Religion Looking Back and Looking Forward
Nowadays people’s choices of Religion seem only to involve what period and sphere of History one is to look far back upon – dead Prophets, dead Messiahs, dead Saints, dead Avatars, even a Buddha who died of food poisoning… from eating food that had gotten too old. How ironic. Yes, occasionally there are new appearances on the Religious landscape, but this is in the way of designer Religions, that is, People tossing out all Revelation and deciding simply from personal preference and taste as to what appeals to them in the way of Doctrine – people creating by themselves a Religion they can feel good about. That God Himself does not ever weigh in with His Opinion does not seem to bother them in the least.
Well, how would God weigh in with His Opinion anyway? He had in the Past. Again, there are all those old dead Saints, Messiahs, Avatars, Prophets and such. Miracles of Supernatural fact and knowledge – Saints doing the Impossible and knowing things it was Impossible for them to know. Religions were accepted not because they sounded good or met with certain aesthetic expectations. It was necessary that they be validated by the Supernatural. You see, the Ancient Peoples had at least that much common sense more than us.
Now, God could easily validate any of the New Designer Religions simply by effectively accrediting the Founder, or even any of the more assiduous of its members or devotees, for, after all, a string of signatory miracles should not be all that impossible for God to accomplish. It does make me wonder that People who design their own Religions do not feel horribly self-conscious that God so pointedly ignores them. Oh, one does hear the most foolish of comments – one Founder says that he deliberately has renounced Miracles as being SO egotistical. Yeah, that’s right! They aren’t all a bunch of frauds and fakes. It’s just that they have all renounced the Miraculous. Makes perfect sense.
Even some 50 years ago one could still read about living Saints and Miracles. All that seems now to be drying up, everywhere. It’s as though the entire World has been handed over to Hell in a Hand-basket, so to speak.
Anyway, all of the preceding was simply preface to the point I would like to make now, and that is that while people are looking back to find their Religions of Choice, well, I think they happen to be looking back too far. If one evaluates the History of Religion to determine any particular one Golden Age, one can discern a salient that occurs at none of the Founding Moments of any of the Major Religions, and none of the Major Scriptural Documents and Holy Books cover the events thereof. I am speaking of the High Middle Ages and Catholic Civilization. There were dozens of Saints of the First Magnitude and hundreds of others, and a significant few of them were frankly more miraculous than Jesus ever was – for instance, Saint Vincent Ferrer probably did more on his laziest day than Jesus accomplished in his entire lifetime.
You would think that the Catholic Church would capitalize on all of this, but they have two problems there. The first problem is that at the Council of Nicea in the 3rd Century they officially closed the Book on New Revelation – yes, saying in effect that if God were to speak again, in the Future, that He would be thoroughly ignored. Islam did the same thing. Indeed, so did the Sikhs. You see, it all comes down to basic Theology with the underlying assumption that God is Absolute, with one of the corollary propositions being that an Absolute God never changes… if a Doctrine seems complete, then the Theologians assume, a priori, that it would be impossible for God to add anything. So they Close the Book… whatever their Religious Book happens to be. Well, Catholicism closed the Book, and now they find that they would have a difficult time opening it up again to say that a Great Deal happened from the 4rd to the 16th Centuries. But it did happen, and so the Church has created something of a Loop Hole, as such things are called. All Miracles, Saints, Revelations and things of that order that happened after the Council of Nicea had affirmed God’s Practical Deadness, all such things are classified as ‘Personal Revelations’ – NOT Church Revelations which would be illegal, but if private Catholics wanted to believe such things on their own, then nobody would burn them at the Stake for it… well, not most of the time anyway. This is why there were so many Religious Orders created, as a Religious Order would give refuge to individuals who would wish to join with other in the celebration of certain ‘Private Revelations’. And as it happened, ALL of the grandiose and spectacular Religious Phenomena of the High Middle Ages, the Golden Age of World Religion, was not Catholic, in the Collective Church sense at all, but was always Revelatory in regards to some ‘Private Revelation’… well, as it would have to be by the very way that the Church forced itself to define such things. The Council of Nicea took away all discretion and latitude in such affairs and decisions. So it is that the Catholic Church virtually ignores its Greatest Moments, and why the Church does not write the New Bible that really ought to have been written.
Also, there is the matter that the Catholic Church AFTER the Wars of the Reformation was not the same Church anymore. One of the big secrets of History is that the Catholics TOTALLY lost that War. It did not end in a truce as we are asked to believe. Look at the facts. The Peace of Westphalia was one thing, ending the War between the Protestant and Catholic Combatants. But then there was the Council of Trent which followed quickly on the heals of the Political Peace Treaty. The Council of Trent redefined the Church, gutting the Practices that had held up Catholic Civilization, and making way for the Protestant Institutions which would lead the way to all subsequent Barbarisms. With that Redefinition of Catholicism, the Spiritual Holiness of the Church was severely damaged, and Saints almost disappeared from History, though there would still be a few now and again, but the Golden Age of Religion and Spirituality was clearly over. Now, after the Council of Vatican II from back in the 1960’s, where the Catholic Bishops pledged Religious Unity with the Protestant Evangelicals, who see no God but Paul, well, that was the complete Death of Catholicism – now its just a stiff cold stinking Body of what it once was… with an Ex-Nazi Pope in charge, of all things.
Well, there have been Apparitions for the last several hundred years, even intensifying in frequency and spectacle – Marian Apparitions – predicting all of this – the decline of the Church and the decline in the Providence and Grace of God, with People not deserving God’s Grace, and all of that. But what we need to keep in mind is that the Predictions look forward to Extremely Bad Times which will be followed by a New Era, a New Time. I suppose Religion will finally come back. And then, PLEASE, and I address here those who will be the SURVIVORS – PLEASE, throw out the Stupid old Bibles and instead pick up your notebooks, and take note of what you see and hear in the way of the Miraculous, in the way of Revelations of God. Write a New Bible. After all, the Old Stuff only let us down in the End, didn’t it?
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Paulism and Turning Logic Around
Paulism and Turning Logic Around
Barrie Wilson’s “How Jesus Became Christian”, though a shallow work written by an unimaginative drudge, still it raised some bookish facts. At the end of the First Century the point was raised by the Messianic Jews that since the Apostles disagreed with Paul on every single doctrinal point, that Paul must have been wrong, because two contradictory points cannot both be true – if one believed the Apostles, the True heirs of the Messianic Legacy, than one could not also believe Paul. It was thought that the Jews finally found a Logical Tool for excluding Paulism – they finally found a weapon that the Greek Mind could appreciate.
Well, a certain very wealthy Greek Merchant, Marcion, saw this Anti-Paulist Logic as something of a challenge… even as an opportunity. If the Jews wished to play Logic with the Greeks he would be pleased to oblige. He saw that this logical sword had two edges and could point either way. If both Paul and the Jews could not both be right, then, fine, he agreed. But he would insist it was the True Apostles of Jesus who were wrong. We can wonder today how Marcion could have the brass to assert such an outrage, but we need to remember his context – he was a Greek in Greece arguing for Free Sin, and against the Jews who were considered a troublesome minority (in the Roman Jewish Wars of the early 2nd Century hundreds of thousands of Greeks had been caught in between… indeed, in many instances the Romans only interceded after the Jews had massacred entire regions of Greeks. So we need not be surprised that if in the 2nd Century the Greek would see the Jew with a certain tinge of hostility and resistance).
So Marcion went on the offensive. Jesus would be presented not as a Messianic Jew, not as the Jewish Messiah, but instead as a Rebellious Individual challenging the Old Jewish Traditions and Laws while offering a completely New Dispensation, which the old fish mongering Apostles were too dense to understand, but which Paul, studied in Greek Philosophy, had the spiritual and mental agility to comprehend correctly. The Argument of the Jews was reversed as like a Mirror Image and turned back against them, and in this format, the Greeks were quite convinced by it.
Now, unfortunately, there is more in Barrie Wilson’s book “How Jesus Became Christian”. He goes far to point out the sophistic and false nature of Marcion’s reverse argument. But if two contradictory points cannot both be True, nothing prevents them both from being False, and this is what Barrie Wilson decides in the case of Jesus and the Messianic Jews, that they are wrong too. We are informed that Jesus was false because he had claimed to be a Messiah, but, well, never became a Messiah. Historically Jesus simply never amounted to anything. When Barrie Wilson decided to sum up his book with a big moral message, it was this, that Christianity should just strike its tent and quit Religion altogether and accept themselves only as Gentiles, defined in terms only of not being Jewish, and that they should learn from it all to find a new appreciation for Jews as the Chosen People of God, and to stop being so Anti-Semitic.
I can understand how the Jews would enjoy being proclaimed the Master Race, and have every Gentile bow before them, their faces in the dirt. But I wonder what appeal Barrie Wilson thought the Gentiles would see in it. The book probably had Jewish Publishers.
Anyway, the same kind of Double Edged Argument as before crops up and I was surprised the Barrie Wilson missed it. What Mr. Wilson fails to point out is that the Failure of Jesus reflects equally upon the Jew. His Failure is their Failure. The only reason Jews have been held in high regards, more than we appreciate, say, the Gypsies or the Kurds, is because they were the Race that brought us our Messiah, Our Savior. If Jesus was a nothing, then what does that make the Jews? Without a Jesus, then the claim of the Jews to be a Chosen People resounds only of self-aggrandizement, bigotry and anti-gentile Apartheid.
Without the New Testament to give it point and direction, the Old Testament is only a chronicle of a cunning and quarrelsome people from whom God obviously withdrew all favor. Solomon’s Temple was destroyed. The Promised Land, held for only a few hundred years anyway, was taken back. And God would give it, to paraphrase Alexander the Great on his death bed, to whomever was strong enough to take it.
But, you know, it is not necessary that Jesus was not the Messiah just because his people turned against him and killed him. Because his people were incredibly Evil is no logical proof that he wasn’t absolutely Good… indeed, it is just one more Spiritual Paradox we find ourselves having to deal with. Professor Wilson takes no look at the History of Spiritual Christianity, particularly at the High Point of Christian Civilization, when the numerous Christian Saints stood at least the equal to any Jewish Prophet or Patriarch, and when Paulism was all but forgotten except by a small cluster of the hedonistically corrupt Bishops. But the Christianity of a great Civilization believed in a God, a Messiah and a Pure Mother of a Messiah, worthy of joining with God Almighty Himself. Yes, it was a Religion that went way beyond its Judaic roots, but it is no crime to rise up above one’s roots – every plant, every flower, every tree hopes to do the same. Life reaches toward the Sky. Death reaches down, staying with the Roots. And reaching up Christianity became a Moral Religion, with Moral Expectations. Indeed everything we have today which makes us capable of Moral Reflection comes to us from that Old Christian Civilization and Religion that was vibrantly alive with its own Miracles and deeply inspired with brilliant Visions of actual Spirituality.
Barrie Wilson’s “How Jesus Became Christian”, though a shallow work written by an unimaginative drudge, still it raised some bookish facts. At the end of the First Century the point was raised by the Messianic Jews that since the Apostles disagreed with Paul on every single doctrinal point, that Paul must have been wrong, because two contradictory points cannot both be true – if one believed the Apostles, the True heirs of the Messianic Legacy, than one could not also believe Paul. It was thought that the Jews finally found a Logical Tool for excluding Paulism – they finally found a weapon that the Greek Mind could appreciate.
Well, a certain very wealthy Greek Merchant, Marcion, saw this Anti-Paulist Logic as something of a challenge… even as an opportunity. If the Jews wished to play Logic with the Greeks he would be pleased to oblige. He saw that this logical sword had two edges and could point either way. If both Paul and the Jews could not both be right, then, fine, he agreed. But he would insist it was the True Apostles of Jesus who were wrong. We can wonder today how Marcion could have the brass to assert such an outrage, but we need to remember his context – he was a Greek in Greece arguing for Free Sin, and against the Jews who were considered a troublesome minority (in the Roman Jewish Wars of the early 2nd Century hundreds of thousands of Greeks had been caught in between… indeed, in many instances the Romans only interceded after the Jews had massacred entire regions of Greeks. So we need not be surprised that if in the 2nd Century the Greek would see the Jew with a certain tinge of hostility and resistance).
So Marcion went on the offensive. Jesus would be presented not as a Messianic Jew, not as the Jewish Messiah, but instead as a Rebellious Individual challenging the Old Jewish Traditions and Laws while offering a completely New Dispensation, which the old fish mongering Apostles were too dense to understand, but which Paul, studied in Greek Philosophy, had the spiritual and mental agility to comprehend correctly. The Argument of the Jews was reversed as like a Mirror Image and turned back against them, and in this format, the Greeks were quite convinced by it.
Now, unfortunately, there is more in Barrie Wilson’s book “How Jesus Became Christian”. He goes far to point out the sophistic and false nature of Marcion’s reverse argument. But if two contradictory points cannot both be True, nothing prevents them both from being False, and this is what Barrie Wilson decides in the case of Jesus and the Messianic Jews, that they are wrong too. We are informed that Jesus was false because he had claimed to be a Messiah, but, well, never became a Messiah. Historically Jesus simply never amounted to anything. When Barrie Wilson decided to sum up his book with a big moral message, it was this, that Christianity should just strike its tent and quit Religion altogether and accept themselves only as Gentiles, defined in terms only of not being Jewish, and that they should learn from it all to find a new appreciation for Jews as the Chosen People of God, and to stop being so Anti-Semitic.
I can understand how the Jews would enjoy being proclaimed the Master Race, and have every Gentile bow before them, their faces in the dirt. But I wonder what appeal Barrie Wilson thought the Gentiles would see in it. The book probably had Jewish Publishers.
Anyway, the same kind of Double Edged Argument as before crops up and I was surprised the Barrie Wilson missed it. What Mr. Wilson fails to point out is that the Failure of Jesus reflects equally upon the Jew. His Failure is their Failure. The only reason Jews have been held in high regards, more than we appreciate, say, the Gypsies or the Kurds, is because they were the Race that brought us our Messiah, Our Savior. If Jesus was a nothing, then what does that make the Jews? Without a Jesus, then the claim of the Jews to be a Chosen People resounds only of self-aggrandizement, bigotry and anti-gentile Apartheid.
Without the New Testament to give it point and direction, the Old Testament is only a chronicle of a cunning and quarrelsome people from whom God obviously withdrew all favor. Solomon’s Temple was destroyed. The Promised Land, held for only a few hundred years anyway, was taken back. And God would give it, to paraphrase Alexander the Great on his death bed, to whomever was strong enough to take it.
But, you know, it is not necessary that Jesus was not the Messiah just because his people turned against him and killed him. Because his people were incredibly Evil is no logical proof that he wasn’t absolutely Good… indeed, it is just one more Spiritual Paradox we find ourselves having to deal with. Professor Wilson takes no look at the History of Spiritual Christianity, particularly at the High Point of Christian Civilization, when the numerous Christian Saints stood at least the equal to any Jewish Prophet or Patriarch, and when Paulism was all but forgotten except by a small cluster of the hedonistically corrupt Bishops. But the Christianity of a great Civilization believed in a God, a Messiah and a Pure Mother of a Messiah, worthy of joining with God Almighty Himself. Yes, it was a Religion that went way beyond its Judaic roots, but it is no crime to rise up above one’s roots – every plant, every flower, every tree hopes to do the same. Life reaches toward the Sky. Death reaches down, staying with the Roots. And reaching up Christianity became a Moral Religion, with Moral Expectations. Indeed everything we have today which makes us capable of Moral Reflection comes to us from that Old Christian Civilization and Religion that was vibrantly alive with its own Miracles and deeply inspired with brilliant Visions of actual Spirituality.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Pirate Island As An Economic Model
Does everyone have a brother that listens too much to Rush Limpbugger while not reading enough nonfiction? Anyway, I do. One time when arguing about World Economic Policy, he brought up the example of one thriving economic community that charged next to nothing in taxes, offered a Labor Force that received abysmally low wages, and he proposed that every Economy could equally prosper by doing exactly the same.
He had forgotten a very important point, which should have been obvious to any orthodox and observant Capitalist… he had forgotten about Competition, and that in Free Market Economics the predictive models can reduce only to one foreseeable outcome – that there will be one Winner and a bunch of losers. In this sense Competition amounts to a huge race toward the most minimal standards and infrastructures. Yes, one particular Pirate Island, positioned optimally so that a very Imposing and Curiously Lenient neighboring Political Jurisdiction can pick up all the Social and Military Slack, can forgo most in the way of Tax Rates in order to attract the most number of Tax Payers. But such a competitive trick can only work once. If Tax Rates were Universally Low, then there would be no reason for any body to move. One Pirate Island works because there is Law and Order everywhere else. The Pirates from Everywhere Else have only one place to go with all their Loot. If the Law was equally unobserved everywhere, then Outlaws and Pirates could might as well just stay home. Oh, and please forgive my hasty metaphor where I inadvertently compare the Rich and Wealthy People to criminals, but if it helps us to understand the picture… as, after all, both groups are after exactly the same thing. In fact one needs to wonder how such levels of selfishness and greed can ever NOT be against one law or another.
So, anyway, is it wise for the Entire World to engage in a Competition, a virtual race to the bottom, where only one Economy can hope to win anyway… and a meager win it would be for a People who would have to satisfy itself with the slimmest margin of wages and social spending in the Entire World; and we would need to wonder how long adjoining Political Jurisdictions could possibly consent to receive the impoverished overflow of social, political and economic refugees from such an Economic Winner?
But let’s think again about this argument for Universal Criminality, that if laws were ignored everywhere, then Outlaws could simply stay home. Well, this same argument works equally in reverse – that if Laws are Universally Upheld then the Criminals, in this case Rich People and Corporations, would have no reason to flee – they might as well take their chances at Home as anywhere else. Do Rich Corporations REALLY want to go to live with Sand Fleas in Bahrain except that they go there explicitly to escape Taxation? If Taxes were the same, they’d stay home and save themselves the unease of being hated by all the poor natives.
It is about time that the people
e who make decisions concerning the World Political Consensus should examine the possibility of arriving at One Legal and Economic Standard – no downward trending Competition offering Pirate Level tax breaks and lower than subsistence level wages in order to steal businesses from other Economies. Let everyone renounce the possibility of being the One Lone Winner in order that everyone can be certain not to be one of the bankrupt and miserable losers.
Also, it may be added that the possibility of their ever being one Winner is entirely imaginary. History has shown that while Economic Competition had always been propelled on the hopes of their being some Perfect Economic Winner, the effects of the Over-Concentration of Wealth had always precipitated a Complete Collapse before any single Winner could have the chance to emerge. You see, Social and Military complications arise. Economies that pair down on their Social and Military Infrastructure in order to Pad the Wealth of their Rich, find that they are exposed to both internal rebellion and foreign invasion, and it can’t be ignored that their Tremendous Wealth does present an irresistible target. But, the Wealthy Classes are lulled into the belief that their tremendous Personal Wealth can purchase them Invulnerability –Gated Communities… even Castles, moots and drawbridges… and even Private Armies. But unless they are prepared to scale up their efforts until they are again willing to pay for real levels of National Security Infrastructure, any limited and focused effort can only provide some temporary island of Security, under siege, and doomed to eventual fall. Again, a review of History shows that there has never yet ever been the first Winner. History only shows a succession of continuous losers, and this will be the case until we finally get serious about what must transpire before we all can become Civilized.
He had forgotten a very important point, which should have been obvious to any orthodox and observant Capitalist… he had forgotten about Competition, and that in Free Market Economics the predictive models can reduce only to one foreseeable outcome – that there will be one Winner and a bunch of losers. In this sense Competition amounts to a huge race toward the most minimal standards and infrastructures. Yes, one particular Pirate Island, positioned optimally so that a very Imposing and Curiously Lenient neighboring Political Jurisdiction can pick up all the Social and Military Slack, can forgo most in the way of Tax Rates in order to attract the most number of Tax Payers. But such a competitive trick can only work once. If Tax Rates were Universally Low, then there would be no reason for any body to move. One Pirate Island works because there is Law and Order everywhere else. The Pirates from Everywhere Else have only one place to go with all their Loot. If the Law was equally unobserved everywhere, then Outlaws and Pirates could might as well just stay home. Oh, and please forgive my hasty metaphor where I inadvertently compare the Rich and Wealthy People to criminals, but if it helps us to understand the picture… as, after all, both groups are after exactly the same thing. In fact one needs to wonder how such levels of selfishness and greed can ever NOT be against one law or another.
So, anyway, is it wise for the Entire World to engage in a Competition, a virtual race to the bottom, where only one Economy can hope to win anyway… and a meager win it would be for a People who would have to satisfy itself with the slimmest margin of wages and social spending in the Entire World; and we would need to wonder how long adjoining Political Jurisdictions could possibly consent to receive the impoverished overflow of social, political and economic refugees from such an Economic Winner?
But let’s think again about this argument for Universal Criminality, that if laws were ignored everywhere, then Outlaws could simply stay home. Well, this same argument works equally in reverse – that if Laws are Universally Upheld then the Criminals, in this case Rich People and Corporations, would have no reason to flee – they might as well take their chances at Home as anywhere else. Do Rich Corporations REALLY want to go to live with Sand Fleas in Bahrain except that they go there explicitly to escape Taxation? If Taxes were the same, they’d stay home and save themselves the unease of being hated by all the poor natives.
It is about time that the people
e who make decisions concerning the World Political Consensus should examine the possibility of arriving at One Legal and Economic Standard – no downward trending Competition offering Pirate Level tax breaks and lower than subsistence level wages in order to steal businesses from other Economies. Let everyone renounce the possibility of being the One Lone Winner in order that everyone can be certain not to be one of the bankrupt and miserable losers.
Also, it may be added that the possibility of their ever being one Winner is entirely imaginary. History has shown that while Economic Competition had always been propelled on the hopes of their being some Perfect Economic Winner, the effects of the Over-Concentration of Wealth had always precipitated a Complete Collapse before any single Winner could have the chance to emerge. You see, Social and Military complications arise. Economies that pair down on their Social and Military Infrastructure in order to Pad the Wealth of their Rich, find that they are exposed to both internal rebellion and foreign invasion, and it can’t be ignored that their Tremendous Wealth does present an irresistible target. But, the Wealthy Classes are lulled into the belief that their tremendous Personal Wealth can purchase them Invulnerability –Gated Communities… even Castles, moots and drawbridges… and even Private Armies. But unless they are prepared to scale up their efforts until they are again willing to pay for real levels of National Security Infrastructure, any limited and focused effort can only provide some temporary island of Security, under siege, and doomed to eventual fall. Again, a review of History shows that there has never yet ever been the first Winner. History only shows a succession of continuous losers, and this will be the case until we finally get serious about what must transpire before we all can become Civilized.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Barrie Wilson’s How Jesus Became Christian
I heard of a new book written by a scholar that was said to hate Paul almost as much as myself, so I went out and bought it. “How Jesus Became Christian” by Barrie Wilson. Here is a hint – don’t buy a book written by anybody who doesn’t have an adult name. “Barrie”!? I should not have been surprised to find the book intellectually immature.
Yes, any book that hates Paul isn’t all bad. But the attack is continued on against Jesus also. What is there to hate about Jesus, you might ask? Well, Jesus was not the Messiah. The argument here assumes that God is All Powerful and that if God had intended Jesus to be the Messiah, than God would have used every miraculous power to impose Jesus as Messiah. Apparently God should have been willing to kill anybody who stood in Jesus’ way. Because Jesus had failed to assert himself as a Messiah, that is, because he was not globally recognized as the Messiah, therefore, he in fact was not the Messiah. While the first part of the Book maintains that Christianity is a false Religion because of the misrepresentations of Paul, the book goes on to leave us the sad impression that even at the very most there had never been anything there anyway but the pretensions of an impostor messiah.
At least we are allowed a Historical Jesus … its not denied that there was some guy named Jesus who managed to start up a minor splinter of a Jewish Sect that lasted several centuries before it was forgotten by history. How inspiring.
In his last chapter concerning what we can salvage of Christianity, it is that we can acknowledge the Jesus was a Jew and out of respect for that, Christians should realize they should not be anti-Semitic. Hmmmmm. A Religion whose sole purpose would be to renounce itself in giving all respect to another Religion, or rather to an Ethnic Group with their own rather Exclusive God. Honestly, I don’t think it would work too well. Sooner or later the Gentiles would realize that they are giving respect to a Religion that returns to them no respect, even to the point of denying them a God! While the Jews have a God – the Only God – it is understood that there is nowhere recognized any God of the Gentiles, and that the One God that does exist, exists only for the Sons of Jacob. Really!? This is where Intellectual Maturity comes into play. If Jesus was nothing because he was NOT the Messiah, then does not the same argument have equal play in evaluating Jews and Judaism as a whole? If Judaism never produced a Messiah, then what need has it of any Gentile Respect? While it had been understood that Jesus WAS the Messiah, then Christians could be persuaded to begrudge the Jews some little bit of respect, which certainly has been the case as is shown by the Gentiles have accepted as Canonical Scripture the purely Jewish Books of the Old Testament. But in this new perspective, that Jesus was some itty-bitty footnote of forgotten Jewish History, than this is enough to consign all of Judaism to the Dustbin of Old Failed Ancient Religions, for as we see it today without any Sentimentality of Connection to an Authentic Christ, Judaism is only a Religion of an insular and selfish people who have survived apart only because of the intensity of their Hate which forbids them to let their sons or daughters marry anybody besides themselves. A Religion of Love they are not. They have succeeded only as a Religion of Ethnic Hate, and of those I am sure we have enough already.
Oh, but why can’t we all become Jews? Well, as they say, somebody has to pay retail.
Yes, any book that hates Paul isn’t all bad. But the attack is continued on against Jesus also. What is there to hate about Jesus, you might ask? Well, Jesus was not the Messiah. The argument here assumes that God is All Powerful and that if God had intended Jesus to be the Messiah, than God would have used every miraculous power to impose Jesus as Messiah. Apparently God should have been willing to kill anybody who stood in Jesus’ way. Because Jesus had failed to assert himself as a Messiah, that is, because he was not globally recognized as the Messiah, therefore, he in fact was not the Messiah. While the first part of the Book maintains that Christianity is a false Religion because of the misrepresentations of Paul, the book goes on to leave us the sad impression that even at the very most there had never been anything there anyway but the pretensions of an impostor messiah.
At least we are allowed a Historical Jesus … its not denied that there was some guy named Jesus who managed to start up a minor splinter of a Jewish Sect that lasted several centuries before it was forgotten by history. How inspiring.
In his last chapter concerning what we can salvage of Christianity, it is that we can acknowledge the Jesus was a Jew and out of respect for that, Christians should realize they should not be anti-Semitic. Hmmmmm. A Religion whose sole purpose would be to renounce itself in giving all respect to another Religion, or rather to an Ethnic Group with their own rather Exclusive God. Honestly, I don’t think it would work too well. Sooner or later the Gentiles would realize that they are giving respect to a Religion that returns to them no respect, even to the point of denying them a God! While the Jews have a God – the Only God – it is understood that there is nowhere recognized any God of the Gentiles, and that the One God that does exist, exists only for the Sons of Jacob. Really!? This is where Intellectual Maturity comes into play. If Jesus was nothing because he was NOT the Messiah, then does not the same argument have equal play in evaluating Jews and Judaism as a whole? If Judaism never produced a Messiah, then what need has it of any Gentile Respect? While it had been understood that Jesus WAS the Messiah, then Christians could be persuaded to begrudge the Jews some little bit of respect, which certainly has been the case as is shown by the Gentiles have accepted as Canonical Scripture the purely Jewish Books of the Old Testament. But in this new perspective, that Jesus was some itty-bitty footnote of forgotten Jewish History, than this is enough to consign all of Judaism to the Dustbin of Old Failed Ancient Religions, for as we see it today without any Sentimentality of Connection to an Authentic Christ, Judaism is only a Religion of an insular and selfish people who have survived apart only because of the intensity of their Hate which forbids them to let their sons or daughters marry anybody besides themselves. A Religion of Love they are not. They have succeeded only as a Religion of Ethnic Hate, and of those I am sure we have enough already.
Oh, but why can’t we all become Jews? Well, as they say, somebody has to pay retail.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Reasonableness of Pessimism and Barbarism
To simplify the difference between Civilized and Barbarian Institutions, we have only look at their regards for population density – Civilizations adopt institutions which maximize population density whereas Barbaric Institutions, while not overtly admitting so much, depend upon sustaining low densities of population. Now, to be clear on this, often Barbarism does not positively and consciously design institutions that would limit population, but rather it is the failure to adopt Civilized Institutions to deal with high levels of population density that thereby default to de facto barbarism – as soon as the effective Population Density exceeds the ability of Society to deal with the needs of a Dense Population, then checks to that population will more or less automatically take over. One does not have to positively plan for Wars, Plagues, Rebellions, murder and mayhem. Such things occur given the absence of Positive Institutions to prevent them. Barbarism, for the most part is simply the void of Civilization.
However, some Barbarism is in fact intentional. Institutions set up to Prevent the establishment of Civilized Institutions are in fact Barbarian. Much of Western Liberal Democracy is Barbaric, when one evaluates it for ultimate effect. Designed to strip most of the people of their share of wealth in order to concentrate all measures of value to the top few percent of the population, then providing for police and armies to control or to eventually murder off the greater part of the populations when they should go into rebellion… such is a conscious and intentional Barbarism. In America it is perfected, by making it a matter of Public Policy to deprive most of the people of Health Care, disease is given a free hand to sweep away unwanted Population Densities.
Yes, it does seem paradoxical, that ‘Democracy’ is used as a weapon against the people. We have only to notice that it is the Wealthiest and Most Selfish segments of the Population that are so espoused to Democracy – and we can conclude that this is because they have found a way to utterly control it and exploit it. How? Well, although the People do in fact vote, it is the Wealthy Controlling Classes that decide who it is that runs for office. Yes, there are Left Wings and Right Wings, but as I heard it recently described, they are all the wings of the Same Old Bird. I would trust Democracy so much more if the classes most engaged in advancing the Cause of Barbarism Exploitation were not so unequivocally in support of Democracy and for its spread to all of the World.
Indeed, to be cynical about it, perhaps it is their wish to impose a World Wide Democracy in order to weaken all traditional Institutions of Civilization where they had ever managed to take hold.
Why would anybody prefer Barbarism? Well, sorry to say, Barbarism is the Deal with the Devil. When Barbarism is able to exert itself, to eliminate the burden of high population densities, then the results for the few survivors can be rather appealing… for a generation or two until population pressures re-exert themselves. But at the close of major plagues or major wars, land opens up and labor becomes dear – everyone makes out like a bandit – Cheap Land and High Wages. Yes, the nine out of ten people who die wouldn’t like the deal they got, but they aren’t alive to complain. History only records the delight of the Survivors who find so much stuff to pick up and take home for themselves. Cities of Gold have collapsed in ruin, but the survivors, previously of the lowest classes, couldn’t be happier but to rummage through the rubble and grab a few candlesticks. The Glory of Freedom!
So, Barbarism does have an appeal… for the optimistic who take it for granted that they will be the one’s who will survive… sometimes hedging their bets with cellars full of horded food, guns and ammo. Then, additionally, these glorious moments of Barbarism are historically troubling, as they are recorded as something of Golden Ages. It is supposed that these People were Happy not because they were lucky survivors, but because they were Freedom Loving Warriors or some such blithering nonsense. Look at America today – their collective prosperity an accident of discovering a virtually empty continent at a time when Europe was destroying itself with a series of suicidal wars, but if you ask any American, they insist that America is great because they are such dedicated Barbarians – Freedom Loving People who will do anything to stifle institutions that would allow for Civilized levels of Population Density. Happy entirely by accident, they think it is because their Selfishness was some kind of a Virtue.
But the Problem with Barbarism’s Deal with the Devil, is that in the absence of any intentional institution for either providing for Population or for keeping Population within certain prescribed limits, then the cycle of massive de-population is bound to re-occur, not really requiring more than 4 or 5 generations… barely more than a hundred years. For instance, the Black Death carried away almost half the Europe’s Population, and while the surviving generation was somewhat left in shock, the next generation was ecstatically happy with their prosperity. Things were so Free and Easy that what were left of Civilized Institutions were seen as obtrusive and senselessly unnecessary. Love of Freedom won over any sense of Security in Order. But it didn’t take more than 200 years before population was again at dangerous levels, and without the previous respect for Civilized Institutions that had once been able to support such levels. There occurred the Fall of Catholic Civilization and the wars and rebellions have not really stopped ever since – Europe has been using internal conflict to keep its populations at moderate levels, never reaching the levels of Asian Societies. When Western Propaganda thanks its Armed Forces for Freedom and Happiness, it is True, but in a sense much more sinister than I am sure is intended – the true sense is “Thank You for Killing Yourselves and Each Other to make more room for the rest of us”.
So, anyway, there are those who suppose that the World is coming to a major traumatic cataclysm of Apocalyptic proportions that will carry away the vaster part of the troubling population levels, and that after this huge purge, this vast cleansing, the elect few survivors will be Happy. Well, yes, they will be. But I tend to see this pessimistically. The process is entirely negative. With no new Civilized Institutions put in place to guide the subsequent growth, the same disasters can be expected again, and perhaps even worse, as the Happy Glories of a fleeting Barbarian Golden Age serve only to discredit and remove whatever had remained of Civilized Institutions.
.
It would be preferable to emplace Institutions for dealing with these uncomfortable levels of Population Density – planned economies, public health care, limiting child birth – putting the World on a strict budget. Nobody would really be happy, but everyone would live. Yes, hope could be planned for in the long term. By imposing a strict budget to limit new population increases, then more benefits could accrue as the overcrowded numbers decline over time in a controlled way. Or the political decision could be made to keep population always at a maximum… a dangerous balance on the razor’s edge. I think that China and India have met with the inevitable future of Civilization in that they have taken conscious and positive control of their population growths with various childbirth limiting programs.
But as reassuring it is to hope and believe for the best, unfortunately, the trajectory of decline toward War, Rebellion, Crime and Disease seems too steep to stop. There is not even the slightest hint of a move toward implementing Civilized Institutions. The Forces of Barbarism seem very much planted at the Helm, at least in West where the sworn Barbarians of Free Masonry have been calling all the shots for Centuries, even if somewhat below the Surface of Appearances. The East, while culturally and historically more inclined to adopt Civilized Institutions, will probably be unable to stand up to the West, which I suppose will not permit itself to die quietly, but will lash out at the rest of the World in a frenzy of Over-Powering Military Reaction. Then, if the East does survive better than the West, the appeal of Open Land and Scarcity of Labor will forestall any necessity for adopting Civilized Institutions, and the Cycle of Barbarism will re-emerge again, East or West.
In conclusion, Barbarism is so easy, and it’s Golden Ages occur again and again, everyone remembering the few Living, forgetting the many Dead, that there is never any great momentum established for putting in place Civilized Institutions. So, overall, I am rather pessimistic.
As a last word I should mention that the UFO Aliens captured at Roswell, New Mexico in the United States were purported to have written of their Civilization, some several million years old. Little has been hinted of their Civilization, and it is rumored that the primary reason why the United States denies the U.F.O. Aliens is because they suppose it necessary to deny and suppress any model or idea of that Civilization, which is not very similar to Liberal Democracy dominated by Corporate, Zionist and Gun Interests. (Besides, the Free Masons having done everything they could to discredit all of the World’s Civilizations, in order to install their own self serving Barbarism, that we could little expect them to allow the published detail of an Other Worldly Civilization, and particularly that of one that has succeeded so well and for so long.) But it’s been said that the U.F.O. Aliens deny that we Human Beings here on Earth have ever had even our first Civilization. As they said, if we would ever once tasted of Civilization, we certainly would never go back. But what I wish we could find out is what they, the Aliens, did some millions of years ago to spark their own Civilization. What was it that finally made them all work together, instead of doing what is so much more easy – to play “Last Man Standing Gets to Be Happy”. What makes living beings love one another instead of hording food and collecting guns?
However, some Barbarism is in fact intentional. Institutions set up to Prevent the establishment of Civilized Institutions are in fact Barbarian. Much of Western Liberal Democracy is Barbaric, when one evaluates it for ultimate effect. Designed to strip most of the people of their share of wealth in order to concentrate all measures of value to the top few percent of the population, then providing for police and armies to control or to eventually murder off the greater part of the populations when they should go into rebellion… such is a conscious and intentional Barbarism. In America it is perfected, by making it a matter of Public Policy to deprive most of the people of Health Care, disease is given a free hand to sweep away unwanted Population Densities.
Yes, it does seem paradoxical, that ‘Democracy’ is used as a weapon against the people. We have only to notice that it is the Wealthiest and Most Selfish segments of the Population that are so espoused to Democracy – and we can conclude that this is because they have found a way to utterly control it and exploit it. How? Well, although the People do in fact vote, it is the Wealthy Controlling Classes that decide who it is that runs for office. Yes, there are Left Wings and Right Wings, but as I heard it recently described, they are all the wings of the Same Old Bird. I would trust Democracy so much more if the classes most engaged in advancing the Cause of Barbarism Exploitation were not so unequivocally in support of Democracy and for its spread to all of the World.
Indeed, to be cynical about it, perhaps it is their wish to impose a World Wide Democracy in order to weaken all traditional Institutions of Civilization where they had ever managed to take hold.
Why would anybody prefer Barbarism? Well, sorry to say, Barbarism is the Deal with the Devil. When Barbarism is able to exert itself, to eliminate the burden of high population densities, then the results for the few survivors can be rather appealing… for a generation or two until population pressures re-exert themselves. But at the close of major plagues or major wars, land opens up and labor becomes dear – everyone makes out like a bandit – Cheap Land and High Wages. Yes, the nine out of ten people who die wouldn’t like the deal they got, but they aren’t alive to complain. History only records the delight of the Survivors who find so much stuff to pick up and take home for themselves. Cities of Gold have collapsed in ruin, but the survivors, previously of the lowest classes, couldn’t be happier but to rummage through the rubble and grab a few candlesticks. The Glory of Freedom!
So, Barbarism does have an appeal… for the optimistic who take it for granted that they will be the one’s who will survive… sometimes hedging their bets with cellars full of horded food, guns and ammo. Then, additionally, these glorious moments of Barbarism are historically troubling, as they are recorded as something of Golden Ages. It is supposed that these People were Happy not because they were lucky survivors, but because they were Freedom Loving Warriors or some such blithering nonsense. Look at America today – their collective prosperity an accident of discovering a virtually empty continent at a time when Europe was destroying itself with a series of suicidal wars, but if you ask any American, they insist that America is great because they are such dedicated Barbarians – Freedom Loving People who will do anything to stifle institutions that would allow for Civilized levels of Population Density. Happy entirely by accident, they think it is because their Selfishness was some kind of a Virtue.
But the Problem with Barbarism’s Deal with the Devil, is that in the absence of any intentional institution for either providing for Population or for keeping Population within certain prescribed limits, then the cycle of massive de-population is bound to re-occur, not really requiring more than 4 or 5 generations… barely more than a hundred years. For instance, the Black Death carried away almost half the Europe’s Population, and while the surviving generation was somewhat left in shock, the next generation was ecstatically happy with their prosperity. Things were so Free and Easy that what were left of Civilized Institutions were seen as obtrusive and senselessly unnecessary. Love of Freedom won over any sense of Security in Order. But it didn’t take more than 200 years before population was again at dangerous levels, and without the previous respect for Civilized Institutions that had once been able to support such levels. There occurred the Fall of Catholic Civilization and the wars and rebellions have not really stopped ever since – Europe has been using internal conflict to keep its populations at moderate levels, never reaching the levels of Asian Societies. When Western Propaganda thanks its Armed Forces for Freedom and Happiness, it is True, but in a sense much more sinister than I am sure is intended – the true sense is “Thank You for Killing Yourselves and Each Other to make more room for the rest of us”.
So, anyway, there are those who suppose that the World is coming to a major traumatic cataclysm of Apocalyptic proportions that will carry away the vaster part of the troubling population levels, and that after this huge purge, this vast cleansing, the elect few survivors will be Happy. Well, yes, they will be. But I tend to see this pessimistically. The process is entirely negative. With no new Civilized Institutions put in place to guide the subsequent growth, the same disasters can be expected again, and perhaps even worse, as the Happy Glories of a fleeting Barbarian Golden Age serve only to discredit and remove whatever had remained of Civilized Institutions.
.
It would be preferable to emplace Institutions for dealing with these uncomfortable levels of Population Density – planned economies, public health care, limiting child birth – putting the World on a strict budget. Nobody would really be happy, but everyone would live. Yes, hope could be planned for in the long term. By imposing a strict budget to limit new population increases, then more benefits could accrue as the overcrowded numbers decline over time in a controlled way. Or the political decision could be made to keep population always at a maximum… a dangerous balance on the razor’s edge. I think that China and India have met with the inevitable future of Civilization in that they have taken conscious and positive control of their population growths with various childbirth limiting programs.
But as reassuring it is to hope and believe for the best, unfortunately, the trajectory of decline toward War, Rebellion, Crime and Disease seems too steep to stop. There is not even the slightest hint of a move toward implementing Civilized Institutions. The Forces of Barbarism seem very much planted at the Helm, at least in West where the sworn Barbarians of Free Masonry have been calling all the shots for Centuries, even if somewhat below the Surface of Appearances. The East, while culturally and historically more inclined to adopt Civilized Institutions, will probably be unable to stand up to the West, which I suppose will not permit itself to die quietly, but will lash out at the rest of the World in a frenzy of Over-Powering Military Reaction. Then, if the East does survive better than the West, the appeal of Open Land and Scarcity of Labor will forestall any necessity for adopting Civilized Institutions, and the Cycle of Barbarism will re-emerge again, East or West.
In conclusion, Barbarism is so easy, and it’s Golden Ages occur again and again, everyone remembering the few Living, forgetting the many Dead, that there is never any great momentum established for putting in place Civilized Institutions. So, overall, I am rather pessimistic.
As a last word I should mention that the UFO Aliens captured at Roswell, New Mexico in the United States were purported to have written of their Civilization, some several million years old. Little has been hinted of their Civilization, and it is rumored that the primary reason why the United States denies the U.F.O. Aliens is because they suppose it necessary to deny and suppress any model or idea of that Civilization, which is not very similar to Liberal Democracy dominated by Corporate, Zionist and Gun Interests. (Besides, the Free Masons having done everything they could to discredit all of the World’s Civilizations, in order to install their own self serving Barbarism, that we could little expect them to allow the published detail of an Other Worldly Civilization, and particularly that of one that has succeeded so well and for so long.) But it’s been said that the U.F.O. Aliens deny that we Human Beings here on Earth have ever had even our first Civilization. As they said, if we would ever once tasted of Civilization, we certainly would never go back. But what I wish we could find out is what they, the Aliens, did some millions of years ago to spark their own Civilization. What was it that finally made them all work together, instead of doing what is so much more easy – to play “Last Man Standing Gets to Be Happy”. What makes living beings love one another instead of hording food and collecting guns?
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Creating a Better God
Perhaps the reason there are so many Atheists is because Atheism seems so plausible, that so many people see no clear signs of there being a God. But the real problem may be that they do not know what to look for, that their very conception of what God is or would be misleads them. They may not be looking in the right place, or they may not know what they are looking for, not realizing that they passed it over because they did not recognize it when they saw it, as in the expression “they would not know God if He were to bite them on the ass”. So we need to ask ourselves if there is another way of anticipating or visualizing God besides the traditional way. How might God be hiding from our expectations?
Well, first let’s look at our traditional way of conceiving of God? In the West God is envisioned as a collection of all positive absolutes – All Powerful, All Loving, All Knowing, and All Decisive, the Grand Being behind the notion that everything has meaning, and that everything has a purpose, and all is as it should be. Because of God we live in the ‘best of all possible world’s’. Rich people use such a notion of God to justify and entrench their privileges, while also concluding that God must have His reasons for hating the poor. The Poor themselves more often than not suppose God is either testing them with challenges or building their character by providing them with a kind of resistance training.
Well, such a God must be up against a huge barrage of constraints, because it seems clear enough to most people, that we live in a very complexly troubled world. If some people do seem blessed, then we can hardly determine any good reason for it, and those who are apparently under some curse, well, they too may seem all too blameless. And it had never been much better but had probably been even worse most of the time – an odd condition for the Best of All Possible World’s under the dominion of a Wise and Good God. So what is God’s problem?
First, let’s become clearer on what we suppose is the nature of God. Many spiritualist traditions envision God as ethereal and spiritual, and this in contradistinction to the idea that the World is material and basic. The early Christians, and the Greek Philosophers with their Platonic notions of the Logos, actually agreed on this issue, of God being Ethereal – made of the substance of thought and dreams.
Here is where we should apply some common sense. Here we need to ask ourselves what influences what. Does Thought influence Matter or does Matter influence Thought? Well, isn’t it easier to suppose that massive structures of gravitational electromagnetic clusters could more easily influence the vague nebulous Mists of the Ethereal then to believe that such insubstantial wisps of quasi-nothingness could affect the massive solids of the World? It seems likely we have been looking at this Theology completely backwards, seeing cause and effect in mirror image, supposing that the Spiritual was the Creative Element, indeed, that God, the Core of Spirit, was the Ultimate Creator, when, quite actually, the Spiritual has been the created product of the Material. It’s the substance which influences the spiritual and not the other way around. We’ve had it backwards.
I once read an amusing, if blasphemous, anecdote that goes back to perhaps the earliest Civilization, the Sumerian. It seems that one citizen had discerned a contradiction between all of the sacrifices to the Gods being asked of the public and the subservience to the Gods that was also being demanded. So there written on one of the small clay tablets was the thought that if God had to beg his food like a dog, then God should be whipped like a dog, and taught to do tricks for his dinner just like any other dog. Perhaps there is some truth here, although our Mesopotamian Friend hardly had presented much of an expansive argument. But lets stay with the metaphor for awhile, that is, comparing God with Man’s Best Friend. What if God really needed to be trained, cultivated, nourished – not being seen at his best unless treated as a cherished pet and given a certain degree of discipline and character formation?
Yes, God may consist in the Ethereal and Spiritual, but all of the real power may be with the Material, and if God ever attains to any significant power it is because this power had been imparted by the Material World. Indeed, the Vedas, the World’s most ancient Religious Literature, states clearly that God’s Power comes from Sacrifice – that it is Man that energizes God and not the other way around.
This may help us to better understand Religious History and our own Religious Current Events. When a Civilization can get together in a common prayer and a common religious Vision, then, in a sense, God becomes Solidified. With so many people thinking similarly, the Collective Consciousness crystallizes a God of the People’s Moral Consensus. God is a Collective Phenomena.
What happens when Barbarism and Individualism reigns? What happens when education breaks down and all unifying culture collapses in skepticism or just plain ignorance? Well, if there ever had been a God, then that God simply evaporates. Yes, each individual may have his own Religion and his own God, but without the Multiplier Effect of Common Communal Belief, then each person’s separate God is too small to matter. It is like a hundred thousand batteries that if wired together would out-surge a bolt of lightening bolt, but just one little single cell battery isn’t enough to run a toy.
But in Ages and Cultures that had a great degree of Religious Unity and Intensity, then a certain amount of Power was communicated into the Spirit World and that power became manifested in Saints, that found a way to tap into it, and Spiritual Apparitions which are probably to be best compared to condensations of Ethereal Substance or Flash Points. Or, if we are hesitant to attribute any quality of Matter to the Spirit, then we can limit these manifestations of Spirit to being phenomena of Consciousness – that these Divine Apparitions may consist in the quasi-substance of what we would otherwise call Delusion – the Substance of Dreams, of Visions, of Thought Itself.
Yes, yes, yes… it is objected that if something is not Material then it is not real. Science equates delusional phenomena with random and arbitrary nothingness. But if a phenomena contains elements of coherent order, substantial or not, then that very coherent order is in itself something of meaning which needs to be respected and understood. We need to have more respect for such Objective Experience, and so if a thousand people all have the very same experience, even if only subjective, even if dismissible as just a Common Delusion, or Collective Hallucination, then the reality of that consensus needs to be valued and appreciated, and if Science has not yet found the tools to quantify such a phenomena, then that is an indictment of Science, and not Religion. After all, Galileo would be the first condemn as silly any person who maintained that Empirical Phenomena was to be discounted only because an investigating Philosopher was unable to assemble a means of verification. Galileo invented the Telescope to make his Research quantifiably possible. Today’s scientists need to stop their endless bitching and invent the Telescope of the Spirit. So much consensus regarding empirical subjective experience cannot be random and of nothing.
But if we accept that the Spiritual is secondary to the Material then there are serious Theological consequences to such thinking. First, we can decide that the Polytheists were right, or more right then the Monotheists. The Truth is that there probably was a contest between competing Gods, between the Spiritual Visions of competing peoples. The Greatest God would be that God with the greatest total sum of collective intensity supporting it. Yes, at the very deepest level where ‘God’ becomes thoughtless and unmodified, consisting in pure unelaborated spirit, then ‘God’ would have a certain sameness. But also, at this level, God would be providentially useless, or worse than useless, as in the Buddhist sense of encouraging nihilism by rewarding the pursuit of absolutely nothing at all. Reject the World, and abandon Society and live in the Bliss of Pure Meditation on God. It is the Intellectual equivalent to drug abuse, or even continuous sex abuse. It leads to some people indulging in Nothingness while other people must take up the slack and work that much harder. Its simply not fair. Oh, which is the reason why the East argues about Karma… that the Lazy have earned the right to be lazy and that those who work hard for society must have a lot of bad Karma. Again, we see how the Rich and the Privileged are adept at finding arguments to justify themselves. We must remember that our Mesopotamian friend was right about the God he compared to a dog, that it is not worth feeding unless we can get some tricks out of Him. God must be useful. Religion must be useful. And People should be useful.
The same way in which particles of iron dust are lined up and made coherent by the invisible influence of a magnet, so we can envision so many individual people being made into a Coherent Civilization by means of God and Religion. In this sense we are comparing God to Electricity, and with this acknowledgement and qualification, that we are ourselves responsible for having to generate the Power and even the Form of God by our own efforts and moral intuitions. The more we can all agree in this Moral Vision, the more coherent our Collective God will be. The Ultimate Quality of our Civilization depends upon our Collective Vision of God.
Well, first let’s look at our traditional way of conceiving of God? In the West God is envisioned as a collection of all positive absolutes – All Powerful, All Loving, All Knowing, and All Decisive, the Grand Being behind the notion that everything has meaning, and that everything has a purpose, and all is as it should be. Because of God we live in the ‘best of all possible world’s’. Rich people use such a notion of God to justify and entrench their privileges, while also concluding that God must have His reasons for hating the poor. The Poor themselves more often than not suppose God is either testing them with challenges or building their character by providing them with a kind of resistance training.
Well, such a God must be up against a huge barrage of constraints, because it seems clear enough to most people, that we live in a very complexly troubled world. If some people do seem blessed, then we can hardly determine any good reason for it, and those who are apparently under some curse, well, they too may seem all too blameless. And it had never been much better but had probably been even worse most of the time – an odd condition for the Best of All Possible World’s under the dominion of a Wise and Good God. So what is God’s problem?
First, let’s become clearer on what we suppose is the nature of God. Many spiritualist traditions envision God as ethereal and spiritual, and this in contradistinction to the idea that the World is material and basic. The early Christians, and the Greek Philosophers with their Platonic notions of the Logos, actually agreed on this issue, of God being Ethereal – made of the substance of thought and dreams.
Here is where we should apply some common sense. Here we need to ask ourselves what influences what. Does Thought influence Matter or does Matter influence Thought? Well, isn’t it easier to suppose that massive structures of gravitational electromagnetic clusters could more easily influence the vague nebulous Mists of the Ethereal then to believe that such insubstantial wisps of quasi-nothingness could affect the massive solids of the World? It seems likely we have been looking at this Theology completely backwards, seeing cause and effect in mirror image, supposing that the Spiritual was the Creative Element, indeed, that God, the Core of Spirit, was the Ultimate Creator, when, quite actually, the Spiritual has been the created product of the Material. It’s the substance which influences the spiritual and not the other way around. We’ve had it backwards.
I once read an amusing, if blasphemous, anecdote that goes back to perhaps the earliest Civilization, the Sumerian. It seems that one citizen had discerned a contradiction between all of the sacrifices to the Gods being asked of the public and the subservience to the Gods that was also being demanded. So there written on one of the small clay tablets was the thought that if God had to beg his food like a dog, then God should be whipped like a dog, and taught to do tricks for his dinner just like any other dog. Perhaps there is some truth here, although our Mesopotamian Friend hardly had presented much of an expansive argument. But lets stay with the metaphor for awhile, that is, comparing God with Man’s Best Friend. What if God really needed to be trained, cultivated, nourished – not being seen at his best unless treated as a cherished pet and given a certain degree of discipline and character formation?
Yes, God may consist in the Ethereal and Spiritual, but all of the real power may be with the Material, and if God ever attains to any significant power it is because this power had been imparted by the Material World. Indeed, the Vedas, the World’s most ancient Religious Literature, states clearly that God’s Power comes from Sacrifice – that it is Man that energizes God and not the other way around.
This may help us to better understand Religious History and our own Religious Current Events. When a Civilization can get together in a common prayer and a common religious Vision, then, in a sense, God becomes Solidified. With so many people thinking similarly, the Collective Consciousness crystallizes a God of the People’s Moral Consensus. God is a Collective Phenomena.
What happens when Barbarism and Individualism reigns? What happens when education breaks down and all unifying culture collapses in skepticism or just plain ignorance? Well, if there ever had been a God, then that God simply evaporates. Yes, each individual may have his own Religion and his own God, but without the Multiplier Effect of Common Communal Belief, then each person’s separate God is too small to matter. It is like a hundred thousand batteries that if wired together would out-surge a bolt of lightening bolt, but just one little single cell battery isn’t enough to run a toy.
But in Ages and Cultures that had a great degree of Religious Unity and Intensity, then a certain amount of Power was communicated into the Spirit World and that power became manifested in Saints, that found a way to tap into it, and Spiritual Apparitions which are probably to be best compared to condensations of Ethereal Substance or Flash Points. Or, if we are hesitant to attribute any quality of Matter to the Spirit, then we can limit these manifestations of Spirit to being phenomena of Consciousness – that these Divine Apparitions may consist in the quasi-substance of what we would otherwise call Delusion – the Substance of Dreams, of Visions, of Thought Itself.
Yes, yes, yes… it is objected that if something is not Material then it is not real. Science equates delusional phenomena with random and arbitrary nothingness. But if a phenomena contains elements of coherent order, substantial or not, then that very coherent order is in itself something of meaning which needs to be respected and understood. We need to have more respect for such Objective Experience, and so if a thousand people all have the very same experience, even if only subjective, even if dismissible as just a Common Delusion, or Collective Hallucination, then the reality of that consensus needs to be valued and appreciated, and if Science has not yet found the tools to quantify such a phenomena, then that is an indictment of Science, and not Religion. After all, Galileo would be the first condemn as silly any person who maintained that Empirical Phenomena was to be discounted only because an investigating Philosopher was unable to assemble a means of verification. Galileo invented the Telescope to make his Research quantifiably possible. Today’s scientists need to stop their endless bitching and invent the Telescope of the Spirit. So much consensus regarding empirical subjective experience cannot be random and of nothing.
But if we accept that the Spiritual is secondary to the Material then there are serious Theological consequences to such thinking. First, we can decide that the Polytheists were right, or more right then the Monotheists. The Truth is that there probably was a contest between competing Gods, between the Spiritual Visions of competing peoples. The Greatest God would be that God with the greatest total sum of collective intensity supporting it. Yes, at the very deepest level where ‘God’ becomes thoughtless and unmodified, consisting in pure unelaborated spirit, then ‘God’ would have a certain sameness. But also, at this level, God would be providentially useless, or worse than useless, as in the Buddhist sense of encouraging nihilism by rewarding the pursuit of absolutely nothing at all. Reject the World, and abandon Society and live in the Bliss of Pure Meditation on God. It is the Intellectual equivalent to drug abuse, or even continuous sex abuse. It leads to some people indulging in Nothingness while other people must take up the slack and work that much harder. Its simply not fair. Oh, which is the reason why the East argues about Karma… that the Lazy have earned the right to be lazy and that those who work hard for society must have a lot of bad Karma. Again, we see how the Rich and the Privileged are adept at finding arguments to justify themselves. We must remember that our Mesopotamian friend was right about the God he compared to a dog, that it is not worth feeding unless we can get some tricks out of Him. God must be useful. Religion must be useful. And People should be useful.
The same way in which particles of iron dust are lined up and made coherent by the invisible influence of a magnet, so we can envision so many individual people being made into a Coherent Civilization by means of God and Religion. In this sense we are comparing God to Electricity, and with this acknowledgement and qualification, that we are ourselves responsible for having to generate the Power and even the Form of God by our own efforts and moral intuitions. The more we can all agree in this Moral Vision, the more coherent our Collective God will be. The Ultimate Quality of our Civilization depends upon our Collective Vision of God.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
China: Moving Toward Civilization
Recently I have been reading books and articles highly critical of China. It makes me think two things: the first is that maybe writers should be required to take some standardized intelligence test, and their score posted upon the cover of their book or on the heading of their article, so that the reader can see straight away whether or not to give the material any serious credence. After all, if the author is stupid, then what can we really expect from his book? Secondly, who is promoting the book and its publication? We may have situations where a really intelligent author simply designs a book to meet certain ideological specifications, agreeing with his own arguments only in the sense that he knows they deliver the propaganda he was paid to provide.
“In the Jaws of the Dragon” by Eamonn Fingleton is a book where we can both note a deficiency of intelligence and an ideological bias. In one case he apologizes for ancient Confucianism by calling it ‘benign’ but says that Modern China has subverted Confucianism because now they are ‘authoritarian’. Duh. The author here is either ideological or stupid, and probably both. Why should authoritarianism be excluded from the possibility of being benign? The author is assuming that those who propose Authoritarian Systems simply intend to be mean for the purpose of simply being mean. We should allow almost anybody the charity of supposing that they have good intentions. Even Adam Smith, in proposing the most extreme selfish motivations of Capitalism, justified them in arguing that the ends would work out better for everybody. So the argument against Capitalism and Adam Smith should go not against his intentions, that Goodness may come, paradoxically enough, from Selfishness, but that there is a Better Way to achieve a Better End.
Western Capitalists, when Russia had been the Big Enemy, used to brag that Capitalism proved itself by its success, and that Socialism was a failure simply in its failure to compete. Well, we won’t go into the facts that the West had cut off Russia from access to raw materials that made success possible. After all, part of the argument for Capitalism was that, in business, any means of competition is ‘fair’, as in ‘alls fair in love and war’. Western Capitalists had never been shy about comparing business strategies to War… indeed, it makes them feel manly to toss out such comparisons. But now that Socialism is showing all of the Competitive Strengths, growing at an average of 10% a year while Western Capitalism is struggling not to contract, now we are finding the Capitalists complain of unfairness, and suddenly discovering that there is more to life than Profit Margins. I almost laughed when I found this arch conservative, this Republican, speak of fair wages and working conditions. This is from a Capitalist Ideology that from its very beginnings had proposed Subsistence Wages, and in its practices has always been hostile to the Collective Bargaining of Unions or the Political Determination of Wages through Legislation. Well, to be fair, I guess one could construe his argument to mean, that if the West has to deal with such awful annoyances as Organized Labor and Labor Politics, then so should the Chinese.
However, to be fair to the Chinese, this whole idea of Competition was not their idea. Remember, the Chinese may have been paying attention while the West was gloating over their Victory over Communism and Capitalism’s obvious ascendancy over Socialism. It is just barely conceivable that the Chinese may have supposed that they would be the West’s next target.
No, I am not supposing that the Chinese had at any point decided to do anything unscrupulous. Indeed, all they really needed to do was to stay true to some certain points of Civilized common sense. And this brings us to the basic differences between East and West, between what is Civilized and what is essentially Barbarian. Civilization creates institutions which promote organization, unity, sharing, community. Civilized Institutions aim at minimizing internal conflicts, and even external conflicts. Therefore, as it should be intuitively clear, Civilization can support much higher population densities. Yes, there is the problem that not everybody in a crowded Civilization can be ecstatically happy all the time. Living with people and getting along with people requires certain compromises, and Civilized People learn to deal with a certain level of frustration with civilized poise and their good graces – a product of being raised in a Civilized Culture and having a proper Education.
Barbarism, though, when examined only in part, can be much more fun. You see, Barbarism depends upon a very light density of population – wide open spaces, cheap land, and a plentitude of resources. So, of course, given these conditions the Barbarians can speak of their idyllic life style – their Freedoms. But the Barbarians never go into much detail about how they manage to assure these thin levels of Population. The Americans enjoy their success NOT through any advantage in ideology, democracy or capitalism, but only because they landed on a practically empty continent. And Western Europe – we know how they keep population down. War, War, War. Adam Smith didn’t mention it, but perhaps he thought he did not need to. You see, in the absence of Civilized Institutions and Civilized Cultural Expectations, War will happen almost automatically, as soon as that certain line is crossed in Population Density that separates a Society’s level of Barbarism from the Level of Civilization that might have saved it. So, yes, Barbarism IS happier, but the catch is, that Barbarians keep their happiness by lashing out and killing all who would infringe upon their Happiness. So it is that the survivors of Barbarism are happy, and nobody factors the victims into the equation. While Civilization may sometimes include a certain degree of frustration, while people must compromise to live side by side with other people, at least it does not depend upon the fundamental Horror of having to base its proffered happiness on a tacit policy of Kill Kill Kill.
Oh, and about Tibet. Honestly, it is as though nobody is thinking. The United States has seen the benefits of Unification. Even Europe is demonstrating that it finally is beginning to understand the benefits of Unification. But all these same people are willing to riot in the streets for the rights of Tibetan People to exercise their hate campaign against Ethnic Chinese. What is their point? Do we seriously want a World in which every little Ethnic Minority is at constant war with all of its neighbors? Or do we eventually want to arrive at a One World Community, where we each see that we have more in common than what is different between us. And we will not get there by rioting against broader political jurisdictions. After all, the Chinese have brought a fairer rule to Tibet, and have even reduced the tax burden for the typical Tibetan, when it is considered how much the lazy monks and Lamas extracted from the Tibetan People they held as effective chattel. Looking at the current rioting in Tibet we can suppose it is propelled only by those who are funded by Western Agitators who suppose their advantage would be in once again imposing their own taxes for their own personal benefit. The West speaks of Freedom, but here it is simply the freedom of predators to stalk and kill their prey. And this brings to mind the Dalai Lama, probably a stupid man who has his books written for him by Western Ideologues – a warm and fuzzy Buddhism, not in keeping at all with the rough and tumble Tantric Buddhism which scholarship tells us abides in Tibet – a mix of sex and sorcery spells all to be expected from a bunch of boys housed together at the public’s expense. Yes, we all might have hoped more from any variety of Buddhism, but as we see the Actions and Behavior of Buddhism, in Tibet, in Nepal, and now from city to city throughout the World, Buddhism is just another name for Chaos, Hate and Violence. Buddhism really needs a Modern Awakening, and has to decide whether it is a force for Barbarism or for Civilization.
“In the Jaws of the Dragon” by Eamonn Fingleton is a book where we can both note a deficiency of intelligence and an ideological bias. In one case he apologizes for ancient Confucianism by calling it ‘benign’ but says that Modern China has subverted Confucianism because now they are ‘authoritarian’. Duh. The author here is either ideological or stupid, and probably both. Why should authoritarianism be excluded from the possibility of being benign? The author is assuming that those who propose Authoritarian Systems simply intend to be mean for the purpose of simply being mean. We should allow almost anybody the charity of supposing that they have good intentions. Even Adam Smith, in proposing the most extreme selfish motivations of Capitalism, justified them in arguing that the ends would work out better for everybody. So the argument against Capitalism and Adam Smith should go not against his intentions, that Goodness may come, paradoxically enough, from Selfishness, but that there is a Better Way to achieve a Better End.
Western Capitalists, when Russia had been the Big Enemy, used to brag that Capitalism proved itself by its success, and that Socialism was a failure simply in its failure to compete. Well, we won’t go into the facts that the West had cut off Russia from access to raw materials that made success possible. After all, part of the argument for Capitalism was that, in business, any means of competition is ‘fair’, as in ‘alls fair in love and war’. Western Capitalists had never been shy about comparing business strategies to War… indeed, it makes them feel manly to toss out such comparisons. But now that Socialism is showing all of the Competitive Strengths, growing at an average of 10% a year while Western Capitalism is struggling not to contract, now we are finding the Capitalists complain of unfairness, and suddenly discovering that there is more to life than Profit Margins. I almost laughed when I found this arch conservative, this Republican, speak of fair wages and working conditions. This is from a Capitalist Ideology that from its very beginnings had proposed Subsistence Wages, and in its practices has always been hostile to the Collective Bargaining of Unions or the Political Determination of Wages through Legislation. Well, to be fair, I guess one could construe his argument to mean, that if the West has to deal with such awful annoyances as Organized Labor and Labor Politics, then so should the Chinese.
However, to be fair to the Chinese, this whole idea of Competition was not their idea. Remember, the Chinese may have been paying attention while the West was gloating over their Victory over Communism and Capitalism’s obvious ascendancy over Socialism. It is just barely conceivable that the Chinese may have supposed that they would be the West’s next target.
No, I am not supposing that the Chinese had at any point decided to do anything unscrupulous. Indeed, all they really needed to do was to stay true to some certain points of Civilized common sense. And this brings us to the basic differences between East and West, between what is Civilized and what is essentially Barbarian. Civilization creates institutions which promote organization, unity, sharing, community. Civilized Institutions aim at minimizing internal conflicts, and even external conflicts. Therefore, as it should be intuitively clear, Civilization can support much higher population densities. Yes, there is the problem that not everybody in a crowded Civilization can be ecstatically happy all the time. Living with people and getting along with people requires certain compromises, and Civilized People learn to deal with a certain level of frustration with civilized poise and their good graces – a product of being raised in a Civilized Culture and having a proper Education.
Barbarism, though, when examined only in part, can be much more fun. You see, Barbarism depends upon a very light density of population – wide open spaces, cheap land, and a plentitude of resources. So, of course, given these conditions the Barbarians can speak of their idyllic life style – their Freedoms. But the Barbarians never go into much detail about how they manage to assure these thin levels of Population. The Americans enjoy their success NOT through any advantage in ideology, democracy or capitalism, but only because they landed on a practically empty continent. And Western Europe – we know how they keep population down. War, War, War. Adam Smith didn’t mention it, but perhaps he thought he did not need to. You see, in the absence of Civilized Institutions and Civilized Cultural Expectations, War will happen almost automatically, as soon as that certain line is crossed in Population Density that separates a Society’s level of Barbarism from the Level of Civilization that might have saved it. So, yes, Barbarism IS happier, but the catch is, that Barbarians keep their happiness by lashing out and killing all who would infringe upon their Happiness. So it is that the survivors of Barbarism are happy, and nobody factors the victims into the equation. While Civilization may sometimes include a certain degree of frustration, while people must compromise to live side by side with other people, at least it does not depend upon the fundamental Horror of having to base its proffered happiness on a tacit policy of Kill Kill Kill.
Oh, and about Tibet. Honestly, it is as though nobody is thinking. The United States has seen the benefits of Unification. Even Europe is demonstrating that it finally is beginning to understand the benefits of Unification. But all these same people are willing to riot in the streets for the rights of Tibetan People to exercise their hate campaign against Ethnic Chinese. What is their point? Do we seriously want a World in which every little Ethnic Minority is at constant war with all of its neighbors? Or do we eventually want to arrive at a One World Community, where we each see that we have more in common than what is different between us. And we will not get there by rioting against broader political jurisdictions. After all, the Chinese have brought a fairer rule to Tibet, and have even reduced the tax burden for the typical Tibetan, when it is considered how much the lazy monks and Lamas extracted from the Tibetan People they held as effective chattel. Looking at the current rioting in Tibet we can suppose it is propelled only by those who are funded by Western Agitators who suppose their advantage would be in once again imposing their own taxes for their own personal benefit. The West speaks of Freedom, but here it is simply the freedom of predators to stalk and kill their prey. And this brings to mind the Dalai Lama, probably a stupid man who has his books written for him by Western Ideologues – a warm and fuzzy Buddhism, not in keeping at all with the rough and tumble Tantric Buddhism which scholarship tells us abides in Tibet – a mix of sex and sorcery spells all to be expected from a bunch of boys housed together at the public’s expense. Yes, we all might have hoped more from any variety of Buddhism, but as we see the Actions and Behavior of Buddhism, in Tibet, in Nepal, and now from city to city throughout the World, Buddhism is just another name for Chaos, Hate and Violence. Buddhism really needs a Modern Awakening, and has to decide whether it is a force for Barbarism or for Civilization.
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