A GENDER HISTORY OF EUROPE PART 3

The European Source of Knowledge

Just as all spirituality came from outside of Europe, all knowledge came from outside of itself as well.

Arabic numbers, Euclidian geometry, Pythagorean theorems and the entire mathematical and geometric knowledge used by Europe came from Asia and/or Africa. Pythagoras introduced to Europe the symbol for the Greek letter Pi for the value of the diameter of a circle divided into its perimeter. The altitude of the pyramid in Giza divided into its base is exactly Pi. Pythagoras spent 20 years in the East and returned to Europe and introduced the knowledge that he had acquired.

The Greeks served as the conduit between the Afro-Asian masculine thinking and the European feminine thinking. The early Greek scholars from the sixth century BC and earlier such as: Thales, Anaximander, Anaxamenes, Anaxagoras, and Pythagoras, dealt with abstractions and concepts. Topics they addressed were the origin of all things, God is in all things, and mind controls matter. Pythagoras, whom we credit with the formula for determining the length of the sides of a right triangle, was a mystic. He introduced to Europe the knowledge of numerology which be obtained from the Chaldeans, and established a mystery school in Crotona, Italy. These men exhibited abstract masculine thinking.

Greeks, whom we credit with conceptual thinking such as Ptolemy, Euclid, and Epicures, were all students of Afro-Asian learning. Euclid and Ptolomy had their headquarters in Alexandria, and Epicures’ mentor Democritus (who taught him the atomic theory), traveled extensively in the East.

The Athenian Greeks were more mundane. Aristotle started the scientific approach of gathering materials, classifying and grading them. Archimedes is credited with two famous statements: the first “Eureka” when he discovered that a floating body displaces its weight in water, and the second “give me a fulcrum and a place to stand and I will lift the world,” when he discovered the principle for the operation of levers. By the time of Hero who in the first century invented the steam engine, conceptual masculine thought had decreased significantly among the Greeks as their thinking became increasingly Europeanized and materially oriented.

All of the principles necessary for the development of the industrial revolution came from the knowledge that the early Greeks brought to Europe.

While the industrial revolution enabled Europe to spread its mark upon the world, a prior event caused the initial imprint. This event was the development of oceanic navigation.

Isn’t it strange that at the end of the 15th century the Europeans suddenly had access to the navigational information necessary to circumvent the globe and chart it? Isn’t it even stranger that Portugal and Spain led this exploration rather than say the United Kingdom—a nation surrounded entirely by water?

These events are only strange if we rely on European history books in which knowledge of the eight-century stay in the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors was expunged. For those who were able to learn that the Moors had built a society that housed great centers of learning and whose ships plied the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean it does not come as a surprise that Portuguese and Spanish ships began their world exploration as Europe expelled the last remnants of Moors.

It becomes less strange when we learn that Columbus’ navigator was a Moor. And when we further learn that as Columbus’ ship passed Cuba he noticed a Mosque on a mountainside, it should serve as proof positive that the Moors knew navigation of the oceans long before the Europeans. Like all knowledge used by the Europeans, oceanic navigation was brought to it from the outside.

The lack of understanding of things unseen by European thought transcends the spiritual and the mechanical and applies to nature as well. It looks upon the earth as a huge finite commodity to be exploited and has no concept that behind everything seen something unseen motivates it.

The ignorance of how nature works has led to the belief that it can be altered and/or improved upon without negative consequences. The pollution of the water of the world—whether rivers, lakes, or oceans—, the air of the world, and the land of the world continues unabated with little thought as to the consequences on all life.

Western thought believes that nature must be tamed and then improved upon. By creating dams, levees, and sea walls it has altered nature. Western thought believes that it can make a better apple than God, a belief that provides the thinking for genetic engineering.

It believes that it can cure illness. It does not know that there is nothing to cure, that disease has a causative factor, that people are healed when the causative factor is removed.

Western thought has made a God of materialism and its extension—technology. It believes that through technology all things can be made better and all problems resolved. It does not understand that technology represents a sophisticated extension of materialism responsible for an increasing number of the ills facing mankind.

Western thought’s ability to produce material things will be discussed in depth in the next essay, the point being made here is that whatever knowledge of the environment, nature, flora and fauna, and the workings of the physical world that Europe has came from outside of itself.

Even the practice of bathing came from outside of Europe. Mediaeval Christians considered bathing to be a heathen custom and they took pride in themselves that they never bathed. The Moors introduced public baths to Europe and were condemned for it. As late as the 17th century Europeans still did not bathe. Henry the VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I never bathed. Public baths existed in Japan and the Middle East. The indigenous people of the Americas bathed, only the Europeans didn’t until it was introduced to them from the outside and then only accepted after much resistance.

Western thought continually produces theories. It has theories about everything. Theories come from those who do not know. If they did know they wouldn’t create a theory. Western thought in its focus on matters material—especially money—has conjured up a host of economic theories. Some of the more known economic theorists are Malthus, Veblen, Smith, Marx, Friedman, and Keynes. These economic theorists believe that the proper relationship of money and goods will resolve the issues of humankind. None of them realize that the more focused society becomes on money, the worse the health of society becomes.

Western society continually searches for the truth but never finds it. Its philosophers, economists, sociologists, psychiatrists, nutritionists, and environmentalists all have theories. They don’t have the truth because they look for it in the wrong place. They look for it on the outside—in the material realm. The truth is contained on the inside—in the spiritual realm. Something spiritual resides behind every material thing. Europe, having a feminine psyche has no awareness of this truth.

To this day Western thought thirsts for knowledge from outside of itself. The United States with 300 million people and some of the best universities of the world continually tampers with immigration laws because it “needs” the talent necessary to maintain its edge in the high-tech era. Europe has a similar population and also a history of great universities; still it too seeks talent from outside of itself.

The West is really searching for the input of masculine assertiveness, vitality, and the conceptual thinking behind it, but does not realize it. All knowledge originates from the masculine principle—it cannot be otherwise.

The next essay will describe the extraordinary productive capacity of feminine Western thought.

E.G.