Sunday, August 19, 2012

Is Enlightenment Individual or Collective

I’ve noticed over the years that many or even most Spiritual Wannabees believe that Spirituality is entirely in the Self Help column of things, that is, that their Spiritual Goals are entirely up to themselves  and really bear no relationship to any outside Force or Condition, that is, that whether they are spiritually enlightened or not is entirely in their own hands. 

Yes, this is exactly in keeping with the now Globalized American Export of the ‘Rugged Individual Philosophy’ whereby we have the Idea that the Individual is Invincible, or at least the most important 1% are.   If that 1% Individual, who is born of the ‘right’ parents or who is scheming, ruthless, connected or devious enough to make the grade, wants to be Enlightened  and works for it really hard, and manages to destroy all of his competition, then, dagnabit (an American word that really isn’t a word, but a euphemism for various ‘cuss’ words), well, he DESERVES to be enlightened. 

However, let’s pump the brakes for a bit and take a quick look at Spirituality from its Traditional contexts.   If we remember Spirituality from the old literatures, before America conquered the World and imposed the New Way of Seeing Everything, then we can see that Spiritual Enlightenment implied something of a Meld and Partnership between the Individual and Something Higher… something VERY Higher, a God, or at least some very significant Universal Oneness, some Central Modal Point, some kind of Cosmic Consciousness that transcended the Self…the most important point being that the decision was not entirely up to the Individual, but was rather in the hands of the more Superior Being involved.   

So traditionally we have the view that God, or Whatever, decides whether we can be Enlightened or not.  Yes,  today we roll our eyes and wave off with our hands the idea that the Universe might have anything to do in the matter and assert that Enlightenment is, ‘dagnabit’, ours for the grabbing.  Well, it is understood that there are some stipulations, for instance ,the New Age Movement insists we can get absolutely nowhere unless we exercise the most proper Techniques, and they, entirely for our convenience,  certainly make the knowledge of them available to us… in outline form in their reasonably priced books, but for all the important details you should probably need to go to one of their weekend seminars, for about $700 dollars.   Not bad considering that it includes complimentary drinks at the hotel bar.   

Well, if this Modern American view of Spirituality is so correct, then, please, where are all the Spiritually Enlightened People?   It seems that Spiritually Enlightened People are like Unicorns – we here all about them but never see any.  

The Big Problem with this Non-Attainment of Spiritual Enlightenment by anybody might be because the Great Cosmic Consciousness has put some kind of a Hold on it.  I remember from years ago, this very old Zen Master in Japan was worried that nobody was attaining Satori anymore, and so he arranged in Japan a huge national workshop and convention that was to go on for weeks, that is, all the time it used to take to drive prepared Zen Monks into the Satori Zone.  It was a very big deal and all of the best Monks in Japan showed up for it.  Guess what?  The Placebo Effect was well in force and many Monks rolled on the floor in Blissful Response to all of the Scheduled goings on.  But the Old Man who organized it all questioned everybody and went over all of the results afterward in the clear light of day , and guess what?  It was all for nothing, except to find out that it seemed that all of the Traditional Techniques were now quite useless.  Nobody attained Satori.  

You know, well, we all know, that Collectively Speaking, the World has quite Rejected God, or the Cosmic Being, or whatever we want to call It.  We now, collectively, with far too few exceptions to matter, worship the Individual, like they do in America where everyone, or everyone that ‘matters’, is so successful.  And if we, collectively, thank God for anything, it is that God choses to reward people who put the most effort into advancing their own personal agendas, that is, we thank God for being a such a good Presbyterian .  We thank God that He finally came around and reconsidered and decided that Lucifer had been right all along.   

But what if God were a Moral God, and not this Satanic Construct created by the Modern World, and what if this Real Moral God looked at the prevailing wave of selfish greed and Individualism as some kind of vast plebiscite, a vote by humanity, between basic Good or basic  Evil, and since Humanity had voted for Evil, then He, the God of Goodness, decided that we should all be Collectively Rejected. 

We might now be in a situation where there really is no Enlightenment anymore.  Spirituality, as a Source Spring, has All been turned off.   We are a hateful selfish contemptible bunch of slimy worms staining the face of a planet that used to be clean and blue until we took it over and pushed it headlong into decadence and ruin.  The Grace of God is Gone.  We, collectively, no longer deserve it.  And there is nothing any individual can do about it.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

World War Three by Plague


I was reading my own Blog from several weeks ago, about the impending War between America and China, and thought to myself that if China acted first, by collapsing the American Economy by releasing its entire Reserve of Dollars into the Market and thus throwing the dollar into a hyper-inflation, then, well, America would probably respond militarily just out of an attitude of, well, sour grapes.  It would be messy for everyone with no clear victor.  But if, as I stated in that earlier Blog, America simply fabricated a Nuclear Provocation, and then completely destroyed China in something in and around 5 minutes, then America would end up being a clear Victor and with the rest of the World in smoking ashes, much as it was after World War Two, a Time which America still holds as being something its Golden Age, its Good Ol’ Days.  It is probable that America would like the same outcome for its next big war.   So, China should be worried.  Really worried.   Very worried.  

Chinese Strategists  would be looking for a First Punch option of their own that could destroy America without the consequence of a devastating reprisal in return.  Hmmmm.    A Biological Attack.  A Government Designed Plague, or ‘epidemic’ as we now call them.   Well, we are already mentally prepared for such a thing.  Look at all the concern there was a few years ago over the ‘Bird Flu’.   

A Designer Disease can be engineered in several different ways.  One can design the Vector or Virus, or whatever, to attack only a certain genetic type, for instance, people with blue eyes or who can roll their tongues.  Or they can be designed to miss people with certain genetic  types, that is, where the disease won’t be able to key into the genetic structures  of people with black hair and brown eyes.   Since there is no one particular racial type for Americans, having a genetic specific disease would probably not be the way to go in attacking America.  Also, since China does have such a wide distribution of genetics itself… they call themselves ‘Han’ but this is more in the order of a Cultural Designation then a truly Racial one… they are really too diverse to find some specific genetic marker for immunity which could save all their different sub-racial groups in China that wouldn’t also save a great many Americans, which would tend to tip the Chinese hand and reveal to America that there had been a specific genetically targeted attach and probably from China. I would be suspicious if none of the Chinese People residing in America acquired so much as a sniffle while the rest of the Population were, well, dying at such a rate that bodies wrapped in plain sheets or stuffed in garbage bags were stacking up along the streets  in piles too high to look over.   So, yes, the Chinese would have to make the terrible decision that all the ‘China Towns’ all over the world would have to suffer too.  Prices of War are morally expensive, aren’t they. 

So probably what the Chinese would do would be to design both a very deadly fast acting disease, very stable to protect against the possibility of its mutating and coming back to bite those who created it, and to create along with it a sure-fire anecdote, an immunity to the disease.  One thing they could do with this Immunity would be to simply determine China’s most popular edible treat or drink, and go to the production facilities and spike it with the Immunization.  Or on a broader and more organized scale, they could fabricate a Bird Flu scare of their own and completely immunize their Population.  But this would be a tricky strategy to actually pull off.  If the Chinese Flu threat looked too ‘real’ the International Health Organizations would pound down the doors and be too much a part of it, and such Organizations  could not really be turned away or boxed in without raising too much suspicion.  And so the Chinese Government would need to be perceived as ‘over-reacting’ to a minor threat when they went into producing Vaccines to cover their entire Population.   And then, when the Vaccines were given out, the Chinese could fabricate some very dangerous looking ‘side-effect’ casualty  numbers, indicating that one or two people out of a thousand had severe reactions to the Immunization and died horrible painful deaths.  In that way, the International Community would not exactly be clamoring for their own share of the Immunization Vaccine.  Then the Chinese could publish relatively low mortality figures from the Flu itself, making it look as though they had miscalculated  tremendously – making a Cure that was worse than the Disease itself.  Americans would be fooled because they love to think in terms of how stupid communists and socialists are and so a huge fabricated Communist blunder would come as no surprise.    

Then the Chinese could launch their attack.  We’ve seen all the movies.  Just take the Disease to the airports.  The best time would be when all the colleges and universities let out on vacation.  It presents the largest wave of Transcontinental Travel.   When everyone in the World started getting sick, China could allay suspicion by publishing large casualty reports of its own, and ordering for itself a General Stay At Home Quarantine, thereby even the Chinese People themselves would think that there was a huge Epidemic, but if they all stayed at home, they wouldn’t see that anybody was actually getting sick.  Tweets and the Internet would stay relatively quiet.  As the diseased progressed through the rest of the World, the Chinese could have a discrete door to door Relief Campaign, starting from the Top and going down to the Bottom, to take people food and water and the news that ‘their particular district’ was free of the Plague and that it would be safe to come out and go back to work.   Only the Internet would be down, for unspecified  technical reasons.   To the Rest of the World, China could be reporting billions of deaths and major riots in every one of its Cities, just as in the Rest of the World.  No one would guess that the attack came from China.  Well, except for the Conspiracy Nuts.  

So, what should America and the rest of the World do?   As much as I sympathize with China’s desire to defend itself, still, I would be one of the first casualties of the Plague War, and would therefore put the rest of the World on alert to watch for any action of the Chinese Government to either officially immunize its Population, or even to arrange a situation where everyone in China was given something to eat or drink together.   As for myself, I am going out right now to find a bottle of Coke or Pepsi that was bottled in China.  

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World War Three by Plague, Part Two

 

It is nice that I am able to intrigue myself with what I write, and that is exactly what has happened.  You see, recently I had written a piece on what must be an impending War between America and China, offering several scenarios, and it seemed to me that America would get the better end of it, with America having a greater chance of a more total success  with a Military War than China could do with an Economic War.  Then I wrote a piece discussing that China could perhaps improve its own chances if it were to engage in a sneak Biological Attack, a War by Plague.

I did mention that the only way such a tactic could work is if America thought China too was suffering the same Plague as America, and, unfortunately, the rest of the World.  At the time I thought that all China would have to do is control Media and Communication going out of China and plant information indicating a sweeping epidemic whipping through their entire country.   Well, five minutes after I hit the ‘publish’ button, it occurred to me that America has satellites up in close earth orbit that could count the number of white hairs in Bin Laden’s beard through a rain cloud and a wad of mosquito netting.  And their Spy Drones can see even better  -- if you reach up and wave at one, then the Americans have your fingerprints.   So the Chinese Plan would have to be much more elaborate.  A Great Play would have to be performed all throughout China involving hundreds of thousands of active actors collaborating to fool not only the American Intelligence Analysts but also even the greatest number of their own Population.

Oh, and the Disease… I was thinking about that too.   Probably it would be best if it has a relatively long incubation period before going active.   But it would have to be very contagious while it was still dormant in regards to overt symptoms.   The primary idea is for the disease to spread and spread and spread, all over the World before the symptoms would actually manifest thus alerting all of the Disease Control Organization that could shut down airports and order quarantines and such.   In perfect terms, everyone in the World, except the majority of Chinese, would have to already have the Disease through contagion, before they knew they had it, that is, before the symptoms would ‘pop’ and the actual dying begin.

Anyway, once the disease started Symptomizing  World Wide, what would be observable in China would have to be closely similar to what could be observed in the rest of the World, excluding what could be accounted for in Cultural differences in the way peoples treat their Dead.    I can only guess, but my first instincts tell me that there would have to be a great deal of activity with ambulance vehicles and coroner vehicles.  Then traffic would seem to shut down to reflect people staying home from work and locking themselves safely behind doors.   I guess there would be signs of rioting in certain districts.   Mass burials involving large earth moving construction vehicles would be the rule, but some large fires of burning bodies would also take place.  After a while one could suppose that Emergency Crews would also begin to stay home, or die, and so the Ambulance and Coroner Vehicle activity would slow down, and bodies, wrapped in bedding, would begin to pile up in the streets.  The Chinese would have to be careful about how many ‘dead bodies’ were  shown to the satellites, because, after a certain point, living care givers, that is, the people who move bodies out to the street, well they would die off too and one could assume that dead bodies would  begin to pile up in the houses and apartments out of sight to America’s Eyes in the Sky.  

All of this would have to be play acted.  Also, while foreigners without communication assets could be ignored, those foreigners in Embassies with Satellite Communication would have to be seriously duped – elaborately conned.  One would have to spray the air with Decay to fool them into staying indoors.  People would have to be placed outside their doors shrieking in painful mourning or pretending to agonize in the throes of Death.   Communication coming out of the Embassies would have to reflect a belief that China was actually Plague Stricken like the rest of World.

Party Members would have to find a way of stockpiling fake ‘dead bodies’ in almost every house and dwelling in China, as the satellites would have to see these Dead Bodies coming out of the houses and apartments.  They could not just be delivered, as the satellites would immediately detect the ruse.

How long would the Chinese have to act out this Tremendous Play?  Well, that would depend upon the Death Rate of the Plague, that is, the Percent of Population Dead Per Day Rate.  The Chinese would have to make a guess as to when most of the American Intelligence Analysts would die off or have a great deal more on their minds than how to ‘connect the dots’ of what is coming out of China.   Those people looking at all that Satellite and Spy Drone information and interpreting it, well, after all, it is just a job for them, and eventually they would either stop coming to work, to protect themselves or to try to protect their own families, or they might die like everyone else.

So after a certain point the Chinese Party members could go door to door and tell people that ‘the disease has finally burned out’, and then they would be thrilled to see quite a complete reunion of friends and neighbors down in the streets.  Party members could slow down the natural conclusions, that there really was no Plague at all, not in China anyway, by claiming that other districts were hit ‘far worse’ and their own district escaped rather easy.

Now, could the Chinese put together such an elaborate ruse, involving maybe a hundred thousand active conspirators without creating any suspicion?  If one squealer could get the word out of stockpiling fake dead bodies to a foreign intelligence agent who would believe it, then, well, it would all be over, and the Americans would begin their own ruse – hitting Seoul South Korea, Tokyo Japan,  Okinawa, Guam, and Australia with Nuclear Weapons and blaming this Attack on China, and retaliating after just about 10 minutes with a Total Obliteration Strike of their own, turning China into one large Plate of Glass.  America would no longer have anything to fear from China, and at the same time be relieved from not only having to pay back all that Chinese Debt, but being relieved of paying back Japan and Korea too.  After seeing what happened to China, countries that owe America Money would be very careful about ever asking for it back.

And the Americans could say, to themselves, as only they would know the Truth, that in the Great Competition which is at the roots of Capitalism, there is more than one way to Win.


 

Sunday, August 5, 2012

The Impending U.S. Chinese World War


If you have been reading the Newspapers, what is left of them, and with what they are willing or allowed to tell us, then you will know that America is presently militarizing the Pacific, strengthening its bases in Korea, Japan, Guam and Australia.  And can anybody guess who  the Enemy is?  Yes, though it remains unspoken by all of the big American Policy Makers, for, after all, they would not want to tip them off, China is the intended Target.   But first we need to understand why.

Let us start with Richard Nixon who was cunning enough to look back into History and see that China and the Chinese People had always been more enamored with Money and Wealth  than with any kind of Collective Principles, and so he went out on the limb with the idea that the Chinese would abandon Communism soon enough if only he waved enough Dollars in their faces.  And it largely worked, so far anyway.  When American Markets opened up to them, and with American approval, all the other international markets, the Chinese forgot all about doing anything for themselves and their own People and went head long into becoming the Manufacturers for the World, and every Chinaman jumped into the race to become the Richest Man on Earth, all with the blessings of the Communist Government.  Somehow the Chinese Mind is still able to bend around that, yes, Inscrutable Paradox.

But I wonder whether Nixon really thought all of this through and was able to envision quite all of the consequences:  that America would outsource nearly all of their Manufacturing Capability to China, retaining only the vestiges of Assembly Lines that merely clamp together and install parts that are made in China.  Without Chinese Parts, America would have no manufacturing capability at all, as all their ‘Vertical’ industrial infrastructure was really shut down more than 25 years ago during the 1980’s. No American is still alive who remembers how to make anything, or they’re too old to go back to work.   Secondly, there is the huge Debt and the hugely off-kilter Trade Balance.   It is now reached Insane Proportions, and I will tell you why.  At the Beginning America paid Money for Manufactured Goods from China.  This money did not go to Chinese Workers, and one can hardly blame Communism for this, because in Capitalism the Workers only get a mere fraction of their value also.  The Profits went into what has become a huge Currency Reserve.   Now, to get value from a Currency Reserve, it must be lent out.  Americans understand this and take great advantage of it, so now they no longer PAY the Chinese anything for Chinese manufactured goods, but instead BORROW money from the Chinese Currency Reserves and get the same monetary value of Chinese Manufactured Goods for the mere promise that they will be paid for ‘someday’ and with some amount of Interest to make all of the waiting worth their while.  So effectively China is now working for Free.  American Prosperity continues on, well, for the richest One Percent anyway, as everyone else had lost their Jobs to Chinese Workers long ago,  while the Chinese, ironically enough,  Slave away for the thinner and Thinner Promise that America, who can no longer make anything to sell, will somehow miraculously find the wherewithal to pay back such a disproportionately huge debt.  I really can’t understand it.  Don’t the Chinese have a single Accountant or Insurance Actuary who can scan the Numbers and see what is absolutely obvious?   So we have come to an End which is no longer sustainable for either the Americans  or the Chinese, for which it is almost impossible to foresee any kind of peaceful resolution.   Well, Nixon wasn’t stupid and might have guessed all of this would happen, but probably figured he’d be dead long before he would ever have to answer for any of it. Even dead that old scoundrel is a fox.

You know, the effective reneging   on Debt has already started.  Look at American Monetary Policy where the Federal Reserve is virtually supplying American Banks with No Interest Loans.  In that kind of Banking Atmosphere we can only guess how much Interest American Banks are willing to give the Chinese for the loan of their hard earned dollars, when they can just simply use Dollars hot off the Federal Reserve’s Printing Presses.   This is why American Bonds have been lately Downgraded.  The Collapse of the American Economy has already been Signaled.  Now we only have to wait for the General Miasmic Stupidity to come out of its Trance of Denial, and for the first Worthless Coward of a Broker to yell SELL, to start that Final Stampede that will that will trample down everything that Globalization has built and bring on the next World Wide Dark Age.   

Anyway, things can unravel in two ways from here, depending on who wants to take the First Shot in what is probably an inevitable War.  America could catch wind that the Chinese and the rest of the Industrialized Developing World, following the Chinese Lead, are about to dump their dollar reserves, writing off their losses, and willing to stand by and watch America collapse into a hyper-inflation and then a Depression that would make the 1930’s look like Them Good Ol’ Days.  My guess is that America would then pre-emptively launch Nuclear Missiles into Seoul  South Korea, Tokyo Japan and Okinawa, Guam, Taiwan, and their own American Bases in Australia.  These Nuclear Detonations could then be blamed on China and in less than ten minutes afterward, with absolutely no deliberation or investigation, China could be Nuked from end to end and up and down.  America would not only be rid of China, but would also have its Debts with South Korea, Japan and Taiwan written off too.

Could America get away with such a thing?  Well, yes, because it would all be Top Secret.  The people who know would never be allowed to say anything.  America has gotten away with a lot of things that nobody ever knows about because of all this Top Secrecy.   And the People who pick up stray facts and make good guesses about what has happened are all dismissed out of hand as ‘Conspiracy Theorists’.  So, really, Government Condoned Secrecy has got to be the greatest invention for Abuse of Power ever created by any Evil Genius in the History of the World.  Oh, and probably we can’t even blame the American’s for it, because I think the English were doing it first.

The Second Way this Great 21st Century War could start is for the Chinese to get in the first move.  They could realize that supporting the American Dollar any further would simply be “throwing good money after bad” and they could launch a Blitz Buying Spree at the same time that they refuse to extend America any more credit, or even the right  to make Cash Purchases, declaring it a better use of American Cash to pay off the existing Debts.  When all of the Chinese Dollar Reserve is suddenly released into a huge multi-trillion dollar Buying Spree, of course International Prices in everything denominated in Dollars would utterly collapse.

Oh, has anybody read about the 21 Trillion Dollars in Hidden Accounts throughout the World, well, as soon as the Dollar would begin its Drop, those 21 Trillion Dollars would come out of the Walls and Mattresses in a New York Stock Exchange Minute and complete what the Chinese had started.  The World would be Swamped in cheap dollars.  It would get so bad that people would throw them away in disgust, and anybody who wanted to take the effort to sweep them up, could be a Millionaire.   
Well, of course, anybody making less than a Million Dollars an Hour would stop coming to work, and you know what they say, “Civilization is when people go to Work, Barbarism is when they don’t.”

Well, given these circumstances, would  the Americans see it in their interest to do anything besides simply laying down to die?  One would think it would take all of the remaining resources left at America’s disposal just to bring some kind of relief to the millions of American’s suddenly delivered into the most bleak Poverty.  But even here, what could be done?  America really has no Oil Reserves, or none that could last for more than a few weeks if handed over for general consumption.  We know that most would go to the Military to be pissed off uselessly.   So, given the utter despair of the situation, that and the realization that there would still be enough of the Rich and Powerful left over to want to exercise some last gasp of Spite, I can suppose that America would launch some Military Attack just for the sake of Vengeance.

But a Nuclear Attack would in these circumstances be too suspicious.  I think America would trot out its Chemical and Biological Arsenal and soak China North South East and West in Poison, and then play it to the World Media as though China was suddenly hit with some Unfortunate and Catastrophic Plague… the Bird Flu gone Viral, so to speak.   Again, America would take the opportunity to Wipe Out all of its other ‘Debt Partners’ too, this time also seeing an opportunity to take out India’s bustling Economy.

Would anybody ‘Win’ in such a War?  Well, no.  It would really be the end of World Civilization, or as close to Civilization as we had been able to get.  Everything built since the last Dark Age would all dissolve once again into complete Barbarism, and the World’s Population would likely drop to no more than 5% of what it is Today.

But the good news is that the Carbon Footprint of Humanity would likely drop down to acceptable levels  and there would no longer be an Impending Global Warming Catastrophe to worry about.  So, here we have it, a wonderfully modern and what we now already know to be a typical 21st Century resolution of things –  a “Damned if we Do and Damned if we Don’t” finish.   The World will come to a miserable end no matter what we do.

Well, there is One Earthly Hope, and that is that the International Community recognize what is about to happen between China and America, that would certainly bring them all down too,  and step in negotiate some kind of a resolution.   But Europe itself is on the verge of collapsing and so there is no Hope there.  I suppose that only leaves an Other Worldly Solution – that the Space Aliens be our Last Resort.  But maybe these Space Aliens, hovering in the Wings, so to speak, are in fact waiting for the Economic Collapse and Total War, seeing these Major Depopulating Events as an Opportunity to restore Ecological Balance, and only THEN will they step in and take measures to initiate the Re-Birth of Civilization.

I would hope the Space Aliens would jump in Sooner than Later, but I am also glad that it isn’t my decision to make, because my Feelings would go one way and my Better Sense would go another.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Why Do We Think Tibet is So Spiritual?

One would think that some perfect brand of Spirituality would help us to overcome life’s small difficulties.  Well, Tibet has had a relatively small difficulty, or at least the Powerful Elite Ruling Class of Tibet, the Lamas, have had a difficulty.  You see, prior to the Chinese taking over territorial jurisdiction of Tibet, the Lamas held sway, and really didn’t do much with their power except to tax the people so that the Lamas could live in luxury in their well- padded Monasteries and Temples.   When the Chinese ended the Lamas’ free ride, most of the Lamas ran away, telling their sad tale to foreigners and collecting money and political support for the violent overthrow of Chinese Rule.

 

It may be simplistic of me, but wouldn’t the Spiritual Approach had been to find an accommodation with China.  After all, China is perfectly willing to tolerate any Religion that equally tolerates China, that is, that respects the Sovereignty of the Chinese Government.  Catholicism is a prime example.  The Chinese even provide sponsorship for the Catholic Church in China, though withholding support from the outspokenly right-wing anti-communist Pope – the Pope that has dismantled Poverty Programs all around the World because they seem to him to lean too far to the Political Left.   Besides, the Vatican has too much to worry about regarding its role in the International Banking Scandals then to pay much attention to the Chinese Catholic Church which can get along fine enough without it.   Masses are conducted and the teachings of the Church are allowed to go forward.   The World is as it should be.

 

My God, but if the Catholics have enough Spirituality to come to a peaceful  Accommodation with the Chinese, then what is so wrong with the Tibetans?   Their Leadership brainwashes their poor monks into setting themselves on fire in order to provoke city-wide riots aimed at scandalizing Chinese Rule and destabilizing the Government.  Yes, the Chinese must react to the Riots to maintain the Public Peace, but clearly every provocation comes from the Tibetans, and probably at the instigation of the Delai Lama himself.  Either that, or the Tibetans have descended into chaos and nobody is any longer in charge.  Just the Essence of their Spiritual System is at play, and it reveals itself in Flames, Blood, and Murder.

 

What good is any Religion or Spiritual system that relies so much on violence to itself and violence to others?  Is that what the World needs – Peace through killing killing killing.  Yes, it’s a very ancient method to achieve Peace, and many Moderns still adhere to it – to kill every man woman and child enemy that exists in the World.  When every Enemy is Dead, then Peace will Reign.  And how has this Ancient Method of arriving at Peace worked for the World?  How is it working now for the Delai Lama?   Clearly we need a Spirituality that is less Militant and Violent, and more, well, Spiritual.

 

Maybe the first qualification of a Spiritual Leader is the ability to shake hands and talk across a table.    

Saturday, July 21, 2012

2012 Prophecy, The Pope Passes


Not only will the Pope pass away, but so will the Institution of the Pope.  We are now living under the last Pope in History.   Really, it is quite an old prophecy: Saint Malucky in the 11th Century had published a list of future Popes and it ends with Pope Benedict.  This Pope, aware of the ancient Prophecy, didn’t hesitate to take the name Benedict, and perhaps Popes have been supporting the prophetic list for centuries, always taking the next name on the list.  But the list does run out, and it runs out now.  

It is just a guess, but if big things were to happen during 2012, certainly the passing of the last pope would qualify.   But then there is the part about this pope being the very  last, that the Catholic Church will suddenly find the motivation and means of overturning such a long standing Tradition, which, divisive as it is in keeping all the other branches of the Catholic Church from coming together – the Russian and Greek Orthodox Churches, the Coptic Church, the Thomasian Catholic Church, and even the Church of England --  well even as a obviously rotten tradition it is still a tradition… we can call it an Institutional Habit that is hard to break…  and that rotten Tradition seems to be set in stone.  What possibly could be so powerful as to so disrupt it? 

Right now, the present Pope had been in power so long, not so much as the Pope, but as the Number One Executive Member of the Vatican who had personally hand-picked EVERY Cardinal for about the last 50 years now.  So EVERY Cardinal now alive, practically, is Conservative – a Rich Man’s Politically Right Wing Traditionalist Cardinal.  What could make these, well, Devils in Red  Caps, turn around and dismantle their machine which they are probably, at the moment, very proud of, or, at least, very much invested in?   With things are as they are this minute, if the Pope were to die today, we’d have another cold blooded poison snake Pope by tomorrow morning and business as usual by the evening.  

This is why I think there will be a COMPLEX of events at the end of 2012.  Yes, if the Aliens from Outer Space land and present a DETAILED ROADMAP FOR SUSTAINABLE CIVILIZATION that is entirely different from Capitalism and the Legal Bribery and Special Interest Pedalling that Democracy has become (and probably always has been), then I could anticipate a huge popular Uprising for Change.  But also a huge Global Economic Collapse might trigger about the same chain of events.   I would hope for the Aliens, but with every day in the News we hear of the Economy, everywhere, spiraling downward – cutbacks in government, and private company downsizing causing  less spending and lower payrolls, causing less trade, causing more companies to lose business, and more governments to collect less taxes, and so the Knife goes deeper and the Spiral swings Lower.   The Bottom of the Rotten Bucket has to fall through some time.  

But I’m willing the bet that this Pope has already seen his last Christmas…  

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Radical Islam vs. Radical Westernism


All of a sudden, in historical terms, the West became amazingly wealthy and powerful and then used its wealth and power to largely subjugate the rest of the World.  Some non-Western Nations were able to reach quickly, notably Japan, and assemble their own defenses against the aggression of the West, but unfortunately this required them to, well, Westernize, that is, to do to themselves what the West would have done to them…  to do a kind of, ‘if we cannot beat them, then we will join them’ kind of thing.  But most non-Western countries were quite overwhelmed, and were colonized to at least some significant extent or another.



Of course in many cases to be colonized by the West was not the worst of all possible things that might have happened to some of these cultures.  Where Societies had already effectively collapsed into a kind of malignant stagnation due to the ascendency of barbarian influences, where extremely small minorities of Clan or Tribe or Class had concentrated all the Wealth to themselves and allowed the remaining People to wallow in an inescapable poverty surrounded by a neglected and shattered social and economic infrastructure, then Westernism would have appeared to come as something of a Liberating Revolution, breaking the Concentration of Wealth at least for a generation or two, until the Western Grip of effective Barbarism would fully have time to ruin everything all over again.  But for a while there would be a much appreciated respite.



So many Peoples and Societies were at first quite mesmerized by the apparent optimism that came from the liberation from their old Ruling Classes and the subsequent freeing up of Wealth and Resources.   They looked to their new Western Masters as somehow shining examples for a New Way of Life.  And what was this new way of Life?  Well, I think it can be summed up as something of a Western Trident, that is a 3-pronged spear of attack or influence – Secularism, Industrialization, and Democracy.   Secularism would destroy or at least mitigate the moral concerns from Religion that would impede the Usury inherent in the Capitalism that would fund Industrialism.  Also, Seculariism, with its abandonment of Religious Principles, would also brush aside the moral reluctance to allow a few Owners in the Society to exploit for their own ends the lives of everybody else, that is, to condone entire societies being subjected to something that would become in time a merciless Wage Slavery.   The Next Influence, Industrialization would expand not only because of the drive of Greed inherent in Capitalism, but also because of the Necessities brought on by War, that is, all of the Wars that would almost be expected to arise between Nations that had abandoned Religious Principles in order to become so necessarily Secular, and in consequence taken on the Cold Reptilian Strategizing for Advantage that does not shun a War that they think can be easily enough Won.  And so every Secular Industrialized Nation became a military threat.   And so it was soon learned that more thoroughly industrialized Nations can make more cannons more quickly than lesser industrialized societies, and the least Industrialized Societies being the most vulnerable of all.    About Industrialization, there no longer seemed to be a Choice.   Then there is the Influence of Democracy.  Well, the propaganda about Democracy is convincing but only insomuch as it is misleading.  Democracy claims to Represent the People; however, when you really think about it, Democracy only represents the Winners, and of the Winners, it only really represents the very few people who picked, funded and supported the winning candidates, while everybody else is, well, in as much of a Dictatorship as they ever were.   Simply look at the West where Democracy has been established the longest.  Voter apathy is rampant, that is, many of the people subjected to democracy recognize that it is effectively useless to vote.  Of course there are exceptions, but only in elections were the Ruling Classes pay heavily to put out the most stirring and provocative campaigns of emotion-driven propaganda, and where nearly all of the Educated People within the Society conclude that the subsequent Large Voter Turnouts bring a far worse result then if people would have sensibly stayed home.   It has gotten so dysfunctional in the West that now all of the Conservative Parties actively restrict access to Higher Education and do everything in their power to sabotage Public Education at the lower and medium stages, even allowing the children to ‘drop out’ of school when it is almost a guaranteed certainty that they will thus come to no good, and all because  ‘Think Tank’ Consultants hired on by the Ruling Classes have pointed out time and time again that Educated People recognize and reject their Propaganda and so tend to vote against them, and that if they want to win Elections, then it is best to cultivate as much Idiocy and stupidity in their Societies as is in their power.   Of course this can’t be good for anybody but themselves, but, luckily for them, that is all they care about.



But, while the Western Trident of influences – Secularism, Industrialization, and Democracy, had their inherent dangers, still, there appeared a kind of glitter and utility about it all in these previously Collapsed and Stagnant Colonized Cultures,  and so in a large degree those Recovering Societies  began to enthusiastically push for the adoption of Western Ways and Western Institutions.



Remember, that much of the Progress these Colonized Societies had at first seen sourced not so much from the Virtues and Powers of Westernism, but simply as an effect of having been liberated from their Old Masters before their New Masters could have sufficient time to sufficiently consolidate their own solid and total Grip.    But time moved inexorably forward and now the Grip has tightened, and this brings us the topic of Radical Islam.



Yes, many of the Islamic Societies had become convinced believers in Westernism.  Their Societies were pulled into the Western Banking Systems, and their Markets had been opened up to cheap Western Goods.  So their own Banks dwindled and their own sources and means of production dried on the vine.  Even their own farmers ended up bankrupt while trying to compete against wheat and corn grown in Kansas, by subsidized corporate Farmers a half a world away.   The Grip had grown solid.  The New Masters, off in the West, are in place and the new strangle hold is much more firm than it ever had been  before.   And now that the Western Trident of Influences no longer Glitters for them, we can understand that there is bound to be a Reaction, a Resistance, an Opposition.  If it is no longer Good for them, then we must expect sensible people to do what sensible people do when they want to get rid of what seems Bad.   But not everybody is sensible.  In fact most people aren’t sensible in any significant scholarly degree at all, and this is what gives way to Radicalism, that is, people taking extremely simplistic approaches to achieve extreme Ends, even when their initial motivations and rationales had been to a large part understandable and sympathetic.   



Unemployment for those under 30 years of age in the Islamic World stands at about 70%.  Now, what are that many young men to do?  Well, in many parts of Islam, money flows from the Wealthiest Oil Soaked Nations to the poorer areas in the form of Scholarships to Religious Schools, and what is offered is Food and Religious Education.  Families are motivated to accept these Scholarships for their young men simply to relieve them from the load of another mouth to feed, and besides,  the Religious Education certainly won’t hurt, or this is what is assumed.   Oh, this is only in Regions still at peace.  Where Wars or Conflicts have broken out, then the Young Men are given Food if they agree to Fight.   Well, of course any young man would agree to Fight.  To turn down an invitation to Fight would be Cowardice, and not just in Their Culture, but in nearly every Culture on Earth a Young Man can hardly, not with any shred of Honor or Dignity left intact, turn down a good bloody Fight.   



You know, the same thing happens in the West.  Unemployment goes up, and more Young Men go into the Military.  And the ones that can’t get into the Military, because the Political Parties had been too successful in denying them an adequate Education, well they join the Criminal Gangs and fight for Territory where they can traffic drugs, control Prostitution and steal cars without bumping into each other and meeting with undue price competition.   Of course, in the West you have nearly nobody going off to Religious Schools.   The West thinks it less dangerous to foster a Criminal Society then Religiously Radicalized Society.  Well, we shouldn’t have to choose between two Evils, but I find it oddly paradoxical  when people think that Religion must necessarily be an ‘Evil’ influence.     



Islam is using the Religious Schools to resist Western Secularism.  Why?  Well, it is much harder for Capitalist Usury and Industrial Exploitation to take firm hold in a very morally conscious Religious Society.  And so Religious Education is pushed…. Well, for everybody but the girls.  In the West it is objected strenuously that girls are restricted from Education, and the Westerners are left to believe that these restrictions are in place out of motives of simple meanness.   Well, what Westerners fail to consider is that in a Society where unemployment among Males is already hovering at about 50%, and much higher for Young Men, that Educated Females would only be one more added factor in keeping the employment figures low and in depressing wages for those who do have jobs.   After all, although they shouldn’t have to, it is well known that women are willing to work for less.   While they complain of low wages, it never seems to make them quit.   Also, Islam isn’t blind and has seen what Female Education and Employment has done in the West.   A century ago, all throughout the Western World, in most families and even in most poor families, the Wages of the Man were sufficient for the entire upkeep of the Household.  But now Husband and Wife both need to work, and for what?  The same thing that the Man could do before now has to be done by Man and Woman both.  Where is the Advantage?   From One Wage Slave, Society now demands Two Wage Slaves.  Is that Progress?  It seems like a more complete Subjugation.   The West has grown blind to the problem, but it is understandable that the Islamic World should be terrified of the same consequences, and not be soothed by the comforting notion that they too will grow used to their yokes and shackles, seeing them instead as the necklaces and bracelets of a High Standard of Living.  



The West claims that educating and employing women liberates them and empowers them.  And this is true to the extent that they now have enough personal resources to be able to readily abandon their families, but we can understand that not everybody thinks this a good thing.   Oh, and is it really liberating to have young women leave their children and families at home in order to work long weeks for minimal wages.   We can say they have a Choice, but do they?  After Female Employment hits a certain level, Inflation takes hold and adjusts prices so that Families absolutely need to send the Women off to Work, when just the Man working is no longer enough.  This is what Islam is trying to preserve itself from – the Necessity of having to force all of their Women into Wage Slavery.



Some well-meaning Westerners, even Al Gore who is ordinarily liberal and thoughtful about things, advocates Education for Women because it lowers the Birth Rate.   He says it is because ‘empowered’ women just so happen to want to have less children.   Well, yes!  But why?   Might the reason be that their employment would be adversely effected by having babies?   Could it be that Employment leaves them too run down and fatigued to have any energy left for babies or child bearing?  Or the answer simply might be that with both Husband and Wife working, there is a friction created so that the couple no longer gets along well enough to be in the position, so to speak, to have babies.  You know, even in the West there was a relatively long period also where Men were objecting to the Wife going out to work.  They saw it in rather practical terms where once the Wife was at Work, then her Boss becomes her New effective ‘Husband’.    Indeed, if the Boss asks the Wife for anything, yes, anything, how was the Wife really able to refuse?   Isn’t the Boss the Boss?   Work was like another home, and there the Boss was, well, the Boss, and the Husband, off at home or another job,  was rendered insignificant and meaningless.   And were these concerns simple paranoia, or have there not been Millions of instances where wives have had affairs with their Bosses and Supervisors, thus being one of the leading causes for Marital Instability in the West.   Now, why would Islam intentionally take on the same hideous issues for itself?   And, yes, why was Al Gore too stupid to see it at these angles?  Oh, well, he and others may well be plotting for the eventual dissolution of the Institution of Marriage altogether, which might not be such a bad idea, but let’s leave that intriguing question for another paper, and remember that Islam may still be holding out hope for the Institution of Marriage, especially that part where Husbands can collect as many wives as they think they can afford.



So, we are at the point now where we should understand that Islam, while no longer seeing any advantages to Westernization, now wishes to resist its Influences.   And yes, sometimes the resistance is extreme and crazy, and, yes, provocative.   But a detached and objective comprehension of the problem might suggest that if we left Them alone, then they would leave us alone.   But this is where Western Radicalism comes into play.  Globalized Capitalism cannot spare any Resource, and sees the Territories of Islam in terms of the Material Resources that could be extracted.  Particularly Oil.  The thought that Islam would ever simply refuse to Sell, well, that is incomprehensible, and would certainly re-trigger the old Colonization response.  If they will not Sell it, then we will Take it.



Also, a very important point to remember is that Islam is obviously split.  Many Regimes are emphatically Secular and sympathetic to Westernization, or at least amenable to being subsidized by Western Dollars.  At least they were.  You know, it is rather confusing that the West is now abandoning the Secular Regimes that had previously been the most sympathetic to Western Influence.  The West is now promoting Democratic Takeovers, by mostly Sectarian and Tribal Political Factions that are almost guaranteed to be at each other’s throats.  Societies that had been held together by Religiously Impartial Secular Authoritarian Regimes will now descend into Civil War or at least the kind of Civil Unrest provoked by 51% Majorities tyrannizing over 49% Minorities.   But the Western withdraw of support for Authoritarian Secularism may have other, and even more severe consequences.



What if the only Way the quarrelling Sects and Tribes can stop their bickering is by focusing on a Common Enemy, and what if this Common Enemy becomes the West?  You know, Islam, if it were ever able to gather Focus and Consensus, could  destroy the West in less than a Business Week.  They would only have to announce the end of Foreign Sales of Petroleum.  Yes, they would lose all that income, but all that Income had only been leading the Way into Westernization.  If they decided to go back to Riding Camels, Herding Sheep, and Weaving Carpets, then they could simply wash their hands of all that Oil Money and not be any of the Worst off for it.   And the Western Economies, with their severe need for Oil, and with their Currencies being evaluated so much in relation to the Price of Oil, well, the Deprivation in Energy Resources and the Confusion done to the Currencies would be overwhelming.



Yes, the Western Militaries, particularly the United States would find excuse to Invade, but it would all need to take too long and the actual economies would be in too severe a state of collapse to recover even if the Oil Fields were reopened inside of a couple of years.  We saw how long it took the United States to reopen the Iraqi Oil fields, and that was with no really serious opposition.  If the United States were to provoke some serious native hostility, then the Oil Fields would never reopen, well, not unless the Unites States resorted to Genocide and repopulated Islam with Oil Workers from Texas.  Hmmm, I shouldn’t even think such a thing, because, well, it IS possible.  As I said before, Secularism has no moral inhibitions, and we have already seen that the United States is willing to justify Murder just for political expediency.  Not from Necessity or Survival, but just for Convenience.    From killing one person to eradicating entire populations is just a matter of degree.    The Willingness has already been demonstrated.



But maybe Islam only needs to be patient and wait (besides, everybody knows the Oil Fields in the East are almost Empty anyway).  Maybe the Collapse in the West has already begun and needs no further push from Islam.  The Real Level of Unemployment in the West is at about 20%.  In the United States they mask this by keeping a huge portion of the Population in Prison, and in Military Uniform.  But, still, a great many people are effectively ‘working’ outside of the System, mostly in Criminal Enterprises.  Where in Islam the Unemployed go off for Religious Schooling, in the West they become Mobsters and Smugglers, Prostitutes, Pimps or Car Thieves.    If there were to be a significant  Economic Crisis in the West, and with every passing day the News Reports make that seem more and more likely, well, it is very likely that the Strongest Elements remaining  in Society would be the Criminal Enterprises, and once they took over Control, it would be extremely difficult for the Legitimate Authorities and Owners to ever get it back again.



Of course it would be Bad everywhere.  The Population Centers of Islam depend on Commercial Food Deliveries just as much as any City in the West, perhaps more.   And all of that would grind to a halt.  Billions of people, everywhere, would die.     



But what would be left of Islam could go back to its Camels, and perhaps with that strong backbone of Religion, with any Religion being significantly better than no Religion at all, well, they could re-achieve something of a New Civilization, perhaps a re-flowering, after a couple hundred years, of the Golden Age of Islam that we had seen in the 11th Century.  But for the West I would guess a New Dark Ages would emerge.  The Rugged Individualism that has been fostered in the West, in the place of Religion, would translate into the most aggressive Barbarism.  The Self Made Men of our so-called Civilization, with its collapse, would simply turn into the biggest self-justifying Thieves and Bandits.  Everybody would be each other’s Worst Enemies.  Men, seeing each other as Rivals, would kill each other on sight.   If History is able to survive, then it will record that the Fall of the West was even more spectacular than its Rise,  and probably of far far greater duration.  

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Dying in a Dream is a Good Thing


If you have died or have faced death in a Dream – A Monster chasing you or some such thing – and you are something of a young adult, early twenties or about, then this dream is a Mortality Dream. You are being shown that you will die... some day... not very soon as the case usually is.  The Monster confronting you is your eventual Death.

But more importantly, in the dream context, you are being given the opportunity to confront Death in the Dream World, and then to realize that in the Dream World you are quite Un-Killable... well, almost... you can be ‘killed’, but if you can keep from waking up for about 20 seconds, you will find that you come back to "life".

So, don’t be too afraid of those Monsters.  My advice is to confront those Monsters and let them kill you, and then 'stay dead', that is, go down and lay there dead and don't get so emotional that you wake up prematurely and ruin the dream.  You have to lay there and just wait. After about 20 seconds it will begin to feel ridiculous and you will get up Alive... or something like the Living Dead, but you won’t be ‘gone’.



After such a dream you will have the realization that you cannot be killed in a dream. It is quite liberating. You might not at first believe it, but other dreams will soon occur to verify it -- you will be gunned down, hit by trains and buses... you will soon get the point that nothing in a dream can even scratch your little finger, well, that holds you back any.

I remember my first Mortality Dream... I and my young friends were being chased through this Amusement Park by a deadly Monster and we could simply not get much of a lead on the Thing, and so I finally decided to stop and just wait for it. I watched my friends run off ahead of me. I slowly turned back to face the Monster, and it surprised me what I saw. It was not the same Monster, but it had turned into the Prison Guard from the movie "Cool Hand Luke", the one with the Mirrored Sun Glasses and the high powered rifle. I asked him, "what are you going to do?" And he said, " I am going to shoot you dead". Anyway, quite matter of factly, and to my surprise I replied simply, "Okay, give me a second", and I turned around so he could shoot me without me having to watch it face to face. BOOM! and the rifle bullet smacked into the back of my head and drove me forward into the ground. Of course I was dead! So I laid there being dead for about 20 seconds until it started to seem ridiculous. I got up and looked around and saw a gas station on the other side of the street. I walked over and asked to use the Men's Room and when I went inside I walked up to the mirror over the sink and opened up my mouth wide, and I could see Sunlight coming through the back of my head... I had left the door open. Seeing the large hole in the back of my head I said, ironically enough, "Yeah, I'm dead alright.

the next night I was hit by a train. the night after that I was shot by feminist terrorists with a machine gun. Soon I got the point, that Dreams couldn't kill me. It is very liberating. it takes the Fear out of dreams.