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Legalism, Anarchism or Blessed Liberty?
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keysone, South Dakota
We of the western cultural persuasion seem to be absolutely convinced that the absence of law and order is anarchy and disorder, that legalism is the opposite of anarchism. We are certain that the entire social fabric would immediately unravel without laws, punishments and enforcement. We think this way because we blindly assume that law is the only viable means of maintaining social order.
This, of course, is utter human nonsense, since it is to take the intellectual position that the Oriental cultures, traditionally based in ethics rather than law, never existed, that there is no such thing as family and public opinion (or that Oriental ethical systems are irrelevant to the western world's notions of order).
If you placed your pocketbook on the street corner in downtown Baghdad and walked around the block, there is a very high probability that it would still be there upon your return. It would be the fear of Guilt for having broken the religious legal code and, perhaps, fear of having one's hand chopped off as punishment that would keep your pocketbook in place. One would have failed to be obedient to God's law, failed to maintain proper conduct, and one would be deserving of whatever punishments a vengeful God might dictate.
If you placed your pocketbook on the street corner in downtown Tokyo and walked around the block, there is a very high probability that it would still be there upon your return. It would be the fear of Shame for having brought dishonor to oneself and one's family (who taught by example that one ought have respect for people and their property) that would keep your pocketbook in place. One would have failed to maintain proper comport, failed to maintain proper relationships and one would be deserving of whatever humiliation Society might dictate.
How can this be in Oriental cultures? How do these traditionally "atheistic" cultures accomplish this, if law is so absolutely essential to maintaining decent human behavior and social order? Clearly, it is possible to achieve the same social outcome, i.e., minimization of theft, in both the traditional west (in the absence of ethics) and in the traditional east (in the absence of law). The point is that purely legal systems (JudeoRomanism) and purely ethical systems (Confucianism) are both able to maintain a modicum of order in society, as they were intended, in complementary opposite ways.
In the Orient, we have family and public opinion, taught by example ("do as I do, not as I say"), as the bottom line, keeping in mind that an absolutist ethic demands respectful and loyal behavior regardless and can easily become a "tyranny of goodness," which demands that one be loyal, even if those overhead are liars and thieves.
In the Occident, we have law, taught by word ("do as I say, not as I do") as the bottom line, keeping in mind that an absolute legalism demands respectful and obedient behavior regardless and can easily become a "tyranny of law," which demands that one be obedient, even if those overhead are liars and thieves.
It would seem, in this comparison, that family and public opinion are the stronger approach, not requiring so much in the way of hired enforcement, legal systems and prisons. In fact, even today, following its westernization and capitalization, Japan has, proportionately, about one tenth as many citizens behind bars as does the U.S. The simple truth is that it has always been far cheaper to raise a child to be a thoughtful, caring citizen than to incarcerate and rehabilitate a screwed up adult.
We see the proof right here in America, where we are the "most law ridden people on earth," where we are the "most violent and self-destructive nation on earth," and where we have the largest proportion of our citizenry locked behind bars, many youthful violators for non-violent crimes. The problem is one of living in an amorphous society where there is so little allowable honesty and truth that the family, the community and the public haven't much of a collective opinion about anything. We call the result "gridlock." Insofar as it takes a village or a nation to raise a child, we have not provided much in the way of either, all for our lack of agreement on what constitutes a democracy and what counts in a democracy. This sin of greed and omission has done a poor job of raising our children.
Western legal systems and eastern ethical systems are complementary opposites, representing cultural extremes established millennia ago in the interest of establishing and maintaining the social order. In both cases, these ancient approaches, unfettered by human knowledge, led to a good deal of book burning and feudalism, a tyranny of law in the west and a tyranny of goodness in the east.
The lesson to be learned is that it is Tyranny, not Anarchy, that the people ought be most concerned about, most afraid of, and here is why.
ANARCHY is when individuals "lord" it over society and its justifiable needs (e.g., The Lord of the Flies").
TYRANNY is when society "lords" it over individuals and their justifiable needs (JudeoRoman imperialism and colonialism, right wing "compassionate" conservatism).
Either way "the people" are out of it.
Anarchy is not the absence of law and order. ANARCHY IS THE RECIPROCAL OF TYRANNY.
Individual anarchy itself, "Lord of the Flies" style, has little cultural and historical precedent since a society where each and every individual is out for only himself would not last for very long and would not constitute a "culture" or a "society." Contemporary crony capitalism is about as close to an individual anarchy as is possible to achieve in reality, with individuals uniformly in competition with each other over the necessities of life, food, shelter, education and medication. In preservation of this relatively mindless individual anarchy, religious crony capitalism employs JudeoRoman justifications to rationalize the use of deceit and deception in nourishing despotic control over the people, their press and their minds.
Jefferson declared open war, not on anarchy, but on all forms of tyranny over the human mind. In this sense, America's fathers were intellectual "anarchists" in that they dispensed with papal and monarchical authority in favor of Democracy and "the will of the people." They dispensed with all forms of external authority so the people might think for themselves. But, they were not anarchists at all in the sense that they worked for a common, agreed-upon cause, Democracy and freedom from religious tyranny and oppression.
To place the highest emphasis on human values and human knowledge, to place the highest value on the nourishment of human rights rather than law or ethics, is not to open the doors to anarchy, it is to close the doors to tyranny. It is to open the doors to Democracy, as a proud example of a collective anarchy, when the people take control of their own government. --08.20.03
The Death Of American Politics
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keysone, South Dakota
Thomas Jefferson was a dialectician in thought and a Deist in belief and, from this theological ground, he provided the intellectual foundations of American Democracy. Jefferson's theology was bottomlined in the concept that Deity was located on the human inside, in the "head and heart" of every person, that the highest authority is the "will of the people, substantially declared." From this concept of Deity and from nascent (dialectic) Christian values comes the concept of universal human rights (G. Lower, BushWatch, July, 2003).
It is something more than telling that a past curator of the National Museum, Daniel J. Boorstin, wrote a wonderful book entitled, "The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson" in 1948. It is similarly telling that this effort, at the dawn of "political correctness," avoided serious discussion of Jefferson's theology, which is so entirely at odds with traditional religion (and so entirely based upon and consistent with nascent Christianity).
Historically, of course, the dialectic values beneath Jefferson's Democracy were compromised right from the start by religious Tory capitalism. The Constitution was penned in Jefferson's absence and it vered sharply right in departing the spirit of Jefferson's Declaration, religiously denying rights to women, blacks and non-landowners. Franklin even prophesized that this "fault" would ultimately lead to a nation under despotic rule and occupied by people who would not even know the difference. Welcome to America in the 3rd millennium. Welcome to Bush World.
>From these awkward beginnings, the traditional dialectic in American politics has been between socialism and capitalism, left and right, secular and religious, liberal and conservative. In 1816, Jefferson warned the people of the dangers of an aristocracy of the rich that would usurp their power. But, the Industrial Revolution was on, the era of "robber barons" was on and the socialist-capitalist dialectic emerged fully into public life. Grover Cleveland established Labor Day in 1894 to acknowledge the contributions of the beleagured American worker, struggling to make ends meet without a fair say in or a fair share of the deal.
The 1920s brought this dialectic to the political forefront with the emergence of labor unions and farm and ranch organizations hoping to achieve a semblance of fairness in American socio-economics by empowering those who must work and produce for a living. Robert Tawney wrote a marvelous book in 1926, ("Religion and the Rise of Capitalism," The New American Library, 1954) that provided serious insight into the role of JudeoRoman religious attitudes in driving imperialism, colonialism and capitalism. By FDR's administration, the President's wife was a card-carrying socialist. Evenso, both political parties during the first half of the 20th century managed to revolve around political center with minimal polarization (Krugman, "America the Polarized," NY Times, Jan. 4, 2002).
The dialectic provided by our Fathers (between those choosing to share without restriction and those choosing to compete without limit) has had a profound downside for American socioeconomics. As complementary opposites, the extreme socialist (we are all the same) and the extreme capitalist ($ome of u$ are cho$en) positions left virtually no room for Jefferson's meritocracy (the dialectic synthesis), with individual reward as a function of individual time and talent, experience and contribution. The result in America is a socioeconomic order in which the skilled and talented are nearer the bottom of the heap, while business administrators rule the day in a world quite upside down by Jeffersonian standards.
Following World War II and the postwar success of capitalism in producing wealth, both political parties were obliged to operate on the same side of the traditional dialectic, to create an entirely new dialectic between liberal secular capitalism and conservative religious capitalism. Capitalism was no longer seen as one of several socioeconomic options worthy of consideration within the frameworks of Democracy, but as the sole chosen way of a war victorious and chosen people, a people whose wealth and power provided evidence of the favoritism shown them by their god, the reward for having faith, all of which served to justify self-righteous claims to worldly dominion and control. With capitalism thusly empowered, there was a need to solidify that power, and the stage was set for complete polarization of the American politic.
The rightward shift to political polarization emerged in public in 1980 with the Reagan administration's overt pandering to the religious right for fiscal support and votes, and the movement went exponential in 1994 with the Southern Baptist takeover of the Texas Republican party. This evolutionary strand reached completion with the emergence of Old Testament JudeoRoman fundamentalism ("compassionate" conservatism) directly in the Oval Office, compliments of an unelected, court-appointed Bush administration.
As a result, the religious right wing, mostly Republican, like the JudeoRoman church-states before it, has pursued a complete tyranny over the minds of the people via control over their government's institutions and policies and control over their press, employing secretiveness and propaganda laced with fabrications and lies. The secular left wing, mostly Democrat, has been reduced to dumbness and impotence, lost entirely from its liberal roots on the side opposite capitalism. Unaware that empowering capitalism signaled the death of the traditional American politic, America proceeded to make a god of mammon. The left wing is unable to envision an alternative to the post WW II chosen "American Way" because it is now integral to that program and to the resulting problems. Within the "intellectual" confines of crony capitalism, there simply are no solutions to the problems created by capitalism itself.
In other words, the radical shift in the American political dialectic since World War II has left both liberals and conservatives on the capitalistic side of the traditional dialectic. Moreover, this self-evident shift has taken place without much public or academic notice, an indication of the rampant sociocultural blindness emergent in America under capitalistic dominion.
Nevermind family values. The creation of a socio-economic system requiring both parents to work is seen as "progress." Nevermind community values. The creation of a vertical national economy with large corporations eating up the horizontal local economies which held our communities together is seen as "progress." Nevermind national values. The creation of a capitalistic ("one ill, one pill, one bill" ) medicine and a root-level crisis in medical ethics is seen as "progress." Exemplifying too much of "good" thing, this capitalistic "progress" has demeaned everything that really counted in America, everything meaningful, from parent-child relationships to quality of education to the celebration of Christ's birth to the principles of Jeffersonian Democracy.
The America people have been gradually but surely hijacked by the rich, religious Republican right wing, those who believe that money, no matter how acquired, is the primary measure of human worth, that it bestows the right to power, and that there is never enough of the stuff. Employing this approach to socioeconomic problem-solving, America has solved not one single social problem since World War II, but rather has made most social problems even worse, with capitalism's penchant for dealing with symptoms instead of causes, it's employment of social bandaids to palliate systemic disease, all in the name of preserving capitalism and enhancing the ruthless pursuit of riches and the rule of the rich.
Coming to worship mammon as a nation was, obviously, a "mistake" that had to be made and was made within the larger embrace of human cultural evolution. Jefferson and Franklin both knew well that the dialectic human values beneath Democracy would have global human appeal, that the "ball of liberty" would "roll round the world." They were also aware that if everyone does not have Democracy, then no one really has it. The larger evolutionary program simply called for further human unification, and JudeoRoman religion and crony capitalism would ultimately supply the greed-driven motivations and the rationalizations for economic globalization.
The American people, over the span of 200 years (Hamilton), 20 years(Reagan), and 2 years (Bush), have been (exponentially) coerced into abiding an ancient religious script which they had no hand in authoring. This coercion was a "mistake" that will have to be corrected as soon as adequate numbers of people can see it, not so much as a mistake but as an evolutionary necessity in the interest of continued human socioeconomic unification (from tribal to national to global organization via imperialism, colonialism and capitalism).
Capitalism has, since World War II, produced a global human economic arena not yet worthy of being called a global economy. Accordingly, it's evolutionary purpose fulfilled, capitalism must now stand aside in the interest of political unification under the auspices of Democracy, the genuine article. Religious capitalism will, of course, never stand aside, and it will never listen to reason. The people are left to watch it die of its own self-righteous hand.
In the historical sense, it is critically important for American citizens to recognize that American Democracy has de-evolved to occupy a position beneath and opposed to the philosophical position which gave it birth. We have come full circle only to see ourselves from beneath and behind ... and it is not a very pretty sight for a nation ostensibly birthed from the concepts of fairness and equality. Until the people recognize the historical significance of current reality, their problems will elude comprehension and control, and they will continue to be led astray by capitalists who fear and despise Democracy.
In the evolutionary sense, it is critically important for Americans to recognize that America is integrally involved in a larger, implicit cultural program that transcends "compassionate" conservatism and the pax Americana it envisions. The outcome of this delusion has already been determined by the JudeoRoman mythology which drives the program, all branches of western religion being apocalyptic and self-terminating. Until the people recognize the evolutionary significance of current reality, their problems will elude comprehension and control, and they will continue to be led astray by religious fundamentalists who fear and despise nascent Christianity.
Thoughtful and caring people will be largely unable do anything to alter the necessary evolutionary outcome, as vengeance-based religion and crony capitalism continue to discredit themselves from the global political arena. If the people choose to fight the good fight for Democracy and freedom or if they choose to fight for JudeoRoman Bushism, the outcome will be quite the same. While waiting for that outcome (as religious prophecy blindly fulfills itself), the people will need to rethink Jefferson's Democracy in contemporary Information Age terms, and the people will need to re-establish Jefferson's God, the "will of the people," as the direct decision-making apparatus of their nation. It is time to return to common human sense and the dialectic wisdom of our Fathers. It is time to grow up as a nation, socially and spiritually.
"Surely this is not an exorbitant demand" of the citizens of the world's first Democracy. Jefferson and Franklin and most good Americans nearly pulled it off 200 years ago. --08.10.03
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keysone, South Dakota
I was sitting last evening, scratching myself where it counts, and a grand revelation came unto me, no gods involved, just an ant bite (or is it a sting?) on the butt. All revelations seem grand and godly, of course, but some are actually insightful and worthy. This is the way insights come to us, at unusual and sometimes awkward moments when we are least expecting it. The notion that someone could have an insight while sitting behind a desk is almost ludicrous.
Its more like Carl Sagan described it. You take a stoned shower with your wife, get lost in the romance of it all, and end up scribbling insights on the shower wall with a bar of soap. That is pretty much how it works, all right. Too bad for the fundamentalist folks who already know everything and do not need or seek insights. They miss the only glory to be found in scratching one's butt.
So, considering the world as a whole, here is the insight born of an itch.
In the Orient, the cultural world is dominated by Hinduism, Confucianism and Buddhism and their various cultural offspring. In the Occident, the cultural world is dominated by Judaism, JudeoRomanism and Islamism and their various cultural offspring. In other words, all traditional world cultures, both east and west, are "ISMS." That's it, the sum total of my insight. What do you think? Did you see that little bolt of white light? It's there. You just have to grab your insight and interrogate it.
The obvious question arising from this insight is what characteristics do these world beliefs have in common that make them all "isms"? How can cultures as different as Judaism and Confucianism (which happen to be complementary cultural opposites) have anything in common?
One characteristic that comes quickly to mind is the fact that all "isms" have been maintained over the millennia by fundamentalists, those who defend their "ism" with incorrigibility, an overt refusal to consider alternatives that might pose a threat to their "ism." As a result, all "isms" are "timeless." They are maintained as fixed belief systems unaffected by the passage of time, unaffected by history and unaffected by the evolution of scientific thought and human knowledge.
"Isms" are perceived by fundamentalists as being complete and fully-assembled, right out of the box, as good today as yesterday, as if the world had not changed at all over the millennia, certainly not enough to require rethinking and re-evaluating the core "ism." As fixed belief systems, these cultural "worlds" have not evolved but have served as a stable base (cultural information content) which has provided for further differentiation and adaptation (cultural information expression), as these world cultures have been molded to fit specific times and places and needs. Ideological information is to human culture as genomic information is to human biology. It's all information at the bottom.
Buddhism in India crossed the mountains to China to become Chan Buddhism which then moved on to Japan to become Zen Buddhism, adaptive variations of the same theme. Judaism gave cause to nascent Christianity as a rejection of both Judaism and Romanism, and nascent Christianity was reunited with Judaism by the Roman emperor, Constantine, to produce JudeoRomanism. JudeoRomanism, in turn, ultimately gave cause to Lutheranism and Protestantism, from Methodists and Baptists to Mormons and Unitarians. In other words, parent "isms" differentiate into specialized "isms," all within the frameworks of the parental "ism."
JudeoRomanism, for example, emphasized Old Testament values to the harsh exclusion of nascent Christian values and it did so for over a millennium in driving imperialism. Lutheranism and Protestantism joined the conquering fray for several centuries to drive colonialism. In other words, parent "isms" establish and maintain operational "isms," e.g., imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, despotism, fascism).
Accordingly, the world has come to be over-whelmed with "isms." Everywhere one looks, there is another "ism," e.g., "compassionate" conservatism, Osama bin Ladenism. And what are all these "isms" doing? They are uniformly holding onto themselves by their own "isms." Unfortunately, the evidence would have it that "isms" (all of which are cultural evolutionary subsets) are largely unequipped and unable to comprehend and control what is going on in the larger world. The traditional "isms" really have no option but to play with themselves. This will not accomplish much more than self-satisfaction. But, who knows, they might have an insight.
There are, however, human cultures which are not "isms" at all. Has anyone ever heard of "Christianism" or "Philosophism" or "Democratism"? No, of course not. By the same token, no one has ever heard of "Judeocracy" or "Confucianity" or "Compassionate Conservophy."
So the next question, then, is what characteristics do these latter day science-based cultures have in common that disqualify them as "isms"? What is it about Science, Philosophy, nascent Christianity and Democracy that set them apart from all other world cultures, apart from all the "isms"?
One characteristic that comes quickly to mind is the fact that these cultures are uniformly based on dialectic human thought and the values derived therefrom, values which embrace and transcend the values beneath western religious systems and eastern ethical systems. These are the values of Science, the values beneath Philosophy, nascent Christianity, and Democracy, not an "ism" in sight.
Hippocrates was a dialectician. He did not look at the victims of disease with conservative apathy or liberal sympathy. He looked at them with knowledgeable empathy, the dialectic synthesis of these complementary opposites. In other words, Hippocrates put himself in the victim's place and then addressed the issues of causation and course in earthbound terms so that he could do something about the situation in earthbound terms. He disqualified supernaturalism from Science and provided medicine its ethical bottom lines.
Jesus was a dialectician. In dealing with social problems, he did not condemn those who had gone astray or condone their behavior. He looked at the situation with an eye toward healing, the dialectic synthesis of these complimentary opposites. In other words, Jesus put himself in the "sinner's" (or victims) place and then addressed the issue of causation and course in earthbound human terms so he could do something about the situation in earthbound terms. He confronted the corruptions of Judaism and Romanism, giving His life in the struggle for an ethical morality based in honesty and compassion. He also provided the seed bed for the values and principles of EuroAmerican Democracy, based on universal human rights.
Jefferson was a dialectician. He did not concern himself with pure ethics (loyalty) or with religious law (obedience). He put the emphasis on human rights (freedom), the dialectic synthesis of these complimentary cultural opposites. He put himself in the citizen's place and then addressed the issues of causation and course in earthbound terms. He did something about it in earthbound terms. He established the separation of church and state, which Jesus had so long ago recommended, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's ..." and he gave us religious freedom. Henceforth, God did not belong to the church, God belonged to the people, residing in the people. The people were no longer children of God, they were the embodiment of God.
The bulk of western cultural evolution is driven by conceptual evolution in Science and the impact of scientific values and knowledge on the traditional western "isms." There was, for example, the rediscovery of Greek knowledge and nascent Christian values during the 11th and 12th centuries which nourished the Renaissance and culminated in the Reformation. There was Newton's Deductive Revolution which nourished the Industrial Revolution, the EuroAmerican Enlightenment and the emergence of the western Democracies. There was Einstein's Reductive Revolution which nourished the current Informational Revolution and the means to a global Enlightenment and a global Democracy (it'll happen).
The values of Science, Democracy and nascent Christianity are neither atheist or theist, neither liberal or conservative. They are dialectic human values designed to avoid the feudal extremes of fundamentalist western religious systems and fundamentalist eastern ethical systems. The world views of these scientific, knowledge-based cultures are neither empirical or transcendental, they are conceptual. They are built on what we can see and how we integrate and interpret what we "see" in our minds to maximize the explanatory value of knowledge and its utility in solving human problems. A long time ago, back in Jefferson's day, dialecticians used to call this approach Natural Philosophy.
So, next time someone tries to sell you a chunk of "ism" with the sales pitch that this is somehow going to help you survive all the other "isms," you tell them that I was scratching my butt one night and it was revealed unto me that the "isms" are a lot of fuedalistic fluff in the name of the few.
Oh, America, America, God shed His grace on thee. JudeoRoman Bushism has turned out the lights of the Temple. Turn them back on, please. --07.28.03
The Core Ingredients of Class Warfare
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keysone, South Dakota
The American people have now had ample time to see for themselves just what "compassionate" conservatism has contributed to American Democracy. It has destroyed our religious freedom, mangled our civil rights, and crucified multilateralism to leave America standing alone against the bulk of the educated world. It has used religious coercion, fabrications and lies to "legitimize" an overtly immoral war against a nearly defenseless nation, eliminating over 6,000 civilians in the process. Like it or not, this is the work of the religious right wing in America, leave there be no doubt about that. They have usurped all authority in America and all responsibility is now theirs as well.
By destroying the Jeffersonian contract between church and state, the people have lost their guarantee of religious freedom, restricted now to the dictates of "compassionate" conservatism under the bully leadership of George Bush the younger. The religious right wing has largely destroyed what little was left of the political philosophy created by America's founders, to place America in an old ideological box, beneath and 180° removed from the philosophical position which gave America birth.
It pretty much all distills down to the millennial conflict between Science and religion, and it is worth keeping in mind that Science has never lost a battle to religion when it comes to defining and comprehending the world and how the world works. Thanks to Galileo's astronomy, we now live in a heliocentric world, in spite of the Roman Catholic objection. Thanks to Lyell's evolutionary geology, we now know how the earth and its features came to be formed. Thanks to Darwin's evolutionary biology, we now know how life came to be on the earth. Thanks to Koch and Pasteur's microbiology, we now know that disease has earthbound causes and nothing to do with the gods. Thanks to Watson and Crick's molecular biology, we have mapped the human genome and now we know that we are all related and share common earthly origins.
Within the embrace of natural systems and information theory, we now know that life comes of itself, that genomic and ideologic information is directing both biological and cultural evolution from the inside out. The creative potential, the free will, is on the inside, the necessity comes from the outside. About the only question left that Science cannot deal with is where we go when we die, and that is an irrelevancy. The greatest mystery in life is not where we go when we die, but who we are when we are alive.
In honest terms, the millennial battle between Science and religion is long since over and yet, despite the exponentially increasing explanatory value of human knowledge, supernatural religion has taken over the reins of political power and the conflict between Science and religion remains alive and well, if only in America and only under the auspices of the Bush administration.
The religious right has maintained this conflict for millennia by conceding not an iota of ground to human knowledge and by their sheer refusal to allow knowledge to threaten their religious faith. This is their right in America, to believe as they damned well please, but only as long as they abide by Jefferson's contract and keep their religion at home where it belongs. Because religious faith is unrelated to human knowledge, religious organizations have no right to impose anything on anyone in America. Doing so is tantamount to treason. Welcome to Bush's America.
So, why do the religious embrace incorrigibility? Why do they fear human knowledge? What makes them think they have a right to impose their religion on the people? Why do they believe in a JudeoRoman god whose earthly administrators have been consistently wrong about how the world works? What are they really protecting in preserving their faith in a personal god? Why this need to get spooky?
The Need for a Personal Guardian (religion for the poor and uneducated)
The most often mentioned reason for religious incorrigibility is the need of some religious people for a personal supernatural guardian, a god who has time (while presumably directing every molecule in the known Universe) to watch over their every thought, word and deed, to provide them protection from life's "evils" and a guarantee of "life" after death if they are obedient to the rules of the game on earth, a "team player" as it were. Accordingly, the most often mentioned reason for faith in a heavenly afterlife is the subtle inner hope that there must be some reward in death to make up for the oppression here on earth. A half century ago, Aldo Leopold (Sand Country Almanac) pointed out the inverse relationship between the extent of one's education and one's need for supernatural faith.
Taken on the whole, these are explanations mostly relevant to understanding the religious poor and the uneducated, those without political power, those whose faith affects very little, if anything, in the real world, those who are in a position to impose only at home. Blessed they be. Given the two-tiered monetary caste system created in America since World War II, and the largest gap between haves and have nots in human history, there is yet another reason behind the need for a personal god, as if you didn't already know.
The Need for Personal Self-Justification (religion for the rich and powerful)
The primary reason for religious incorrigibility is the need of some religious people for personal justification and defense of their wealth and power. Everyone maintains some internal justification for their existence. Religious people are truly fortunate in that they are able to provide justification apart from how they actually acquired their wealth and power.
This typically stems from a subconscious awareness that they got to where they are for reasons other than personal contribution and merit. These people do not much care for the notion of a meritocracy, as you might guess. Whether considering old or new money, many simply inherited their wealth, many simply married into it, never challenging how grandfather came to acquire it. Many have fallen into lucrative positions with recompense on a per centage basis rather than on a salary or wage basis. Many have fallen into lucrative business operations because of convenient external factors, i.e., the new railroad or the new Interstate came through town. Many simply sued the living hell out of someone with money.
The end result is people with enormous wealth and power who have no personal investment in acquiring that wealth and power. Nevertheless, wealth and power are taken as prima fascie evidence that one's personal god is most concerned and remarkably thankful for their very existence, no contributions necessary. In other words, one's wealth can always be ascribed to god's favoritism, doled out only to those whom god loves enough to grant tangible reward. One can see god's love shining through the chrome on that new Lexus. One can see god's love flowing from Congressional approval to attack Iraq.
And this would be the real over-riding reason for religious incorrigibility. It has allowed the wealthy and powerful to justify their possession of wealth and power from the beginning and it has provided them the required self-righteousness to coerce and/or oppress anyone in their path. Wrapping oneself up in the gods in order to conquer and control others was the millennial western way (imperialism and colonialism) until the EuroAmerican Enlightenment and the emergence of American Democracy. It is now going on again, right in America, with the death of Jefferson's political philosophy and the rise of neofundamentalist crony capitalism, aka "Enronism."
From the time of Constantine, nascent Christian values have been trampled beneath JudeoRoman self-righteousness and an imperial mindset which seldom had any real use for these values. Ever since Constantine, the rich and powerful have been right there to take advantage of religion's enabling embrace, which invariably meant leaving nascent Christian values out of the equation. It was the Old Testament's absolutism, the Old Testament's legalism and penalism, the Old Testament's vengeance-based morality, and the Old Testament's spooky god that they required in the name of control.
There are only two options for solving this millennial problem. The first is to eliminate fundamentalist JudeoRomanism and crony capitalism from allowable political discourse (Jefferson's considered objective). The second is to eliminate the rich and powerful themselves (McGovern's considered objective). Accomplishing either one of these objectives is to accomplish the other.
Eliminating ignorance in America has traditionally been approached in our educational systems and eliminating the rich and powerful has traditionally been approached in the voting booths. The hard won results of both approaches, however, can be undone (as Americans have recently witnessed) in a matter of months with the full empowerment of the religious right wing and its politically-inspired religiosity.
The traditional American dialectic between liberal and conservative causes has, in fact, been defunct since World War II, when capitalism was in it's post-war glory. In the joy of victory, both political parties took to operating on the same side of the traditional dialectic between socialism and capitalism, a move that has compromised and frustrated liberal causes ever since by making the traditional left nearly right and the traditional right so far right as to fall off Jefferson's playing field.
But then, just when one can no longer see light, just when one would consider giving up on all human causes, lo and behold, the the entire scene changes. Almost as if there were a spooky god, the skies darkened and the earth shuddered, and from out of the bowels of crony capitalism rises George Bush the younger with his politically-ordained version of JudeoRoman religion, his inside-trader version of capitalism and his "influence-for-a-fee" version of democracy. Wonder of wonders, this was just what the gods ordered. All hear the great good news!
No administration in the history of the United States has done more to discredit fundamentalist religion and crony capitalism in the eyes of the world. The fact that this administration is still supported by the religious right in America is of little importance in light of the new global awareness which the Bush administration has nourished. The Bush regime was appointed to provide a government "of, by and for" the rich and powerful, and it has already done more to discredit their authority than any administration in history.
Consider the likely result should the Bush administration launch another intervention on the global stage that is seen as being utterly immoral in the eyes of the world (and you know it is coming). No one knows how far the rich and powerful will go to maintain this last hurrah of religious imperialism. When they ultimately fall from grace (there being no other option), the world will suddenly be open to honesty and democracy. It will provide a millennial opportunity for human maturation and self-comprehension. So, hang in there good people. The gods are onto Bush and they are getting more pissed everyday. --07.21.03
Capitalism and the Crisis in Medical Ethics
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keysone, South Dakota
If one asked a group of typical Americans what they know about "Bioethics," most would claim to have never heard of the term. Nevertheless, there are currently several thousands of programs in medical "bioethics" at colleges, universities and medical centers across America and the western world. Given their role in maintaining medical ethics, these programs certainly deserve public awareness and comprehension.
As a matter of history, the term "Bioethics" was coined in 1970 by Dr. Van Rensselaer Potter, a pioneer in molecular pathology and experimental oncology at the University of Wisconsin (Bioethics: Bridge to the Future, Prentice-Hall, NY, 1970). Bioethics was a rigorous conceptual effort to extend the scientific ethics of Aldo Leopold (Sand County Almanac, The Land Ethic, Oxford University Press, NY, 1948) directly into the medical realm. Van's motivation stemmed from his conviction that medical ethics was, at that time, in a state of "crisis". He was correct 30 years ago, of course, and the situation has only continued to deteriorate as capitalism has increased its control over medical decision-making in America.
The term "Bioethics," however, was quickly borrowed (pilfered) by the eastern medical establishment as their very own, a new label for an upscale ethics designed mostly to deal with increasingly high-tech approaches to diagnosis and therapy. Programs in medical "bioethics” appeared all over America and the term was popularized in the western world without even mentioning Van’s name or his seminal publications. So much for the ethics of American medical ethicists. Who watches over these people?
As self-admitted entrepreneurs, eastern medical ethicists had found a fitting label for ideas that they could sell to the establishment, e.g., the need to watchdog medical high technology, divine the ethical ramifications of it all and advise medical practioners. That need was seen as overriding.
Accordingly, the type of bioethics promoted in America was pragmatic and nonconceptual and it bore little relationship to the scientific ethics which Van Potter had envisioned. Indeed, it bore even less relationship to the scientific ethics which Leopold had defined. The newly emergent medical "bioethics" addressed itself not at all to the actual decades-old crisis in medical ethics.
As a result, medical bioethics has had precisely the same impact on the capitalization of American medicine as the Harvard Business School's program in business ethics has had on the Enronization of American business, i.e., no impact at all. No core ethical considerations have been allowed to impose themselves in any way upon the agenda of medical capitalism.
Van Potter was always quick to point out that a scientific ethics must be, by definition, based upon an adequate scientific knowledge base. It goes even deeper than that. A scientific ethics must be based on the best available theoretical views of disease, the best conceptualizations of the problem as a whole. It must be based on natural historical views of both causation and clinical course, views that provide for the identification of both preventive and therapeutic interventions. There must be balance, and that balance was and remains utterly missing in American medicine.
Due largely to marketplace demands, the bulk of effort in national cancer policy has been aimed at diagnosis and therapy, where there was money to be made. Even the victims of neoplastic disease did not care about causes, they wanted cures. In truth, until we know the causes of disease, there is no hope for cause/defect-specific diagnoses or cause/defect specific therapies. That much we have learned from our experience controlling infectious diseases.
The western medical marketing managers took over and American medicine was capitalized under the old notion of "one ill, one pill, one bill." It is this move that has destroyed medical ethics at the clinical level, where traditional ethics have been overruled by the institution's ethics (essentially capitalistic business "ethics"). It has made our physicians unprofessionally silent and inordinately wealthy.
We end up with a market-driven biomedical "community" which has been operating for decades without benefit of any cohesive biomedical philosophy, apparently believing that biomedicine is best defined by bean counters, lawyers, and policy wonks. In the beginning, it was Aristotle who argued that medicine is not a business but “the highest calling of philosophy.” To make it otherwise is to destroy the very concept of physicians as healers and to affirm the notion of medicine as just another "growth industry."
This entire matter distills down to the simplest, most self-evident ethical principles, those principles that have been ignored on a daily basis while medical bioethicists deal with the myriad real and esoteric problems associated with medical high technology.
One of those ethical principles requests the physician to "do good and avoid harm." This is, however, a difficult principle to abide in capitalism's exclusionary medicine. While it is unlawful to deny uninsured patients medical attention, it is not unlawful to deem patients as being beyond therapeutic help. It is a simple fact that many institutions, as a matter of unspoken policy, provide uninsured patients with the minimal diagnostic work required and then, especially in the case of patients with terminal disease, they provide the bad news that little can be done.
Seldom, if ever, do such patients hear about available therapeutic options, certainly not those available in competing institutions. Seldom, if ever, do such patients hear about the likely course of events they will experience as their disease progresses in the absence of therapy. Seldom, if ever, are such patients provided hope. More commonly, that important personal aid to regaining health is simply destroyed, and this is to do no good if not harm.
But the most fundamental ethical principle requests the physician to help those in need of help. Remember the physicians on M.A.S.H.? It didn't matter if you were American or Korean. If you needed help, you got help. In this regard, the healer helps first and then worries about recompense. Under capitalism, physicians can actually be found who make fun of those healers from yesterday who would brave a winter storm to deliver a baby in return for a chicken and two dozen eggs. A bunch of losers, one must presume.
A good deal of attention has been recently paid to the problem of physician depression and suicide (Confronting Physician Depression and Suicide, Laurie Barclay, MD, J Am. Med. Assoc., 289: 3161, 2003). These studies are, however, typically too shallow in inquiry to have explanatory value. Of course, physicians succumb to the same personal problems and suicidal pressures afflicting everyone else, but the denial of their chosen role as healers is an especially difficult burden to bear.
Nowhere are physicians asked how they feel about having sacrificed core ethical principles in order to participate in exclusionary medicine. No where are physicians asked how they feel about short changing those without medical insurance, treating the uninsured victims of both capitalism and disease as second rate citizens. No where are physicians asked how they like having their decisions made for them by bean counters and policy wonks, most of whom could likely not even define ethics.
If physicians fall into depression and alcoholism, they are fully expected to blame no one but themselves. As there couldn't possibly be anything amiss with JudeoRomanism's exclusionary religion, there couldn't possibly be anything amiss with capitalism's exclusionary medicine. This oppression of the physician's freedom is a literal requirement to maintaining an unethical, wonked-out, over-commercialized, assembly-line medicine. As a result, physicians seldom discuss their loss of core ethical issues, it being easier to abide the oppression that nourishes denial.
The only real obstacle to returning medicine to its rightful place and role in society is greed-driven capitalism, the "American way" that places itself above all human values and all ethical principles, of both medicine and democracy. It was a mistake to allow this commercialization to commence after World War II, and it is a mistake to allow it to continue.
What is one to suppose? Do America's ruling crony capitalists really believe that the other western democracies (which do see to their people's educational and medical needs) will someday see the capitalistic light and abandon their social programs? Do capitalist's really believe that medicine is better if denied to the poorest citizens who must work for a living? Do capitalists really believe that personal wealth is the sole criteria for distributing the right to medical care? Do capitalists really believe that a greed-driven marketplace is a better dictator of national health policy than physicians immersed in medical philosophy, ethics and clinical care? Do capitalists really believe that physicians ought get a money kick back for prescribing therapies that are typically inadequate (Cancer Doctors Profitting from Drugs, Robert Bazell, MSNBC, June 27, 2003)? What exactly do they believe?
In order to accommodate greed-driven crony capitalism, American medicine has had to compromise the core ethical principles established since scientific medicine emerged in Greece some 2,500 years ago. Hippocratean ethics be damned. This is not medical bioethics, of course, it is medical bullshit. On these grounds, European physicians have been badmouthing American physicians for decades.
America houses the first generation of physicians in the history of medicine who are content allowing the marketplace to direct their practice of medicine. The result is a life of extraordinary personal income and professional denial which is simply not condusive to professional meaning and mental health.
Certainly one does not need to be a Harvard bioethicist to understand the nature and depth of the current crisis in medical bioethics. Despite the "complex" nature of high-tech medicine, the core principles of medical ethics are very down to earth and elegantly simple, having been around for millennia. Your valued physician ought be allowed the freedom to honor these ethical principles. It is his way of assigning value to you and fulfilling the ethical requirements of his profession.
Those who have traditionally defiled temples have long since defiled the halls of medicine as well. To oppress American physicians in thought and action is an overtly criminal act, perpetrated by shallow capitalists who have no right to do so. As in the beginning, these people simply know not what they are doing.
Most of us have a better chance of being appointed Surgeon General than seeing greed-driven capitalism provide a balanced, ethical program of quality research and health care and an equitable program of health care delivery. That would require a fully developed medical ethics, built once again upon Hippocratean and nascent Christian ethical principles, rigorously related to current medical theory and nourished by a medical community comprised of healers. Van Potter, the Father of Bioethics, pretty much knew all of this 30 years ago. What medical bioethicists have been doing since, under that label, is simply not bioethics at all. It is just what one gets under JudeoRoman Republican capitalism, now under the "compassionate" dominion of the Bush administration. --07.14.03
"I Am Not A Liar," He Lied
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keysone, South Dakota
One of Richard Nixon's most memorable lines was "I am not a crook," a statement made in denial. George Dubya Bush's parallel line would be "I'm not a liar," a statement likewise made in denial. Lying and denying seems to have become the rule rather than the exception among latter day American presidents. Unless one wants to be remembered as a liar, there is little option after lying but denying.
John Moyers has recently legitimized use of the "L" word in the American press and he has provided a summary statement of the media's coverage of Bush's lies (In Bush We Trust, TomPaine.com, June 24, 2003). It has already gone beyond the point of dispute, even if it has not yet gotten into mainstream discussion. Bush is a chronic liar and he has been one for decades. You don't escape charges of insider trading by being honest, for Christ's sake (George claiming to be both "honest" and "compassionate").
This makes Bush all the more difficult to believe. Why on earth would a man actively support a world that makes him into a despotic liar, albeit it a rich and powerful liar. Does he not understand that once one lies, one has to live that live for the duration? Does he not care about the only life he will ever live on this planet? Will his god let him pass heaven's gates with such a load of baggage? Certainly, one does not get remembered kindly by the people for lying to them.
The only possible conclusions are that 1) Bush does not possess adequate capacity for introspection and doesn't even know that he is lying, or 2) Bush simply does not believe that he is lying, he believes what he wants. Either way, of course, he is still a liar. Given George's limited awareness and knowledge of the world, it is clear, in Bush's case, that "not lying" is something different from "telling the truth." It is difficult not to lie if one does not know very much truth.
While that may be just two sides of the same thing, i.e., ignorance, there is, nevertheless, a devoutly religious and capitalistic sense in which Bush is not a liar at all. Welcome to neofundamentalist right wing America where we currently enjoy the same kind of honesty and logic that we enjoyed under self-righteous British rule two centuries ago. We have come full circle to see ourselves from the rear.
With regard to the lies a nation will tell itself, it was back in the 1950s when Madison Avenue went "psychological." All of a sudden ads did more than announce and describe a product and its price, they did more than employ a bit of hype and hoopla to sell product (traits around from the beginning). In this brave new Mad ad world, the use of certain products (e.g., cigarettes, cosmetics, drugs) would actually make you what you want to be in life (a macho Marlboro Man, a thinly smoking Eve). All of a sudden, certain products could make your personal dreams come true. It all started with that famous one-liner, "Next time, light up a Lucky."
The good old boys on Madison Avenue were on a roll and consumption in America became nothing less than essential, a matter of maintaining one's personal identity. No one at the time noticed that this new marketplace approach was more than a path to fiscal "progress," it was a path to the successful effort to alter the very basis of American self-concept and self-identity. This left little or no room for Jefferson's meritocracy, wherein we are worth something as a function of virtue, knowledge, talent and skill. Note that Jefferson mentions nothing material in his criteria of human worth (Compassionate Conservatism : Human Worth in Bush's World, Counter Punch, June 9, 2003).
Thanks to capitalism's inherent desperation (there's never enough money, you know), the American business world was introduced to the use of psychological manipulation, subtle lies and half truths in order to pursuasively mislead the customer into a sale, an approach now accepted as something of the norm. You know, tell them what they want to hear, "blow 'em a little smoke."
Smoke is precisely what it is, in the sense that there is no necessary relationship between what a given product is said to do for you and what it actually does for you. That this approach has even defiled the notion of ethics in American medicine is of no concern to the marketplace (Cancer Doctors Profiting From Drugs, Robert Bazell, MSNBC, June 27, 2003). Even worse are the coverup lies about negative benefits. The prescription drugs promoted on television are simply miraculous to behold, until one gets to the listing of contraindications and side effects. As for side effects, the only thing that the Marlboro Man ever got from being "psyched" into smoking was bronchogenic carcinoma.
In this world of American business fantasies, George Bush is not a liar. He is just a "good old boy" in business, now the anointed point man for a religion-based capitalism that has traditionally thrived on lies. It could not function without them. In the same way, an Enronized corporate America has come to thrive on insider trading and "influence-for-a-fee" government. It could not function without them. As a result, the Bush administration is having a difficult time dealing with the historic criminality of religion in promoting political violence in the world and with the exposed criminality of once proud corporate supporters at home.
The religion beneath this fiscal self-righteousness (wherein "compassionate" conservatives see themselves and their cronies as being above the law) is likewise based on a world of lies, the biggest one being the lie of "external authority," the lie that the causes of disease, poverty, injustice and violence in the world are not earthbound, the lie that kept the people in check throughout the eras of imperialism, colonialism and now crony capitalism. America's founding fathers knew better, of course, and that is why they made effort to eliminate religious superstition from public discourse and decision-making.
Within Bush world, where religion and state are one, lying is not lying, it is defending, by whatever means necessary, the sole source of goodness in the world, i.e., the fiscal and power status quo. There are no standards of truth or morality in Bush world outside of "winning" each and every conflict, maintaining control of the people's reality and the people, their resources, their time, their money and their souls.
There is no need for knowledge and truth in Bush world. Indeed, would that not be a potentially terminal consideration for liars? Bush world is thusly defined on the fly (or is it on the run?). The Bush regime has little if any ability to act with knowledgable foresight and it is in possession of nothing resembling a well-considered vision, certainly not beyond their dreams of fiscal hegemony. This lack of vision restricts them largely to responding to events after the horrible fact rather than acting with a visionary plan allowing control of events up front. Welcome to newly "liberated" Iraq.
Bush world depends entirely on what portion of the American public Bush is able to coerce into abiding his religion based attitudes and approaches, what portion of the American public will continue to accept that the joy of executions and preemptive bombings is the just reward of "Christian" compassion. Bush's entire neo-imperialist agenda hangs on how long he is able to keep the people from thinking for themselves, as to what constitutes Christian values and what does not, as to what constitutes fairness and equality and Democracy and what does not, as to what constitutes truth and what constitutes lies and political fabrications.
The media are currently occuppied "parsing the difference between a lie and an exaggeration, a spinmeister and a fabricator" (Shame on Us, Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe, June 26, 2003). This is all essentially another media sidetrack on issues that have long been resolved.
There simply is no parsing to be done. Thinkers from Socrates to Alfred North Whitehead have pointed out the obvious, that there is simply no difference between a lie and a half truth, a fabrication or a distortion, and there never has been. One sees the same end result, regardless, if the fabrications and distortions are able to accomplish the same objectives as a few "good" lies (A Rose is a Rose is a Rose, Josh Marshall, TheHill.com, June 23, 2003).
Both Science and Democracy rely entirely upon the honest human truth. That is one of the great beauties of Science. If you lie about something of significance in the literature, you will be found out, you will be exposed, you will be dismissed. There is no escape. So, ought it be in American Democracy, no escape from lies, no escape for liars. George Bush is not only an "American" liar but an ill-advised one at that. We really ought impeach liars in America. They are not very good for national health.
Even though Bush has no reservations about executing the mentally-challenged, any just and fair impeachment proceeding aimed at Bush ought not impose harsh punishments, especially in light of Bush's limited intellectual grasp of Democracy and his limited comprehension of the world.
In keeping with the values of nascent Christianity, in seeking a compassionate justice, the most appropriate impeachment sentence for Bush and his cronies in crime (from Cheney to Kenneth Lay) would be to remand every one of these people to a lifetime of menial labor, under supervision, at minimum wage, no other options, end of discussion. Now that is creative justice, to see these self-righteous liars live out their lives as did the people whom they have oppressed and exploited for generations, all in the name of capitalistic notions of fairness and progress. That was all a lie, if you think about it. --06.28.03
Christian Values and Human Rights in Bush World
On the Nascent Christian Origins of Jefferson's Human Rights
Dr. Gerry Lower< Keysone, South Dakota
Like it or not, American Democracy was built from a basis in human rights, under the law of man and not the law of a supernatural external authority. Indeed, rejection of the notion of external authority was necessarily a clarion call during the American Revolution, simply because the British and European monarchies and the Papacy were using religious authority to oppress and exploit the people of the New World colonies.
So to hell with them all, chuck their tea in Boston Harbor and curses upon everything they believe in order to justify their exploitation of the colonies. The British oppression was absolutely stifling, sufficiently so for the colonists to ultimately reject virtually everything they had been told about the higher sources of authority in the world. Religious law in America was replaced with human rights in our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson placed God in the "head and heart" of every person, and "the highest authority" was assigned to "the will of the people, substantially declared (1791 Cabinet Opinion)."
We take these rights to be self-evident. That means if you think about it honestly, you will come to the same conclusions as Jefferson and Franklin. We take these human rights as the basis for all civil rights, the operational extensions we provide ourselves in order to guarantee that human rights are honored in the living world.
Two centuries later, we have come full circle to have America dominated by the religious right wing and Republican crony capitalism. The man ostensibly guiding this masterful enterprise is George Bush the Younger, a "reformed" alcholic and born-again "christian," converted by Billie Graham, anointed by John Scalia. In keeping with British imperial tradition, Bush worships the British version of the JudeoRoman god defined in the King James Version (yes, folks, even that is British).
Given that George has openly proclaimed his belief in Billy Graham's JudeoRoman god and his deep admiration of the first Christian, it is only appropriate to begin this discussion with a Biblical story that demonstrates Christian concepts of human values, laws and rights.
More importantly, historians trace the entire notion of universal human rights back to the 17th century and the EuroAmerican enlightenment which rediscovered and implemented Democracy in the New World. In truth, universal human rights go all the way back to nascent Christianity, and that is precisely where our Deist fathers learned about them. [Author's comments in brackets].
"And the scribes and the Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery ... in the very act."
[Nowadays, of course, life is not nearly so self-righteously egocentric, and most people would be more prone to wonder what these "men of law" were doing, sneaking around and peeking in people's windows?]
"Now, Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?"
"This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him."
[As one might expect from self-righteous "men of law," they wanted to see if Jesus would dare ignore Abraham's god and Mosaic law. If so, you know, he might be a terrorist in the name of love.]
"But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not."
[So much for the first Christian's notion of political correctness. He simply dissed the men of god's law.]
"So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
"And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground."
[Two overt snubs in a row. The men of god's law are not doing so well, are they?]
"And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst."
[Wherein the first Christian clearly demonstrates the difference in response when honesty, as opposed to self-righteousness, is employed as a basis for judging others. He did not let the lady off the hook. She knew that she had gotten herself into trouble. But, it was the "men of law" whom the first Christian saw as far mor troublesome. So, he removed them from the discussion with one simply brilliant directive.]
"When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?"
"She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."
Now, what do we have here, people? Do we see here a man obssessed with religious law as the word of god? No. Do we see here a man dedicated to preserving the rule of the men who claimed to know god's law? No. Do we see here a man who was hot to implement Moses' command to bloody such women with rocks? No. Do we see here a man getting his rocks off on other people's mistakes and misfortunes in order to make himself feel morally superior? No. Does this man's words and actions have anything to do with religious law and vengeance-based morality? No.
So, what exactly do we have here, people? Do we see a man whose chosen bottom line in thought is compassion instead of vengeance? Yes. Do we see a man in love with his fellow humans and dedicated to human honesty? Yes. Do we see a man who has little time or interest in a posteriori law and punishment? Yes. Do we see a man whose primary objective is to level the playing field in the interest of fairness and equality? Yes. Do we see a man who actually trusts people to make their own decisions? Yes.
Do we not see in the first Christian a man with an overwhelming passion for human rights? Yes.
Is there any doubt in your mind why Jefferson would choose this man and his ethical morality as the basis for American Democracy?
Nascent Christian morality was based solidly in human rights from the very start. It is not the first Christian's fault that Roman emperors from Constantine on merely talked about his values in order to justify self-righteous conquest and control. It is not the first Christian's fault that JudeoRoman mis-interpretations and outright fabrications drove imperialism, colonialism and crony capitalism, in his name. The problem is clearly with JudeoRoman religion which never has very much honored nascent Christian values.
Jefferson and Franklin were Deists who recognized the self-evident truth that nascent Christian values and JudeoRoman values are mutually exclusive. One can choose to be vengeful or compassionate, but one simply cannot be both. The JudeoRoman religions had always talked the latter and acted on the former. Cristianity was, from the beginning, a rejection of vengeance, a rejection of legal/penal moralities and a rejection of marketplace values. The west had been doing it wrong for millennia and Jefferson would conclude that Christianity was a moral system that had not yet been tried in the real world.
As a result, Jefferson's Declaration is certainly one of the most Christian documents yet written, and his "Jefferson Bible" is certainly the most honest version of western scripture yet edited (all versions are edits, folks, that's why the British call theirs the KJV), the product of Christian Deism, no religious law in sight, as the first Christian would have it.
Today, with Jefferson's Declaration values replaced entirely by the values of the religious right and crony capitalism, we are right back where we started. The men whom the first Christian threw out of the temple are now back in the temple with a self-righteous vengeance. Christ, is this sick or what?
Accordingly, Bush's values have no Christian content whatsoever. Rather, Bush upholds the values of our European and Papal oppressers. Accordingly, Bush sees law as his to define, which is precisely the equivalent of lawlessness. Accordingly, Bush sees human rights as something to be taken away from the people in the name of national security and a "controlled society." Every western tyrant since Constantine has seen the world thusly. George the Younger, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Rove, and Cheney would make any religious despot proud.
"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."
Matthew, VII, 15
Those who still admire the first Christian's ethical morality could provide an immense service to their country and their countrymen if they would only reconsider, for themselves, the values to which they would freely subscribe. The values of nascent Christianity provide for universal human rights. The values of right wing religion provide for human oppression and despotism. It is a tragedy for good people to be lemminged right over the edge by the Bush administration's employment of fear and religious coercion.
"And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers, for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers."
Luke XI, 46 --06.23.03
Bush World: Bush Applies Bad Philosophy To Fabricated Problems
Dr. Gerry Lower< Keysone, South Dakota
There is an old aphorism which states that all good philosophy begins with the Here and Now. That is true insofar as good philosophy starts with recognition of actual problems in the Here and Now. Good philosophy then proceeds to explain the What, How and Why of those problems by examining their natural history and evolution with an eye toward comprehending causation. Solutions, preferably preventive, involve intervention with specific processes involved in either causation or ś course in the overall causal fabric.
Translation: If you have rats in the house, you best be learning how they are getting in so that you can implement an effective preventive intervention (which provides a much cleaner solution than buying rat poison as an after-the-horrible-fact therapy.
Although good philosophy does start with the Here and Now, this does not imply at all that the Here and Now is a good place to be. Sometimes it is not so bad and sometimes it is not so good, as a function of prevailing political realities. In the physical sense, the Here and Now is the only place possible to be. In the philosophical sense, the Here and Now is where to begin but it is the worst place to be, because solutions to problems require thinking outside of this tiny box in which time is not particularly relevant. All western religious world views are built upon the ancient Hebrew Here and Now, where time is not a serious consideration. Indeed, the western world did not really get into the concept of time until Galileo figured out a way to measure small amounts of it in order to comprehend ballistics.
Most Americans, of course, are intimately familiar with the Here and Now. We have been, since World War II, raised to live mostly in that world, as if there were no yesterday and maybe no tomorrow, and certainly no source of nourishment apart from money. In this highly exclusionary world, we are lost from our own roots and we have, therefore, no vision. We are proud American pragmatists, so savvy and self-assured by our wealth and dominion that we do not need to ask Why questions anymore. Life in the Here and Now prevents its inhabitants from learning anything, for millennia on end, since every morning they get up, they are back in the Here and Now, no necessary relationships to yesterday, therefore no plan for tomorrow.
But there is, of course, always a Why beneath every situation in this world and if we fail to examine and adduce that Why, we simply end up having someone else's Why imposed upon us, e.g., the Why beneath Bush's pre-meditated, pre-emptive war on Iraq, a Why that is properly impossible for honest, thoughtful and caring people to abide. Getting a realistic handle on Why is a function of how much time we are willing to embrace in our thought, whether or not we are embracing adequate time to encompass causation.
THE HERE AND NOW VIEW: From the narrow perspectives of the Here and Now, our current situation in America is seen as just a continuation of post World War II capitalism, Republicans versus Democrats. In this view, nothing has really changed in America and nothing ever will. The political pendulum will eventually swing back Demward and we will return to some sort of capitalistic "normalcy." In the meantime, we will ride out Bush's dalliance with neo-imperialism for better or worse.
Neither of these potential outcomes derived from Here and Now views is likely to be an option for America, given the despotic nature of current "leadership." Yet, here is where most Americans typically remain with their heads, not seeing at all the historical and evolutionary enormity of our current American problems. In effect, most Americans keep themselves removed from any and all larger levels of awareness that threaten the utility of denial and ignorance and the religious ground upon which they justify themselves, time frames that threaten the Here and Now views that sustain the "American Way."
THE HISTORICAL VIEW: From larger historical perspectives embracing the past two centuries of American democracy, our current situation is seen as the culmination of the battle between American (Jeffersonian) values speaking on behalf of democracy and the people and British (Hamiltonian) values speaking on behalf of profits and the corporate aristocracy. Hamiltonian values have now totally eclipsed Jeffersonian values and American Democracy is in a state of full crisis, having come full circle to reside upon the despotic ground from which it extracted itself 200 years ago. For Democracy to prevail, as it will, right wing political philosophy will have to discredit itself in American eyes. In launching its preemptive war on Iraq, the right wing has already accomplished this in everyone's eyes but their own.
THE EVOLUTIONARY VIEW: From larger evolutionary perspectives embracing the past two millennia of western cultural evolution, our current situation is seen as the culmination of the battle between Science and nascent Christianity (empiricism) and Religion (vengeance-based transcendentalism). Because Democracy is the political philosophy of Science, it is reassuring to recall that Science has never lost a battle to religion in explaining how the world works. For Science to prevail as a pan-cultural human knowledge base, as it will, supernatural religion will have to discredit itself in the eyes of the world. In driving the bulk of all political violence, the three supernatural branches of western religion, i.e., Judaism, Islamism and "compassionate" conservatism ("American" neo-JudeoRomanism) have already accomplished this in everyone's eyes but their own.
Insofar as good philosophy begins with the Here and Now, we can also ask where bad philosophy begins. With the Bush administration as a proud exemplar, one can state immediately that bad philosophy begins with the failure to recognize actual problems in the Here and Now (especially those problems resulting from one's own policies) and with the fabrication of non-existent problems in the Here and Now (especially those problems which coerce the people's support). As a result, actual problems go ignored (e.g., terrorism) and manufactured problems (e.g., war on Iraq) waste our national time, effort and resources, not to mention our good name.
Knowledge of causation in Bush world is restricted to "timeless" (see what I mean) supernatural religious understandings of good and evil. The cause of moral decay in America is seen as the result of the (necessary) American departure from traditional religious values (e.g., absolutism, despotism). America, we are told, needs to return to religious despotism in order to restore American morality in the form of enforced legal/penal code. This "logic" says that we must eliminate Jefferson's Christian wall ("Render unto Caesar ...") between church and state , we must destroy religious freedom in order to impose neo-JudeoRomanism on the people in the name of a "controlled" American society. It would never occur to these fools that the moral decay of America is more related to capitalism's ludicrous notions of fairness and decency and its devastating impact on working people and their families.
Having no causal grasp of actual problems (e.g., greed-driven capitalism's creation of the largest gap between haves and have nots in human history), bad philosophy then proceeds to apply failed religious attitudes and approaches to solve fabricated problems (e.g., self-righteous lies and fabrications in legitimizing preemptive war on Iraq).
In other words, bad philosophy begins with failed old ideas employed to solve Here and Now problems that are only percieved to exist or are fabricated into existence, all the while that actual problems go ignored. Now, that is truly bad philosophy, essentially a greed-driven and power-driven psychosis characteristic of those driven by fundamentalist western religion.
The problem resides in how we Americans are looking at the problem, the nature of which is a function of how much time we embrace in our thought. The further we get from the Here and Now, the deeper and broader is our understanding of the current American situation.
The Bush administration is literally locked into the ancient Hebrew Here and Now where the history of religion and Science and Democracy will not get in their way. Having lived in that tiny world for decades as a result of capitalism's imposition of relative mindlessness, it has been easy to coerce most Americans into Here and Now support.
The further we remove our thought from the Here and Now, the more significance must be assigned to our current situation. The further we remove our thought from the Here and Now, the uglier the Bush administration becomes, as it plays out its self-assigned religious role to eliminate evil in the world, ultimately eliminating vengeance-based religion, crony capitalism and itself. --06.18.03
Democracy Is Built On Trust, Which ComCons Can't Produce
Dr. Gerry Lower
Michael Kinsley (Tyranny of the Rich, MSNBC, June 06, 2003) has recently legitimized open discussion of class warfare in America, and the historical context for this western millennial trait has been discussed with regard to it’s relationships to fundamentalist western religion (Class Warfare Against the Poor, CounterPunch, Jan. 30, 2003). Rather than blame Michael Kinsley for his poor grasp of political correctness, we might also consider addressing the actual issue.
By all right wing gods, we certainly do have an awkward time in America with the notions of human greed and human fairness. The rich are entirely unable to define or recognize greed. The poor, as a result, seldom experience fairness. Rather than having fairness as a bottom line, it has become the reciprocal of greed (greed up, fairness down). As the driving force of capitalism, greed has been increasingly in dominion since World War II, maxing out with the current Bush administration.
Here we are, a nation birthed from the concepts of fairness and equality, and we have recently produced the largest gap between the rich and poor in the history of the human race. The fact that the religious right wing accepts this as the proper norm for the entire world is really all the proof needed that the religious right has never been able to grasp the concepts of fairness and equality. Given our purported American role of nourishing Democracy at home and abroad, this outcome ought really be explained to the American citizens so that they might better appreciate the job their government is doing for them in the name of fairness.
In sorry truth, our American grasp of human fairness and equality is right up there with our grasp of human sexuality, not having a clue what that is about either. We are, as a nation, rather obsessed lately with the adolescent notion that penile size matters in sex (yes, “you have mail”). Never mind Whoopi Goldberg’s sage advice to men, that they ought stick their tongues through the hole in a LifeSaver™ and thats “all I wanna see.” Viagra™, likewise, will never make much of an impact among the lesbian set. Somehow over the past few millennia, men have simply missed the self-evident fact that the primary sensual apparatus on the female body is situated externally. Somehow over the past few millennia, men have simply missed the simple truth that if you are not making love with the entire woman, body, mind and soul, then you simply ain’t all the way in anyway. Beneath this "American" view, my friends, is mythology, ignorance beyond empirical and experiential comprehension. Men have simply not gotten the message, have they?
We are, likewise, rather obsessed lately with the pathetic notion that “greed is good,” that greed is central to the nourishment of democracy in America. Never mind Kenneth Lay and American dominion by corrupt middlemen who create or produce nothing themselves. Never mind eating up the poor to eke a little more money out for the rich. Somehow over the past two millennia, the right wing has missed the self-evident fact that the primary causes of unfairness and inequality in the world are greed and self-righteousness. Somehow over the past few millennia, the right wing has missed the self-evident fact that “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could not have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration” (Lincoln). Beneath this right view, my friends, is mythology, ignorance beyond empirical and experiential comprehension.” The right wing have simply not gotten the message, have they?
Consider the various contributors to America, for better or worse. On the one hand, we have had leadership in America which took us in the direction of fairness and equality in the interest of the values of nascent Christianity and Democracy, e.g., Jefferson and Lincoln. On the other hand, we have had “leadership” in America which has taken us in the direction of unfairness and inequality in the name of the values of Republican crony capitalism and “compassionate” conservatism, e.g., Bush and Cheney. Between these extremes, we can consider the concept of relative human worth. That range embraces everything from human genius to human criminality, from knowledgeable creativity to ignorant destruction, from human healers to human hucksters.
The majority of us live in between these extremes, aspiring to be neither saints or sinners, being kindly one day and maybe not so kindly the next, just trying to survive the unfairness of a harshly competitive, mindless socioeconomic system. We mostly just vacillate between acceptance and judgement, indifference and outrage. It is the few at the extremes who provide our saints and our sinners, either by encouraging us to think for ourselves, or by encouraging us to allow others ("them”) to think for us, respectively. Speaking directly to this dichotomy in leadership, Jefferson put it this way in a letter to DuPont de Nemours, “We both consider the people as our children, and love them with parental affection. But you love them as infants whom you are afraid to trust without nurses; and I as adults to whom I freely leave to self-government.”
With the right wing Republican takeover of American government, capitalism has come to transcend the traditional western dialectic between liberal (empiricist, New Testament) and conservative (transcendentalist, Old Testament) viewpoints, replacing traditional notions of relative human worth with notions of personal net worth. We have become a nation in which everything revolves around money, decidedly in service to mammon (common knowledge here, people. Deal with it).
Without money, you are no one, you are nothing, you have no “rights.” The concept of personal character hasn't been recognized by American financial institutions for decades. Even with an income of $200,000 per annum, you are next to nothing under “influence-for-a-fee” crony capitalism. You simply do not have adequate means to be a viable contributor to the right wing political agenda. You do not have enough chips to gamble at the crony capitalist table.
Employing a purely fiscal approach to relative human worth, Bush’s self-enabled tax break for 2003 will be the equivalent of what can be earned by working full time at $20 per hour, a tax savings for Bush more than most Americans can even earn by working. Not bad for a man who is so self-evidently challenged in the intellectual, moral and spiritual realms. Bush is pretty special. Cheney’s tax break for 2003 will be the equivalent of what can be earned by working full time at $150 per hour, more than the average physician can make by working. Cheney is enormously special.
And that IS the problem. Cheney is just too special for human belief, but that doesn’t matter to the self-righteous who question not how they became so special. They embrace only the notion that they are special, by the grace of their god. Downplaying every notion of meritocracy is essential to this embrace.
There simply is no empirical or logical basis for taking personal fiscal worth as any criterion at all for evaluating relative human worth. Even the first Christian, the abused and ignored savior of right wing religion, died penniless. Even Jefferson accomplished perfection in leaving this life with pretty much what he had when he entered it, abiding by the self-evident notion that "you can't take it with you," and failing to abide by the notion that his offspring were so remarkably blessed that they ought not have to contribute for a livelihood.
The only rationale for using money as a measure of human worth comes from the traditional right wing religious notion that personal wealth is an indication of heavenly favoritism which, in turn, provides justification for self-righteousness and belligerence in one’s own name and interest. Accordingly, any growing gap between the rich and poor is necessarily seen as god’s will, never-mind the will of the people.
This approach to self-justification is the practical equivalent of psychosis insofar as it is a refutation of empirical reality, a refutation of human reason and a denial of human history. As Saint Bernard pointed out, "No more vain than insane." This religious effort to be “right” for the sake of being “right” is characteristic of fanatical and criminal thought, characteristic of fundamentalist religious thought regardless of brand name (William Raspberry, Uncontested Zealotry give GOP an Edge, Seattle Times, June 3, 2003). This approach is necessarily devoid of reason because it sees "special" people as being worth literally hundreds and thousands times more than a minimum wage worker. This all makes perfectly good sense to the self-righteous religious right wing.
To Jefferson, this was utter nonsense. The members of his American Philosophical Society covered the range from established scientists and physicians to creative craftsmen and naturalist farmers. To Jefferson, it was not whom you knew but what you knew that made you human and worthy of being a citizen in America. Indeed, the evidence would have it that America's intellectual fathers were rather modest men, hoping to convince with logic rather than spin. Jefferson's tombstone does not even mention that he was president.
Is getting an honest, realistic handle on the concepts of fairness and meritocracy just too tough for right wing comprehension? If so, we are going to have to dump them from the political scene, no other option in a world needing a little fairness. But not to worry, as the right wing seems to be doing everything possible to ensure that end on their own. "The people who should worry most about the credibility gap are those who support Bush's foreign policy (E.J. Dionne, Jr., Spinning Away Trust, Washington Post, June 6, 2003)."
Democracy, is built on trust, trust in human rights and trust in our fellow humans. Human rights transcend a posteriori religious law looking for someone to punish. The most important laws in a democracy are a priori laws designed to prevent people from falling through tears in the social fabric (remember the 60s?). The only absolute law in a true democracy is the law that you must think for yourself and make your own decisions. Everything else follows from that one law in a government of, by and for the people. --06.09.03
Jesus, Bush, And Religious Self-Righteousness
Dr. Gerry Lower
A few years ago, eastern South Dakotans experienced a devastating tornado which virtually destroyed a small ranch town on the prairie. After the storm subsided, one woman and her young son emerged from the debris of their basement quite safe and sound. The mother told how she had grabbed her son and carried him to the basement. There she laid him on the floor, she laid down on top of him, and she grabbed a firm hold of the water pipes anchored to the basement wall.
Overjoyed at being alive, the mother was, of course, asked by reporters how she had ever managed to survive. The mother's response was, "Jesus saved us. We prayed and Jesus saved us." And the people did rejoice that Jesus, once again, had come through for the few, nevermind the many. Thank god almighty.
There are several points to make about this story in terms of religious and Christian content.
Jesus had nothing to do with it, all right? If we examine the woman's actions, heading to the basement and hanging on for dear life, her program falls into the category of common sense precautions, the likes of which most people have heard about at some time or another, especially people living on the open prairies. This sort of knowledge and a little luck always go further than anything else we currently can summon up to help. There is no need to thank Jesus, and here is why He wouldn't appreciate the applause.
Without realizing it, the woman's statement (coming, no doubt, from a warm-hearted Christian lady) is admirably anti-Christian and religiously self-righteous. She did not intend for this at all, but that is what comes out when Christian values are compromised by those of the Old Testament Roman world. If we must applaud Jesus for saving this mother and her son's lives, then we must condemn Jesus for allowing so many others to perish in the tornado. In other words, by assigning her survival to Jesus instead of to her own common sense and good luck, she has placed herself into a self-righteous position in which an ethereal Jesus has presumably employed supernatural powers to show her preferential favoritism over others. Praise the lord.
Nowhere in New Testament scripture is there an indication that Jesus wanted credit for every wonderful and lucky thing that happens on this planet. He just wanted people to be honest with and caring of each other. He just wanted people to do as He did, think for themselves. That is all, and that is everything. Indeed, it was precisely because the woman in South Dakota thought for herself, with knowledge provided by others with experience, that she and her son survived the storm. Bravo! Christianity (the real thing) works.
Constrast this with the approaches promoted by right wing "compassionate" conservatives in America who urge our national leaders to rely not at all on their own knowledge or any human knowledge, who urge our national leaders to not think for themselves. Rather, they urge pursuit of a self-righteous, belligerent stance in the world in the name of America's rich and the the religion they use to justify their cause, which embraces no one but themselves.
In other words, "compassionate" conservatives use the nascent Christian concept of compassion as a justification for a conservative political philosophy that bears no relationship whatsoever to Christianity. No, I am afraid that Jesus does not directly save us from anything. He died nearly two millennia ago, you may recall. By Jefferson's time, it was clear that nascent Christian values were a rejection of traditional religious values.
In Jefferson's mind, Jesus saves us from ourselves by promoting a little honest introspection and cogitation as to what causes what in the world, this knowledge providing the path to wisdom. Jesus saves us from ourselves by exposing the dark side of vengeance-based moralism, absolute legalism and penalism, and marketplace pragmatism. These are the cultural beliefs which now dominate America at the expense of nascent Christian and American values, compliments of the Bush administration and the Texas Southern Baptist political party.
The American Temple has fallen at the hands of the very same men whom the first Christian threw out of the Temple, men who would wrap their self-styled agenda up in spiritual and nationalistic attire in order to leverage their way with the people.
So, next time you hear someone praising Jesus for saving lives, please remind these people that Jesus only saves us by teaching us to think for ourselves. That is all, and that is everything. Be devoutly honest, be compassionate, and think for yourself. It is all the more Christian you need to be; it is all the more Christian you can be. Just think for yourself, and you will end up not talking about Christ but thinking like Him. That's all He ever asked, so sure He was that you would find Him inside yourself. --06.01.03
Billie Graham's God And George's Evolution
Dr. Gerry Lower
George W. Bush was appointed into the White House as a proudly born-again "christian," and his "compassionate" conservative administration entered the White House accordingly, as if it had a mandate from the gods, when it didn't even have a mandate from the people. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, George has answered to a higher calling and signed America up in the millennial religious struggle against "evil" in the world. George's self-proclaimed "crusade" against terrorism has become the new and larger American assignment, having entirely eclipsed America's centuries-long struggle to become a democracy.
Operationally, George's vision translates into the Orwellian notion of preserving American "freedom" by eliminating American rights, maintaining a self-righteous, neo-imperialistic attitude toward the "old" world's democracies, and promoting a militaristic expansion of American power in the name of America's war on terrorism. All of this is brought to you, as they say on Sesame Street, by the letter "C," "compassionate" conservatism, consumerism and corrupt crony capitalism.
In light of George's dynastic family past, it is possible to wonder why George would feel so duty bound to nourish the conservative sociocultural world which caused him decades of dysfunction as a young man. Why would he invest in a sociocultural world which provided him with no interest in education, a good deal of interest in alcoholic escapism, and little or no ability to survive on his own in the business world of his social class?
Having finally found sobriety in Billy Graham's concept of deity, George learned to accept as personal fact that he had largely wasted two decades of his life jagging around as the spoiled son of money, privilege and power. Having achieved this personal epiphany, it was by giving himself over to Graham's god, that George has been able to rid himself of alcoholic indecision and indirection. In return, Graham's god has provided George with righteous self-justification. While one might hope for a president who is knowledgeable, thoughtful and caring, George doesn't need to be any of these things, because George is right in the eyes of the god who keeps him sober.
George's devotion to his Grahamic god has saved him from a life of alcoholic failure and chronic bailouts, no doubt. George has found his theological calling as a "dry drunk,", now able to be smug and belligerent without drinking a drop, as testimony to the great healing power of Graham's god. From this self-righteous mindset, George has declared that America (and the crony capitalism for which it has come to stand) is transcendent of all traditional western notions of morality, no compassionate forgiveness, no religious vengeance, just raw unprovoked military aggression. America's dominant position in the world is assumed to reflect the wishes of Graham's god and America is, therefore, justified in contemplating pre-meditated and unprovoked violence against all who are seen as a threat to the new unilateralist "American Way."
In the course of this personal evolution, George has come to accept that he was a black sheep in the Bush dynastic family, that he was saved from himself by Graham's god, and that he has since been blessed by that god with a transcendent, religious reason for being in power. Given that George's dynastic family has made his survival and his "success" possible, it is necessarily in George's interest to see himself as duty bound to those responsible. George, the prodigal son, has found his way back home to make his family proud. It was he who was out of line all along wasn't it now, all praise Graham's god.
This approach to the comprehension of causation in one's life is, by now, classically "American" in that it only goes back one step in thought. Under the aegis of consumerism, for example, food comes from grocery stores and housing comes from real estate agencies, nevermind the farms and ranches and timberlands. For decades now, American consumers have believed that they need only go back one step in thought, to the retail outlets and to the common denominator required at all of them, i.e., money.
Likewise, personal causation in George's life did not start one step ago with his devotion to Grahamism, nor did it start with his earlier devotion to alcoholism. As with even "common" people, personal causation in George's life started back in the family, where the parenting which he experienced must be considered as a factor in his early lack of self-discipline and self-respect and, therefore, his lack of parental respect.
In other words, if George took a natural historical look at his situation, beginning with his beginnings, he would see that there are necessarily direct and indirect reasons for his having spent his first two adult decades in alcoholic failure, both as a dis-interested student and as a would-be businessman. George must know that he was not really such a "bad" kid, that there were home-bound reasons for his depression and his penchant for alcoholic escape, his inability to find a mature footing upon which to grow.
From what kind of world do you suppose George was so desperately and for so long seeking to escape? What was the nature of the parental world that would drive a young man into a life style of alcohol and meaningless relationships? What parental impositions would produce a young man with little interest in personal growth and self-improvement? What sins of commission? What sins of omission?
This is the introspective subject area to which George ought really devote considerable personal attention in the interest of self-comprehension. It would certainly make him a better president to better know himself. Do you suppose that George turned to alcohol and "good" times because he was raised in a world in which he was personally insignificant and inconsequential? Do you suppose that George lost his way because he was exposed to nothing that had meaning for him, nothing that made sense to his nascent self? Do you suppose that George's wealthy and powerful parents were so busy with matters of pomp and circumstance, matters of security and securities, that George's needs were oftentimes treated with benign neglect (which is never very benign)? Do you suppose young George went off the deep end because he got everything he wanted and very little he needed?
Do you suppose that if George thought about his life on the whole, from the beginning, that he might see that his youthful depression and escapism were understandable if not justifiable, given his dynastic family experience? Do you suppose that George might come to see that he was perhaps not all that wrong as a rebellious youth, more like over-protected, over-pacified and neglected? Do you suppose that George might come to see that had he been provided what all young people need at home, a loving, honest and time-intense parental relationship, he might have avoided two decades of meaningless escapism? Is it not entirely possible that George could have departed the parental nest to do just fine as an adult, not as a politically-appointed and manipulated president, not as a self-ordained religious hack, but as an honest, thoughtful and caring individual making honest contribution to the country and the people he could love?
Think back, George, to the days before you sold yourself out. What exactly about your home life was bothering you? --05.22.03
Somewhere Inside George W. Bush
Dr. Gerry Lower
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he knows that he is a chronic failure, a failure at the best schools in America, a failure at holding his booze, a failure in the baseball business, a failure in the oil business. Even worse, he knows that he is a failure in the realm of personal self-improvement, failing to acquire much knowledge of the world outside of his family's dynastic play pen. Bush would, in fact, be a total no account failure in life were it not for his family's money and influence and his open mind about insider trading, were it not for the blind support of people who are no longer able to make a distinction between democracy and crony capitalism.
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he is aware of his limited abilities to comprehend and communicate intelligently. Afterall, he has to listen to his own conceptual and verbal stumbling almost daily. He can't have missed it.
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he is aware that he is likely the most ill-educated, ill-experienced, ill-advised and inconsistent presidential puppet to ever be dangled around in the Oval Office.
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he is aware that his own intellectual limitations put him under the dominion of those who are even less "Christian" than he claims to be, people who are demonstrably ignorant of the values of democracy on a daily basis.
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he knows that he is precisely the Howdy Doody that the religious right was looking for in order to monger power and control in promoting their own self-serving, corrupt agenda, not Bush's agenda (which he does not and could not possess).
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he knows that there is a difference between Christian compassion and religious belligerence and self-righteousness. He knows that you can't destroy human life with executions and precision bombing and then pretend to be working for the Prince of Peace.
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he knows that he would never be able to survive his office if anything even remotely resembling the truth gets into the mainstream press to be honestly considered by the people.
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he knows that his presidency is already over, except for the threats and lies and denials, that he is never going to be able to spin a pre-meditated, unprovoked war on an impoverished, nearly-defenseless nation into an act of high Christian morality in the eyes of the world.
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he knows that all the lies and fabrications and dirty tricks will catch up with him, as they always seem to catch up with dishonest people. Funny (and fortunate) how the world works that way, is it not?
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he knows that he is a dry drunk, a man who has found a way to be smug, belligerent and self-righteous without drinking a drop, a truly godlike accomplishment. He knows that if he diverges even for a moment from his religious convictions, he would be back on the bottle.
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he knows his life has been a series of fabrications, manipulations and bailouts designed to keep his boat afloat, that his entire past and current status have no relationship to honest human truth, that his entire history doesn't really exist except as a fervently-maintained fabrication. President or pauper, this outcome is always something of a human tragedy.
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he knows that his entire program is a puff of capitalistic smoke, a fabrication without substance, a pyramid sitting on its nose, only as good as the fabrications which prop it up, dependent upon more and more fabrications, until the people ultimately can see his blessed nudity.
Somewhere deep down inside George W. Bush, he knows that all of these things are so, because these conclusions are far more empirically-justifiable than suggestions that he knows something about democracy, let alone suggestions that he knows how to provide democratic leadership to the world.
The question is this : What events might catalyze a glorious personal epiphany, a self-realization of his own ignorance and incompetence? What might be the nature of the words which would bring George W. Bush back to earth and to his knees in self-abhorance? What might be the nature of the personal downfall when Bush accepts the inescapable fact that his knowledge of Jefferson's Democracy and Christ's ethical morality isn't worth a spit, that he has no business whatsoever being in the White House, that he has executed Jefferson and Franklin right along with the rest of the criminals in his mind, and screwed over the most promising nation in the evolution of human culture, all in the name of a tiny handful of greedy, self-rightous people like himself, comprising all of one half percent of the world's population.
Given the massive amount of darkness embraced by the Bush administration (which has reduced their pupils to tiny black specks), it is just a matter of time before George Jr. and his crony capitalist cadre are simply blinded by the light.
You might want to get yourself a pair of shades for this apocalyptic event. It is a given. 05.12.03
Tribes Of The Middle East, Including Ours
Dr. Gerry Lower
The Bush administration has claimed victory in deposing Saddam Hussein and freeing the people of Iraq from his despotic rule. Thusly "liberated," the competing tribes of Iraq (e.g., Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites) are currently regrouping to fight among themselves for control of everything in Iraq that the U.S. decides not to control. Meanwhile, the Bush administration is planning to install a "controlled" democracy in Iraq (the only type of "democracy" the Bush administration supports). It may well become necessary to intimidate or bomb a few more neighboring tribes into submission, but then the job will be one of watching the wonders of "democracy" and crony capitalism spread throughout the Middle East to bring freedom and prosperity to all.
Now, hold on here just a moment! What is that plan again ... to bring "democracy" to the Middle East? Is the Bush administration jerking the people around or what? My 75 year old neighbor, Del (who has been far more places and seen far more things than George W. Bush), has been telling me for months that the U.S. does not know what it is getting into in the Middle East, that we short-sighted, ill-read Americans are simply too naive and self-assured for our own good, that we are in over our heads in a religious world we do not understand at all.
To begin with, democracy is something that comes from the people of a nation under adequately enlightened leadership, not from a foreign military power in occupation. We in America would be nothing today had we waited for the British to impose "democracy" upon us. The values of Democracy, in the minds of the men who are carved on Mount Rushmore, come from the human heart and, no doubt about it, the human soul. Democracy is born of human passion for honesty, freedom and fairness and peace. But, despite the passion of our Fathers two centuries ago, one of the more obvious reasons that democracy was actually established in America, and not in Europe, was our physical and intellectual isolation from monarchical and papal powermongers of Europe.
America was not birthed by a branch office of the Roman Catholic church but by a small handfull of highly self-educated, highly read, highly thoughtful and highly-articulate people who mostly practiced Deism and the belief that God was located on the human inside, of all places. Jefferson, Franklin and Washington rejected supernaturalism and the notion of "external authority," accepting instead that fact that causation in life (e.g., disease, poverty, and injustice) is entirely earth-bound. Jefferson and friends rejected religious determinism, replacing it with human determinism, they rejected pre-destination, replacing it with education and choice. They were out to create something entirely new by eliminating the profoundly uninspired religiosity traditionally driving western culture and currently driving U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Here is why they wanted to remove religion as a basis for further thought.
Traditional western religion with its "one" supernatural god of the "chosen" few is absolutely tribal and self-centered in nature. From the very beginnings, the Tribes of Israel were regularly having at each other with their differing views of what their god wanted them to be doing collectively. Given the despotic logic of the times, the emphasis was not on finding common ground but on winning, getting one's way. It was only when the Tribes had a common external enemy, more fearsome to the Tribes than the Tribes were to each other, that they flourished in religious and nationalistic unity. This is just the way the western religious world works, my word against yours until we face a common problem. It is an approch that only can work with clean, defined logic and criteria of belief, matters of theology never addressed by western religion with its basis in faith alone.
If I disagree with you on an issue (although my reasons are entirely self-centered and earth bound), I can perhaps get more leverage if I align my objectives with those of an all-knowing, potentially wrathful god. If you continue to disagree with me, you clearly have an inferior god or no god at all, which I can use to justify my self-righteous dominion over you. If you do agree with me, I will have coerced you into thinking that you are now in alignment with the gods when, in fact, you are only in alignment with me and my agenda. See how this works? Tricky, isn't it?
Just remember that my dad is bigger than your dad and my dad is going to come over to your house and kick your dad's butt. That is, unfortunately, the full extent of western religion's social maturity, exemplified in the Middle East for millennia. The Bush administration has modernized this primitive manipulation into an artform.
America's Founding Fathers, of course, had hoped to eliminate all of this nonsense because it cannot be dealt with intelligently, because it is nothing but belligerence with a mouth and because it avoids honest confrontation of the actual issues at hand. This mindless approach allows the Bush administration to promote tax cuts one day because the economy is so good and it allows them to promote tax cuts the next day because the economy is so bad. It is, however, an act of utter incompetence and desperation to wrap up one's hopes and dreams for the world in blind religious patriotism. It puts one in the same camp with all other religious enemies of freedom and fairness and equality. Just ask Jefferson about this.
This is really not so difficult a concept to grasp. All muddy thinking starts on simple (as in assinine) human ground. All clean thinking starts on simple (as in elegant) human ground. You simply have to get "simple" (in the elegant sense) and human (in the thoughtful sense) and leave behind the adolescent world of religious superstition and the "complex" world of crony capitalism. Life has always provided those holding to a scientific world view with far more to agree upon than not.
With every tribe having its own version of god (designed to protect its own interests over everyone elses), the people end up agreeing upon nothing across tribal boundaries and they devote themselves instead to finding even more upon which to disagree. The predictable historical result is more factionation, less unification and no human progress. Welcome to the world of Tribes.
Consider Afghanistan and its rule by competing religious tribes. How does one nourish democracy among competing warlords who are not even trying to see through each others eyes in the interest of the people? Consider Iraq and its rule by competing religious tribes. How does one nourish democracy among the competing Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, each group hoping to control as much of Iraq as possible, never mind the people?
Once again, democracy can only come from the human inside, from the thinking of people who are willing to consider agreeing upon some things, e.g., those human needs and human rights common to all people. It does not happen among self-righteous religious people, does it? Afterall, these people have had two millennia to get it right, make a little peace in the world, and they haven't even come close.
The point is this. Anyone who believes that democracy can be installed in nations of warring religious tribes by an occuppant "superpower" that has, itself, lost all touch with the values of democracy, well now that is a belief unfit for human consumption, a belief for "fools or charlatans," to use Jefferson's words. "A nation that expects to be ignorant and free is something that never was and never will be." It is simply ignorance incarnate, in this day and age, to claim that god is on your side and no one elses, that god has opted to play favorites just for you. You can cause a lot of trouble and get into a lot of trouble by believing that you are special beyond human compassion and reason.
Under Jefferson's democracy, Americans have chosen to grant themselves freedom of religion. You may believe anything you want about a personal god working 24/7 on your sole behalf at the expense of others. You may believe in anything you damned-well please, as long as you do not impose your beliefs on another living soul. This is called freedom of religion and it protects you, if honored, from religious fanatics and despots who would use lies and fabrications to deceive you and control you to enable their own ends, the current Bush administration being a proud exemplar. It is the beauty of the values of democracy, that most educated people do not need convincing of the merit of these values, they just need leadership in their behalf. 05,05,03
RELIGIOUS AND REPUBLICAN AT THE SHRINE OF DEMOCRACY
Dr. Gerry Lower
Have you ever noticed how many brand name American commodities (beer would be a good example) have been watered down beyond uniqueness, made entirely bland in order to accomodate a mass market? Back in the days before individual creativity and opportunity died (or was stolen away), America provided a home for over five hundred unique breweries. Today we cheer for a half dozen megabreweries and their bland offerings so that we can still have our drinks and momentarily escape our bland realities.
The same is true of the American Press. The news and commentary we are provided by the large media outlets are necessarily watered down beyond uniqueness, made entirely bland in order to accomdate a mass market ... "careful how you say that ... make it so they can all swallow it." As a result, one can oftentimes benefit by going into the smaller city scene to find out what is really beneath the national fluff. So let me take you for a brief sojourn into western South Dakota, the heart of midwestern tourist land.
"West River" (i.e., west of the Missouri), as the region is known, is culturally-dominated by Old Testament religion and conservative Republican capitalism, accompanied by western hospitality and a wild and woolly western "clickiness," aka cronyism. As a direct result, of course, South Dakota provides its citizens with the second lowest per capita income in America and, at the same time, ranks sixth in the U.S. in its density of millionaires. We are one of the exemplars of the enormous gap between the rich and poor in America.
Conservative Republican dominion works for regional growth and development, although the area does suffer from business people who are far too competitive for their own good, a situation which breeds the typical desperation beneath most corruption. This much-pursued growth threatens daily some of the most spectacular landscapes in North America, the Black Hills National Forest and several national parks and monuments, including Mount Rushmore, the Shrine of Democracy.
Well-healed folks from larger midwestern cities are moving to West River in droves to retire in one of America's oldest and most beautiful mountain ranges. The local working class have been mostly out of the real estate market for decades and Rapid City sports a horrendous number of inner city trailer parks, originally built on the city's edge and now scattered from downtown outward for several miles. But we do have brand new hotels and motels and museums and banks and Walmarts. Long after the Gold Rush of 1876, Rapid City is once again "booming," pretty much for the same people it boomed for the first time around.
The "balanced" but decidedly Republican Rapid City Journal prints editorials daily which amount to nothing more than loudly self-righteous tirades against liberalism and all political approaches smelling of the Democratic party.
Why, just today Shirley wrote about antiwar demonstrators in West River (with their "foolish tantrums and myopic opposition"). You demonstrators and your "minority ilk won't misuse our rights and tear apart our nation as you did about (sic) Vietnam ... not over my dead body!" Shirley writes with a religious passion.
Certainly, the editors at the Journal can differentiate between thoughtful commentary and an egregiously self-righteousness outburst. The fact that the editors do not much bother making such distinctions in prioritizing editorial commentary says quite a lot about the deeply self-righteous religious attitudes embedded in West River culture (as a microcosm of the national scene with less confusing fluff) and about the sorry state of the press in America, which was originally designed to measure the news relative to the values of democracy, not to the values of post World War II capitalism. West River is a vast sea of prairie out of which rises the majestic mountain islands of the Black Hills. West River culture, on the other hand, doesn't cover much ground beyond the Old Testament or outside of West River.
Here in West River, one can actually find the authentic item, people worth several millions of dollars who provide their management-level employees with very modest pay and no benefits at all, oftentimes on a seasonal basis. Yet, some are known to gather around with their employees to pray collectively to almighty god. For what? For a good season and more money incoming, of course. A living income in West River simply escapes the working people unless there be godly intervention on behalf of their rich employers.
Here we are, in the shadow of Mount Rushmore. The Shrine of Democracy was sculpted between 1927 and 1941 by Gutzon Borglum in honor of America's enlightened leadership. Listen to these granite individuals, now looking southeast over the Black Hills to greet every red, white and blue American sunrise:
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
Theodore Roosevelt
Abraham Lincoln
Doesn't sound very religious or capitalistic, does it? Sounds more like these men were speaking from the values of democracy, doesn't it?
So, here is what I want to know. What gives with you people living in Rushmore's shadow? What gives with the Republican Party in America?
Have you noticed that since Bush's appointment to the Oval Office, your "ilk" has become infallible, incapable of being stupid and doing wrong? Have you noticed that you no longer need to make any sense, common or otherwise, in promoting your agenda? Have you noticed how you "teflonize" those who tell you what you want to hear so that you do not have to challenge yourself or your thinking - in a country birthed from much larger thinking?
Have you noticed how empty arguments flavored with self-righteousness can oftentimes "win" the day? That smug cultural attitude, of course, emerges from JudeoRoman religious thinking, no Christian values in sight, as Jefferson well knew. Therefore, he gave you and me the right to believe in personal religious infallibility if we wish, in the Catholic tradition. But you and I have no right to impose that belief, or any other religious belief, upon another living soul. By Jefferson's standards, don't you see, you have sold out ... completely. That happened the instant you found your way to values other than those outlined in the Declaration, certainly one of the most Christian documents ever written.
Have you noticed how you refuse to listen to reason and how you wrap your efforts in religion and patriotism so that you do not have to bother with intelligent explanation - because you know that the supernatural notions which nourish your attitudes do not logically cut it in the real world anymore? Have you noticed how far out of sync you are with every single granite mind enshrined on Mount Rushmore? We all appreciate a break from having to think now and then, but you folks have made it into a way of life.
One does wonder, however, why you strive so hard to win, as if nothing else matters, fabrications, distortions and fantasies being just part of a well-fought game. Despite swings of the political pendulum, you folks have been winning all along, don't you see, gradually acquiring more and more control over "acceptible" American thought and behavior, more and more control over national positions and postures, more and more control over the working individual's ability to secure a living income. In a nutshell, it has been a quest for more and more authority over the people and less and less responsibility for the people, an approach which can ultimately be only self-defeating. You savior warned about service to mammon.
You have created more and more opportunities for the rich and fewer and fewer opportunities for working people. Your world is one in which bright and talented people do not start up businesses; rich people start up businesses and they hire bright and talented people for as little as possible to keep margins up. The destruction of meritocracy and the creation of the largest gap between "haves" and "have nots" in human history is your doing. You have converted "the people" (our collective selves) into mindless, voiceless and odorless consumers who do not need to know and do not deserve rights, medical, educational or otherwise. You make America unique among the western democracies.
The questions that come to my mind are these. What have you really won outside of a desperately-illogical and remarkably unconstitutional control over America and the people? Now that you have finally taken over and, in less than two decades, hauled America backwards two centuries to our Tory enslavement, what are you going to do with us? Inquiring people, people who have read Locke and Jefferson and Paine and Twain and Lincoln and Thoreau and Whitman, want to know. --04.21.03
BUSH'S FATAL IGNORANCE OF EVOLUTION
Dr. Gerry Lower
Authors note: Over the past century, the various world cultures have been increasingly interactive under the aegis of a nascent global economy as directed largely by the machinations of western capitalism. As is traditional following western capitalizations and economic unifications, there is now the resulting western need to nourish larger sociopolitical organization by way of international and global treaties. Unfortunately, the Bush administration sees this necessary unification as properly occurring only under American crony capitalistic dominion, never mind democracy, never you even mind logic and knowledge. Indeed, the Bush administration is quite unable to make a distinction between the values of Democracy and the values of crony capitalism, as if the Tories had won the Revolutionary War.
Adequate comprehension of this situation in the interest of human maturation and survival requires understanding the general features of western cultural evolution so that we might recognize overriding evolutionary imperatives in spite of the Bush administration's imperialistic dalliance. While one cannot do justice to cultural evolution in a short essay, it is possible to gain enough insight to see through the Bush administration's imperialistic agenda. Honestly seeing what is happening in the world, of course, is prerequisite to doing something about it, and the only honest and useful way to accomplish this is through evolutionary eyes.
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The Concept of Cultural Evolution
The fact of biological evolution has been with us since Darwin's time, nearly 150 years ago, as a common denominator explanation for human origins on earth. Biological evolution, because it is based on empirical observation and logical organization of the resulting ideas, provides an explanation of human origins independent of cultural background, an explanation involving the underlying evolution of genomic information beneath human biological forms. In other words, we are all from the same place, regardless of what we have been told.
Culture consists of the ideas, words and actions we use to define and control ourselves and the world we live in. It ought surprise no one, then, that it is similarly possible to speak of cultural evolution as a common denominator explanation for human intellectual origins on earth. Because cultural evolution is based on empirical observation and logical organization of the resulting ideas, it provides an explanation for human growth and maturation independent of genomic background, an explanation involving the underlying evolution of ideologic information beneath human cultural forms. In other words, we all think in basically the same ways, "acceptible" ways of thought being established by culture not genotype.
For those accepting biological evolution, for those able to appreciate the immense explanatory value of evolutionary thought and knowledge, then the existence of cultural evolution simply must follow, even if philosophers have not yet been able to develop frameworks for rigorously defining the process. For those who recognize evolution in their own creative efforts, the existence of cultural evolution is a given.
Knowing that a thing exists, however, and adequately defining that thing in the interest of comprehension and control, are two different states of knowledge, the former intuitive/empirical, the latter empirical/logical. So, we must acquire an adequate grasp of the larger cultural process in which we are currently embedded, because it is our only hope for maturation and survival.
Truly, it is a long way from the beat of tribal drums to the world wide web. Clearly, there is a lot more than time between Abraham and Einstein. Obviously, we are all caught up in a process larger than ourselves, a process not yet of our general comprehension or yet of our own design. In other words, cultural evolution is self-evident to anyone who thinks about it, yet remains inadequately defined in empirical/logical terms. We have not yet figured out a way to think about all of this, as we continue to follow the ancient western Biblical script.
To look at the world through the eyes of a world subculture (e.g., Judaism, Confucianism) is not helpful simply because cultural evolution cannot be comprehended from within the world views of the human subcultures which it embraces. This fact leaves the world's traditional cultures without a means to deal with what is happening in the larger world, and many of them (including America) have retreated, for lack of authentic democratic leadership, back into the belief systems of their feudal pasts.
Comprehension of cultural evolution requires departing the world of things and the world of supernatural conjecture for the world of empirical/logical ideas and natural philosophy, the world of Thomas Jefferson and America's Deist Fathers. It requires reductive reasoning in the synthesis of a systematic viewpoint, looking at life from the top down as well as from the bottom up, looking at life on the whole, embraced by the intuitive concepts of Oneness and Interconnectedness. It requires living in the world of Einstein and taking leave of Newton's world. We are speaking here of global thought and philosophy for a global world.
The Concept of Conceptual Evolution
A central feature of human biological evolution is that, at any given point in time, virtually all preceding biological exemplars remain represented by living descendants and fossil remains. In other words, observation of human biological diversity at a given point in time provides a panorama of preceding biological exemplars (from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens sapiens) which can be placed into an ordered temporal sequence, a fact which makes comprehension of human biological evolution possible. We have found the bones and they tell our biological story, independent of cultural background.
A central feature of human cultural evolution is that, at any given point in time, virtually all preceding cultural exemplars remain represented by living practitioners and recorded human history. In other words, observation of human cultural diversity at a given point in time provides a panorama of preceding cultural exemplars (from Judaism to Roman Catholicism to Lutheranism to British Protestantism to Unitarianism to Jefferson's Deism) which can be placed into temporal and evolutionary sequence, a fact which makes comprehension of cultural evolution possible. We daily see the bones of our cultural past in action and they tell our cultural story, independent of genomic background.
Conceptual evolution in Science, the evolution of how we think about the world and how we see the world, is the basis for cultural evolution. Conceptual evolution has occurred almost exclusively, most honestly and most naturally in Science. It has been the evolving world views of Science which have most influenced traditional cultural world views, in driving cultural evolution away from ancient tribal authoritarianism and despotism and toward individual self-determination and freedom. Comprehension of cultural evolution, then, requires comprehension of conceptual evolution in Science and how the resulting knowledge and world views have impacted traditional cultures to get us where we are currently stationed. It requires comprehension of the evolution of human thought and knowledge.
This in turn requires consideration of an evolutionary theory of knowledge which can be moved through time to provide an explanation of how our thinking has changed and how the resulting knowledge has influenced cultural evolution toward the self-evident goal of human self-comprehension. In doing so, we begin in the beginning with Socrates.
The Socratic Theory of Knowledge
It was the great insight of Socrates to recognize that adequate knowledge consists of adequate answers to adequate questions. This definition is quite far-reaching as it allows us to categorize knowledge on the basis of the questions we ask, and we can ask only three types of General Questions, WHAT, HOW and WHY. All other questions, WHO, WHEN, WHERE, and WHICH are Qualifier questions which provide names and locations in space and time, important questions from historical perspectives, but not critical to understanding pure knowledge.
In the natural course of evolutionary events, western religion began its search for relevance by asking "Why" questions, right up front, never concerning itself much with What or How, bothering only with the myriad applications of god's law in providing the "Why." In Science, the search for knowledge, and thence relevance, necessarily began with "What" questions and worked its way up from there, simply because it is difficult to know How and Why anything happens if one does not know What one is dealing with. Religion has always had it thusly backwards, imposing its own "Why" upon all natural "Whys."
WHAT? - DESCRIPTIVE KNOWLEDGE : Formal answers to What questions came with the emergence of Inductive reasoning and Descriptive knowledge in Greece about 2500 years ago. Inductions involve reasoning upward in a hierarchy of knowledge, reasoning from what is particularly true to what is generally true. Greek physicists induced the existence of "atoms" and Greek physicians induced the existence of material causes of disease, "miasmas." Both ideas recieved empirical validation over two millennia later. By the end of the 19th century, everything was, indeed, made up of atoms and, yes, pathogenic microorganisms did make people sick. The Greeks were right about most everything.
Plato had made God of the human mind and the human mind, free of superstition and supernaturalism, and choosing to live in the real world, conceived and implemented Science, along with a scientific ethics (Hippocratean). As its political philosophy, Science naturally implemented Democracy in the form of Greek city-states.
HOW? - MECHANISTIC KNOWLEDGE : Formal answers to How questions came with the emergence of Deductive reasoning and Mechanistic knowledge with Newton and friends about 300 years ago. This extension of logic required a conceptual extension, which required an extension of human vision, enabled externally by the telescope and internally by the microscope. Deductions represent reasoning downward in a hierarchy of knowledge, from what is generally true to what is specifically true. European physicists deduced the motions of the planets and European physicians deduced the causes of infectious disease. God became a wise and accomplished clockmaker whose methods were entirely comprehensible by the human mind so that the people might have the gift of choice and the reward of real world problem-solving.
The Euro-American Enlightenment was on schedule (from Newton and Spinoza to Locke to Jefferson) and Democracy was re-discovered, re-synthesized and re-implemented in America, all at the expense of traditional religious belief, the practitioners of which were, of course, Jefferson's chief antagonists. In keeping with the mysticism and scientific logic of the Enlightenment era, Jefferson placed God in the "head and heart" of the people and placed the Highest Authority in "the will of the people, substantially declared." Jefferson's God was the God of all people.
WHY? - SYSTEMATIC KNOWLEDGE : Formal answers to Why questions came with the emergence of Reductive reasoning and Systematic knowledge with Einstein and friends about 100 years ago (notice how the conceptual breakthroughs always come in physics and math first). This logical extension also required a conceptual extension, enabled externally by the conceptual methods of astro and subatomic physics and internally by the conceptual methods of molecular biology. Reductions represent explanations of behaviors at one level of organization based on observations at underlying levels of organization (analytic reduction) and integrations of those observations into a natural historical, hierarchical viewpoint of the whole (synthetic reduction). Physicists reduced heat to a matter of statistical mechanics and sub-atomic behavior to a matter of quantum mechanics. Biomedical scientists and physicians reduced the neoplastic diseases to an understanding of mutational disruptions at the level of the cellular genome. The human genome was mapped and all of our connections to earth's flora and fauna, all of our connections to each other, were exposed.
God is found in the information beneath the entire living system, emergent from the inside out. The moon orbits the earth because it is the most natural thing for it to do. Pasque flowers burst through the snows of Spring because it is the most natural thing for them to do. People seek honesty and freedom and fairness because it is the most natural thing for them to do. This is just the way the real world works.
Life comes entirely of itself, no pushing or pulling from the outside required, only political pushing and pulling here on earth to keep the people from being natural. As the Industrial Revolution followed Newton, the Informational Revolution followed Einstein, and we are currently awaiting the inevitable cultural revolution based on systematic knowledge of the whole, because until we can be ourselves, on a global basis, we are invariably captives of someone else's past.
The Nature of Cultural Evolution
Now, it is simply the case that the entirety of western cultural evolution has revolved around the millennial conflict between transcendentalists (religious conservatives who believe that comprehension of life requires a supernatural, external authority directing causation on earth) and empiricists (scientific liberals who believe that the comprehension of life requires nothing more than observation and integration, that the causes of earthly phenomena are entirely earth bound. Empiricists tend to hold their views because they are honest views and because they can be built upon to extend and enhance human comprehension and control. Transcendentalists tend to hold their views because they allow self-justification of wealth and position as a reward for belief, an indication of godly favoritism, nothing more than that, really, although they seldom know that this is why they believe in the unbelieveable.
In considering the evolutionary dialectic between transcendentalism and empiricism, we can conclude immediately that cultural evolution does not proceed in a linear manner (as conceptualized in the religious west) nor does it proceed in a circular manner (as conceptualized in the ethical east). Rather, as conceptualized by the dialectic mind, cultural evolution proceeds in a spiral manner and it does so at a logarithmic rate, the time intervals between major events getting shorter and shorter, as is self-evident, once one begins looking for such characteristics.
On the spiral of scientific empiricism, for example, it took over 2,000 years from the emergence of Inductive/Descriptive thought in Greece to the emergence of Deductive/Mechanistic thought in Europe with Newton and friends. It then took only 200 years for the emergence of Reductive/Systematic thought in Europe and America with Einstein and friends. Today, just 100 years after the emergence of reductive thought and systematic knowledge, we have reduced life to the information resident inside all things, i.e., physical, biological (genomic) and cultural (ideologic) information. We finally know where we come from and to whom we are related, no more guessing.
Information runs everything, from the inside out. God, the highest authority, is embedded in what we know and care about. It is our ideas and actions which mold our world and define our God. Determined authority comes from within as we struggle to comprehend and control a probabilistic world on the outside. Without that internal authority, known as human choice, and a good deal of honest, reliable knowledge to back up our choices, where would we be? Based on historical and evolutionary evidence, in this conceptual world there is no where to go but up. Conceptual growth and spiritual growth are one and the same. Honesty, Compassion and Creativity are akin to Godliness.
On the spiral of religious transcendentalism, for example, Holy Roman imperialism ruled the western world for some 1200 years, Catholic and Protestant colonialism ruled the western world for some 300 years, and neofundamentalist Republican crony capitalism is already at the end of its cultural rope in just a few decades, having quickly come to a self-righteous unilateralism that leaves little room for input from the rest of the world. Independent from human knowledge, this neo-imperialism has been driven by the same attitudes and ideas driving despotism since 1054 AD, when the Bishop of Rome decided that he alone ought rule western Christendom, and ended up striking his own church assunder. Based on historical and evolutionary evidence, in this transcendental world there is no where to go but down. It is ultimately nothing but a matter of self-fulfilling prophecy.
In other words, there is clear and definable order in the time intervals between events in conceptual and cultural evolution. With regard to Science, these time intervals define an ascendent logarithmic spiral. Science acquires more and more knowledge at a faster and faster rate. Because conceptual evolution has generated knowledge necessarily in conflict with traditional religious belief, there is a reciprocal order in the time intervals between events. With regard to religion, these time intervals define a descendent logarithmic spiral. Religion loses more and more authority at a faster and faster rate.
When logarithmic spirals are observed from a perpendicular plane, they project in two dimensions as a logarithmic sine wave. In looking at western cultural evolution in this manner (see westernwave), the eras of Roman imperialism, European colonialism and American capitalism emerge in defined temporal windows, the longevity of each era getting shorter and shorter as a function of an increasingly educated public's unwillingness to abide religion-based despotic political philosophy.
Bush's Role in Cultural Evolution
With the emergence of Republican crony capitalism, western religion has raised its supernatural head for the last time, in an effort to control the world and the reality we live, in the name of the few, in blindly approaching its own prophetic end. Bush and several of his cronies, hack religious "theologians," are self-ordained as agents of "god" in the implementation of a "crusade" against "evil" and self-proclaimed warriors in the battles of the apocalypse. In keeping with its apocalyptic vision, the Bush administration's last hurrah for religious despotism is already dead in principle, and current evolutionary frameworks, when extrapolated into tomorrow, would suggest that it is not going to be very long lived.
The exponential growth of religious crony capitalism began in 1980 with Reagan's pandering to the religious right for votes. This movement achieved regional dominion in 1994, when the Southern Baptist Convention took over the Texas Republican Party. It achieved national dominion two years ago when Old Testament "compassionate" conservatism was brought directly into American government by the supremely political appointment of George Bush and several like-minded corporate cronies and inside traders. This absolute breech of America's contract between church and state constituted the death of Jefferson's Democracy.
In order for the Bush administration to fulfill religious prophecy by discrediting religious morality and crony capitalism in the eyes of the world, it would be essential for the Bush players and followers to be absolutely blind to what they are really doing and why they are doing it. This, of course, is precisely the case in America today, where conservatives continue to teflonize and tolerate the self-righteousness and belligerence which the Bush administration administers in their names.
So, while the religious Bush regime is hoping to implement a global economic and religious dominion, it is far more likely, if not certain from evolutionary perspectives, that the Bush regime will utterly discredit itself in the eyes of the world and put an end to religion-based right-wing political philosophy forever. Given the administration's underlying religious zeal (upon which their actions are based), this is almost certainly the only outcome. There is also, to be sure, a profound sense of evolutionary necessity in this.
The goal of crony American capitalism, of course, is to make the entire world just like contemporary America, full of people who will consume to the best of their abilities and abide a corrupt crony capitalism. Unfortunately, the World Watch Institute has calculated that making the world just like America would require almost four additional planets. Consumerism and crony capitalism on a global scale is not only unattainable but also unsustainable, except in the eyes of those whom Jefferson referred to as "fools or charlatans." Because it is blindly attempting the physically impossible, the Bush administration has no option but to fail. Fail it will, because Bush's agenda is so entirely out of step with evolutionary imperatives and global necessity.
Given the fact that Democracy has been around for over 200 years and has been adopted by dozens of nations, it is now simply too late to expect that a new western imperialism will long survive world opinion, especially in those democracies having noticeably greater concern for the people and their rights than contemporary America. It is, after all, Biblically prophetic that the people will have their say, their day of judgment against millennia of self-righteous, despotic dominion by the rich, and this will be a global judgment.
If there would be any common denominator beneath the moral and fiscal bankruptcy of modern social systems, be it communism in Russia or democracy in America, it would be the rich and powerful, those who attempt to compromise the values and principles of their social systems to no one's benefit but their own. Jefferson said it all in pointing out that "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains." In Bush's quest to seek out and destroy "evil" in the world, he has conveniently blinded himself to and is fully aligned with its root causes, i.e., greed, ignorance, vengeance-based moralities and old-fashioned self-rightousness. This shortcoming is something of a prerequisite for any would-be anti-Christ.
Sitting near the top of the curve for western capitalistic dominion, we can ask how long is the road to Bush's inevitable apocalypse? How long until the curve crashes to the ground in global disgrace? How long until the people will have their day of judgment against cultural world views that promote the rich and the self-righteous? How long until we realize, as did Abraham Lincoln, that all capital comes from labor, that economic systems start at the bottom with those who do the work?
It all depends on when we, the people, decide to give up the Hamiltonian bill of goods sold to us after World War II and return to the Jeffersonian values from which we, as a people, emerged. If we give up the pursuit of money for pursuit of an honest family, community, national and spiritual life, we would quickly learn that, despite all of our current wealth, we have no where to go but up.
Human decisions are best made on the basis of what we know and what we care about. Money is not even part of the equation. Money is something we look for once we decide what we are going to do. We best get back to doing Democracy. Its just the way the world works, and it is the way the world works best. 04,17.03
Note: Your response to this essay is invited.
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Why The Religious Rich Are Not Christian
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Keystone, South Dakota
Keystone, South Dakota
"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."
"I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of men." Or better yet, "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains." Or, "the purest system of morals ever before preached to man [nascent Christianity] has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions [Old Testament moralities] into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power ... and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, so as to constitute the real Antichrist."
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." What more can be said? "We here in America, hold in our hands the hopes of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men."
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." Or better yet, "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Keystone, South Dakota
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