Could it be that an email I recently wrote for children and sent to them and family could get close to the core reality of OUR lives? AND the science? I think so. In a way, it is in the spirit of "in vino veritas".
The message itself (see below) is easy to read, of course, ON THE SURFACE.
But I have explored all nine of the great "rivers" of human deep culture and worldviews in great detail (hard core mathematical science, shamanisms, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduisms, Buddhisms,'Daoism, Shinto) and understood how the core real experience underlying all nine can be unified in solid, coherent mathematical insight grounded in experience, first person and third person and second person.
At werbos.com, I have posted many of the threads which weave together now into one solid framework.
AS A CRUDE APPROXIMATION... I pay highest respect to a sort of "holy trinity" which the usual trinity mirrors in an imperfect way: the UNIVERSE ITSELF (https://drpauljohn.blogspot.
"Amaterasu" (the collective mind/organism of our solar system, descended from a universe-spanning species, even though she is only a few billion years old, just a teenager), and "Our Father in Heaven", exactly the person Jesus
spoke to whom I too have met just a few times, but not someone you would forget, who often watches quietly so as not to disrupt us. As For Jesus, he is a great archetype WITHIN the brain of Ameratsu, whom we are part of.
And so, in a way, the story of carbon-based life on earth is inseparable from the life history of Amaterasu.
The development of OUR souls is the story of OUR connection through "qi" (the various levels or frequencies
and types of qi, connecting "dark matter" to carbon-based matter and to other mundane types of matter)
to and from Amaterasu, of which OUR souls and archetypes are part. Her story is right at the center of our history
and futures. I do hope we do not all forget who we really are.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Paul Werbos <paul.werbos@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Subject: child's history of life on earth
From: Paul Werbos <paul.werbos@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Subject: child's history of life on earth
Good morning, Maia and Evie and Kallie!
Almost a week ago, Maia and Roger and Leo and Ori all came and joined us at the Greek Festival. It was great to catch up.
As part of that... we learned that Leo is becoming VERY interested in all kinds of animals. I mentioned that we discussed with Evie the possibility of our working with her to construct a kind of child's history of life on earth.
Of course, any child who gets to be lead author or coauthor of such a book is opening up great opportunities for their future.
What amazes me is how little most adults -- even "experts" -- know about the real history of life on earth, in ways that are very important to our hopes for the future. And how entertaining the real story is. I have learned a WHOLE lot myself, just as a side effect of how complicated my own life has been.
And so... ONE possibility is that one of you might want to set up a zoom where Evie and Leo and I can just talk about the stories of where we humans came from, with guidance and leadership from Maia or from another adult,
preferably a good communicator. (I am better at finding out and answering questions than at leading such a discussion.) I doubt Peter would have time to help, but if he can help in any way, we should be very grateful and honored.
---
SO MANY great stories which children should be able to appreciate, if explained the right way..
I learned a lot when I was studying the different types of brains out there, and where THEY came from.
But for the big picture... I learned most from trying to understand about climate changes.
At NSF, the head of the geosciences directorate introduced us to Peter Ward. He said that Peter was the world's number one expert on the times when there was a mass death of life on earth in the past. Peter agreed to help me understand what the risks are NOW. We wrote a joint paper which is very short but very deep, backed up by the very best science now available: https://build-a-
From that work, I learned that a very dense book for adults,
is by far the best one-volume of the history of life on earth now available. To understand the whole picture,
I have also studied important work by Robert Hazen (who works here in DC!) and work by Lee Kump
described as part of one of the chapters in Ward and Kirschvink. Hazen also has created video courses, one of which we have watched. By the way, if you have any interest in minerals or crystals, those same courses are a great start for them as well. (Hazen has gotten money from the oil&gas industry, because geology is a big part of THEIR business.)
Advanced forms of life on earth really started about 800 million (0.8 billion) years ago.
All four of those great scientists have written about the whole history of life, starting about 4.5 billion years ago.
ONE OF THE GREAT STORIES is how the earth became habitable for advanced life.
In the old days (when science knew less, even when I was born), they used the words "boring billion"
for the billion years from 1.8 billion years ago to 0.8 billion years. Not so many signs of advanced life and what it produces (like fossils and oil). But in one of Hazen's great video courses (which we can pass on to you), he interviews the woman professor in a Virginia college who changed that story, radically.
I remember PART of what she said.
"They should not call it the boring billion. They should call them the STINKY billion."
If you think of the earth or our solar system as a kind of Greal Soul (called "Gaia" or
"Amaterasu"), that soul spent a billion years focusing all her intelligence on the job of cleaning out the stinkiest,
most poisonous "toilet" within light years of the earth. The oceans of the earth were full of poisonous sulfate
compounds, just like a toilet, the main reason why advanced life could not evolve. To make the oceans
clear enough, she used natural selection -- the evolution of certain specific molecules, certain TYPES of DNA and the cells they breed, able to clean out those sulfates. If she is intelligent enough to have memory... it is amazing what she remembers!
When I saw that video, I thought of a cult movie I saw years ago:
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Jupiter Ascending is considered a cult movie for its ambitious, visually stunning, yet polarizing space opera story, which features elaborate costumes, wild world-building, and campy dialogue that has earned it a dedicated following. Directed by the Wachowskis, the film stars Mila Kunis as a Chicago janitor who discovers she is the heir to an intergalactic royal dynasty and Channing Tatum as her genetically engineered protector ..
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I am glad I saw that movie, because it really does portray the true spirit of the earth (or of our solar system),
and what it remembers. Whenever I hear an intellectual or political person asking us to make better friends with the earth, I picture what that person would have to do to make friends with a billions-year old
Hispanic teenager, like the heroine of that movie, who has just spent a billion years cleaning out such toilets.
And I wonder what her (very intelligent, patient, but very serious ) strategy might be for dealing with human leaders intent on turning it BACK into such a toilet!
===============
But, hey, there is another very interesting story....
Starting at 800 million years ago, advanced life BEGAN in our oceans, and crept up to the land.
However, at about 250 million years ago, there was a dramatic shift in life on earth,
called the "Permian Triassic" (PT) discontinuity:
Peter Ward's shorter, older book, Under a Green Sky, was a real breakthrough in humans' understanding of what actually happened back then. In my files (on Alex's and Maia's hard drives!) are the most serious scientific reports from NASA expanding on key details of Peter's story. It is clear that events in the ocean caused a rise in sulfate
poisoning in our atmosphere (H2S and its byproducts) AND levels of radiation high enough to kill all humans on earth, if there were humans alive at that time. (By the way, those events are repeating themselves now, but I am not expected to live long enough to see them. YOU MIGHT see them, if we don't use the best new technologies we now have to prevent it.)
BEFORE that catastrophe, the best brains on earth (our ancestors) were on track to developing and ruling
the lands of the earth, before the reptiles and birds could take over. BUT ... well, mammals are not well designed for breathing poison. If you visit the museum of Natural History... you have seen a stuffed version of "Morgie", the great common ancestor, "great grandmother", of all mammals. HER picture should certainly belong
in the child's book of earth life! BUT she was descended in turn from our very tough
"great grandfather," our great tough honorable ancestor, lystrosaurus.
Lystrosaurus was the only one of OUR ancestors able to survive and proliferate even on the poisonous, acid muddy lands of the earth after PT. Like a rhinoceros
in appearance. He reminds me of my stepfather, Buddy, Gordon Smith, former marine sargeant who raised the US flag in the Pacific in World War II. In fact, I first saw a proper honorable status of Lystrosaurus on one of those Pacific islands. We probably still have it in our great photo albums, which I hope we can pass on to all of you,
when sanitized.
BECAUSE the reptiles were able to survive the new world better than mammals, they became rulers of the earth for many billions of years. Our ancestors barely survived, scurrying around under the colossal feet of the new rulers of the earth.
That period of time, the mesozoic era, from PT to the death of the dinosaurs, reminds me of legends like those of the earlier Mongols and Jews, of the long period of oppression living under the rule of very powerful top dogs.
Those early mammals may have felt hopeless and oppressed...
BUT THE REAL STORY WAS THAT OF FIERCE FAST NATURAL SELECTION.
I can even imagine Amaterasu grinning in that period, laughing at those poor dinosaurs (and perhaps the same
at much of Trump's community or the more military warlords embedded in modern China) who did not realize what
their role was in the story she was writing. Being small and oppressed and heavily challenged, they evolved
THE GREAT MAMMAL BRAIN in a way the slow dinosaurs never could. The breakthrough to a new kind of animal, the complete mammal WITH A MAMMAL BRAIN, was one of the two or three most critical, dramatic
events in the whole history of life on earth.
And there is more... Peter might explain to you that the death of the dinosaurs was not JUST the great freak event of the famous Great Comet, which ended the mesozoic era of life on earth. And the mammal brain was created a bit before that. The powers of the mammal brain (which include a kind of special creativity, unknown to dinosaurs,
which strengthened the mouse ability to locate and eat dinosaur eggs) already created dramatic changes,
and pressure on the dinosaurs. I will never forget "Maiasaurus", the great good dinosaur mother, evolved enough
BY selection in the new environment, to protect her eggs and her children far more than the earlier dinosaurs could.
Dinosaurs did suffer a lot when the new environment came into force, but they hung on in some places for awhile,
until the comet hit. To be honest, I wonder at times what Amaterasu had to do with that comet, when it came to our solar system. And Peter and I wonder about life beyond our solar system.
By the way, I do claim to know more about how mammal brains work, for aspects of higher intelligence
like creativity, than anyone else on earth. For example, there is a paper by Werbos and Davis reporting on the
data supporting our model of how mammal brains work. The Frontiers system of journals even created a new journal, Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, to try to advance that new understanding
Love, Dad
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