IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY
Mankind in Collective Amnesia

Immanuel Velikovsky described his work on collective amnesia :

"Mankind in Amnesia has to do not only with the past, like my other books -- primarily it has to do with the future, a future not removed by thousands or tens of thousands of years, but the imminent future, on whose threshold we now stand."

The subject that Immanuel Velikovsky has chosen is the psychological condition and case history of the human race. Virtually every aspect of human behavior, every pattern in human history, and every article of human belief, if examined and illuminated in the light of the thesis of this book, reveals how human thought and action have been shaped and molded by repressed collective memories of cosmic catastrophes that befell our ancestors as recently as one hundred generations ago.

In the section "A Collective Amnesia" of Worlds in Collision, published in 1950, Velikovsky outlined his principal psychological thesis. His theory of collective amnesia explains the inability of people to look at the overwhelming evidence of global catastrophes -- from all parts of the world -- that is there, and the unwillingness to see the implications of that evidence.

Velikovsky  wrote:

The memory of the cataclysms was erased, not because of lack of written traditions, but because of some characteristic process that later caused entire nations, together with their literate men, to read into these traditions allegories or metaphors where actually cosmic disturbances were clearly described.

As a student I became familiar with Velikovsky who was at once considered a visionary and a scientist, and yet a charlatan and writer of fiction by many His books Earth in Upheaval and Worlds in Collision are how accepted a scientifically viable works. Velikovsky wrote Mankind in Amnesia over the course of many years. Most of it was written in the 1950's and 60’s, but he added sections as late as 1979, the year he died.

What Vellikovsky theorized was that as a race we were in critical denial of catastrophic past events, and also of the probability of likely future events.

His work and his writings asserted that earth, its universe and galaxies were, like smaller systems bound to change, cleanse themselves and reassert in other forms or elements. He was arguably one of the first science writers to advance theory about collapsed matter and the nature of stars.

The Madeira of Velikovsky is that his theory about denial is totally germain to our inability to accept a lack of mastery of  nature or the  highly unpredictable nebula of stars, forces and conditions prevalent in our larger environment. Our icecaps have lost volume in excess of the mass of the Province of Ontario while politicians debate the reality of global warming. It will not be small extra planetary beings saying “Take me to your leader.” that threaten our existence, but larger suit wearing terrestrials in our House of  Commons. Collective Amnesia is the distemper of denial. Waking up now would be a really good idea.