First it must be clear to everybody that the World’s Petroleum Cartels have been and still are most successful in suppressing the Nuclear Energy Industries. Even Al Gore is intimidated into silence. The Oil Companies allow us to discuss silly alternatives such as wind energy or solar energy only because these alternatives can provide so little energy at such great expense. None of these alternative energies can be taken seriously when oil is still the cheaper and more efficient energy sourse.
But Nuclear Energy can be generated in tremendous quantities, and the more nuclear plants that go on line, then the cheaper it all gets. Nuclear Energy could replace all of the energy now coming from oil, coal, gas and bio-sources for a few bare percent of the present cost. And it all comes with absolutely no carbon dioxide. Electrical energy sourced from nuclear power plants could be directed towards producing hydrogen for a new generation of automobile that runs on hydrogen energy cells, or, for that matter, the nuclear power plants could run electric power into the roads and highways themselves for electric cars that pick up their electricity from induction.
But mostly Nuclear Energy can provide the power necessary to deal with the most frightening effects to be expected from Global Warming.
We know that the ice caps will melt. It is only a matter of time. The green house gas concentrates are already too high and cannot be reversed while already the icecaps are now mostly slush. So we now know for an absolute certainty that the ocean levels will rise and flood some of the most populated coastlines in the World. Are we just supposed to wait for it. If we have any sense then we would start right now towards moving water inland – to direct the Flood where we want it and where we could use it, into reservoirs, into newly created rain forests, into high rise greenhouse agricultural complexes.
Water, water everywhere.
Also, in putting this redirected water to use, it would solve another of our problems – in growing new rain forest territories and by creating higher density agricultural complexs (high rise multi-level greenhouses towering into the sky instead of single ground level one layer fields), we will be pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and effectively be storing it in new tree and plant growth.
Fresh water can be made by Nuclear Energy in two ways. First, the electrical power can be used to distill sea water, or where we have situations where the prevailing winds move from the sea to over continental areas, then the Nuclear Power Plants can simply heat up the water to boiling and pump out clouds that will move inland and translate into higher levels of rainfall.
This now must bring our attention to the great deal of engineering projects which must begin soon. We must engineer our landmasses so that we can capture all of the water we could get from the rainfall. It should be obvious that it is extremely stupid for us now to allow any fresh water to flow into rivers and then return to spill uselessly back into the oceans. It is simply a waste. We must set up the necessary pipelines and the canal networks and dig the reservoirs to retain all of this fresh water that is now being lost to the oceans. Now, it need not be envisioned as a permanent necessity, since it is understood that once new rain forests are in place, that they contain in themselves a great deal of water – in the trees and plant-life as well as being held in saturation by the soil. Even the higher humidity levels will account for a great deal of water volume. But to start the way to growing these new rain forests, we must start by moving in a great amount of fresh water.
Also, some amount of rains can be generated by clever and inexpensive means. For instance, black heat absorbing panels can be floated in the oceans just off the coasts of some of our dryer continents. The heat from these panels will increase oceanic evaporation which will send rain clouds inland. Also, for just a small area of heat absorption in the oceans that these black panels would be responsible for, by their increasing the white cloud cover downwind over the land masses, the over-all effect will be to reflect off more heat from the earth, and the earth will become on the balance cooler rather than warmer.
Is all of this possible? Well, certainly. Most of the world’s population is now greatly underemployed while much of the work now being done is directed towards weapon production and development. The monetary policies in America and Europe that aim for a real 10% level of unemployment is perhaps wonderful for bankers who represent .01% of the World’s Population. But given full employment towards these fresh water and nuclear energy initiatives, then we could easily anticipate not only surviving the Global Warming Disasters, but we could turn it all into a wonderful opportunity for engineering our Planet for better living in this Third Millennium.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
The Joys of a Multi-Cat Household
I look about myself now, in the small hours of a weekend late-night, and count six sleeping cats, all within an easy throw of myself and realize they are situated so close around me out of love. Well, that feels good. A multi-cat household can be a wonderfully happy place.
But you can’t just go out and buy six cats and expect it to be instantly wonderful.
Well, you can buy six cats, but you need to be careful of the choices you make. So many people buy the kitties that they feel sorry for, or they go to the County Kennel and get the kitty that they suppose is the next to be selected out for euthanasia because of its undesirability. I once volunteered at the Kennels, and found that because people took home all the miserable, ugly, maladjusted cats, it was the GOOD cats that were euthanized because nobody wanted them. Now, how stupid is that!? And then the general public who visit households who had adopted these ugly maladjusted mean nasty psychologically damaged cats, they rightly soak in their negative experiences and then wonder aloud why anybody would ever own a cat.
Then there is the common sense of it, where one can hardly suppose one will be happier by adopting some sad cat than by adopting a happier and healthier animal.
So don’t buy a cat you feel sorry for. Indeed, DO let the pathetic cats be the ones who are euthanized. Rescue the best cat you can find. You will be doing the reputation of cats in general a favor, and, even better, you will be doing yourself a favor. You will be getting a much better companion. Remember that you may have to live with your choice for twenty or more years (cats do have an edge on dogs as per life expectancy).
Now, there are very beautiful cats, and some specific breeds can be relied upon to produce some cats that also have exquisite personalities. But to be honest, that while you can soon get used to the beauty of the most dazzling cat, what is really most ingratiating in a cat is its personality. Select your cat by personality first, and then, all else being equal, refer to beauty as a second level criteria.
What is a good personality in a cat, when one is shopping for cats? Well, in kittens… I call them ‘cage monkeys’ because the best ones climb the front of the cage to get closer to the customers… the best kittens are active and are oriented towards human beings. The kitten you want should show by its own attentions that it also wants you. It should look you in the eye and meow at you. It should be saying “Me! Me! Pick me up! Take me home!” Even if it is the stunted and has bold spots in its fur, if the other kittens are not so focused on you as this thing, then they are not as ‘good’. Personality first! Once you get it home, you can nurse it up to perfect health, but the best looking cat that is indifferent to you might always be indifferent to you, as that is its personality.
I remember looking for a new cat once. I went to the kennel and there was this beautiful Siamese, but all it thought to do when I petted it was to bite at my hand as though it were a toy. It didn’t think to look at my eyes. But not far away was a four year old Calico (a calico is in fact a very pretty cat that has patches of white, red and black; so arranged that it seems that a totally white cat was sprayed with spots of red and then hit with spots of black) and this calico in a very strident and raspy voice was calling to me. Looking me in the eye. And when I took her (all calicos are female, for some genetic reason) out of the cage, while she was not instantly loving and cuddly, she seemed to show a willingness toward beginning a budding relationship. She began to purr tentatively.
Well, I was cautious and reserved and so I went on with my shopping and came back later in the day to see if she would remember me specifically. She did. So I went away again and again and would come back later. Again she would recognize me and was beginning to become upset with me for not taking her home. Well, when they can get mad at you for not being devoted enough, THAT indicates the type of cat that one takes home. Oh, and while most people shop for kittens, one may consider that there are some advantages in getting full grown cats. They are so long lived that you need not worry too much about losing time with your cat. While kittens can be fun, they really can be very self-possessed until they are somewhat over a year old. An adult cat will behave more maturely and will have more consideration of your needs (being careful not to wake you up, and will be more aware of your modes). Older cats have more empathy.
Many people only get one cat. For a while my Calico was my only cat. I would go to work and then come back. She got fat. Slowly she got fat. I did not notice it happening, but there came a point when I wondered to myself “I never noticed before what a little piglet Calico Bunny was”. They had given me her old medical records when I got her and so I looked into them and discovered she had never been more than 8 pounds, but now she was 13. My guess was that she ate and slept when I was not around – her way of keeping busy instead of being lonely. Well, since I have gotten more cats, guess what, she is back down to 8 pounds. If you cannot be your single cat’s sole companion and must leave it alone for extended periods, then why not consider another cat?
Oh, this is not to say that the only reason some cats are fat is because they are lonely. I do own one fairly fat cat. Some kitties just like to eat.
If one does begin to acquire more and more cats then things can eventually become complicated. Firstly, don’t get all of your cats all at once. One should allow a good deal of time for each new cat to integrate into your household. I would advise giving each new cat a full year to be the baby of the family. It needs that long to get used to the other cats, and for the other cats to get used to it. Everyone needs to readjust their place in the Universe when another cat comes in and effectively says ‘move over’. A year is probably long enough. More on this later.
Then one needs to set up a regimen for managing a multi-cat household. For instance, every so many hours one should look about and count the cats. Are they all there? Good! But if some are off hiding or in the other rooms somewhere, well, this may mean that there is a problem. Find them and find out what the problem is. Indeed, sometimes a newer cat will go off specifically to determine whether you will notice whether or not it is gone. Now, while each cat is different and unique, bla bla bla, what seems to work best generally is to pretend to sleep with a newer cat that seems to be testing you for your dedication to it. Find it, pet it, and then put your head down on your arms and go to sleep for a minute or two. This will totally reassure it concerning your affection, trust and devotion.
Because there are so many dysfunctional cats out there, the general public sometimes communicates the assumption that cats only care about getting fed. While feeding time is important to them, they also can come to get used to their Quality Time rituals. In my household I have a Quality Time Box that is centrally located, and whenever I go by it, if there is a cat on the Quality Time Box, then it gets petted and brushed, or played with… whatever it likes. Well, once one sets up such an institution then one finds that the cats will set up their own Quality Time places and rituals, and they will train you regarding what they expect from you. One of their favorite games is something of a mix of ‘hide and seek’ and ‘tag your it’, that is, they will hide in the dark, and when you get close, they will jump out at you. The more it scares the crap out of you, the better they like it. Oh, play with the lights out, to give them the advantage. But you are allowed to win, rarely. If you are patient, then you can be the one who hides, and when they come looking for you, you can be the one who jumps out and scares them. No, they don’t mind, but will actually appreciate that you have taken the game to a new level for them.
Now, much does depend upon the interaction between the cats themselves. Cat Politics. The cats need to be able to get along with each other. The experts say that when one introduces a new cat into the house that one should keep it in a separate room for awhile. For a few days let the cats sniff at each other from the crack under the door. But then let them in together and just go away and let the cats work things out. This is good advice, but honestly you should remember that it can take years for cat politics to stabilize in a multi-cat household. Who becomes antagonists, who becomes best friends, who grooms with whom, who sleeps with whom, who plays ‘fight and bite’ with whom. It can take a very long while before a new cat finds its place and truly becomes settled in with your other cats. But in some cases you may find that one particular cat is simply not working out with the rest.
Keep in mind that everyone can make a mistake, even yourself. And then you must realize that if you do not remedy your mistake, then that counts as another mistake. When you have a disruptive and impossible cat in the house, then you need to get rid of it. I’ll give an example. There is this feral cat named Funny Face, the oldest female in all of my Feral Cat Feeding Stations (I call her ‘Mother of All Cats’… you see, I could never get close enough to catch her, and she was wise to all of my bait traps, and so she went on having litter after litter, and she would bring these babies of hers to the feeding stations, presenting me with more and more little mouths to feed. Today, nearly every one of my ferals is somehow related to Funny Face). I finally tricked her into one of my cage traps (I began to bring the same ‘feeding box’ out night after night, morning after morning, with all of the other feral cats eating out it, until Funny Face decided she should trust it, and then when she went inside I hit the button and the door slammed shut. Ha!) so I was able to take her to the Vet and get her spayed. Anyway, once I had her captured, I decided to give her a choice about whether she would like to live indoors. I brought her in. Well, she isolated herself in the highest closet spaces, only jumping down in order to poop in my bed. She wanted nothing to do with the indoor cats, and the indoor cats were frankly puzzled by her obnoxious behavior. After 3 or 4 weeks I decided it wasn’t working out and chased her back outside to the Feeding Station. For 3 days she disappeared and I suspected she changed territories, but then had an intuition that maybe her feelings had been hurt by me chasing her with a broom and that she would not show her face until I apologized. So I called her name apologetically and instantly she came walking out of the jungle (oh, I am on a tropical island in the Pacific, by the way)… my calling her was apparently enough to satisfy her damaged pride. So, anyway, the point here is that if one cat is simply not working out with the other cats, then don’t overly prolong the difficulties but throw the trouble maker out!
We humans can be sensitive and even delicate in our feelings. But the truth is that life is very hard on the majority cats. Most kennel cats end up being euthanized. Most outdoor cats don’t live longer than a year or two (Funny Face, at 5 years old, is the oldest outdoor feral cat I know, and my heart has been broken time and time again when relatively young beloved outdoor ferals are found dead or simply don’t come out of the jungle at feeding time anymore, falling prey to heaven knows what). So, with life being so generally tough for cats, don’t be so judgmental of yourself if you should have to toss out a nasty cat. It certainly will deserve its fate as much as any other cat would. And then consider that you are simply making room for a more deserving cat.
Oh, and this reminds me… not all cats are acquired at the Pet Stores. Many perfectly good pets – really good pets – they escape from those who adopted them and they look for better homes. So some of the best pets might come right up to your door. Of my 6 indoor cats, three of them, maybe four, were entirely socialized pet cats that I found outside who had been attracted to the food at my feral cat feeding stations. One of them was given to me by a lady who originally got the cat herself because it came to her door. A man would come and ask for his cat back, but then after a while the cat would again escape and come back to this lady. Finally the man stopped coming to ask for his cat to be returned. Anyway, when the lady had to leave the island for awhile, she asked me to watch after it. Well, this cat fit in so perfectly with my other cats, she let me keep it.
Two or three of my other cats had also probably escaped from the homes they had been adopted into. You see, while you are determining whether or not your new cats are ‘working out’, well, they may be determining whether or not they think you are working out, and, if not, they will find an opportunity to rush out through an open door and simply never come back.
But you shouldn’t simply take in a new outdoor cat instantly. After all, property is sacred in our Civilization. Some people do have indoor-outdoor cats (not very wise of them, since ‘indoor-outdoor’ cats have only about half the life expectancy of purely indoor cats) and so you must systematically prevent yourself from inadvertently stealing another person’s cat. What I do to keep myself honest is to put a collar on them with a tag that says “Is this your cat? I plan to take it.” And I include my name, address and phone number. If after three days the cat is still wearing the collar and I have heard nothing from anybody then I figure that it is mine to take.
Okay… what did those other owners do to drive away their cats? Well, I guess it is too much negative behavior – too much “bad cat bad cat bad cat”. Not enough Quality Time or play. It really doesn’t take much. One only needs to remember to look around for the cat and say “hello” once in awhile. It sounds odd coming from an intellectual such as myself, but I once met a very intuitive young lady who told me from her heart to remember that “animals are only human, you know”. So, yes, to succeed with our pets, we need to remember that they are “human”, that they have feelings. No, we can’t be entirely verbal with them and we must learn to some extent to communicate with them in their own terms.
And this brings us to Cat Communication. First, when a cat meows or warbles at you, then answer it. Simply say “yeah” every time that it meows for attention. It will take a while at first because it is testing the situation and can’t really believe that you are answering, but soon it will realize that it truly is speaking with you.
Then one should know that cats can speak with their eyes – a slow blink at a distance is a sign of respect or affection. And then if a cat should look at you and lick its lips, you should do the same, or make a ‘kissy kissy’ sound which it will consider the same thing. Once a cat feels that it has opened up a genuine line of communication with you, it is so much less likely that it will escape from you to seek other adopted parents.
Often I have volunteered with Kennels and Pet Stores as a placement advisor. I had seen people actually holding a cat that is repeatedly meowing at them, and they won’t answer it – completely oblivious to it. Adults. Children. It doesn’t seem to matter. Some people even while going through all the efforts to become pet owners don’t seem to have much of an intuition about communicating with animals. Perhaps the first lesson in being a ‘cat whisperer’ is to simply be willing to listen too and respond to the cats own vocalizations and communications. Take the little thing seriously. Remember that is ‘human’.
Now, back to our primary subject concerning multi-cat households. If one participates in play, communication, grooming and quality time with one’s cats, then what I have found is that the ‘alpha’ or leader cats in your household will begin to live up to your very example – in their own funny ways they will begin to emulate your behavior. For instance, in my household of six cats, I have two neutered toms and they seem to be acting more and more like myself. They will go through the house counting the other cats, and will try to administer grooming and quality times. While they don’t have the key to the food cabinet, they take it upon themselves to remind me of the feeding times.
So the important thing to remember about this is that one must not habitually perform any behaviors that you do not want your alphas to try to copy. So you should refrain from any hostile or aggressive behaviors which could only reinforce such behaviors in your cats – don’t hit the kitties in anger.
Then we must remember the old adage “to get a friend one must be a friend”. Don’t depend upon the kitties to automatically show affection for you, that is, to automatically sit on your lap or jump up and sleep at the foot of your bed. You should consider doing some inviting behavior. Go and get a cat and put it on your lap, and even if it jumps off after a second, well, it knows it had been invited. The same with bedtime. Go and get the cat and put it on the foot of the bed and then it knows it has been invited. Cats are terribly cerebral and they seem to want to think everything out (cats do in fact come when they are called, but often it takes a few minutes since they have to think it entirely through first), but soon enough you will see that they suddenly want to participate in the behaviors you had been inviting them to. Oh, and this reminds me about their feeding behavior, that while they may seem to shun some new food, well, don’t necessarily believe it, as they may eat just a little bit of something they actually like, but if it is new, they wait to see if it makes them sick. So if it appears to you as though they don’t like a new brand of food, well, give it a third or fourth chance and you might find that your kitties actually have a new favorite.
Perhaps now we should examine the notion of socialization – what goes into socializing a kitten so that it can become the best of possible house pets. One never knows when one might be put in charge of a small kitty who has been separated from its mother. Or you should know enough about proper socialization so you can inquire intelligently of breeders concerning whether they have been properly socializing their kittens. Well, as I said before, one should answer meows and then, if the kitten is at all aggressive then one should take it by its scruff and bring it to one’s breast bone where it will hear your heart beat. Here we get involved with its instincts. When it hears your heart, it thinks you are its mother and this automatically inhibits their aggression. You see, Nature has hardwired these kittens behavior so that they might NEVER bite the tit that feeds them. Aggression is impossible from a kitten while it hears its mothers heartbeat. So bringing a kitten up to your chest will automatically quiet it down. This works for every kitten that is still young enough to have that pointy pin-feather like fur. But a kitten old enough to be weaned and who has fur that lays back like adult fur, well, nothing will ‘automatically’ inhibit aggression in a kitten that far along in age, and they can be dangerous if not already socialized. But while they are young, you can take demonic little hissing and spitting kittens and put them up on your breast bone to calm them, and they you should engage in grooming behavior – give them little kisses while moving your head back and forth so it does seem exactly like grooming. In a few days, with just some minutes each day, the most horrible kitties will become socialized. They will go from being virtual little evil demons to being angelic little sweethearts, climbing up the front of the cage when they see you coming – perfect little cage monkeys.
Oh, and this reminds me again of an interesting point, that is, another behavioral difference between socialized cats and ferals. As I had said above, a socialized cat will interpret a kiss as an act of grooming. But ferals live in a rough world and almost any action is interpreted in terms of aggression and the tools of aggression – they see kisses as gentle and harmless bites, and they see petting and thumping as gentle and harmless clawing. This goes far in explaining why ferals are at first very hesitant to receive your affection, since they expect any touch to bring with it some sting of aggression. But once they do get used to your expressions of affection, in their own terms, then they may begin to return such affection. In their little minds they must be thinking “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”. They think they are being friendly. They will gently swipe their claws at you, and they will gently bite at your hands and nose. Often at first the biting and the clawing may not be so entirely gentle, as at first ferals greatly over-estimate the toughness of us human beings, but if you yelp in pain when the cat bites down a bit too hard, then it will soon get the idea and ease up a bit from then on. But the important point here is that it can be somewhat disconcerting to have a cat biting and scratching at one. One hardly sees that as affection. But I remind you that the ferals at first had a difficult time being touched themselves, having seen the human behaviors of kissing and petting in terms of biting and scratching. And when the cats have finally gotten over their fear of you and begin to return your affection, the only way they know how, they are puzzled when you back away from them. So, really, it is best to hold still and let them swat and bite at you a little bit. They mean well. Even some socialized cats will sometimes use their teeth to grip your hand, when it wants more petting. This is often times misinterpreted. I have seen mothers in Pet Stores complain of cats ‘biting’ their children, and then I need to explain to them that a cat who really bites will go at a person like an industrial sewing machine – quick repeated bites that go as deep as their teeth are long, biting down to your bones. There is always a lot of bleeding from real cat bites. If the cat does not break the skin, then it really was not a bite. The cat only wanted your attention… to take your hand by holding it in its mouth, like it would carry one of its own kittens. Remember that they do not have opposable thumbs for gripping, and so they will use their teeth or reach out their claws gently to pull you in. It is nothing to be afraid of, once you find that you can trust the cat not to harm you.
I have brought several of the ferals indoors and from interacting with the socialized cats they do eventually learn socialized grooming behavior and will begin to act more as the socialized cats do. It is always a wonderful moment the first time an ex-feral licks one’s hand in genuine grooming behavior style.
Oh, and then we must talk a little bit about the matter of choice between having cats or having dogs. Now, dogs are great, but they do have different needs. Do you go off to work? Dogs tend toward demoralized loneliness when their masters are away. While cats will be happy when one comes home, greeting one at the door, one rarely hears complaints from the neighbors that one’s cats are crying plaintively when one is out. Dogs will. But I must admit here that often times cats can be lonely if left alone, and it is my opinion that if one finds a few cats that can be friends and can get along with each other, then one should keep them both and they will probably be happier than if they were in single cat households.
Dogs can be annoying as they will defend territory with barking behavior, and they will bark at other dogs, and will begin howling if they hear other dogs howl – pack behavior. Neighbors will complain. And then there is biting and attack behavior. One should be careful about what kind of dog one acquires. Many image obsessed men will get fighting breed dogs as macho-accessories for themselves, and they are fooled by their pet’s submissive behavior towards themselves while forgetting that thousands of years of targeted breeding has focused on turning these animals into reflex killers. Such pets are legal liabilities at the least, and can often be actually dangerous to your guests or to your neighbors. No one’s pet kitty ever ripped out the throat of the little girl next door, but such nightmares have often played out for dog owners.
Then there is hygiene to consider. Cats are inherently clean. One hears stories of Tomcats ‘spraying’ their territory with stinky urine, but if a boy cat is neutered before it is some large mature Tomcat already habituated to marking its territory, then there is almost no chance at all that your Tomcat will ever mark. Indeed, I have found neutered Tomcats to be really the better companions, though of my 6 cats, I have 4 females. Each sex can make a wonderful companion.
Cats naturally will sand box train themselves – their version of being toilet trained. Indeed, some people actually toilet train their kitties. But dogs will poop and pee on the floor. Dogs really need to be walked. They also need to be trained carefully enough so that they do not become more of a list of problems than they are worth. And so it is that dogs require a good deal more time and attention than do cats. If one is retired or works out of the home and can be there for a dog, then a dog’s close companionability can be very enticing. But allow me to repeat, that if one chooses one’s cats well, then one can be sure of having some very companionable cats. People really love their cats, and visa versa.
Before I close out this essay, let me add a word regarding the commonly held generalization that people who keep cats are in some manner dysfunctional in their human relationships – that they are pathetic lonely souls. Well, the truth is rather the opposite. Yes, a keeper of cats may go out less frequently than those who have no cats, but this is because they are rather less lonely. It is loneliness that drives ordinary people out to the bars and the clubs. I used to be one of them. I never thought my life would change drastically just because I began to keep a few cats, but imperceptibly and slowly I progressed toward going out less and less often. I was happier to simply stay at home. This is in no way pathetic or indicative of any human to human dysfunctions. It is contentment, pure and simple. And so if having cats can make one more content with one’s life, then that should rather be seen as a good thing.
But you can’t just go out and buy six cats and expect it to be instantly wonderful.
Well, you can buy six cats, but you need to be careful of the choices you make. So many people buy the kitties that they feel sorry for, or they go to the County Kennel and get the kitty that they suppose is the next to be selected out for euthanasia because of its undesirability. I once volunteered at the Kennels, and found that because people took home all the miserable, ugly, maladjusted cats, it was the GOOD cats that were euthanized because nobody wanted them. Now, how stupid is that!? And then the general public who visit households who had adopted these ugly maladjusted mean nasty psychologically damaged cats, they rightly soak in their negative experiences and then wonder aloud why anybody would ever own a cat.
Then there is the common sense of it, where one can hardly suppose one will be happier by adopting some sad cat than by adopting a happier and healthier animal.
So don’t buy a cat you feel sorry for. Indeed, DO let the pathetic cats be the ones who are euthanized. Rescue the best cat you can find. You will be doing the reputation of cats in general a favor, and, even better, you will be doing yourself a favor. You will be getting a much better companion. Remember that you may have to live with your choice for twenty or more years (cats do have an edge on dogs as per life expectancy).
Now, there are very beautiful cats, and some specific breeds can be relied upon to produce some cats that also have exquisite personalities. But to be honest, that while you can soon get used to the beauty of the most dazzling cat, what is really most ingratiating in a cat is its personality. Select your cat by personality first, and then, all else being equal, refer to beauty as a second level criteria.
What is a good personality in a cat, when one is shopping for cats? Well, in kittens… I call them ‘cage monkeys’ because the best ones climb the front of the cage to get closer to the customers… the best kittens are active and are oriented towards human beings. The kitten you want should show by its own attentions that it also wants you. It should look you in the eye and meow at you. It should be saying “Me! Me! Pick me up! Take me home!” Even if it is the stunted and has bold spots in its fur, if the other kittens are not so focused on you as this thing, then they are not as ‘good’. Personality first! Once you get it home, you can nurse it up to perfect health, but the best looking cat that is indifferent to you might always be indifferent to you, as that is its personality.
I remember looking for a new cat once. I went to the kennel and there was this beautiful Siamese, but all it thought to do when I petted it was to bite at my hand as though it were a toy. It didn’t think to look at my eyes. But not far away was a four year old Calico (a calico is in fact a very pretty cat that has patches of white, red and black; so arranged that it seems that a totally white cat was sprayed with spots of red and then hit with spots of black) and this calico in a very strident and raspy voice was calling to me. Looking me in the eye. And when I took her (all calicos are female, for some genetic reason) out of the cage, while she was not instantly loving and cuddly, she seemed to show a willingness toward beginning a budding relationship. She began to purr tentatively.
Well, I was cautious and reserved and so I went on with my shopping and came back later in the day to see if she would remember me specifically. She did. So I went away again and again and would come back later. Again she would recognize me and was beginning to become upset with me for not taking her home. Well, when they can get mad at you for not being devoted enough, THAT indicates the type of cat that one takes home. Oh, and while most people shop for kittens, one may consider that there are some advantages in getting full grown cats. They are so long lived that you need not worry too much about losing time with your cat. While kittens can be fun, they really can be very self-possessed until they are somewhat over a year old. An adult cat will behave more maturely and will have more consideration of your needs (being careful not to wake you up, and will be more aware of your modes). Older cats have more empathy.
Many people only get one cat. For a while my Calico was my only cat. I would go to work and then come back. She got fat. Slowly she got fat. I did not notice it happening, but there came a point when I wondered to myself “I never noticed before what a little piglet Calico Bunny was”. They had given me her old medical records when I got her and so I looked into them and discovered she had never been more than 8 pounds, but now she was 13. My guess was that she ate and slept when I was not around – her way of keeping busy instead of being lonely. Well, since I have gotten more cats, guess what, she is back down to 8 pounds. If you cannot be your single cat’s sole companion and must leave it alone for extended periods, then why not consider another cat?
Oh, this is not to say that the only reason some cats are fat is because they are lonely. I do own one fairly fat cat. Some kitties just like to eat.
If one does begin to acquire more and more cats then things can eventually become complicated. Firstly, don’t get all of your cats all at once. One should allow a good deal of time for each new cat to integrate into your household. I would advise giving each new cat a full year to be the baby of the family. It needs that long to get used to the other cats, and for the other cats to get used to it. Everyone needs to readjust their place in the Universe when another cat comes in and effectively says ‘move over’. A year is probably long enough. More on this later.
Then one needs to set up a regimen for managing a multi-cat household. For instance, every so many hours one should look about and count the cats. Are they all there? Good! But if some are off hiding or in the other rooms somewhere, well, this may mean that there is a problem. Find them and find out what the problem is. Indeed, sometimes a newer cat will go off specifically to determine whether you will notice whether or not it is gone. Now, while each cat is different and unique, bla bla bla, what seems to work best generally is to pretend to sleep with a newer cat that seems to be testing you for your dedication to it. Find it, pet it, and then put your head down on your arms and go to sleep for a minute or two. This will totally reassure it concerning your affection, trust and devotion.
Because there are so many dysfunctional cats out there, the general public sometimes communicates the assumption that cats only care about getting fed. While feeding time is important to them, they also can come to get used to their Quality Time rituals. In my household I have a Quality Time Box that is centrally located, and whenever I go by it, if there is a cat on the Quality Time Box, then it gets petted and brushed, or played with… whatever it likes. Well, once one sets up such an institution then one finds that the cats will set up their own Quality Time places and rituals, and they will train you regarding what they expect from you. One of their favorite games is something of a mix of ‘hide and seek’ and ‘tag your it’, that is, they will hide in the dark, and when you get close, they will jump out at you. The more it scares the crap out of you, the better they like it. Oh, play with the lights out, to give them the advantage. But you are allowed to win, rarely. If you are patient, then you can be the one who hides, and when they come looking for you, you can be the one who jumps out and scares them. No, they don’t mind, but will actually appreciate that you have taken the game to a new level for them.
Now, much does depend upon the interaction between the cats themselves. Cat Politics. The cats need to be able to get along with each other. The experts say that when one introduces a new cat into the house that one should keep it in a separate room for awhile. For a few days let the cats sniff at each other from the crack under the door. But then let them in together and just go away and let the cats work things out. This is good advice, but honestly you should remember that it can take years for cat politics to stabilize in a multi-cat household. Who becomes antagonists, who becomes best friends, who grooms with whom, who sleeps with whom, who plays ‘fight and bite’ with whom. It can take a very long while before a new cat finds its place and truly becomes settled in with your other cats. But in some cases you may find that one particular cat is simply not working out with the rest.
Keep in mind that everyone can make a mistake, even yourself. And then you must realize that if you do not remedy your mistake, then that counts as another mistake. When you have a disruptive and impossible cat in the house, then you need to get rid of it. I’ll give an example. There is this feral cat named Funny Face, the oldest female in all of my Feral Cat Feeding Stations (I call her ‘Mother of All Cats’… you see, I could never get close enough to catch her, and she was wise to all of my bait traps, and so she went on having litter after litter, and she would bring these babies of hers to the feeding stations, presenting me with more and more little mouths to feed. Today, nearly every one of my ferals is somehow related to Funny Face). I finally tricked her into one of my cage traps (I began to bring the same ‘feeding box’ out night after night, morning after morning, with all of the other feral cats eating out it, until Funny Face decided she should trust it, and then when she went inside I hit the button and the door slammed shut. Ha!) so I was able to take her to the Vet and get her spayed. Anyway, once I had her captured, I decided to give her a choice about whether she would like to live indoors. I brought her in. Well, she isolated herself in the highest closet spaces, only jumping down in order to poop in my bed. She wanted nothing to do with the indoor cats, and the indoor cats were frankly puzzled by her obnoxious behavior. After 3 or 4 weeks I decided it wasn’t working out and chased her back outside to the Feeding Station. For 3 days she disappeared and I suspected she changed territories, but then had an intuition that maybe her feelings had been hurt by me chasing her with a broom and that she would not show her face until I apologized. So I called her name apologetically and instantly she came walking out of the jungle (oh, I am on a tropical island in the Pacific, by the way)… my calling her was apparently enough to satisfy her damaged pride. So, anyway, the point here is that if one cat is simply not working out with the other cats, then don’t overly prolong the difficulties but throw the trouble maker out!
We humans can be sensitive and even delicate in our feelings. But the truth is that life is very hard on the majority cats. Most kennel cats end up being euthanized. Most outdoor cats don’t live longer than a year or two (Funny Face, at 5 years old, is the oldest outdoor feral cat I know, and my heart has been broken time and time again when relatively young beloved outdoor ferals are found dead or simply don’t come out of the jungle at feeding time anymore, falling prey to heaven knows what). So, with life being so generally tough for cats, don’t be so judgmental of yourself if you should have to toss out a nasty cat. It certainly will deserve its fate as much as any other cat would. And then consider that you are simply making room for a more deserving cat.
Oh, and this reminds me… not all cats are acquired at the Pet Stores. Many perfectly good pets – really good pets – they escape from those who adopted them and they look for better homes. So some of the best pets might come right up to your door. Of my 6 indoor cats, three of them, maybe four, were entirely socialized pet cats that I found outside who had been attracted to the food at my feral cat feeding stations. One of them was given to me by a lady who originally got the cat herself because it came to her door. A man would come and ask for his cat back, but then after a while the cat would again escape and come back to this lady. Finally the man stopped coming to ask for his cat to be returned. Anyway, when the lady had to leave the island for awhile, she asked me to watch after it. Well, this cat fit in so perfectly with my other cats, she let me keep it.
Two or three of my other cats had also probably escaped from the homes they had been adopted into. You see, while you are determining whether or not your new cats are ‘working out’, well, they may be determining whether or not they think you are working out, and, if not, they will find an opportunity to rush out through an open door and simply never come back.
But you shouldn’t simply take in a new outdoor cat instantly. After all, property is sacred in our Civilization. Some people do have indoor-outdoor cats (not very wise of them, since ‘indoor-outdoor’ cats have only about half the life expectancy of purely indoor cats) and so you must systematically prevent yourself from inadvertently stealing another person’s cat. What I do to keep myself honest is to put a collar on them with a tag that says “Is this your cat? I plan to take it.” And I include my name, address and phone number. If after three days the cat is still wearing the collar and I have heard nothing from anybody then I figure that it is mine to take.
Okay… what did those other owners do to drive away their cats? Well, I guess it is too much negative behavior – too much “bad cat bad cat bad cat”. Not enough Quality Time or play. It really doesn’t take much. One only needs to remember to look around for the cat and say “hello” once in awhile. It sounds odd coming from an intellectual such as myself, but I once met a very intuitive young lady who told me from her heart to remember that “animals are only human, you know”. So, yes, to succeed with our pets, we need to remember that they are “human”, that they have feelings. No, we can’t be entirely verbal with them and we must learn to some extent to communicate with them in their own terms.
And this brings us to Cat Communication. First, when a cat meows or warbles at you, then answer it. Simply say “yeah” every time that it meows for attention. It will take a while at first because it is testing the situation and can’t really believe that you are answering, but soon it will realize that it truly is speaking with you.
Then one should know that cats can speak with their eyes – a slow blink at a distance is a sign of respect or affection. And then if a cat should look at you and lick its lips, you should do the same, or make a ‘kissy kissy’ sound which it will consider the same thing. Once a cat feels that it has opened up a genuine line of communication with you, it is so much less likely that it will escape from you to seek other adopted parents.
Often I have volunteered with Kennels and Pet Stores as a placement advisor. I had seen people actually holding a cat that is repeatedly meowing at them, and they won’t answer it – completely oblivious to it. Adults. Children. It doesn’t seem to matter. Some people even while going through all the efforts to become pet owners don’t seem to have much of an intuition about communicating with animals. Perhaps the first lesson in being a ‘cat whisperer’ is to simply be willing to listen too and respond to the cats own vocalizations and communications. Take the little thing seriously. Remember that is ‘human’.
Now, back to our primary subject concerning multi-cat households. If one participates in play, communication, grooming and quality time with one’s cats, then what I have found is that the ‘alpha’ or leader cats in your household will begin to live up to your very example – in their own funny ways they will begin to emulate your behavior. For instance, in my household of six cats, I have two neutered toms and they seem to be acting more and more like myself. They will go through the house counting the other cats, and will try to administer grooming and quality times. While they don’t have the key to the food cabinet, they take it upon themselves to remind me of the feeding times.
So the important thing to remember about this is that one must not habitually perform any behaviors that you do not want your alphas to try to copy. So you should refrain from any hostile or aggressive behaviors which could only reinforce such behaviors in your cats – don’t hit the kitties in anger.
Then we must remember the old adage “to get a friend one must be a friend”. Don’t depend upon the kitties to automatically show affection for you, that is, to automatically sit on your lap or jump up and sleep at the foot of your bed. You should consider doing some inviting behavior. Go and get a cat and put it on your lap, and even if it jumps off after a second, well, it knows it had been invited. The same with bedtime. Go and get the cat and put it on the foot of the bed and then it knows it has been invited. Cats are terribly cerebral and they seem to want to think everything out (cats do in fact come when they are called, but often it takes a few minutes since they have to think it entirely through first), but soon enough you will see that they suddenly want to participate in the behaviors you had been inviting them to. Oh, and this reminds me about their feeding behavior, that while they may seem to shun some new food, well, don’t necessarily believe it, as they may eat just a little bit of something they actually like, but if it is new, they wait to see if it makes them sick. So if it appears to you as though they don’t like a new brand of food, well, give it a third or fourth chance and you might find that your kitties actually have a new favorite.
Perhaps now we should examine the notion of socialization – what goes into socializing a kitten so that it can become the best of possible house pets. One never knows when one might be put in charge of a small kitty who has been separated from its mother. Or you should know enough about proper socialization so you can inquire intelligently of breeders concerning whether they have been properly socializing their kittens. Well, as I said before, one should answer meows and then, if the kitten is at all aggressive then one should take it by its scruff and bring it to one’s breast bone where it will hear your heart beat. Here we get involved with its instincts. When it hears your heart, it thinks you are its mother and this automatically inhibits their aggression. You see, Nature has hardwired these kittens behavior so that they might NEVER bite the tit that feeds them. Aggression is impossible from a kitten while it hears its mothers heartbeat. So bringing a kitten up to your chest will automatically quiet it down. This works for every kitten that is still young enough to have that pointy pin-feather like fur. But a kitten old enough to be weaned and who has fur that lays back like adult fur, well, nothing will ‘automatically’ inhibit aggression in a kitten that far along in age, and they can be dangerous if not already socialized. But while they are young, you can take demonic little hissing and spitting kittens and put them up on your breast bone to calm them, and they you should engage in grooming behavior – give them little kisses while moving your head back and forth so it does seem exactly like grooming. In a few days, with just some minutes each day, the most horrible kitties will become socialized. They will go from being virtual little evil demons to being angelic little sweethearts, climbing up the front of the cage when they see you coming – perfect little cage monkeys.
Oh, and this reminds me again of an interesting point, that is, another behavioral difference between socialized cats and ferals. As I had said above, a socialized cat will interpret a kiss as an act of grooming. But ferals live in a rough world and almost any action is interpreted in terms of aggression and the tools of aggression – they see kisses as gentle and harmless bites, and they see petting and thumping as gentle and harmless clawing. This goes far in explaining why ferals are at first very hesitant to receive your affection, since they expect any touch to bring with it some sting of aggression. But once they do get used to your expressions of affection, in their own terms, then they may begin to return such affection. In their little minds they must be thinking “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”. They think they are being friendly. They will gently swipe their claws at you, and they will gently bite at your hands and nose. Often at first the biting and the clawing may not be so entirely gentle, as at first ferals greatly over-estimate the toughness of us human beings, but if you yelp in pain when the cat bites down a bit too hard, then it will soon get the idea and ease up a bit from then on. But the important point here is that it can be somewhat disconcerting to have a cat biting and scratching at one. One hardly sees that as affection. But I remind you that the ferals at first had a difficult time being touched themselves, having seen the human behaviors of kissing and petting in terms of biting and scratching. And when the cats have finally gotten over their fear of you and begin to return your affection, the only way they know how, they are puzzled when you back away from them. So, really, it is best to hold still and let them swat and bite at you a little bit. They mean well. Even some socialized cats will sometimes use their teeth to grip your hand, when it wants more petting. This is often times misinterpreted. I have seen mothers in Pet Stores complain of cats ‘biting’ their children, and then I need to explain to them that a cat who really bites will go at a person like an industrial sewing machine – quick repeated bites that go as deep as their teeth are long, biting down to your bones. There is always a lot of bleeding from real cat bites. If the cat does not break the skin, then it really was not a bite. The cat only wanted your attention… to take your hand by holding it in its mouth, like it would carry one of its own kittens. Remember that they do not have opposable thumbs for gripping, and so they will use their teeth or reach out their claws gently to pull you in. It is nothing to be afraid of, once you find that you can trust the cat not to harm you.
I have brought several of the ferals indoors and from interacting with the socialized cats they do eventually learn socialized grooming behavior and will begin to act more as the socialized cats do. It is always a wonderful moment the first time an ex-feral licks one’s hand in genuine grooming behavior style.
Oh, and then we must talk a little bit about the matter of choice between having cats or having dogs. Now, dogs are great, but they do have different needs. Do you go off to work? Dogs tend toward demoralized loneliness when their masters are away. While cats will be happy when one comes home, greeting one at the door, one rarely hears complaints from the neighbors that one’s cats are crying plaintively when one is out. Dogs will. But I must admit here that often times cats can be lonely if left alone, and it is my opinion that if one finds a few cats that can be friends and can get along with each other, then one should keep them both and they will probably be happier than if they were in single cat households.
Dogs can be annoying as they will defend territory with barking behavior, and they will bark at other dogs, and will begin howling if they hear other dogs howl – pack behavior. Neighbors will complain. And then there is biting and attack behavior. One should be careful about what kind of dog one acquires. Many image obsessed men will get fighting breed dogs as macho-accessories for themselves, and they are fooled by their pet’s submissive behavior towards themselves while forgetting that thousands of years of targeted breeding has focused on turning these animals into reflex killers. Such pets are legal liabilities at the least, and can often be actually dangerous to your guests or to your neighbors. No one’s pet kitty ever ripped out the throat of the little girl next door, but such nightmares have often played out for dog owners.
Then there is hygiene to consider. Cats are inherently clean. One hears stories of Tomcats ‘spraying’ their territory with stinky urine, but if a boy cat is neutered before it is some large mature Tomcat already habituated to marking its territory, then there is almost no chance at all that your Tomcat will ever mark. Indeed, I have found neutered Tomcats to be really the better companions, though of my 6 cats, I have 4 females. Each sex can make a wonderful companion.
Cats naturally will sand box train themselves – their version of being toilet trained. Indeed, some people actually toilet train their kitties. But dogs will poop and pee on the floor. Dogs really need to be walked. They also need to be trained carefully enough so that they do not become more of a list of problems than they are worth. And so it is that dogs require a good deal more time and attention than do cats. If one is retired or works out of the home and can be there for a dog, then a dog’s close companionability can be very enticing. But allow me to repeat, that if one chooses one’s cats well, then one can be sure of having some very companionable cats. People really love their cats, and visa versa.
Before I close out this essay, let me add a word regarding the commonly held generalization that people who keep cats are in some manner dysfunctional in their human relationships – that they are pathetic lonely souls. Well, the truth is rather the opposite. Yes, a keeper of cats may go out less frequently than those who have no cats, but this is because they are rather less lonely. It is loneliness that drives ordinary people out to the bars and the clubs. I used to be one of them. I never thought my life would change drastically just because I began to keep a few cats, but imperceptibly and slowly I progressed toward going out less and less often. I was happier to simply stay at home. This is in no way pathetic or indicative of any human to human dysfunctions. It is contentment, pure and simple. And so if having cats can make one more content with one’s life, then that should rather be seen as a good thing.
Why I Converted to Catholicism
Just more than several years ago I converted to Catholicism, which by all accounts seems a very rare and peculiar thing for any non-Catholic to do. Many people, both Catholic and non-Catholic would wonder why a person would do such a thing, especially as officially converting takes too much work to be done simply on a whim. So to answer this general curiosity, here I will attempt to explain why I decided to convert.
Of course, the entire story would be complicated even if the core motivations were simple, so please expect a depiction of all of the textures and terrain undulations of not a perfect situation but of a real one.
First, let me begin by telling of a precipitating moment, a catalytic prelude to my Conversion. I was visited by my adult daughter in the American Southwest and we decided to pass our time sightseeing. We went to quite a famous old Catholic Mission. I had seen it all before, but when asked by my daughter to go inside the Church with her, I felt some discomfort at the notion and sent her ahead by herself without me. I would have had no hesitation about walking in alone, but as my daughter was a Catholic and I was not, I felt it would be incongruous – the mixing of a tourist with a true believer would have presented a clash against my sense of good taste. And then there was another dynamic involved. I had once been a Protestant, and was still tinged with that strange complex which effects nearly all Protestants, which is a hate for Catholicism that is carefully and repeatedly indoctrinated from the earliest Sunday school lessons, paired with an unavoidable envy for the apparent genuine religiosity of the Catholic Experience – a pageantry and flow of religious emotions which Protestantism is at a complete loss to match, which is the very reason why the Leaders of Protestantism find it so necessary to carefully and repeatedly instruct upon the necessity for hating Catholicism. You can see it is a spiraling set of dynamics which feed upon themselves. Hate is the Protestant’s best defense against Envy. So where I could have gone into that Mission Church alone, I was afraid my envy would show to my quite perceptive daughter. But there was no hate, and this I will have to explain in the bulk of this presentation.
One does not ever instantly know why one feels certain things, until one has had time to think about one’s feelings. We conduct much of our behaviors by the dictates of our feelings, and would not know why we act the way we do until we find time to reflect upon our conduct with our intellect. Not accompanying my daughter into that Mission Church puzzled me and I found myself going over that decision like a philosopher trying to solve the Riddle of the Sphinx. It finally occurred to me that if I was envious, than there was nothing to prevent myself from becoming Catholic. My parents were dead, and probably would not have cared if they had still been alive. Of course, if my early protestant conditioning, to hate Catholicism inveterately in my heart and soul, had still been entirely intact, it would have never occurred to me to even consider a Conversion. So, what made Catholicism even a little bit sympathetic to me?
First, for years I had studied and participated in some of the movements of the World’s Higher Moral Religions – Sufism (which better represents old Zoroastrianism more than it does modern Islam, no matter what the Sufis themselves say about it, as they are all quite under duress to pretend to be good Muslims), Spiritual Hinduism and Yoga, and Mahayana Buddhism, together with the other Traditions that had borrowed all of their Spiritual Capital from these sources, along as from elements of Spiritual Catholicism. I had been a Monk at an Aurobindo Ashram, a high initiate in Kundalini Yoga, and had followed a number of Gurus (along with a stint in the Peace Corps, as I believe actual service to Humanity must go hand in hand with one’s Spiritual Quest). And what did I notice in my active acquaintance and experience with the adherents and followers of these Higher Religions? It was that there was in every case some interaction and sympathetic communications between these Spiritual Groups and those of various Catholic Religious Orders. Indeed, Monks, Catholic and Non-Catholic alike, would visit each other’s Monasteries, Shrines and other establishments and partake somewhat in each other’s spiritual practices hoping to gain some insight, in the spirit of Spiritual Fellowship. It was no small matter to me that Spiritual Catholicism was not held in disgrace by the other Higher Religions of the World, as the same cannot be said of Protestantism (which is seen not so much as a Religion but as an excuse the West has contrived to not have any Religion at all – Protestant Salvation is represented as coming from a free Grace that requires neither spiritual practice nor even morality, and Christians are encouraged to refer to themselves as ‘sinners’, while Good Works are shunned. Where is Religion in any of that? Civilization can survive only on a basis of a wide acceptance of moral and spiritual assumptions and a lot of very hard good work, all of which Paulist Christianity dismisses as non-essential, and even as detrimental to their Salvation by based upon Faith alone). One would not willingly associate oneself with a Religion that would bring a moral or spiritual scandal to oneself. One needs to be able to correctly discern both Christ and the Devil. Something can call itself a Religion, but if it propagates the Devil and puts forward Satanic interests and Doctrines, I should hardly suppose we should concede to its Religious pretensions. Charity and Christian Love does not demand we hand our Sheep over to the Wolves, no matter how well-tailored be their Sheep’s Clothing.
Then there was the matter of History. I’ve always studied and read History – in College I majored in it, before going over to Philosophy. I’ve always considered that Catholic Civilization did rather well for itself, though many would argue the point, but when all things were considered in the balance, Catholic Civilization grew and even thrived, and lived up to not only some Spiritual Ideals but even some material ones as well. Indeed, from the Papacy of Gregory the Great to the defeat and the collapse of Catholic Christendom in the Wars of the Protestant Rebellion, was it not almost exactly the “Thousand Year Reign of Christ on Earth” promised by the New Testament Prophesies. Oh, and perhaps I should point out that the “1000 Year Reign of Christ” could not have begun until a Pope arose who would challenge Paul’s strangle-hold on Christian Doctrines, and particularly that doctrine requiring the submission of The Church to secular political authority found in the Epistle to the Romans. Christian Civilization would have been impossible had Pope Gregory the Great, and others in his footsteps, not established the Catholic Church as a central political power, a final arbiter of disputes and a court of last resort, which alone could make peace and commerce possible over what would have been a cluster of perpetually warring cities and states.
Back a few years ago, while still very much a Non-Catholic, I would often go Online and discuss my political and religious views, and would occasionally be surprised to find myself, a disinterested bystander, so to speak, defending the role of Catholicism in History. However spotted the History of Secular Catholicism, the facts point out that as a Civilization, Catholic Christendom was the most successful Civilization in the world this last two thousands years – the only Civilization which had been able to stand against the invasions of first the Huns, in the 6th and 7th Centuries, and then the Mongols in the 12th to 14th. The much maligned Crusades were actually a political and military success in preserving Christendom, that is, Catholic Civilization (for which no one today is grateful, no, not even the officials of the Catholic Church as even the Popes themselves nowadays issue hand-wringing apologies for having deployed armies that were solely responsible for having saved Christendom when everywhere else less hardy civilizations were swept into the basest and cruelest barbarism, not because they morally renounced an active defense or because they did not make what must have been the most valiant efforts to defend themselves, but because the imperfections of their Institutions made an effective defense impossible). Such successes, in Catholic Christendom, were only possible as the Church was able to exercise an effective Secular Authority over a body of nationalities that behaved effectively like the component states of a great Catholic Empire. The policies that could sustain this Jurisdiction, the saving Grace of our Civilization, are to be commended… not apologized for. This is not to say that the Catholic Church did not often have to resolve Social and Religious Conflicts of its own making. If certain Bishops had gratuitously and even foolishly provoked civil wars, we can certainly lament their inexcusable stupidity while still understanding the absolute necessity of re-establishing Territorial Integrity. One should not provoke Rebellion, but at the same time one can also not excuse Rebellion. It is silly for Protestants and Anti-clerical Masons (who dominate the politics of almost every Nation we would suppose to be Catholic) to accuse the Catholics of having fiercely suppressed Rebellion when certainly no Protestant or Masonic Nation has ever permitted such liberties in their own jurisdictions. The American’s who killed millions in their own Civil War must be disingenuous when they accuse Catholics of killing in order to sustain their Union. And the modern Non- Catholic and Anti-Clerical European Nations have committed genocide with far less justification than Christendom ever demanded.
But Spiritual and Historical Respectability are only incidental factors in my Conversion – reasons why it would not be considered disgraceful to convert to Catholicism, but not yet providing any positive incentive for Converting. As I indicated before, I already suppose that there are other Higher Spiritual Religions – the World outside of Catholicism is not entirely devoid of Grace. How can I say such a thing, now, as a Catholic? Well, because there are Saints of God who have been manifest in all of the Higher Religions of the World. One can hardly expect that the Cosmic Christ would limit His Dispensation only to those people who would have the audacity to claim some Divine Benefits for having murdered the Messiah of God. We must remember some of those important though mostly tacit lessons of the Bible, one of which is that The People’s of the Three Kings of the East did not inflict violence upon The Christ but rather paid their Tribute to the King of Kings and asked only for Christ’s Glory. They did not reject Christ… but in point of fact they were the first and perhaps the only peoples to ever have actually bowed before Our Lord while He was still among us. Certainly that should be rewarded with Grace as equally as with those who offered Christ only suffering and then murder, not so much bowing before Christ or Worshipping Christ as attempting to trade His Body to God for that License of Free Sin which Christians call Salvation.
And the Fruits of this Approval from the Cosmic Christ appear in the miraculous lives of the Saints, both Catholic and Non-Catholic. The Proof of Divine Favor is in the Supernatural Fruits of the Saints. This is pivotal. This is very important. One needs to remember the Logic of the Prophet Elijah. Elijah did not propose to argue for a Belief System. Elijah did not emphasize the aesthetics of his doctrines – how the religion he proposed could appeal to the sensibilities of each individual’s self-interests. No. Elijah wagered that he could bring down fire from Heaven to validate his own Religious Views, while betting that those with opposing Religious Views could not – That Spirit would only answer to True Religion. The Validity of Religion would rest upon the Evidence of the Miraculous – the Supernatural Mandate from Heaven. We would know True Religion by the Divine Power invested in Its Saints – this is the Lesson of Elijah (And as Catholics we should understand that Elijah was the Prophet who would found the Order of Monks at Mount Carmel which would later, during the Crusades, be the foundation for the Catholic Carmelite Order, whose habit seems to be a favorite of Our Lady, who, when She appears in Religious Garb at all, is perhaps always dressed as a Carmelite, representing an Order that began with Elijah… an Order both Jewish and Catholic simultaneously. This is expressive of a Religious Unity which Catholicism’s apparent Gentile Fixation largely renounces, even while Our Blessed Virgin Mary wears the cloths of Judaism. And do we forget that the Magnificat is a Jewish Prayer? Catholicism may one day need to review its position that this first Schism in the Church was entirely necessary – the Schism which separated the Gentile Congregations from the Apostolic Church of Messianic Judaism. Following Paul into separation, faction and division seems to have been only a House dividing against itself). Catholicism has never had a total monopoly of Saints. But then it occurred to me, that the Catholics, over the last two thousand years, have perhaps had the greater number of First Magnitude Saints. Catholicism has had a dozen Great Saints where between all of the other Religions combined there may have been only about half as many (Protestantism, the Religion of Paul, having had none over the period of five hundred years). The Spiritual Communities of the World could hardly ignore Catholicism’s fine winning record. The Vine of Christ is identified by its fruits, no? Now, if one would desire to be a Saint oneself, does not one’s odds improve by joining the Team that has shown the most successes in that Endeavor?
Then there is the matter of Divine Revelation. My first acquaintance with any notions of a particular Divine Revelation going exclusively to Catholics (though Heaven does not seem to distinguish between the Roman, Orthodox, Coptic or Thomasian Rites) was not through any formal education or reading, but came by a chance encounter with a rather special Catholic Priest of my acquaintance. You see, back in the nineteen-eighties while I was still affiliated with one of the Oriental Religions, I became acquainted through a Hare Krishna girl, who was also a Catholic, with a Dominican Priest, Father Tom, who was then running a relief operation to feed the poor – mostly migrant farm workers. I found myself with time on my hands and so I asked Father Tom if he could use a volunteer. He became quite a spiritual mentor and gave me my first informal lessons regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary. I had already acquired some pictures of the Blessed Virgin which added to the population of the Pantheon which cluttered my Spiritual Altar and took up much of the space on many of my walls, and told Father Tom of the ones I recognized in his own collection. His eyes quite lit up when he found he had uncovered a Marian from such an unexpected source, and I was from then on inundated with all kinds of Marian information and intelligence, particularly regarding the instances of recent Revelation in the Apparitions of Our Lady. Of particular remembrance, he made a gift to me of a Supernatural Photo of the Blessed Virgin’s Apparition in Medjugorje Herzegovina. It showed a translucent Lady against a granite wall in which one could see both Our Lady and the granite stones immediately behind Her. Perhaps Father Tom prayed for my Conversion, but it would take years for that prayer, if there had been one, to come to fruition.
Then, coming back to the near present, several weeks after the incident with my daughter at the Mission Church, I saw a tabloid newspaper that had one of those ubiquitous stories, largely fictional, regarding Our Lady the Blessed Virgin. It intrigued me. It brought back my memories of Father Tom. I bought it and took it home and began to do a series of Web Searches in hopes of validating the story. There was just enough Truth in the tabloid story to provide me with some more reliable links. It seems Father Tom had not gone into quite enough detail 20 years before. There had been hundreds of Revelatory Appearances of the Blessed Virgin during our Christian Era. Some, such as in the instances of Guadalupe and Fatima, have objectively and certainly been proven to be of miraculous origins. And then there were the hundreds of other instances of Divine Apparitions which must be miraculous if the anecdotes regarding them can be believed, as they certainly should be, as they carry the weight of any number of credible witnesses whose testimony could well meet legal muster. We must remember that not all evidence is Scientific, yet atheists often insist that Evidence that would be entirely sufficient in a Court of Law should not count at all in the judgments of our own minds.
While other Religions may have had Saints, it seems that Catholicism is the only Higher Religion to enjoy a sustained Revelation from Heaven. Unfortunately there have always been factions in the Catholic Church who would oppose these Revelations – I would suggest they are the ‘weeds’ Christ spoke of, rising up to choke out the Wheat. The Bishops seem to have often acted as though they were jealous of Our Lady. For instance, in the early centuries the Bishops forbade any New Revelation being added to what they called “The Depository of Faith” – apparently, they had no appetite for digesting ever new communications from Heaven, and would save themselves from such responsibilities by deliberately cutting off all commerce with God. This slamming shut the Door of Revelation could easily be seen as a deliberate affront to the ongoing Revelations from the Blessed Virgin Mary. But, despite the obstructionist Bishops, the Revelations would continue, coming to the Religious Orders and the Holy Laity, while the Bishops, despite themselves, would be forced to recognize it, calling it ‘Private Revelation’. Yes, the Bishops may have been reluctant to show their approval, but it was a case of their either following their flock or their being left behind without a flock. This, in fact, accounts for all those differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, where Catholicism had opened itself to the influences of these Revelatory Apparitions of Our Lady and the teachings and experiences of the Saints. After all, had we been left with only the Depository of Faith, that is, only the Bible, would we today not be in much the same deplorable shape as Protestantism, which only allows itself the Bible, to be cut off from all current and continuous Revelation from Heaven. It is often argued that Absolute Truth need not be updated regularly, but we need to remember that the Bible was published containing 14 Letters from Paul, who most certainly could bear with quite a great deal of updating. Also, I might add that it seems as though it should be some kind of Divine Law, that those who deliberately make it their policy to reject Revelation should never receive Revelation. Protestants then have shut themselves off from God. But thank the Good Lord that Catholicism left open that ‘Private Revelation’ Loop Hole. Indeed, Catholic Openness to these almost continuous Marian and Saintly Revelations would be instrumental in establishing a High Christian Civilization, a Civilization that would peak in the 11th and 12th Centuries, where a Kingdom of a thousand Cathedrals would rise up, all referred to in short as an “Our Lady’s of ‘This’” or an “Our Lady’s of ‘That’”. Catholicism, in its highest moments and manifestations, was a Religion of Our Lady. Christ was appreciated and worshipped mostly because He came so well recommended by His Blessed Virgin Mother.
As the Apparitions of Our Lady had converted Europe, so they would convert the New World, primarily through the instrumentality of the Miraculous Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which remains a visibly verifiable Miracle to this day.
So… back to the Weekend of the Tabloid Newspaper – remembering back, I largely went sleepless while searching the Web and studying the History of Our Lady and Her Apparitions. Approaching Monday morning, I decided to convert. Still feeling some discomfort with walking onto Catholic soil without belonging or having been invited (When has any Non-Catholic ever been invited by anybody to Convert? If there is such a thing as a Catholic Missionary, he must be the member of the most secret of Religious Orders). It had not occurred to me to research the actual process of becoming a Catholic. If I had, it may have significantly altered what turned out to be a very positive experience. I went off to pursue my Conversion with only the vaguest ideas of what would be expected of me. I thought that appealing to the Church’s bureaucracy would only perhaps bog me down, and it would be better to start with the advice of a knowledgeable Lay Person. So, I went to a small Catholic Bookstore in my neighborhood. I’ve always found I could trust Business People in the Religious Markets for their ability to provide practical and to the point spiritual advice, where the official Clergy can often be profound but mystifying, and even discouraging where they think they are not doing their jobs unless they can enumerate every single possible negative and toss up every possible barrier they can conceive of (these are the same Clergy who find it so difficult to recruit new Clergy. Hmmmm, I wonder why). It turned out this Shop was owned by a Third Order Carmelite Lady. I walked in and wasted no time in asking, “I suppose one needs a Sponsor in order to become a Catholic?” It only took this Lady a few seconds to size me up with her gaze and then she replied “Yes, you will”, and she proceeded to give me a list of details -- places to go, people to see, and she told me that she would consent to be my Sponsor -- my ‘Godmother’. I did not know at the time that she was the most fearsome of all God Mothers in the American Southwest, and that all of the Clergy were quite terrified of her. I would be her 18th God Child to be sponsored into the Catholic Church, and I received quite the red carpet treatment owing to her ‘intercessions’.
But back to that day. I asked if she had a 24K gold Miraculous Medal to sell, but her shop was on the poor side of town and she didn’t carry the more expensive inventory items, and so she drew a map to the more upscale Catholic Store across town where I was able to purchase a medium size Miraculous Medal, which I still wear. I needed some token of Catholicism because my decision to Convert came right after Easter and so I would be in the ‘pipeline’ for a complete year before becoming officially a Catholic, that is, before being allowed to receive the Holy Sacrament (I’m sure they must have taught me why it is necessary to violate all the rules of Civilized Hospitality by refusing to Feed the Hungry, especially those who Hunger for Things of the Spirit, who Hunger for Christ; and why it became the Policy of our Modern ‘Peters’ NOT to feed His Sheep as soon as they might complain of their Hunger. But apparently this Sensible Teaching didn’t make enough of an impression for me to remember it).
Not much later I learned from my God Mother, a Third Order Carmelite we must remember, of the Sacramental Nature of the Brown Scapular (which sources from the Carmelite Order). It instantly seemed to me to be a most indispensable item, and so we both insisted, God Mother and God Child, to the Carmelite Parish Priest that the ‘rule books’ said nothing about the need for being a fully Baptized and Confirmed Catholic before one can be enrolled into the Order of those who wear the Brown Scapular, and so I received The Brown Scapular, which made my waiting for the Holy Sacrament that much more tolerable. Then a little later I received the Chord of Saint Philomena, and then my God Mother insisted that I take the Chord of Saint Joseph, and memorize his famous Prayer from the Fifth Century ( “Hail Saint Joseph whose Protection is so great, so strong so prompt…”). I was instructed on how to multiply up Holy Water. All the while I read or became familiar with most of the books in her little Shop. And among the Statues and Paintings, I learned my Catholic Saints. By the time the RCIC Classes began, I was fairly well settled in and prepared for them. There was rarely any assigned work besides reading, but I would try to hand in at least one ‘Paper’ a month, so that the deacons could report favorably back to my Godmother… I wanted her to be proud of her newest protégé.
So that is the Story of what lead up to my Conversion. I wanted to become a Catholic and carried through and became a Catholic. But am I entirely satisfied? Do I wish the Catholic Church were different, were better? Well, certainly. We all must keep in mind that Christ prophesized that His Church would be a mixture of Wheat and Weeds. What rational person would wish to have the same appetite for Weeds as for Wheat? And yet I see very little discernment among the Catholic Intelligentsia, if there even is such a thing, for differentiating between the Good and the Evil within the Church. I have never found an open Forum for Catholic Discussion… everything sensible seems to be at the same time ‘heretical’, making discussion impossible… nobody is allowed to think. Questions can be asked and the Same Answers are given in reply that have always lead in the past to all of the Divisions and Unrest which have marred our Catholic History, as though nobody had ever heard the Words of Christ which say that Bad Doctrine can be recognized by its Bad Results.
Well, what good does complaining do? After all, Christ DID say that the Weeds would be with the Wheat well until the End of Time, that is, until the Final Harvest. Well, soon enough this Day of this Final Harvest will come, when the useless, barren and even positively evil Doctrines that have crowded out the Good in Our Church will no longer be able to sustain a defense based on duress, suppression and forced silence. Mary will confront Her Bishops and suddenly it won’t seem so obvious that they should have chosen Paul over Christ. Perhaps, the drive for Revenues always made Paul’s Popular Wide Way attractive to the Bishops who were mercenary enough even from the time of Peter’s murdering Ananias and Sapphira for their money. But hadn’t Christ quite condemned the Wide Way as the Way to destruction, and did He not advocate the less appealing but the only effectual Way – the Narrow Way of the Teachings of Righteousness and Perfection. On the Day of the Harvest we must decide whether we belong to the Church of the Wide Way, or of the Narrow? The Catholic Church contains Both. The Catholic Church provides a Choice, a Test – a Great Fork in the Road. It is both the Church of the Paul’s Bishops and the Church of the Holy Religious Orders, the Righteous Laity, and of Mary the Blessed Virgin. It is both the Church of Christ Her Son, and the Church of Paul, whose credentials must be wondered at considering that he never spoke a single word commending the Blessed Virgin or indeed ever quoted a single statement of Christ.
Yes, I know that these matters of Doctrine may be confusing, but we should remember that we have not been left without guidance. While we still receive the Revelations and Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, there is hope that Her Patronage and Sponsorship will bring us through to completion and perfection, and that She, with Her Angels and Saints, will sustain the Wheat while holding back the encroachments of the Weeds.
So, in short, I converted to Catholicism because it is the World’s Last and Only Living Religion, experiencing an Active Communication with Heaven, through Saints, and Seers (once called Prophets and Oracles), and receiving Revelations from Divinity Itself through the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I have not converted to a mere Belief System, but to an Institution that embodies the Living Vine of Christ on Earth, nurtured and watered by the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of God Herself. To be a Catholic is to be under the Pall of Her Grace.
….Oh, allow me to add some subsequent history. I had noticed that after each Holiday Season, I and many others would come down with symptoms of respiratory illness, and I was able to infer that the smoke from the incense was making myself and others sick. I mentioned this to both the Parish Priests and the Arch Bishop of the Diocese and was frankly smiled at. Well, I suffered the indignity until the next set of Holidays whereupon they again brought out the Smoke. And then there was the election of Cardinal Ratzinger to Pope. The man had given every one of the Cardinals who voted for him their jobs. “I make you Cardinal, and you can make me Pope”. It simply was not honest and ethical behavior. So while I enjoyed the Sacraments for a number of years, I suppose that the Catholic Church of the Secular Clergy, the Bishops and the Pope must get along without me.
Of course, the entire story would be complicated even if the core motivations were simple, so please expect a depiction of all of the textures and terrain undulations of not a perfect situation but of a real one.
First, let me begin by telling of a precipitating moment, a catalytic prelude to my Conversion. I was visited by my adult daughter in the American Southwest and we decided to pass our time sightseeing. We went to quite a famous old Catholic Mission. I had seen it all before, but when asked by my daughter to go inside the Church with her, I felt some discomfort at the notion and sent her ahead by herself without me. I would have had no hesitation about walking in alone, but as my daughter was a Catholic and I was not, I felt it would be incongruous – the mixing of a tourist with a true believer would have presented a clash against my sense of good taste. And then there was another dynamic involved. I had once been a Protestant, and was still tinged with that strange complex which effects nearly all Protestants, which is a hate for Catholicism that is carefully and repeatedly indoctrinated from the earliest Sunday school lessons, paired with an unavoidable envy for the apparent genuine religiosity of the Catholic Experience – a pageantry and flow of religious emotions which Protestantism is at a complete loss to match, which is the very reason why the Leaders of Protestantism find it so necessary to carefully and repeatedly instruct upon the necessity for hating Catholicism. You can see it is a spiraling set of dynamics which feed upon themselves. Hate is the Protestant’s best defense against Envy. So where I could have gone into that Mission Church alone, I was afraid my envy would show to my quite perceptive daughter. But there was no hate, and this I will have to explain in the bulk of this presentation.
One does not ever instantly know why one feels certain things, until one has had time to think about one’s feelings. We conduct much of our behaviors by the dictates of our feelings, and would not know why we act the way we do until we find time to reflect upon our conduct with our intellect. Not accompanying my daughter into that Mission Church puzzled me and I found myself going over that decision like a philosopher trying to solve the Riddle of the Sphinx. It finally occurred to me that if I was envious, than there was nothing to prevent myself from becoming Catholic. My parents were dead, and probably would not have cared if they had still been alive. Of course, if my early protestant conditioning, to hate Catholicism inveterately in my heart and soul, had still been entirely intact, it would have never occurred to me to even consider a Conversion. So, what made Catholicism even a little bit sympathetic to me?
First, for years I had studied and participated in some of the movements of the World’s Higher Moral Religions – Sufism (which better represents old Zoroastrianism more than it does modern Islam, no matter what the Sufis themselves say about it, as they are all quite under duress to pretend to be good Muslims), Spiritual Hinduism and Yoga, and Mahayana Buddhism, together with the other Traditions that had borrowed all of their Spiritual Capital from these sources, along as from elements of Spiritual Catholicism. I had been a Monk at an Aurobindo Ashram, a high initiate in Kundalini Yoga, and had followed a number of Gurus (along with a stint in the Peace Corps, as I believe actual service to Humanity must go hand in hand with one’s Spiritual Quest). And what did I notice in my active acquaintance and experience with the adherents and followers of these Higher Religions? It was that there was in every case some interaction and sympathetic communications between these Spiritual Groups and those of various Catholic Religious Orders. Indeed, Monks, Catholic and Non-Catholic alike, would visit each other’s Monasteries, Shrines and other establishments and partake somewhat in each other’s spiritual practices hoping to gain some insight, in the spirit of Spiritual Fellowship. It was no small matter to me that Spiritual Catholicism was not held in disgrace by the other Higher Religions of the World, as the same cannot be said of Protestantism (which is seen not so much as a Religion but as an excuse the West has contrived to not have any Religion at all – Protestant Salvation is represented as coming from a free Grace that requires neither spiritual practice nor even morality, and Christians are encouraged to refer to themselves as ‘sinners’, while Good Works are shunned. Where is Religion in any of that? Civilization can survive only on a basis of a wide acceptance of moral and spiritual assumptions and a lot of very hard good work, all of which Paulist Christianity dismisses as non-essential, and even as detrimental to their Salvation by based upon Faith alone). One would not willingly associate oneself with a Religion that would bring a moral or spiritual scandal to oneself. One needs to be able to correctly discern both Christ and the Devil. Something can call itself a Religion, but if it propagates the Devil and puts forward Satanic interests and Doctrines, I should hardly suppose we should concede to its Religious pretensions. Charity and Christian Love does not demand we hand our Sheep over to the Wolves, no matter how well-tailored be their Sheep’s Clothing.
Then there was the matter of History. I’ve always studied and read History – in College I majored in it, before going over to Philosophy. I’ve always considered that Catholic Civilization did rather well for itself, though many would argue the point, but when all things were considered in the balance, Catholic Civilization grew and even thrived, and lived up to not only some Spiritual Ideals but even some material ones as well. Indeed, from the Papacy of Gregory the Great to the defeat and the collapse of Catholic Christendom in the Wars of the Protestant Rebellion, was it not almost exactly the “Thousand Year Reign of Christ on Earth” promised by the New Testament Prophesies. Oh, and perhaps I should point out that the “1000 Year Reign of Christ” could not have begun until a Pope arose who would challenge Paul’s strangle-hold on Christian Doctrines, and particularly that doctrine requiring the submission of The Church to secular political authority found in the Epistle to the Romans. Christian Civilization would have been impossible had Pope Gregory the Great, and others in his footsteps, not established the Catholic Church as a central political power, a final arbiter of disputes and a court of last resort, which alone could make peace and commerce possible over what would have been a cluster of perpetually warring cities and states.
Back a few years ago, while still very much a Non-Catholic, I would often go Online and discuss my political and religious views, and would occasionally be surprised to find myself, a disinterested bystander, so to speak, defending the role of Catholicism in History. However spotted the History of Secular Catholicism, the facts point out that as a Civilization, Catholic Christendom was the most successful Civilization in the world this last two thousands years – the only Civilization which had been able to stand against the invasions of first the Huns, in the 6th and 7th Centuries, and then the Mongols in the 12th to 14th. The much maligned Crusades were actually a political and military success in preserving Christendom, that is, Catholic Civilization (for which no one today is grateful, no, not even the officials of the Catholic Church as even the Popes themselves nowadays issue hand-wringing apologies for having deployed armies that were solely responsible for having saved Christendom when everywhere else less hardy civilizations were swept into the basest and cruelest barbarism, not because they morally renounced an active defense or because they did not make what must have been the most valiant efforts to defend themselves, but because the imperfections of their Institutions made an effective defense impossible). Such successes, in Catholic Christendom, were only possible as the Church was able to exercise an effective Secular Authority over a body of nationalities that behaved effectively like the component states of a great Catholic Empire. The policies that could sustain this Jurisdiction, the saving Grace of our Civilization, are to be commended… not apologized for. This is not to say that the Catholic Church did not often have to resolve Social and Religious Conflicts of its own making. If certain Bishops had gratuitously and even foolishly provoked civil wars, we can certainly lament their inexcusable stupidity while still understanding the absolute necessity of re-establishing Territorial Integrity. One should not provoke Rebellion, but at the same time one can also not excuse Rebellion. It is silly for Protestants and Anti-clerical Masons (who dominate the politics of almost every Nation we would suppose to be Catholic) to accuse the Catholics of having fiercely suppressed Rebellion when certainly no Protestant or Masonic Nation has ever permitted such liberties in their own jurisdictions. The American’s who killed millions in their own Civil War must be disingenuous when they accuse Catholics of killing in order to sustain their Union. And the modern Non- Catholic and Anti-Clerical European Nations have committed genocide with far less justification than Christendom ever demanded.
But Spiritual and Historical Respectability are only incidental factors in my Conversion – reasons why it would not be considered disgraceful to convert to Catholicism, but not yet providing any positive incentive for Converting. As I indicated before, I already suppose that there are other Higher Spiritual Religions – the World outside of Catholicism is not entirely devoid of Grace. How can I say such a thing, now, as a Catholic? Well, because there are Saints of God who have been manifest in all of the Higher Religions of the World. One can hardly expect that the Cosmic Christ would limit His Dispensation only to those people who would have the audacity to claim some Divine Benefits for having murdered the Messiah of God. We must remember some of those important though mostly tacit lessons of the Bible, one of which is that The People’s of the Three Kings of the East did not inflict violence upon The Christ but rather paid their Tribute to the King of Kings and asked only for Christ’s Glory. They did not reject Christ… but in point of fact they were the first and perhaps the only peoples to ever have actually bowed before Our Lord while He was still among us. Certainly that should be rewarded with Grace as equally as with those who offered Christ only suffering and then murder, not so much bowing before Christ or Worshipping Christ as attempting to trade His Body to God for that License of Free Sin which Christians call Salvation.
And the Fruits of this Approval from the Cosmic Christ appear in the miraculous lives of the Saints, both Catholic and Non-Catholic. The Proof of Divine Favor is in the Supernatural Fruits of the Saints. This is pivotal. This is very important. One needs to remember the Logic of the Prophet Elijah. Elijah did not propose to argue for a Belief System. Elijah did not emphasize the aesthetics of his doctrines – how the religion he proposed could appeal to the sensibilities of each individual’s self-interests. No. Elijah wagered that he could bring down fire from Heaven to validate his own Religious Views, while betting that those with opposing Religious Views could not – That Spirit would only answer to True Religion. The Validity of Religion would rest upon the Evidence of the Miraculous – the Supernatural Mandate from Heaven. We would know True Religion by the Divine Power invested in Its Saints – this is the Lesson of Elijah (And as Catholics we should understand that Elijah was the Prophet who would found the Order of Monks at Mount Carmel which would later, during the Crusades, be the foundation for the Catholic Carmelite Order, whose habit seems to be a favorite of Our Lady, who, when She appears in Religious Garb at all, is perhaps always dressed as a Carmelite, representing an Order that began with Elijah… an Order both Jewish and Catholic simultaneously. This is expressive of a Religious Unity which Catholicism’s apparent Gentile Fixation largely renounces, even while Our Blessed Virgin Mary wears the cloths of Judaism. And do we forget that the Magnificat is a Jewish Prayer? Catholicism may one day need to review its position that this first Schism in the Church was entirely necessary – the Schism which separated the Gentile Congregations from the Apostolic Church of Messianic Judaism. Following Paul into separation, faction and division seems to have been only a House dividing against itself). Catholicism has never had a total monopoly of Saints. But then it occurred to me, that the Catholics, over the last two thousand years, have perhaps had the greater number of First Magnitude Saints. Catholicism has had a dozen Great Saints where between all of the other Religions combined there may have been only about half as many (Protestantism, the Religion of Paul, having had none over the period of five hundred years). The Spiritual Communities of the World could hardly ignore Catholicism’s fine winning record. The Vine of Christ is identified by its fruits, no? Now, if one would desire to be a Saint oneself, does not one’s odds improve by joining the Team that has shown the most successes in that Endeavor?
Then there is the matter of Divine Revelation. My first acquaintance with any notions of a particular Divine Revelation going exclusively to Catholics (though Heaven does not seem to distinguish between the Roman, Orthodox, Coptic or Thomasian Rites) was not through any formal education or reading, but came by a chance encounter with a rather special Catholic Priest of my acquaintance. You see, back in the nineteen-eighties while I was still affiliated with one of the Oriental Religions, I became acquainted through a Hare Krishna girl, who was also a Catholic, with a Dominican Priest, Father Tom, who was then running a relief operation to feed the poor – mostly migrant farm workers. I found myself with time on my hands and so I asked Father Tom if he could use a volunteer. He became quite a spiritual mentor and gave me my first informal lessons regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary. I had already acquired some pictures of the Blessed Virgin which added to the population of the Pantheon which cluttered my Spiritual Altar and took up much of the space on many of my walls, and told Father Tom of the ones I recognized in his own collection. His eyes quite lit up when he found he had uncovered a Marian from such an unexpected source, and I was from then on inundated with all kinds of Marian information and intelligence, particularly regarding the instances of recent Revelation in the Apparitions of Our Lady. Of particular remembrance, he made a gift to me of a Supernatural Photo of the Blessed Virgin’s Apparition in Medjugorje Herzegovina. It showed a translucent Lady against a granite wall in which one could see both Our Lady and the granite stones immediately behind Her. Perhaps Father Tom prayed for my Conversion, but it would take years for that prayer, if there had been one, to come to fruition.
Then, coming back to the near present, several weeks after the incident with my daughter at the Mission Church, I saw a tabloid newspaper that had one of those ubiquitous stories, largely fictional, regarding Our Lady the Blessed Virgin. It intrigued me. It brought back my memories of Father Tom. I bought it and took it home and began to do a series of Web Searches in hopes of validating the story. There was just enough Truth in the tabloid story to provide me with some more reliable links. It seems Father Tom had not gone into quite enough detail 20 years before. There had been hundreds of Revelatory Appearances of the Blessed Virgin during our Christian Era. Some, such as in the instances of Guadalupe and Fatima, have objectively and certainly been proven to be of miraculous origins. And then there were the hundreds of other instances of Divine Apparitions which must be miraculous if the anecdotes regarding them can be believed, as they certainly should be, as they carry the weight of any number of credible witnesses whose testimony could well meet legal muster. We must remember that not all evidence is Scientific, yet atheists often insist that Evidence that would be entirely sufficient in a Court of Law should not count at all in the judgments of our own minds.
While other Religions may have had Saints, it seems that Catholicism is the only Higher Religion to enjoy a sustained Revelation from Heaven. Unfortunately there have always been factions in the Catholic Church who would oppose these Revelations – I would suggest they are the ‘weeds’ Christ spoke of, rising up to choke out the Wheat. The Bishops seem to have often acted as though they were jealous of Our Lady. For instance, in the early centuries the Bishops forbade any New Revelation being added to what they called “The Depository of Faith” – apparently, they had no appetite for digesting ever new communications from Heaven, and would save themselves from such responsibilities by deliberately cutting off all commerce with God. This slamming shut the Door of Revelation could easily be seen as a deliberate affront to the ongoing Revelations from the Blessed Virgin Mary. But, despite the obstructionist Bishops, the Revelations would continue, coming to the Religious Orders and the Holy Laity, while the Bishops, despite themselves, would be forced to recognize it, calling it ‘Private Revelation’. Yes, the Bishops may have been reluctant to show their approval, but it was a case of their either following their flock or their being left behind without a flock. This, in fact, accounts for all those differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, where Catholicism had opened itself to the influences of these Revelatory Apparitions of Our Lady and the teachings and experiences of the Saints. After all, had we been left with only the Depository of Faith, that is, only the Bible, would we today not be in much the same deplorable shape as Protestantism, which only allows itself the Bible, to be cut off from all current and continuous Revelation from Heaven. It is often argued that Absolute Truth need not be updated regularly, but we need to remember that the Bible was published containing 14 Letters from Paul, who most certainly could bear with quite a great deal of updating. Also, I might add that it seems as though it should be some kind of Divine Law, that those who deliberately make it their policy to reject Revelation should never receive Revelation. Protestants then have shut themselves off from God. But thank the Good Lord that Catholicism left open that ‘Private Revelation’ Loop Hole. Indeed, Catholic Openness to these almost continuous Marian and Saintly Revelations would be instrumental in establishing a High Christian Civilization, a Civilization that would peak in the 11th and 12th Centuries, where a Kingdom of a thousand Cathedrals would rise up, all referred to in short as an “Our Lady’s of ‘This’” or an “Our Lady’s of ‘That’”. Catholicism, in its highest moments and manifestations, was a Religion of Our Lady. Christ was appreciated and worshipped mostly because He came so well recommended by His Blessed Virgin Mother.
As the Apparitions of Our Lady had converted Europe, so they would convert the New World, primarily through the instrumentality of the Miraculous Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which remains a visibly verifiable Miracle to this day.
So… back to the Weekend of the Tabloid Newspaper – remembering back, I largely went sleepless while searching the Web and studying the History of Our Lady and Her Apparitions. Approaching Monday morning, I decided to convert. Still feeling some discomfort with walking onto Catholic soil without belonging or having been invited (When has any Non-Catholic ever been invited by anybody to Convert? If there is such a thing as a Catholic Missionary, he must be the member of the most secret of Religious Orders). It had not occurred to me to research the actual process of becoming a Catholic. If I had, it may have significantly altered what turned out to be a very positive experience. I went off to pursue my Conversion with only the vaguest ideas of what would be expected of me. I thought that appealing to the Church’s bureaucracy would only perhaps bog me down, and it would be better to start with the advice of a knowledgeable Lay Person. So, I went to a small Catholic Bookstore in my neighborhood. I’ve always found I could trust Business People in the Religious Markets for their ability to provide practical and to the point spiritual advice, where the official Clergy can often be profound but mystifying, and even discouraging where they think they are not doing their jobs unless they can enumerate every single possible negative and toss up every possible barrier they can conceive of (these are the same Clergy who find it so difficult to recruit new Clergy. Hmmmm, I wonder why). It turned out this Shop was owned by a Third Order Carmelite Lady. I walked in and wasted no time in asking, “I suppose one needs a Sponsor in order to become a Catholic?” It only took this Lady a few seconds to size me up with her gaze and then she replied “Yes, you will”, and she proceeded to give me a list of details -- places to go, people to see, and she told me that she would consent to be my Sponsor -- my ‘Godmother’. I did not know at the time that she was the most fearsome of all God Mothers in the American Southwest, and that all of the Clergy were quite terrified of her. I would be her 18th God Child to be sponsored into the Catholic Church, and I received quite the red carpet treatment owing to her ‘intercessions’.
But back to that day. I asked if she had a 24K gold Miraculous Medal to sell, but her shop was on the poor side of town and she didn’t carry the more expensive inventory items, and so she drew a map to the more upscale Catholic Store across town where I was able to purchase a medium size Miraculous Medal, which I still wear. I needed some token of Catholicism because my decision to Convert came right after Easter and so I would be in the ‘pipeline’ for a complete year before becoming officially a Catholic, that is, before being allowed to receive the Holy Sacrament (I’m sure they must have taught me why it is necessary to violate all the rules of Civilized Hospitality by refusing to Feed the Hungry, especially those who Hunger for Things of the Spirit, who Hunger for Christ; and why it became the Policy of our Modern ‘Peters’ NOT to feed His Sheep as soon as they might complain of their Hunger. But apparently this Sensible Teaching didn’t make enough of an impression for me to remember it).
Not much later I learned from my God Mother, a Third Order Carmelite we must remember, of the Sacramental Nature of the Brown Scapular (which sources from the Carmelite Order). It instantly seemed to me to be a most indispensable item, and so we both insisted, God Mother and God Child, to the Carmelite Parish Priest that the ‘rule books’ said nothing about the need for being a fully Baptized and Confirmed Catholic before one can be enrolled into the Order of those who wear the Brown Scapular, and so I received The Brown Scapular, which made my waiting for the Holy Sacrament that much more tolerable. Then a little later I received the Chord of Saint Philomena, and then my God Mother insisted that I take the Chord of Saint Joseph, and memorize his famous Prayer from the Fifth Century ( “Hail Saint Joseph whose Protection is so great, so strong so prompt…”). I was instructed on how to multiply up Holy Water. All the while I read or became familiar with most of the books in her little Shop. And among the Statues and Paintings, I learned my Catholic Saints. By the time the RCIC Classes began, I was fairly well settled in and prepared for them. There was rarely any assigned work besides reading, but I would try to hand in at least one ‘Paper’ a month, so that the deacons could report favorably back to my Godmother… I wanted her to be proud of her newest protégé.
So that is the Story of what lead up to my Conversion. I wanted to become a Catholic and carried through and became a Catholic. But am I entirely satisfied? Do I wish the Catholic Church were different, were better? Well, certainly. We all must keep in mind that Christ prophesized that His Church would be a mixture of Wheat and Weeds. What rational person would wish to have the same appetite for Weeds as for Wheat? And yet I see very little discernment among the Catholic Intelligentsia, if there even is such a thing, for differentiating between the Good and the Evil within the Church. I have never found an open Forum for Catholic Discussion… everything sensible seems to be at the same time ‘heretical’, making discussion impossible… nobody is allowed to think. Questions can be asked and the Same Answers are given in reply that have always lead in the past to all of the Divisions and Unrest which have marred our Catholic History, as though nobody had ever heard the Words of Christ which say that Bad Doctrine can be recognized by its Bad Results.
Well, what good does complaining do? After all, Christ DID say that the Weeds would be with the Wheat well until the End of Time, that is, until the Final Harvest. Well, soon enough this Day of this Final Harvest will come, when the useless, barren and even positively evil Doctrines that have crowded out the Good in Our Church will no longer be able to sustain a defense based on duress, suppression and forced silence. Mary will confront Her Bishops and suddenly it won’t seem so obvious that they should have chosen Paul over Christ. Perhaps, the drive for Revenues always made Paul’s Popular Wide Way attractive to the Bishops who were mercenary enough even from the time of Peter’s murdering Ananias and Sapphira for their money. But hadn’t Christ quite condemned the Wide Way as the Way to destruction, and did He not advocate the less appealing but the only effectual Way – the Narrow Way of the Teachings of Righteousness and Perfection. On the Day of the Harvest we must decide whether we belong to the Church of the Wide Way, or of the Narrow? The Catholic Church contains Both. The Catholic Church provides a Choice, a Test – a Great Fork in the Road. It is both the Church of the Paul’s Bishops and the Church of the Holy Religious Orders, the Righteous Laity, and of Mary the Blessed Virgin. It is both the Church of Christ Her Son, and the Church of Paul, whose credentials must be wondered at considering that he never spoke a single word commending the Blessed Virgin or indeed ever quoted a single statement of Christ.
Yes, I know that these matters of Doctrine may be confusing, but we should remember that we have not been left without guidance. While we still receive the Revelations and Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, there is hope that Her Patronage and Sponsorship will bring us through to completion and perfection, and that She, with Her Angels and Saints, will sustain the Wheat while holding back the encroachments of the Weeds.
So, in short, I converted to Catholicism because it is the World’s Last and Only Living Religion, experiencing an Active Communication with Heaven, through Saints, and Seers (once called Prophets and Oracles), and receiving Revelations from Divinity Itself through the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I have not converted to a mere Belief System, but to an Institution that embodies the Living Vine of Christ on Earth, nurtured and watered by the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of God Herself. To be a Catholic is to be under the Pall of Her Grace.
….Oh, allow me to add some subsequent history. I had noticed that after each Holiday Season, I and many others would come down with symptoms of respiratory illness, and I was able to infer that the smoke from the incense was making myself and others sick. I mentioned this to both the Parish Priests and the Arch Bishop of the Diocese and was frankly smiled at. Well, I suffered the indignity until the next set of Holidays whereupon they again brought out the Smoke. And then there was the election of Cardinal Ratzinger to Pope. The man had given every one of the Cardinals who voted for him their jobs. “I make you Cardinal, and you can make me Pope”. It simply was not honest and ethical behavior. So while I enjoyed the Sacraments for a number of years, I suppose that the Catholic Church of the Secular Clergy, the Bishops and the Pope must get along without me.
Friday, June 15, 2007
A Mormon President Means Death Camps for the Rest of Us
There is presently a Mormon candidate for the Presidency of the United States. Yes, it is almost certain that a Republican cannot win, and especially that a Republican cannot win who raises the suspicions of the Southern Baptist Convention that had elected the previous Republican Presidents. Mormons are not Southern Baptists, and visa versa.
Yet, still, there is now a leading candidate who is in fact is a Mormon. What if that Mormon did win?
Well, two things worry me. The first is that Mormons have set up elaborate study committees to ascertain the specific genealogy of everybody in the World. Everybody, not just Mormons. I suspect that this may be a prelude to some form of ‘ethnic cleansing’. Secondly, every Mormon family is being instructed to hoard at least 18 months of food and supplies. Now, what does this mean? Well, obviously, it means that the Mormons are attempting to arrange a total shut down of the American Economy, which they must be anticipating to last at most 18 months), long enough to starve out the ‘gentiles’ (when its been estimated that 80% of the Urban Populations would starve out in just 6 months). Yes, like the Jews, the Mormons have adopted the same dismissive and patronizing epithet with which they can designate everyone outside their group as effectively non-human – the word ‘gentile’ is their version of the ‘n’ word. Then, even among the survivors, Mormons or not, the genealogical records can be examined to determine a final culling. I suspect, that the Mormons, so used to an Economy of exploitation, even if left to a World of their own, would soon need to exploit other Mormons, and so out would come the Genealogical Records to justify a distinct and solid social hierarchy, and so even if you are now a Mormon, if your Great Aunt Sally was known to take a drink or flirt with a sailor, then you will become the slave to all those whose families were so dull that they were never known for anything. This is perhaps some odd way that the ‘meek shall inherit the earth’.
You may ask how the Mormons could bring about a total economic collapse. Well, it would be easy, if they had a President in place. All that would need be done is to alienate the OPEC Countries into opening their sales to other World Currencies besides the dollar (as it is now, the U.S. Dollar is accepted as the only valid petro-currency, and this is for no other reason than that some tacit gentlemen’s agreement was made years ago in some smoky room somewhere. There is no supporting Treaty and the OPEC Countries could easily enough renege anytime they would like to). Also, the Asian Countries that now carry huge dollar reserves; if they also were alienated, they could dump their dollars for Euros or even set up a Pan-Asian Monetary Unit, as like what Europe did with their Euro. If OPEC would suddenly take any World Currency for oil, and if Dollar Reserves were dumped to make place for an Asian ‘A-Yen’, then overnight the Dollar would become almost entirely worthless on the World Market. What’s more, the dollar would become worthless in America. You see, Capitalists, being capitalists, would sell all moveable American assets for export abroad, for currencies that would have some real value. The American Businessman would simply abandon America. “Nothing personal. Its just business”.
And if the President were Mormon and certain high cabinet officials were Mormon, than any Emergency Measures that could mitigate the misery would simply be side-stepped and the disaster would be left to unfold naturally. As with the Katrina Hurricane and President George Bush and his FEMA Director, leaving Democratic New Orleans to rot because they had not voted Republican. Politics can be a deadly weapon. You know, already there are a great many Mormons infiltrated into the American Criminal Justice Departments. They are already there, just waiting for their opportunities. The Death Camp Guards are just waiting for their call, but they are already on the payroll.
America would be allowed to decline into ruin, and it would be made to look like some huge colossal accident (just as the Depression is recorded in History as being some huge accident, when really the English Government intentionally pulled gold off the international markets in order to destroy America because it regarded America’s rising influence in the World as a threat to its own continued ascendancy – America was seen as a threat and England pulled out the gold supply to wreck the American Economy. It worked. Well, because there are so many Anglophiles in high American positions, while I also suppose that the powerful American Free Masons and the powerful English Free Masons, who make it a point to control their Governments, are chapters of the same Secret Society Club, and so this devastating English attack on America has never been spoken of aloud although everybody who knows anything knows it all very well. It was surprising, then, that America then fought a war for Britain, when actually, if justice should have been served, America’s war should have been first against the British. You know, they used to say that if we did not beat the Germans then we would all be speaking German. Well, we are all now speaking English and we don’t find that a problem?).
Anyway, Americas Mormon-induced apocalyptic catastrophe would be made to appear like just another accident of History and then that the lopsidedly high Mormon survival rate would be seen as because Mormons had just coincidentally been better prepared. They would tell the story of the Wise Ant who worked and saved as contrasted with the prodigal grasshopper who played away during the good days and gathered nothing against the winter, and no one would examine for the possibility that the Wise Ants were the ones who deliberately engineered a famine that would kill their friends the grasshoppers so that the Ants could conquer the World.
But yes, the Mormons are deliberately planning for a War by Siege. They have hoarded their stuff and they are just biding their time until they can shut off the lifeline that keeps the rest of us of the World alive… preventing the Mormons from realizing their God-granted Destiny, as the Mormons see it.
Now, some of you may think that I am dreaming up all of this, that Mormons are after all very Religious People. Really? Actually not. You see, the morality that they respect is very selective, very narrow. They think it enough to get haircuts, to dress prudishly and to wait for marriage before they take any number of sex partners (oh, but yes, they did go in and edit their Book of Mormon so it no longer says what it used to say about polygamy. That, also, is another subject, that is, how the Mormons have often simply gone in and changed the actual text of their Holy Scriptures, for whatever political convenience they recognize from moment to moment. It is as though they are fully aware, at the highest levels, that God never really had anything to do with it at all, and that their Book of Mormon was always, from the first, just an artificial tool of opportunity). Simply examine Mormon Behavior as regards to non-Mormons and then you can determine just exactly what their Morality is, or isn’t. For instance, Mormon Corporations and Mormon owned Businesses are famously exploitative and have terrible relationships with labor and unions. Mormons are best described as predatory. Think about it, that while there are liberal Jews, who has ever heard of a liberal Mormon? So while our stereotypes of Jewish greed must be considered as relative to this obvious trend toward Morality in popular Jewish Political Behavior; our view of Mormon predatory behavior must be absolute. We must be open to Jews because there are obviously very good and very enlightened Jews. But this can’t be said of Mormons who are monolithically set to enslave all non-Mormons. Mormons supported Slavery in the 19th Century and then, since, they have endorsed wage slavery and the exploitation of ‘gentiles’.
Also, it is worrisome that the Mormons see themselves as the New Jews. Why? Well, because the old Jews, their models, are seen as exemplars because they reported that God explicitly told them to invade Civilized Nations and commit total genocide so that they could confiscate all lands and property free and clear.
Well, if that is God, then I would not want to hear about the Devil.
Yet, still, there is now a leading candidate who is in fact is a Mormon. What if that Mormon did win?
Well, two things worry me. The first is that Mormons have set up elaborate study committees to ascertain the specific genealogy of everybody in the World. Everybody, not just Mormons. I suspect that this may be a prelude to some form of ‘ethnic cleansing’. Secondly, every Mormon family is being instructed to hoard at least 18 months of food and supplies. Now, what does this mean? Well, obviously, it means that the Mormons are attempting to arrange a total shut down of the American Economy, which they must be anticipating to last at most 18 months), long enough to starve out the ‘gentiles’ (when its been estimated that 80% of the Urban Populations would starve out in just 6 months). Yes, like the Jews, the Mormons have adopted the same dismissive and patronizing epithet with which they can designate everyone outside their group as effectively non-human – the word ‘gentile’ is their version of the ‘n’ word. Then, even among the survivors, Mormons or not, the genealogical records can be examined to determine a final culling. I suspect, that the Mormons, so used to an Economy of exploitation, even if left to a World of their own, would soon need to exploit other Mormons, and so out would come the Genealogical Records to justify a distinct and solid social hierarchy, and so even if you are now a Mormon, if your Great Aunt Sally was known to take a drink or flirt with a sailor, then you will become the slave to all those whose families were so dull that they were never known for anything. This is perhaps some odd way that the ‘meek shall inherit the earth’.
You may ask how the Mormons could bring about a total economic collapse. Well, it would be easy, if they had a President in place. All that would need be done is to alienate the OPEC Countries into opening their sales to other World Currencies besides the dollar (as it is now, the U.S. Dollar is accepted as the only valid petro-currency, and this is for no other reason than that some tacit gentlemen’s agreement was made years ago in some smoky room somewhere. There is no supporting Treaty and the OPEC Countries could easily enough renege anytime they would like to). Also, the Asian Countries that now carry huge dollar reserves; if they also were alienated, they could dump their dollars for Euros or even set up a Pan-Asian Monetary Unit, as like what Europe did with their Euro. If OPEC would suddenly take any World Currency for oil, and if Dollar Reserves were dumped to make place for an Asian ‘A-Yen’, then overnight the Dollar would become almost entirely worthless on the World Market. What’s more, the dollar would become worthless in America. You see, Capitalists, being capitalists, would sell all moveable American assets for export abroad, for currencies that would have some real value. The American Businessman would simply abandon America. “Nothing personal. Its just business”.
And if the President were Mormon and certain high cabinet officials were Mormon, than any Emergency Measures that could mitigate the misery would simply be side-stepped and the disaster would be left to unfold naturally. As with the Katrina Hurricane and President George Bush and his FEMA Director, leaving Democratic New Orleans to rot because they had not voted Republican. Politics can be a deadly weapon. You know, already there are a great many Mormons infiltrated into the American Criminal Justice Departments. They are already there, just waiting for their opportunities. The Death Camp Guards are just waiting for their call, but they are already on the payroll.
America would be allowed to decline into ruin, and it would be made to look like some huge colossal accident (just as the Depression is recorded in History as being some huge accident, when really the English Government intentionally pulled gold off the international markets in order to destroy America because it regarded America’s rising influence in the World as a threat to its own continued ascendancy – America was seen as a threat and England pulled out the gold supply to wreck the American Economy. It worked. Well, because there are so many Anglophiles in high American positions, while I also suppose that the powerful American Free Masons and the powerful English Free Masons, who make it a point to control their Governments, are chapters of the same Secret Society Club, and so this devastating English attack on America has never been spoken of aloud although everybody who knows anything knows it all very well. It was surprising, then, that America then fought a war for Britain, when actually, if justice should have been served, America’s war should have been first against the British. You know, they used to say that if we did not beat the Germans then we would all be speaking German. Well, we are all now speaking English and we don’t find that a problem?).
Anyway, Americas Mormon-induced apocalyptic catastrophe would be made to appear like just another accident of History and then that the lopsidedly high Mormon survival rate would be seen as because Mormons had just coincidentally been better prepared. They would tell the story of the Wise Ant who worked and saved as contrasted with the prodigal grasshopper who played away during the good days and gathered nothing against the winter, and no one would examine for the possibility that the Wise Ants were the ones who deliberately engineered a famine that would kill their friends the grasshoppers so that the Ants could conquer the World.
But yes, the Mormons are deliberately planning for a War by Siege. They have hoarded their stuff and they are just biding their time until they can shut off the lifeline that keeps the rest of us of the World alive… preventing the Mormons from realizing their God-granted Destiny, as the Mormons see it.
Now, some of you may think that I am dreaming up all of this, that Mormons are after all very Religious People. Really? Actually not. You see, the morality that they respect is very selective, very narrow. They think it enough to get haircuts, to dress prudishly and to wait for marriage before they take any number of sex partners (oh, but yes, they did go in and edit their Book of Mormon so it no longer says what it used to say about polygamy. That, also, is another subject, that is, how the Mormons have often simply gone in and changed the actual text of their Holy Scriptures, for whatever political convenience they recognize from moment to moment. It is as though they are fully aware, at the highest levels, that God never really had anything to do with it at all, and that their Book of Mormon was always, from the first, just an artificial tool of opportunity). Simply examine Mormon Behavior as regards to non-Mormons and then you can determine just exactly what their Morality is, or isn’t. For instance, Mormon Corporations and Mormon owned Businesses are famously exploitative and have terrible relationships with labor and unions. Mormons are best described as predatory. Think about it, that while there are liberal Jews, who has ever heard of a liberal Mormon? So while our stereotypes of Jewish greed must be considered as relative to this obvious trend toward Morality in popular Jewish Political Behavior; our view of Mormon predatory behavior must be absolute. We must be open to Jews because there are obviously very good and very enlightened Jews. But this can’t be said of Mormons who are monolithically set to enslave all non-Mormons. Mormons supported Slavery in the 19th Century and then, since, they have endorsed wage slavery and the exploitation of ‘gentiles’.
Also, it is worrisome that the Mormons see themselves as the New Jews. Why? Well, because the old Jews, their models, are seen as exemplars because they reported that God explicitly told them to invade Civilized Nations and commit total genocide so that they could confiscate all lands and property free and clear.
Well, if that is God, then I would not want to hear about the Devil.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
UFO People and a Model of a Viable Civilization
UFO People and a Model of a Viable Civilization
The Rise of Civilization
I was impressed when reading Toynbee, that History shows us so far that Civilizations decline and fall, about the same way each time. No Civilization has ever sustained itself, and even our own Civilization is well marked by the milestones of decline. A new Dark Ages awaits. It is all quite inevitable at this point.
But then Toynbee points out that in geological terms our efforts toward Civilization are all still relatively recent, going back less than 10,000 years. Civilization for us as Human Being, Homo Sapiens, has only just begun.
So this begs the question of older Societies. Well, of course the Earth does not know of any older societies, unless of course we count the UFO People. These advanced Technological Societies could very well be extremely old in terms of when they first started their practices toward becoming Civilized. Instead of our 10,000 years, they may have been Civilized for some 10,000,000 or even 100,000,000 years. Since the Big Bang was over 4 Billion years ago, that gives a great deal of leeway regarding how much sooner some intelligent species may have evolved ahead of us.
Now, all of this is not just idle speculation. Intelligence Agents get drunk in bars and they come out with some interesting stories. This is what I have picked up by listening over the years. A number of years ago the UFO people crashed one of their ships in Roswell New Mexico, a small town in one of the dry almost uninhabited sections of the United States. There were survivors – living but injured UFO People. They were taken to the Navy Department Building in Washington D.C. The UFO People contacted the Washington Authorities and negotiated a ‘prisoner exchange’, substituting their own Ambassador-Grade personnel for the flight crew personnel that originally had been captured. These UFO Ambassadors were asked to comment on their Society and so these UFO prisoners requested a blank notebook so that they could respond in writing. Well, the notebook given to them was yellow, and so the book came to be called the “Yellow Book”. It described their Civilization.
Well, rumor has it that the reason why the World Governments still insist upon keeping the UFO People classified as secret, so that no Freedom of Speech can ever freely discuss their existence, the reason for all this secrecy is because the Governments are conscious that the highly evolved and viable Civilization of the UFO People is remarkably different from our own model of Civilization. And our Governments are afraid that many intelligent people might begin asking that we consider the successful options being offered to us, especially as our own Civilization shows increasing signs of decline and collapse.
Anyway, one of the points that the UFO Ambassadors made was that what we call Civilization really isn’t Civilization. While Society still oscillates between rise and fall, success and failure, it still fails to meet the basic definition of what they would consider a Civilization. Unless it is doing the job it is supposed to do, it is not really much of a Civilization, is it? It is only a Civilization when it is both viable and sustainable. Well, what makes a Civilization viable and sustainable?
Now, the UFO People do not think we here on Earth are all so hopeless. Indeed, it is widely thought that by giving us the blueprints for microchip technology that they gave us a huge push forward toward developing a computerized information society, an important key to achieving the Civilized State. With computers and the automated collection of information it becomes increasingly easier to know every economic interaction and dynamic within a Society, and then to impose an effective level of planning upon that Society, at least enough planning to sustain a Civilization that would otherwise decline and collapse.
The Rise of Civilization
I was impressed when reading Toynbee, that History shows us so far that Civilizations decline and fall, about the same way each time. No Civilization has ever sustained itself, and even our own Civilization is well marked by the milestones of decline. A new Dark Ages awaits. It is all quite inevitable at this point.
But then Toynbee points out that in geological terms our efforts toward Civilization are all still relatively recent, going back less than 10,000 years. Civilization for us as Human Being, Homo Sapiens, has only just begun.
So this begs the question of older Societies. Well, of course the Earth does not know of any older societies, unless of course we count the UFO People. These advanced Technological Societies could very well be extremely old in terms of when they first started their practices toward becoming Civilized. Instead of our 10,000 years, they may have been Civilized for some 10,000,000 or even 100,000,000 years. Since the Big Bang was over 4 Billion years ago, that gives a great deal of leeway regarding how much sooner some intelligent species may have evolved ahead of us.
Now, all of this is not just idle speculation. Intelligence Agents get drunk in bars and they come out with some interesting stories. This is what I have picked up by listening over the years. A number of years ago the UFO people crashed one of their ships in Roswell New Mexico, a small town in one of the dry almost uninhabited sections of the United States. There were survivors – living but injured UFO People. They were taken to the Navy Department Building in Washington D.C. The UFO People contacted the Washington Authorities and negotiated a ‘prisoner exchange’, substituting their own Ambassador-Grade personnel for the flight crew personnel that originally had been captured. These UFO Ambassadors were asked to comment on their Society and so these UFO prisoners requested a blank notebook so that they could respond in writing. Well, the notebook given to them was yellow, and so the book came to be called the “Yellow Book”. It described their Civilization.
Well, rumor has it that the reason why the World Governments still insist upon keeping the UFO People classified as secret, so that no Freedom of Speech can ever freely discuss their existence, the reason for all this secrecy is because the Governments are conscious that the highly evolved and viable Civilization of the UFO People is remarkably different from our own model of Civilization. And our Governments are afraid that many intelligent people might begin asking that we consider the successful options being offered to us, especially as our own Civilization shows increasing signs of decline and collapse.
Anyway, one of the points that the UFO Ambassadors made was that what we call Civilization really isn’t Civilization. While Society still oscillates between rise and fall, success and failure, it still fails to meet the basic definition of what they would consider a Civilization. Unless it is doing the job it is supposed to do, it is not really much of a Civilization, is it? It is only a Civilization when it is both viable and sustainable. Well, what makes a Civilization viable and sustainable?
Now, the UFO People do not think we here on Earth are all so hopeless. Indeed, it is widely thought that by giving us the blueprints for microchip technology that they gave us a huge push forward toward developing a computerized information society, an important key to achieving the Civilized State. With computers and the automated collection of information it becomes increasingly easier to know every economic interaction and dynamic within a Society, and then to impose an effective level of planning upon that Society, at least enough planning to sustain a Civilization that would otherwise decline and collapse.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Global Warming As a Weapon Against China
When America was caught up in the Cold War and considered Russia to be its primary enemy, it made every effort to achieve rapprochement with China. It was thought that if America befriended China, then it would deprive the Russians of a friend. It was a cynical and convenient friendship. Then, under Clinton, it was simply assumed that Peace was better than War, and that since America would have nothing to gain by war and since China would have nothing to gain by war, so it would be that genuine Friendship could became the policy goal of both World Powers. But this ended when the American Right Wing Religious Conservatives forced their coup in 2002 and took over America. Soon we had any number of books flying out of the American Publishing Houses, astounding the World that no state secrets were being violated when it was openly announced that every American Military priority was being concentrated upon planning some ultimate war with China. It amounted to little less than an official declaration of war. There were many rationales offered, but we could place them all basically into two families, the first being that while China was growing and America was declining, then America could only protect its lead by destroying China; and the second reason for planning War against China was that China offered a large enough threat to qualify for the highest level of Defense Spending, that is, that the vested interest in Defense Spending, established during the half century of the Cold War, simply needed a New Big Enemy, and since France was not quite large enough to stand in for the role, China was targeted simply because it met the profile qualifications. With every other industry being outsourced away from American shores, Militarism was the last Big Business left.
But America must certainly have discovered by now that Wars are iffy at best. The dogs of war could bite both ways. A generation ago tiny Vietnam handed America a resounding military defeat, and that just little more than a decade after China and North Korea fought America to a draw on the small battlefield of Korea. Then, America has found that it can’t even enforce its will upon Iraq, an undeveloped country that had been weakened by 20 years of war and sanctions. Well, yes, it can win the War, but finds itself losing the Peace. America, while thinking of itself as a Giant, is aware that it has had great difficulties fighting with those it thinks of as midgits, and while America is puzzled by this perceived inconsistency, it acknowledges the difficulities nonetheless. So now their are even Republicans clamoring for peace, no doubt hoping to destroy the rest of the World by other means.
America had come to realize that it had not so much won the First and Second World Wars as that the rest of the World had lost them much more badly, and America, by fighting the least, by loosing the least, won by default. No American cities had been bombed out, but, instead, the plundered wealth of the World went into building shiny new American Factories from coast to coast. Thinking itself the Grand Winner, America became proud and took on some fights of its own, but possibly may have learned its lesson. America would attempt to achieve its ends by different means.
And so it is that it may be that America has tacitly settled upon the policy of pushing forward the devastations of Global Warming. Just as with the Great Wars of the 20th Century, America may suppose that while it would suffer some inconveniences and losses from Global Warming, they anticipate that the remainder of the World, and especially China, would be devastated.
So we see Americans still advocating and investing in economic models that pump out the most greenhouse gases, while opposing any remodeling of social plans that could effectively decrease the buildup of fatal and dangerous levels of greenhouse gases. Even Al Gore never mentions nuclear energy power plants. Why? Well, simply because Nuclear Power Energy Plants would be the key to solving the entire problem.
Also, America’s insistence that alcohol should be a viable replacement for petroleum could also be a subtle weapon in its arsenal for global genocide (Americans are good people at heart and don’t want to enslave anybody. So American World Dominance is not envisioned as imposing Slavery on the rest of Mankind. Without anybody overtly saying so, it is just hoped that the rest of the World will simply go away and stop impinging upon American Happiness. Well, that means genocide, whether anybody admits it openly or not, especially if the Genocide can be made to look like some huge accident, such as is the case with AIDS, Global Warming, Energy Prices, etc). Alcohol, while being just as bad a greenhouse gas culprit as petroleum, would divert crops ordinarily intended for Food Production into the highly inflated fuel markets. Indeed, the ever increasing starvation levels we now see in Africa can be closely correlated to the price of Ethanol. Western Economies no longer consider diverting the surpluses of their grain harvests to famine stricken economies, not when the price of grain is now almost directly linked to Oil Prices. Grain was never really ever given away for Humanitarian concerns alone, but only because by giving grain away to worthless markets, the price of all of the remaining grain was supported… it boosted prices. But now that the price of wheat rises side by side with the price of oil because it too has become an energy commodity, there is not a grain left to be given away. World grain supplies will inevitably be diverted more and more to the ethanol distilleries, leaving less and less food to eat. As Oil Reserves are depleted and the price of grain alcohol soars, hungry people will be allowed to starve as thirsty automobiles are allowed to drink. While wealthy Americans could still pay perhaps $7or $8 dollars a liter for their gasoline and ethanol blends, there would be billions of people throughout the World who could never hope to pay those same high prices for a slice of bread or a small bowl of rice. And Americans could assume it was nobody’s fault that millions were left to starve, but simply blame the impersonal and inescapable economic laws of supply and demand – the types of thing that no Free People could possibly do anything about.
And so it is that though America might fear an open and overt War with China, these same Americans might look forward to destroying China with the rising sea levels caused by the Global Warming it had effectively engineered, and then starving China by the imposing impossibly high food prices it advanced by converting the Oil Economies over to Ethanol.
But America must certainly have discovered by now that Wars are iffy at best. The dogs of war could bite both ways. A generation ago tiny Vietnam handed America a resounding military defeat, and that just little more than a decade after China and North Korea fought America to a draw on the small battlefield of Korea. Then, America has found that it can’t even enforce its will upon Iraq, an undeveloped country that had been weakened by 20 years of war and sanctions. Well, yes, it can win the War, but finds itself losing the Peace. America, while thinking of itself as a Giant, is aware that it has had great difficulties fighting with those it thinks of as midgits, and while America is puzzled by this perceived inconsistency, it acknowledges the difficulities nonetheless. So now their are even Republicans clamoring for peace, no doubt hoping to destroy the rest of the World by other means.
America had come to realize that it had not so much won the First and Second World Wars as that the rest of the World had lost them much more badly, and America, by fighting the least, by loosing the least, won by default. No American cities had been bombed out, but, instead, the plundered wealth of the World went into building shiny new American Factories from coast to coast. Thinking itself the Grand Winner, America became proud and took on some fights of its own, but possibly may have learned its lesson. America would attempt to achieve its ends by different means.
And so it is that it may be that America has tacitly settled upon the policy of pushing forward the devastations of Global Warming. Just as with the Great Wars of the 20th Century, America may suppose that while it would suffer some inconveniences and losses from Global Warming, they anticipate that the remainder of the World, and especially China, would be devastated.
So we see Americans still advocating and investing in economic models that pump out the most greenhouse gases, while opposing any remodeling of social plans that could effectively decrease the buildup of fatal and dangerous levels of greenhouse gases. Even Al Gore never mentions nuclear energy power plants. Why? Well, simply because Nuclear Power Energy Plants would be the key to solving the entire problem.
Also, America’s insistence that alcohol should be a viable replacement for petroleum could also be a subtle weapon in its arsenal for global genocide (Americans are good people at heart and don’t want to enslave anybody. So American World Dominance is not envisioned as imposing Slavery on the rest of Mankind. Without anybody overtly saying so, it is just hoped that the rest of the World will simply go away and stop impinging upon American Happiness. Well, that means genocide, whether anybody admits it openly or not, especially if the Genocide can be made to look like some huge accident, such as is the case with AIDS, Global Warming, Energy Prices, etc). Alcohol, while being just as bad a greenhouse gas culprit as petroleum, would divert crops ordinarily intended for Food Production into the highly inflated fuel markets. Indeed, the ever increasing starvation levels we now see in Africa can be closely correlated to the price of Ethanol. Western Economies no longer consider diverting the surpluses of their grain harvests to famine stricken economies, not when the price of grain is now almost directly linked to Oil Prices. Grain was never really ever given away for Humanitarian concerns alone, but only because by giving grain away to worthless markets, the price of all of the remaining grain was supported… it boosted prices. But now that the price of wheat rises side by side with the price of oil because it too has become an energy commodity, there is not a grain left to be given away. World grain supplies will inevitably be diverted more and more to the ethanol distilleries, leaving less and less food to eat. As Oil Reserves are depleted and the price of grain alcohol soars, hungry people will be allowed to starve as thirsty automobiles are allowed to drink. While wealthy Americans could still pay perhaps $7or $8 dollars a liter for their gasoline and ethanol blends, there would be billions of people throughout the World who could never hope to pay those same high prices for a slice of bread or a small bowl of rice. And Americans could assume it was nobody’s fault that millions were left to starve, but simply blame the impersonal and inescapable economic laws of supply and demand – the types of thing that no Free People could possibly do anything about.
And so it is that though America might fear an open and overt War with China, these same Americans might look forward to destroying China with the rising sea levels caused by the Global Warming it had effectively engineered, and then starving China by the imposing impossibly high food prices it advanced by converting the Oil Economies over to Ethanol.
Cooperation: An Evolutionary Leap
Since there has been so much discussion of Evolution, it is often wondered by many who argue such things in the debate forums just what the next evolutionary leap might be.
Well, what might really be the next great evolutionary leap is Civilized Cooperation. Oh, we might think that we are already well established as Civilized People, but really we are only just actually one the very verge of that leap. It has just been only 10,000 or so years ago or so that the Human Species arrived at its first Civilization, that is a level of cooperation that could support economic surpluses and urban development. Yet trends of barbarian individualism and urges for 'freedom' have consistently eroded and then destroyed every developed Civilization. Within the Human Character and Psychology at present are the conflicting influences of social cooperation against the impulses of a more primitive impulse for predatory selfishness. The Social Human and the Individual Human are waging a War for global supremacy. Now, the Media and certain Political Parties go on endlessly praising the advantages of Barbarism -- Freedom, Greed, War, etc. But when one examines the economic models, Barbarian Regimes are only feasible in situations of low population densities. High Population Densities are only possible when Social Cooperation is at its Civilized Maximum. And so it is that Barbarism essentially relies upon Genocide of excess population levels. Simply refer to any period in History when Barbarism succeeded Civilization, when Selfishness conquered Cooperation, then there followed not a coincidental but a necessary drop in population levels... often by more than half. In this sense America's call for universal Freedom is a call for what is tantamount to mass and even global Genocide. We can have a World where tens of billions of people can cooperate in a civilized manner, or where a relative few Americans can survive in their Freedom.
And the genocide need not be particularly overt. All that is required is that Civilized Institutions be opposed and stifled. The best example here is the effort Americans are making to both advance Global Warming by advocating and investing in economic models that pump out the most greenhouse gases, while opposing any remodeling of social plans that could effectively decrease the buildup of fatal and dangerous levels of greenhouse gases.
Also, America’s insistence that alcohol should be a viable replacement for petroleum could also be a subtle weapon in its arsenal for global genocide. Alcohol, while being just as bad of a greenhouse gas culprit as petroleum, would divert crops ordinarily intended for Food Production into the highly inflated fuel markets. Indeed, the starvation we now see in Africa can be closely correlated to the price of Ethanol. Western Economies no longer consider diverting excess grain harvests to famine stricken economies, in order to support powerful Farm Constituencies, not when the price of grain is now almost directly linked to Oil Prices. Well, we can easily anticipate what will be the ultimate result – as Oil Reserves are depleted and the price of grain alcohol soars, hungry people will be allowed to starve as thirsty automobiles are allowed to drink.
Though America might fear an open and overt War with China, these same Americans might look forward to destroying China with the rising sea levels caused by the Global Warming it had effectively engineered, and then starving China by the impossibly high food prices it advanced by converting the Oil Economies over to Ethanol.
And so it is that the Barbarians need not assemble themselves into filthy lice-infested hoards to do their damage to Civilization. They only need to be able to obstruct the implementation of institutions of social cooperation. And so it is that the establishment of some model of liberal Democracy has become such an important matter for these Barbarians. These Capitalist Predators know from hundreds of years of experiment in the West that Liberal Democracy is too inherently weak and disorganized to offer any effective opposition to Predatory Capitalism, that is, to the forces of Barbarism. When they claim that the ‘checks and balances’ of Democracy are the protectors of ‘Freedom’, well, that is exactly what they had counted upon. Democracy weakens the institutions of cooperation while assuring the predatory forces of predatory barbarism, that is, ‘freedom’.
Well, what might really be the next great evolutionary leap is Civilized Cooperation. Oh, we might think that we are already well established as Civilized People, but really we are only just actually one the very verge of that leap. It has just been only 10,000 or so years ago or so that the Human Species arrived at its first Civilization, that is a level of cooperation that could support economic surpluses and urban development. Yet trends of barbarian individualism and urges for 'freedom' have consistently eroded and then destroyed every developed Civilization. Within the Human Character and Psychology at present are the conflicting influences of social cooperation against the impulses of a more primitive impulse for predatory selfishness. The Social Human and the Individual Human are waging a War for global supremacy. Now, the Media and certain Political Parties go on endlessly praising the advantages of Barbarism -- Freedom, Greed, War, etc. But when one examines the economic models, Barbarian Regimes are only feasible in situations of low population densities. High Population Densities are only possible when Social Cooperation is at its Civilized Maximum. And so it is that Barbarism essentially relies upon Genocide of excess population levels. Simply refer to any period in History when Barbarism succeeded Civilization, when Selfishness conquered Cooperation, then there followed not a coincidental but a necessary drop in population levels... often by more than half. In this sense America's call for universal Freedom is a call for what is tantamount to mass and even global Genocide. We can have a World where tens of billions of people can cooperate in a civilized manner, or where a relative few Americans can survive in their Freedom.
And the genocide need not be particularly overt. All that is required is that Civilized Institutions be opposed and stifled. The best example here is the effort Americans are making to both advance Global Warming by advocating and investing in economic models that pump out the most greenhouse gases, while opposing any remodeling of social plans that could effectively decrease the buildup of fatal and dangerous levels of greenhouse gases.
Also, America’s insistence that alcohol should be a viable replacement for petroleum could also be a subtle weapon in its arsenal for global genocide. Alcohol, while being just as bad of a greenhouse gas culprit as petroleum, would divert crops ordinarily intended for Food Production into the highly inflated fuel markets. Indeed, the starvation we now see in Africa can be closely correlated to the price of Ethanol. Western Economies no longer consider diverting excess grain harvests to famine stricken economies, in order to support powerful Farm Constituencies, not when the price of grain is now almost directly linked to Oil Prices. Well, we can easily anticipate what will be the ultimate result – as Oil Reserves are depleted and the price of grain alcohol soars, hungry people will be allowed to starve as thirsty automobiles are allowed to drink.
Though America might fear an open and overt War with China, these same Americans might look forward to destroying China with the rising sea levels caused by the Global Warming it had effectively engineered, and then starving China by the impossibly high food prices it advanced by converting the Oil Economies over to Ethanol.
And so it is that the Barbarians need not assemble themselves into filthy lice-infested hoards to do their damage to Civilization. They only need to be able to obstruct the implementation of institutions of social cooperation. And so it is that the establishment of some model of liberal Democracy has become such an important matter for these Barbarians. These Capitalist Predators know from hundreds of years of experiment in the West that Liberal Democracy is too inherently weak and disorganized to offer any effective opposition to Predatory Capitalism, that is, to the forces of Barbarism. When they claim that the ‘checks and balances’ of Democracy are the protectors of ‘Freedom’, well, that is exactly what they had counted upon. Democracy weakens the institutions of cooperation while assuring the predatory forces of predatory barbarism, that is, ‘freedom’.
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