world.

Once a technology enters human life whether it be fire, the wheel, the automobile, radio, television, or the internet it changes it in ways we can never fully understand.

Nothing is more commonplace than to lament that moral progress has failed to keep pace with scientific knowledge.

If only we were more intelligent and more moral, we could use technology only for benign ends.

The fault is not in our tools, we say, but in ourselves.

In one sense this is true.

Technical progress leaves only one problem unsolved: the frailty of human nature.

Unfortunately, that problem is insoluble.

And what about the history of Earth?

The Earth.

The Earth that Azief is living in.

The time before the Ice Age.

There is a civilization.

Not one but many.

And as Azief saw through the world, a different world, a more beautiful world than the world before the Fall, Azief could not help but be entranced for a moment.

Some of these civilization before the Ice Age were primitive but not as primitive as most historian thinks.

Some built palaces and there is kings and emperors.

There is written records and countless languages. It is not a hunter gatherer society as most historians would tell you.

But Azief also noted some civilization that is quite different and quite weird compared to the other civilization

because some of them are really advanced.

The only reason why humans of the future never has been able to trace these civilization is simply because the way these civilization was created was not using the same kind of technology and they did not develop in the same way that the modern civilization develop.

The ancient people before the Ice Age did not pursue extracting resources from Earth or destroying everything they laid their eyes on

Instead, they live quite peacefully with the beast that roams the Earth and uses the nature around them without destroying them

And also because of magic.

Yes, magic.

A magical civilization could not be detected by a civilization that embark on a different way.

The modern civilization of Earth before the Fall rejects magic. They reject what they couldn’t see and couldn’t understand

But mostly because one couldn’t measure it. Magic is hard to measure. Even in those civilization who lived quite harmoniously with magic, to measure magic is still a hard thing and not absolute

Because magic is…illogical in the first place. It could break the rules and laws of a world. Do things that should not be possible

It is the highest form of creation and destruction. Everything that goes beyond the understanding of the mind could be considered magic.

The only limit of magic is the imagination

And so, it is impossible for modern Earth civilization to create a device that could measure magic particles and trace the ancient civilization that is built before the Ice Age.

Even after the Ice Age, certain civilization that rose after that also uses some kind of magic power to make their civilization prosperous before the magic energy become so thin that some of this cavillation fate decline.

And if Azief had to say the biggest factor why no trace of civilization could be found, he could attribute this to these aliens beings that come down to Earth

Azief had seen many advanced alien civilization and he knows how easy it is to erase all of their trace.

Even Azief could do it if he wanted to

But he stop thinking about this and his eyes gaze toward that area

His gaze landed on the land of the ancient Egypt.

Ancient Egypt.

This civilization has been debated many times in the mouth of scholars, one of the most prominent ancient civilization.

And one of the most contested thing about the ancient Egypt is the pyramid. The scientist believe they already knows the answer, but some people believe other things.

Azief flies around the ancient Egypt and he was surprised to see this Egypt. It is nothing like he had ever imagined.

Right now, he is a translucent.

Like a ghost.

The construction of the pyramids is a mix of both, Azief noted.

He could see a giant the size of twenty feet high, throwing stones all over the area creating a pyramid

And then with Odin words, Azief understood certain things. There are pyramids that the aliens had built. And then there is the pyramids that the pharaoh had built with the help of workers

The workers consist of highly skilled engineers and slaves.

Because some pyramids is born even before the regie of some Pharoah. Some are built even before the system of Pharaoh even existed in the land of ancient Nile.

These ancient people believe that these pyramids might have some powerful ability because some of them have seen these giants themselves, and these “gods” and probably the Pharaoh even believe that they could attain immortality or power and begins constructing it.

The change of pyramids from a tool to seek immortality and abilities then become a change that it is a funeral place for pharaoh.

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