Fire and Some Human Relationships

 

The podcast can be found here: Fire and Some Human Relationships

Why fire and some human relationships, and not fire and human relationships as the title. Because fire is too big, it can fill encyclopedia’s upon encyclopedia’s, or at least a massive server. Note, both the encyclopedia and server are the result of fire. An encyclopedia be it scrolls pre to post industrial age, a server stores our digital information.

Fire is real, but it is constantly mystified, most ceremonies include fire. What can be more mystical than a ceremony, maybe the ancient light, because in reality one can have fire in the middle of a ceremony, they might as well have a heater or a light bulb, fire is nothing but a provider of light and heat, the simplest radiation humans can control. Fire is not specialized, it throws heat and light everywhere, heat and light are just photons, radiating from a fire or those heaters called radiators, efficient light bulbs emit more light than heat. But it all started with fire, when fire played role of light and heat.

To have a ceremony with fire at the center or playing a prominent role can only be to admit what a central role fire has played in our civilizations that the tool is mystified. The tool is mystified, it is nothing but our first age of controlling radiation, of controlling the production of photons. Those photons will give us heat and light depending on the quality and quantity of their energy.

Massive servers to hold information around fire. Use of metals is only because of the heat from fire. Wood and stone are not as versatile as metals in creating a weapon. Molten metals can follow a mold, the imagination of a man, what ever shape he wants the weapon. Fire allowed humans to satisfy their wishes in designing the best handheld weapons possible. Allowing them to experiment in design beyond what wood and stone weapons would allow.

But fire has done much more, right at the beginning, where honestly would human beings be without fire. It is not some deference to a deity that will bring heat to the shelter on some cold night. No matter how much one gets into a state of what would be considered a trance , speaking to the spirits of the dead, that will not boil that pot of water, but fire will as long as you know how to start that fire and control it.

Fire does nothing more than bring control of the elements closer to humanity. Almost every culture knew how to make a weapon with a metal blade, that is the courtesy of fire. Fire is a big deal. Fire is a tool, a tool is there to make things easier.

From when first controlled fire has been central to human culture around food, and shelter. It is part of culture in that fire cooks our food and warms our shelter, thus it is central to our lifes, it has been central in our lifes as we can see we are leaving the age of fire after 200 000 years and just moving to natural refinement of what fire provided. Used in certain ways fire improved always in efficiency always giving greater insights to those who experimented with it in a controlled fashion giving the energy to fashion tools to study fire itself and move away to different heat and light sources. Investigating fires abilities directly took man to the moon.

Fire is a tool, used properly makes human life easier, what humans do with that controlled fire is up to human beings.

Fire must have been a wonder, just to taste the difference in the taste of meat from fire compared to raw meat must have been an experience. Just this alone reduced sickness.

Here is fire, anyone can train how to light it. For the first time in human relationships here was something mystics could never claim to be able to exclusively control. A mystic could not go to the other side and touch somebody and give them the luck in lighting a fire as they could bless the hunt and the growth of the plants. Obviously now we have far more agricultural output thanks to knowledge not blessings from the priestly class that includes shaman, popes, priests of Venus, Krishna, same class. And there is the crime of Prometheus if ever there was what is considered treason in myth or reality. At a time when everything was blessed, those who where given the ability, the power to control fire, usually every adult, they did not need a blessing to make the meat taste better. It wasn’t the divine, it was their ability that everyone can have to light and control fire. What a revelation, what a gift.

That should be one of the first realizations humans had with their relationship with fire, though everywhere blessings took place, what actually made meat taste better was lighting a fire, what gave them access to beans was fire, raw beans cannot be stored, too hard, need fire to create boiling water in a container that is possibly hardened by fire and the beans cook and become soft. Lighting a fire, knowledge and skill that anyone could possess, it had to be taught, not a genetic gift like a fast runner.

Though not genetic, lighting a fire depended on how much one wanted to know how to light that fire and practice like with any other skill or knowledge one wants to apply. Fire was once a priority, everyone had to know how to light it, just as today everyone knows how to light a stove or a heater, the source of heat.

To start and control a fire implies a relationship with fire. All relationships lead to a loss of freedom due to the energy needed to maintain them, this implies time being spent on those relationships. Thus when starting and controlling a fire time must be spent on these activities. But that relationship did not need some ceremony and the food tastes better than the food that was blessed but was not cooked.

Say one lights a fire for a purpose, say cooking. One is not only in a relationship with that fire, they are also in a relationship with the food that is boiling in the pot, plus the fire they must constantly watch, but they are also constantly in a relationship with the air they breath and the ground they stand, walk and sleep on. We are always involved in multiple relationships at any one time.

Talking about mythology, the likes of Prometheus, in Greek mythology he gave humans the gift of fire, it is a nice story. When Prometheus gave human beings fire, he gave more than warmth, light and better tasting meat, he gave a philosophy behind that fire. True, everybody probably understood that there where better hunters than others, and in a group hunting everybody had their role, but there was the blessing before the hunt. But the fire that made the meat taste better needed no blessing. For this Prometheus was made to pay a heavy price. To this day he is tied to a rock and a vulture eats his liver during the day, constantly, then the liver grows back and night and the next day the vulture comes and eats his liver.

That is the price according to Greek mythology that was paid for human beings to have fire, the tool that made meat taste better than meat that was equally blessed but had no fire to cook it. Even those claiming to have connections with vast powers of the universe could not make the meat taste better, it must be the properties of fire that made the meat taste better and easier to chew. It is either they misunderstood those vast powers, or those vast powers do not exist because they can’t make the meat taste as good as fire.

Many are familiar with the History Channel production Ancient Aliens. It is a different perspective of history. Imagine if Prometheus really existed, let us look at the symbolism of his punishment, to understand how important fire is to humanity even in mythology. The crime of Prometheus was to give fire to humans.

Fire did not just give warmth and make the meat and beans more palatable, it showed to man that they could control the elements without relying on the whims of the gods. The gods of course in Greek mythology, in some human mythology where displeased, and the punishment Prometheus received, it shows the magnitude of how much the gods believed the act of Prometheus was so treasonable, they wanted man to believe every advance was from the gods, the spirits, anything but not the deeds of humans, when the truth is every action used to build civilization is from people.

For letting humans begin to understand reality, by giving humans fire, Prometheus was tied to a rock and has his liver eaten everyday and he would recover at night the punishment is supposed to be forever. But why the liver, what Prometheus did was to believe in the potential of the human being and gave a human being a toy, play with it and see how strong your mind is, a tremendously brave thing to do, then why not eat his heart , the heart is usually associated with bravery, why the liver?

Prometheus acted with resolve, determined no matter the consequences, most of the world associates’ bravery with the heart, why does the vulture not eat his heart, why the liver? Incidentally the Khumalo associate resolve with the liver. A deed of resolve is always followed by you have liver. The heart is associated with acts of passion, overcoming like overcoming one’s fears, but the liver with acts of resolve, what must be done. Prometheus did what must be done for humanity by giving the gift of fire. For that, the gods punished him be a vulture eating his resolve constantly. Let us forget this Ancient Alien stuff and back to reality around fire.

By allowing humans to get warmth and taste better meat, it for the first allowed humans to understand their fate is in their own hands if they so desire. Human fate does not have to be at the whims of the elements and the gods. Fire gave humans a chance to awaken. Access to greater variety of foods, nobody knows how one can eat raw beans, they are so hard, but boil them and all that nutrition is unlocked for Earthlings.

Fire allowed humans to replace what is considered natural like wood with metals. I say considered natural, because when we understand the principles behind the reasoning that everything is information because everything will tell you what it is, everything has similar basic characteristics, it is all made up of the same stuff, a fact proven by every experiment in a collider. Our existence is about relationships this same stuff has with itself, those relationships determine how that same stuff will be, it could become a human, a rat, iron ore, a star, or a tree. Everything is nature, is natural, even a nuclear power station, it does not disobey the laws of nature, it comes from what they call nature, it is made up of the same stuff as what they call natural.

A nuclear reactor, because it is there it is natural, it has been part of the natural process. It is natural for the imagination of the human being to change the more it explores nature, that has been the most significant thing about the relationship with fire, being creative with fire has allowed humans to have machines outside the solar system, these machines would be impossible without humans understanding that one can make meat taste to their requirements, one can have a well done steak or a rare steak. The food doesn’t have to taste the same just because it is from the same antelope. The meat will taste to your desire not the desire of the one who blesses food that is eaten raw.

This in no way suggests the planet should be made inhabitable, then what would have been the point of that fire if humans end up destroying themselves.

All humans had access to fire, most had access to metals. What they forged with the metal was the imagination of the human beings freeing the mind more and more with each improvement of the what was being forged. Culture chooses how to forge that metal, when liquid it will take the shape of the mould, the shape of the mould is what the mind desires, not the elements controlling humans, humans controlling the elements, the great awakening was fire for those who chose to play with it. Fire gave according to the relationship a culture decided to have with it.

Take the creation of a blade for defending one’s life and war.

Metal is heated by fire, because fire is radiation, it gives out different types of photons, different types of light, fire from wood is nonspecialized radiation. Some photons released produce visible light other photons produce heat. Fire was our first control of radiation. The photons that produce heat, heat the ore and separate the metal from what becomes sludge. The metal flows into a mold and takes the form that the bladesmith has imagined. Fire gave man the power to replace materials that came directly from nature like wood, with far stronger and resilient material like metal, it all just depended on what humans wanted to replace the natural material with this metal that comes from fire. Metals can do this because they take the shape of the mold. The mold could be a spear, a sword, a pot, jewellery, a gear, what ever they are imagining.

One decided to do with that fire depended on the structure of that culture, that metal making a spear could very well make a pot or a small container for personal stuff, it is up to the imagination. Still on the subject of replacing what was considered natural with man made materials like iron, imagine the first group that had a metal blade. They met others who still relied on wood. Even if those that relied on wooden or stone tipped blades. Those with stone tipped blades might be in general have more skill, more power, their shock as they met iron tipped blades that at times would cut through the wooden shaft, the shock and disbelief. The strength would be a hinderance as the swing their weapon with all their power making it easier for the metal to cut their wooden shafts.

It is not fire that brought the wars, the wars where already there, fire added to the imagination. Like any other tool fire can be abused by human beings. In many religions they would burn people as sacrifices to their gods, that is a corruption of the use of fire, making sacrifices to the gods as gruesome as possible. In most cases people burnt because they didn’t believe in that particular god, denying them their taste of meat.

Fire gave humans a glimpse of freedom, their creativity that is inert inside them. To then burn them for using their mind is a corruption of the use of fire. Fire is a source of warmth to keep the shelters more comfortable. It cooks the food making it more palatable and kills the germs making people healthier. Coming to the very basics of human survival, a warmer shelter ensures more people survive, that is the job of fire. Cooked food is more palatable and has less germs making sure people lived longer and the food will last longer. Every night we must find shelter, a warm shelter is best. Every day we must eat, better food that is healthier, one cannot hunt everyday, fire provided a way to preserve the food and allow it to remain palatable, like smoking. Because there was fire, dried preserved food, especially protein from meat could be cooked later, much food can’t be eaten if it is not cooked after being dried and smoked.

Given that all relationships are random, and everything is in a relationship. That a human being is alive is random, and that they continue to live for as long as possible is also random, but death is a certainty, it is the when that is unknown. From the very beginning, the human relationship with fire was about increasing the chances of the human to survive to postpone death, warmth in the shelter in cold times, there is not always a warm body to share the heat with, all huddling up. It cooked the food, helped in preserving it further increasing the chances of survival. Sacrificing somebody to the gods reduces the chances of survival, reduces creativity because one is not allowed to think outside that box. Burning people’s homes reduces the chances of people to survive.

Every good thing you see around you, the way you hear this podcast is the result of fire, of understanding that fire allows great creativity, allowing imagination. This world we exist in, the most effective tool for humanity, has been fire, for those who understood what it means to have a different taste in meat brought about by the courtesy of fire. The food in your fridge is there because of fire. Slaughtered far away, transported by transportation that uses fire in the engine. The engine being metal was separated from it’s ore by fire. The tires where made in factories that need fire. It is wrapped in plastic that was separated from crude oil by fire.

Those running from war are running from instruments created by fire, many dying for literally for thinking the food that is blessed is by a better spirit, god than the other human, when even if the food is not blessed it is the fire that cooked it. There are lots of reason for war, all the tools of war, though from the human imagination would not be possible without fire.

As our knowledge in quantum mechanics increases, the age of fire is coming to an end. Fire is inefficient for todays world, but it has carried us for over 200 000 years. Fire is needed for the photons associated with it. Electricity was once mostly from coal; we can get it from the sun. Engines can be driven by hydrogen creating water pollution that has to be considered, harmless until there is too much. Fire gives out an array of photons, we can select photons more easily, use infrared, microwaves, visible light, all have their specialized uses thanks to our knowledge of photonics and quantum mechanics.

Gratefulness for fire; the greatest tool humans have had, and we would never be at this level if people had not accepted what different tasting meat means, choice.  

Bhekuzulu Khumalo

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