Dream of Escape From Spirituality
The other night I lost track of time and read and wrote until the sun had come up. I did not feel so very good the rest of the day and so I resolved to catch up upon my sleep and I did, so much so that I began to have some leisurely dreams.
In one dream I levitated, though not so spectacularly as when I was younger. Nowadays I am content to rise but imperceptibly above the ground and float along at sometimes great speeds without the strain or bother of even pretending to walk or run. One does not have to fly like a bird, and as far as ease of transportation goes, to rise up an inch is as good as a mile.
Then I had a dream that I was a prisoner in an old school – not a lavish old traditional school of brick and ivy, but only some run down single level cheaply fabricated school built by the lowest bidder to the County. But the Prison Routine was not very strict and the guards not plentiful or particularly observant. I soon discovered that outsiders would approach and pass keys in through the window, and those with these keys could escape with fairly minimal trouble or risk. So I effected an escape.
I took up residence in a building further up the hill. At first I passed my time in ease, but somehow I discovered that I could come by those Keys of Freedom, no, not very many at a time, but I could get such keys (keys that seemed sometimes keys and sometimes coins), and so I determined to become one of those people who would go down the hill below and pass keys through the window.
Then my mother came to me and was telling me that my brother was down the hill below and was a member of an Ashram. I looked out and saw the Ashram, and it was not quite the Old dilapidated School I had escaped from earlier, but some crudely nailed together single story dwellings, what they call Ranch Houses, all with cooking fires as I could see whiffs of smoke curling from chimney pipes popping out from the roofs. Against the minimalist desert landscape, this Ashram must have been about some kind of Spiritual Work, as nobody was there for the Aesthetics.
Well, I had been a member to several Ashrams and found the idea of my brother being an Ashram Member interesting… he did not seem the type, having taken an entirely different path in life from mine. As she elaborated, I found that the language of the Ashram was not Sanskrit, the Holy Language of the East, but some Native American Language, supposedly ancient. Well, I really did not know what to think about that.
Now that I review some of my readings, there was some rumors that the Native American’s at the time of the Spanish Invasion were responding to Prophecies that held them as Liberators who would free them from the Aztecs who they saw and suffered under as veritable devils who had stamped out the True Religion of the Mayans or whoever. And then the Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe was seen as the Prophesized reincarnation of some Merciful Feathered Snake God or whatever. It is remarkable that almost the entire population of tropical America converted en masse to this Religion of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and with hardly any official Catholic instigation, indeed, for the Spanish had to send off to Spain for reinforcements of Priests just to take care of finalizing the Conversions, where all the convincing propaganda was handled by the Natives themselves, in terms of the Old Legends and Prophecies (which the Catholic Priests were not overly curious about).
My mother has shown me some examples of this Native American Language, in writing. I wondered at the time whether its meaning was in any ways as sensible as spiritual Sanskrit. But I must admit that one can go through reams of old Sanskrit literature without finding anything particularly inspiring, as we Moderns have come to expect. And then we must wonder that after one has plucked the gems from the pages, what all the rest of it had to say. You see, while we may pick one phrase as a favorite and suppose the entire Religion is based upon that, well, some other group with another agenda of interest may pick something entirely different, something we dismissed for being too obviously mundane. Yes, Religions should keep themselves short and to the point, it being almost as important not to say the wrong thing as it is to say the right.
The importance of Viewpoint should not be forgotten in evaluating this Dream. I was up looking down on this Ashram, and so I should dismiss immediately the possibility that I might be missing something in not being a follower of this newly uncovered Field of Spirituality. And I need to remember that only moments before I was running Keys down that same Valley to help people escape from it.
Hmmmmm. Is there something inherent in much of Today’s Spirituality that one would consider imprisoning and where it could be thought a benefit to escape from it. Remember, in my dream, nothing was very strict in that Prison, and the guards were few and far between, and the Escape proved rather easy. And after the escape I did move up in the World, up the Hill to a Higher Level. All very symbolic, but how does it compare to the Real World?
Well, most Spiritual Organizations are wrong about something. They formed around some old political or economic agenda, in reaction to something, or for some interested end in itself. In those senses, of course they would be impure. Then there is the matter that most Spiritual Traditions are polarizing, as they set some Languages against others, some Countries against others. Sometimes it is only a matter of Accident, where the wrong People happen to be in charge – perfectly good spiritual organizations being contaminated by the Idiots in Charge.
Oh, this brings to mind the very importance of insisting that there is a Transcendent God above it all. While there is a Transcendent God to point to, albeit its Invisibility, then all the imperfections of the Spiritual Organization below can be somewhat allowed for, even forgiven some of its ineptitudes because, after all, the Organization is not really the center of focus – God is. But in cases where the Spiritual Organization sets up a Super Guru, a God on Earth, then we have the problem where any imperfection noted in the Guru disqualifies everything.
Indeed, all Religious Leaders should insist upon their own personal Imperfections… they should even Institutionalize their Imperfection by perhaps always wearing mismatched socks, or something. Wherever Religion Deifies its Leaders it comes to be a problem. Christianity Deified Paul and now has to live with a man’s doctrines as though they are God’s. Islam deified Mohamed and now they can never pry the Sword out of God’s Hand. The Mormons deified John Smith and so their God has a penis and a huge sexual appetite. God needs to be kept Transcendent.
Well, does there absolutely need to be a Spiritual Organization. In most cases a Civilization depends upon its concrete established Institutions. Organizations can be extremely important. But often enough great Influences on Society are not Institutionalized in the Organizational sense at all, or only peripherally. I can think of the influences of Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Yes, peripheral Institutions in Theatre and Publishing have contributed to the wide Influence of Shakespeare and Austen, but neither of them have an established Priesthood or a dedicated College. No one pretends to maintain purity of Doctrine. Here I am saying that if a Spiritual Influence were Culturally Powerful enough, it might be able to operate free of a Concretized Organization, or any one particular Organization, as I am sure there are any number of Shakespeare and Austen Reading Clubs, without the danger of any one Club creating an embarrassment large enough to humiliate the Whole.
What Spirituality and the Cause of Civilization needs Today is a Cultural Phenomena, and not just some new Organization.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Joys of Being a Linguist
Joys of Being a Linguist
Now, adults are bombarded at every turn with the dubiously helpful insight that children are so much better at learning languages than are adults. Indeed, however, when the details of such findings are fully revealed, this Age of Susceptibility, this Window of Opportunity for Linguistic Achievement, is rather too small to be put to much practical use, beyond supposing that there might be some benefit in playing child’s games with more than one way to say “you’re it” or “naa na-na neh naa naa!” It may be that children can learn better only because they are content to learn less.
So let us put it out of our minds, that anxiety that learning another Civilized Language might be significantly harder than if we had set out to do it when we were three years old.
But now, why? Why learn another language? Particularly if one already knows English, which has become something of the Lingua Franca of the Modern World. Can’t one language really be enough?
Well, as in many other things, it is a matter of taste and inclination. Consider the case that one is really delighted in one’s Language, and had practically read everything, and, well, “heard it all” so to speak. Can one really continue to go back endlessly to one’s old favorite books? Many do. But many develop the urge to reach toward something more.
I have been gifted with a good memory. Many people have the vaguest memories of their childhood, but I remember a great deal. I remember being a very little boy uncertain of even my own Mother Tongue. I recall being in front of a door of a friends house, knocking, and wondering what on earth I was going to say to the mother who would open the door and enquirer as to what I wanted. Happily, when she did she knew somehow automatically that I was there to ask to play with the boy of the house, and that prescience of mind relieved me of the anxiety of having to find something intelligent to say. But Language continued to worry me. I then remembered my first years in school and how fussy teachers could be about spelling and pronunciation, and how I had to do much deliberate practice and study to keep from being put down with the stupid boys. Then I remembered the first books I actually enjoyed reading. Then I remembered the first books that I enjoyed despite their making me reach for dictionaries and grammars. I remember one teacher awkwardly suggesting I start upon Fine Literature, and I could see the doubt in her eyes as she wondered whether she was pushing too hard or two early. It was that look that sent me to the Library where I discovered the Great Literature of my Language. Then came the vocabulary notebooks. The Quote notebooks. Oh, I had other interests. There was plenty of stuff I was doing. But amidst it all was Language. And now that I am getting older, and sports, cars, girls and all those other interests recede, there still remains Language.
But the vocabulary notebooks, the quote notebooks… one can never return home again. Few new cards can be written. The cards, back then, well, they did their job. I now speak in Vocabulary Notebooks. And there are even moments, when I hit my stride, where I am even quotable. But those old joys of discovering English can not be run through again. The original wonder of a book can not be had on its tenth reading. So one looks to a New Language and a new Great Literature.
Now, even with my fine memory, I can’t remember the first moment I thought of learning French, to again break out the Vocabulary Notebooks and the Quotes, and the Verb Conjugation Charts that I had not even suspected, and the Grammars which are so necessary if only to make sense of some words which, despite their individual and separate meanings, when arranged together seem to make no sense at all. It is the colloquialisms, the mystery of the little words with their special funny meanings that I guess are so easy for the child but which pose such a problem for the adult. But since they are common, they are seen often and eventually the strange use of the little words becomes familiar.
It is all surprisingly quite fun. While Fast Cars and Pretty Young Women played such a large part in the first phase of my Mid-Life Crisis, now I find myself putting in a great deal of time studying Linguistics. It is certainly safer, far cheaper, and I get better sleep at night. What is not to like?
Oh, there are discouraging moments. When I first started it seemed like I was forever studying, going over vocabulary lists and reading, reading, reading and still it seemed as though I was always returning to a completely foreign language every time I unloaded my book bag. Then the day arrived where I read through my first entire French Paragraph without having to consult a dictionary or a grammar. I was stunned at first. I suspected it might have been a matter of lazy inattention and went back and re-read the paragraph, and, yes, while I knew some words had additional senses that had slipped my mind, I knew that as the words were used in this case, I knew what they meant. Wow! It was like a small Religious Experience, but a small one of those is better than none at all. A blip of Rapture!
Then one finds that one day one can actually begin using the Primary Language Dictionary, not having to ever resort to the English-French Cheater Dictionary. That was a strange and sneaky advance. It seemed like only the day before I could not understand nearly a thing of the pure French Dictionary, with the definitions giving me only more words to look up, with more words to look up after that, and never answering the original question… in most cases forgetting what the original question was. But then, one day the French-English Dictionary must have slid beyond my reach and I grabbed the Pure French instead, and I suddenly found I could read it, no, not completely, but enough to serve.
Finally there comes the moment when one actually enjoys a fine turn of phrase… not mistaking it for the ordinary usage of the Language, but actually being able to detect something special going on… some artful arrangement of the words and phrases that go way beyond what the grammar books would anticipate. All before that there was the Love of wanting to Fall in Love with the Language. But then to actually hear it and grasp it and appreciate it. To really feel the effect of the Fine use of a new Language… one is no longer a Virgin anymore.
Oh, there is a plodding and practical use for learning a New Language. One becomes so much more aware of one’s English… of its Grammar and usages. I had always wondered to myself why the English writers were so much better than the Americans. Well, of course, its because they all knew French.
Now, adults are bombarded at every turn with the dubiously helpful insight that children are so much better at learning languages than are adults. Indeed, however, when the details of such findings are fully revealed, this Age of Susceptibility, this Window of Opportunity for Linguistic Achievement, is rather too small to be put to much practical use, beyond supposing that there might be some benefit in playing child’s games with more than one way to say “you’re it” or “naa na-na neh naa naa!” It may be that children can learn better only because they are content to learn less.
So let us put it out of our minds, that anxiety that learning another Civilized Language might be significantly harder than if we had set out to do it when we were three years old.
But now, why? Why learn another language? Particularly if one already knows English, which has become something of the Lingua Franca of the Modern World. Can’t one language really be enough?
Well, as in many other things, it is a matter of taste and inclination. Consider the case that one is really delighted in one’s Language, and had practically read everything, and, well, “heard it all” so to speak. Can one really continue to go back endlessly to one’s old favorite books? Many do. But many develop the urge to reach toward something more.
I have been gifted with a good memory. Many people have the vaguest memories of their childhood, but I remember a great deal. I remember being a very little boy uncertain of even my own Mother Tongue. I recall being in front of a door of a friends house, knocking, and wondering what on earth I was going to say to the mother who would open the door and enquirer as to what I wanted. Happily, when she did she knew somehow automatically that I was there to ask to play with the boy of the house, and that prescience of mind relieved me of the anxiety of having to find something intelligent to say. But Language continued to worry me. I then remembered my first years in school and how fussy teachers could be about spelling and pronunciation, and how I had to do much deliberate practice and study to keep from being put down with the stupid boys. Then I remembered the first books I actually enjoyed reading. Then I remembered the first books that I enjoyed despite their making me reach for dictionaries and grammars. I remember one teacher awkwardly suggesting I start upon Fine Literature, and I could see the doubt in her eyes as she wondered whether she was pushing too hard or two early. It was that look that sent me to the Library where I discovered the Great Literature of my Language. Then came the vocabulary notebooks. The Quote notebooks. Oh, I had other interests. There was plenty of stuff I was doing. But amidst it all was Language. And now that I am getting older, and sports, cars, girls and all those other interests recede, there still remains Language.
But the vocabulary notebooks, the quote notebooks… one can never return home again. Few new cards can be written. The cards, back then, well, they did their job. I now speak in Vocabulary Notebooks. And there are even moments, when I hit my stride, where I am even quotable. But those old joys of discovering English can not be run through again. The original wonder of a book can not be had on its tenth reading. So one looks to a New Language and a new Great Literature.
Now, even with my fine memory, I can’t remember the first moment I thought of learning French, to again break out the Vocabulary Notebooks and the Quotes, and the Verb Conjugation Charts that I had not even suspected, and the Grammars which are so necessary if only to make sense of some words which, despite their individual and separate meanings, when arranged together seem to make no sense at all. It is the colloquialisms, the mystery of the little words with their special funny meanings that I guess are so easy for the child but which pose such a problem for the adult. But since they are common, they are seen often and eventually the strange use of the little words becomes familiar.
It is all surprisingly quite fun. While Fast Cars and Pretty Young Women played such a large part in the first phase of my Mid-Life Crisis, now I find myself putting in a great deal of time studying Linguistics. It is certainly safer, far cheaper, and I get better sleep at night. What is not to like?
Oh, there are discouraging moments. When I first started it seemed like I was forever studying, going over vocabulary lists and reading, reading, reading and still it seemed as though I was always returning to a completely foreign language every time I unloaded my book bag. Then the day arrived where I read through my first entire French Paragraph without having to consult a dictionary or a grammar. I was stunned at first. I suspected it might have been a matter of lazy inattention and went back and re-read the paragraph, and, yes, while I knew some words had additional senses that had slipped my mind, I knew that as the words were used in this case, I knew what they meant. Wow! It was like a small Religious Experience, but a small one of those is better than none at all. A blip of Rapture!
Then one finds that one day one can actually begin using the Primary Language Dictionary, not having to ever resort to the English-French Cheater Dictionary. That was a strange and sneaky advance. It seemed like only the day before I could not understand nearly a thing of the pure French Dictionary, with the definitions giving me only more words to look up, with more words to look up after that, and never answering the original question… in most cases forgetting what the original question was. But then, one day the French-English Dictionary must have slid beyond my reach and I grabbed the Pure French instead, and I suddenly found I could read it, no, not completely, but enough to serve.
Finally there comes the moment when one actually enjoys a fine turn of phrase… not mistaking it for the ordinary usage of the Language, but actually being able to detect something special going on… some artful arrangement of the words and phrases that go way beyond what the grammar books would anticipate. All before that there was the Love of wanting to Fall in Love with the Language. But then to actually hear it and grasp it and appreciate it. To really feel the effect of the Fine use of a new Language… one is no longer a Virgin anymore.
Oh, there is a plodding and practical use for learning a New Language. One becomes so much more aware of one’s English… of its Grammar and usages. I had always wondered to myself why the English writers were so much better than the Americans. Well, of course, its because they all knew French.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Chipping People the Latest Surveillance Technology
Chipping People the Latest Surveillance Technology
Some old friends in the Intelligence and Police Communities had been updating me on the latest Surveillance Technologies, covering Information and Communication, as well as the Iraqi Surge Secret Technologies, of using multi-spectrum satellite imagery to effectively ‘fingerprint’ identities and then using new Search Engine Information Technologies to effectively catalogue the vast amounts of Data into useful chunks of Intelligence Information… who to drop bombs on.
It is all very impressive. Yes, it all could have been done years ago. But before Terrorism there were only Criminals, and Governments had no interest in really doing anything about Criminals… you see, Criminals are such a tempting source of Cash Money Contributions. The mistake the Terrorists are making is that they are not paying anybody off. But since the Terrorists won’t behave reasonably within the Democratic World, hiring the compulsory Lobbyists, like the Israelis do in order to become Respectable, then they must be dealt with, and this requires real action. And we DO have some very capable people when it comes to implementing real action.
Anyway, I had written an essay before on the Surge Surveillance Secret Technology – the combination of Multi-Spectral Identity Certification with Mass Information Cataloguing. Everybody in the Community is still oowing and ahhing over that, but, then, especially from the Police, we hear the suggestion that using elaborate cameras that push out so much data and need so much computer bandwidth in order to be understood… that it is clumsy, even while being so impressive; but that it could all be done with so much less muss and fuss if everybody was simply required to carry a small Radio Transponder that would mark Identity and Location, that is, if everybody was CHIPPED. Oh, and If vehicles and significant pieces of mobile property were also required to be chipped.
Already all phones, websites and emails are surveilled. If we added this next step of being CHIPPED, then Terrorism would be, well, impossible. Using the Mass Information Cataloguing Technologies (derived from the Search Engine Wars… making Google the Father of Big Brother) the Law Enforcement and Intelligence Communities would have a complete map of everybody’s associates, everybody’s habits, comings and goings. Certainly most elaborate Terrorist Attacks could be nipped in the bud, well before execution, but certainly nobody would ever be able to get away with anything.
Oh, the only drawback is that anything used against Terrorism might be used against Crime. Right now the Terrorist’s greatest Ally in the West is Organized Crime. Most of the Propaganda in support of Privacy has been paid for by Organized Crime or those sympathetic to Crime (political Anarchists and destructive psychopaths), and every Politician asked to support more thorough Surveillance Technologies must contend with the anxieties of major criminal contributors… again, all in unmarked cash. It’s not the Declared Contributions we need to be worried about, but piles of cash money that can be shoved anywhere and certainly must have an influence on how Power is exercised.
Anyway, the same as how 9-11 did away with any effective opposition to complete monitoring of Email and Telephone Communications, when Criminal Organizations simply had to shut up about it and hope that their continued Pay Offs would protect them from Prosecution (and it has, hasn’t it?), so it is hoped that the Coordinated Terrorist Attacks in India will convince the Civilized World of the necessity for Chipping every Person, every vehicle, every important little thing.
We will live in a Safe World when we know where everybody and everything is, was and will be.
Some old friends in the Intelligence and Police Communities had been updating me on the latest Surveillance Technologies, covering Information and Communication, as well as the Iraqi Surge Secret Technologies, of using multi-spectrum satellite imagery to effectively ‘fingerprint’ identities and then using new Search Engine Information Technologies to effectively catalogue the vast amounts of Data into useful chunks of Intelligence Information… who to drop bombs on.
It is all very impressive. Yes, it all could have been done years ago. But before Terrorism there were only Criminals, and Governments had no interest in really doing anything about Criminals… you see, Criminals are such a tempting source of Cash Money Contributions. The mistake the Terrorists are making is that they are not paying anybody off. But since the Terrorists won’t behave reasonably within the Democratic World, hiring the compulsory Lobbyists, like the Israelis do in order to become Respectable, then they must be dealt with, and this requires real action. And we DO have some very capable people when it comes to implementing real action.
Anyway, I had written an essay before on the Surge Surveillance Secret Technology – the combination of Multi-Spectral Identity Certification with Mass Information Cataloguing. Everybody in the Community is still oowing and ahhing over that, but, then, especially from the Police, we hear the suggestion that using elaborate cameras that push out so much data and need so much computer bandwidth in order to be understood… that it is clumsy, even while being so impressive; but that it could all be done with so much less muss and fuss if everybody was simply required to carry a small Radio Transponder that would mark Identity and Location, that is, if everybody was CHIPPED. Oh, and If vehicles and significant pieces of mobile property were also required to be chipped.
Already all phones, websites and emails are surveilled. If we added this next step of being CHIPPED, then Terrorism would be, well, impossible. Using the Mass Information Cataloguing Technologies (derived from the Search Engine Wars… making Google the Father of Big Brother) the Law Enforcement and Intelligence Communities would have a complete map of everybody’s associates, everybody’s habits, comings and goings. Certainly most elaborate Terrorist Attacks could be nipped in the bud, well before execution, but certainly nobody would ever be able to get away with anything.
Oh, the only drawback is that anything used against Terrorism might be used against Crime. Right now the Terrorist’s greatest Ally in the West is Organized Crime. Most of the Propaganda in support of Privacy has been paid for by Organized Crime or those sympathetic to Crime (political Anarchists and destructive psychopaths), and every Politician asked to support more thorough Surveillance Technologies must contend with the anxieties of major criminal contributors… again, all in unmarked cash. It’s not the Declared Contributions we need to be worried about, but piles of cash money that can be shoved anywhere and certainly must have an influence on how Power is exercised.
Anyway, the same as how 9-11 did away with any effective opposition to complete monitoring of Email and Telephone Communications, when Criminal Organizations simply had to shut up about it and hope that their continued Pay Offs would protect them from Prosecution (and it has, hasn’t it?), so it is hoped that the Coordinated Terrorist Attacks in India will convince the Civilized World of the necessity for Chipping every Person, every vehicle, every important little thing.
We will live in a Safe World when we know where everybody and everything is, was and will be.
What To Do About Islam’s Violence
What To Do About Islam’s Violence
Yes, yes, one hears endlessly that the Muslim Mainstream is Peaceful. Of course they are. They are in business and have good jobs and Peace is what they mean when they are talking about ‘not rocking the boat’, ‘not killing the goose that is laying their Golden Egg’. Yes, Islamic History is full of repeated examples of their Educated Schools trying to make Doctrinal Islam worthy and supportive of their flourishing Civilizations by establishing Moral Doctrines and layering some soothing Interpretations over all the Seeping and Simmering Violence embedded within the Koran. All of this was Noble and Worthy. Good Men trying to do a Good Thing. Admirable.
However, every new wave of Barbarians coming out of the hinter-country Hills, who would learn the most basic Arabic from those who knew barely more than the most basic Arabic, would insist that they needed no Doctrine, they needed no Enlightened Interpretations. Indeed, they would not understand it anyway, as it was far beyond their simple Readings. But, they would insist that they could read with their own two eyes how Mohamed their Great Prophet hated everybody and wanted everybody dead… all except those Faithful willing to do all the Specified Killing. Their Mullahs would open the Koran and point to the passages. And, yes, the passages are there. I’ve looked. The Koran, with as much respect as one can summon to say so, has serious moral problems.
It does not help that Islam has no Official Organization. Islam is largely a great deal like American Protestantism, where Religious Leaders are, well, Self Appointed. Yes, it is in some manner Democratic, that every so called Religious Leader has power in proportion to the number of those he has been able to convert to his Cause. Unfortunately, history shows us that Opportunistic Religious Leaders have the most ease in ‘Converting’ those of the lowest Education, those most easily manipulated. Also there is the Matter of the Rich and Powerful being able to greatly influence the Doctrines of these Community Religious Leaders, as we see in America, where Rich Corporate Republicans effectively hire the services of Ministers who can control the vote and political leanings of the poorest parishioners … or those who simply follow their Christian Heroes via television.
Islam, and American Protestantism, for that matter, need to Organize and Solidify Doctrine, and to positively STOP all those who attempt to Resurrect justifications for Violence out of Scripture. This might imply a great Civil War within Islam. But yes, the World must Insist. If Islam will not clean up its own House, then the World owes it to its own Security and Safety to knock down that House that is proving to be such a General Threat to the World Community as a Whole.
Seriously, let any body of Historians take a look at Islamic History and it will be obvious that Islam can not be at Peace with the World or even at Peace with itself. Then let Theologians take over and look at the Koran and it might appear obvious to them that the greatest difficulty is in rehabilitating the Koran itself. It is simply too True that the Prophet fulminated too often, shook his fist too often, and bore the Sword too often, all to be a creditable Religious Leader in regards to any Doctrines of Peaceful Coexistence.
And it is not very encouraging that it takes years of University Training to see how Islam is really a Peaceful Religion, but that the Hinterland Mullahs need only a fiery Sermon or two, from straight out of the Koran, with Quotes and everything, to show a village full of men that the Koran is just some great Death Warrant to be assigned to any convenient Enemy.
Maybe Islam needs to take a page from Mormon History – as the Mormons have never hesitated to rewrite their Scripture, melting the plates of all prior editions, even replacing old Family Coffee Table Bibles, so Islam might consider putting the Koran through a major Editing. Take a Page from Jewish Screenwriters in Hollywood who are satisfied if their finished product is only BASED on the Original. It might fix all of Islam’s problems if they could only just update the Koran, and root out every old edition. Ask the Mormons how they did it. But, then again, Mormons don’t have to worry about what individuals think, as they have a very strict Centralized Organization. Mormons are told what to think and they think it, or they lose their jobs and privileges, and nobody wants to be a normal person in Utah, on non-union slave wages and no human rights… not being Mormon and all. You know, after the World deals with Islam, it should consider the attack coming from Mormonism… not to Kill us, but to enslave us, in a very real sense. If Mormons wish to Utahize the World, then everybody should be really worried.
Anyway, the World needs to decide what to do about Islam. The Answer might not be very nice. The Best Thing would be for Islam to foresee this eventuality and take care of their own Problems before more Responsible Bodies have to step in and do it for them.
Oh, and it is a mistake for America to suppose that they are indispensable. The Arab World has PLENTY of money, and doesn’t need American Soldiers pretending somehow that they are shooting Muslims all the way on the other side of the World for the sake of American Freedom. The Saudi Oil Billionaires could bring in Larger Armies, cheaper, from all over the Third World and establish an Pan-Arab Islamic Region with only One Acceptable View of Islam, and that a Peaceful one… or the World would have to step in.
Yes, while it is nice to be Open and Tolerant, the World does not NEED Islam, and if Islam insists upon being a continual, even eternal THREAT to World Peace, well, let the Solution be quick, and if done well, in a hundred years our Children will never know there even was ever a problem (like on the American East Coast where nobody ever speaks of Indian Tribes)… nobody will ever ask about Islam except maybe some future history scholar looking for something obscure enough that nobody has already done dozens of doctoral treatises on the subject already. What a wonderful Subject – “The Disappearance of Islam”.
Yes, yes, one hears endlessly that the Muslim Mainstream is Peaceful. Of course they are. They are in business and have good jobs and Peace is what they mean when they are talking about ‘not rocking the boat’, ‘not killing the goose that is laying their Golden Egg’. Yes, Islamic History is full of repeated examples of their Educated Schools trying to make Doctrinal Islam worthy and supportive of their flourishing Civilizations by establishing Moral Doctrines and layering some soothing Interpretations over all the Seeping and Simmering Violence embedded within the Koran. All of this was Noble and Worthy. Good Men trying to do a Good Thing. Admirable.
However, every new wave of Barbarians coming out of the hinter-country Hills, who would learn the most basic Arabic from those who knew barely more than the most basic Arabic, would insist that they needed no Doctrine, they needed no Enlightened Interpretations. Indeed, they would not understand it anyway, as it was far beyond their simple Readings. But, they would insist that they could read with their own two eyes how Mohamed their Great Prophet hated everybody and wanted everybody dead… all except those Faithful willing to do all the Specified Killing. Their Mullahs would open the Koran and point to the passages. And, yes, the passages are there. I’ve looked. The Koran, with as much respect as one can summon to say so, has serious moral problems.
It does not help that Islam has no Official Organization. Islam is largely a great deal like American Protestantism, where Religious Leaders are, well, Self Appointed. Yes, it is in some manner Democratic, that every so called Religious Leader has power in proportion to the number of those he has been able to convert to his Cause. Unfortunately, history shows us that Opportunistic Religious Leaders have the most ease in ‘Converting’ those of the lowest Education, those most easily manipulated. Also there is the Matter of the Rich and Powerful being able to greatly influence the Doctrines of these Community Religious Leaders, as we see in America, where Rich Corporate Republicans effectively hire the services of Ministers who can control the vote and political leanings of the poorest parishioners … or those who simply follow their Christian Heroes via television.
Islam, and American Protestantism, for that matter, need to Organize and Solidify Doctrine, and to positively STOP all those who attempt to Resurrect justifications for Violence out of Scripture. This might imply a great Civil War within Islam. But yes, the World must Insist. If Islam will not clean up its own House, then the World owes it to its own Security and Safety to knock down that House that is proving to be such a General Threat to the World Community as a Whole.
Seriously, let any body of Historians take a look at Islamic History and it will be obvious that Islam can not be at Peace with the World or even at Peace with itself. Then let Theologians take over and look at the Koran and it might appear obvious to them that the greatest difficulty is in rehabilitating the Koran itself. It is simply too True that the Prophet fulminated too often, shook his fist too often, and bore the Sword too often, all to be a creditable Religious Leader in regards to any Doctrines of Peaceful Coexistence.
And it is not very encouraging that it takes years of University Training to see how Islam is really a Peaceful Religion, but that the Hinterland Mullahs need only a fiery Sermon or two, from straight out of the Koran, with Quotes and everything, to show a village full of men that the Koran is just some great Death Warrant to be assigned to any convenient Enemy.
Maybe Islam needs to take a page from Mormon History – as the Mormons have never hesitated to rewrite their Scripture, melting the plates of all prior editions, even replacing old Family Coffee Table Bibles, so Islam might consider putting the Koran through a major Editing. Take a Page from Jewish Screenwriters in Hollywood who are satisfied if their finished product is only BASED on the Original. It might fix all of Islam’s problems if they could only just update the Koran, and root out every old edition. Ask the Mormons how they did it. But, then again, Mormons don’t have to worry about what individuals think, as they have a very strict Centralized Organization. Mormons are told what to think and they think it, or they lose their jobs and privileges, and nobody wants to be a normal person in Utah, on non-union slave wages and no human rights… not being Mormon and all. You know, after the World deals with Islam, it should consider the attack coming from Mormonism… not to Kill us, but to enslave us, in a very real sense. If Mormons wish to Utahize the World, then everybody should be really worried.
Anyway, the World needs to decide what to do about Islam. The Answer might not be very nice. The Best Thing would be for Islam to foresee this eventuality and take care of their own Problems before more Responsible Bodies have to step in and do it for them.
Oh, and it is a mistake for America to suppose that they are indispensable. The Arab World has PLENTY of money, and doesn’t need American Soldiers pretending somehow that they are shooting Muslims all the way on the other side of the World for the sake of American Freedom. The Saudi Oil Billionaires could bring in Larger Armies, cheaper, from all over the Third World and establish an Pan-Arab Islamic Region with only One Acceptable View of Islam, and that a Peaceful one… or the World would have to step in.
Yes, while it is nice to be Open and Tolerant, the World does not NEED Islam, and if Islam insists upon being a continual, even eternal THREAT to World Peace, well, let the Solution be quick, and if done well, in a hundred years our Children will never know there even was ever a problem (like on the American East Coast where nobody ever speaks of Indian Tribes)… nobody will ever ask about Islam except maybe some future history scholar looking for something obscure enough that nobody has already done dozens of doctoral treatises on the subject already. What a wonderful Subject – “The Disappearance of Islam”.
India Terror Prevented and People Should be Chipped
India Terrorism Prevented and People Should be Chipped.
India experienced coordinated terrorist attacks. The Terrorists must have made extensive use of Communication and Transportation resources. But nobody was looking and nobody was listening.
In India this may be a matter of pure Governmental Poverty, or perhaps Official Incompetence and laziness in the Intelligence and Police Communities. Or there may be some misguided Respect for Privacy Rights.
Well Edmund Burke, or was it Winston Churchill who had said “Privacy is the Darkness where Evil lurks”.
As in America, all phone calls, all emails, all computer traffic can be put under surveillance. Yes, it must be terribly expensive. All this communication traffic must be scanned for Code, that is, are speech patterns and narrative ‘real’ or artificial, and if ‘real’ is the content non-threatening. Logs must be kept of who is talking to whom, and who cares about what. On the Visual Surveillance side, a great deal of Computer Bandwidth is necessary, not only to store the vast amounts of visual imagery, but also in the Computer Capacity necessary to analyze and catalogue the Core Information – everyone’s comings and goings, habits, patterns, and especially in detecting when any group of known associates break out of their established patterns, as in the case of launching a Terrorist Attack.
All this Technology already exists. Simply ask about the Secret behind the Surge Strategy in Iraq. A few soldiers on the ground did not make all the difference. The progress made in Iraq was all about New Surveillance Technologies and advances in Computer Cataloging Technologies – whereby billions of bites of Data can be compressed and reduced to small packets of important and useable information. Surprisingly, it all sources back to all the Search Engine advances. Google is the Father of the New Big Brother. The Search for the Brave New World is over.
In addition, Modern Civilized States can take even further care, by insisting that every Citizen or Resident wear a short range Radio Transponder, to establish Identity, what we would call a Chip. Yes, I have heard rumors of Multi-Spectrum Photo Scanning, even from Satellites that can effectively ‘fingerprint’ Identities and thus positively track individuals from moment to moment, day by day without any such Chip. But the Bandwidth required to record and analyze such necessarily complex information must be prohibitively expensive. It would be so much more simple if everybody just ‘beeped’ a unique personal code and their position continuously recorded. Cameras could be used to identify Non-Chipped people walking or driving around, and Police could instantly be alerted to their presence.
This would be bad for Criminals. For instance, if anybody is mugged in a dark alley, then simply by consulting the Records it could be easily determined who was in that particular Alley at the time of the Illegal Infraction. Equally, on the other side of it, the Innocent could greatly benefit. How often do we hear the cry from the Jails and the Prisons of “It was not me!” “I didn’t do it”. Yes, so often people (victims and witnesses) miss-identify suspects… when both the Evening and the Suspect are dark, so to speak, nobody can be sure of what is really seen, and victims and corroborating witnesses assume that the Police are arresting suspects for good reasons and feel pressures not nullify the hard work of the Police by expressing such seemingly counterproductive doubts just when arrests can be made. So it is that the System sometimes strikes at Crime blindly, but only because it is kept in the Dark. But with Chip Tracking and Chip Identification every Innocent Person automatically will have an official alibi. This is especially good for people who live alone, who, under the Old Regime can be accused of anything, done anytime, done anywhere, because, until cats can talk, they would never be able to assert an alibi. In our Modern Societies where it is so often incumbent upon us to prove our own innocence, the Chip should be welcomed with open arms and dancing in the streets.
However, Privacy Fanatics might suppose that the World will break out in Bloody Protest before submitting to Identity Chipping, but it could very well be welcomed by most people when the benefits for themselves are pointed out. But I do realize that Popular Media Propaganda for close to a hundred years now have been heavily on the side of Criminality, Anarchy and Privacy. It seems that many of the People with the Most to Hide are very wealthy and have connections in Publishing, Movies, TV and Radio. We have been bombarded with totally Artificial Scenarios of how bad it would be if the Truth were Known about Things. We have been left to suppose that Governments would Naturally hold Goodness and Purity against us, and would persecute and prosecute us for merely being good and decent Human Beings and for minding our own businesses. The real fact of the Matter is that the Worst Criminal Elements have put forward this intensive Propaganda Campaign in order to maintain their Massive Criminal Enterprises in the Dark, maintaining Privacy as the First and Foremost Right within Liberal Democracy. But we should wake up to the Deceptions and Impositions and announce to ourselves and the World that finally there will be Light.
The Technology is already here. We can choose now to chase the Criminals and the Terrorists out of the Darkness of Institutionalized Privacy Rights.
India experienced coordinated terrorist attacks. The Terrorists must have made extensive use of Communication and Transportation resources. But nobody was looking and nobody was listening.
In India this may be a matter of pure Governmental Poverty, or perhaps Official Incompetence and laziness in the Intelligence and Police Communities. Or there may be some misguided Respect for Privacy Rights.
Well Edmund Burke, or was it Winston Churchill who had said “Privacy is the Darkness where Evil lurks”.
As in America, all phone calls, all emails, all computer traffic can be put under surveillance. Yes, it must be terribly expensive. All this communication traffic must be scanned for Code, that is, are speech patterns and narrative ‘real’ or artificial, and if ‘real’ is the content non-threatening. Logs must be kept of who is talking to whom, and who cares about what. On the Visual Surveillance side, a great deal of Computer Bandwidth is necessary, not only to store the vast amounts of visual imagery, but also in the Computer Capacity necessary to analyze and catalogue the Core Information – everyone’s comings and goings, habits, patterns, and especially in detecting when any group of known associates break out of their established patterns, as in the case of launching a Terrorist Attack.
All this Technology already exists. Simply ask about the Secret behind the Surge Strategy in Iraq. A few soldiers on the ground did not make all the difference. The progress made in Iraq was all about New Surveillance Technologies and advances in Computer Cataloging Technologies – whereby billions of bites of Data can be compressed and reduced to small packets of important and useable information. Surprisingly, it all sources back to all the Search Engine advances. Google is the Father of the New Big Brother. The Search for the Brave New World is over.
In addition, Modern Civilized States can take even further care, by insisting that every Citizen or Resident wear a short range Radio Transponder, to establish Identity, what we would call a Chip. Yes, I have heard rumors of Multi-Spectrum Photo Scanning, even from Satellites that can effectively ‘fingerprint’ Identities and thus positively track individuals from moment to moment, day by day without any such Chip. But the Bandwidth required to record and analyze such necessarily complex information must be prohibitively expensive. It would be so much more simple if everybody just ‘beeped’ a unique personal code and their position continuously recorded. Cameras could be used to identify Non-Chipped people walking or driving around, and Police could instantly be alerted to their presence.
This would be bad for Criminals. For instance, if anybody is mugged in a dark alley, then simply by consulting the Records it could be easily determined who was in that particular Alley at the time of the Illegal Infraction. Equally, on the other side of it, the Innocent could greatly benefit. How often do we hear the cry from the Jails and the Prisons of “It was not me!” “I didn’t do it”. Yes, so often people (victims and witnesses) miss-identify suspects… when both the Evening and the Suspect are dark, so to speak, nobody can be sure of what is really seen, and victims and corroborating witnesses assume that the Police are arresting suspects for good reasons and feel pressures not nullify the hard work of the Police by expressing such seemingly counterproductive doubts just when arrests can be made. So it is that the System sometimes strikes at Crime blindly, but only because it is kept in the Dark. But with Chip Tracking and Chip Identification every Innocent Person automatically will have an official alibi. This is especially good for people who live alone, who, under the Old Regime can be accused of anything, done anytime, done anywhere, because, until cats can talk, they would never be able to assert an alibi. In our Modern Societies where it is so often incumbent upon us to prove our own innocence, the Chip should be welcomed with open arms and dancing in the streets.
However, Privacy Fanatics might suppose that the World will break out in Bloody Protest before submitting to Identity Chipping, but it could very well be welcomed by most people when the benefits for themselves are pointed out. But I do realize that Popular Media Propaganda for close to a hundred years now have been heavily on the side of Criminality, Anarchy and Privacy. It seems that many of the People with the Most to Hide are very wealthy and have connections in Publishing, Movies, TV and Radio. We have been bombarded with totally Artificial Scenarios of how bad it would be if the Truth were Known about Things. We have been left to suppose that Governments would Naturally hold Goodness and Purity against us, and would persecute and prosecute us for merely being good and decent Human Beings and for minding our own businesses. The real fact of the Matter is that the Worst Criminal Elements have put forward this intensive Propaganda Campaign in order to maintain their Massive Criminal Enterprises in the Dark, maintaining Privacy as the First and Foremost Right within Liberal Democracy. But we should wake up to the Deceptions and Impositions and announce to ourselves and the World that finally there will be Light.
The Technology is already here. We can choose now to chase the Criminals and the Terrorists out of the Darkness of Institutionalized Privacy Rights.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
The Free Masons and Conspiracy Theory
The Free Masons and Conspiracy Theory
Okay, anytime you have National Security States, that is, where more than half of all Government generated reports are Classified so that nobody can lawfully discuss with anybody what they are doing or why, then you will have Outsiders trying their best to figure out What, Why, When and Where. Honestly, how does anybody suppose it is consistent that a Democracy can also be a National Security Police State? People frozen out of all relevant information sources can hardly make informed decisions.
Anyway, important things happen. But nobody says boo. Well, things don’t just happen. So Independent People work backwards from the Events to possible causes, motives, and all the necessary dynamics of planning and coordination on which such momentous events must depend. And when looking at every single variable known and discussed by the Public, or to the Public, well, there is this huge VOID. All these things that HAPPEN could not have possibly happened, not with the powers, potentials and agencies we can now take count of. Something is missing.
But this is where Free Masonry comes in – when Government Agencies and even Private Entities SEEM to be working together. Orders and Agendas coming out of NOWHERE. The Government and Private Corporations insist that they have absolutely no documentation to explain their involvement in these certain momentous events, and they are most likely being truthful, because it is the Free Masons who are carrying the ball and making the plays. And they have never submitted their Records for examination.
It is an honest concern when everything that is otherwise unexplainable has only one thing in common, that the Leadership of every Agency, Company and Organization in involved is in the hands of the Free Masons.
Okay, anytime you have National Security States, that is, where more than half of all Government generated reports are Classified so that nobody can lawfully discuss with anybody what they are doing or why, then you will have Outsiders trying their best to figure out What, Why, When and Where. Honestly, how does anybody suppose it is consistent that a Democracy can also be a National Security Police State? People frozen out of all relevant information sources can hardly make informed decisions.
Anyway, important things happen. But nobody says boo. Well, things don’t just happen. So Independent People work backwards from the Events to possible causes, motives, and all the necessary dynamics of planning and coordination on which such momentous events must depend. And when looking at every single variable known and discussed by the Public, or to the Public, well, there is this huge VOID. All these things that HAPPEN could not have possibly happened, not with the powers, potentials and agencies we can now take count of. Something is missing.
But this is where Free Masonry comes in – when Government Agencies and even Private Entities SEEM to be working together. Orders and Agendas coming out of NOWHERE. The Government and Private Corporations insist that they have absolutely no documentation to explain their involvement in these certain momentous events, and they are most likely being truthful, because it is the Free Masons who are carrying the ball and making the plays. And they have never submitted their Records for examination.
It is an honest concern when everything that is otherwise unexplainable has only one thing in common, that the Leadership of every Agency, Company and Organization in involved is in the hands of the Free Masons.
Friday, November 21, 2008
A Real Avatar A Real Christ A Real Matraiya
A Real Avatar, a Real Christ, a Real Matraiya
Hope is one thing. Faith is one thing. But Certainty is another.
People see a claimant to the much hoped for position of World Savior, and they hope that he is for real. But the Hope may exceed all reasonable bounds.
The honest process would be to wait and observe. Are all actions and words befitting of a World Savior? If yes, then fine. But if found lacking, then what is the purpose of making extenuating excuses? Honestly, will a real World Savior be so soon and easily detected for being lacking in Deed and Word? Can mere mortals brush aside the Flaws of their Saviors? Or even should they?
I’ve had a lifetime of Dreams of Messianic Figures, and for the most part they were flawed. Only I was not kidding myself. These Dreams would give me every indication I was in the Presence of a King or some Great Leader, and then these Personages would come off acting silly somehow. It was disappointing and puzzling.
But I am glad, now, that I did not make excuses for them.
Recently I had a dream of a Worthy Messianic Figure. No Vanity. No immaturity. No self-preoccupation. There in my dream was a Strong and Determined Messianic Figure with a Purpose, and certainty to his step. He saw on the Horizon where the Battle was and resolutely headed for it.
That is who we need to wait for. If we toss in with every silly and stupid Pretender, then who will believe us when we finally come across the Real Thing?
Hope is one thing. Faith is one thing. But Certainty is another.
People see a claimant to the much hoped for position of World Savior, and they hope that he is for real. But the Hope may exceed all reasonable bounds.
The honest process would be to wait and observe. Are all actions and words befitting of a World Savior? If yes, then fine. But if found lacking, then what is the purpose of making extenuating excuses? Honestly, will a real World Savior be so soon and easily detected for being lacking in Deed and Word? Can mere mortals brush aside the Flaws of their Saviors? Or even should they?
I’ve had a lifetime of Dreams of Messianic Figures, and for the most part they were flawed. Only I was not kidding myself. These Dreams would give me every indication I was in the Presence of a King or some Great Leader, and then these Personages would come off acting silly somehow. It was disappointing and puzzling.
But I am glad, now, that I did not make excuses for them.
Recently I had a dream of a Worthy Messianic Figure. No Vanity. No immaturity. No self-preoccupation. There in my dream was a Strong and Determined Messianic Figure with a Purpose, and certainty to his step. He saw on the Horizon where the Battle was and resolutely headed for it.
That is who we need to wait for. If we toss in with every silly and stupid Pretender, then who will believe us when we finally come across the Real Thing?
Friday, November 14, 2008
Feelings Over Thinking
Feelings Over Thinking
Several Centuries ago, when the Ideals of Democracy were for the first time envisioned for the Modern World, they referred to their Age as the Age of Reason, and nobody spoke seriously of Democracy without putting forward the corollary notion that Public Education and the unrestricted publication of Ideas would inform the Public Mind and make Democracy Reasonable. Nobody ever supposed that an Uninformed and Unreasonable Public could possibly ever make intelligent and productive political decisions.
But at sometime during this long process toward Democracy the emphasis toward Enlightened Thought and Reasoning was allowed to recede into the Past. A New Ideal arose, though it was not so loudly spoken of, and that was that the Public Mind could be manipulated by Powerful Interests correct in Themselves, and the less the Public was actually Educated, the easier it would be to manipulate the Public Mind for the benefit of these Interests, assumed to be correct in themselves.
Well, actually it was not the Public Mind that would be influenced… we speak of the Public Mind only out of habit… but the Public’s Feelings – unreflective and uninformed gut reaction feelings. The less that anybody actually thought, the better. Feelings from the Heart. The Head would only get in the way of the purity of these feelings.
It puts me in mind of how I have always gotten out of Jury Duty… when the lawyers ask if I have any hobbies, I reply that I read books of fact and I think about it. Lawyers simply do not know what to do with that, as they have grown accustomed to only appealing to people’s feelings.
Now, some people might think that Feelings are the Way to Go, that Feelings are more honest than Thought. We can only Feel Good about Good things and if something makes us Feel Bad, well, it is a clear indication that it is probably bad. It is the Honesty of Aesthetics – the Good is Beautiful, and all Evil is Ugly. Well, that is what they want us to Think. But Art History shows us that Rembrandt thought fat chicks were cute. Feeling, Aesthetics, are not fixed.
But how are Feelings inculcated? All it really takes is Association – reward some Feelings and discourage others. Once Thinking has been discouraged, then the Propaganda Artist has a relatively easy job before him, as long as his Media Resources are veritably endless. For instance, both Nazis and Israelis are in fact bigots and in fact persecute the Minorities within their power (the Nazis call themselves the Master Race, and the Jews call themselves the Chosen People… whatever is the difference), and while the Media unexceptionally vilifies the Nazis, the Israelis, on the other hand are presented as the Chosen People of God, or at least quiet any opposition to Israeli Persecution by associating such criticism to a Renaissance in Nazi Evil. Any THOUGHT would quickly undo this Nonsense, but while the Public Discussion is only conducted within the realm of FEELINGS, then all this irrational manipulation of Public Feeling is allowed to seriously influence World Democratic Politics.
And it is continuing. Now, EVERYTHING BLACK IS GOOD, and all criticism of anything Black is BAD. So attacks on the Gay Community, exploiting easy Religious Based Propaganda being played out on the Black Community is given a Free Pass because it has become politically impossible to criticize anything Black. However, it was recently been uncovered that nearly all the money going into the Black Community to influence their FEELINGS on the Anti-Gay Issue have come from Out of State, from the Mormons in Utah. White Mormons. Again, while the System works only on FEELINGS we are all too easily manipulated by anybody who has become jaded and cynical enough to wish to Pull the Strings.
And few people are aware of the Problem. Even on so called Intellectual Discussion Forums elaborate thought and logical constructions are attacked whenever it is found that it simply does not FEEL RIGHT. And these Sites more often than not go with their Feelings. Feelings are automatic, but it takes work to Think.
Several Centuries ago, when the Ideals of Democracy were for the first time envisioned for the Modern World, they referred to their Age as the Age of Reason, and nobody spoke seriously of Democracy without putting forward the corollary notion that Public Education and the unrestricted publication of Ideas would inform the Public Mind and make Democracy Reasonable. Nobody ever supposed that an Uninformed and Unreasonable Public could possibly ever make intelligent and productive political decisions.
But at sometime during this long process toward Democracy the emphasis toward Enlightened Thought and Reasoning was allowed to recede into the Past. A New Ideal arose, though it was not so loudly spoken of, and that was that the Public Mind could be manipulated by Powerful Interests correct in Themselves, and the less the Public was actually Educated, the easier it would be to manipulate the Public Mind for the benefit of these Interests, assumed to be correct in themselves.
Well, actually it was not the Public Mind that would be influenced… we speak of the Public Mind only out of habit… but the Public’s Feelings – unreflective and uninformed gut reaction feelings. The less that anybody actually thought, the better. Feelings from the Heart. The Head would only get in the way of the purity of these feelings.
It puts me in mind of how I have always gotten out of Jury Duty… when the lawyers ask if I have any hobbies, I reply that I read books of fact and I think about it. Lawyers simply do not know what to do with that, as they have grown accustomed to only appealing to people’s feelings.
Now, some people might think that Feelings are the Way to Go, that Feelings are more honest than Thought. We can only Feel Good about Good things and if something makes us Feel Bad, well, it is a clear indication that it is probably bad. It is the Honesty of Aesthetics – the Good is Beautiful, and all Evil is Ugly. Well, that is what they want us to Think. But Art History shows us that Rembrandt thought fat chicks were cute. Feeling, Aesthetics, are not fixed.
But how are Feelings inculcated? All it really takes is Association – reward some Feelings and discourage others. Once Thinking has been discouraged, then the Propaganda Artist has a relatively easy job before him, as long as his Media Resources are veritably endless. For instance, both Nazis and Israelis are in fact bigots and in fact persecute the Minorities within their power (the Nazis call themselves the Master Race, and the Jews call themselves the Chosen People… whatever is the difference), and while the Media unexceptionally vilifies the Nazis, the Israelis, on the other hand are presented as the Chosen People of God, or at least quiet any opposition to Israeli Persecution by associating such criticism to a Renaissance in Nazi Evil. Any THOUGHT would quickly undo this Nonsense, but while the Public Discussion is only conducted within the realm of FEELINGS, then all this irrational manipulation of Public Feeling is allowed to seriously influence World Democratic Politics.
And it is continuing. Now, EVERYTHING BLACK IS GOOD, and all criticism of anything Black is BAD. So attacks on the Gay Community, exploiting easy Religious Based Propaganda being played out on the Black Community is given a Free Pass because it has become politically impossible to criticize anything Black. However, it was recently been uncovered that nearly all the money going into the Black Community to influence their FEELINGS on the Anti-Gay Issue have come from Out of State, from the Mormons in Utah. White Mormons. Again, while the System works only on FEELINGS we are all too easily manipulated by anybody who has become jaded and cynical enough to wish to Pull the Strings.
And few people are aware of the Problem. Even on so called Intellectual Discussion Forums elaborate thought and logical constructions are attacked whenever it is found that it simply does not FEEL RIGHT. And these Sites more often than not go with their Feelings. Feelings are automatic, but it takes work to Think.
Talking to the Buddha Boy
Recently writing to a friend, I was told that an old mutual acquaintance was learning an obscure South Asian Language, a Dialect really, in order to speak to a young man, Ram Bomjon, of whom the most extreme claims are being made, all the way up to asserting that this is the Second Coming of Christ, the Matraiya Buddha, God on Earth.
What I know of the Young Man is that several years ago he seemed to sincerely to wish to go out into the Jungle and meditate for 6 years uninterruptedly, but couldn’t really stick to his plan. He was bitten by snakes several times, and now entertains a serious phobia of them, tooting about this big sword, and has retreated back to Civilization, now meditating in a nice cozy cellar. Now that he is Famous he now breaks his Constant Meditation in order to give Speeches on local holidays. A recurring theme of his Speeches is that people should try to be more quiet because he finds it so difficult to meditate while people are making so much noise. But perhaps that is a faulty translation.
Initial claims for this Ram Bomjon which did the most to garner Fame was that he was living a continual fast, not eating at all, living only by the Grace of God. But then those who listen and look closely found that this was only a pretense… witnesses were chased away at dinner time, and witnesses saw him always casually picking and munching away on jungle salads. Those of Little Faith were disillusioned and disenchanted. After all, many young men have expressed the wish to Meditate, and then meditated sporadically, and fasted now and then, all without pretending to be God on Earth. When this Young Man was found to be patently Un-Special, it is bazaar that he is still treated as though he were, well, still, Divinity Incarnate. It is as though Spirituality must take second place to Deceptive Public Relations Practices. If one had ever once CLAIMED to be God for five minutes, and it had ever been considered even vaguely plausible, then it seems to be taken as Un-sportsman-like that anybody should ask for the least little Good Reason to suppose one should continue so.
I guess there is the underlying assumption that the Truth of it all depends upon all the Faith that it IS true. I suppose people think that the least Doubt will jinx the matter. People forget that Jesus did everything he did in the face of tremendous onslaughts of Doubt. A Real God will not be afraid of a Question Mark.
Anyway, what the Guru Movements throughout the 20th Century have shown us is that Guru Organizations can make a lot of money, even if they register as Charitable Organizations. You see, those who manage to worm into such Organizations can be put on Salary, and with so much Unemployment in the World, a Paycheck is a Paycheck.
So we should naturally suppose that where a Guru pops up, natural economic forces will exert themselves so that Organizations soon follow.
Yes, I suppose there is also such a thing as Spiritual Pride… to be God’s Right Hand Man.
Oh, the Acquaintance I speak of is in fact in Partnership with Owners of a Ram Bomjon Webpage. Very tightly run outfit. I was banned the very moment I expressed my first doubt. These People definitely want the Stock Price of Ram Bomjon to go up, and will not tolerate the least murmur… or whatever it is that I do. In fact, banning the likes of myself probably was seen as a Special Mark of Faith and Loyalty… whoever Fired the Gun against the Heretic took a step up in the Organization. Probably it was my Acquaintance that arranged to give me the Ax. No one is ever told about how such things come about… one simply finds one can no longer sign on. And the Intolerant Bigots never need to worry of any unpleasant confrontations. Curtailment of Freedom of Speech comes like a Stab in the Back. But it would be beneath me to bear a grudge, wouldn’t it?
Well, but back to their Viewpoint…with so many Partners sitting equally, how could an aspiring young Apostle break the tie and climb to the Top of the Ladder? As in the case of my old acquaintance, as I had mentioned, he or she (I never could figure out which) put forward the claim that he or she was making every effort to learn the obscure local dialect of the God Boy, the Buddha Boy, the Who-Ever. He or She has gone to Nepal with the expectation that there will be an Interview and a Discussion with this Adolescent God.
One wonders if this is all sincere. A Skeptic might wonder whether there even NEEDS to be an Interview, to serve the purpose of my Acquaintance. He or She can come back telling any Story, and who could possibly ever know the Difference? What if anybody asks if a Tape had been made, capturing the moment? Well, the easy answer is to say that the Guru’s attendants asked that all such gadgetry be left outside. Yeah, sure… sounds very plausible. Indeed, I know a great many people who had gone to the Far East, Guru-hopping, so to speak. In most cases people don’t get Interviews. With thousands of people milling about, and Gurus in great love with their own privacy and comfort, a fraction of a percent of people ever get a private word with the Holy of Holies.
But what of somebody who crosses the Globe with the express purpose of some Empowering Interview. To make such a Gamble to become a Big Respected Group Leader and then NOT getting an interview… that would really be a Big Risk. But young people are not afraid of Big Risks, and my young acquaintance is, well, young. Well, there is Bribery, but more on that later.
But the Language Learning makes me wonder. Is this Sincere or just more Smoke. I myself have studied languages. Yes, one can learn enough to be polite, to catch a bus, to get a room, and to order food. But to discuss Spirituality, Theology, and the Problems of Life!? Particularly when the language involved is a Local Dialect, some Provincial Patois. Such languages are chuck full of colloquialisms and slang – almost nothing is spoken of directly but everything is a local saying, some locally understood metaphor. Of have my doubts as to whether anybody, with even the best intentions, can find sufficient Study Materials to master such a backwoods Dialect for such desired intentions. But my young Acquaintance may simply be unaware of such complexities. In any case, already my Acquaintance is already being granted the respect of due to an Expert… without yet even having successfully hailed the first local Taxi. Shouldn’t we first wait to see whether this ‘Expert’ can even whistle in Nepalese, let alone discuss the most subtle intricacies of how many Angels reside on the head of a pin.
However, language aside, that is, even if one spoke the same Mother Tongue as some such Super Guru, then what would one say anyway? I’ve done some Guru-Hopping myself, and never could decide upon anything particularly clever. To ask of anything Universal and Metaphysical, well, the problem then would revolve upon understanding the Answer. I take for granted that I ALREADY understand what I am capable of understanding – formulating the Question implies that I would have a good idea what the Answer would be. And why ask a Question if one already knows the Answer? As for what I didn’t know – there the problem would come in even putting together a coherent question. And if one could finally ask about what one did not already understand, then the problem would be in understanding the Answer. Oh, yes, well, one could ask Personal Questions and ask for Personal Favors… but meeting with some Universal Being in order to deal merely with some small Particular issue of comfort and convenience, well, that seems too grubby to admit to. I am honestly ashamed of People who had visited Gurus to speak only of mundane details of Material Life.
Oh, I have an example. Once, sitting in a Group Interview with a rather famous Guru, he explained, using a Metaphor, about how the World and Dualism were Qualified, and that the Divine was Unqualified. It was all quite Easy philosophy for me and I had seen it all before at least a hundred times. He used the metaphor of Cloth and Thread, that the World and Duality were the Cloth, and that God was the Thread. Form and Substance, blah blah blah. I think I probably had to stifle a yawn. Well, when the Interview was over and the Leader of the Group held a meeting to discuss what was Said, she explained that the Guru told them that while the World offered thread on every occasion and in all places, God was the perfect cloth and the product of the best fabrication and sewing. You see, she got it completely backwards. She was Qualifying God (well don’t most Ignorant People Quality God?).
Anyway, so what good is asking questions if one can’t understand the answers… or for that matter, to ask questions if one is already quite comfortable with all these Philosophies and Doctrines, and anything really NEW might only rock the boat?
So I have always just given these Gurus my polite greeting and then waited to see if they had anything to say to me… appointing me Leader of this or that Branch Office, with salary, of course. But, as it were, Polite Greeting were always answered with Polite Greetings. But, after all, this may have been very fortunate for me.
Not everybody was as lucky as myself. Those who donated heavily to the Cause, well, they attracted much more attention from the Guru, and if it was discerned that such people had even further Influence and had connections back Home, they would indeed be given Positions of Authority in the Organization. Yes, that could be considered good, if one were really a True Believer. But complications can arise. For instance, I have had many friends in the Sathya Sai Baba Organization… back in the 60s and 70s a most promising Organization, and many people joined up and moved up. Then the Scandals broke out. Sathya Sai Baba took on the Persona of some bloated old accused child molester, on numberless counts, and all kinds of accusations of fraud and deception coming out from everywhere. What can Leaders in such an Organization do? Admit they were duped all along and resign? But one builds one’s life around such things. One becomes financially and even emotionally invested. Some old friends of mine are still bowing down before that Tarnished God. Too old to start Guru Hopping again, I suppose.
And this brings to mind the old Adage that God is Within. Really. My best Religious Revelations had come to me during my own Dreams and Meditations. One of my earliest was when I found myself dreaming that I had found myself in the Ancient Cave of the Prophet Elijah, with soot covered rough hewn stone walls lit by candlelight, and then the Prophet came up behind me and spoke softly “Remember that Perfection consists in randominity and be not One Thing and be not the Other”.
Maybe that was not so much an injunction, or even advice, but a declaration of how it would work out to be for me. You see, I have never been able to fully agree with any of these Organizations, nor even to fully disagree. No particular Group had ever been able to fully encompass God, or give a full enough Vision of Divinity. But they all found at least some small bit. The only Guru I ever really agreed with was one that told me to keep up my research, but his Organization People… well, they were idiots.
Anyway, what can my Acquaintance really expect, going to Nepal to see a Teenager? No, I don’t know the Language, but I watched a video of last years Big Speech. He went on for close to an hour. People were walking out. People in the first rows were chatting with each other. The Hot Dog Vendors were doing brisk business. It was clear that nobody was listening. The Young Man was no overpowering Orator, no Captivating Speaker. I subsequently saw a ‘Translation’. The Translation could be read in a few minutes, which means that the Speech had been severely edited… or it was compiled by somebody who pretended to know the language but was too lazy to put something together that would take roughly an hour to read.
But will this year’s Big Speech be much different from last year’s? Indeed, if my good Acquaintance has really taken much pain in order to learn the Language, he or she might find she knows it better than our Inarticulate Young God. His or Her Contribution to World Divinity may be to correct God’s careless grammar and imprecise constructions.
Oh, it would not be the first time. There was one Famous Guru who had hired a University Professor of Sanskrit Philosophy to ‘edit’ and publish his speeches and personal essays. This Guru became famous for his erudition and good sense. Then the Professor quarreled with the Guru was fired and he was replaced as ‘Editor’ by a mere, well, Editor… a man who had run a small newspaper somewhere. Suddenly the Guru lost all his good sense and erudition. The jaded among us suspected that the Professor had never attended a single Speech but simply sat at home, next to the fire, and drew the Words of God out from his own Head… oh, with the generous help of his own well stocked Sanskrit Library.
Anyway, having learned the Language, even if just to recognize a trend or direction of the Speech, my dear Acquaintance may be sufficiently astute as to be able to detect whether or not the Published Translation is at all close to the Speech that is actually given. However, and this is the rub, what if it is not?
When a Faithful True Believer finds something amiss, what then? When a Partner with Stock in the Company uncovers the Fraud, what then?
The World if full of Hopeful Statistics. For instance, more than 75% of Catholic Seminary Students drop out of Seminary, I guess when they finally understand what ‘Saint’ Paul was really saying. That is to say that 75% of at least these Young Catholics have Intellectual and Spiritual Integrity strong enough to overcome their Emotional and Financial Investments.
So what about my Young Acquaintance. Will he or she come back with the Truth and Integrity. Or will we hear some reassuring Blah Blah Blah along with a shift-eyed and self-conscious appeal for membership fees and donations.
What I know of the Young Man is that several years ago he seemed to sincerely to wish to go out into the Jungle and meditate for 6 years uninterruptedly, but couldn’t really stick to his plan. He was bitten by snakes several times, and now entertains a serious phobia of them, tooting about this big sword, and has retreated back to Civilization, now meditating in a nice cozy cellar. Now that he is Famous he now breaks his Constant Meditation in order to give Speeches on local holidays. A recurring theme of his Speeches is that people should try to be more quiet because he finds it so difficult to meditate while people are making so much noise. But perhaps that is a faulty translation.
Initial claims for this Ram Bomjon which did the most to garner Fame was that he was living a continual fast, not eating at all, living only by the Grace of God. But then those who listen and look closely found that this was only a pretense… witnesses were chased away at dinner time, and witnesses saw him always casually picking and munching away on jungle salads. Those of Little Faith were disillusioned and disenchanted. After all, many young men have expressed the wish to Meditate, and then meditated sporadically, and fasted now and then, all without pretending to be God on Earth. When this Young Man was found to be patently Un-Special, it is bazaar that he is still treated as though he were, well, still, Divinity Incarnate. It is as though Spirituality must take second place to Deceptive Public Relations Practices. If one had ever once CLAIMED to be God for five minutes, and it had ever been considered even vaguely plausible, then it seems to be taken as Un-sportsman-like that anybody should ask for the least little Good Reason to suppose one should continue so.
I guess there is the underlying assumption that the Truth of it all depends upon all the Faith that it IS true. I suppose people think that the least Doubt will jinx the matter. People forget that Jesus did everything he did in the face of tremendous onslaughts of Doubt. A Real God will not be afraid of a Question Mark.
Anyway, what the Guru Movements throughout the 20th Century have shown us is that Guru Organizations can make a lot of money, even if they register as Charitable Organizations. You see, those who manage to worm into such Organizations can be put on Salary, and with so much Unemployment in the World, a Paycheck is a Paycheck.
So we should naturally suppose that where a Guru pops up, natural economic forces will exert themselves so that Organizations soon follow.
Yes, I suppose there is also such a thing as Spiritual Pride… to be God’s Right Hand Man.
Oh, the Acquaintance I speak of is in fact in Partnership with Owners of a Ram Bomjon Webpage. Very tightly run outfit. I was banned the very moment I expressed my first doubt. These People definitely want the Stock Price of Ram Bomjon to go up, and will not tolerate the least murmur… or whatever it is that I do. In fact, banning the likes of myself probably was seen as a Special Mark of Faith and Loyalty… whoever Fired the Gun against the Heretic took a step up in the Organization. Probably it was my Acquaintance that arranged to give me the Ax. No one is ever told about how such things come about… one simply finds one can no longer sign on. And the Intolerant Bigots never need to worry of any unpleasant confrontations. Curtailment of Freedom of Speech comes like a Stab in the Back. But it would be beneath me to bear a grudge, wouldn’t it?
Well, but back to their Viewpoint…with so many Partners sitting equally, how could an aspiring young Apostle break the tie and climb to the Top of the Ladder? As in the case of my old acquaintance, as I had mentioned, he or she (I never could figure out which) put forward the claim that he or she was making every effort to learn the obscure local dialect of the God Boy, the Buddha Boy, the Who-Ever. He or She has gone to Nepal with the expectation that there will be an Interview and a Discussion with this Adolescent God.
One wonders if this is all sincere. A Skeptic might wonder whether there even NEEDS to be an Interview, to serve the purpose of my Acquaintance. He or She can come back telling any Story, and who could possibly ever know the Difference? What if anybody asks if a Tape had been made, capturing the moment? Well, the easy answer is to say that the Guru’s attendants asked that all such gadgetry be left outside. Yeah, sure… sounds very plausible. Indeed, I know a great many people who had gone to the Far East, Guru-hopping, so to speak. In most cases people don’t get Interviews. With thousands of people milling about, and Gurus in great love with their own privacy and comfort, a fraction of a percent of people ever get a private word with the Holy of Holies.
But what of somebody who crosses the Globe with the express purpose of some Empowering Interview. To make such a Gamble to become a Big Respected Group Leader and then NOT getting an interview… that would really be a Big Risk. But young people are not afraid of Big Risks, and my young acquaintance is, well, young. Well, there is Bribery, but more on that later.
But the Language Learning makes me wonder. Is this Sincere or just more Smoke. I myself have studied languages. Yes, one can learn enough to be polite, to catch a bus, to get a room, and to order food. But to discuss Spirituality, Theology, and the Problems of Life!? Particularly when the language involved is a Local Dialect, some Provincial Patois. Such languages are chuck full of colloquialisms and slang – almost nothing is spoken of directly but everything is a local saying, some locally understood metaphor. Of have my doubts as to whether anybody, with even the best intentions, can find sufficient Study Materials to master such a backwoods Dialect for such desired intentions. But my young Acquaintance may simply be unaware of such complexities. In any case, already my Acquaintance is already being granted the respect of due to an Expert… without yet even having successfully hailed the first local Taxi. Shouldn’t we first wait to see whether this ‘Expert’ can even whistle in Nepalese, let alone discuss the most subtle intricacies of how many Angels reside on the head of a pin.
However, language aside, that is, even if one spoke the same Mother Tongue as some such Super Guru, then what would one say anyway? I’ve done some Guru-Hopping myself, and never could decide upon anything particularly clever. To ask of anything Universal and Metaphysical, well, the problem then would revolve upon understanding the Answer. I take for granted that I ALREADY understand what I am capable of understanding – formulating the Question implies that I would have a good idea what the Answer would be. And why ask a Question if one already knows the Answer? As for what I didn’t know – there the problem would come in even putting together a coherent question. And if one could finally ask about what one did not already understand, then the problem would be in understanding the Answer. Oh, yes, well, one could ask Personal Questions and ask for Personal Favors… but meeting with some Universal Being in order to deal merely with some small Particular issue of comfort and convenience, well, that seems too grubby to admit to. I am honestly ashamed of People who had visited Gurus to speak only of mundane details of Material Life.
Oh, I have an example. Once, sitting in a Group Interview with a rather famous Guru, he explained, using a Metaphor, about how the World and Dualism were Qualified, and that the Divine was Unqualified. It was all quite Easy philosophy for me and I had seen it all before at least a hundred times. He used the metaphor of Cloth and Thread, that the World and Duality were the Cloth, and that God was the Thread. Form and Substance, blah blah blah. I think I probably had to stifle a yawn. Well, when the Interview was over and the Leader of the Group held a meeting to discuss what was Said, she explained that the Guru told them that while the World offered thread on every occasion and in all places, God was the perfect cloth and the product of the best fabrication and sewing. You see, she got it completely backwards. She was Qualifying God (well don’t most Ignorant People Quality God?).
Anyway, so what good is asking questions if one can’t understand the answers… or for that matter, to ask questions if one is already quite comfortable with all these Philosophies and Doctrines, and anything really NEW might only rock the boat?
So I have always just given these Gurus my polite greeting and then waited to see if they had anything to say to me… appointing me Leader of this or that Branch Office, with salary, of course. But, as it were, Polite Greeting were always answered with Polite Greetings. But, after all, this may have been very fortunate for me.
Not everybody was as lucky as myself. Those who donated heavily to the Cause, well, they attracted much more attention from the Guru, and if it was discerned that such people had even further Influence and had connections back Home, they would indeed be given Positions of Authority in the Organization. Yes, that could be considered good, if one were really a True Believer. But complications can arise. For instance, I have had many friends in the Sathya Sai Baba Organization… back in the 60s and 70s a most promising Organization, and many people joined up and moved up. Then the Scandals broke out. Sathya Sai Baba took on the Persona of some bloated old accused child molester, on numberless counts, and all kinds of accusations of fraud and deception coming out from everywhere. What can Leaders in such an Organization do? Admit they were duped all along and resign? But one builds one’s life around such things. One becomes financially and even emotionally invested. Some old friends of mine are still bowing down before that Tarnished God. Too old to start Guru Hopping again, I suppose.
And this brings to mind the old Adage that God is Within. Really. My best Religious Revelations had come to me during my own Dreams and Meditations. One of my earliest was when I found myself dreaming that I had found myself in the Ancient Cave of the Prophet Elijah, with soot covered rough hewn stone walls lit by candlelight, and then the Prophet came up behind me and spoke softly “Remember that Perfection consists in randominity and be not One Thing and be not the Other”.
Maybe that was not so much an injunction, or even advice, but a declaration of how it would work out to be for me. You see, I have never been able to fully agree with any of these Organizations, nor even to fully disagree. No particular Group had ever been able to fully encompass God, or give a full enough Vision of Divinity. But they all found at least some small bit. The only Guru I ever really agreed with was one that told me to keep up my research, but his Organization People… well, they were idiots.
Anyway, what can my Acquaintance really expect, going to Nepal to see a Teenager? No, I don’t know the Language, but I watched a video of last years Big Speech. He went on for close to an hour. People were walking out. People in the first rows were chatting with each other. The Hot Dog Vendors were doing brisk business. It was clear that nobody was listening. The Young Man was no overpowering Orator, no Captivating Speaker. I subsequently saw a ‘Translation’. The Translation could be read in a few minutes, which means that the Speech had been severely edited… or it was compiled by somebody who pretended to know the language but was too lazy to put something together that would take roughly an hour to read.
But will this year’s Big Speech be much different from last year’s? Indeed, if my good Acquaintance has really taken much pain in order to learn the Language, he or she might find she knows it better than our Inarticulate Young God. His or Her Contribution to World Divinity may be to correct God’s careless grammar and imprecise constructions.
Oh, it would not be the first time. There was one Famous Guru who had hired a University Professor of Sanskrit Philosophy to ‘edit’ and publish his speeches and personal essays. This Guru became famous for his erudition and good sense. Then the Professor quarreled with the Guru was fired and he was replaced as ‘Editor’ by a mere, well, Editor… a man who had run a small newspaper somewhere. Suddenly the Guru lost all his good sense and erudition. The jaded among us suspected that the Professor had never attended a single Speech but simply sat at home, next to the fire, and drew the Words of God out from his own Head… oh, with the generous help of his own well stocked Sanskrit Library.
Anyway, having learned the Language, even if just to recognize a trend or direction of the Speech, my dear Acquaintance may be sufficiently astute as to be able to detect whether or not the Published Translation is at all close to the Speech that is actually given. However, and this is the rub, what if it is not?
When a Faithful True Believer finds something amiss, what then? When a Partner with Stock in the Company uncovers the Fraud, what then?
The World if full of Hopeful Statistics. For instance, more than 75% of Catholic Seminary Students drop out of Seminary, I guess when they finally understand what ‘Saint’ Paul was really saying. That is to say that 75% of at least these Young Catholics have Intellectual and Spiritual Integrity strong enough to overcome their Emotional and Financial Investments.
So what about my Young Acquaintance. Will he or she come back with the Truth and Integrity. Or will we hear some reassuring Blah Blah Blah along with a shift-eyed and self-conscious appeal for membership fees and donations.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Abortion and Pet Ownership
Abortion and Pet Ownership
First, God is only concerned with Collective Life, that Huge Life Force, the Life of Everything. If God has any preference at all, it is for Life in Full Bloom. When a Human Fetus is indistinguishable from a Tadpole… well, why should anybody suppose God imposes any imaginary distinctions upon it. If we see only a tadpole, then God sees only a tadpole.
A tadpole is a tadpole. “Its not a Choice. It’s a Frog”.
Yes, Abortion is a problem. I would imagine it is upsetting to the women involved. Romantic people who cry watching movies should not have to withstand the nastiness of an Abortion.
Other Cultures had once used Infant Nose Pinching to control Population. The Midwife would take away the Healthy Baby and then come back only minutes later to inform the poor mother that the child had died in childbirth. Observing the Birth and Death Statistics from past Centuries, they are only explainable in terms of Nose Pinching. After all, it was a really compelling fact that many Fathers were entirely conscious that they could not afford any more children. SOMETHING had to be done. Well, if the mothers had known, this would have really been brutalizing to them.
The best thing we can all do is encourage the lavish use of Birth Control Methods. Obviate the Problem at its source. Nip it in the bud, so to speak.
But even Birth Control has a sad effect on the Sensitive Female Psyche. My recommendation?! Well, young women should get some nice cats or even a small dog and name it “Baby”. Yes, the Maternal Instinct is that easily diverted. One would think that anything as Momentous as the Maternal Instinct would need something as Momentous as a Real Baby to satisfy it, but, no.
Love is Love.
Oh, yes, Parents feel more obligation to a Baby. More Duty. More Responsibility. But the love a Woman has for a fine Cat… whether she cares to admit it or not… is just as intense as that for a Child, and just as satisfying… if her friends can only refrain from making her ashamed of it… calling her just a “Cat Lady”. If Society would only get on board and allow Pet Ownership to do its Thing, then we could finally get a handle on the Population Problem. Women would stop insisting upon having ‘pet’ babies, just to make them feel fulfilled and less bored with themselves. Such ‘babies’ will keep them busy for only a while but then they grow up and become nasty demanding adults, and go out and scourge the World. That Lady who supposes her own strident life of bickering protest is full vindication for her mother not getting an abortion… well, lead her to the Prisons, the Unemployment Lines, the Young Men who have to get blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan because they could find a Job. A useless and burdensome life is no justification for Anti-Abortion Policies, but rather a reason why something needs to be done. But we need not resort to extremes. Get a Cat!
First, God is only concerned with Collective Life, that Huge Life Force, the Life of Everything. If God has any preference at all, it is for Life in Full Bloom. When a Human Fetus is indistinguishable from a Tadpole… well, why should anybody suppose God imposes any imaginary distinctions upon it. If we see only a tadpole, then God sees only a tadpole.
A tadpole is a tadpole. “Its not a Choice. It’s a Frog”.
Yes, Abortion is a problem. I would imagine it is upsetting to the women involved. Romantic people who cry watching movies should not have to withstand the nastiness of an Abortion.
Other Cultures had once used Infant Nose Pinching to control Population. The Midwife would take away the Healthy Baby and then come back only minutes later to inform the poor mother that the child had died in childbirth. Observing the Birth and Death Statistics from past Centuries, they are only explainable in terms of Nose Pinching. After all, it was a really compelling fact that many Fathers were entirely conscious that they could not afford any more children. SOMETHING had to be done. Well, if the mothers had known, this would have really been brutalizing to them.
The best thing we can all do is encourage the lavish use of Birth Control Methods. Obviate the Problem at its source. Nip it in the bud, so to speak.
But even Birth Control has a sad effect on the Sensitive Female Psyche. My recommendation?! Well, young women should get some nice cats or even a small dog and name it “Baby”. Yes, the Maternal Instinct is that easily diverted. One would think that anything as Momentous as the Maternal Instinct would need something as Momentous as a Real Baby to satisfy it, but, no.
Love is Love.
Oh, yes, Parents feel more obligation to a Baby. More Duty. More Responsibility. But the love a Woman has for a fine Cat… whether she cares to admit it or not… is just as intense as that for a Child, and just as satisfying… if her friends can only refrain from making her ashamed of it… calling her just a “Cat Lady”. If Society would only get on board and allow Pet Ownership to do its Thing, then we could finally get a handle on the Population Problem. Women would stop insisting upon having ‘pet’ babies, just to make them feel fulfilled and less bored with themselves. Such ‘babies’ will keep them busy for only a while but then they grow up and become nasty demanding adults, and go out and scourge the World. That Lady who supposes her own strident life of bickering protest is full vindication for her mother not getting an abortion… well, lead her to the Prisons, the Unemployment Lines, the Young Men who have to get blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan because they could find a Job. A useless and burdensome life is no justification for Anti-Abortion Policies, but rather a reason why something needs to be done. But we need not resort to extremes. Get a Cat!
Monday, November 10, 2008
Talking to God, Learning the Language of Ram Bomjon
Recently writing to a friend, I was told that an old mutual acquaintance was learning an obscure South Asian Language, a Dialect really, in order to speak to a young man, Ram Bomjon, of whom the most extreme claims are being made, all the way up to asserting that this is the Second Coming of Christ, the Matraiya Buddha, God on Earth.
What I know of the Young Man is that several years ago he seemed to sincerely to wish to go out into the Jungle and meditate for 6 years uninterruptedly, but couldn’t really stick to his plan. He was bitten by snakes several times, and now entertains a serious phobia of them, tooting about this big sword, and has retreated back to Civilization, now meditating in a nice cozy cellar. Now that he is Famous he now breaks his Constant Meditation in order to give Speeches on local holidays. A recurring theme of his Speeches is that people should try to be more quiet because he finds it so difficult to meditate while people are making so much noise. But perhaps that is a faulty translation.
Initial claims for this Ram Bomjon which did the most to garner Fame was that he was living a continual fast, not eating at all, living only by the Grace of God. But then those who listen and look closely found that this was only a pretense… witnesses were chased away at dinner time, and witnesses saw him always casually picking and munching away on jungle salads. Those of Little Faith were disillusioned and disenchanted. After all, many young men have expressed the wish to Meditate, and then meditated sporadically, and fasted now and then, all without pretending to be God on Earth. When this Young Man was found to be patently Un-Special, it is bazaar that he is still treated as though he were, well, still, Divinity Incarnate. It is as though Spirituality must take second place to Deceptive Public Relations Practices. If one had ever once CLAIMED to be God for five minutes, and it had ever been considered even vaguely plausible, then it seems to be taken as Un-sportsman-like that anybody should ask for the least little Good Reason to suppose one should continue so.
I guess there is the underlying assumption that the Truth of it all depends upon all the Faith that it IS true. I suppose people think that the least Doubt will jinx the matter. People forget that Jesus did everything he did in the face of tremendous onslaughts of Doubt. A Real God will not be afraid of a Question Mark.
Anyway, what the Guru Movements throughout the 20th Century have shown us is that Guru Organizations can make a lot of money, even if they register as Charitable Organizations. You see, those who manage to worm into such Organizations can be put on Salary, and with so much Unemployment in the World, a Paycheck is a Paycheck.
So we should naturally suppose that where a Guru pops up, natural economic forces will exert themselves so that Organizations soon follow.
Yes, I suppose there is also such a thing as Spiritual Pride… to be God’s Right Hand Man.
Oh, the Acquaintance I speak of is in fact in Partnership with Owners of a Ram Bomjon Webpage. Very tightly run outfit. I was banned the very moment I expressed my first doubt. These People definitely want the Stock Price of Ram Bomjon to go up, and will not tolerate the least murmur… or whatever it is that I do. In fact, banning the likes of myself probably was seen as a Special Mark of Faith and Loyalty… whoever Fired the Gun against the Heretic took a step up in the Organization. Probably it was my Acquaintance that arranged to give me the Ax. No one is ever told about how such things come about… one simply finds one can no longer sign on. And the Intolerant Bigots never need to worry of any unpleasant confrontations. Curtailment of Freedom of Speech comes like a Stab in the Back. But it would be beneath me to bear a grudge, wouldn’t it?
Well, but back to their Viewpoint…with so many Partners sitting equally, how could an aspiring young Apostle break the tie and climb to the Top of the Ladder? As in the case of my old acquaintance, as I had mentioned, he or she (I never could figure out which) put forward the claim that he or she was making every effort to learn the obscure local dialect of the God Boy, the Buddha Boy, the Who-Ever. He or She has gone to Nepal with the expectation that there will be an Interview and a Discussion with this Adolescent God.
One wonders if this is all sincere. A Skeptic might wonder whether there even NEEDS to be an Interview, to serve the purpose of my Acquaintance. He or She can come back telling any Story, and who could possibly ever know the Difference? What if anybody asks if a Tape had been made, capturing the moment? Well, the easy answer is to say that the Guru’s attendants asked that all such gadgetry be left outside. Yeah, sure… sounds very plausible. Indeed, I know a great many people who had gone to the Far East, Guru-hopping, so to speak. In most cases people don’t get Interviews. With thousands of people milling about, and Gurus in great love with their own privacy and comfort, a fraction of a percent of people ever get a private word with the Holy of Holies.
But what of somebody who crosses the Globe with the express purpose of some Empowering Interview. To make such a Gamble to become a Big Respected Group Leader and then NOT getting an interview… that would really be a Big Risk. But young people are not afraid of Big Risks, and my young acquaintance is, well, young. Well, there is Bribery, but more on that later.
But the Language Learning makes me wonder. Is this Sincere or just more Smoke. I myself have studied languages. Yes, one can learn enough to be polite, to catch a bus, to get a room, and to order food. But to discuss Spirituality, Theology, and the Problems of Life!? Particularly when the language involved is a Local Dialect, some Provincial Patois. Such languages are chuck full of colloquialisms and slang – almost nothing is spoken of directly but everything is a local saying, some locally understood metaphor. Of have my doubts as to whether anybody, with even the best intentions, can find sufficient Study Materials to master such a backwoods Dialect for such desired intentions. But my young Acquaintance may simply be unaware of such complexities. In any case, already my Acquaintance is already being granted the respect of due to an Expert… without yet even having successfully hailed the first local Taxi. Shouldn’t we first wait to see whether this ‘Expert’ can even whistle in Nepalese, let alone discuss the most subtle intricacies of how many Angels reside on the head of a pin.
However, language aside, that is, even if one spoke the same Mother Tongue as some such Super Guru, then what would one say anyway? I’ve done some Guru-Hopping myself, and never could decide upon anything particularly clever. To ask of anything Universal and Metaphysical, well, the problem then would revolve upon understanding the Answer. I take for granted that I ALREADY understand what I am capable of understanding – formulating the Question implies that I would have a good idea what the Answer would be. And why ask a Question if one already knows the Answer? As for what I didn’t know – there the problem would come in even putting together a coherent question. And if one could finally ask about what one did not already understand, then the problem would be in understanding the Answer. Oh, yes, well, one could ask Personal Questions and ask for Personal Favors… but meeting with some Universal Being in order to deal merely with some small Particular issue of comfort and convenience, well, that seems too grubby to admit to. I am honestly ashamed of People who had visited Gurus to speak only of mundane details of Material Life.
Oh, I have an example. Once, sitting in a Group Interview with a rather famous Guru, he explained, using a Metaphor, about how the World and Dualism were Qualified, and that the Divine was Unqualified. It was all quite Easy philosophy for me and I had seen it all before at least a hundred times. He used the metaphor of Cloth and Thread, that the World and Duality were the Cloth, and that God was the Thread. Form and Substance, blah blah blah. I think I probably had to stifle a yawn. Well, when the Interview was over and the Leader of the Group held a meeting to discuss what was Said, she explained that the Guru told them that while the World offered thread on every occasion and in all places, God was the perfect cloth and the product of the best fabrication and sewing. You see, she got it completely backwards. She was Qualifying God (well don’t most Ignorant People Quality God?).
Anyway, so what good is asking questions if one can’t understand the answers… or for that matter, to ask questions if one is already quite comfortable with all these Philosophies and Doctrines, and anything really NEW might only rock the boat?
So I have always just given these Gurus my polite greeting and then waited to see if they had anything to say to me… appointing me Leader of this or that Branch Office, with salary, of course. But, as it were, Polite Greeting were always answered with Polite Greetings. But, after all, this may have been very fortunate for me.
Not everybody was as lucky as myself. Those who donated heavily to the Cause, well, they attracted much more attention from the Guru, and if it was discerned that such people had even further Influence and had connections back Home, they would indeed be given Positions of Authority in the Organization. Yes, that could be considered good, if one were really a True Believer. But complications can arise. For instance, I have had many friends in the Sathya Sai Baba Organization… back in the 60s and 70s a most promising Organization, and many people joined up and moved up. Then the Scandals broke out. Sathya Sai Baba took on the Persona of some bloated old accused child molester, on numberless counts, and all kinds of accusations of fraud and deception coming out from everywhere. What can Leaders in such an Organization do? Admit they were duped all along and resign? But one builds one’s life around such things. One becomes financially and even emotionally invested. Some old friends of mine are still bowing down before that Tarnished God. Too old to start Guru Hopping again, I suppose.
And this brings to mind the old Adage that God is Within. Really. My best Religious Revelations had come to me during my own Dreams and Meditations. One of my earliest was when I found myself dreaming that I had found myself in the Ancient Cave of the Prophet Elijah, with soot covered rough hewn stone walls lit by candlelight, and then the Prophet came up behind me and spoke softly “Remember that Perfection consists in randominity and be not One Thing and be not the Other”.
Maybe that was not so much an injunction, or even advice, but a declaration of how it would work out to be for me. You see, I have never been able to fully agree with any of these Organizations, nor even to fully disagree. No particular Group had ever been able to fully encompass God, or give a full enough Vision of Divinity. But they all found at least some small bit. The only Guru I ever really agreed with was one that told me to keep up my research, but his Organization People… well, they were idiots.
Anyway, what can my Acquaintance really expect, going to Nepal to see a Teenager? No, I don’t know the Language, but I watched a video of last years Big Speech. He went on for close to an hour. People were walking out. People in the first rows were chatting with each other. The Hot Dog Vendors were doing brisk business. It was clear that nobody was listening. The Young Man was no overpowering Orator, no Captivating Speaker. I subsequently saw a ‘Translation’. The Translation could be read in a few minutes, which means that the Speech had been severely edited… or it was compiled by somebody who pretended to know the language but was too lazy to put something together that would take roughly an hour to read.
But will this year’s Big Speech be much different from last year’s? Indeed, if my good Acquaintance has really taken much pain in order to learn the Language, he or she might find she knows it better than our Inarticulate Young God. His or Her Contribution to World Divinity may be to correct God’s careless grammar and imprecise constructions.
Oh, it would not be the first time. There was one Famous Guru who had hired a University Professor of Sanskrit Philosophy to ‘edit’ and publish his speeches and personal essays. This Guru became famous for his erudition and good sense. Then the Professor quarreled with the Guru was fired and he was replaced as ‘Editor’ by a mere, well, Editor… a man who had run a small newspaper somewhere. Suddenly the Guru lost all his good sense and erudition. The jaded among us suspected that the Professor had never attended a single Speech but simply sat at home, next to the fire, and drew the Words of God out from his own Head… oh, with the generous help of his own well stocked Sanskrit Library.
Anyway, having learned the Language, even if just to recognize a trend or direction of the Speech, my dear Acquaintance may be sufficiently astute as to be able to detect whether or not the Published Translation is at all close to the Speech that is actually given. However, and this is the rub, what if it is not?
When a Faithful True Believer finds something amiss, what then? When a Partner with Stock in the Company uncovers the Fraud, what then?
The World if full of Hopeful Statistics. For instance, more than 75% of Catholic Seminary Students drop out of Seminary, I guess when they finally understand what ‘Saint’ Paul was really saying. That is to say that 75% of at least these Young Catholics have Intellectual and Spiritual Integrity strong enough to overcome their Emotional and Financial Investments.
So what about my Young Acquaintance. Will he or she come back with the Truth and Integrity. Or will we hear some reassuring Blah Blah Blah along with a shift-eyed and self-conscious appeal for membership fees and donations.
What I know of the Young Man is that several years ago he seemed to sincerely to wish to go out into the Jungle and meditate for 6 years uninterruptedly, but couldn’t really stick to his plan. He was bitten by snakes several times, and now entertains a serious phobia of them, tooting about this big sword, and has retreated back to Civilization, now meditating in a nice cozy cellar. Now that he is Famous he now breaks his Constant Meditation in order to give Speeches on local holidays. A recurring theme of his Speeches is that people should try to be more quiet because he finds it so difficult to meditate while people are making so much noise. But perhaps that is a faulty translation.
Initial claims for this Ram Bomjon which did the most to garner Fame was that he was living a continual fast, not eating at all, living only by the Grace of God. But then those who listen and look closely found that this was only a pretense… witnesses were chased away at dinner time, and witnesses saw him always casually picking and munching away on jungle salads. Those of Little Faith were disillusioned and disenchanted. After all, many young men have expressed the wish to Meditate, and then meditated sporadically, and fasted now and then, all without pretending to be God on Earth. When this Young Man was found to be patently Un-Special, it is bazaar that he is still treated as though he were, well, still, Divinity Incarnate. It is as though Spirituality must take second place to Deceptive Public Relations Practices. If one had ever once CLAIMED to be God for five minutes, and it had ever been considered even vaguely plausible, then it seems to be taken as Un-sportsman-like that anybody should ask for the least little Good Reason to suppose one should continue so.
I guess there is the underlying assumption that the Truth of it all depends upon all the Faith that it IS true. I suppose people think that the least Doubt will jinx the matter. People forget that Jesus did everything he did in the face of tremendous onslaughts of Doubt. A Real God will not be afraid of a Question Mark.
Anyway, what the Guru Movements throughout the 20th Century have shown us is that Guru Organizations can make a lot of money, even if they register as Charitable Organizations. You see, those who manage to worm into such Organizations can be put on Salary, and with so much Unemployment in the World, a Paycheck is a Paycheck.
So we should naturally suppose that where a Guru pops up, natural economic forces will exert themselves so that Organizations soon follow.
Yes, I suppose there is also such a thing as Spiritual Pride… to be God’s Right Hand Man.
Oh, the Acquaintance I speak of is in fact in Partnership with Owners of a Ram Bomjon Webpage. Very tightly run outfit. I was banned the very moment I expressed my first doubt. These People definitely want the Stock Price of Ram Bomjon to go up, and will not tolerate the least murmur… or whatever it is that I do. In fact, banning the likes of myself probably was seen as a Special Mark of Faith and Loyalty… whoever Fired the Gun against the Heretic took a step up in the Organization. Probably it was my Acquaintance that arranged to give me the Ax. No one is ever told about how such things come about… one simply finds one can no longer sign on. And the Intolerant Bigots never need to worry of any unpleasant confrontations. Curtailment of Freedom of Speech comes like a Stab in the Back. But it would be beneath me to bear a grudge, wouldn’t it?
Well, but back to their Viewpoint…with so many Partners sitting equally, how could an aspiring young Apostle break the tie and climb to the Top of the Ladder? As in the case of my old acquaintance, as I had mentioned, he or she (I never could figure out which) put forward the claim that he or she was making every effort to learn the obscure local dialect of the God Boy, the Buddha Boy, the Who-Ever. He or She has gone to Nepal with the expectation that there will be an Interview and a Discussion with this Adolescent God.
One wonders if this is all sincere. A Skeptic might wonder whether there even NEEDS to be an Interview, to serve the purpose of my Acquaintance. He or She can come back telling any Story, and who could possibly ever know the Difference? What if anybody asks if a Tape had been made, capturing the moment? Well, the easy answer is to say that the Guru’s attendants asked that all such gadgetry be left outside. Yeah, sure… sounds very plausible. Indeed, I know a great many people who had gone to the Far East, Guru-hopping, so to speak. In most cases people don’t get Interviews. With thousands of people milling about, and Gurus in great love with their own privacy and comfort, a fraction of a percent of people ever get a private word with the Holy of Holies.
But what of somebody who crosses the Globe with the express purpose of some Empowering Interview. To make such a Gamble to become a Big Respected Group Leader and then NOT getting an interview… that would really be a Big Risk. But young people are not afraid of Big Risks, and my young acquaintance is, well, young. Well, there is Bribery, but more on that later.
But the Language Learning makes me wonder. Is this Sincere or just more Smoke. I myself have studied languages. Yes, one can learn enough to be polite, to catch a bus, to get a room, and to order food. But to discuss Spirituality, Theology, and the Problems of Life!? Particularly when the language involved is a Local Dialect, some Provincial Patois. Such languages are chuck full of colloquialisms and slang – almost nothing is spoken of directly but everything is a local saying, some locally understood metaphor. Of have my doubts as to whether anybody, with even the best intentions, can find sufficient Study Materials to master such a backwoods Dialect for such desired intentions. But my young Acquaintance may simply be unaware of such complexities. In any case, already my Acquaintance is already being granted the respect of due to an Expert… without yet even having successfully hailed the first local Taxi. Shouldn’t we first wait to see whether this ‘Expert’ can even whistle in Nepalese, let alone discuss the most subtle intricacies of how many Angels reside on the head of a pin.
However, language aside, that is, even if one spoke the same Mother Tongue as some such Super Guru, then what would one say anyway? I’ve done some Guru-Hopping myself, and never could decide upon anything particularly clever. To ask of anything Universal and Metaphysical, well, the problem then would revolve upon understanding the Answer. I take for granted that I ALREADY understand what I am capable of understanding – formulating the Question implies that I would have a good idea what the Answer would be. And why ask a Question if one already knows the Answer? As for what I didn’t know – there the problem would come in even putting together a coherent question. And if one could finally ask about what one did not already understand, then the problem would be in understanding the Answer. Oh, yes, well, one could ask Personal Questions and ask for Personal Favors… but meeting with some Universal Being in order to deal merely with some small Particular issue of comfort and convenience, well, that seems too grubby to admit to. I am honestly ashamed of People who had visited Gurus to speak only of mundane details of Material Life.
Oh, I have an example. Once, sitting in a Group Interview with a rather famous Guru, he explained, using a Metaphor, about how the World and Dualism were Qualified, and that the Divine was Unqualified. It was all quite Easy philosophy for me and I had seen it all before at least a hundred times. He used the metaphor of Cloth and Thread, that the World and Duality were the Cloth, and that God was the Thread. Form and Substance, blah blah blah. I think I probably had to stifle a yawn. Well, when the Interview was over and the Leader of the Group held a meeting to discuss what was Said, she explained that the Guru told them that while the World offered thread on every occasion and in all places, God was the perfect cloth and the product of the best fabrication and sewing. You see, she got it completely backwards. She was Qualifying God (well don’t most Ignorant People Quality God?).
Anyway, so what good is asking questions if one can’t understand the answers… or for that matter, to ask questions if one is already quite comfortable with all these Philosophies and Doctrines, and anything really NEW might only rock the boat?
So I have always just given these Gurus my polite greeting and then waited to see if they had anything to say to me… appointing me Leader of this or that Branch Office, with salary, of course. But, as it were, Polite Greeting were always answered with Polite Greetings. But, after all, this may have been very fortunate for me.
Not everybody was as lucky as myself. Those who donated heavily to the Cause, well, they attracted much more attention from the Guru, and if it was discerned that such people had even further Influence and had connections back Home, they would indeed be given Positions of Authority in the Organization. Yes, that could be considered good, if one were really a True Believer. But complications can arise. For instance, I have had many friends in the Sathya Sai Baba Organization… back in the 60s and 70s a most promising Organization, and many people joined up and moved up. Then the Scandals broke out. Sathya Sai Baba took on the Persona of some bloated old accused child molester, on numberless counts, and all kinds of accusations of fraud and deception coming out from everywhere. What can Leaders in such an Organization do? Admit they were duped all along and resign? But one builds one’s life around such things. One becomes financially and even emotionally invested. Some old friends of mine are still bowing down before that Tarnished God. Too old to start Guru Hopping again, I suppose.
And this brings to mind the old Adage that God is Within. Really. My best Religious Revelations had come to me during my own Dreams and Meditations. One of my earliest was when I found myself dreaming that I had found myself in the Ancient Cave of the Prophet Elijah, with soot covered rough hewn stone walls lit by candlelight, and then the Prophet came up behind me and spoke softly “Remember that Perfection consists in randominity and be not One Thing and be not the Other”.
Maybe that was not so much an injunction, or even advice, but a declaration of how it would work out to be for me. You see, I have never been able to fully agree with any of these Organizations, nor even to fully disagree. No particular Group had ever been able to fully encompass God, or give a full enough Vision of Divinity. But they all found at least some small bit. The only Guru I ever really agreed with was one that told me to keep up my research, but his Organization People… well, they were idiots.
Anyway, what can my Acquaintance really expect, going to Nepal to see a Teenager? No, I don’t know the Language, but I watched a video of last years Big Speech. He went on for close to an hour. People were walking out. People in the first rows were chatting with each other. The Hot Dog Vendors were doing brisk business. It was clear that nobody was listening. The Young Man was no overpowering Orator, no Captivating Speaker. I subsequently saw a ‘Translation’. The Translation could be read in a few minutes, which means that the Speech had been severely edited… or it was compiled by somebody who pretended to know the language but was too lazy to put something together that would take roughly an hour to read.
But will this year’s Big Speech be much different from last year’s? Indeed, if my good Acquaintance has really taken much pain in order to learn the Language, he or she might find she knows it better than our Inarticulate Young God. His or Her Contribution to World Divinity may be to correct God’s careless grammar and imprecise constructions.
Oh, it would not be the first time. There was one Famous Guru who had hired a University Professor of Sanskrit Philosophy to ‘edit’ and publish his speeches and personal essays. This Guru became famous for his erudition and good sense. Then the Professor quarreled with the Guru was fired and he was replaced as ‘Editor’ by a mere, well, Editor… a man who had run a small newspaper somewhere. Suddenly the Guru lost all his good sense and erudition. The jaded among us suspected that the Professor had never attended a single Speech but simply sat at home, next to the fire, and drew the Words of God out from his own Head… oh, with the generous help of his own well stocked Sanskrit Library.
Anyway, having learned the Language, even if just to recognize a trend or direction of the Speech, my dear Acquaintance may be sufficiently astute as to be able to detect whether or not the Published Translation is at all close to the Speech that is actually given. However, and this is the rub, what if it is not?
When a Faithful True Believer finds something amiss, what then? When a Partner with Stock in the Company uncovers the Fraud, what then?
The World if full of Hopeful Statistics. For instance, more than 75% of Catholic Seminary Students drop out of Seminary, I guess when they finally understand what ‘Saint’ Paul was really saying. That is to say that 75% of at least these Young Catholics have Intellectual and Spiritual Integrity strong enough to overcome their Emotional and Financial Investments.
So what about my Young Acquaintance. Will he or she come back with the Truth and Integrity. Or will we hear some reassuring Blah Blah Blah along with a shift-eyed and self-conscious appeal for membership fees and donations.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Education In America – One Child One Dollar
In politics the Democratic Ideal has been briefly expressed in the pithy phrase “One Man, One Vote”.
Education in America is deplorable, that is, except for the Wealthiest of Communities. You see, schools in America are funded from Property Taxes. So it is that Rich Communities have good education, but wherever land values fall beneath a certain level, well, Education in that Community simply is not paid for, beyond that certain level. Rich Communities have schools with marble floors and a computer on every desk. Poor schools are shut down for hygiene problems half the time and the students don’t even get individualized books. They go home told to study for tests but don’t even have the books to study from.
Amazingly, although this biased and unequal means of funding has been challenged time and time again in the Courts, the Judges, probably all good Country Club Members and Protestants, have ruled that it is only Good and Proper that Poor Children should go to Poor Schools. Huh!?
Oh, and it has always been consistently denied that the Republican Party has deliberately plotted to keep the Schools dysfunctional because studies have proven that Stupid People vote Republican.
Anyway, in our coming Brave New World of Obamanomics, I am sure that Education Reform will come into discussion. First, they should decide to toss out all those Corrupt Judges who ruled in favor of the most heinous and unfair policies designed to monopolize Privilege to the existing Privileged Communities. Oh, it’s a favorite Doctrine among Protestants, that the Rich are the Elect and that the Elect are the Rich … after Sinning was made Forgivable with the Doctrine of Salvation, the next Doctrinal step was to figure out a way Sinning itself could be turned to a Profit. Anyway, these Judges need to go. The Politics of Protecting Entrenched Privilege needs to go to.
Moving on, my first thoughts would be to say that every State should educate all children equally. But then we only expand the Problem, of having Rich States with Good Schools and Poor States with Poor Schools. So, really, Education needs to be Nationalized, with the Federal Government picking up the expenses of All Education Everywhere. Also, we need to understand that the existence of Private Schools to a huge degree shields Rich People from any anxiety at all in regards to the condition of Public Education. And these Rich People are the most Politically Influential. Perhaps Private Schools should be banned, or Nationalized, to be set aside for Students of proven Merit. If the Rich and Powerful were threatened with the possibility that their children would have to have the Same Education as other children, then maybe they, with all their Power and Influence, could do something positive, for a change.
Oh, the same Argument works for Medical Care. While Rich People can buy their own Health Care, while they can have their own 4 Star Doctors in Private Clinics, again, with the most lavish marble floors, they will hardly care at all for the Collective Health Care allotted out to the Common people, what we can call “Cracked Tile Floor Coverage”.
Incidentally, in a Society funded by a Progressive Tax, good Education makes good Economic sense. A Highly Educated Society will be a more affluent Society, paying more taxes, thus paying, again and again and again, for the Education it had received. But Bad Education only sends children to adult Prison, and that is only a black hole expense.
By making Education equal for all, we not only become equal. We become better.
Education in America is deplorable, that is, except for the Wealthiest of Communities. You see, schools in America are funded from Property Taxes. So it is that Rich Communities have good education, but wherever land values fall beneath a certain level, well, Education in that Community simply is not paid for, beyond that certain level. Rich Communities have schools with marble floors and a computer on every desk. Poor schools are shut down for hygiene problems half the time and the students don’t even get individualized books. They go home told to study for tests but don’t even have the books to study from.
Amazingly, although this biased and unequal means of funding has been challenged time and time again in the Courts, the Judges, probably all good Country Club Members and Protestants, have ruled that it is only Good and Proper that Poor Children should go to Poor Schools. Huh!?
Oh, and it has always been consistently denied that the Republican Party has deliberately plotted to keep the Schools dysfunctional because studies have proven that Stupid People vote Republican.
Anyway, in our coming Brave New World of Obamanomics, I am sure that Education Reform will come into discussion. First, they should decide to toss out all those Corrupt Judges who ruled in favor of the most heinous and unfair policies designed to monopolize Privilege to the existing Privileged Communities. Oh, it’s a favorite Doctrine among Protestants, that the Rich are the Elect and that the Elect are the Rich … after Sinning was made Forgivable with the Doctrine of Salvation, the next Doctrinal step was to figure out a way Sinning itself could be turned to a Profit. Anyway, these Judges need to go. The Politics of Protecting Entrenched Privilege needs to go to.
Moving on, my first thoughts would be to say that every State should educate all children equally. But then we only expand the Problem, of having Rich States with Good Schools and Poor States with Poor Schools. So, really, Education needs to be Nationalized, with the Federal Government picking up the expenses of All Education Everywhere. Also, we need to understand that the existence of Private Schools to a huge degree shields Rich People from any anxiety at all in regards to the condition of Public Education. And these Rich People are the most Politically Influential. Perhaps Private Schools should be banned, or Nationalized, to be set aside for Students of proven Merit. If the Rich and Powerful were threatened with the possibility that their children would have to have the Same Education as other children, then maybe they, with all their Power and Influence, could do something positive, for a change.
Oh, the same Argument works for Medical Care. While Rich People can buy their own Health Care, while they can have their own 4 Star Doctors in Private Clinics, again, with the most lavish marble floors, they will hardly care at all for the Collective Health Care allotted out to the Common people, what we can call “Cracked Tile Floor Coverage”.
Incidentally, in a Society funded by a Progressive Tax, good Education makes good Economic sense. A Highly Educated Society will be a more affluent Society, paying more taxes, thus paying, again and again and again, for the Education it had received. But Bad Education only sends children to adult Prison, and that is only a black hole expense.
By making Education equal for all, we not only become equal. We become better.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Obama Beat Them Black and Blue!
Obama Beat Them Black and Blue
It had puzzled many Political Analysts that Obama had campaigned so strenuously in States he was practically certain to lose. But as the results came in I began to see a very compelling reason. You see, although Obama had a huge lead in the Electoral College allocations, his lead in the Popular Vote was, at least at the very the start of things, only marginal. As the evening went on it became noticeable that even in decidedly Red States, the vote was still close, indicating that it was certain that more than just Urban Blacks had come out to vote for Obama. Obama’s Victory was as much Blue as Black.
It may be the case that Obama had campaigned to keep it close in the Red States so as to forestall the embarrassment of Winning the Electoral College while being behind with the Popular Vote, something that would come to haunt him when he would come to Washington to claim some kind of Mandate to Act.
The true genius of this strategy was that Obama somehow anticipated that he would be able to change some very White Minds in some very Red States. And the payoff of the strategy is that he was able to come in with a healthy margin in the Popular Vote, which he would not have had except for the fact that he took such surprising pains for it.
Clearly President Elect Obama is a skilled and discerning Creature of Politics. I suspect the World will be continually dazzled over the next Obama Years to come.
It had puzzled many Political Analysts that Obama had campaigned so strenuously in States he was practically certain to lose. But as the results came in I began to see a very compelling reason. You see, although Obama had a huge lead in the Electoral College allocations, his lead in the Popular Vote was, at least at the very the start of things, only marginal. As the evening went on it became noticeable that even in decidedly Red States, the vote was still close, indicating that it was certain that more than just Urban Blacks had come out to vote for Obama. Obama’s Victory was as much Blue as Black.
It may be the case that Obama had campaigned to keep it close in the Red States so as to forestall the embarrassment of Winning the Electoral College while being behind with the Popular Vote, something that would come to haunt him when he would come to Washington to claim some kind of Mandate to Act.
The true genius of this strategy was that Obama somehow anticipated that he would be able to change some very White Minds in some very Red States. And the payoff of the strategy is that he was able to come in with a healthy margin in the Popular Vote, which he would not have had except for the fact that he took such surprising pains for it.
Clearly President Elect Obama is a skilled and discerning Creature of Politics. I suspect the World will be continually dazzled over the next Obama Years to come.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
The October Surprise, the Syrian Attack
The October Surprise, the Syrian Attack
Was that it? That is what I thought in regards to that stupidly provocative attack on Syrian Territory. Yes, the Syrians did react in all the grand proportion that one could expect. But, unlike what should happen in any really consequential October Surprise, both Candidates were able to quite ignore it.
I suppose the Real Plan had been to violate Syrian Territory but then to kill an actual Documented Big Time Terrorist. Well, they say they killed the Terrorist, but probably what was not planned was the imbecility of the idiot Commandos who left a large pile of dead women and children. From what the Reports say, the Commandos shot at anything that moved. Several of the Helicopters landed, but a few remained circling over head, and they had machine-gunners at the doors that also shot at anything that moved. The Americans say they did not use Missiles because they wanted to contain civilian casualties. But apparently nobody had inquired into Modern Commando Training, or at least into what their Combat Culture has rendered into their habitual behavior. It sounds terribly uncharitable, but they are the worst cowards, only concerned for their own safety. They simply find it better to use their quick reaction time to shoot first without the slightest hesitation, and so they are always gunning down women and children even before they can fully realize they are not Terrorists with guns. I suppose they save a fraction of a second in not having to wait to define the threat of their targets. It was a heartless and cowardly training decision they made to incrementally keep down their own casualties by a percent or two. So it is that the Syrian Raid piled up a stack of dead women and children. It is so nice that the Pride of American Soldiery takes such pains to assure their own safety.
The Problem is that the People who planned that Raid obviously did not know what Operational Behavior of these Men was going to be. Maybe orders were given, but the Orders ignored. Apparently there are no consequences for These Men in the Modern Military… they do whatever they please… the Holy Sainted Military in Time of War. The bastards can do no wrong. Anyway, the People Who Planned this Raid should have used their Own Men – trusted Agents. Don’t send cowardly boys to do a Man’s job. It all came off as amateurish.
But this made for a miserable October Surprise. How was John McCain supposed to jump on a Bandwagon of shooting women and children. Yes, he is a Republican, but he is hoping for some Undecideds. I suppose McCain was supposed to point out that Obama would want to ‘talk’ with the Syrians. But, now, after the event, it does seem that talk would be in order.
It turns out that earlier this year Lower Level Diplomats had arranged a Deal whereby Syria would commit scarce resources to police that very long border. Their only request in return, to seal the deal, was that America make an announcement that Syria was no longer one of America’s declared enemies. America refused. America wants the Political Convenience of having so many Enemies (any Enemy of Israel is an Enemy of ours…) while still hoping for friendly give and takes… without having to give anything.
All this is not secret. Had this October Surprise really instigated any discussion it would have soon been apparent that the Republican’s had a deal to seal that border but let it go simply because they did not want to “Shake Hands” with the Syrians on camera.
If Obama can be just one-tenth more reasonable than that then he should be President.
And whoever thought of this particular October Surprise – that entire Agency needs to be disbanded and the people, well, exiled. What a combination – deadly dangerous and profoundly stupid.
Was that it? That is what I thought in regards to that stupidly provocative attack on Syrian Territory. Yes, the Syrians did react in all the grand proportion that one could expect. But, unlike what should happen in any really consequential October Surprise, both Candidates were able to quite ignore it.
I suppose the Real Plan had been to violate Syrian Territory but then to kill an actual Documented Big Time Terrorist. Well, they say they killed the Terrorist, but probably what was not planned was the imbecility of the idiot Commandos who left a large pile of dead women and children. From what the Reports say, the Commandos shot at anything that moved. Several of the Helicopters landed, but a few remained circling over head, and they had machine-gunners at the doors that also shot at anything that moved. The Americans say they did not use Missiles because they wanted to contain civilian casualties. But apparently nobody had inquired into Modern Commando Training, or at least into what their Combat Culture has rendered into their habitual behavior. It sounds terribly uncharitable, but they are the worst cowards, only concerned for their own safety. They simply find it better to use their quick reaction time to shoot first without the slightest hesitation, and so they are always gunning down women and children even before they can fully realize they are not Terrorists with guns. I suppose they save a fraction of a second in not having to wait to define the threat of their targets. It was a heartless and cowardly training decision they made to incrementally keep down their own casualties by a percent or two. So it is that the Syrian Raid piled up a stack of dead women and children. It is so nice that the Pride of American Soldiery takes such pains to assure their own safety.
The Problem is that the People who planned that Raid obviously did not know what Operational Behavior of these Men was going to be. Maybe orders were given, but the Orders ignored. Apparently there are no consequences for These Men in the Modern Military… they do whatever they please… the Holy Sainted Military in Time of War. The bastards can do no wrong. Anyway, the People Who Planned this Raid should have used their Own Men – trusted Agents. Don’t send cowardly boys to do a Man’s job. It all came off as amateurish.
But this made for a miserable October Surprise. How was John McCain supposed to jump on a Bandwagon of shooting women and children. Yes, he is a Republican, but he is hoping for some Undecideds. I suppose McCain was supposed to point out that Obama would want to ‘talk’ with the Syrians. But, now, after the event, it does seem that talk would be in order.
It turns out that earlier this year Lower Level Diplomats had arranged a Deal whereby Syria would commit scarce resources to police that very long border. Their only request in return, to seal the deal, was that America make an announcement that Syria was no longer one of America’s declared enemies. America refused. America wants the Political Convenience of having so many Enemies (any Enemy of Israel is an Enemy of ours…) while still hoping for friendly give and takes… without having to give anything.
All this is not secret. Had this October Surprise really instigated any discussion it would have soon been apparent that the Republican’s had a deal to seal that border but let it go simply because they did not want to “Shake Hands” with the Syrians on camera.
If Obama can be just one-tenth more reasonable than that then he should be President.
And whoever thought of this particular October Surprise – that entire Agency needs to be disbanded and the people, well, exiled. What a combination – deadly dangerous and profoundly stupid.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Paying for Wars Perpetuates War
Paying for Wars Perpetuates War
Years ago an AIDS Activist told me why they would never cure AIDS, or cancer for that matter. The Government gives out far too many Grants for the study of AIDS, and cancer. If anybody ever cured these diseases, the Money would stop. If anybody ever came across a cure, they’d hide it. Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Since then I have kept my ear out, listening for the whispers of conspiracy, and, sure enough, more than several Cures have been thrown away for the interest of maintaining the stream of Federal Grant Moneys. Don’t cure the sick Goose that gets such great health care benefits.
If the Government wants to help, they should offer a Prize for the Cure. They should buy the Fait Accompli. Instead they have institutionalized a process that will go on forever, if self interest has anything to do with it.
The United States has been giving Israel about 5 billion dollars a year since who know how long in order to defend itself. Well, with that kind of money coming in to ‘defend itself’, why would Israel ever see any interest in actually making Peace with its neighbors. Do a study. Ask a few questions. How many people in Israel depend on that 5 Billion dollars a year for their livelihood? I expect most of the people in Israel make a living on maintaining a state of War with the rest of the World. Peace is therefore completely impossible while Israel has anything at all to do with it. If Peace means National Poverty, they will keep their Prosperous War.
The same dynamic is developing in Taiwan. America is turning that little Island into a War Economy. Soon they won’t be able to live without menacing War. Isn’t anybody the least bit afraid that Mainland China won’t back down as the tensions are ratcheted up. Nobody is paying them to go along with this farce.
Now the United States is giving billions of Dollars to Mexico and Columbia in order to Fight the Drug War. Do we see a trend yet? These billions of dollars will represent far too large a proportion of their National Economies for anybody to do anything so rash as to actually bring the Drug War to a conclusion by actually arresting any of the principal parties.
Speaking of ‘Principal Parties’… might it not be more than a coincidence that Osama Bin Laden has not be captured or killed yet. Again, there is probably too much money to be made on this War on Terror to take a chance that that Public may fall out of love with it. It may lose focus if Bin Laden should ever be brought to justice, and all those Commandos now making their living shooting women and children would have to find honest work, and in such a recession as we have now!
Paying for War perpetuates War. President Eisenhower, who had been the Invading General of Europe, warned that every precaution should be taken against supporting and enlarging the Military Industrial Complex. Is that not exactly what America is doing by effectively making War the number one product of so many National Economies. What about America. With every economic sector having been ‘out-sourced’ the only vibrant businesses left in America are the Bomb Makers. With their Lobbyists paying off Politicians to sustain the Business of War, how can the People ever hope for Peace.
So don’t pay for War. Pay for Peace. Cut Israel off until they come up with a Peace Deal. If we want Mexico and Columbia to bottle up drugs, then offer money for Results, not endless activities and cats chasing their own tails, for money. For Taiwan, well, do we want a peaceful turnover of Power or do we want World War Three? The Billions of people already under Chinese Authority, well, they aren’t doing so bad, are they? It really isn’t worth destabilizing the whole world, with a War that could kill millions and spill over everywhere else, just so a handful of Taiwanese Billionaires can keep a low tax rate, is it? Oh, could it be that these Taiwanese Billionaires are paying Lobbyists to support American Politicians in their Pro-War Policies. Of course so! This is just one more reason why we must be so imaginative when we give reasons why Democracy is the Best Form of Government ever created by man… and why we must ignore every Civilization or Empire that ever institutionalized a Bureaucratic Meritocracy. That is, Government by honest Civil Service. The only people who complain about Government by honest Civil Service are just the kind of people who cause all the problems that need such Government in the first place.
Years ago an AIDS Activist told me why they would never cure AIDS, or cancer for that matter. The Government gives out far too many Grants for the study of AIDS, and cancer. If anybody ever cured these diseases, the Money would stop. If anybody ever came across a cure, they’d hide it. Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Since then I have kept my ear out, listening for the whispers of conspiracy, and, sure enough, more than several Cures have been thrown away for the interest of maintaining the stream of Federal Grant Moneys. Don’t cure the sick Goose that gets such great health care benefits.
If the Government wants to help, they should offer a Prize for the Cure. They should buy the Fait Accompli. Instead they have institutionalized a process that will go on forever, if self interest has anything to do with it.
The United States has been giving Israel about 5 billion dollars a year since who know how long in order to defend itself. Well, with that kind of money coming in to ‘defend itself’, why would Israel ever see any interest in actually making Peace with its neighbors. Do a study. Ask a few questions. How many people in Israel depend on that 5 Billion dollars a year for their livelihood? I expect most of the people in Israel make a living on maintaining a state of War with the rest of the World. Peace is therefore completely impossible while Israel has anything at all to do with it. If Peace means National Poverty, they will keep their Prosperous War.
The same dynamic is developing in Taiwan. America is turning that little Island into a War Economy. Soon they won’t be able to live without menacing War. Isn’t anybody the least bit afraid that Mainland China won’t back down as the tensions are ratcheted up. Nobody is paying them to go along with this farce.
Now the United States is giving billions of Dollars to Mexico and Columbia in order to Fight the Drug War. Do we see a trend yet? These billions of dollars will represent far too large a proportion of their National Economies for anybody to do anything so rash as to actually bring the Drug War to a conclusion by actually arresting any of the principal parties.
Speaking of ‘Principal Parties’… might it not be more than a coincidence that Osama Bin Laden has not be captured or killed yet. Again, there is probably too much money to be made on this War on Terror to take a chance that that Public may fall out of love with it. It may lose focus if Bin Laden should ever be brought to justice, and all those Commandos now making their living shooting women and children would have to find honest work, and in such a recession as we have now!
Paying for War perpetuates War. President Eisenhower, who had been the Invading General of Europe, warned that every precaution should be taken against supporting and enlarging the Military Industrial Complex. Is that not exactly what America is doing by effectively making War the number one product of so many National Economies. What about America. With every economic sector having been ‘out-sourced’ the only vibrant businesses left in America are the Bomb Makers. With their Lobbyists paying off Politicians to sustain the Business of War, how can the People ever hope for Peace.
So don’t pay for War. Pay for Peace. Cut Israel off until they come up with a Peace Deal. If we want Mexico and Columbia to bottle up drugs, then offer money for Results, not endless activities and cats chasing their own tails, for money. For Taiwan, well, do we want a peaceful turnover of Power or do we want World War Three? The Billions of people already under Chinese Authority, well, they aren’t doing so bad, are they? It really isn’t worth destabilizing the whole world, with a War that could kill millions and spill over everywhere else, just so a handful of Taiwanese Billionaires can keep a low tax rate, is it? Oh, could it be that these Taiwanese Billionaires are paying Lobbyists to support American Politicians in their Pro-War Policies. Of course so! This is just one more reason why we must be so imaginative when we give reasons why Democracy is the Best Form of Government ever created by man… and why we must ignore every Civilization or Empire that ever institutionalized a Bureaucratic Meritocracy. That is, Government by honest Civil Service. The only people who complain about Government by honest Civil Service are just the kind of people who cause all the problems that need such Government in the first place.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Obama Riots Win or Lose
Obama Riots Win or Lose
Earlier I had worried that the Black Masses, in the event of an Obama defeat, would turn out to riot, effectively burning down much of Urban America. But then I saw a Black Comedian on Dave Letterman, and his point was that the Celebrations that could follow an Obama Victory would go beyond any imagined bounds. That put me in mind of some mere Sports Victories, in America and in Europe, where the victorious and deliriously happy fans took to the streets and, well, burned cars and looted, much as we could have expected had they been very unhappy.
Drunkenness may have something to do with it.
Well, yes, if there were to be some excessive exuberance just on Election Night, the Nation could easily survive. The true worry is that the Happy Riots could escalate, for instance, if Police or shop owners (exasperated themselves at their own defeat) too quickly come out with guns and summarily execute Blacks on the street. From there the Happy Riots could expand into the Real Thing.
This, again, could explain why the White Militias have been holding back during the Campaign. As stupid as we may expect they are, maybe the White Supremacists at least had enough sense to hire a team of Sociology Consultants who were able to convince them that SOMETHING will happen during Election Night that they will be able to exploit in order to justify their initiation of the Race War they have been preparing for, for generations now.
I suppose that Black Community Leaders are now too busy just working to have Obama elected. But very soon the Word has got to go out that the Black Community must act with the utmost sobriety and discipline on Election Day and the night and day that follows, Win or Lose. Unfortunately I expect that the Blacks, even the Leaders, will see this as their well earned celebration party, and nobody will be in charge, and everybody will be drunk, and the Crowd will develop a mind of its own – a drunken mind senseless with euphoria.
Oh, and then there is the problem with Uneducated Assumptions concerning how Power works, particularly to minds already debilitated by drunkenness. More than a few Black Celebrants may think along the lines of “The President is Black now, so they can’t arrest us anymore”. That is, they may suppose the President is some kind of an Absolute King who rules all by fiat, forgetting that their own Mayor is the one who really most closely holds their lives and fates within his hands. Besides, it will be months before Obama is actually sworn in. But, yes, such fine logical distinctions may be beyond the capacity of these impaired Celebrants we are speaking of.
Perhaps, Obama himself needs to give a speech, before the Election, with reminders during Election Night itself, imploring the Local Clergy and Political Leaderships to take charge of the Crowds, to cut off the Alcohol and to exert a very firm discipline. Win or Lose they need to keep the lid on, or it could all be just the beginning of America’s Second Civil War.
Earlier I had worried that the Black Masses, in the event of an Obama defeat, would turn out to riot, effectively burning down much of Urban America. But then I saw a Black Comedian on Dave Letterman, and his point was that the Celebrations that could follow an Obama Victory would go beyond any imagined bounds. That put me in mind of some mere Sports Victories, in America and in Europe, where the victorious and deliriously happy fans took to the streets and, well, burned cars and looted, much as we could have expected had they been very unhappy.
Drunkenness may have something to do with it.
Well, yes, if there were to be some excessive exuberance just on Election Night, the Nation could easily survive. The true worry is that the Happy Riots could escalate, for instance, if Police or shop owners (exasperated themselves at their own defeat) too quickly come out with guns and summarily execute Blacks on the street. From there the Happy Riots could expand into the Real Thing.
This, again, could explain why the White Militias have been holding back during the Campaign. As stupid as we may expect they are, maybe the White Supremacists at least had enough sense to hire a team of Sociology Consultants who were able to convince them that SOMETHING will happen during Election Night that they will be able to exploit in order to justify their initiation of the Race War they have been preparing for, for generations now.
I suppose that Black Community Leaders are now too busy just working to have Obama elected. But very soon the Word has got to go out that the Black Community must act with the utmost sobriety and discipline on Election Day and the night and day that follows, Win or Lose. Unfortunately I expect that the Blacks, even the Leaders, will see this as their well earned celebration party, and nobody will be in charge, and everybody will be drunk, and the Crowd will develop a mind of its own – a drunken mind senseless with euphoria.
Oh, and then there is the problem with Uneducated Assumptions concerning how Power works, particularly to minds already debilitated by drunkenness. More than a few Black Celebrants may think along the lines of “The President is Black now, so they can’t arrest us anymore”. That is, they may suppose the President is some kind of an Absolute King who rules all by fiat, forgetting that their own Mayor is the one who really most closely holds their lives and fates within his hands. Besides, it will be months before Obama is actually sworn in. But, yes, such fine logical distinctions may be beyond the capacity of these impaired Celebrants we are speaking of.
Perhaps, Obama himself needs to give a speech, before the Election, with reminders during Election Night itself, imploring the Local Clergy and Political Leaderships to take charge of the Crowds, to cut off the Alcohol and to exert a very firm discipline. Win or Lose they need to keep the lid on, or it could all be just the beginning of America’s Second Civil War.
Its God or Us
Its God or Us
People think of God in far too small terms. God, acknowledged to be defined in terms of every Absolute, is yet set apart categorically while Humanity pretends some smug Superiority, some right to judge and decide.
But any Sophistication at all in one’s Spiritual or Metaphysical Bearings would neutralize such pretensions.
Nobody should pretend to know anything about Religion, Spirituality, or Metaphysics until they have some acquaintance with Sanskrit or Eastern Philosophy. And, no, its not any kind of ‘Ancient’ Knowledge. The great thing about Eastern Metaphysics is that it continued, over the last several Millennia, to grow and develop. While Greek and Christian Theologies collapsed into circular nonsense, moral depravity, or walked away into the starkest Materialism, the Sanskrit Traditions were able to approximate a synthesis between, well, everything that matters.
Here are a few basics. If one is still thinking in terms of Duality – subject and object relationships, individuals separate from their fields and fellows, then what one lives in, as a Frame of Reference, is the Godless World – Maya. It is the Material Dimension.
But in what Frame of Reference does God exist… what is God’s Dimension? Well, Duality is opposed by Unity. If the Individual rises above his individuality, transcending it, to become part of the Great Extension of God, then God is Realized, Experienced.
While referring to things within the Duality, in terms of Duality, it is really quite ridiculous to speak of Divine Things at all. It is not that God does not ‘Exist’, but only that God is not within that Frame of Reference, that Dimension. Its Apples and Oranges.
This is not very well understood in the West, by the Old Greeks, by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The idea of Individual Salvation, Immortality, survival in Paradise of the Individual Soul – all such Doctrine is only a perpetuation of the Dualistic Frame of Reference, the Godless Dimension, or rather, the Non-God Dimension. Indeed, the Offer of Eternal Life is probably only the most elaborate of the Satanic Temptations and Deceptions. Any True Knowledge of God would have to involve the EXTINCTION of the Individual Soul. God and Other cannot Exist side by side. To Experience Divinity one must surrender Individuality and become the Everything. After that Experience, it simply no longer makes any sense that anybody would even WANT to return to Individuality…. Unless as a painful Duty or a tedious necessity.
What is the Experience of somebody who has moved from Duality into Unity and back again. After having lived in the Consciousness of the Universal, can one really be happy in the Particular, the parochial, the local, the Individual? I would expect, and all the anecdotal testimony points in the direction that most Individual priorities and concerns collapse after the Universal Experience. The Little Things no longer seem quite so important. Standard of living suffers. Personal hygiene declines. In this day and age, Homelessness becomes very likely… may even be characteristic.
But many of the Spiritual Traditions that advance this Way toward the Universal, also inculcate a severe training in Duty and Obedience, covering almost every detail of living morally and even neatly. Where one may suddenly lose one’s wants, desires, concerns and preferences, after having been awe-struck by the Universal, it would prove useful if sheer habit and conditioned behavior could keep one on the Path of self-sufficiency and decency, above from being a burden or a bother to others.
Still, it should be noted that a prominent portion of the Spiritual Literature involves the very deep depression that is experienced by those who, once having experienced the Universal, come back to pick up their lives as individuals. Where the Ego has not been totally extinguished, it tends to become totally depressed. I guess it might be compared to Drug Withdraw. Or, for those who cannot relate to the Drug Experience, maybe the end of a Summer Vacation with a pretty girl. Down from the Summit of Ecstasy to the muddy tracks of the mundane.
But there does seem to be an established record of these Between the Dimensions People – Transcendent and back again, who seem to arrive at a kind of balance between the Two Spheres, going so far as to even be able to maintain a level of activity even after they die. Indeed, there is a long History of Catholic Saints, and even other Saints, that is, of Deceased Souls somehow being linked enough to the Transcendental that they may intercede to answer the Prayers of others. I suppose these Saints must see some necessity in fulfilling some kind of obligation, some kind of Karma.
But what I noticed in the History of the Saints is that their careers do not last forever. The Stories of such Saints would continue for some generations, yes, but then would quit out. What happens? Well, the Painful Duty of Separation from God in order to benefit Humanity could only go on for so long before the Saintly Soul would shake off the job of having to be the Eternal Go Between. Particularly as Humanity seems less and less worth the Trouble. To spread the burden, if Saints are necessary at all, then New Saints must replace the Old Saints, the ones that simply, for their own Good, must eventually move on to their Dissolving into Unity. Their rest.
Yes, I wish the Saints would persist, but really, in all of their so called ‘help’ are they not only reinforcing the Illusion of Duality. In what Prayers are they ever helping anybody to give up their divisive Individuality?
Maybe it’s best to let People suffer… and let the Saints rejoin with and disappear into God.
Yes, the Realm of Duality should be better. Conditions of Suffering should be relieved. But such details are well within the grasp of those still caught up in the Duality, those who still see the importance in all the small details. It’s not really important to involve God or the Saints in what is really only a Worldly Set of Problems. To blame God for the condition of the World is to abrogate our own Responsibility. We know whose fault everything is. The Republicans, surely.
What about Spirituality? Well, yes, people should not live and then die still entirely caught up in the Duality. As one ages one should engage more and more into Meditation and Such Things, to free oneself psychologically from the Material bonds that must come asunder anyway at the time of Death. Mostly one should not be so silly as to hope for some Individual Survival, some Immortality of one’s separate Soul. As one dies, one should be happy that God is able to Survive. What is the Great Life Force that subsumes all living beings anyway but the Unity of God? Individuals may die but Life itself, well, Lives. Life Goes On. Birth and Death is like a burning flame, like a blooming flower, petals dropping from the edge as new petals form in the center. No one thinks to save the Dead Petals. It’s only the Flower that counts. Life. God. Sweep the fallen petals away.
People think of God in far too small terms. God, acknowledged to be defined in terms of every Absolute, is yet set apart categorically while Humanity pretends some smug Superiority, some right to judge and decide.
But any Sophistication at all in one’s Spiritual or Metaphysical Bearings would neutralize such pretensions.
Nobody should pretend to know anything about Religion, Spirituality, or Metaphysics until they have some acquaintance with Sanskrit or Eastern Philosophy. And, no, its not any kind of ‘Ancient’ Knowledge. The great thing about Eastern Metaphysics is that it continued, over the last several Millennia, to grow and develop. While Greek and Christian Theologies collapsed into circular nonsense, moral depravity, or walked away into the starkest Materialism, the Sanskrit Traditions were able to approximate a synthesis between, well, everything that matters.
Here are a few basics. If one is still thinking in terms of Duality – subject and object relationships, individuals separate from their fields and fellows, then what one lives in, as a Frame of Reference, is the Godless World – Maya. It is the Material Dimension.
But in what Frame of Reference does God exist… what is God’s Dimension? Well, Duality is opposed by Unity. If the Individual rises above his individuality, transcending it, to become part of the Great Extension of God, then God is Realized, Experienced.
While referring to things within the Duality, in terms of Duality, it is really quite ridiculous to speak of Divine Things at all. It is not that God does not ‘Exist’, but only that God is not within that Frame of Reference, that Dimension. Its Apples and Oranges.
This is not very well understood in the West, by the Old Greeks, by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The idea of Individual Salvation, Immortality, survival in Paradise of the Individual Soul – all such Doctrine is only a perpetuation of the Dualistic Frame of Reference, the Godless Dimension, or rather, the Non-God Dimension. Indeed, the Offer of Eternal Life is probably only the most elaborate of the Satanic Temptations and Deceptions. Any True Knowledge of God would have to involve the EXTINCTION of the Individual Soul. God and Other cannot Exist side by side. To Experience Divinity one must surrender Individuality and become the Everything. After that Experience, it simply no longer makes any sense that anybody would even WANT to return to Individuality…. Unless as a painful Duty or a tedious necessity.
What is the Experience of somebody who has moved from Duality into Unity and back again. After having lived in the Consciousness of the Universal, can one really be happy in the Particular, the parochial, the local, the Individual? I would expect, and all the anecdotal testimony points in the direction that most Individual priorities and concerns collapse after the Universal Experience. The Little Things no longer seem quite so important. Standard of living suffers. Personal hygiene declines. In this day and age, Homelessness becomes very likely… may even be characteristic.
But many of the Spiritual Traditions that advance this Way toward the Universal, also inculcate a severe training in Duty and Obedience, covering almost every detail of living morally and even neatly. Where one may suddenly lose one’s wants, desires, concerns and preferences, after having been awe-struck by the Universal, it would prove useful if sheer habit and conditioned behavior could keep one on the Path of self-sufficiency and decency, above from being a burden or a bother to others.
Still, it should be noted that a prominent portion of the Spiritual Literature involves the very deep depression that is experienced by those who, once having experienced the Universal, come back to pick up their lives as individuals. Where the Ego has not been totally extinguished, it tends to become totally depressed. I guess it might be compared to Drug Withdraw. Or, for those who cannot relate to the Drug Experience, maybe the end of a Summer Vacation with a pretty girl. Down from the Summit of Ecstasy to the muddy tracks of the mundane.
But there does seem to be an established record of these Between the Dimensions People – Transcendent and back again, who seem to arrive at a kind of balance between the Two Spheres, going so far as to even be able to maintain a level of activity even after they die. Indeed, there is a long History of Catholic Saints, and even other Saints, that is, of Deceased Souls somehow being linked enough to the Transcendental that they may intercede to answer the Prayers of others. I suppose these Saints must see some necessity in fulfilling some kind of obligation, some kind of Karma.
But what I noticed in the History of the Saints is that their careers do not last forever. The Stories of such Saints would continue for some generations, yes, but then would quit out. What happens? Well, the Painful Duty of Separation from God in order to benefit Humanity could only go on for so long before the Saintly Soul would shake off the job of having to be the Eternal Go Between. Particularly as Humanity seems less and less worth the Trouble. To spread the burden, if Saints are necessary at all, then New Saints must replace the Old Saints, the ones that simply, for their own Good, must eventually move on to their Dissolving into Unity. Their rest.
Yes, I wish the Saints would persist, but really, in all of their so called ‘help’ are they not only reinforcing the Illusion of Duality. In what Prayers are they ever helping anybody to give up their divisive Individuality?
Maybe it’s best to let People suffer… and let the Saints rejoin with and disappear into God.
Yes, the Realm of Duality should be better. Conditions of Suffering should be relieved. But such details are well within the grasp of those still caught up in the Duality, those who still see the importance in all the small details. It’s not really important to involve God or the Saints in what is really only a Worldly Set of Problems. To blame God for the condition of the World is to abrogate our own Responsibility. We know whose fault everything is. The Republicans, surely.
What about Spirituality? Well, yes, people should not live and then die still entirely caught up in the Duality. As one ages one should engage more and more into Meditation and Such Things, to free oneself psychologically from the Material bonds that must come asunder anyway at the time of Death. Mostly one should not be so silly as to hope for some Individual Survival, some Immortality of one’s separate Soul. As one dies, one should be happy that God is able to Survive. What is the Great Life Force that subsumes all living beings anyway but the Unity of God? Individuals may die but Life itself, well, Lives. Life Goes On. Birth and Death is like a burning flame, like a blooming flower, petals dropping from the edge as new petals form in the center. No one thinks to save the Dead Petals. It’s only the Flower that counts. Life. God. Sweep the fallen petals away.
Win or Lose, Republicans in Trouble
Win or Lose, Republicans in Trouble
The big problem is this, with all the news even now that the Republicans are doing their worst to fix the election, with vote rigging, voter intimidation, scrubbing the voter rolls, etc; then the great number of African Americans, who have put so much hope in this Election, will never suppose they have a duty to be good sports if they should happen to lose, even if the case may be that they have somehow been honestly beaten.
The Republicans already have a reputation for Election stealing. Gore, to prevent a constitutional crisis, or perhaps because he was constitutionally a weak willed coward about getting into any kind of hard hitting scrap, conceded quickly, and never pursued redress for any of the crimes committed to put the Republican’s ahead. He allowed the Coup to stand. Unfortunately, with Gore going into hiding, to grow his beard and make his Hit Movie, the Democrats left behind who may have had more spirit, were left with only a moot point to argue. But a Constitutional Crisis was averted, and America did not Burn to the Ground.
This next time may be significantly different. Even if Obama should concede early for just the same reason as Gore, I mean to save America from a Constitutional Crisis, it is still rather suspect that his tens of millions of supporters would bow their heads and go home quite as quietly as those lukewarm followers of Gore the Bore. And if they don’t go home, they will take their Anger to the Streets. And once the trouble starts, it might be quite difficult to stop.
To compound an already volatile situation, … I have wondered why the Right Wing Militias had not already moved against Obama. It has occurred to me that they do not wish to seem the aggressors (which indicates more of a Conspiracy among all these groups than I would otherwise have suspected). The Militias are hoping for a McCain win and the ensuing Riots, and then they will pounce, pretending they are doing so in the interests of Law and Order.
The White Militias may be seriously underestimating their enemies. The Whites think, with their NRA Memberships and their fluency in bending the literal intent of the 2nd Amendment, that they have all the guns, but the Gangs have been arming up for years, and not for such nice reasons. And, now, with all the many Blacks in Military Service, the White Militias cannot seriously expect to have much of a Tactical Training Advantage over the Blacks – the Blacks they will fight against are Experience Gang Thugs or toughened Ex-Convicts or even War Veterans, and many will be all three in One. The Pot Bellied White Beer Drinking Militias might be provoking a fight they can never hope to win. Unlike the American Government they do not have Nuclear Bombs to suppress superior enemies.
My advice? Let Obama win. Republicans, go out and vote for Obama. Don’t even take a chance that all that Election Rigging will takes its effect. Believe that Obama being President will not be half as bad as the alternative – America burning to the ground. Besides, some very racist friends of mine have pointed out to me the consolation prize for Racists should Obama win, and that is that the Blacks will no longer have an argument for Affirmative Action. No more special favors. “You’re equal now. Mo Fo, so get in the same line with everybody else!” Now, wouldn’t that be worth it!?
What’s more, while Obama may be liberal in regards to many social policy issues, in matters that the Right Wing really cares about, War, Obama is quite on the same page as almost any Nazi Skin Head – spreading War throughout the Middle East and South Asia as well as provoking Russia to World War Three. Obama, really, has been as reckless, in his threats and blustering, as any White politician out there.
Actually, I hope that Obama has been simply lying lying lying, about being such a Militaristic “Big Stick” Nut Case… to reassure Middle America that he was not being ‘soft’ on America’s Enemies. I indeed have heard rumors that Obama was not nearly so flipped out and blood thirsty BEFORE he ever had to appeal to the American Electorate for their Vote. Let’s hope that after Obama has sold his soul to the Devil in order to get Elected, he may be able to lease it back, so that he may be able to lead the World better than he had Promised to.
The big problem is this, with all the news even now that the Republicans are doing their worst to fix the election, with vote rigging, voter intimidation, scrubbing the voter rolls, etc; then the great number of African Americans, who have put so much hope in this Election, will never suppose they have a duty to be good sports if they should happen to lose, even if the case may be that they have somehow been honestly beaten.
The Republicans already have a reputation for Election stealing. Gore, to prevent a constitutional crisis, or perhaps because he was constitutionally a weak willed coward about getting into any kind of hard hitting scrap, conceded quickly, and never pursued redress for any of the crimes committed to put the Republican’s ahead. He allowed the Coup to stand. Unfortunately, with Gore going into hiding, to grow his beard and make his Hit Movie, the Democrats left behind who may have had more spirit, were left with only a moot point to argue. But a Constitutional Crisis was averted, and America did not Burn to the Ground.
This next time may be significantly different. Even if Obama should concede early for just the same reason as Gore, I mean to save America from a Constitutional Crisis, it is still rather suspect that his tens of millions of supporters would bow their heads and go home quite as quietly as those lukewarm followers of Gore the Bore. And if they don’t go home, they will take their Anger to the Streets. And once the trouble starts, it might be quite difficult to stop.
To compound an already volatile situation, … I have wondered why the Right Wing Militias had not already moved against Obama. It has occurred to me that they do not wish to seem the aggressors (which indicates more of a Conspiracy among all these groups than I would otherwise have suspected). The Militias are hoping for a McCain win and the ensuing Riots, and then they will pounce, pretending they are doing so in the interests of Law and Order.
The White Militias may be seriously underestimating their enemies. The Whites think, with their NRA Memberships and their fluency in bending the literal intent of the 2nd Amendment, that they have all the guns, but the Gangs have been arming up for years, and not for such nice reasons. And, now, with all the many Blacks in Military Service, the White Militias cannot seriously expect to have much of a Tactical Training Advantage over the Blacks – the Blacks they will fight against are Experience Gang Thugs or toughened Ex-Convicts or even War Veterans, and many will be all three in One. The Pot Bellied White Beer Drinking Militias might be provoking a fight they can never hope to win. Unlike the American Government they do not have Nuclear Bombs to suppress superior enemies.
My advice? Let Obama win. Republicans, go out and vote for Obama. Don’t even take a chance that all that Election Rigging will takes its effect. Believe that Obama being President will not be half as bad as the alternative – America burning to the ground. Besides, some very racist friends of mine have pointed out to me the consolation prize for Racists should Obama win, and that is that the Blacks will no longer have an argument for Affirmative Action. No more special favors. “You’re equal now. Mo Fo, so get in the same line with everybody else!” Now, wouldn’t that be worth it!?
What’s more, while Obama may be liberal in regards to many social policy issues, in matters that the Right Wing really cares about, War, Obama is quite on the same page as almost any Nazi Skin Head – spreading War throughout the Middle East and South Asia as well as provoking Russia to World War Three. Obama, really, has been as reckless, in his threats and blustering, as any White politician out there.
Actually, I hope that Obama has been simply lying lying lying, about being such a Militaristic “Big Stick” Nut Case… to reassure Middle America that he was not being ‘soft’ on America’s Enemies. I indeed have heard rumors that Obama was not nearly so flipped out and blood thirsty BEFORE he ever had to appeal to the American Electorate for their Vote. Let’s hope that after Obama has sold his soul to the Devil in order to get Elected, he may be able to lease it back, so that he may be able to lead the World better than he had Promised to.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Problems in Studying Collective Consciousness
Just how Collective is Collective Consciousness? I had read up on Cross Cultural Psychology and its conflict with Cultural Psychology (the war between those who recognize Collectivity versus the strict materialists who insist upon an entirely isolated individuality for every soul) and all the studies are almost entirely bound up in Behavior. Well, what does Behavior have to do with Spirituality these days?
The problem with Behavior is that it may be opposed to the Inner Spiritual Impulses. Behavior may be dysfunctional or neurotic. But the trend in Psychology is to simply itemize behaviors and endorse those Behaviors that have large followings – if enough people participate in a certain Act, it becomes Normal only because it has become Popular. And remember how Society works – “To get along one has to go along”. Behaviors reinforced by the positive loop of Social Conformity. So it is that the exterior Culture can exert a very powerful influence against any inner collectivity in spirituality.
Remember that the domain of Collective Spirituality only becomes apparent during dreaming, during deep meditation trances, and within psychotic delusions. Well, we know that most people are dismissive of their dreams, and that many people don’t remember their dreams at all. Most people never achieve any deep state of meditation. And the vast majority of people will never have a psychotic delusion. With these people Culture, Societal Influences, Peer Pressures and Family Dynamics will have more effect on Behavior than any Inner Spiritual Impulse. Yes, one might suppose that if ones Behavior is totally at variance with one’s Inner Spirituality, that there will be some conflict, some resistance. But in this Day and Age we could probably expect the person to simply pop an Anti-Depressant, have a strong cup of coffee and march on in the Paths of Materialistic Glory. Several decades ago it would have been a drink and cigarette… and a cup of coffee.
What needs to be done is that Cross Cultural Psychotic Experiences should be studied. Dreams too, but my experience there is that Dreamers, because of some popular fads in Lucid Dreaming, and the wide availability of Dream Literature, well, these dreamers are suspect to be prone to a great deal of exaggeration, or even absolute lying, as there is simply too much awareness of a difference between ordinary dreams and really cool neat dreams. Psychotic Episodes may present more honestly than Dream Questionnaires. But of course Dreaming is more prevalent. Maybe Dreamers could be interviewed while some kind of Lie Detection can be applied to standardize the information received.
Once we know what the Collective Spiritual Impulse is trying to tell us, then we will be able to recognize exactly to what extent that the various Cultures, particularly Globalized Western Culture, go toward suppressing this Spirituality. What makes me believe there has been some Suppression? Well, many Societies once had distinct Spiritual Components, where Spiritual Impulses arose and were not substantially modified because of social, economic or cultural demands and conflicts. Such Spirituality was allowed to focus itself and intensify. And we had documented Miracles and Saints from all that. Nurtured and gathered Spirituality had some actual Power. But the Forces of Western Materialism has all around the World largely suppressed these Zones of Spiritual freedoms and liberties.
If we had a better picture of the Spirituality that was being suppressed, we would have a better idea of how much we have been victimized and damaged by what sees itself only as a kind of benevolent Skepticism (while it ridicules, reduces and even ruins every career which doesn’t pass its test of Skeptical Purity).
The greatest obstacle might be from the Scientific Community and its reluctance to examine any hypothesis not based on the severest orthodox notions of materialism… that all human thought and behavior relates purely mechanically, and while almost every dream tells us that we each know more than we had ever officially learned, heard, or seen; still, proper Scientific Doctrine demands a material connection for everything. Even the suggestion of a Spiritual Undercurrent will have the whole business tossed out as Prema Facia False… False on its Very Face – “we don’t even have to look at it since our Pure Doctrines already tell us that it cannot be True” (a Study of a man in India who hasn’t eaten in years was tossed out, without even being read, only because its conclusions and not its process violated Acceptable Scientific Doctrine). Gone are the days of going where the Facts lead, if they lead away from Cherished Pet Materialistic Beliefs. Science has come full circle and now Francis Bacon and even perhaps Galileo would probably be surprised that the Science of simple observation and recording data, Empiricism, is being rejected for the sake of a New Orthodoxy in Belief Systems, this time Materialism. Putting on Blinders has not become a good thing simply because they look in the Other Direction now.
The problem with Behavior is that it may be opposed to the Inner Spiritual Impulses. Behavior may be dysfunctional or neurotic. But the trend in Psychology is to simply itemize behaviors and endorse those Behaviors that have large followings – if enough people participate in a certain Act, it becomes Normal only because it has become Popular. And remember how Society works – “To get along one has to go along”. Behaviors reinforced by the positive loop of Social Conformity. So it is that the exterior Culture can exert a very powerful influence against any inner collectivity in spirituality.
Remember that the domain of Collective Spirituality only becomes apparent during dreaming, during deep meditation trances, and within psychotic delusions. Well, we know that most people are dismissive of their dreams, and that many people don’t remember their dreams at all. Most people never achieve any deep state of meditation. And the vast majority of people will never have a psychotic delusion. With these people Culture, Societal Influences, Peer Pressures and Family Dynamics will have more effect on Behavior than any Inner Spiritual Impulse. Yes, one might suppose that if ones Behavior is totally at variance with one’s Inner Spirituality, that there will be some conflict, some resistance. But in this Day and Age we could probably expect the person to simply pop an Anti-Depressant, have a strong cup of coffee and march on in the Paths of Materialistic Glory. Several decades ago it would have been a drink and cigarette… and a cup of coffee.
What needs to be done is that Cross Cultural Psychotic Experiences should be studied. Dreams too, but my experience there is that Dreamers, because of some popular fads in Lucid Dreaming, and the wide availability of Dream Literature, well, these dreamers are suspect to be prone to a great deal of exaggeration, or even absolute lying, as there is simply too much awareness of a difference between ordinary dreams and really cool neat dreams. Psychotic Episodes may present more honestly than Dream Questionnaires. But of course Dreaming is more prevalent. Maybe Dreamers could be interviewed while some kind of Lie Detection can be applied to standardize the information received.
Once we know what the Collective Spiritual Impulse is trying to tell us, then we will be able to recognize exactly to what extent that the various Cultures, particularly Globalized Western Culture, go toward suppressing this Spirituality. What makes me believe there has been some Suppression? Well, many Societies once had distinct Spiritual Components, where Spiritual Impulses arose and were not substantially modified because of social, economic or cultural demands and conflicts. Such Spirituality was allowed to focus itself and intensify. And we had documented Miracles and Saints from all that. Nurtured and gathered Spirituality had some actual Power. But the Forces of Western Materialism has all around the World largely suppressed these Zones of Spiritual freedoms and liberties.
If we had a better picture of the Spirituality that was being suppressed, we would have a better idea of how much we have been victimized and damaged by what sees itself only as a kind of benevolent Skepticism (while it ridicules, reduces and even ruins every career which doesn’t pass its test of Skeptical Purity).
The greatest obstacle might be from the Scientific Community and its reluctance to examine any hypothesis not based on the severest orthodox notions of materialism… that all human thought and behavior relates purely mechanically, and while almost every dream tells us that we each know more than we had ever officially learned, heard, or seen; still, proper Scientific Doctrine demands a material connection for everything. Even the suggestion of a Spiritual Undercurrent will have the whole business tossed out as Prema Facia False… False on its Very Face – “we don’t even have to look at it since our Pure Doctrines already tell us that it cannot be True” (a Study of a man in India who hasn’t eaten in years was tossed out, without even being read, only because its conclusions and not its process violated Acceptable Scientific Doctrine). Gone are the days of going where the Facts lead, if they lead away from Cherished Pet Materialistic Beliefs. Science has come full circle and now Francis Bacon and even perhaps Galileo would probably be surprised that the Science of simple observation and recording data, Empiricism, is being rejected for the sake of a New Orthodoxy in Belief Systems, this time Materialism. Putting on Blinders has not become a good thing simply because they look in the Other Direction now.
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