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Saturday, March 12, 2011

Song Saturday-Emancipate Yourselves From Mental Slavery

Waking up this morning to the news of reactors blowing on the island nation of Japan almost had me posting The Pixies' 'Wave of Mutilation' this morning.  It also had me making remarks about Godzilla, I think it's probably too soon for that though. 

However, I am a little bothered by trends I've been watching on line, in conversations on the streets, at coffeehouses in churches, etc.  I'm hearing two things that are really troubling to me.  They may not be troubling to you but let's find out. 

1. End Times- There have always ALWAYS been people predicting the end.  There was before the cult of Christ and there will be after.  Somehow it comforts people.  I think it does this in one of two ways.  For some people it helps keep them in line.  They may just barely have a reign on their moral reasoning and looking forward to some big finale keeps them "good" or whatever good is in their minds.  For the second group its a reason to party, hell everything's going to shit, why not?  Why not screw over my whole state. (I'm looking at you Gov. Walker) Why not keep Palestine in an 'Escape From New York' like lockdown?  The end is coming damn it!  I forgot a group, there are just the bat-shit crazies. 

But really in the past couple of years every single swivving time a natural disaster occurs, out come the megaphones and the biblical and Mayan support "evidence" that the time is drawing nigh, get ye to a kirkyard baby!- P.S. I really think the Mayans just ran out of room and were bloody done and figured they could start a new calendar anytime, we do it every year after all.  How were they to know they would be decimated? 

I don't think earthquakes happen because God or Gods and Goddesses want us to run out and worship them more heartily.  I think it's pretty well laid out scientifically how plate tectonics works.  And I know God works in mysterious ways, blah blah blah... In the song I chose today Bob Marley states "Some say it's just  a part of it. We've got to fulfill the book."  What the shit?  Why do you really believe that a loving parent would set up a disaster for us?  Or is it just possible that man, or satan or whatever boogey man you believe in whispered in some overworked monk's ear as he was transcribing, "don't forget this part, it's going to make things a lot more interesting."

 Think about this.  If your parents were mean angry punishing assholes would you live in their house?  Hell no, you'd hightail it outta there as soon as you could.  Conversely if your parents are kind, loving and give direction with the ability to make your own choices wouldn't you come home for Christmas more?  Of course.  Why then worship and angry punishing parent-god? 

It doesn't make sense.

But that's just me.   And before anyone gets their panties in a was and starts calling me a god-less heathen-pagan, I'll let you know I am decidedly a heathen-pagan but god-less, no.

2. The other thing that has been bothering me is that in the same span of time-the past couple of years or so, the Atheists out there have been becoming as vehement and angry and persecuting as the religions they claim to hate.  I have watched as numerous atheists call all believers in, well anything foolish, stupid, insipid, retarded, lovers of fairy tales.  I am wondering how that is helpful to their own belief (or non-belief) system.  If you have to name call, you should be looking inwards at why. 

I'll just say it.  Atheists you are getting ugly.  Clean up your act, so we can take your arguments seriously again.

Anyway the song I chose today is Redemption Song.  Why?  Because we all need it from the Atheists to the Crazies.  We need to cool it down, take a step back start thinking about what needs to be worried about, what can be done and work on the things we can. "Have no fear for atomic energy"  or anything else because really it is us we need to be afraid of and that is something we can do something about.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.

6 comments:

  1. It may or may not be the end of the world mentioned in Revelation, but it's certainly the end of the world as we know it. The earth is being contaminated at a rapid pace and much death and destruction is likely to occur. Genetic engineering of food sources have also endangered the ability of crops to reproduce. We've drawn so much out of the earth without replacing it with anything, there will probably be earthquakes and sink holes even where there aren't fault lines. It's a disaster of our own making which came from greed and power lust.

    With us always wanting more and more, better and better, newer and newer, we've all but destroyed many of our resources. Constantly seeking after newer, shinier things with no thought for the resulting consequences has shown us what poor stewards of the Earth we are.

    From my viewpoint, we were warned about this long ago. You can write the bible off as a fairy tale or be wise and at least consider it as a cautionary tale if you choose not to believe.

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  2. Yes, I agree with you Grainne.

    And with Space Eagle. I've read the Revelation account many times. The bible does "predict" these things, but one could also speculate that it's simply human nature to predict and visualize the end of the world, and what it might look like. I think it's safe to say that Revelation was a doomsday prediction and not just the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of Rome, which I've read before. The imagery of Revelation is clearly apocalyptic and futuristic.

    I don't think anyone's dumb enough to say there have always been earthquakes, wars, and today is no different. There is definitely a coming change in geology and in future civilization, and possibly for the negative.

    Whether or not God gets involved, and how specifically, is anyone's guess. It certainly is comforting to think about instead of just the old world blowing up scenario.

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  3. I took a class on Revelation/John’s Apocalypse a few years back, so I had to read all sorts of nifty interpretations of the thing. It made MOST sense to me as an apocalyptic genre writing. It made the least sense to me as a prediction of the end of the world in which we didn’t understand any of the cast of characters until yesterday’s newspaper.

    Hal Lindsey’s financial success and prophetic FAILURE from the Seventies should have put that theory to bed for good.

    Just as interesting in your entry today, though, was your comment about the atheists. I’ve noticed the same thing lately – the internet has seemed to give enough rope to the atheist crowd as to allow them to hang themselves. The AAIQ (Average Atheist Intelligence Quotient) seems to have dropped precipitously as of late, to the point where their arguments are as dumb and hostile as everyone else’s…

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  4. Cal, I feel like every night when I go to bed it's the end of the world as I know it. Of course things change. And being somewhat versed in Revelations, I'm not discounting that someone was far-seeing and could predict just these things.

    What I don't believe is that anything is set in stone and HAS to happen. We have gotten ourselves to this point. For years people have be pumping the wonderful benefits of nuclear power and now we are seeing the side effects. Do we save oil? Yes, but there is always a cost. We are accountable for that. It's all about choices. We can choose to be better, and I like to believe we can do this at any time. I don't believe it's ever too late. -Just for the record I don't personally think the Bible a faerie tale, just inaccurate due to human beings.

    @Katydid- I agree. And I have respect for Atheists, those who are truly questioning and thinking. I just don't like the seperation that is occuring, it's getting nasty. Seperation breeds prejudice, prejudice breeds more seperation.

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  5. Grainne, my Christianity, such as it is, follows the liberal teachings of my father, who dismissed huge segments of the Bible as the stories and myths of a nomadic tribe who had their place in history, but were not history. Revelations, to him, were no more inspired than the conceptual art of Da Vinci, or the prophecies of Nostradamus. He was a Christ follower, and for all end of the world advocates, he pointed out that Jesus had said no one would know the day or time the world ended.

    Here is the way i look at the triple disaster belonging to Japan. The first two calamities were the usual periodic upheavals of tectonic pressure. The third one was man made. Japan is part of the Ring of Fire. They built nuclear power plants in an active earthquake/volcanic zone. Anytime you build a plant, factory or other installation in an active zone, it's not a matter of will it withstand an earthquake, a tsunami, or a volcanic explosion, but when it will be taken down.

    This is the second man made disaster in less than a year that will have long term global consequences. The ocean floor surrounding Louisiana is a dead zone. We can no more continue sustaining these severe calamities than we can risk a nuclear war.

    The Mayans have a richer, far more curious history than our anthropologists are willing to admit. Mayan students insist that their technology has been this advanced; and even greater than it is now. They say their technology, which included air travel, advanced medical procedures and lethal weapons, caused a world wide catastrophe, destroying their great cities, and leaving them with only a small handful of survivors. It was because they went through it once that they could develop a time frame for experiencing it again.

    Take it or leave it as you please, but to my mind, this is quite plausible.

    Atheism i see as a separate subject. I find atheism as narrow and limiting as unquestioned faith in a literal Bible. I believe that in general, humans are hard-wired for a spiritual identity. Russia was not able to convert their Orthodox Christians to atheism, even after fifty years of religious banishment and persecution. Throughout history, you will find people of such great faith, they overcame all obstacles.

    They are drawing upon a power outside their selves, and it makes no difference to me what name you would call it. What disappoints me about the modern day atheist is their claims are based on their own "superior" intelligence. Of all the time periods since post-Renaissance, i find the turn of the twentieth century thinkers and scholars the most fascinating. They were unafraid to explore the aspects of spirituality. Dabbling in the arts of psychic perception, collective conscience and higher power awareness were Houdini, Sir Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Hermann Hesse, Carl Jung, James Joyce. However much you care for them individually, they engaged in challenging, engrossing debates, left huge prints on the public mind and left behind a legacy of mental pioneering we haven't even begun to explore.

    I'm also a fan of Frank Herbert. "By my mind alone, i will set things in motion". The internal force of will contacts the outer force of power, greater and far more consequential than our individual efforts. We haven't reached this culmination of mindspeak or its understanding, because we are still immature. Denying a force greater and stronger than our own only limits our ability to access it. Refusing to believe their could be a greater intelligence than our own limits our ability to imagine greater intelligence. We become stagnant. We become embers that have died because there was no warmth, no light, no message, no reason to rekindle them. -karlsie

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  6. Actually, i misquoted Herbert. It's "by my will alone, i set my mind in motion". I had a scrambled egg moment. -karlsie

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