How Religion Deals with Sin

No Civilization can long flourish without Religion.  Without Religion fortifying Morality, while people would still insist they knew the difference between right and wrong, as so many atheists today claim, they would simply find it convenient, time and time again, to violate Rightness, by cheating, or lying, or even stealing.  That is, when they knew they would not get caught.   This is a bigger problem for Atheists then they would choose to admit, for, after all, 5 minutes after they decide that there is no rational reason to believe in God, they would decide the same about Morality.   We can see the best example of this in the Moral Behaviors coming from Societies that had been longest steeped in Atheist and Materialist Doctrines, the Countries of the Former Soviet Union, now the homes and sources of the most ruthless Criminal Enterprises and Capitalist Corporations in the World.  You know, it is not impossible that they could take over the World, as it is difficult to imagine how they could possibly be stopped, given the West’s sad lack of commitment and effectiveness when it comes to fighting crime and business corruption.  

So it would take a strong and convincing Religious Indoctrination in order to raise up a People who not only believe in Morality, but would consistently act Morally, ignoring every convenient moment when they could benefit by some sly and secret sin.  

You would think such things would be obvious to those who deal with moral theology, the people who “think up” Religions, but apparently it isn’t.  Some Religions deal with Sin almost as badly as do the Atheists.  For instance, Protestant Christianity, based almost entirely on the Doctrines of Paul, whom I really consider to be the Anti-Christ.  From Paul, and paul’s apologists, we have the doctrine of Original Sin, that is, that people are by nature sinful and can do nothing with their own free will to change that and behave Morally.  Furthermore, Paul assigns the purpose of Christianity to be all wrapped up in forgiving Sins and distributing a Free Salvation.  Behavior is addressed only to dismiss its importance.  For instance, Paul describes the Sins of Jacob and goes on to conclude that God loved Jacob just fine despite all that unpleasantness.   This brings us to the Doctrine of Election and Predestination, where God simply loves some Souls while holding others as reprobate, for reasons only apparent to God Himself and having nothing to do with Moral Behavior or Righteousness.  What kind of Civilization could possibly run on such a set of dark and cynical doctrines?  Well, ours, for the last 400 years, but we can see what we are coming to with all of that.  

Yes, Catholicism started from this core of Paulist Error, but as the centuries progressed, certain Saints and Apparitions appeared and worked to introduce Corrections into Catholic Doctrine and Practice.  The Catholicism that was alive at the time of the Golden Age of Catholicism in Europe had largely forgotten Paul, except in certain pockets of Church Corruption where the Anti-Christ, that is, Paul, was still remembered and cherished.  We can see this in the complaints of Martin Luther, that famous first Protestant who nailed his challenges to the Church Door, the biggest one of which was that the Church no longer taught the doctrines of Paul.  It just shows what an idiot Martin Luther was in particular, and the Protestant Churches in general, that they considered that A ‘problem’.  

So, yes, the Protestants would teach Paul.  They did have a bit of a problem at first, since Paul was not Christ, and certain references in the Bible itself go toward minimizing Paul and holding him in suspicion.  So the Doctrine of holding the entire Bible as all equally being the Inspired “Word of God” was propounded.  In this way the Words of Paul could be allowed the same weight as the Words of Jesus Christ Himself.  But in practice the words of Jesus slipped into oblivion, and only the Words of Paul were ever quoted.   

All this has given us what we have today, which is Predatory Protestantism and Greed-as-a-Virtue Capitalism.  Many people would argue that it was all in fact a good thing.  Well, yes, the Protestants did need to abandon all Moral Concerns in order to murder all the Priests, Monks and Nuns that stood in their way from confiscating all Church Property in Captured Protestant Europe.  This “Free” Property, combined with the freeing up of so many resources, from having murdered so many Catholics, did bring about a kind of economic ‘boom’, for the survivors.  The opening up of America, an accident of History, did not hurt either.  But, in any case, it is really not an argument for Thievery that in many cases the Thieves do economically better than the people they victimize.  The problem goes toward Sustainability.  First the Thieves steal from innocent Victims, and then from each other, until they all turn on each other and it all collapses in a fiery and dismal End of Civilization, as we see swiftly approaching us today.    

I wish I could better defend Modern Catholicism, and while some of the Religious Orders are Moral Exemplars, the corrupt old Bishops are still as thoroughly paulist as their Protestant Colleagues, for instance, forgiving themselves over and over again for the worst instances of sexual misconduct and materialistic self-aggrandizing, and, from looking at their photos, of gluttony.  And even when the Church does speak on Morality, it is almost exclusively in terms of sexuality.  So caught up in the nasty and prurient that they forget there are such a things as a Social Morality.  And even then their Sexual Morality is utterly confused.  For instance, while it is disgusting and immoral for people who are not married “in the church”, as they say, to have sex, if they are married in the church, then all that grunting and humping becomes a virtual Religion Sacrament, oh, and just so long as nobody uses a condom or takes a pill.  Yes, it is okay to use thermometers and calendars to avoid pregnancy, because these methods are flawed enough to be ignored by Religious Moral Philosophy.  So the Church has decided that Carnality and the Pleasures of the Flesh are a good thing, as long as all that Stooping and Grunting is done in the Church, so to speak.  It reminds me of the Sacred Prostitutes in the Temples of Babylon – religion getting in the Sex Business is probably never a good idea.  

In reality, the role of Religion in regards to Sexuality should be to discourage too much excessive carnality, and to emphasize that people are generally happier the less they are obsessed with sex.  Then there are the considerations of Over Population, where we can see the benefits of encouraging Monastic Institutions that encourage life-long celibacy, and not looking too closely at how these ‘celibates’ pretend to accomplish such a physical impossibility.   Religion’s stance on Sexuality should always aim at the utmost discretion, ignoring it whenever at all possible.  

Islam has the same tunnel-vision focus on Sexual Morality.  They’ll kill a teenage girl for having had sex, while she was being forcefully raped you understand, and somehow it never puzzles them that they make sex a bigger sin then murder.  I am not sure as to Islamic Doctrine, but it would seem that they believe that Men have no control over their Sexual Conduct but assign all moral responsibility to those who Tempt and Seduce these poor helpless men, and so it is always the girls that get the blame.  So there really is not the same idea of Rape in Islam as in the West.  They can say the girl showed too much ankle and that whatever followed was largely inevitable.  Yes, in an isolated Society one could see that such a notion could be advanced and held as the truth, as long as all the men consistently acted in conformance to such low moral expectations, but with all the Western Influences crashing in upon them, they must be aware, from all the Movies and TV, that Western men are quite often confronted by women who are almost completely nude, and while it might capture their momentary interest, in most cases the men stay controlled and even polite.  Yes, not all, but certainly most.  We still have plenty of raping celebrity athletes to worry about, but thankfully they are in the minority, so to speak.   Now, if Western Men, that is most of them, can forebear acting like sexually depraved mad dogs, then why can’t Islamic Men see that they should expect the same of themselves and dismiss their ancient and tired belief in their own sexual helplessness.    

Oh, moving on, perhaps the biggest obstacle to a Religion dealing well with Morality is that Religions can hardly rise up in the Real World, overcoming enemies and dealing with practically impossible problems, without committing acts that would be huge moral embarrassments, and used in the Future as examples of why it would be Right to do Wrong.  For instance, Jesus got angry at a tree and blasted it, and then went to town and started flipping over shop stalls and flogging the merchants.  These are real problems for anybody who claims that Jesus was the Perfect Son of God, the Messiah.  Actually, this is why I think Jesus resigned from being the Messiah.  You know when Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane asked God to take the Cup from Him, well, most people think this means that Jesus was asking to be spared the Crucifixion, but what actually happed was Jesus was upset with Himself for his moral failures and asked God to let him resign, to give up being the Messiah.  And God consented, immediately withdrawing all of the Angelic Protections that had guarded him and kept him safe up until then.  He was dead within the day… well, almost dead.   The Romans took bribes to cut Jesus down early (it really takes days to kill people by Crucifixion… death is be dehydration and starvation) and history records Jesus moving onto Damascus and then points East.  He was identified by the scars on his palms.  

Jewish Tradition is loaded with any number of embarrassing moral faux pas.  For instance, Jacob was obviously Pre-Moral, a barbarian in the Age of Barbarism, not much better and not much worse than anybody else of his Time, but not fit to be a Moral Example in any Era much since the Rise of Zoroastrianism, the World’s first Moral Religion, about 3000 years ago. 

Islam suffers the worst from accidental bad examples.  Yes, if people would simply have given Mohamed his way with everything from the very start, then there would not have been such an extensive history of violence and moral relativity in the accidental history of Islam.  Then there is the History of Violence that follows throughout the Centuries for  Islam.  Everything Past is an example for Even More Violence.  Islamic Scholars have tried to deal with this, but for every single good Moral Scholar there are at least a thousand Ruthless Thugs who can use the Example of Violence to further their own self-interests.  Islamic Societies will always be inherently unstable as long as it remains so easy to call people to arms and violence for just about any reason at all.  And so it is for any Nation that has risen out of Violence and created a kind of cherished Justifiable Homicide from out of its History.  Every Modern wannabee Murderer wants to see himself as a Hero Revolutionary, like George Washington, and to think in terms where Mass Murder is called victory.  

It is difficult to imagine how a new major World Religion could form up without leaving some trail of unfortunate moral accidents that could be seen as bad examples for future generations.  Perhaps the best antidote for this is to insist that Nobody, not even the finest Saints or Religious Leaders can be seen as entirely Perfect, that is as Totally Inspired at every moment in their lives by the Hand and Voice of God, but that it will always be the case that Mistakes will Happen, and just because Jesus cursed a tree and slapped around a few store owners, does not mean we should go about and also do the same such things.  The unpleasantness of such behaviors should be obvious to anybody with a calm mind and a peaceful disposition.   These Religious ‘Bad’ Examples should be used to point out that almost anybody, when pushed too hard and too long can begin to unravel and be distraught, and that there are moments in History that nobody ever wished for and everybody would rather have avoided, but which must be dealt with anyway, and while these things aren’t good, and should never be seen as good, the best that can be hoped for is that these repugnant moral violations prevent the occurrence of events that would have been far more worse.  For example, guaranteeing sick people against their will so that entire Societies aren’t wiped out by a Plague.  But, still, it is a philosophically bothersome to ever open up the door the least crack for Moral Relativism.  Using immoral deeds at first for the most desperate last resorts starts the way to using immoral deeds for mere matters of convenience.  In many ways the Best Thing would be to hold all Moral Infractions as Unforgiveable, and simply do away with any hint of “the ends should ever justify the means”. 

But how could such a Strict Philosophy of Religion thrive in the same World where people do sometimes reluctantly make moral mistakes, and are pushed by overwhelming circumstances into crossing certain moral boundaries?  Well, like the Catholic Church and their institution of the Confessional, we could insist, that while no Sin can ever be Forgiven, they can be dealt with and eventually left behind. 

It was part of Paulist Doctrine that Sin would somehow permanently stain the spirit and soul.  He needed this perspective in order to make such a big deal of Forgiveness and Salvation.  But, really, psychologically, we do not see truly permanent stains and eternal scars.  What do they say?  “Time heals all”.  With regret and remorse, and with the appropriate moral guidance, people can redirect their lives and begin to live new lives and someday look back upon their misdeeds in a kind of wonder that they were ever able to do such sad or horrible deeds.  

This is the idea of Purgatory, that sinners given enough time and the right circumstances can be ‘purged’ of their sinfulness. 

This reminds me of my Dream in which two heavenly scholars taught me of the two kinds of Sin:  Red Sin and Black Sin.   Red Sin is conditional upon the needs and urges of Bodily Existence.  Souls may develop the bad habits of Red Sin – lust and gluttony, or stealing for food, etc, but with death and the dropping off of the body, the soul has little trouble getting beyond the Red Sins and achieving a real Spiritual Purity.  But the Black Sins are worse and more corrupting – hating and victimizing other souls, and having overbearing pride.  Such sins don’t just belong to the body but would follow the Soul even into the afterlife and persist until they are dealt with.   

In this Life or the Next can a Mean and Nasty Person ever change for the better and become a candidate for Spiritual Purity?   Well, it puts me in mind of Charles Dickins “A Christmas Carol”, the story of the redemption of mean and selfish old Ebenezer Scrooge.  Apparently Dickens felt that people could undergo moral transformations.  And nowadays we have Anger Management Programs and Positive Psychology Workshops, all premised on the idea that people can be transformed in both their behaviors and their more basic modes and outlooks. 

This is what Religion really needs to focus on – making people better people.

The Institutional Money Hole and Special Interests

When it comes to institutional spending, there is something of a Paradox in action. The ordinary thinking that is that if we have a huge societal problem, then we can spend money and invest in resources to fix the problem. But what actually happens is the problem becomes institutionalized. We pay because we have a problem, and the money is used to address the problem in any number of ways, but somehow the problem never gets fixed. The money is being spent to effectively perpetuate the problem. You see, if the problem were ever to be fixed, then the money would go away and everyone involved would lose their jobs.

Apparently nice people can do crazy things to protect their incomes. There was an AIDS Conference some years ago and a young researcher stood up to address the Conference, and when it became apparent that he was about to address the issue of a higher AIDS rate among those practicing anal intercourse, he was booed off the stage, and his paper was not allowed to be read into the minutes. You see, at the time the AIDS Scientific Community wanted more funding, and it was thought they could get more funding if they stressed the “fact” that AIDS was a heterosexual mainstream disease too, and they were will to hide any inconvenient evidence to the contrary, all while believing they were doing the right thing. Oh, and this is what concerns me of the chronic and widespread atheism in the Scientific Community, that once they have figured out that there is no rational basic to believe in God, then the very next step is to determine that there is likewise no rational basis for morality, virtue, truth or honor, and that they might rationalize any course of action for whatever reasons appeal to them, money not being the least of such things.

So back to the idea of Money being used to perpetuate the problems it is supposed to be fixing. Examples are easy to come up with. The United States funding Israel. It has turned the Israeli Economy into a permanent war economy. Their Society would collapse if they ever made peace with their neighbors, and so we will never have peace in the middle east, because we pay so much to have a perpetual war. Now the U.S. is about to do the same with Afghanistan, proposing to give the Kabal Regime 2 billion dollars every year that they don’t come to peace with the Talaban. Oh, and U.S. is also giving Columbia billions of dollars a year to close down the Drug Cartels. Guess how likely that is to ever happen. Now the U.S. is probably thinking of giving Mexico money to stop all the drug cartel related killings in their country. That ought to make everything better, but effectively it will be paying them to continue on with the slaughters, as long as the Yankee Dollars keep flowing in.

Funding the Cure for diseases is the saddest of all examples. Research Laboratories and Pharmaceutical Companies make too much money off of disease to ever cure anything. I suppose many of the worst diseases have already been cured a dozen times over, but the research is proprietary and it is hid out of sight, or outright burned to keep it from publication. No Million Dollar Nobel Prize can compete with diseases that bring in hundreds of millions of dollars a year in pharmaceutical and treatment profits. They will release results about drugs and treatments that only ameliorating symptoms, that is about keeping patients alive longer so they can buy more drugs. This is why everything in the Medical sphere needs to be made non-profit. We shouldn’t be setting prices on these matters of Life and Death.

What about energy. We can pour all sorts of money into alternative forms of energy, but the Trillion Dollar Oil Economy will find ways of sabotaging it all. I remember back in the late eighties or early nineties, that a TV news show, Prime Time Live, had advertised a story for the next Thursday night about a new invention. An amateur researcher, a president of a semi-large manufacturing company, had found that when he added a small electrical current to jars of water of a certain size filled with water and metal plated glass beads of a certain size and composition, then the water would break into a rolling boil. The steam energy from the boiling water could be sent through a dynamo and create hundreds of times more energy than the small current it had taken to precipitate the reaction. It was free energy, the heart of a perpetual motion machine. The Researcher had packaged his Experiment and sent five full sets to the best Universities in America in order to verify his findings. The advertisements for the show ran for a day, and then they were pulled, and it was like nothing had ever happened. You can say this for America, no one even knew there had been a scandal. Maybe America’s concern for Truth and Freedom in the rest of the World is only a concern for appearances, and that when Regimes clamp down, they should do it discretely so that nobody ever finds out, like they do in America.

Well, we can understand why America might have taken extreme measures to destroy the Perpetual Motion Free Energy Machine. The U. S. Dollar effectively rests on the value of Oil. It is not based on gold, and not on silver. Basically the dollar has a strong value because the OPEC Countries prefer that Oil be paid for with dollars, so any country buying Oil on the International Market needs to go into the Currency Exchange business first, and trade up the price of the Dollar. If Oil were to lose its value, so would the dollar and the American Economy would collapse. It also bares consideration that the same thing would happen if Saudi Arabia ever decided to open their trades to any international currency and not just the Dollar. We can only guess how much leverage this gives to Saudi Arabia regarding American foreign policies.

Anyway, so there was an invention that could have been used to stop the onset of Global Climate Change 20 years ago, and it was shelved because it would have eliminated Oil, the primary villain of Climate Change, all to protect the shaky moorings of our capitalistic based economy, which will collapse anyway, if not for one reason, then for another. The consequences of Climate Change and growing levels of Commodities Scarcity as Growth Capitalism goes further into saturation simply will not permit business as usual, and new Super-Computers can easily model and predict the End of Civilization, give or take five or ten years one way or the other.

Well, to tie this essay up, we will eventually have to address our problems, and address them with money expenditures, but we need to be careful how we do this. Money creates Special Interests which take on Political Lives of their own. Once created they refuse to die. We need to guarantee that All projects are explicitly temporary, and goal driven. We need to pay to fix our problems, and not pay to have them institutionalized.

So Arabs Want Democracy

We are being told that all the Arab Protestors want democracy. Really? The fact is that the Arab World enjoyed something like a ‘baby boom’ that has now grown up, kicking up the adult unemployment rate at exactly the same time as the World Commodities Price Crisis is shooting up the prices of Food and Fuel, throwing Economies into a New Recession before they had even begun to recover from the Old Recession. And the People, grasping for any straw, grasp for Democracy.

But would Democracy help? Well, they should read a few newspapers and see whether Democracy has been much help in America, in Europe, in Asia. These Economies are in just as much trouble, and if they are better positioned than the Arab Economies, it is only because they started out with more, having been successful Colonial Powers, before the Anarchy and Insanity inherent in Democracy made them fumble that card with a series of self-inflicted World Wars.

Democracy won’t bring jobs. China has more jobs than anybody, and they aren’t democratic. It’s the security and stability of their Authoritarian System that has attracted the capital that established so many jobs. America, the primary Torch Bearer of Democracy, has lost jobs.

There is one tactical advantage to Democracy. People don’t protest. They simply complain about the Party presently in Power and in the next Election, they vote for the other side. Democracy is a hypnotic Shell Game. Let people complain, and let them vote for the Other Guys. The problem is, the Other Guys are never much different from Original Guys. The Same Money nominates them both.

The Propagandists for Democracy emphasize the People’s Power to Vote. What they never mention is that the People are no where near being around when Candidates are picked out by the Powerful Few who pick the candidates, fund them, lay out their Media Plans, etc. The People only get to Vote for the Show Dogs that had already won the most important part of the Game – getting the Un-Official but all-important Nod of Approval. The Vested Interests run everything within Democracies. Yes, there may be sometimes crazy fringe minority parties, but they are hardly an improvement on the typical Oligarchy and Rule by the Rich, who may be selfish but are at least sane.

If the Arab Protestors and the Truly Disaffected, and not just opportunistic troublemakers in the pay of the Americans, really wanted to improve their lot,then they would want productive Governmental Reform. Not Democracy, but a Meritocracy, and a Bureaucracy that operates transparently. Do you want to be in Government? Then take the Civel Service Test. Do you want to stay in Government, then submit to the strictest Financial Audits. It would create Government that would be truly and effectively independent of Vested Interests and Foreign Influences, that is, Money.

Or you can do what the West does – vote vote vote vote vote, and nothing ever gets any better. Not only is it that the wrong people get elected, but that most Democracies had been intentionally designed to be institutionally weak and ineffective -- the euphemism they use is "checks and balances" but it simply assures that nothing important can ever get accomplished. The Rich and Powerful had stepped in from the very beginning and assured that Government would never be anything they would ever need to worry about.

So if you are willing to die for Democracy, just think of all the Rich People in the World, sitting with their feet propped up on Democracy, who are laughing at you. And they just can’t wait to kick their feet up on your Country too.

Neil Diamond “Dreams”

Timothy Yap did an excellent review of this album’s content, so I can do him the honor of not simply repeating the same message –‘less is more’ and all a very beautiful presentation.

But it needs to be said that Neil Diamond was the Producer on this project. My God! That is where he really shined!

Yes, the presentation did seem stripped down, but when one listens closely and repeatedly to this beautiful collection, well, the individual performances and the arrangements are genius. Now, that is what a producer does with a checkbook and a telephone, that is, if he is a great producer. Neil Diamond got the absolutely best people – the violin in “Blackbird”, the horn section in “Don’t Forget Me”, and the very heavy piano we hear throughout the entire repertoire. And all the studio time it must have taken. It was probably a considerable expense.

The Production Standards are some of the best I’ve ever seen. They remind me of the Rod Stewart ‘Great American Songbook’ collection, over the years finally getting up to Volume 5, which is really good, but they all have their merits, chiefly in the area of production values and standards. Great people were brought in and allowed the time to do their best work. And you can hear the fun they had making it.

I certainly hope that Neil Diamond’s “Dreams” is successful, or at least that it breaks even financially. Neil Diamond must have worked hard and found it very tiring, at his age, but at the same time, work of this quality is rewarding in the spiritual sense. So, if he is not financially ruined by this first installment of “Dreams”, then maybe, like the successful Rod Steward Series, we will see more of these superb collections from Neil Diamond. The titles will be fun – “Keep Dreaming” is one suggestion. Let the Old Man retire? Certainly not! There is plenty of time to retire when he is dead. If we buy these Dreams, he will keep making them because he is fulfilled by it.

And we do so much need collections of the Best. The Singer Songwriter era of music gave us so many wonderful songs, but they were only the tip of the iceberg of almost endless crap. To find the good songs, we had to suffer thousands of songs that the record companies foisted upon us. It’s the way Capitalism perverts things – original copyrights make more money, theoretically, than beautiful songs in the Public Domain, so the Capitalists wanted plenty of original copyrights – a new song every minute, but so few of these money grubbers had any true instincts for quality and culture and so most songs suck. So we were all submerged in this virtual landslide of garbage, yes, with a real potato here and a real carrot there, but mostly just garbage. The singer-songwriters were put under contract to produce, and produce they did, mostly bland stupid or eminently forgettable songs. That is why Greatest Hits albums sell so well, it is because people came to distrust ordinary albums, mostly stuffed with filler… songs nobody could possibly have been happy about, but simply produced to keep the Stupid Mindless Capitalists happy. Even most Greatest Hits albums are mostly filler. Honestly, most of the Singer Songwriters of this Era, had maybe one or two real ‘hits’ – songs that deserve to be remembered. One Hit Wonders. Any songwriter that has 3 or more actually good songs to their credit, should be honored with a ticker tape parade and a hero’s pension for Life… free coffee at Starbucks, etc. So, most Greatest Hits records should have only two or three selections. What purpose does it serve to roll out the filler garbage one more time in even their Greatest Hits Albums. It only tends to spoil the meal.

So it has become so hard to listen to any album from beginning to end nowadays. That is perhaps the most ascendant virtue in Neil Diamond’s “Dreams” , that every song is good, and one needs to skip over nothing.

So we do need Collections of the Good Songs. And it is good that one of the best Singer-songwriters of our Age uses his other considerable talents, the knowledge and taste he has acquired over the years, to give us not only the Best there is, but the Best that it can possibly be made to be. He takes the best and makes it better. We need to throw that man a parade… and buy his record.

Oh, a personal note on Neil Diamond. It’s odd, considering the body of his work, that he was never considered in the very top rank of the ‘Stars’. Maybe he wasn’t grungy enough, or he should have started off in a band. But he was always considered a fraction of a level down. Well, it didn’t keep me from buying his records. Indeed, there was a strange phenomenon that persuaded me to keep my mind open about the exact merits of Neil Diamond. I’m an amateur musician and my first love is the violin. Well, I NEVER break strings, that is, except when playing along with Neil Diamond’s “Holly Holy” . The song just builds and builds and builds, and one finds oneself scrubbing and sawing the violin like never before, trying to keep up with the building intensity. So, two or three times Neil Diamond has sent me to the store to get new violin strings. Nobody else. So when people criticize Neil Diamond… well, the Beatles never caused me to break a string… The man knows how to do a song.

Problems with Democracy

With the World now facing so many very serious problems, it is demoralizing to realize that nothing can be done about them. You see, most of our problems have been brought to us by the various special interest groups – Capitalists, Marketers, Military Industrialists, etc – and only Governments with the Power and the Will and the Ability to counter such special interests could ever hope to rein them in and advance any positive program to save the World. But most of the most powerful nations on earth are Democracies, and Democracies have almost entirely defined themselves as the Vehicles for the Special Interest Control of Everything.

Of course, Special Interests do not have an absolute hold on Politics. Racism and Ethnic Identity also fit in. Woodrow Wilson, who was a Professor of History before he became President, had issued a Theory that Democracies resolve into Ethnic Self-Determination, and so the Rise of Nazism and all subsequent Ethnic Pride Parties had been predicted. Remember that in the parlance of Politics, Ethnic “Pride” is just another name for what we understand to be racial hate and prejudice, or the distinction is meaningless as to whether they just love themselves more, or just hate everybody else a great deal, as the end results are divisive politics and Democracies that fail to represent Minority Groups, or Split Majorities – when a Majority Ethnic Groups divides along real political issues, allowing a Hate Group Minority Party to capture an election.

Anyway, even in such cases where Ethnic Parties come to power independently of Special Interests, the Special Interests are usually able to sweep in afterwards and make enough contributions to the New Power Structure to bring them onboard and at one with the Special Interest World. Those who don’t are isolated by Sanctions. For all of the love we hear about for Democracy, it only applies for those nations and people who vote in accord with the Special Interests. Palestine, Iran, Venezuela go their own way and so are treated as though they are enemies.

While Ethnicity does a great deal in distorting Democracies in their role of providing impartial and independent Governments, still, the much greater problem is with Special Interests.

How do the Special Interests control Politics and Politicians? While outright bribes are still nominally illegal, the Lobbyists have made a science of finding myriads of legal avenues through which money can go from the pockets of Special Interests to the campaigns of Politicians. Indeed, that brings us to the Paradox of Campaign Finance Reform, that it so entangled Campaign Finance Law, that now nothing in Politics can be done without the Lobbyists, as they are the only ones with enough money to hire the legal teams sufficient to keep everything straight.

Years ago there had been a fad about Term Limits – the idea being that if a Politician only ran once, he would have no incentive to sell his soul to the Special Interests. Well, what then occurred was that nobody could enter into politics as a career, and so very few truly independent people ran for office, if any, and this allowed the Lobbyist Firms to run their own people – good looking young men and women who could read a speech and do what they were told. And after their Term of Office, they could return to the Lobbying Firm they came from, with a big raise in salary. All legal.

Even if the Special Interests do not apply their monies directly to the different campaigns, they can still operate by effectively buying up Media Influence. Newspapers and Networks claim to be independent, but, really, their advertisers must exercise a great deal of influence. Or the Media Owners are so wealthy in their own right, that they are their own Special Interest, pulling the strings for whatever whim entertains their fancy, as for example, drumbeating the World to War, because Wars make the News so much more fun to print for the Media Tycoons.

But even if Special Interests, the Media and Ethnic Hatreds and Pride could be isolated away from that much of an effect on the World Democracies, still there would be one more annoying factor to deal with, and that is that Democracy does nothing to guarantee the abilities of those who run for office. Good looking people who can read a speech and make promises win elections all the time. Some of the stupidest people on earth do rather well at Politics, George W. Bush, being the first example to come to mind.

Really, what the World needs now is a Bureaucratic Meritocracy – Professional Government open to anybody who can Pass the Test. No Campaigns and no Campaign Contributions, and no Job Jumping from Government to a Special Interest Corporation – these measures would curtail most every evil from the Special Interests. Government workers would have to be in it for Life, or at least never be allowed to work for anybody or anything he had anything to do with while in Government Service. Money and Property of Government Workers would have to be monitored to assure that there was no trading of influence. This would give Government the Independence and Intellectual ability and integrity to Save the World, even while the Special Interests do all they can to destroy it, if that is what they think gives them a stronger return on their Capital for the upcoming Fiscal Quarter. Yes, they don’t mean to destroy the World… that is not even what they are thinking about.

It’s the Job of Government to think about the things that Special Interests have no interest in thinking about. And only a Bureaucratic Meritocracy could be fit for such a Job.

Turning a Jazzmaster Into a Baritone Guitar

I had bought one of the new “Blacktop” Telecasters and converted it to Baritone by stringing it with the 6 heaviest strings of a set of D’Addario Jazz Light Seven Flats. It was easy, I just had to get a fresh stone-encrusted finger nail file and widen the Nut slots a bit. The Telecaster, with its Humbucker pickups was perfect for the new application. The Telecaster as Baritone, has these really nice round and clean tones.

But it was so good, that I wondered what I was to do with my Jazzmaster. The Jazzmaster, as it is, is thin on the high side … I had to adjust up the pickups on the high side, and tweak up the sound system equalization to help out the high notes. Perhaps it would be better to “bulldog” the Jazzmaster too, that is, to turn it into a Baritone Guitar and forget about the High Side by simply eliminating it

When I decided to “Bulldog” the Telecaster, I had ordered the D’Addario Jazz Light Seven Flats from two different venders, on the chance that I’d get one set sooner than later. You see, I play violin and bass too, where the strings are relatively expensive, and so the cost of guitar strings seems like nothing in comparison. Anyway, the second set of D’Addario Sevens came in today. It made me think of putting them to use.

I looked over the Jazzmaster. Convertering it to Baritone would be a bigger job than the Telecaster. Not only would I have to widen the Nut slots, but there was the Bridge Slots to deal with. And the Bridge was made of medal.

But when I cut off the old strings and just removed the Bridge simply by lifting it off the keeper pegs, I saw that the Bridge Slots were not even differentiated – they are all just the same size little “Vees”, that the strings could settle into – one size fits all. Well, that seems to be why the Jazzmasters have their famous Problem, that vigorous picking or even finger plucking, knocks the strings off their bridge seats – the bridge slots are too narrow, and ‘V’ shaped – the strings just slip up the slant with the least little sideways force.

Converting the Jazzmaster to Baritone would ‘kill two birds with one stone’; I could lower the range more into its natural bandwidth (it likes Low Notes better than High Notes), and I could work the Bridge so that it could hold the strings better.

I had to think through the process. I could use a Dremel Tool for widening the Bridge Slots, but the problem with Power Tools is that, while they are faster, they also make irreparable mistakes very quickly. So I decided to use hand tools. I found an old hack saw blade. Hack saws are made for cutting metal. The particular blade I found was something of a compromise. It would make the slots a bit too wide for the little strings, but not wide enough for the fat strings, particularly the .65 B String that would be the new Low String.

I hacksawed the existing “Vees” down so that they now had square corners. The Strings could now settle into slots. It would be much more difficult to knock a string off the Bridge now. The hacksaw might have left some rough edges, and so I got Sandpaper and folded it and ran the sand paper into the groves. For the wider slots, I folded the sandpaper around an old fingernail file. I used sandpaper from 80 grade to 220 grade. The metal had to be smooth, or the strings might be damaged. I’m an old man and so I used a jewelers loupe to see with magnification, to make sure the sizing and the smoothness was just right, but younger people would probably just ‘eyeball’ the whole process.

After having done the Telecaster Nut, the Jazzmaster Nut was easy. I finished by using a thin stick and a Carpenter’s Pencil to rub some of the graphite powder ( a very good dry lubricant) into the Nut Slots, to make tuning easier.

The skinny strings had a bit of side to side play in the Bridge Grooves, but no problem manifested while playing. Just as I expected, by squaring the Bridge Slot edges and deepening the grooves, there was no longer a problem with knocking the strings off the bridge.

How did the Jazzmaster work as a Baritone?

Now the Telecaster, converted to “Bulldog”, was superb – nice clean round tones from low to high… what was left of high, which seemed to be plenty. So I did side by side comparisons with the Telecaster Baritone and the Jazzmaster Baritone. The Jazzmaster was a bit less ‘round’ but equalization could fix that. But the Jazzmaster does have the Tailed Bridge which makes those pretty, though somewhat unpredictable, flared notes (which is why Jazz Players seem to prefer Tailed Bridges). The both of them were so good – the Telecaster with the Humbucker Pickups, and the Jazzmaster with the shallow single sided pickups and Tailed Bridge, that there really was no choosing… not, on the basis of performance. I finally decided to make the Jazzmaster the Practice Workhorse because it had the Rosewood Neck, which doesn’t stain from hours of sweat and skin oils. Also, the Jazzmaster I have has those Dual Controls… you can set up for both Lead Guitar and Rhythm and switch back and forth. I rarely use it, except for when I play Deep Purple’s “Woman From Tokyo” which is hard-driving Rock except for a very pretty middle part… with the dual controls I can go from “Hard Driving Rock” to “Pretty” at the flip of a switch.

But, yes, both guitars are extremely better as Baritones.

Oh, when I used to play normal guitars, I tuned to E A D G C F instead of E A D G B E (it keeps the string intervals at Perfect Fourths, while the B E tuning, to bring those strings down a step, it only helps with chording for people with short fingers. Who know where that tradition starte?). With the Baritone ‘Bulldogs’ I keep the Perfect Fourth tuning – B E A D G C. But traditionalist Guitar Players, with short fingers who want to keep doing their old chords, well, they could tune to B E A D F# B… you would just have to transpose a little to get the exact chords you want, but the neck would still be the same…except for being a Perfect Fourth lower.

If in doubt about String Tension, consult the D’Addario String Tension Chart on their Website, or just do a Web Search for D’Addario String Tension Chart.

Humbucker Telecaster (Blacktop) Turned Baritone Guitar

I had gotten the Blacktop Telecaster because the humbucker pickups, particularly the neck pickup, gave it a good clean round ‘O’ sound, much like the thin single pole pickups in the Jazzmaster. Well, I already have a Jazzmaster, but the problem with the Jazzmaster is that, with a shade too much enthusiasm, you can whip the strings off the tailed bridge (the trade off for the inconvenience of a trailed bridge, is that at certain intervals the strings have a nice swelling flare, although steals a bit from sustain).

Anyway, the Humbucker Telecaster seems like a kind of best of both worlds kind of instrument – nice clean round sound from the pickups and strings that you can get rough with without scaring them off the bridge.


Anyway, I bought it and as I was leaving the Shop, the owner of the place asked me if I thought of ‘baritoning’ it. You see, he was familiar with me going from Violin to Viola (a viola is a violin that goes lower than a normal violin by one string interval), and tuning up a step on my Fender Jazz Bass, to keep the D’addario Light Flats tight (The D’addario strings were designed for 36” Scale but the Fender Bass is a tad shorter and so taking the strings up a notch would simply keep all things more or less even). Oh, and with guitar he knew I was going from the traditional E, A, D, G, B, E tuning to E, A, D, G, C, F, that is, to keep the strings at Perfect Fourth (5 step) intervals (they only tune up the B and E strings to make chording easier for short fingers… no other reason). Anyway, the shop owner had every reason to suspect that I might try some tuning change with this new telecaster, and was simply curious about it. Well, actually, I hadn’t thought ahead that far, but it gave me the idea.

Yes, they do have ‘Real’ baritone guitars – acoustics that are built on a longer scale, because, well, with acoustic guitars it is the actual physical dimensions that resonate with and support the sound of the strings. But with electric guitars and their pickups, physical dimensions are no longer so essential.

But converting the Telecaster to Baritone would require an extra big fat string that I could tune down to B. I looked around and found that D’addario makes a set of strings for 7 String guitars – “Jazz Light/ 7-String”, ECG24-7. They were all a bit fatter than what I am used to (D’addario super light Flats), but, checking with D’addario’s String Tension Chart, they would be usable, even with me tuning up the last two skinny strings, to preserve the perfect fourth (five step) intervals. So I ordered some strings. I actually ordered two sets, from different suppliers, Wiener Music, through Amazon, and Just Strings, hoping that one would come before the other. Wiener Music won. I’m still waiting for the Just Strings set to come through, but they did email me with an apology, as there had been some kind of delay.

Oh, with using a much fatter string in the old Fat E position, and using larger strings in every position, really, I would need to enlarge the groves in the Nut up at the top of the neck. So I bought one of those Nail Files with crushed industrial diamonds… which look a lot like sand.

Meanwhile, I played the ordinary tuning, for me (E A D G C F) for a week. I even had an All Nighter Practice to get acquainted with the new instrument and its new sound.

When the strings came in, I got out my Jewelers Loupe and worked the Nut with the fingernail file until the notch sizes seemed suitable for the new fits. The new strings went on without event. The strings were a bit stretchy and required a lot of retuning between songs, but only for the first evening. They settled in after a day.

Oh, the intonation was effected. But Intonation adjusts on this Telecaster are easy – just detune the strings until you can push back the bridge block with your finger, and then just take up the slack by tightening up the screw that goes through the spring. It took a lot of adjustment… more than a quarter of an inch… the Fat B String going back almost to the ‘wall’, but alls well that ends well. I suppose the intonation adjustment was necessary because I went to higher tension strings, and not so much because they were simply fatter strings.

The ‘Bulldog’ Telecaster sounds great. Sacrificing the high E string for the low B seems like a wonderful trade-off. Just like going from violin to viola, or from a 4 String Bass to a 5 String. One loves going lower but, in the case of the Viola and Bulldog Baritone Guitar, doesn’t miss the shorted higher reach at all… to go high you can just work down the neck a bit further than usual.

Its funny, the strange phenomena whereby one gets used to an instrument’s range. When I was still playing an old 4 String Precision Bass, I wondered why anybody would ever need a 5 String, as it seemed every song could be done without going up past the nut of the 4 String’s E String. I thought the same about my violin’s G string. I play by ear, and so apparently the first thing my brain does is organize riffs and arrangements according to available range. But after five minutes with the new Range, one wonders what one ever used to do without it.

When I first got my 5 String Jazz Bass, I read on line some guy that was saying that the “common mistake” new 5 String owners make is that they play their new Fat String too much. Well, that’s not really a mistake, is it? For instance, if you have an old dog who has been kept in the back yard its whole life, and then you decide to add the side yard to his enclosure, well, where do you suppose the dog will go at its first opportunity? Of course it will sniff out its new territory. So spending a lot of time, at first, in one’s new Range is not such an odd thing for an old musical dog.