What Are We Not Seeing?

35 Comments on "What Are We Not Seeing?"

paulo1 on Tue, 1st Dec 2015 7:13 pm 



Flake 101.

makati1 on Tue, 1st Dec 2015 7:27 pm 



Some sense here, but not too obvious nor plentiful.

I disagree with the ‘long decent’ BS. We are fast approaching the cliff and gravity says it will not take long to get to the bottom. Another huggy/feely article that will influence no one nor change anything .

Pennsyguy on Tue, 1st Dec 2015 8:02 pm 



Ignoring the cliff won’t make it go away. I’m not much for “spirituality” or the supernatural, but I am for whatever helps people cope with our difficult and increasingly precarious existence. As long as such beliefs promote some kind of inner peace and compassion rather than hatred.

idontknowmyself on Tue, 1st Dec 2015 9:04 pm 



This is what you dont see in the media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw08pP4tc-4

makati1 on Tue, 1st Dec 2015 10:30 pm 



Pennsyguy, I doubt a hundred articles like this will change one person’s ideas of what is happening to the world he/she lives in. But, yes, it may help.

jjhman on Tue, 1st Dec 2015 11:43 pm 



It’s interesting to see this meme coming from so many different directions: our only hope is community and scaling down. The magic mumbo-jumbo is just that, mumbo- jumbo. Being prepped for a simpler life is probably the only hope anyone has whether the decline happens in one hour or 50 years.

Personally I’ve moved from expecting a short term collapse to the long term. Partly bcause I’m really too old to change much. But also because I’ve lived through at least three EOTWAWKI events and have finally realized the resiliance of BAU. Virtually every single human on the planet is a stake holder in the capitalist/market economy. Even the lunatics, like ISIS who are bent on destroying western civilization are totally dependent on it. So yes there will be crises and yes our children and their children’s children will learn to live with less material goods, less security and poorer health but the changes will be, most likely, a stair-step change punctuated with modest disasters. Each disaster will make people more accepting of their reduced circumstances.

So I’m for the touchy-feely, kumbaya attitude whether it comes with spiritual nonsense or not. It’s just about all we can count on in the decades to come. In another decade or less it won’t make any difference to me.

Boat on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 12:00 am 



What an amazing post JJman. Now you will be accused of all kinds of wild thinking because your doom isn’t big enough or fast enough. These boys around here like big fast doom. They like politicians have a reset button every couple months that frees them from time lines but, who cares.
No need for a keyword search for fire, flood, or financial meltdown. We hear about it every day. If you live in the US it will collapse faster and the pain a lot worse.

makati1 on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 12:58 am 



jjhman, the past is definitely NOT a good reference for the events of today. I’m 71 but I am changing my life to match the expected future. Not in 50 years, but possibly next year. By 2020 at the latest.

Do I want it to happen? Nope! I have 12 grand kids and a few greats, in the US, that I am concerned about. But, I am intelligent enough to know that I am not responsible for them and can do little to change their futures. So, I only worry about myself and my partner and his family here in the Ps.

We are moving to an independent lifestyle and hope to have at least one more year to prep and finish the farmhouse, but it is looking more and more like we may not have that much time. I suspect that TPTB will try to keep it from happening before the changing of the puppet president, but they are running out of possibilities and keep banging the war drums all over the world. Or so it seems to me from my position outside the US MSM Iron Curtain. We shall see.

makati1 on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 1:00 am 



Boat, you got it. Now believe it. LOL

meld on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 2:33 am 



I became a polytheist a few years ago after being an atheist my entire life. I practice magick as well. My life has improved immeasurably and I’ve actually started making change in my local environment. Currently building one of the largest forest gardens in the UK and working with kids to help them understand the future and how they can prepare. I don’t really care if the many gods exist or not, but they certainly act like they do 🙂

ohanian on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 4:10 am 



The only magic in this world is the magic of Mathematics. Everything else in this world depends on mathematics.

Davy on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 5:53 am 



Scaling down and preparing for a world with little to no prosperity and worse is what I preach. The status quo is much less resilient today then we realize. It still has resilience though so on the social, economic, and geopolitical level of potential collapse this could drag on. The financial system is a real danger but with “the powers that are” being committed to maintenance of this global system we could limp along in a slow motion depression. This is a process of depression that has just begun. It will be a physical and spiritual process of depression.

Economically we have the beginnings of dysfunction, irrational policies, and economic abandonment that will contribute to a process of decay and decline. People will lose their lives become poor and disenfranchised. Spiritually people will lose optimism. More deaths over births will initiate a period of spiritual feeling of death everywhere we look. I am not sure how long global 24/7/365 TV will be maintained but the reports will be horrible.

We cannot feed 7BIL and growing. We are now but in a deceptive way. Our economy, our energy, and our climate are destabilizing. Soil and water have been fully exploited and are in broad based decline. Food insecurity, hunger, and famine will be part of our lives soon. The rich world will see it and be a part of it. Famine will hit those areas that are on the edge now. Those areas that erupt in war or are destroyed by a destabilizing climate will have deaths from hunger, disease, and exposure. I myself am increasingly worried by runaway climate events. It is well known abrupt climate change can happen in a decade. We appear to be in such a period.

I constantly preach a crisis is what we need to change attitudes and lifestyles at the community level. Food and fuel shortages are the best way for this to happen. I see this forced upon us relatively soon because both food and fuel have a global reach and exposure. Economics of globalism are extremely fragile to disruption despite “the powers that are” abilities to keep confidence and liquidity. Lately it is global peace. Can “the powers that are” maintain peace?

If any of these disrupt enough then food and fuel will be in shortage and the economics of our current complex globalism in disarray. Once a crisis at this level occurs a systematic bifurcation will force our global system to a new and lower activity level. There will be a break of some kind at some point probably random and unpredictable. We will NEVER recover from this break. The complexity and the resource stock necessary to support current complexity will never return.

We are cannibalizing both soft and hard global assets now. Ecosystem and climate are being degraded and in local failure. Social stability is degrading. Infrastructure is not being replaced at the same time we build useless infrastructure without need. We are pumping our production of goods not needed further adding to the waste load and using up valuable resources. This malinvestment and overcapacity from economic bubbles is further destroying our global financial system.

In crisis there will be change and the change will be for the worse. This will not be a positive revolution that ushers in a new age. Those who want to destroy the system for a better one are deceived. This current one is irreversible and the alternative much worse. Yet, it is a crisis at this point if properly adapted to that can allow a degree of residual civilization as opposed to collapse.

This will not be without rebalance per our natural and human capacity. Consumption and population will drop. This will be painful and horrible in some places and there is an equal chance at this point for a hard, quick, and long collapse. I say equal chance because human nature is not predictable we as a global people can react either way.

With that in mind I recommend all that can reflect on your lives in the deepest way. You location, your skills, and your home. Location is critical and it is well known which areas are most vulnerable. Learn skills that will be useful in a collapsing world. Make sure you have some basic preparations. The list is long and I have no time to elaborate.

Collapse in place if you are in a good local. Downsize with dignity by just learning to enjoy simple. Get out of the radar screen of trouble. Trouble will find you today if you are careless. Work towards a group change in some way if you can. This is my biggest problem in my local but I still try to find likeminded people. If you are ready for crisis when the community is in crisis you will be in a position of strength and able to assist with resources and knowledge. Change your attitude because attitude will be the glue that keeps you going. Be under no denial that just because you are prepared you can survive. I also recommend finding your higher power and practicing spiritual technics for coping. This is going to be horrible but remember throughout history some of the highest of human traits come out in the worst of times.

Dredd on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 6:11 am 



“What Are We Not Seeing?”

Did you see the Pope rap (E^3)?

Anonymous on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 7:26 am 



That “Cliff” comes when we burn through our fracked oil in Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Texas. Which is sooner rather than later, because of the red queen phenomena. We’re aggressively adding new capacity that only lasts a couple year max at high production levels, and most of the fracking done earlier is already declining.

Once that happens, we go back on tap for Venezuelan, Nigerian and Middle Eastern Crude, like everyone else. The dollar dramatically weakens while the demand on these sources sours.

However, I strongly disagree that we will be made more insecure. Insecurity has arisen in globalization precisely because anyone from anywhere can get anywhere in the world in about 48 hours. In addition, highly sophisticated military technology is utterly dependent upon fuel sources to function.

Having some training in military science and logistics, I can tell you that we will be made more secure against foreigners, not less, when oil finally spikes out and sustains itself at +150$ barrel oil. This is because North America is physically isolated by very large oceans from happenings in Asia, Europe and Africa.

A modern military is almost entirely on fuel to function. The ability to project force outside the “borders” of a political entity will markedly decrease, along with the ability to sustain a military presence in biologically “hostile” environments.

So we will be kept safe from China and Russia, regardless of what happens in Asia and Europe, because humans cannot physically survive in the high arctic approaching Alaska without ample supplies of fuel.

Our big security threat will be derived from the Mexicans and Cubans, and nominally other “foreigners” to our political unit inside our country

makati1 on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 8:29 am 



Anon, China and Russia will be the least of the Us’ problems if there is no war. The 320,000,000+ drugged up, obese, spoiled, Americans will not know how to handle the stress to come. 250,000,000+ guns in their hands WILL be used. The race wars, drug wars and religious wars will make a real war seem tame. Looting will happen until there is nothing left to loot anywhere.

How do I know? Well the 60s is a good example and today’s news tells me that it is already getting out of hand. 1,200+ killed by cops this last year alone vs. just 287 five years ago. Not to mention the crazies that kill as many as they can before they are killed in churches, schools, etc. An article stated that 1/4 of the Us population is mentally unbalanced. Sixty million are on tranquilizers. Suicide exceeds car deaths. And on and on. The Us has created it’s own hell.

JuanP on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 9:51 am 



Davy talking about spirituality and community is like a bull talking about Chinese porcelain. There is nothing spiritual or communitarian about your behavior on this board, Davy. You are the worst member of this community, IMHO. My guess is not even the Devil would want you in hell if it actually existed like you believe in your deluded religious brain.

I think someone needs to walk the walk more and talk less hot air. Your comments smell of beans, Davy! You should do some community service in your local and give the people of this forum a break from your mentally ill, deluded, exceptionalist rants. You are like a broken record that just won’t stop skipping.

Davy on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 9:54 am 



Folks, I love it crazy Juan is losing it!

Juan, go play in the ocean. This board is dangerous for you unstable mental health.

JuanP on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 10:11 am 



Davy, the delusional American exceptionalist one percenter living in denial about his life, family, friends, religion, and country strikes back! I know you wish I left the board, Davy. I will stay here to fight your lies, falsehoods, and distortions for as long as I can now. I am 100% certain you will regret this in the future, if you don’t already.

Fuck the board’s fool!

JuanP on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 10:13 am 



Davy, Go play with yourself, fool!

JuanP on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 10:14 am 



Davy, the board’s fool strikes again! LOL!

JuanP on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 11:01 am 



Davy “… Crazy Juan…”

What you don’t get, Davy, is that you can’t hurt me by insulting me, my people, or my country. I am completely immune to that. You need to find a new strategy if you want to attack me effectively. I have been called names by sick, ignorant fools like you since I was in PreK. I am not like you, all hypersensitive about this and that and living in denial, I have a very, very thick skin. If you have half a sane brain I suggest you cease and desist now while you still can. You are much easier to hurt than I am, and you can’t possibly win this fight. I laugh in your face at your simpleminded, feeble, completely ineffective attempts to strike back at me, board fool!

theedrich on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 11:37 am 



You make some interesting points, Patheos.  I might offer some additional arguments for when you happen to be explaining your views to Christians or Jews:

Given the fact that so much of modern American and Western politics continually refers to nebulous “values” (accepted even by non-Christians and atheists) in justification of their countless perversions, boondoggles and ripoffs, it behooves us to inquire into the origins of such “values.”  Which immediately takes us to the Bible, the “Sacred Scripture” (Sancta Scriptura) so often mentioned but not so often actually read.

However, instead of accepting at face value all of the myths and pious lies contained or imagined in the Bible, it is more helpful to consider what modern archeologistis, researchers and scholars expert in the ancient languages and cultures have to say about it.  Naturally, countless Bible-pounders in the various denominations condemn all such knowledgeable people as gravely misguided if not demonic.  But for those who are interested in truth, the findings of modern investigators are extremely important.  Such investigators make it clear that the ancient texts cannot be read as if they were a modern newspaper written in the context of Western civilization.

We can begin with Genesis, the first book of the Bible.  It and the following five books (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) are often referred to as the “five books of Moses,” the “Pentateuch” or, by Jews, as the “Torah” or “Law.”  Most important are the second and third chapters of Genesis, which present the myth of Adam and Eve, the “protoparents” of mankind who lived in a paradisiacal garden of Eden.  According to this story, God told them not to eat the fruit of a Tree of Knowledge in the middle of the garden.  But they were misled by a talking snake, ate the fruit, and in consequence were ejected from Eden.  Alas, all the generations resulting from them bore the guilt of that “original sin.”  In the standard Christian interpretation, all of mankind is therefore “guilty” and in need of a god-man who will expiate their sin for them.
But understood in accordance with modern psychology, and in comparison with the mythologies of other early religions, the major elements of the Eden story can be recognized as follows:

The Garden of Eden = the human body itself, especially as pre-conscious.
Two trees — the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge = the same tree = the arbor mundi (or axis mundi) = the human Central Nervous System (CNS), with its “roots” throughout the body and its “foliage” or “crown” being the brain.  Compare, for instance the “Mighty Pillar” (Irminsūl) of the ancient Saxons or the life-symbol, the ankh, of the Egyptian pharaohs.
The “fruit” of the Tree of Knowledge (i.e., of the CNS) = knowledge itself (i.e., not an “apple”).
The Serpent = symbol of curiosity (intellectual inquisitiveness) which worms its way toward knowledge, not literally a “talking snake” (or pre-condemnation lizard with legs), nor a devil in disguise.
Eyes being “opened” = emergence of self-conscious, human, cortex-based forethought.  “Humanization” of the anthropoid primate.
Covering up nakedness = recognition and protection of the self as separate from nature and the rest of society.  This is another aspect of self-awareness, also seen in the boundary-forming ouroboros or “world serpent” surrounding a mandala (symbol of the self) in Buddhism.  Clothing as metaphor for a subconscious, protective boundary or fence (= bulwark or shield) for the self against the cosmos.
Eve from the rib of Adam = symbol of female subordination to the male among hominid primates.
Misinterpretation by late Judaism and Christianity:  taking the myth literally and viewing it as a “fall” from grace/paradise, with the talking serpent as Satan incarnate.  The “serpent” imagery was taken from the religions of surrounding Levantine peoples.  (Note that many statues of the Virgin Mary in Catholicism show her treading on a snake, quite reminiscent of the statues of the Latin goddess Minerva or the Egyptian/Hellenic goddess Isis [Egyptian Aset, the deified river Nile] with a serpent at her feet.)

Proceeding further, we find that Noah’s diluvium is a derivative of earlier Mesopotamian flood stories as found in the epics of Ziusudra, Atrahasis and Gilgamesh.  Abraham and the boys are a collection of legends about semi-pastoral adventures of the early second millennium B.C., with extremely tenuous connections to any post-Exodus Hebrews.

The next biblical book, Exodus, after blithely skipping over four hundred years of supposed dalliance of the Hebrews in Egypt (Exodus 1:8), portrays the escape of 600,000+ men, plus wives, children, non-Israelites and livestock (= ca. 2 million humans, not to mention cattle) from Egypt, after the Egyptians themselves had been tormented by various plagues sent by Yahweh.

However, in reality the biblical “exodus” of ancient Israelites never happened as portrayed.  Instead, the tale is what scholars call a “charter myth” — a narrative concocted by societal elites which purports to describe how a people’s earliest beginnings were formed and which thereby prescribes customs, institutions and beliefs regarding how that people should be and act ever after.  It is tantamount to a kind of “constitution” for pre-literate or barely literate peoples.

In the fiction of a mass of Israelite slaves escaping from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, there is virtually nothing that can be confirmed by modern scholarship.  In fact, rather than Israelites leaving Egypt, the historical evidence reveals the reverse:  a process of imperial Egypt leaving Canaan.  In the late Bronze Age (roughly 1300 — 1100 BC), Levantine empires were slowly weakening.  But until that time, Egypt had dominated and enslaved much of Canaan’s population.  Many slaves, naturally, did their best to escape.  Indeed, Egyptian records themselves talk of runaway slaves.

Then in the latter half of the 12th century, the declining Egyptian hegemon retreated from Canaan, leaving the locals to fill in the power vacuum and form their own societies.  As archeologist Ann E. Killebrew explains in her 2005 work, “Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity:  An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel, 1300-1100 B.C.E.” (Atlanta, GA:  Society of Biblical Literature, 2005;  see partial text at Google Books), archeology shows the beginnings of ancient Israel (the ethnogenesis of the Hebrews) appearing in the Cisjordan and Transjordan hill country in the eleventh century.  In addition, scholars have found a correlation between the description of the boundaries of the “promised” land (as described in Numbers 34:1-15, Josh. 15.1-12; Ezek 47.13-20) and Levantine territory under Egyptian control at the end of the 13th century.  (Cf. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, edd., The Jewish Study Bible, Oxford, England: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004, p. 341.)

Hundreds of years later, the collective memories — of the Egyptian occupation, of the enslavement of Canaanites, and of ongoing escapes of slaves — were “layered” atop one another and fictionalized or “telescoped” (thus Killebrew) into a fable of Israelites escaping en masse (again, ca. 2 million of them, plus livestock) from Egypt through a miraculously parted sea which subsequently closed over and drowned pursuing pharaonic forces.  As this huge number supposedly wandered around in a desert for 40 years (vide Numbers, chapter 33), the hordes were divinely supplied with manna (ch. 11) to keep them and their animals alive.

In reality, after the departure of the Egyptians (ca. 1150-1100 B.C.), a portion of the thitherto subjugated population that had long been native to Canaan developed a powerful religio-political ideology centered on the worship of Yahweh.  This self-organizing polity quickly filled the vacuum left by the retreat of imperial forces.

The literary precipitate of this ideology, the Pentateuch (i.e., the Torah or “Law”), originally handed down through multiple traditions, was written down half a millennium later from at least four different memory strands (J, E, P, D) by a redactor (“R”) who completed his compilation (with all of its inconsistencies and anachronisms) during the Babylonian Exile (586-538 B.C.), or soon thereafter in the early Persian period.  These are the facts behind the “exodus” as unearthed by modern scientists, archeologists and scholars.

Things are similar with Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Pentateuch.  The main, oldest part of this book (chapters 12—26, composed in the seventh century B.C. in the Jerusalem royal court under King Josiah), was written to center the national cultus — and thus political power — in the royal government and the Jerusalem temple at a time of danger for Judea.  Kings IV (or 2 Kings, in modern Bibles) 22:8 reads, &#147And Helcias the high priest said to Saphan the scribe:  ‘I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord’.”  This book, allegedly thus “found” in the temple was chapters 12—26, the main core of Deuteronomy.  Through this pious fraud, the commands to place the whole cultus in the city of Jerusalem were “pseudepigraphically” placed in the mouth of Moses to appear as his actual word.  This fictional “Moses” used verbs of future tense, but without naming Jerusalem by name, because that city had not yet been captured by David in the time of Moses himself.  (The character of Moses is also almost certainly another poetic fiction.)  Again and again, Deuteronomy states merely, “in the place that Yahweh your God will have chosen,” or something similar.  But that place — Jerusalem — was in fact chosen much later by the king or the king’s high priest.

Modern biblical scholars believe not only that the part of the “book of the law” (i.e., chapters 12—26) found in the temple was the beginning of Deuteronomy, but that the priests later (during the Babylonian captivity and afterwards) expanded that book with their own additions and appended it to the end of the Pentateuch.  Deuteronomy is, in other words, a mendacious political tractate, like so many other official documents in human history.

The next major phase came with the capture of Jerusalem in 587/6 B.C. by the Babylonians and the deportation of the Hebrew upper classes to Babylon, where the Jewish rabbinate emerged to maintain the culture.  Then, along with Persia’s conquest of Babylon itself and the release in 538 B.C. of many Jews to return to Canaan and rebuild their temple, major elements of dualistic Persian Zoroastrianism (of the prophet Zarathuštra, who lived sometime between 1400-1000 [cf. Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism, Leiden/Köln: E.J. Brill, 1975, p. 190]) were infused into the Hebrew/Jewish religious ideology.  Among other things, the Persian ruler, Cyrus the Great, was scripturally crowned as the first Messiah (“Anointed One,” Isaiah 45:1).  Major theological developments and borrowings from all this were the following:

As mentioned, King (Shah) Cyrus himself was glorified as the first Messiah (“Anointed One,” Isaiah 45:1) in the Bible.

The national god, Yahwéh (“YHWH”), was promoted to the same status as Ahura Mazda (the “Wise Lord”).

Satan (formerly merely “the Antagonist,” a kind of prosecuting-attorney-demigod) was diabolized as Angra Mainyu (the “Evil Spirit”)

Yahwéh’s former wife, Ishtar/Astarte (Jer 44:17ff.), the Regina Cæli, disappears from the popular Jewish pantheon after the Babylonian Captivity.

The concept of heaven as a “reward” for normative civil/religious behavior:  “democratization” of the apotheosis (originally only) of potentates, as long found in Egyptian religion, where the pharaoh became a god at death.  This idea prepared the way for the notion of the resurrection of the body, which was to play a large role in the Hellenistic mystery religions with their divine heroes rising anew after death.

The concept of hell (“Sheol,”, “Gehenna,” etc.):  originated in the “supernaturalization” of the ancient Persian “ordeal” by fire (molten lead being poured on chest of the accused) as a test of culpability.  (The innocent were preserved from death by the Christ-like god, Mithras, as entranced fire-walkers today are immune to being burned by the coals they walk on.)

These features became most prominent in the popular religion (represented especially by the Pharisees), and less so in the Hellenistically oriented priesthood and its upper-class party (Sadducees).

Another half-millennium later, elements of pre-AD-70 Judaism, along with Paul’s letters, were absorbed into Hellenistic mystery religions (based on dying and rising gods) with influences from gnosis and Stoic philosophy.  (Greek religion was highly syncretistic to begin with.)  With the help of Saint Paul, the new Christ-based sect (there was as yet no such thing as “Christianity”) gradually parted from Torah-based Judaism and became a Greek mystery religion.

But after a long struggle against the rich Greek shipbuilder Marcion, who rejected the Jewish scriptures and published only the Gospel of Luke and Paul’s letters, this new movement inherited traditional Jewish religious literature (the Old Testament, mainly in the Greek Septuagint translation) to which it added its own writings (the New Testament, in Greek).  On the psycho-religious level, this extremely influential, mystery-religion background is almost never mentioned, since it would disturb current theology and politics.  The substrate of Paul’s epistles, however, is a Hellenistic dying-and-rising mysteriology with a Jewish (though anti-Torah) laminate.

Although Paul himself was quite egalitarian and anti-imperial (cf. Bernard Brandon Scott, The Real Paul:  Recovering His Radical Challenge, Salem, OR:  Polebridge Press, 2015), on the social level, many decades later, this new, syncretizing religion also incorporated elements from highly patriarchal and hierarchic Roman society, as seen in the non- and pseudo-Pauline epistles and in the non-Pauline interpolations inserted into the authentic Pauline letters.

While Paul was still alive, the Jesus movement was under the control of Jesus’ brother James, headquartered in Jerusalem’s Temple.  There was no “Christianity,” only a splinter group of Jews and philosemitic Greeks who held Jesus to be a mortal man resurrected by God:  a kind of “super-saint,” but not divine.  The embryonic “church” was, so to speak, in utero.  As regards the Acts of the Apostles, it must be said that it is historically quite uncertain.  In fact, it was written not in the first century but around A.D. 115-120 by an author who knew Paul’s letters and had also read Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, written ca. A.D. 93/4.  (See Richard I. Pervo, Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists, Salem, OR: Westar Institute, Polebridge Press, 2006.)  In the vein of Homeric and Virgilian adventure stories, he then wrote a Christian charter myth with miracles and the description of a utopian ecclesiastical society.

But in A.D. 70 came the vast historical earthquake that is rarely mentioned or even remembered in Christian chronicles:  the culmination of the Jewish War (see Josephus) with the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple.  Subsequently, in the post-AD-70, Hellenistic centuries, Jesus the Anointed, a divinely resurrected human, became re-interpreted as Jesus Christ, humanity’s “window” to God, and the Second “Person” (literally, “mask” or “role,” as in a theater) of God.  What was left of Judaism continued more or less of the Pharisaic branch of the ancient religion.  The Sadducees and Essenes went extinct.  (After the Jewish War of 66-70 there were two more futile Jewish Wars against Rome:  the Kitos War [115-117] and the Bar Kokhba War [132-135].  They only solidified the division between Judaism and Christianity.)

In consequence, later Catholicism came to consist of two main parts:  a legal-social-hierarchical one and a mystical and truly spiritual one.  The inner and psychic part heeded the Gospel injunction, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice” (Mt 6:33, Lc 12:31).  And the external and political aspect concerned itself with power and domination, as under the Roman emperors.  The center of this religion (the fons et origo of all later offshoots) was and is an anthropomorphic god who is said to have died and risen.  But the prime psychodynamic drive which gave Christianity its power throughout many centuries was the sense of guilt (especially regarding sex), but which can easily be manipulated, changed and twisted by the powerful.  Such feelings of the human soul are extremely useful in controlling people.  Similarly, among the Jews we find communal paranoia and a sense of divine “election,” and among the Mohammedans the drive toward domination and submission.  These urges cannot be explained logically, but rather are rooted in the biological evolution of primates.

As a result of sacrilegious and irreligious political abuses by the mediæval Catholic Church, Luther and the Protestant Reformation threw out the mystery-religion baby with the political bath.  Much of the resulting Protestantism (today with perhaps thousands of splinter churches) reverted to bibliolatry (especially of the Old Testament) and became a collection of wannabe Jews.  Cults such as the “Seventh-Day Adventists” and “Jehovah’s Witnesses” are more overt about their Pentateuchism, but the slavish adulation of Jewry by almost all the rest of Protestantism (“Remember the holocaust!”) is obvious to any objective observer.  It is out of these confused circumstances that atheism and the utter repudiation of Christianity together with Western civilization have today emerged.

But human beings need religion of some sort.  The decline of religion portends severe problems for the West.  Since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Roman Catholicism itself has largely sunken into a kind of religiously tinged social agency focussing on importing non-Whites into White countries and exporting White wealth to the Third World and its dictators.  Due to Jewish control of the media, there is much propaganda about (White) “racism,” but almost nothing about the genocidal savagery of Communism, the favored Jewish ideology.  The resulting cynicism about religion in general, along with the materialism now consuming the dark-skinned races as well as Whites, promises nothing less than the termination of evolution on this planet.  Everywhere atheism-based materialism is taking over the world.  For that reason our political “leaders” are unable to understand how it is that Mohammedan assassins, in their war against the West, can commit suicide to bring about their horrific murders.  The materialistic contempt of religion and its manifestly false myths is spreading everywhere throughout the non-Mohammedan educated elites of the world.  It would be far better to have a mystical relgion which encompasses evolutionary biology and cosmogony.

Truth is extremely important in everything, but especially in religion.  Modern science, especially astrophysics, biochemistry, evolutionary biology and related disciplines, teach us that what is called God is much greater and far, far more mysterious than we have ever suspected up to now.  This Ultimate Reality is not the violent and peevish demiurge depicted in the Pentateuch, nor the body-building geezer painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.  Nor is it an anthropomorphic figure which exudes an effeminate and cloying love toward all men (including parasites).  It is a transcendentally intelligent and severe spirit that creates, sustains and abolishes everything, even the most remote galaxies.  Human intelligence is only the smallest spark of that undergirding Reality.  For that reason all men, even atheists, seek something divine, some raison d’être, some way to fulfill what Maslow called “self-transcendence” — something that is more than material objects.  Because man truly does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of “God” — a Source beyond all sources which confers meaning on his existence.  That word is sought in various ways mostly in religion.  The human soul cannot long bear the nihilism of modern Western materialism and genosuicidism.  But today only religion which is consistent with scientific truth can satisfy the educated man.

claman on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 6:16 pm 



Thee said : “But human beings need religion of some sort.”

Nature doesn’t need religion to survive, it’s just we foolish monkeys that need this superstition to be able to live with our own bad manners

makati1 on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 8:05 pm 



Claman … Right On!

makati1 on Wed, 2nd Dec 2015 8:09 pm 



JuanP,

“What you don’t get, Davy, is that you can’t hurt me by insulting me … I laugh in your face at your simpleminded, feeble, completely ineffective attempts to strike back at me …”

Well said and it echos my thoughts on the subject. LOL Have a great day!

theedrich on Thu, 3rd Dec 2015 3:23 am 



Sorry Mak, humans are not monkeys, despite our almost 99% identical DNA and your wishes.  That last 1% makes all the difference.  Nor are we bacteria or stones.  All history has shown that, whatever the ultimate facts about “other dimensions” may be, the human brain is hardwired to need something which “authorizes” its existence.  There is no culture that has not had some type of religion at its core.  Our elites, it is true, are atheistic/agnostic.  However, all signs are that we are soon to die because we ignore our own nature and, believing ourselves to be cosmically meaningless, no longer have any satisfying reason to live.  Fluffy blather about “universal love,” etc., is meaningless.  Saying that anything anyone believes is as good as anything anyone else believes is the same as saying that nothing is good.  It is to embrace nihilism, the future which Nietzsche predicted.  The result is death.

makati1 on Thu, 3rd Dec 2015 6:52 am 



Belief in a ‘god’ is the need for a crutch, nothing more. Nothing less.

Davy on Thu, 3rd Dec 2015 7:09 am 



Those who claim there is no higher power are as bad as those who blindly believe there is one. True human maturity and humility acknowledges the whole subject is beyond human capabilities.

JuanP on Thu, 3rd Dec 2015 8:09 am 



I have always thought that people who choose to believe in imaginary beings, whether fairies, elves, orcs, ghosts, zombies, gods, or whatever are intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically less developed than people that don’t. These people may compensate for their inferior minds by developing a great imagination and inventing things as they go through life partially disconnected from reality all the time.

In my own life, I tend to discriminate against and ignore religious people as a rule, though I can make exceptions. One of my friends is a Catholic Jesuit priest, but he also has chemistry and physics doctorates besides his theology one, and an open mind.

BC on Thu, 3rd Dec 2015 11:39 am 



Brain/mind/thought cannot conceive of its own ending, therefore, thought/subject/”self” projects a thoughtform object (“self” experiencing life after death, Heaven, Hell, Paradise, reincarnation, etc.) as existing perpetually beyond the demise of the physical body from which thought perceives itself separate.

But, of course, brain/mind/thought/”self” is not separate from the body, which itself is inseparable from Nature.

Thus, “self” or “I” is an illusory projection of the human ape brain but a rather practically useful illusion, to be sure.

Zen refers to the experience of the “emptiness” of the illusory “self” as “no-mind” or “no-thingness”, i.e., consciousness unconscious of consciousness conscious of itself. IOW, when mind is emptied of all that is perceived, constructed, and projected as illusory “things”, mind is said to be in the “natural state”, i.e., “The Void” that is “full of emptiness” or “no-thingness”.

Western elites’ religion is perpetual growth of population, resource consumption, revenues, profits, and capital accumulation within the frame of so-called neoliberal economic and geopolitical beliefs in “democratic imperialism”, “free markets”, and “multi-culturalism” under the financial, economic, and political structure of a global, rentier-socialist corporate-state.

The secondary motivation is to create a kind of “Heaven on Earth” (at least for the top 0.001-1%) based on “education”, “meritocracy”, “free trade”, capitalist profit seeking, and application of scientific and business principles and technological innovation to achieve the goals of “The Order”.

Yes, they are cynical and Machiavellian, but few reach the positions at, or near, the top of the hierarchy without internalizing the foregoing values and beliefs and demonstrating them via deference, speech, and actions.

Of course, the elites have little or no loyalty or self-identification with nation-states, particular ideologies or traditional religions; but they are members of one or more “tribes” or exclusive cliques of like-minded individuals of similar income, wealth, position, status, influence, and power.

These elites transmit directly and indirectly from above their status, values, beliefs, and expectations via the institutions they control, reproduce, and are most influential in evolving over time.

theedrich on Fri, 4th Dec 2015 4:29 am 



Note that in my statements above I have said nothing about a “God,” especially of the Judæo-Christian type.  In fact, the word “god” itself comes from proto-Germanic *guð-, seen in its Visigothic descendant as guþ (in the nominative), (genitive guðis), which is NEUTER in gender.  In the Gothic Bible it was converted from the original neuter (i.e., þata guþ) to masculine (sa guþ) under the influence of the Greek θεός and Latin deus, both of which are masculine gender (a linguistic, not a biological, category).  The Indogermanic origin of *guð- was *ĝhau-, ĝhaw-, ĝhawə-, “to call, call upon” (see Julius Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wöterbuch, Franke Verlag, Bern und München, p. 413).  The pre-Christian cult of the ancient Germanic peoples was, like that of other peoples of ancient Iran and the circumpolar steppes, shamanic, i.e., based on a cultic specialist who would voluntarily undergo a “Near-Death Experience,” talk to spirits of the underworld, then return and let his tribesfellows know what was in store for them, where they could find food, etc.  Phenomenologically, the cult had many similarities to Tibetan Buddhism, especially with the revenants (i.e., NDE-undertakers) of the latter.

Those who, like Mak, are convinced they know everything about such matters and ridicule those with differing views, remind one of a South Sea Islander who refuses to believe in snow because he himself has never seen it.  But for those few with an open mind, I suggest browsing through the works of Rupert Sheldrake or even of Ian Stevenson (perhaps his Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect), mostly available on Amazon.

In biology there is a gene-based “life-history theory,” also called the r—K scale of reproductive strategies by evolutionary biologists.  This scale is used in comparing the life histories of different species.  At the “r” end of the scale are beings that rely on prolific reproduction (with less care devoted to the offspring) to maintain their species, and on the “K” end are those that have comparatively lower reproduction rates and spend more of their life energy on caring for them in one way or another.  As U of Western Ontario’s Professor J. Philippe Rushton puts it in his RACE, EVOLUTION
AND BEHAVIOR:  A Life History Perspective,

On this scale, Orientals are more K-selected than Whites, while Whites are more K-selected than Blacks.  Highly K-selected women produce fewer eggs (and have bigger brains) than r-selected women.  Highly K-selected men invest time and energy in their children rather than the pursuit of sexual thrills.  They are “dads” rather than “cads.”

However, the same theory might be applied to the universe as a whole.  Zillions of galaxies might be required at the “r” end of the scale to produce a single planet with life, let alone intelligence.  If such an idea is anywhere near correct, then it would indicate that there is (shudder) an underlying teleology “cybernetically” at work in cosmic existence.  For those who ask why humans should exist at all, the answer would be that there is a cosmic will to be.  And the most intense form of being is physical intelligence.  Forget about “good” and “bad.”  Being — physical existence — itself is the name of the game.  Hence the murderous competition among all biota, not just humans.  Judæo-Christianity, with its unspoken assumption of an infinitude of resources (to support those at the “r” end of the scale), has completely distorted the fact of such competition.

Davy on Fri, 4th Dec 2015 7:24 am 



Thee, you are always interesting and that above was a mouthful. My spirituality these days looks less at the linear of the written word and more on the breadth of non-linear spiritual experience. Do I have a clue, no, but I have studied theology, philosophy, and comparative religions extensively.

I am currently reading Alan Watts “Taoism Way Beyond Seeking”. This is a fine book without purpose just enjoyment. I will mention with the coming bottleneck one would be wise to read Taoism to understand a proper mental approach to collapse. Taoism arose in the waring states period in China. I think that is a perfect match for what is ahead for us.

Your research above is quite interesting but a dead end like much of what I have read. At some point you have to completely walk away from such things but only after you have research all you can. At some point you find you can go no deeper. At that point is when you have found it.

theedrich on Sat, 5th Dec 2015 3:52 am 



Actually, Davy, I do know quite a bit about Taoism.  But ultimately, it is based on the same ultra-cosmic perception (through non-cortical sensation) that is found in most mystical traditions, whether Taosim, Buddhism (Mahayana or Hinayana), Sufism, the Catholic mystics, shamanism, Emanuel Swedenborg, and so forth.  As humans, our entire perceptual organism, minds (including language), art, science and technology are based on the world impinging on our senses, which are limited strictly to what we need to perceive in order to survive.  (Many non-human creatures have senses which perceive many other factors — e.g., electromagnetism, ultraviolet light, smells — far beyond our grasp.)  If you could read German, you would benefit greatly from Dr. rer. nat. Dr. phil. Gerhard Vollmer’s Evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie:  Angeborene Erkenntnisstrukturen im Kontext von Biologie, Psychologie, Linguistik, Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie (Stuttgart:  Verlag S. Hirzel, 1975).  He explains how the evolution of life is really a process of evolutionary epistemology.  That is, we (and all life) are creatures whose whole being is adapted to learning about this world and this world only.  I am not sure I understand what you mean by a “dead end.”  Are you looking for a world of unicorns?  A Christian or Mohammedan heaven?  Samadhi?  The nir-vana (“out-blowing” of the candle of existence) of Buddhism?  The only cosmic imperative there is, is not Kant’s and everyone else’s “golden rule,” but the command to survive, and to do so at all costs.  And that is precisely what the White genosuicidists of our time are against.

Davy on Sat, 5th Dec 2015 8:02 am 



You comments are interesting and enjoyable Thee. I love your discussions (until they get racist). Thee I read about the Tao strictly for enjoyment as one would look at art or enjoy a symphony. BTW the spoken Tao is not the Tao.

peakyeast on Sat, 5th Dec 2015 8:47 am 



Not that I know much about Tao, but I fully enjoyed Benjamin Hoffs, The Tao of Pooh and the Te of piglet. I recommend it for a comfy cozy and interesting read