IT IS UNDOUBTEDLY THE CASE ...

[Michael Grove]

 ... that THE CURIOUS CASE of BEING BRITISH, provides an exemplar

 testimony of the fact that 5 millennia of migration to these ISLES of OURS

 - by an assortment of celtish norsemen, romans, angles, saxons, danes

 and the mercenary cohorts of the Kings of France, in search of the best

 resources that the planet could provide - has evolved over that TIME a

 people's collective of open mindedness to ALL THINGS and EVERYTHING.

In his television programme, A History of Britain, the historian Simon Schama says of Magna Carta ... IF NOT exactly the birth certificate of democracy - [IT] IS the death certificate of despotism. [IT] spells out, for the first time, the fundamental principle that the law is not simply the will or whim of the King. The law is an independent power unto itself and the King could be brought to book for violating it. A contract whose underlying understanding - guaranteed by charter - that the government of the kingdom had to be subject to the sovereignty of the law.

Why hunt for excalibur - when you had something

already that was as potent as Magna Carta.

Over the course of the last two millennia, the inhabitants of Spaceship Earth and its habitat, have been inexorably touched and influenced by the consequences of consequences, of THE complex system of MIND-GAMES CONTROL, which the Roman Empire established, following the demise of THE DEMOCRATIC system of values and principles, that had been established in Athens by the Greeks, in accordance with the NATURAL DESIGN processes of the SACRED ENERGY FORCE.

It was the revolution of the Athenians and their request of Pericles to return from exile - coupled with an understanding of the need for change - which brought this about - & subsequently acted as the catalyst for this small insignificant city state to transform itself into a trading nation at the heart of the Mediterranean - which influenced the Roman Empire and all other western civilizations since. An Art of ZEN - INTEGRAL solution in fact - which was established by way of the Parthenon, the Acropolis & Athenian democracy - an all inclusive impulse of the moment - as similarly created by DALI in his painting the - Apotheosis of the Dollar in the act of painting Gala - in which you can see - on the left Marcel Duchamp masquerading as Louis XIV behind a vermeerian curtain which is the invisible but monumental face of "Hermes" by Praxiteles - a multitude of references to MIND, BODY & SPIRIT - WAR, PEACE, LOVE & LIFE - & the shadows of DALI's own religious mysticism, hallucinogenic mysticism, mysticism of gold and the mysticism of his soft watches in his interpretation of Bridget Riley's " FALL " - albeit a mirror image thereof.

Gregory's own story of Bucky's sailings passed-by "his lighthouse", reminded me of a BBC television transmission almost three years ago to the day, in which reference was made to the grandeur and magnificence of the lighthouse of Portus, which shone out to sea, right to the horizon. Portus was constructed as THE Port of Rome, connected directly by a grand canal rather than the meandering river Tiber, and provided an icon of mind-game melding control over access to the entirety of its million square mile Empire of 60 million people; as well as inspiring an awe of Empirical Existence, in the hearts and souls of those approaching Rome for the first time from the extremities of the empire by way of the Mediterranean Sea.

It is now known that the port was constructed of a specially developed Roman Concrete, which strengthened with age, regardless of whether submerged in water or not. The concrete domed roof of the Parthenon in Rome is assumed to have been constructed of a similar material, and remains to this day the oldest concrete roof structure on earth. All of this, in conjunction with a road network of 25,000 miles, connected the entirety of EVERYTHING and EVERYONE in 'The Empire' together. 

In the Vatican Gallery of Maps there is a fresco of a hexagonal shaped Portus area, painted in 1582 by Antonio Danti after cartoons of Ignazio Danti; but the more recent utilisation of more sophisticated satellite imagery techniques as well as Lidar has led to the discovery of evidence of a much larger central harbour complex catering for 50 ships, including an amphitheatre capable of seating and entertaining 50,000 people, a mob packed together in giant communal celebration of conquest, utilising slaves brought in from defeated armies and occupied provinces and then slaughtered for the entertainment, again and again and again, of the citizens of Rome; a coming together of perfect order on the one hand and terrible violence on the other; a powerful combination which helped in the process of bringing the empire together. 

The recent visit to these isles, by Xi Jinping and his wife, brought to mind the Qin Shi Huang [born Ying Zheng] who died in 210BC, just 11 years after he had conquered all of his neighbours, to become the first Emperor of China. The same CHINA which has itself evolved over 2 millennia to become a Superpower of the 21st century, but still controlled in a much less democratic way than Britain. Ying Zheng had reigned for 37 years man and boy; and was buried at the heart of his grand mausoleum next to his Terracotta Army - consisting of individualised warriors, built and actually armed with the most advanced war-grade weapons, produced on a vast scale - an army prepared for eternal war in the afterlife, which stands to this day as testimony to the ingenuity and ruthlessness of a system that built an empire which rivalled that of ROME. The individual warriors are all unique and guard an acropolis far bigger than previously thought. The Chin crossbows consisted of a precision casted trigger of easily assembled components that readily fitted into the wooden shaft of the crossbow itself, which enabled a peasant army to be quickly converted into state-of-the-art troops, firing specially designed bronze arrowheads, manufactured as a single tang and head, which had been sharpened by a precision rotary lathe. 40,000 of these arrow heads have so far been recovered from the excavation site. The brutal quality control system of management established as Legalism, which pertained in the standing army close to the Emperor, was also applied to the manufacture of the Terracotta Army and its weapons, such that cells, of 5-10 persons, were allocated with specific tasks, and every task was identified by the mark of the person who had produced it, such that any faults or incompetence could be traced back to the individual who had to fix it; and if that couldn't be done the entirety of the members of the cell were severely punished, by maimings, tortures or executions.  

At that time of course ROME was still only a Republic, having become so with the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom; and the Roman Empire was not established until 27BC. Great Britain had by then already frequently been the target of invasions, planned and actual, by the forces of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. In common with other regions on the edge of the empire, Britain had enjoyed diplomatic and trading links with the Romans in the century since Julius Caesar's expeditions in 55 and 54 BC, and Roman economic and cultural influence was a significant part of the British late pre-Roman Iron Age, especially in the south. A millennia later, when William the Conquerer invaded the southern shore of England, the Danelaw Anglo-Saxons of the north would have nothing to do with William's mindset of control, which resulted of course in William and his Knights, perpetrating the North Alerton massacre of 150,000 British Souls, in just a few days.

Is there any wonder therefore, that WE finally beheaded William's successor almost 600 years later - because of his complete and utter disdain and contempt for the British People - which resulted in those forebears of mine deciding that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

Buckminster Fuller, however, concluded that ... "GREAT NATIONS are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery" and went on to say that ... "the British Empire ... was the first empire of man to occur after we knew that the Earth was a  sphere. A sphere IS finite unity and Thomas Malthus, professor of political economics of the East India Company College, was the first economist ever to receive ALL the vital statistics and economic data from a closed-system world. Once the world is conceived as a sphere - a finely closed system - there was no longer an infinite number of possibilities, such as accompanied the misconception of the infinitely extended flat-out world. In an infinite world, with its infinity of possibilities, praying was felt to be "worthwhile". Because Earth had been discovered by its high-seas masters to be a closed and finite system, the great pirate venturers who controlled the seas took their scientists around the world to discover and disclose to them its exploitable resources... All the people in all the previous open-edged empires lived in a system within whose infinity anything could happen or exist. Paganism (or peasantism) wasn't illogical. Geometrically speaking, the pagans could have an infinite number of gods. There were also an infinite number of chances of upsetting the local pattern, which was most satisfying if it happened that the individual didn't like the prevailing local pattern. It seems strange that we were not taught about the historical, philosophical, and economic significance of the foregoing transition from an open-flat to a closed-sphere world system. Because the churches were strong and the great pirates wished to obscure both their monopoly of the riches of the now limited system and their grand world ocean strategy for its control, the significance of the concept of a closed world system was popularly unrealised. The power structure and its patronised education systems "let well enough alone".

So it was that China and the Chinese were disadvantaged, by being hooked on opium in exchange for silk and porcelain, and tricked into allowing their tea plants to be stolen, for [RE]planting by the British in India, in order that the new habit of tea drinking in England could be profitably exploited. How strange to think that it was subsequently the taxation being levied on that tea, which led to the 13 colonies, declaring independence from Great Britain, which the British eventually decided to accept because it was more important to them, to protect the profitable supply of sugar from the Caribbean, which the people of Britain could be encouraged to drink with their tea.

.

[Michael Grove]

Since the very first days of the emergence of an understanding on

the part of HumanKIND, of an understanding of the significance of

the song of the humpback whale, as a loud, complex series of sounds

repeated over and over, Linnie and I, both individually and

collectively have sought to associate ourselves with those NOT in

denial of our species connessione with NATURE; as opposed to being

encouraged to live a lifestyle, in accordance with the dictates of

those who would seek to maintain the self-serving, Gregorian Calendar

status quo mindset of denial, of the TIME of NATURE, doing the wrong

things for the wrong reasons, ably assisted by their cohorts, who Vance

Packard originally described in his book ‘The Hidden Persuaders’.

[Michael Grove]

“Every time man makes a new experiment he always learns more. He cannot learn less.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth is a short book which was first published in 1968, following an address with a similar title given to the 50th annual convention of the American Planners Association in the Shoreham Hotel, Washington D.C., on 16 October 1967.

[Michael Grove]

United Nations Secretary-General U Thant spoke of Spaceship Earth

on Earth Day March 21, 1971 at the ceremony of the ringing of the

 Japanese Peace Bell ... 

"May there only be peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our

beautiful Spaceship Earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid

space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life."

Epcot's Spaceship Earth

Spaceship Earth is the name given to the 165 ft geodesic sphere that

greets visitors at the entrance of Walt Disney World's Epcot theme

park. Housed within the sphere is a dark ride  that serves to explore

the history of communications and promote Epcot's founding

principles, "[A] belief and pride in man's ability to shape a world that

offers hope to people everywhere." 

A previous incarnation of the ride, narrated by actor Jeremy Irons and

revised in 2008, was explicit in its message:

Like a grand and miraculous spaceship, our planet has sailed through the universe of time, and for a brief moment, we have been among its many passengers….We now have the ability and the responsibility to build new bridges of acceptance and co-operation between us, to create a better world for ourselves and our children as we continue our amazing journey aboard Spaceship Earth.