Not enough time to learn it all

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I know this isn't a usual problem but sometimes I really feel like I'll never achieve the level of knowledge I want. Yeh it sounds nerdy, and geeky, but I love history and facts. I overwhelm myself with the fact that modern history is so young and so much has happened before.

I mean the Roman Empire was around over 2,000 years ago and lasted so long and they were it. They were civilization. In terms of technology, culture, society, they were western society of their time. And now they're gone. The Mayans had their own thing going, so did the Egyptians, the varies Chinese tribes, India, and even the Native Americans. Don't even get me started in the Middle East.

How can I be satisfied that this is it when there is so much more out there, so many different ways to live, different concepts of math, science, astronomy, religions, music, arts, governments, industries. I want to know it all and appreciate all that has existed and make connections about how we got here now.

Today I was talking to my brother about music and the blues. I realized that the blues - which pretty much is the corestone for all western pop music - is less then 200 years old. What has existed 500 years ago, what about 1,000 years ago? What did they listen to in Medieval European, or what instruments did the Aztecs play? What did Jesus listen to?

We're celebrating Christmas now. Well what's going on in the middle of the Congo, or in Malaysia? Are they celebrating Christmas, and if so, how?

What are the priorities of people in other societies? Are they as materialistic as Americans? What do Chinese kids want? Toys, video games, happiness, a strong government?

How many traditions do we have today that are of pagan origins and pure propaganda? How did they come to be and what was the transitional period to have that established?

How can I cope with all this and still be sane? If I could have my perfect gift, it would be to have a room with a comfy arm chair, all the literature ever written in history, an anti-glare computer screen hooked up to the internet, and 2-3 people I can call in whenever I wanted to discuss or debate a topic.

I guess some people see the world trough their eyes and thats it, but I want to see the world through everyone's eyes and how they see things. Its not me vs 6 billion, its me wanting to connect to 6 billion people.

In computer terms, I don't think I have the bandwidth to digest it all.

Or maybe a magic viewing screen that will allow you to zoom in on anywhere/anywhen on Earth and check out what's going on. Except then you'd be swamped with enquiries: "Hey nbxyz! My buddy has just bet me ten bucks that Jesus was really a chick. What's the scoop?"

Seriously, there's nothing wrong with curiosity about the world around you. You may find, though, that it's more practicable to break it up into more easily-digestible chunks, and try to look at only a few of them at a time.

What I want to know is, how did people survive before the Internet came along?

Welcome to Wrong Planet, in case I haven't already said so.

Isn't it great? This is why I am never bored. There is always so little time, and so much to learn. I don't think learning ever stops - ever.

It is all in my book, which runs seven volumes and still does not get to modern times, like after 1543 BC.

Most of the good stuff happened more than 10,000 years ago. It is what set out culture on the path it is on.

Written history is basically about the fall of man. I miss the good old days.

Inventor,
what is this book of which you speak?
Please tell....

I have the same question, how?

Back and back through time, I wandered, what were the truely fomitive events of humans?

It only took forty years to put it in order. Most good stuff happened in pre history.

Sumer did not start writing, there is no proto Sumerian, writing appears fully developed.

Their crops and animals had been domesticated about 25,000 years before.

They were but a farm village, compared to the first city, Catal Huyuk in Turkey.

10,000 people lived there for 5,000 years, then abandoned it 3,000 years before Sumer started.

Writing is at least twice as old as it is credited with being, true, we cannot read it, but it is writing.

There were Ages before this one, and Ages before then.

I gathered and wrote, lately Anthropology has come to my view, everything important is very old.

The timeline was there, hidden and ignored, as various writers tried to show one period as being the meaning of life, but having to edit harshly to make their story fit, and failing.

This is the Fifth Age, I write about the first four. A single timeline connects them all.

Currently Book One, Chapter One, is in production as a comic book.

Coming soon to an Internet near you!

Good idea. Although I'd have 5 magical screens that can access up to five people's point of view at any time in history. So I'd need a dial for history, and a dial for who I want to use. And I should be able to pick up to 5 different people in 5 different eras in 5 different places and see what they do.

Too much impossible dreaming. Although I'd be a cool toy.

woah...ok, from the top

No one could possibly learn everything. Knowledge is advancing too fast. Say, in 1860, each fact could be numbered. Say 1 billion facts (gravity makes things fall, sun rises in the east, etc). by 1900 there were probably 2 billion facts, but 1930 or so, 4 billion, and exponentially onward. Probably by now, each year accumulates as many new facts as existed for all of the beginning of time to 1860.

500 years ago there were Gregorian chants, folk music (some are older than you know)
1000 years ago, there was always religious music (the universal constant. I don't know anything older than about 300AD)

Jesus listened to Jewish music, maybe some Roman songs, Greek certainly. Cantors, etc.

The Congo was Belgian, so Christmas is probably popular there. Malaysian is Muslim, so Eid al Fitr

everyone's priorities are different. Depends on a millino different things. Many aren't as materialistic as us....but they'd like to be

The Church borrowed liberally from Pagan sources; Christmas from Saturnalia, Mithraism, and Pagan (Pagan comes from the Latin Pagani[i] which means 'people of the fields'...you know....rednecks... It's a long subject, and I have to go, but you get the general idea...

i know there's infinite amount of knowledge, and i'll never learn it all.

its just that whenever i learn something new in addition to appreciating it, i also wonder why i didn't know about it before and how much more related knowledge there is to it.

everyone has to start somewhere...

I liked a lot of those 'interconnectedness' shows they'd have on public television, like 'Connections' (boy, am I showing my age... How knowing one fact brought up a connection to another fact, and a third and forth...facts don't add, they multiply.

Nothing wrong with learning things, just have to take it at your own pace.

Knowing everything is not possible, or good for you.

There are patterns, humans, living on big rock.

Even during the time of writing, three long, 800 year dark ages,

Cultures rise and fall. The first good historian, Ibn Khaldun, 1300, wrote about the patterns of history.

Worst, we are taught it backwards, learn the effect before the cause.

My view is where does it start?

Electroplating gold on copper was well known in Babylon. The batteries have been found.

The Greeks knew a lot about electricity, heat engines, machines, mechanical computers, gears.

The Romans did not know of the wheel barrow.

The first building in America taller than a Mayan building was the Sears Tower, built in 1937.

The Mayans quit building about 900 AD.

Cultures rise in waves, and crash in waves.

Three warm times and two ice ages since the first tech culture.

The cave painters of Europe worked during the worst of the last Ice Age,

12,000 years later Stonehenge was built, before any culture we know of, before Crete, Mycenia.

5,000 years before Egypt, Sumer.

Ebb and flow mark human time.

Our little era is hardly 200 years old. Fulton's steamboat, a toy, but fifty years later, riverboats, railroads, and another fifty, automobiles, and manned flight, and fifty more to commercial jet travel.

Now computers, Internet, but humans do not change.

A literate Greek could use everything we have, but would ask why we do not question the meaning of life?

We are mechanical, but not at all philosophical.

All is in the beginning of things.

i couldn't have been happier at the way this thread went.

so much more knowledge for me to learn!!