Eight vices were forbidden in the early mosaic code, which wisely watered them down to where they permitted society to survive. How much lying is permitted? All but false witness against actual neighbours. How much killing?
The evidence for the success of the judao-christian codes includes eight thousand years of cultural survival, and counting.
The enlightenment brought new freedoms for those who could afford them. Including the freedom of Gibbon to explore the rapid corruption of every Christian state.
The late nineteenth century realisation that science is not intuitive mechanisms – relativity and quantum theory knocked that one – brought in the vultures of unreason. Warhol and Jackson and Hollywood epitomize for me the lost twentieth century of reason. There is the underlying suspicion that the doctrines of nihilism and agnosticism, fascism and dada would not have spread without commercial pushes: there was money to be made in using them or countering them. Similarly grantology and well-funded drug research today corral the best brains.
Perhaps the only virtue is the understanding that leads to deeper understanding. A problem with this is insanity: remove the props of childhood, and most adults wobble. This limits deep thinking to those who are both outside the canon of their society, and either very private or very unpublished. Any support group dilutes by spin the message of the prophet. The mafia of the capitalist convergency would not have its foundations rattled. Spies are the best paid of all soldiers.
Newton and Darwin waited decades before publishing their pivotal theories, for good reasons. Electronic publishing achieves the same effect by a different route. The meat is lost in the mist. But there is a difference: resonance used by the search engines tells intelligent seekers what is happening. The new enlightenment is for those who can escape the cake and circuses. And there are enough of them for their new species to take losses and to thrive. In this war the brown shirts will be pilloried, the Gestapo punished, by their own more moral children. Youtube is hard to refute at breakfast.
And for the masses? For them mental euthanasia, the tat of democracy, and the hypermarket temple. Can we fix this? Prehistoric and historic slavery say no: co-evolution was built on entrapment. Are we big enough to escape this paradigm? Mentally, yes, we know we need to. Capitalism says no, the system depends on it. Spiritually, the arguments for a new system abound. Electronically, we have no choice: surveillance of individual and group mental patterns will revoke the privacy of the cranium. Just as forensic DNA use can place a criminal at the place and soon the time of a crime, so will mobile dynamic brainscans identify pre-crime deviant thoughts by mental body-language.
The race between conservative control and genuine democratic freedom is as ever too close to call. The division of the species looms as never before. To the barricades! But remember that last century Paris replaced all cobblestones with tarmac to remove the weapon of the barricaders. So the republic will have to come from within. Over the discoverers and revealers of spirit.
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( 3 / 227 )The function of government is not security of the citizen, as advertised. It is the entertainment of the citizen in discussion of government or other circuses, while the real ruler, the corporate, gets on with the serious business of enriching the few, and keeping them few enough to know each other in the best spirit of the Grandes Ecoles.
On this scenario the President of the USA is the uniformed agent of the family trusts, and certainly not the captain of the ship of state. Undue independence like sympathy for the underdog or care for reputation would lead to the repository.
It follows you can only put an honest man in the White House if like Gerry Ford he has problems counting.
TBC, hopefully to a positive conclusion.
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( 3.1 / 262 )I am getting to be fed up with commercial and self centered interests that delay and destroy progress.
Whenever there is a media attack on something good, it needs to be analysed and the originators and colluders condemned publically. Berated at least, before class action from those who will suffer.
The list is endless. From the pillorying of the Eves and Cains in every society, through the pogroms and genocides that are still government policies, that are still with us, to the helpless feelings of those who would reform daft political correctness.
So what’s to do? Read the newsgroups to find fellow-travellors, I fear. Until old age dims the fires, or debilitating bribes arrive if we start getting effective.
This was sparked by a little read of the secret history of Paris, by Andrew Hussey. Racy, mind on sales, but well reviewed and pithy about why Parisians have a right to be so nasty about their governments. Like the bitter olive in a martini.
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( 2.9 / 230 )Crazyidea may be about to split, like most book-based religions except scientology.
Some projects are starting to share lack of ambience.
Rambles, rants and raves will mostly stay here.
Cureent rough categories.
Math for all from late starter to high level
Livingstone science and paradigm shift awareness
Urban science awareness
Wolfram math as universal tool
Beyond the birthing boxes to fuller PHSERN and immune systems for each of them
Wymf
Computing
Networking
Eco into nomics, logy trends and friends
Notschool mainly for unschooled, partly as catch-all
Good things religion can offer young people
Plan to try some maths and science and notschool stuff on a blog or similar.
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( 3 / 261 )Reasons for god: by golly, by gap, by goodness and by need of community
Wonder and amazement at the glories and patterns of the created universe. Evolved from quarks or smaller beginnings, an awesome thing to be part of and aware of.
The gap in all of us when down, unloved, depressed or dubious. Is it a god-shaped hole?
Whence goodness in us? Prisoner’s dilemma writ large, or something far more deeply intertwined?
The sense of the numinous could be hysteria induced by loneliness or presence of god.
Prayer could be the syncopating electrons.
The euphoria of communal worship could be the formation of tribal identity – the warmth of the crowd.
The people of Israel found a way of feeding priests and acolytes and children through ritual meals and security. The multi-millenial thriving of the House of Abraham was not by accident.
The Christian god saves in all senses repeated sacrifice, and until the enlightenment (= ?the atheist-agnostic spectrum) let the state keep the masses in awe of sacrament.
The pillars of Islam give feelings of release from troubles like the magreb diaspora, as well as in the Friday sermon contact with local comforts and wisdoms. Also in learning the Koran, solidity with the past and direct contact with the Prophet and Allah.
All the peoples of the book have hard-wired memories, fear and degrees of guilt from pogroms, crusades and jihads. Each religion forgives itself its own sins: morbid introspection brings loss of group manhood.
All literate peoples of the book can return to their book for solace and reinvigoration. Hence schisms lead by local interpretations.
Hence also our current tabloid and broadsheet abhorrence of corruption in secular and religious leaders. Also our fascination with leaders who tell it like it is: rappers, Thatcher, young New Labour, before we see the clay in the feet.
Evolution has answers for all of these, with gaps for me at creation of consciousness and conscience and soul.
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