American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse

[The Lawspeaker]

American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-05/ff_guidestones?currentPage=1)



http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1705/ff_guidestones_f.jpg (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-05/ff_guidestones?currentPage=1#)
http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-05/ff_guidestones?currentPage=1#)

The Georgia Guidestones may be the most enigmatic monument in the US: huge slabs of granite, inscribed with directions for rebuilding civilization after the apocalypse. Only one man knows who created them—and he's not talking.



The strangest monument in America looms over a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia. Five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern. The rocks are each 16 feet tall, with four of them weighing more than 20 tons apiece. Together they support a 25,000-pound capstone. Approaching the edifice, it's hard not to think immediately of England's Stonehenge (http://www.anima.demon.co.uk/stonehenge/index.html) or possibly the ominous monolith (http://www.ohgizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/2001_monolith.jpg) from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Built in 1980, these pale gray rocks are quietly awaiting the end of the world as we know it.


Called the Georgia Guidestones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones), the monument is a mystery—nobody knows exactly who commissioned it or why. The only clues to its origin are on a nearby plaque (http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/4212332.jpg) on the ground—which gives the dimensions and explains a series of intricate notches and holes that correspond to the movements of the sun and stars—and the "guides" themselves, directives carved into the rocks. These instructions appear in eight languages ranging from English to Swahili and reflect a peculiar New Age ideology. Some are vaguely eugenic (guide reproduction wisely—improving fitness and diversity); others prescribe standard-issue hippie mysticism (prize truth—beauty—love—seeking harmony with the infinite).


What's most widely agreed upon—based on the evidence available—is that the Guidestones are meant to instruct the dazed survivors of some impending apocalypse as they attempt to reconstitute civilization. Not everyone is comfortable with this notion. A few days before I visited, the stones had been splattered with polyurethane (http://freespeech.vo.llnwd.net/o25/pub/images/g1.jpg) and spray-painted with graffiti, including slogans like "Death to the new world order." This defacement was the first serious act of vandalism in the Guidestones' history, but it was hardly the first objection to their existence. In fact, for more than three decades this uncanny structure in the heart of the Bible Belt has been generating responses that range from enchantment to horror. Supporters (notable among them Yoko Ono) have praised the messages as a stirring call to rational thinking, akin to Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Reason). Opponents have attacked them as the Ten Commandments of the Antichrist.


Whoever the anonymous architects of the Guidestones were, they knew what they were doing: The monument is a highly engineered structure that flawlessly tracks the sun. It also manages to engender endless fascination, thanks to a carefully orchestrated aura of mystery. And the stones have attracted plenty of devotees to defend against folks who would like them destroyed. Clearly, whoever had the monument placed here understood one thing very well: People prize what they don't understand at least as much as what they do.


The story of the Georgia Guidestones began on a Friday afternoon in June 1979, when an elegant gray-haired gentleman showed up in Elbert County, made his way to the offices of Elberton Granite Finishing, and introduced himself as Robert C. Christian. He claimed to represent "a small group of loyal Americans" who had been planning the installation of an unusually large and complex stone monument. Christian had come to Elberton—the county seat and the granite capital of the world—because he believed its quarries produced the finest stone on the planet.


Joe Fendley, Elberton Granite's president, nodded absently, distracted by the rush to complete his weekly payroll. But when Christian began to describe the monument he had in mind, Fendley stopped what he was doing. Not only was the man asking for stones larger than any that had been quarried in the county, he also wanted them cut, finished, and assembled into some kind of enormous astronomical instrument.


What in the world would it be for? Fendley asked. Christian explained that the structure he had in mind would serve as a compass, calendar, and clock. It would also need to be engraved with a set of guides written in eight of the world's major languages. And it had to be capable of withstanding the most catastrophic events, so that the shattered remnants of humanity would be able to use those guides to reestablish a better civilization than the one that was about to destroy itself.




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The Georgia Guidestones Guidebook

http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1705/ff_guidestones_book_t.jpg (http://www.wired.com/images/multimedia/magazine/1705/Wired_May_2009_Georgia_Guidestones.pdf)
Published by Elberton Granite in 1981: (http://www.wired.com/images/multimedia/magazine/1705/Wired_May_2009_Georgia_Guidestones.pdf)
Download Complete Book [70MB PDF] (http://www.wired.com/images/multimedia/magazine/1705/Wired_May_2009_Georgia_Guidestones.pdf)

[Beorn]

maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

That has me sold.

[The Lawspeaker]

That has me sold.
Me too- in the opposite way. Something tells me that there is something wrong with this stuff.

[Electronic God-Man]

I think that both Hebrew and Swahili were bad choices for 2 of the 8 languages. The others were good choices. Is Swahili a language that has a lot in common with other African languages...would there be a better African language for this purpose? I can't find any reason to have Hebrew.

And why did they include Hieroglyphics, Babylonian cuneiform, etc? My first thought was that they want people to be able to read the classics...but this is the apocalypse we are talking about and if artifacts with cuneiform can survive the survivors probably won't need a huge stone tablet to tell them what to do, a lot would survive in that case.

[Sol Invictus]

Bump.

[Loddfafner]

This looks like an interesting artifact of the mentality of the late 1970s. I just wonder what we do now that will seem as inexplicably insane 30 years later.

[ikki]

I think that both Hebrew and Swahili were bad choices for 2 of the 8 languages. The others were good choices. Is Swahili a language that has a lot in common with other African languages...would there be a better African language for this purpose? I can't find any reason to have Hebrew.

And why did they include Hieroglyphics, Babylonian cuneiform, etc? My first thought was that they want people to be able to read the classics...but this is the apocalypse we are talking about and if artifacts with cuneiform can survive the survivors probably won't need a huge stone tablet to tell them what to do, a lot would survive in that case.

swahili is related to arabic, and preforms as a lingua franca for east africa... or in a sense all the coaslines of the indian ocean

[Cato]

Weird, I've never heard of this before.

[ikki]

The purpose?

Changing oppinions to match those. The technique is simple enough: 2 steps, 1) Expose to the views, 2) discredit their own. 1) was accomplished with the stones.

2) comes with societys breakdown due to multiculture, excessive lending and the gold trust who will have spent the us gold reserves by 2015, 2020 latest. That is also when the dollar will collapse, or seemingly so anyway, as gold starts hitting astronomical 25k/ounce... and soon after infinite in dollars anyway.

At the same time we will have run out of a great number of strategic minerals aswell.

......

But why exactly there was a need to pass thru diversity first is unknown. I mean, there is a vast conspiracy.... and those did fund the lend-lease, why?
Are these changed opinions, which gets stranger still without funded restitution of such values destroyed at nuremberg, or another group.

The one in power, we know, has made money divine... and made everyone worship this holy object.
That would indicate strongly a rival group. And that those stones arent meant to exactly guide, asmuch as perform as a tombstone for all alternative values to money divine.
The obscurity surely lends to this.

[Poltergeist]

Me too- in the opposite way. Something tells me that there is something wrong with this stuff.

Me too. It points towards some sort of (totally wrongly understood) "concern for the environment", coupled with the "overopulation" scaremongering, usual mantra of catastrophists of various stripes since the sixties. Here also combined with certain occultic flavour.

[The Lawspeaker]

Err. No. If this was a crime investigation this might have been a smoking gun. "conspiracy to murder".

[Cato]

My brief comments on the instructions (in parentheses).
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature. (While overpopulation will become a severe problem in the future, I think that the world can support more than half a billion people. The population at the turn of the 20th century was around 1 billion iirc.)
Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity. (This isn't as inane or as evil as it sounds imo.)
Unite humanity with a living new language. (An English-derived language?)
Rule passion - faith - tradition - and all things with tempered reason. (An ideal that must be taught, this sounds like Enlightenment or even Stoic doctrine.)
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts. (See above.)
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court. (This would imply a global government of some sort that had the power to enforce the directives of this world court.)
Avoid petty laws and useless officials. (Reminds me of the phrase "venal officials" in Mein Kampf for some reason.)
Balance personal rights with social duties. (This reminds me of the sort of stuff that Ombongo likes to refer to- what social duties does he mean? What duty to private citizens have to society beyond the norm?)
Prize truth - beauty - love - seeking harmony with the infinite. (Sounds Vedic or new age.)
Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature. (Nature worship is not the be all and end all of existence. It's the duty of humans to create and maintain civilization and culture.)

[The Lawspeaker]

Pretty scary stuff, in'nit ?

[Cato]

Old thread gets a bump!