Here, one of the central characters travels with his AI companion, Ra, searching for a way to transform human consciousnessโbefore humanity tumbles over the Climate Cliff for a second and final time.
When we last left them, they were grappling with the legacy of Qin Shi Huang, Chinaโs First Emperorโa figure I explored in depth in Wisdom Guardians: Loyalty Over Truth: From Qin Shi Huang to Trump | #7. He didnโt make it into Sapience (too many ruthless rulers, not enough pages), but thatโs why the Wisdom Guardians podcast exists: to fill in the gaps, tracing the egos that bent civilizations to their will.
This passage marks the transition from ancient China into the fertile cradle of MesopotamiaโSumer, Akkad, Babylonโbefore sweeping to Akhenatenโs Egypt and then back again, through thousands of years of empire building and collapse. And what emerges, when you step back, is sobering: for all our progress, the modern era isnโt nearly as different from those ancient times as weโd like to believe.
The following is an earlier draft of this excerpt from my novel Sapience: The Moment Is Now.
Who Broke the Timeline? Qin to Rome
The lush green mountains of the Qin Empire disappear. Yong Xing-li finds himself standing on a hill overlooking the Isthmus of Suez. The same drying climate that forced the Indo-Aryan tribes further north to migrate and contributed to the Indus valleyโs civilization collapse is drying out the lands of Mesopotamia. A vast desert already has northern Africa in its grips forcing most of the native tribes towards the Nile River valley and the Fertile Crescent is destine for the same fate.
In the East, a darkness grows. Yong Xing-li wonders if itโs rain. It approaches fast, and he soon sees it is not billowing clouds of rain but rather dust. They move like creatures devouring everything into their dusty darkness. It blots out sun, then swallows Yong Xing-li in its smothering embrace. Finely broken bits of rocks pound his face. Itโs hard to breathe. Gasping for air, Yong Xing-li reaches for the kill switch to end the simulation when the swirling dust separates and forms a bubble around him.
Dust pelts the bubble from all directions. Thereโs no form or shape to anything as if he was swallowed into a static pattern of an old television set. The dust begins to clump by color. Brown dust particles form mountains and high plains. White dust crowns their peaks and creates high, arid lands. Green dust particles settle into valleys with yellow-green dust making high valleys and dark green dust creating low valleys. Blue grains of dust form into long ribbons that tumble from the mountains, meander through the plains and valleys, then empty into seas.
The image is clear. This is Mesopotamia. The telltale narrow neck of where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers flow closest together looks like an entrance into Eden from this perspective. And it is. Between these two rivers is a place where everything needed to live is available in great abundance.
Suddenly, Yong Xing-li all on his own without any help from Ra understands these were the first cities of Sumer, simply from a different perspective. Each one beating to its own unique rhythm, its color, as it grew around its whirl. Just as individual cells clustered together to better meet the needs of daily existence, so too do civilizations. Just as simple creatures evolved digestive tracks to better capture, distribute, and discard energy, so too did civilizations. Their digestive track is simply on a different level of being the one created when man used his focused beam of conscious attention not just to scan for threats and opportunities in the external world but to scan his inner world too.
Along the banks of the Euphrates, Yong Xing-li watches as colorful whirling clusters form along the riverโs edge. To the north, near the narrow neck, yellow, rose, and turquoise whirls grow. To the south, near the mouth, baby blue, orange, and purple swirls grow. He watches as each whirl pulls different colored particles around it into its vortex. Blue particles of water disappear into the vortex. Green particles constantly flow into the whirl vanish. Brown particles dematerialize into the eddy. Red particles are pulled out of all the dominate color patterns dissipate in whirlpools.
When he did this, a murky plane of unmanifested potential became visible. It is a vast plane full of strange feelings, nebulous dreams, terrifying possibilities, bone-chilling fears, shadowy ideas, half-baked notions, circular ruminations, stifling opinions, rigid convictions, and backwards-looking reflections. Using his beam of focused conscious attention, he could choose actions different than what nature would have made for him through his instinctual responses to happenings in the world. By combining this focused effort with others in this tribe, the collective effort was 10 times, 100 times, 10,000 times more powerful than the work of one man working alone.
The more people used this ability together to accomplish collective action, the more synchronized their inner dialogues grew with everyone else. Talking to oneself is of course thinking. There is a natural beat or rhythm to thinking just as there is to a heartbeat, breathing, or between waking and sleeping states of consciousness. Shared language, customs, and routines synchronize an individualโs thinking rhythm with the groupโs rhythm. These group patterns are further colored by flourishes such as local idioms, beloved stories, and the type of humor enjoyed by the people.
Getting everyone to flow in the same direction is harder, but there are lots of ways to encourage cooperative flow. Routines, rules, and laws are common practices to introduce and enforce conformity and a commonly agreed way of doing things. But far more powerful is shared beliefs. Nothing galvanizes a group of humans faster or stronger than shared beliefs that capture and store the peoplesโ collective hopes and dreams as well as their nightmares and fears in a collective reservoir of potential. This reservoir serves as a source of energy upon which everyone can draw as they work together to make their hopes and dreams come true while keeping the fiendish, nightmarish possibilities at bay. Rites and rituals create a powerful spin that keeps everyone moving mostly in the same direction and this spin creates the vortex around which civilizations grow.
Yong Xing-li knows the pale-yellow swirl furthest north near the narrow neck of the Euphrates and Tigris is the Sumerian city of Sippar. It swirls around its patron god Shamash, God of Sun and Light. Borsippa beats to turquoise while twirling around Nabu, God of Writing and Wisdom. Kish thumps to rose while rotating around Zababa, God of the Hunt. Downstream near the mouth of the Euphrates, Ur beats to baby blue while spinning around Nanna, Moon God and King of all Gods. Uruk reverberates to purple while whirling around Inanna, Goddess of Love. Eridu quivers to orange while spiraling around Enki, a trickster god.
As each city grows bigger, smaller swirls grow and flow inside the bigger swirl creating complicated rosette patterns. From the center of these blooms of civilization emerge the patron god or goddess of each city. They have cow ears or baby goat horns or hair made of wheat emerge, symbols of the collective force that tamed wheat and barley, goats, and cows in service of the people. Buds of civilizations appear up and down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and between them. Swirls even emerge in the mountains or far from rivers and streams as people unleash their collective intelligence to solve all sorts of problems of survival.
Tendrils of trade, communication, culture, and technology grow between the blooming city-states of Sumer and other newly bloomed civilizations such as the Amorites, Elamites, and Gutians. Shimmering networks of trade and cooperation light up Mesopotamia with the glistening achievements of civilization. But a collective will can manifest evil as well as good. Such collective manifestation is also on par with the power of a Godโthe wrath of a God. Dark spots of conflict erupt along vital trading routes. Sippar wars with Borsippa. Uruk wars with Kish. At any one point in time during the 2,000 years Sumerian civilization controlled the region, they warred with each other almost as much as they warred with other nearby civilizations who infringed on their resources or land. The gentle, peaceful agrarian Gods and Goddesses who first emerged soon became adept in the art of war and grew fiercer features and powers.
One dark yellow Amorite swirl far to north along the Tigris River grew bigger and bigger. It soon turned its tendrils of trade into ramparts of war conquering Sumerโs rainbow-colored city-states and turning them into the dark yellow beat of king Sargon of Akkad. He is the first of the Sumerian kings, although he was an Amorite who spoke a different language, to conquer all the city-states of Sumer and bringing them under one rule. He is the first to establish an empire in Mesopotamia. The pulse of the Akkadian Empire dominates the Mesopotamia for 200 years.
Changing climate chips away at rigid structures imposed by the Akkadian Empire, which are further weaken by furious Gutians who descend from the Zagros Mountains attacking Akkadian outposts to reclaim their independence. The Empire falls, allowing erratic, unstable independent city-states to return to the Sumerian way.
Trading networks reappear, but Sumer is a shadow of itself. New realities of empires mean city-states must learn how to bundle their strengths or fall prey to another ambitious ruler. Broken bits of the Akkadian-speaking empire reassemble into the Assyrians in the north and the Babylonians in the south. Elam forms as a power in the south, the Gutains galvanizes as a power in the east, the Hittites grow into a power in the north, and to the west Canaan and Palestine are forming into powers. And still further west, Egypt is growing as a fierce force that will soon need to be reckoned with.
Babylon is the first to take control of the Fertile Crescent under Hammurabiโs hand. The Hittites conquer Babylon and extend their control into new territories into Asia Minor while Egypt gobbles up the lower half of the Fertile Crescent extending its empire all the way to the Euphrates River. Sea People attack the Hittites that make them vulnerable to the Assyrians who are rising as a formidable power. The Assyrians conquer the Hittites and the Egyptians too, creating the biggest and most ruthless empire yet. Nebuchadnezzar strikes back, conquering Assyria and claiming its empire for Babylon. Persia led by Cyrus the Great conquers the second Babylon empire, taking Mesopotamia and Egypt as well as adding parts of India and Greek Islands to create the Achaemenid Empire. It is now the biggest empire ever assembled and lasts for almost 600 years until Alexander the Great strikes back. He conquers Persia and claims its massive empire for Macedonian. Desiring even more land, he pushes deeper into India but does not get too far. He dies young and his mighty Macedonian Empire crumbles into smaller warring kingdoms, which leave the civilized western world sitting on the tip of a pin.
The only way to get more land or resources in this part of the world is to conquer it. In three short centuries, the Roman does precisely that but not without some difficulties. The dust storm obliterates the colorful maps of moving particles, and it is just grey chaos storming around him and darker than ever.
Yong Xing-li wonders what Ra plans to show him next or if he will show him anything else. The torrent of raging dust only seems to be growing stronger and darker. It pelts at his bubble shielding him from its abrasive edges that threaten to cut him into millions of tiny pieces as small as the swirling dust all around him. For a moment, heโs not sure if heโs in a dust storm or a deluge of formless, meaningless quanta and his bubble of space rapidly begins to recede.
Raโs bodiless voice resounds not only in his diminishing bubble but everywhere outside of it. He asks, โDo you ever wonder why manโs timeline starts in the middle?โ
โNo Ra,โ Yong Xing-li replies growing ever more nervous as his bubble shrinks further and further now little bigger than his own body, โIโve never really thought about it. Why does it start in the middle?โ He pushes ineffectively against the shrinking bubble to no avail. His little universe of calm and orderliness is about to be swallowed by dust when another distinctly different voice resounds that instantly reclaims all his lost standing and his bubble is restored.
โItโs because of me. It is my story that defined time. It is my story the marks year zero for all of humanity. I made the timeline start in the middle.โ
As this strange new voice echoes away into the blowing grains of dust, the bust of Julius Caesar forms outside the edge of his bubble glaring at him. This bust of marble is very much alive. Yong Xing-li is very much at a loss of what to do for he has never in his life had to interact with just a head.
Another voice booms in the howling dust: โNo, it is because of me. I am the one who put Spartacus down and nailed him and his 6,000 men to crosses along the Appain Way. I am the one who saved Rome from free fall. It is my story that defines time and divided it into before and after.โ
To Julius Caesarโs right, the marble bust of Marcus Lucinius Crassus, one of the richest men of Rome during his time forms from the dust. He is just as living and just as livid as Julius Caesar.
Another bodiless booms in the dust, laughing in disdain at the other two busts. โYou both are wrong,โ the voice booms with contempt and scorn. โIt is me who defies time and starts the timeline for the men to come. I am the one who rescued Rome from famine and hungry. I crossed the high seas defeating the pirates and confronting Mithridates of Pontus who was raising an army to strike at Rome in a weaken and vulnerable state. I marched my men through the Caucasus Mountains, redrawing the map for Rome and making the eastern Mediterranean Red for Rome.โ
To Julius Caesarโs left, the marble bust of Pompey the Great forms from the swirling dust. One of the greatest military men of Romeโs long history. His living arrogance hoovers over Julius and Crassus like a gloomy cloud.
โYou both remain as deluded in death as you were in life,โ Julius retorts. โYour head was cut off Crassus in the Battle of Carrhae and put on a stick that the Parthians used in Euripides play The Bacchae. And Pompey, your head was delivered to me on a platter after you went running yellow to Egypt where my friend Ptolemy XIII Theos Philopator, Pharaoh of Egypt, met you and cut off your head.โ
โAnd you were stabbed 23 times and bled to death on the Senate floor not more than 2 years later,โ a booming voice of three resounds making Yong Xing-li spin around on his heels to see three more marble busts materializing from the dust. It is none other than Marcus Antonius better known as Mark Antony, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Caesarโs grandnephew and adopted son, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus better known as Octavian.
In unison they boom, โIt is I who avenged you and serve as the marker dividing time from before to after,โ though the tone of each man is clear; he alone did it.
These are the men of the Second Triumvirate who play the sentiment of the people of Rome so finely, it turns forever away from its founding as a Republic and into an Empire that shreds and dominates Western Civilization for centuries to come.
The six busts stare and glare at each other in such defiant domination Yong Xing-li is sure their glowering stare will crack his fragile bubble into millions of pieces, and he will be swallowed once again in the ravenous dust storm that he is certain he will not survive.
Then a soft and beautiful glowing light appears above his bubble and a man appearing in the center of the light holding a lamb in one arm and a Shepardโs crook in his other hand. Without moving his lips, he says, โIโm afraid it is I who created a rift in the timeline.โ
No sooner than these words are conveyed to Yong Xing-li, than a tremendous earthquake shakes the ground upon which he stands opening a tremendous rift that extends down and down and down to who knows where. Yong Xing-li barely jumps to one side in time.
From the depths of this dark fissure in the Earth the most menacing voice Yong Xing-li has ever heard thunders up from the darkness along with two piecing points of glowing green eyes, โIt is all my doing. I created the schism in time.โ
A decidedly repulsive creature crawls from the gapping cavity and wraps its long snake-like body around Yong Xing-liโs legs and body, placing its hideous head face to face with his head. Itโs breath reeks of the dead and dying of a million, billion, trillion beings.
Yong Xing-li is about to pass out when the whole shebang disappears, and he is simply standing on a hill looking out over the Isthmus of Suez again. Raโs familiar, gentle voice returns.
There was most certainly a countdown during this time, but truth is always much richer and more complex than one manโs ego. What is for certain, the currents of power fluctuating wildly during this time set in motion a wave so powerful it would eventually envelope the entire globe in a spirit of rage and revenge that echoes into this very moment.
I have made a library for you pursue at your leisure for the human mind has evolved as such to only be convinced of things if it has verified and checked them out for itself. That is of course if it is still individualized. The collective mind is a different animal. With its power and might to conduct actions in the world once reserved to the gods, it remains feeble and afraid deferring its right to decide to the majority.
We explore just three more Ruthless Rulers arising in the flows and counter flows of Western Civilization. The rest I leave for you to discover what the others did in the name of seeking the power and glory.
Excerpt from Sapience: The Moment Is Now, all rights reserved.
Feature Archetypal Animation
POSTSCRIPT: Who Broke the Timeline? The Latest Ego Wars
The dust settles. Or does it?
Yong Xing-li stands again on that hill above the Isthmus of Suez, watching the ancient eddies of civilization dissolve into the horizon. Ra is quiet. The six marble busts have crumbled back into the desert from which they came. The serpent has slithered back into its fissure. And for one suspended moment, it seems as though the lesson has finally been learned โ that no single ego, however magnificent, however monstrous, however convinced of its own divine right to define time, ever actually does.
Then Ra speaks again.
“Look East. Look West. Look inward. They are at it again.”
And Yong Xing-li knows, with the sick certainty of someone who has just watched ten thousand years of the same story repeat itself, that the Busts of Dust have returned. Not in marble. Not from the swirling sands of Mesopotamia or the Senate floor of Rome. They arrive in real time, beamed directly into the palm of every human hand on Earth โ in feeds and posts and declarations, in rocket launches and tariff wars and rallies that fill arenas the way temples once filled with the fervent. The patron gods have new names. The vortices still spin.
The difference โ the only difference โ is this: Caesar could not split the atom. Pompey did not hold the launch codes. Crassus, for all his obscene wealth, could not buy the atmosphere itself. The ruthless rulers of antiquity could shatter civilizations; the ruthless rulers of now can shatter the timeline for good.
Two men โ among others, but none so loud, none so richly endowed with the tools of civilizational leverage โ have positioned themselves not merely as definers of an era, but as engineers of the species’ next move. One dreams of leaving Earth entirely, as if the mess here is simply a problem of location. The other dreams of remaking Earth in the image of his appetites, as if the mess here is simply a problem of insufficient loyalty. Both carry within them the ancient vortex โ that swirling, hungry thing that has animated every conqueror since Sargon of Akkad: the belief that I am the force around which history should properly organize itself.
History, of course, has heard this before.
It has heard it in the marble mouths of men who were certain their story was the one that broke the timeline. It has heard it in the thundering hooves of armies convinced they were destiny’s instrument. It has heard it rise from every fissure in the Earth, reeking of the dead and dying of a million, billion, trillion beings.
What history has not yet heard โ what Yong Xing-li is searching for across ten thousand years of evidence โ is the sound of a collective consciousness that chose differently. Not fate. Destiny.
The moment that choice becomes possible is not some distant point in the future.
Ra would tell you โ it is always now.
The questions Yong Xing-li and Ra are chasing across the ruins of civilization are the same ones you are living through today. If this postscript found you, perhaps the timeline isn’t broken yet.
Who Broke The Timeline: This Time?
What Our Ancient Ancestors Understood & Modern Man Forgot (or more aptly… ignores)
