A World of Hirt

Futurist doesn’t want to know the future, after all it’s just a game

It’s coming to light, more and more, that the first business of colleges and universities is…business. The recent controversy at the University of Missouri, reminds us that the great American preoccupation with head-banging football is also a huge business, reflecting a priority in many schools that in part explains our country’s ever descending ranking in education, actual productivity and more.

It exemplifies how the sleight of hand that has resulted in American jobs by the ton being out-sourced overseas has been accomplished, with entertainment loving Americans encouraged to live happily vicarious, pretend lives, to indulge in worship of sports heroes and celebrities, and stay ceaselessly absorbed in playing video games, etc., while remaining oblivious to the bottom falling out economically and otherwise for as long as they can. (Of course by next November things should be so undeniably bad that the masses will rally around some incompetent or other who will promise them salvation from all these woes, most likely through war, etc.)

The big concern is with watching and playing…games. We pay overgrown adolescents millions of dollars to run around throwing balls to each other, through hoops, etc., and then get excited when “we” win or lose. Ever noticed how the fans think that they actually did anything other than swill beer, scream and shout and otherwise perform on command like Pavlov’s pups?

Our Future History

That brings us to the future, as life always does moment by moment and, once again, to ASU. Their latest information informed me of a new spring course, cleverly titled The History of the Future*, which kinda reminded me of my own article about rewriting our own future history. Buoyed up with hope that the professor, Dr. Paul Hirt, might be receptive to information about and from the most prophetically accurate person to ever live, I sent him the following:

Dear Prof. Hirt,

I was unable to reach you by phone and I wish to provide you with information that should both interest you and be more than worthy for inclusion in your course.

ASU notified me that you’ll be co-teaching Predictions of the Future this spring, which appears to be far superior to such previous lightweight fare from CSI, focusing on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Daffy Duck, Looney Tunes, etc., about which I’ve been openly quite critical.

First, some explanation. Last March I attended The Skeptical Classroom at NAU. One of the featured presenters at this all-day event was Prof. Scott Antes. He emphasized that in his classroom beliefs need to be left at the door and that only credible, factual information was worthy of discussion and consideration in determining the truth.

While I didn’t get a chance to speak with Prof. Antes at the time, fortuitous circumstances led to our meeting in early July. At that time, I informed him that I appreciated his hardcore, skeptical approach – and his disdain for political correctness – and that I was involved with unusual information that warranted his critical, skeptical evaluation. Consistent with what he had publicly stated in March, he reminded me that he was indeed “a tough nut to crack”.

Our interactions in the ensuing four months have led to his inviting me to make a multi-media presentation to his anthropology class on November 17.

During that presentation I will touch on some of the abundant, specific, prophetically accurate scientific information published by Billy Meier, the Swiss the man who is at the center of the material I lecture and make films about. Since I hope to develop this conversation with you, I won’t saturate this message with all of the links and information that are available.

However, I’ll list a few of the many things that Meier verifiably foretold:

Unnatural, manmade climate change and global warming

Two US-Iraq Gulf Wars

AIDS (by name)

A-bomb/ozone layer destruction connection

Extraction of oil/gas connected to earthquakes

Io most volcanically active body in solar system

The Ebola epidemic

Radical Islamist terrorism

The WTC attack on 9/11

Russian military movements

Europa encrusted in ice

Mercury’s core causes contraction of planet

Genetic manipulation and cloning

Computerized weapons and AI

Neptune’s rings

Home computers and internet

Water and flora/fauna lifeforms on Mars

Ability of neutrinos to change

Fall of the Berlin Wall

Portable telephones and plastic credit cards

The danger of bio-metric chipping

Discovery of two planets beyond Pluto

Meier began publishing this information (of which we now have about 150+ specific examples) in 1951…when he was 14 years-old. I should state that he never publishes theories but only statements of fact and, to date, we’ve not found any incorrect prophetic/predictive information.

Obviously you’ll be able to do some independent sleuthing on my site, skeptical sites, etc. So I’ll add that Michael Malin, David Froning, NASA aerospace engineer, Matthew Wieczkiewicz, and Kenneth Smith, the Director of Operations at Orbital Launch System Group (Ret) have endorsed Meier’s singular authenticity and the independently authenticated physical evidence in the case. (Both Mr. Wieczkiewicz and Mr. Smith are willing to join me in presentations as well, as Dr. Froning previously did.)

One of the core reasons the Plejaren extraterrestrials came here was to try to help us assure our very threatened future survival – not for us to chase lights-in-the-sky, or to create careers for so-called “UFO experts”, etc.

Of course I’ll be glad to engage in a similar process to the one that led to Prof. Antes’ invitation. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Michael Horn

His reply:

Thanks, Michael, but I’m not interested.  —Paul

Yup, that was it. So I sent the following warm and fuzzy response to him:

Paul,

Well thank you for such an in-depth, thoughtful, comprehensive and detailed response to documentation spanning 64 years, as well as my own 36 years of research, all of which of course you failed to refute, in the grand tradition of mediocrity at ASU.

I wonder what it would be, i.e. funding, tenure, reputation, the lack of initials before or after my name, etc.?

Of course history is replete with “experts” who are more comfortable not looking through the telescope, who have reached some status, a sense of self-satisfaction that supersedes intellectual curiosity…at the risk of being shown to not be quite the experts they fancied themselves to be.

It’s a shame that this only adds to the well deserved cynicism about many scientists and the difference between their professed expertise – you are presenting about prophecies, right? –  and their integrity.

Most sincerely,

Michael Horn

…which lit a few tiny embers resulting in this:

Michael,

My course is not about prophesies at all. It is about how we humans imagine the future, about creative visioning, and about how those imaginative futures are shaped by contemporary cultures, values, and events. I do not teach about prophets and prophesies, or about contact with extraterrestrials. And since you chose to insult me after I simply noted my lack of interest in following up with you about Billy Meier and UFOs, I request that you do not contact me again. This is the last you will hear from me.

Paul

…ooooh, a little touchy there! So of course I pointed out:

For the record – although you’ve stated that you won’t see it – I have two suggestions for you.

First, this is what I received about your course from ASU:

Visions and predictions of the future are artifacts of particular times and places: they often tell us more about the hopes, values, anxieties, and prejudices of their creators than they do about how the future will actually turn out. In this course, we will examine a diverse set of visions of the future – ranging from policy reports to science fiction novels to Hollywood films – crafted by people from different times, places, and walks of life.

Secondly, you seem rather thin-skinned considering your initial response was a curt dismissal of someone who simply happens to know far more than you about a rather important body of authenticated, impeccably credible and uniquely significant evidence and information that is rather pertinent to your supposed topic, which you now disavow.

That information also pertains to your stated interest in “global environmental history, environmental policy and sustainability studies” – and which comes from the first man to warn in detail about these now nearly insurmountable, approaching realities when he was only 14 years-old.

While participants can “envision the future, and write imaginative visions of our own” perhaps if they compared what the Pentagon considers “threat multipliers” with what Meier has long warned of, they might be inspired to something even more pertinent than an academic exercise.

This unfortunately impeccably accurate information should compel any environmentalist, let alone futurist, concerned human being, etc., to prioritize its thorough examination.

I invite you to rise to the occasion.

Michael Horn

Naturally there was no further word from Paul.

It’s All About the Money

So why would a futurist, environmentalist, conservationist, etc., run like hell from such painfully pertinent, easily verifiable information as Meier’s?

Well in case you missed the update here, this just may help to explain it:

“Researchers at Arizona State University have received a four-year, $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF)”

“’From ‘Star Trek’ to the ever-expanding Lego universe, we’ve come to expect our most exciting stories to unfold across novels, video games, the silver screen and a host of other media. This project asks if we can use that phenomenon — which we call ‘transmedia storytelling’ — to deepen public engagement on crucial questions at the intersection of science and society,’ says Ed Finn, director of the Center for Science and the Imagination (CSI) and the lead investigator on the project.”

That’s right, the money flows in to help accelerate the deepening, dumbing downward plunge that will assure that more and more American students being “educated” in these corporate amusement palaces will move into occupations as overly entertained, game playing, hopelessly indebted burger flippers in this ever more competitive world, preparing Happy Meals for the imported workers who are now taking the jobs they thought they were being trained and educated for.

All together now, students, “Do ya want fries with that?”

Given the opportunity to present urgent, life essential information, once again CSI ASU chooses to snatch cutesy irrelevance from the jaws of significance so that students can “write imaginative visions of our own”, deliberately deprived of the necessary knowledge and awareness, i.e. seeing things as they really are, so that their visions can be based in an understanding of reality, not some “Lego universe” that will leave them…lost in space.

NOTE: My own musings about the underlying aggression of American culture, the worship of the football god and the future were expressed in my somewhat prophetic painting titled Wait, in 1965 (number 24). You may notice the partly visible word “Hero” behind the football god’s head. (Ironically, 19 years later, I would write a hero song extolling complete self-responsibility.) There’s the false piety of the sleazy prayerful figure hiding behind sunglasses like a Mafioso, the jet plane coming in to bomb everything and the American wearing a hat with an “A” on it, beneath a modified Confederate flag with a skull and bones, who hides one hand in his pocket while reaching out with a more foreboding one. The slain civil rights leader, Malcolm X, is in the upper right hand corner, fallen onto the death flag, while a train keeps on coming down the tracks…towards us.

*

The History of the Future Spring 2016 course: HST/SOS 394  Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:00 – 4:15pm  Arizona State University, Tempe campus
Visions and predictions of the future are artifacts of particular times and places: they often tell us more about the hopes, values, anxieties, and prejudices of their creators than they do about how the future will actually turn out. In this course, we will examine a diverse set of visions of the future – ranging from policy reports to science fiction novels to Hollywood films – crafted by people from different times, places, and walks of life. We will examine the values, assumptions, and ideologies underlying these imagined futures, apply critical perspectives to how societies—both past and present—envision the future, and write imaginative visions of our own. Particular attention will be paid to issues of sustainability and the environment, which pervade both historical and contemporary thinking about our collective prospects for the future. Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (HarperCollins, 2014) the Center for Science and the Imagination’s recent anthology of optimistic, technically grounded, near-future science fiction, will be a key grounding text for the course, providing rich examples of stories that integrate actual scientific, technical, social, and cultural insights into compelling visions of the future. Students from all majors are welcome. This course is co-taught by Dr. Paul Hirt, Professor of History and Senior Sustainability Scholar, and Joey Eschrich, Editor and Program Manager at the Center for Science and the Imagination.

A World of Hirt originally appeared on They Fly Blog on November 11, 2015.

Source: http://theyflyblog.com/2015/11/11/a-world-of-hirt/