The palette of humanity
I could have used a legacy song such as the Beatles' 'Hey Jude', or Quuen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody', or even Supertramp's 'Dreamer', or maybe even Nina Simone's 'My Baby Just Cares For Me'. Of course I feel I would need to mention Amy Lee from Evanescence, Elton John, Christina Aguilera and finally Meatloaf.
The piano was invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori (May 4, 1655 – January 27, 1731) of Padua, Italy. He was employed by Ferdinande Medici, the Grand Prince of Tuscany, as a keeper of instruments. Cristofori was an expert harpsichord maker, and was well acquainted with the body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments; this knowledge of keyboard mechanisms and actions helped him to develop the first pianos. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano, but there were three in existence by 1720. The original name for his invention was 'un cimbalo di cipresso di piano e forte' (a keyboard of cypress with soft and loud) which was shortened over the ages to pianoforte, fortepiano and eventually, piano.
But what I want you to think about or try to imagine what music was like before the invention of the piano. Also, what if the piano had never been invented? How would the absence of the piano influenced the evolution of music history?
The palette of humanity
The palette of humanity is a concept I created as an alternative explanation to the mystical tradition of 'the way of the ancestors' or the way of the elders'. Being primates, we are social animals, apes who evolve through community, society and the sharing of conscious insight, tools, culture and stories. The shaman is where we started evolve in a way which was different from other species of primate which go out and collectively hunt and gather the same as other species. It was the shaman who took us beyond the limitations of male domination common to all species of primate and communities based on strict patriarchal structures, and for a time in our evolutionary history after we left the rush rainforests of Africa and began to settle in the grasslands, we evolved to live in complete harmony not only with our natural environment, but also with each other.
This was how we discovered civilization. The shamen were the healers in hunter gatherer societies, they knew which plants healed and which plants didn't, and from this women learned to gather these plants and bury them with food supplies before everyone moved on to ensure that everyone had food when they returned. This is how we developed settled, agrarian communities and societies and developed the practice of farming and agriculture. Early on this was the so-called Golden Age before the Fall of Man, where we lived in large communities and the community was the primary social unit. We hunted, gathered, shared food, lived together, slept together, argued, fought, reconciled, engaged in orgies, shared happiness, pleasure, and evolved collectively as a species.
The Fall of Man, an evolutionary event which took place somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 years ago, happened when we learned that we could create a different reality through our narrow focus of conscious attention, direct our thoughts, and develop what we understood to be the Ego, the concept of self, my children, my woman, my family, my life, my skills, my labour, my knowledge, my wisdom and we devolved back into our less civilized natural patterns of behaviour based on male dominance and domination culture. While the Fall of Man brought us the ability to live together in cities, and the concept of welfare, education, social care, it also created religion, authority, organization and formal education. Consider than until a few centuries ago, unless you were religious and male, you did not receive an education or learn how to read and write. Up until several decades ago women were seen as chattels to be exchanged between families through marriage for the purposes of procreation, and domestic and sexual servitude. I perceive the Fall of Man as a collective evolutionary mistake which has changed the course of human evolution irreversibly for millenia.
Until we somehow collectively as a species learn to correct those mistakes we will always be at odds with our natural environment and each other, because we will always believe in the false illusions of separateness, separateness between self and environment, separateness between self and other, and we will continue to be crippled and deformed by our social and mental conditioning, our Egos, and have a distorted perspective of ourselves and our lives.
So getting back to the palette of humanity, which is pretty much the same as 'the way of the ancestors' and the 'way of the elders'. Human culture and social thinking is the interface which lies between human evolution and individual human experience and creativity. It's important to understand that we all have a pivotal relationship with the social and cultural values we are taught by the external authority figures in our lives, parents, grandparents, teachers, other relatives, politicians, cultural figures and icons, and so on. At its most fundamental level 'the way of the ancestors' is the relationship we have with our grandparents and the experience of that relationship. The relationship we have with our grandparents is slightly more distant than that of our parents, so there's far more opportunity for wisdom, insight, as well as resolution of conflicts we have with our parents and children. While the socialization process is traumatic in nature, because we are often in conflict and forced into positions of compromise, I also honestly believe that socialization as a process happens in good faith where on the whole parents and teachers take their role seriously and care for the well being and development of their children as a priority.
The primacy of individual human experience and insight
What the palette of humanity is really all about is shifting the social and cultural emphasis in society and community, and the focus of our attention, back from the organization, the institution, ideology, belief systems, hierarchy and domination culture back towards the primacy of individual human experience.
By the time we reach adulthood we have all gathered a certain amount of knowledge, wisdom, insight, truth, abilities, skills, interests, and so on from our past experiences of childhood and teenage years. The nature of such conscious awareness, insight and knowledge will always be determined and relative to what went on in your individual childhood and teen experiences, your background and social environment, your upbringing, your education, your social experiences, and your relationship with the community, society in general, and so on and so forth. You will have picked up religious and political beliefs. You will have developed a certain worldview. You will have experienced trauma and choices which have placed you in conflict, trouble or difficulties. What you have been taught, or trained to think and believe is one thing, and what you have directly experienced is another.
Irrespective of how your life turned out in the first two decades of your life, you will be in a position to make some contribution to the community, or society through the sharing of your life experiences, insights and knowledge. Even if you come from a pathological background and abusive family environment - and here I'm referring to some experience far more traumatic than my experiences, even if you got beaten, verbally abused, sexually abused, neglected, abandoned or rejected - you are still in a position where you can add to the palette of human understanding and awareness of life, of society and culture through the sharing of your experiences and your memories. You're still a human being, and relative to other people you're still capable to bringing something of value to other people's lives through your insight, experiences and what you are able to do for other people.
What I'm writing about here is the social transaction between you and the community and wider society. In meta-physical terms, and terms of actual reality, the mystical transaction between you and the universe and the natural environment, despite the vast inequality in terms of scale and dimension, is pretty much egalitarian and supportive. Take air for example. You breathe in, and each time you breathe out you have more air to breathe in. I doubt that you've ever felt insecure (unless someone is strangling you) about having access to air so you can breathe. However in social or cultural terms this is not the case. Let's consider the two things humans use to measure the value of human experience, money and time. The inequality also applies to the social transaction. Most people never have the time or money to properly evolve or develop as human beings, because they're under constant pressure to achieve, produce, work and serve in specific ways to serve the economy and the organization. As a result the vast majority of individual human experience, incredibly valuable individual human experience and insight, gets discarded, rejected and remains lost forever.
We can't have it both ways
The fundamental mystical principles of existence are very clear and very simple. Creativity requires interaction, and interaction requires creativity. This applies to all examples of existence, the universe, the natural environment and nature, and also human society. There are no exceptions to these principles. You cannot be free, or individual, or different unless you are supported by a totality. Creativity, diversity, and humanity all require space in relationship and they also require both the Sacred Masculine Principle of appreciation and care of being, and also the Sacred Feminine Principle of empathy, nurturing and love.
This is the bare minimum. This is the threshold. If we wish to continue to exist as a species on this planet in the universe, we need to all be playing by the principles of our environment. This planet does not accept major credit cards. Business as usual is no longer on the menu. Planet Earth does not give a flying fuck about any human global economy. Either we embrace these principles and learn to live with them or we will not be around that much longer.
Human beings are an endangered species. There. I've written it. Let it sink in.
Caring, sharing and community involvement
We are the most divisive, boundary obsessed and territorial species on the planet by far. This is the first issue. The second issue is that we are giving each other less and less space in relationship. Our society is progressively getting uglier, meaner, more hostile, and more mean-spirited by the moment. This is because those who have are so anxious about the fact that they might be asked to share some of their wealth.
What we have gone through in the West over the past 20-40 years is a massive transfer of material and financial wealth to a minority 2% to society, and together with this, a tremendous spread of anxiety, fear, alienation, marginalization and a dehumanizing of the whole social enterprise. If we don't collectively and get a grip on reality by the middle of this century most of our natural environment will be a toxic desert inhabited by primarily destitute humans. Dotted here and there within this toxic wasteland will be well defended gated communities and pleasure domes inhabited by incredibly wealthy people who will lead lifestyles of totally self-indulgent hedonistic fantasy in complete denial of the humanitarian crises and moral catastrophy they participated in so as to achieve that hedonistic lifestyle.
This is already happening as a process. There has got to be community, there has got to be empathy and there has got be humanity and these three things need to be priority among everyone. Not just some people, and not optional after you got your career, your house and your Mercedes. These three things need to be a serious and genuine commitment from everyone before you get anything back materially or financially. We don't have that. What we have is a lawless free for all where a significant minority believe themselves to be free from all social obligations and a significant majority of people struggling in relative poverty, surrounded by vast material and financial resources which they cannot access because.. strictly reinforced boundaries and stupid ideological objections.
Make of this what you will.