0.0.0.0 Would Our Legacy Survive?

by Richard Graupner

  ‘Within a few months, I was able to respond almost as well as my father, and this made it easier. He needed me to be able to pick up this role to allow him to scout and be away for days at a time. Mom was too emotionally involved with the mothers to be able to assume this role in his absence. My gran had changed though and was quite supportive, taking on the chore of cooking and some cleaning, whatever she was able to do. The time in the Hole was starting to tell more so on Ouma than the rest of us. Having difficulty entertaining herself, as Dad had not really catered for them being here, she was sleeping most of the time, and her already frail body was degenerating rapidly.

  ‘Three days before she finally left us, passing in her sleep, I found Dad in a small open patch in the trees. He was preparing a grave, sweating in the sun. “I sense it too,” was all I said, and began to carefully assemble the stones he asked me to collect. Strange how much longer this takes when you are constantly being wary of your movements. I now understood why birds take their time to look around before alighting somewhere. Second chances in nature are obviously a rare thing. It was only when I was almost done, hours later, that I noticed my father watching me surreptitiously. I got the feeling the rock collecting was somehow a test. Had I passed? I wondered.’

  ‘It had taken a very close encounter for me to understand what my father had been trying to get us all to understand, not superficially with simple acknowledgement, but understand at the core of our being. “There will be no second chance,” he had said matter-of-factly. “I am the only male here. If we are found here, where we live, we will almost certainly be killed for what we have stashed here.” I understand now how important it was he made this point, but it still did not really sink in until, sitting one morning in the cover of the trees near the entrance, we watched a group of eight people passing by. There were four men, two women, and two youngsters around ten years old. The attack was sudden, and neither they nor we expected it. Another group burst out of the trees and fell upon the surprised group. Before the surprised group could scatter and run the attacking group was amongst them, clubbing and stabbing with whatever weapons they held. Two of the men and one woman escaped the attack, running away in different directions.’

  ‘Mom must have sensed something was happening as she appeared in the entrance to my right. She followed our gaze and froze, watching in horror with us as the attacking group simply clubbed and stabbed until they seemed to run out of breath. One or two laughed, as they began to collect the meagre possessions of the group they attacked. “Battle frenzy,” my dad said quietly, “once started, it is hard to contain and is often the reason for what were previously classed as war atrocities.” It was then we noticed that one of the fleeing men had changed direction, angling in towards the trees we were in, obviously attempting to find a place to hide. In his terror, he had not noticed he had no pursuers, and it was obvious he was going to pass by very close to us. “Quiet, and don’t move,” came the whisper from my father. It was that terror-stricken face passing by that sealed it for me. Oblivious to the damage to his body, he blindly ran through bush and small trees, cutting himself all over his body in his dash for safety and disappearing slowly into the distance. It was obvious that the world was now living by the motto of every man for himself.’

  ‘I sat there, sick to my stomach. We had always seen the odd violent snippet on TV, but they were far removed from us and seemed unreal as a consequence. I could now see the difference between acting those parts in the movies we had seen, and the real thing. Even the good actors did not come close to emulating reality. Were we really capable of doing what I had just witnessed? Obviously we were. I could not imagine how I could ever get to that level, and at that point, I sincerely believed I never would. I suppose it was my mind trying to protect itself from engaging that reality. It took me some time of contemplation to convince myself that there possibly were situations where I would probably kill, but my mind still baulked at such wanton killing as we had witnessed that day. The larger group could easily have just taken what they wanted, why did they not? “Simple competition for resources,” my father had explained. “Resources are scarce, so simply taking that away from others is not a good survival tactic – and here you can forget about ethics, morality, and so on. Those ‘others’ you simply steal from and allow to leave unharmed could attack you next time, or use resources you could have utilised. Think of the wild animal shows you saw on TV. You always asked why they had to kill each other, and others similar to them, rather than simply scaring them away. That is the reason.” From that moment on, I needed no further coaching regarding the need to be careful.’

  ‘Ouma was surprisingly light when we moved her and laid her gently in the fairly shallow grave. Dad had tried hard, but the area was underlain with rock, and we could not risk doing this in the open where the ground was softer. Wrapped in a blanket, we took a few moments to say farewell, each in our own way. She had hung in for nearly three months. We knew this because Dad was adamant we needed to maintain the system of time keeping. Dad and I carefully filled the grave and then packed the rocks over it. I noticed that I had collected far more than we had needed. Dad had obviously felt we would need these sometime in the future. Looking at him standing there, I could see the strain and the exhaustion of the past two days since the attack we had witnessed. He had gone out each night since the attack, digging the graves within the tree line opposite our position and burying the dead. I suspected the death of the children affected him far more than the adults. I sent him in to rest, telling him I would keep watch. The gratitude in his eyes was touching, and he went inside almost asleep on his feet.’

  ‘As I sat there alone in the trees, watching the area around us, I wondered how he had managed to do it. The afternoon after the attack he had remained outside, watching the victorious group as they hung around their place of victory, one of the few times I had heard a group being noisy. “They are obviously successful at what they do,” he had said to me before sending me inside. “They are confident in their ability to defeat anyone, so they must be one of the largest groups around.” I counted eighteen of them. Is this what mankind had come to? I wondered as I went inside. Although I slept fitfully that night, I did not realise that my father had slipped out and spent almost the entire night moving the bodies into the trees and burying them out of sight. Only when I saw him leave the second night, the night Ouma passed in her sleep, did I realise what he was doing. He had come back in the early hours of the morning, having finished the grizzly work, only to have to deal with Ouma’s passing. The physical and mental strain had taken its toll, and I was thankful I was now able to help.

  ‘For the next few months, life carried on pretty much in the same fashion as before, just now without Ouma. As much as she had been difficult to have around in the circumstances, her forgetfulness often provoked a joke and a smile. I am sure it helped us all. We continued to spend time reading the different books Dad had stashed in the Hole. These were not novels, but knowledge books. Not just the kind such as mathematics and so on, although he had a pile of those in one of the steel trommels. These were books detailing both the general knowledge of our time as well as the knowledge that had constantly been put down and discredited by the system that had controlled the world for so long. “Sad as it is,” my dad had said, “we have here the chance to let this knowledge blossom again, to let it become the primary knowledge by which we live and interact with each other and nature. If we lose the books, we need to know sufficient within ourselves to still pass on enough to allow it to grow anew. If we don’t maximise this chance, the old fear-based control systems will rise to power again, and the opportunity presented by the current disaster will have been lost, possibly again for millennia.” I could not help but feel the weight of all this on my young shoulders, wondering how this was all possible from this pathetically small group of people, regardless of the strength of their purpose.’

  ‘Once we got into it though, the
discussions on the various books began to get fascinating. It seemed that being stripped of the veneer of our previous lifestyle and the pressures to fit in and all that went with it, which now seemed so shallow, we were able to enter aspects of our brain and psyche that we could not do before. At least I knew I was not able to do so before, with my mind preoccupied with other things. As we worked I understood more and more, and I began to match and challenge both Mom and Dad in their understanding. Amazingly, and surprisingly, my gran participated quite well. She had always enjoyed reading and talking. Especially the talking.’

  ‘The months flew by now, and we were spending more and more time outside, still in the protection of the trees, though spending much of that time reading out in the sunlight. We were able to talk quietly, as we could see fairly far. With the vegetable growing area behind us protected by a steep almost vertical drop, and completely closed by the wattle, it was not only very difficult to climb but also impossible to come through without making some noise, so we only needed to focus on the ‘frontal’ approximately two-hundred-degree vista that could approach our position.’

  ‘Dad used to collect the honey in the early morning, just as it was getting light. In the absence of sugar, I had come to enjoy the honey immensely. We had only lost one hive so far, obviously found by someone and smashed to bits in an effort to get the honey. I was there with him when Dad found it. He had begun teaching me, and I was meant to do the extraction this time. The sad look on his face was heart breaking. He was again dismayed at how little man knew and how he simply destroyed to get what he wanted with no thought of the future or of others. “The sad thing,” he said finally, “is that the honey they took is now tainted with violence and destruction. Although it may have tasted good to them, its real nutritional value would have been seriously compromised.” We had moved on to one of the other hives, and I was pleased beyond belief to pass with flying colours, leaving with our honey and the hive intact and content, and myself with not one sting. I suppose that up until that point, I still was not sure of the safety of the process used by my father, even after witnessing it numerous times.’

  Chapter 20

  Having spent much of the day with the few esoteric members of this village, I then took the time to walk around and chat with the other members. This was the smallest community of the three and had a lovely spot, although limited for growth. Occasionally, the other villages took on a member or two from this village to assist it. I insisted, though, that it also needed to receive from the other two villages.

  ‘We have to prevent ourselves becoming isolated pockets of experience and knowledge,’ I explained. ‘We must continuously share knowledge and experiences, and we need to ensure we limit inbreeding as far as possible.’ Discussions on genetics and its influences had proved challenging, but the principles were now generally accepted.

  Having some time remaining before dinner, and feeling fairly elated that Jim’s evaluation of the changes matched mine so closely, I retired to my guest rondavel, enjoying the mug of tea handed to me earlier. It had a spicy flavour, and I made a mental note to ask what they were using. It would be a welcome alternative to the lemon tea. I sat down, got myself comfortable, and recalled the meeting and discussion held in the community hall of my own village a few days ago. I had been surprised, very pleasantly so, by the discussion and comments. I now really needed to check if the other villages felt the same before I went further with my thinking. Poor Angela, though. She had so badly wanted to come with, citing my state of mind and even treading on the semi-dangerous ground of my frailty as a reason.

  ‘You know we cannot allow that,’ I reminded her. ‘Key people cannot be sent out together. Gerry would, in any event, not allow it. We have to stick with preserving our rules and knowledge. Although we have come a long way, we are by no means out of the woods in this respect. We must ensure as competent a continuation of information as we possibly can.’

  I had continued my story to her late into the evening after the discussion in the community hall. Despite it being draining on both of us, I think we both felt the need to complete the story as soon as possible.

  ‘Some of the books we read were very thought provoking. Luckily, we have most of them stored here, and people are slowly working through them. Although I am unable to remember them all, a number I remember clearly from the discussions and mental pictures and feelings I had when we worked through them. One of these was a book entitled Fractal Time26 by Gregg Braden. Although we had also worked through The Divine Matrix27 and The Isaiah Effect28 by the same author, a section in Fractal Time really caught my attention. It revolved around the discovery and work done by the Institute of HeartMath29, stating that the heart has a very strong magnetic field, one that also has a number of overlapping frequencies with certain layers of the earth’s atmosphere. The theory they were researching was related to the possibility that if sufficient people, together, concentrated on a particular theme at the same time, it could influence the planet and other people as well.

  ‘In The Isaiah Effect, Gregg Braden investigates the ancient Book of Isaiah from a different perspective. In a way, he was also showing that we get what we believe and think of collectively. Think of the implications. My father felt that this was known to those who controlled the planet prior to the Fall, and that the use of mass global media to guarantee as many people as possible were fed the same information was well used, ensuring the thought pattern required by them, including fear, was further distributed via this mechanism. “It would explain how talk of a possible financial meltdown, for example, could suddenly become a reality with little real explanation available as to its cause,’” he had said.

  ‘I was definitely not a science fan and had struggled my whole life with the concepts. The discussions my father and I had around the cause-and-effect types of scenarios though had got me wondering as to whether mankind had brought this catastrophe on itself. The intertwining of the concepts from Gregg Braden’s books, such as cycles within cycles, collective consent, quantum physics, and others was intriguing, to say the least. In essence, if we allow for conflict in our individual lives, then we create the conditions for the laws of quantum physics to take our individual expressions and amplify them by many orders of magnitude into another time and place, creating the conditions that allowed war, oppression, and mass suffering on a global scale.

  ‘“But I don’t see families going to quite that extent,” I remember saying to my father.’

  ‘“Scale it down,” he had said. “To quote Gregg, war at home can manifest simply as defending oneself in romance or at work; oppression can be controlling family members beyond reason or having people work long hours for little return; suffering can be allowing family members such as aged parents to struggle and live poorly while you are more than comfortable. The global scale is simply magnification of these aspects, and it is tragic that the bulk of the world population bemoans the acts of war, terror, and suffering around the world whilst casually continuing to accept that their minor infringements have nothing to do with it. Although it sounds like a cliché, Gregg is right when he said, ‘To know peace in the world we need to become peace in our lives’.”’

  ‘This particular conversation had taken place prior to the Fall, and I clearly remember how despondent I had felt then. If this was true, and deep down it did resonate as such, then how were we, as humankind, going to get this right? Everyone I knew was involved in these non-peace aspects and saw themselves as the victims of something or other, and therefore it was the other guy who had to make the peace moves and so on. I could not see it changing for the better back then, as there were simply too many people amply aided by the momentum of anger and violence, sustained so well by a political and media system designed to manipulate opinion in favour of the respective controllers. Now though? Now I believed it could be done, should be done. The tragedy that befell the planet, and I was no longer sure whether it was a tragedy or
a blessing for mankind, should not be allowed to fade into memory without us making a concerted effort to keep our thinking at the peace level, regardless of the energy it had been requiring and would continue to require.’

  ‘Amazing though, thinking about it: man finds it so easy to expend huge amounts of energy on the negative, yet finds it so hard to expend energy on the positive. I could not help wondering, for the umpteenth time, whether this was man’s normal way of being, or simply a well-conditioned version of him generated by those who had controlled us so well.’

  ‘Other books that had fascinated me were those about the possibilities of early gods on the earth – the possibility of aliens from another planet, more technologically advanced than us and using us or perhaps even genetically modifying us to improve us. Books by authors such as Bauval30, Graham Hancock31, Sitchin32, and others were important. These books were quite compelling in their arguments, but without the gods themselves, people were naturally sceptical.’

  ‘“The questions remained, like ‘what if it were true?’ ‘How would that affect our psyche, and our vision of ourselves?’ These are questions we need to ponder, even if they remain simply an enigma. We need to interrogate, to keep ourselves alive and searching. It is what defines us clearly from the animals, this search for knowledge and explanation of the unknown. It is necessary for our growth.” This little speech from my father was still as clear as the day he gave it me.’

  ‘“Remember,” he had said, “we today, with all our supposed knowledge and technology, cannot do what was done back within the ancient civilizations. As a consequence, modern archaeologists find it extremely difficult to accept mounting evidence that the civilizations they have uncovered are significantly older than they would like to think. A book entitled From Atlantis to the Sphinx33 investigated some of these issues further, supporting the arguments of the few that this is in fact the case. The enigma again is that these civilizations and the vast majority of their knowledge and history simply appear to have vanished.” This was a question I knew plagued my father back then, and I believe was the driving force behind him having taken the effort to preserve much of what he could and to work hard at passing on as much as he was able to the survivors.