Bill Hicks

"A statesman for his generation,  a comic, a poet and a revolutionary"

In Bill Hicks' own words comedy is the last bastion of free speech.  When used properly, comedy (specifically stand up comedy) has the ability to challenge ideas and shine a spotlight on the absurdities of the status quo. 

The way Hicks did it, it forcibly wrenched open the eyelids of the audience and injected his no bullshit take on life directly into the frontal lobe. 

Hicks fearlessly smashed through the dogmatic walls of social and cultural taboos like a white hot wrecking ball. As a result many people left his shows with a new perspective on life no matter how revolutionary those ideas may have seemed before sitting down to enjoy the ride.
 

Bill's veins pumped pure integrity, he despised mediocrity and banality and had a loaded shotgun full of hatred and vitriol in each hand for whenever he came across it. 

When he was on stage he was a blowtorch rallying against superficiality and falsehood.  He detested corporate puppets and the culture of selling-out with feverish passion

On the rare occasion that someone was brave enough to heckle him, they quickly discovered the meaning behind the phrase "ripped a new arsehole"

Bill tragically died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 32.  Early in his career he was labelled the most dangerous comedian alive and as a testament to the trail that he blazed many of his ideas that at the time were considered so radical are today part of the mainstream dialogue.

 He achieved something in his short life that most people don't even come close to.  He managed to live a life self-actualised.  He didn't care who he offended or who thought he was full of shit. he had a message and he put it out there regardless in the hope that he could change the way people look at the world

I'll leave you with a quote from Tom Waits and a few links if you have the time and the inclination to get to know Bill a little better.  "Bill Hicks, blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer and brain specialist, like a reverend waving a gun around. Pay attention to Rant in E Minor, it is a major work, as important as Lenny Bruce's. He will correct your vision. His life was cut short by cancer, though he did leave his tools here. Others will drive on the road he built. Long may his records rant even though he can't."

Revelation

Sane Man

Relentless

Rant in E Minor

Last show before death

Brain Forests

J.B.S Haldane, the British geneticist and evolutionary biologist said " My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose".

Reality is a crazy place to be! what strikes me as crazier, is that for sweeping multitudes of our population there is more interest in finding out how their team did on the weekend than considering this extraordinary framework we all exist in. 

As children we are all governed by an insatiable curiosity about the workings of the things and people that surround us. Unfortunately as adults we often lose the desire to understand the world and ourselves.  It's so easy to get trapped in the routine and the mundane and forget to look around and question the why's and how's.   

Sometimes though all it takes is a carefully planted seed to fire up an imagination.  I don't claim to be an expert on any of the things that I will be posting about, but hopefully somewhere in this brain forest you can find a seed that takes hold . 

Here is something to get you started, http://scaleofuniverse.com/

Enjoy

Fingerprints of the Gods

Read this book

"We are a species with amnesia" Plato.

If historical events are the best predictors of future events, then the one thing that we can say with a degree of certainty is that all civilisations fall. 

If current day humans were to disappear from the face of the earth, leaving behind the artefacts of our civilisation, the first thing to be lost would be the information contained on the internet.  With no one to provide power to the web, this vast labyrinth of information would be lost almost instantly to anyone who came after.  Next to go would be the books of the world, paper would quickly decay and deteriorate.  What then would live on? only the buildings and structures that we have created.  These too are remarkably delicate when compared with the lifespan of planets, the proof of this is the visible on almost every street of ancient Rome, where teams of people work all year round to preserve monuments that were built a mere two millennia ago. 

Given enough time without care and attention the only things that would be left would be the great monumental structures that we have produced such as the Hoover dam.

What then would a future discoverer of the Hoover dam think about the culture that built such a monumental structure.  Luckily the builders of the Hoover dam had the foresight to build in a message for just such an occasion.  Obviously this message could not be written in language as the risk that it could not be deciphered is too great.  Ingeniously the architects decided to build in a start map.  A clue that could guide any intelligent civilisation to be able to trace the structure  to the exact date of its completion.

Could these sorts of hints been left by previous civilisations?  This is precisely the framework within which Graham Hancock examines the ancient stone monuments and myths of Egypt and South America.

Hancock, not content with examining the facts from a distance is meticulous in his desire to get up close and personal with the monuments and to seek out those who have done the same.  

From the first chapter Hancock introduces ancient maps that make an almost undisputable mockery of the currently held historical chronology.  Furthermore he examines and unravels clear inconsistencies in the current dogma, from the age of the structures themselves to the level of knowledge and engineering expertise required to build them. 

The books journey through Central and South America to recurring flood myths from around the globe, to the precession of the celestial equinoxes is an attempt to offer a more plausible explanation for the history of civilisation than the current establishment has been able to offer.

This book will open your eyes and your mind to the possibility, in fact to the probability that the conventional view of history is flawed in the extreme, that we are in fact as Hancock and Plato before him have pointed out, a species suffering from amnesia. 

Read this book cover to cover then pass it to a friend. http://www.fishpond.com.au/Books/Fingerprints-of-Gods-Graham-Hancock/9780517887295

Follow Graham on Twitter @Graham__Hancock

Check out Graham Hancock's website http://www.grahamhancock.com/