Seizure

By Laszlo Varszegi

Jeffrey Clark has been working at UCLA for a number of years as a professor of history and has been a lifelong researcher on his own time. His deepest interests are in human behavior and human relations that define our world. After thirty plus years of diligent research, he decided to make his findings public by going on a speaking tour. Six countries accepted his proposed topic, to be presented as scientific lectures. His tour turned out to be a great success yet controversial, in more ways he could imagine. His speeches stirred up the publics mood in each country, and that mood began spreading around the globe via the Internet. Upon returning home, he found himself in the center of official attention and disapproval. He is soon kidnapped from his home, to be interrogated by authorities, but rescued by sympathizers to his cause. The authorities, determined to detain him, regardless of his growing popularity, mount a nationwide search to locate him. While in a short and voluntary exile, Jeffrey Clark continues to speak his mind. His courage, to stand up for what he believes in, earns him many new friends. They are true patriots, who work selflessly to save the country and its government from foreign interests. The FEDs finally locate and surround his hideout, only to find themselves surrounded by The Peoples Network.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499075823

Laszlo Varszegi

Jeffrey Clark has been working at UCLA for a number of years as a professor of history, and has been a life-long researcher on his own time. His deepest interests are in human behavior and human relations that define our world.

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Laszlo Varszegi.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014917139

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4990-7580-9

                Softcover      978-1-4990-7581-6

                eBook         978-1-4990-7582-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 09/23/2014

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Contents

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1-2

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2-2

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3-2

Chapter 4-1

Chapter 4-2

Chapter 5-1

Chapter 5-2

Jeffrey Clark’s presentation at the international symposium

The past, present, and future of the human race

An analysis of human interactions

Intended course of presentation:

-Greeting

-Personal introduction

-Plainly speaking (here and everywhere)

-Follow the highlights on your pamphlet

-Raising consciousness

Topics:

-Evolution

The appearance of humans

-Basic human relations, past

Basic human behavior

Did we learn anything from the past? Why are we still making the same mistakes?

-Human relations, present

Summary of the past one hundred years in contrast to previous centuries (as they are the consequence of one another)

The establishment

Development and control of human behavior, role of parents and schools (teachers)

Work related manipulation-motivation (socialism<>capitalism)

-Medical care

-Globalization

Nationalism/heritage, accelerated mixing of races (few exceptions)

Economic consequences

-The economy

Banks, money, supply and demand, cheap labor, cheap products, (consumer products—not expected to last?)

-Where are we going? (The future)

Closing

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!

Please accept my warmest welcome this fine evening! It makes me extremely happy to see so many brave people gathered to hear my lecture, especially in light of the seemingly boring topic.

You may soon find that it is anything but boring!

Before I would begin my presentation, I must clarify a couple of things that, I feel, are rather important.

Firstly, I would like to introduce myself more thoroughly, as your invitation pamphlet only provides limited information about me.

My name is Jeffrey Clark. I was born on December 25, 1964, right around sunrise in the great city of Los Angeles, California. My parents were Roman Catholics for most of their lives. Therefore, people assume that my siblings and I are also Catholics. During our childhood, we learned the basics and practiced the traditions of this faith, but our parents left us to decide what we will ultimately believe in.

Believe me; I have been working on that all my life.

Currently, I am a tenured professor of history at a prominent university in my home state, and I have been working there since 1989. I choose not to name the institution because the views I’ll be presenting today are my own, distilled from my comprehensive studies over three decades, as well as my life experiences. My private studies included anthropology, archeology, geology, and human psychology to gain a better understanding of the way we relate to one another. I devoted considerable amount of time to researching economic development and finance and their combined effect on the life of the masses. Consequently, I studied numerous business forms as they emerged with the advancement of technology. Finally, I briefly studied the word business to clarify its various meanings, if only for my own amusement. Then I realized, the way Italians tend to pronounce it as busy-ness, might just be its secret.

Secondly, since you may anticipate that I will use language, typical of the sciences mentioned above, which usually goes right over the heads of the audience, I want to assure you that my goal is to speak as clearly as possible. Here is why:

From time to time, in the course of our lives, we must read and understand legal documents, business contracts, or simple advertisements. The purpose of the difficult language in those documents is to discourage us from deciphering its true meaning on our own. Feeling intimidated and short on time, we usually accept the enticing terms obediently. To have an attorney review the document would cost money most of us are unwilling to spend. Therefore, we take on risks that may or may not come back to haunt us. Even after signing such documents, most people rarely take the time to read the fine print. The presence of fine print on legally binding documents is a cunning way to hide undesirable consequences, in plain sight, that may result from the deal. Upon signing such document, essentially we accept all liabilities and relinquish all our rights.

Consequently, fine print is proof-positive of malicious intent.

For this reason, I embrace the style of speaking plainly.

That is the only way I can expect you to trust what I am about to share with you.

The pamphlet you received shows the main points and timeline I intend to cover. To accentuate similarities between ancient and modern events or behaviors, it will be necessary to jump back and forth in time.

To address each point, according to their significance, will take close to three hours. That may be too much for some of you to digest in one sitting, so we shall take a twenty-minute break, about half way.

Many of you may be wondering about the real purpose of this event and why do I put so much effort into a benign subject. I offer this to clarify: I wish to raise individual and collective consciousness about what we are doing to one another on this amazing planet.

How would you summarize human achievements? What historical events would you highlight? Would you exemplify our greatness or our flaws? Would you list our inventions? Would you say that discovering the laws of nature is our greatest feat? Do you admire architectural wonders, like ancient pyramids or modern skyscrapers? Do you approve the way we structured our societies and belief systems? How do you feel about the ways we treat one another? How do we relate to our environment and all the wonderful things our magnificent planet has to offer? Is this really the best we can do with our accumulated intelligence?

Finally, where are we going with all of this?

Let us examine our progress from the beginning.

Primitive life may have started forming on our planet as early as three to four billion years ago, and that, my friends, is a scientist’s way of saying, We have no clue. The beginning of life remains shrouded in mystery, to this day. Despite of all the sophisticated equipment available to scientists today, the answer to how it really began still eludes us. From all the data collected throughout the centuries by conscious research, a theory is all we can propose.

If our true beginnings were discovered, it must have cost an arm and a leg to keep it secret this long.

Maybe quite literally, meaning the loss of limbs.

Looking at history often brings up the question of understanding time.

When we think about time in lengths far greater than the lifespan of a human being, we tend to lose track quickly. Just think, for a moment, about your childhood and those school years when you first started to learn about history. Most of you, just like me, simply accepted that this or that event took place at such and such time, but we never stopped to think it through. Ancient times always seemed so far out of reach that, perhaps out of laziness, we trusted our teachers to tell the truth.

To get a better idea, during your teenage years, you may have stopped for a moment wondering about your future. How far ahead in time did you dare to imagine the way your life may unfold? It was not easy then, and it did not get any easier, but one thing seems certain. Your best reference, the one you can easily relate to, is your current age.

Therefore, when scientists talk about time in terms of centuries, millennia, or even longer periods, try to compare that to the length of your own existence. It will become clear in an instant just how insignificant we really are. Then go a step further and think of great distances. Lean back in your seat and go beyond the limits of our planet. Go into space, where time takes on a new perspective. This is where most of us lose our grip instantly, but few of us would ever admit it. Measuring distance with elapsed time can easily exceed the average person’s power of imagination. I am sure all of you have a good idea about the length of a minute. Perhaps at times, that minute may seem like an eternity, while other times it may be gone undetected.

Based on the associated experience, we perceive the length of time differently.

When we speak of happy moments, they may have lasted for several hours or even days. However, a single unpleasant incident, lasting no longer than a minute or two, can turn an entire day or week into a memorably bad one. The negative feelings generated by an event and how long we hold on to them can greatly skew the perception of time.

Someone illustrated this phenomenon by saying, The length of a minute depends on your position to the bathroom door.

The saying may seem juvenile, but if you ever waited for a restroom, with any urgency, you must know its wisdom.

Lighthearted remarks aside, the scientific community has agreed that the speed of light, being nearly constant in space, should be the benchmark of measuring interplanetary or interstellar distances. Yet they still resort to estimating when they inform us about the distance of certain objects in space. Imagine now looking at the night sky and you may see a star that is a thousand light years away. Let us say that star exploded or imploded five hundred years ago and no longer emits any light. Yet we will be able to observe it for another five hundred years before it disappears from our sight. Consequently, when you look at the night-sky you always see the past and the future at once, but never the present. You see a forecast of the future because whatever you observe happening to galaxies, stars, and planets will, with all certainty, be the faith of our solar system and our galaxy as well.

Since now we all feel comfortable with time expressed in billions of years, we will begin with the creation of our planet. Scientists say that planet Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago. How it really happened, I leave it up to your imagination. Violent things kept happening for a very long time; that much is certain. Let us skip most of that by jumping forward to about 1–1.2 billion years ago.

Trust me, we did not miss much by doing so!

We skipped some prokaryotic life forms, which kept cloning themselves, leading nowhere.

Now we arrived at a time when sexual reproduction began in earnest.

But not quite the way you may imagine it.

Back then, all sexual activities took place chemically, at the cellular level. Cells identified and communicated with other cells by chemical signals. If all went well, they reproduced.

Interesting parallel to humans is that our word for initial attraction is chemistry. Women may argue that they mean something else by it, but believe me, they too are responding to that ancient chemical signal. Physical attraction is a complex process that begins at the chemical level in our brains. When chemistry seems mutual, we contemplate many things before we proceed. Women especially do. The social status and monetary worth of the contender became a deciding factor, some time ago. This selective process presents an unnatural twist on things, to which the evolutionary code has not yet found a response.

Suffice it to say, that many influences are at work, negatively affecting individuals, and the future of humanity.

Continuing our timeline, Mother Nature ran a myriad trial and error tests for viable species, and the time of the first mammals was steadily approaching. Around 250 million years ago, the first animals appeared that are thought to be direct ancestors of modern mammals. You see, with the advancement of technological instrumentation, old archeological, geological, and other collected samples can yield new information because humans have accumulated intelligence to formulate new theories.

Therefore, history changes, as new theories now serve as evidence of what might have been!

That means what you now know, may be rendered obsolete by someone with credentials, putting forth a new idea. Ultimately, that new idea would still be someone’s speculation, nothing more.

We should skip another 190–200 million years. Do you remember how much happened just last year?

Now imagine thousands or millions of years!

I could literally sit around for hours wondering about what has been going on during those ages!

If we could go back in time, we would see small, furry, warm-blooded animals living in the jungle.

They mated in a relatively modern fashion and produced milk to feed their offspring.

Not long after this period, about forty million years ago, the first species of primates developed that can still be recognized today in their descendants. I think it is safe to jump forth another thirty-five million years.

Evidence exists to prove that some apes were able to walk on their hind legs as early as 4 to 4.5 million years ago. About a mere 2 million years later, we see Homo erectus evolve in Africa.

While I intend to keep my presentation enjoyable, any pun about Homo erectus would be inappropriate.

One fascinating fact, however, is worth mentioning about the homo subgroups.

Homos persistently reappeared throughout the ages, making their presence known for a while, only to exemplify the concept of an evolutionary dead end.

The next brief segment will cover the time during which they came and went.

You will see that time estimations are becoming more accurate as we approach modern times.

Roughly three hundred thousand years after Homo erectus appeared and migrated north-northeast, the species named Homo georgicus came forth and colonized Eurasia.

We have fossilized evidence from this age suggesting that he, and of course, her of the species were both able to start and extinguish fire independently, as they needed it.

If you find that I do not conform to the idea of political correctness, it is because it is a form of censorship. Political correctness serves to confuse the meaning of similar-sounding expressions, thus leaving the true meaning of the conveyed information open for discussion.

That is crucial when we are given information by people we should be trusting, specifically our leaders!

Whenever I use the common noun he or man referring to humans, in my mind, it includes both sexes equally as it has for many centuries earlier.

Around five hundred thousand years ago, the species Homo heidelbergensis dominated the landscape. Although physically similar to Homo erectus, they had larger brains, about 93 percent of that of modern humans. After shedding much of their body hair, their skin color lightened as an adaptation to their new environment. Males, on average, stood about five feet five inches tall, and the females were about five feet tall.

Even though they were much stronger than we are, accidents did occur during hunting. Aside from environmental factors, the injuries so suffered most likely contributed to their relatively short lifespan.

It was a long journey, but three hundred thousand years later, Homo sapiens finally arrived. Earliest fossil evidence points to around one hundred ninety-five thousand years ago, creating a bit of an overlap in time. This only means, as pointed out earlier, that members of several evolutionary levels coexisted simultaneously. Some twenty-five thousand years had passed until Homo sapiens began to show most of the characteristics of modern humans. They have fully erect posture, and the shape and size of their skull became very much like ours. They had to put up and contend with lesser developed human species for more than forty thousand years. I give them a lot of credit for patiently waiting for them to catch up.

Worth mentioning of this period is the discovery of Mitochondrial Eve, the mother of all modern humans who live today, as we all carry some of her mtDNA (mitochondrial).

For the most part, we accept this information at face value because we receive it from fellow humans, whom we respect based on their knowledge and because we have no reason to doubt their intention.

Interestingly, Homo sapiens still did not have a way of verbal communication at that time, but we can be certain that they were able to understand one another’s body language, facial, hand, and even vocal expressions. Just like whales, dolphins, and other land mammals of sufficient intelligence, they must have had a range of sounds by which to communicate important information.

By the way, would you consider sharks and dolphins, alligators and crocs, eagles and other raptors, bears, and last but not least, all large cats, all of whom have also reached the top in their own classes, as equal? Please note that all of them are predators but, unlike us, they do not prey on their own kind.

Would you say that humans are truly on the top of the food chain?

Then have you ever watched survival shows to get an idea of what it takes to survive in the wild?

If you have, would you volunteer to try your current skill set, say, in the middle of a very civilized European forest? Before you start laughing, consider that you would not have any modern gear available to you at all. For a week, you would not be allowed to leave the forest to find civilization. You could pick the season and your clothes and then left to rely on your wits and physical abilities to survive.

Now go back to about one hundred fifty thousand years ago, with over a million years of human evolution behind us! Imagine that, we have risen to the top, and we did not even know it!

It would still take seventy thousand years before humans could express their thoughts or feelings intelligibly, but who cared? It was enough to know, without much discussion, that when it started to rain or the temperature dropped below a comfortable level, they would seek shelter in some form. Preferably a cave, but for some, a boulder and a few fallen branches and leaves may have seemed like a good start.

Clothing was most likely seasonal and consisted mainly of animal skins, as evidence suggests. However, during summer months, they were probably going around shamelessly naked. We can see that most of their actions were dictated by instincts imprinted during their million plus years of evolution. These instincts are so essential that, to this day, they could help most of us survive a brief calamity.

As we evolved out of the animal kingdom and established our own new species, we also managed to retain certain primitive characteristics to this day.

In those days, one had to be a good observer, alert, strong, and fast, as a human can be, to ensure the survival of the self and their offspring. There were no questions about any deed being right or wrong. There was no shame in hiding or running away to save one’s hide. There was no guilt attached to killing an opponent, animal, or human that posed to be a threat, only elation. The goal was and is to survive. This is true evolution, nature at work to select the most viable specimen to pass on their genes and acquired knowledge. The young had to learn all the skills of survival quickly before their mother and father would die. Self-reliance is a prerequisite of survival for both the individual and its species. Smaller groups began to merge to increase protection. It is self-evident that at some point, they realized the advantage in numbers, possibly while hunting large animals. This behavior later became valuable against other humans as well. Due to their limited population, it is unlikely that they would have run out of natural resources in any given location. Therefore, following the behavior of animals they hunted, they would only need to migrate as the seasons changed. Naturally, some of those who first made that expedition became our ancestor’s ancestors. It was another crucial evolutionary step, without which we may not be here today. We must also give credit to those who, having honed their skills of survival for their geographic location, decided to pull through the winter.

They had to have accumulated additional knowledge of all the local animals and plants and figured out ways of gathering and preserving enough supplies to last until next spring. Throughout winter, they still had to make brief excursions for various reasons, during which they learned even more about their environment.

Neither group could claim a hundred percent success rate, but obviously, they survived in sufficient numbers to carry on. We are living proof of that fact.

As we see, evolution was and is a painfully slow process. There were great advances as well as major setbacks all along. About ten to twelve thousand years ago, Homo sapiens had finally triumphed over all lesser developed humans. The power of thought is undeniable!

Basic human relations in the past were, as the word suggests, basic. As we had seen, most interactions stemmed from the need for survival. The cooperation of individuals served the advancement of the group, and serious competition moved to the group level, for the most part.

Early on, the smallest human unit consisted of a mother and her child or children. She had to protect and provide for the little ones, as any other mammals do. For quite some time, males did everything on their own, so the role of a father, even as a mere protector, took a long time to realize. Once that happened, a new unit had formed, and it offered a greater chance of survival. We call this unit a family. Beside the family, another unit began to take shape, in which small groups of families, bound by the same basic needs, lived together in a tribe. One aspect of human existence did not change at all since the beginning of time. Just like every other living creature, they need food and shelter constantly to prosper. For the most part, their early shelters were made of larger branches tied together by twines made of tree-bark or animal sinew and covered with large leaves or animal skins.

We refer to a group of these huts as a village, and people who live in them are the villagers.

Regardless of the added security of living together, things did not always go smoothly. They had to be constantly on guard against impending dangers, like predatory animals that would consider them prey or accidental encounters with other creatures like snakes, spiders, and such. Accidents did happen on their hunting trips, and it was just a matter of luck if one would only suffer a minor cut or break a limb or possibly die. They did not dwell on misfortune very long. They were just happy to be alive.

It is important to understand that at this stage of human development, people were not emotionally equipped to express much of sorrow, happiness, hatred, love, guilt, or pride. To express those emotions would take hundreds of years more to perfect. They had two basic states of existence. They were either peaceful (happy) or frightened (unhappy). Therefore, when I say, they were happy to be alive, I only mean that they returned to their calm state after having been frightened.

Around this time, our planet was also experiencing one of its cyclic climate changes. Mind you, these changes have been ongoing since the planet formed, and we are fortunate to live in a pleasant phase, called the interglacial period. Some twelve thousand years ago, the last glacial period slowly ended.

Until then, human habitat was confined to an area scientists refer to as the fertile crescent.

The diversity of life in the region was well suited for human development. Due to its moderate climate at the time, it had most of the flora and fauna that later became the foundation of agriculture.

While glacial ice gripped the northern and possibly the southern hemisphere as well, a region greatly neglected throughout history, early humans took great strides in developing verbal skills, domesticating animals and growing crops. As the ice retreated, the northern hemisphere became habitable once again. The ecosystem of the region was quite different now. Most large mammals became extinct, and most plants, not being hardy enough, also vanished. Over thousands of years, the land recovered and humans slowly spread northward. They may have over populated the fertile crescent and had to find new living space, as the area began to lose its fertility and was not able to support them all. According to credible sources, earliest bows and arrows found are nearly forty thousand years old. Their compact size offered a definite advantage over spears in tight quarters. Until about four thousand years ago, people mostly used tools made of stones and bones, sharpened to cut meat, carve wood, or to point their arrows. Approximately three thousand five hundred years ago, people had enough knowledge to seek out and smelt copper ores. Thus, the Bronze Age began.

Time seems to have accelerated slowly for a few thousand years now. At least to our perception, it will continue accelerating as our accumulated knowledge grows and as we develop new technologies. Nevertheless, a day has always been and will remain twenty-four-hours long, regardless of how many activities we intend to force into it.

Let us step back for a minute to examine life in a Stone Age village. It may have contained a dozen huts. For quite some time, in moderate climates, people dressed lightly in the summer, wearing only a loose cover around the groin area and not much else. The hotter and colder climates forced them to cover their body more thoroughly. Life in the village proved safer from animal attacks, as the scent of people and the smells and noises generated by their activities deterred most animals. They might have had hunting dogs too to alarm them. Their safety did not last long, as an unexpected foe emerged from the woods.

This new threat turned out to be other humans.

We can only speculate as to why humans have turned on one another. Basic instincts