Use. Your. Imagination. Part Two of How to Find Intelligent Life.

Rudolf Steiner once wrote, 'The question 'why can't we remember our past lives?' is the wrong question. Instead we should ask, 'How can I learn to remember my past lives?''

In that spirit: One way to find intelligent life is to actively use anachronism to gain new perspectives. In my previous post I laid out an imaginary situation where alien sentience tries to make sense of automobile traffic, without the benefit of being aware of human beings. If that didn't help you to imagine what our world, our existence looks in the panorama of human consciousness, then imagine this:

A human from a neolithic tribe, advanced with regard to tradition, tribal law, divinity, but of course lacking any of the technology that defines our current culture and civilization. They build, sew, hunt, eat, kill, and bury with their hands. They are outnumbered by grazing buffalo and deer and antelope and elk. The rivers are clean. The forests are vast. The clouds are the swiftest of all things. Anything built by fellow humans is rare. More common are beaver dams and lodges, birds' nests, anthills, fox dens.

This human is granted a vision of sitting in the front seat of a car driving at night in heavy, fast traffic. They feel the immense gravity pressing against them as the car rushes ahead at 75 miles per hour. Darkness is embedded with dazzling jewels of light - mostly red and white, but also amber, green, blue. Light reflects off of shiny car bodies smooth as glass. There isn't a human being to be seen in all the flashing light and the rushing sound. This neolithic human is literally dizzy and nauseous from the speed and light and sound. "This is how human beings live, only 400 years in the future. This is your future." The neolithic human passes out, and wakes up to their own time, their own quiet, their own smells of grass and fur and skin and smoke from a fire. They wake up from hell to heaven.

This is creative anachronism.