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To unsubscribe, change your address, or subscribe, go here for Bush Headline News or here for Inside Bush Watch. BUSH WATCH...GERRY LOWER Dr. Gerry Lower lives in Bell Center, Wisconsin. His website is at www.jeffersonseyes.com and he can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com'toon | world papers | google news | comment | features | today's news | news update | news archives | us | contact |
Dr. Gerry Lower, Bell Center, Wisconsin
Samuel P. Huntington wrote "The Clash of Civilizations," when he was the Director of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. His now-famous essay was originally published in Foreign Affairs in 1993 and then expanded into a book (1).
More recently, Huntington's analysis has been reconsidered by Prof. David R. Loy in the context of Dick Cheney's Bush administration and its promotion of neoconservative capitalism with an imperial bent toward self-righteousness and belligerence on the world stage (2).
What Huntington attempted to develop over a decade ago was a new global paradigm that ostensibly brought "the new global mess into focus." Democratic societies do not go to war against each other and the Cold War era of struggle between nation-states and rival ideologies was over. Huntington foresaw that post-Cold War conflicts would be waged between "civilizations" which have "different languages, histories, institutions, and - most importantly - different religions" (2).
In other words, Huntington carried the American transition from national to global conflict and he listed seven or eight "civilizations" with the potential for future interaction and conflict. The "civilizations" he listed are "Western, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin-American, and possibly African" (2). While these frameworks did provide a new and larger paradigm for "strategic" thought with regard to safeguarding American interests, we immediately run into problems with semantics, the lack of historical context, and Huntington's America-outward and bottom-up approach to thought itself.
For example, Huntington throws all of western "civilization" into one religious camp living under Abraham's god. It is not clear how "western civilization" is somehow held separate from "Slavic-Orthodox" Christianity. Likewise, Japanese "civilization" is somehow held separate from Confucianism - which Japan borrowed from China in the 7th century, right along with Buddhism, which Huntington does not mention as a "civilization."
These are, in part, the kinds of problems that can be experienced when attempting to organize things within larger conceptual frameworks in moving from national to global levels of observation and comprehension. We can deal directly with what we have got or we can comprehend historically where things came from and how they evolved.
First, there is a semantic problem with Huntington's choice of the term "civilization" as an organized group of people with similar beliefs. That term does not adequately embrace the human nature of the situation. We are not speaking of "civilizations", we are speaking of human "cultures" which were uniformly birthed from and have been maintained with human "thought." Likewise, original human cultures were uniformly compromised by despotism and the rule of the few over the many.
It is essential, therefore, to define human culture in thoughtful and knowledgeable terms, because all human cultures are the products of human "thought" and can be defined in those terms. Eastern and western cultures are no further removed from each other than men and women are removed from each other.
HUMAN CULTURE : Those Ideas, Words and Actions that we employ to comprehend and control ourselves and our environment.
With this definition in place, we can begin to see that we are not talking about western "strategy" here, we are really talking about embracing "The People" and "The Land." All cultures are uniformly human and all are the products of human "thought" as compromised by the inherent despotism of the ancient cultural "isms."
Likewise, there is a problem with Huntington's general approach to thought which constitutes thinking from the "bottom up," a reaching out to embrace identifiable elements of the larger human situation. The larger human situation, of course, can be examined more effectively from the "top down."
Given that Life is naturally symmetrical and complementary on the whole, it is quite reasonable to begin with the whole. First, the whole is divided into halves, in this case into Eastern (Oriental) and Western (Occidental) cultures. This is ideologically to divide the human world into female and male, matriarchal and patriarchal societies, ethics and laws as approaches, harmony and order as goals, respectively.
Within the eastern world, the cultural subsets begin with Hinduism in India and Confucianism in China. By the early 7th century, this was all quickly overlain with Buddhism which, along with Confucianism, moved into Japan. One negative result of this evolution was an overshadowing of the original nature-based religions of China (Taoism) and Japan (Shintoism).
Within the western world, the cultural subsets begin with Judaism, Old Testament Romanism (aka Roman "christianity") and Islamism, emergent in that order and largely in response to each other. Nascent Christianity was birthed as a rejection of both Judaism and Romanism. Three centuries later, Roman "christianity" was birthed by putting all three back together to yield an imperial Rome justified by conquest in the name of Christian values. Islamism was birthed of internal strife and in response to the growing Roman menace and it went for a reaffirmation of Abraham to start a despotic legalism all over again.
Of the human subcultures, the two most dynamic (i.e., missionary) have been Buddhism in the east and Romanism in the west. Buddhism spiraled clockwise from India to China and Japan and, with the 20th century, into the western world. Old Testament Romanism in the name of "christianity" was the driving force beneath Imperialism, Colonialism, and Capitalism, which spiraled counter-clockwise from Rome to Europe to the Americas and, with the 20th century, into the eastern world.
Huntington claimed that increasing interaction among people of different civilizations is enhancing the historical "civilization-consciousness" of peoples in ways that "invigorate differences and animosities stretching or thought to stretch back deep into history".
It is equally possible and more human to argue that increasing interaction among people of different cultures is enhancing the historical and cultural consciousness of peoples in ways that emphasize similarities and nourish common human ground in human knowledge that we already know to "stretch back deep into history."
The highly relevant question asked by Loy is this: "Is this enhanced interaction and awareness increasing inter-civilizational intolerance and strife or decreasing it?" The answer to this dialectic question, of course, is a notable "yes". Enhanced interaction does both at one and the same time, depending on one's point of view. With regard to a human idea that has been voluntarily accepted in virtually every nation on earth, there is no better example than the concept of Jefferson's human rights-based democracy.
All over the world, from China to Ukraine to Venezuela to America, there are thoughtful and caring people who argue for a human rights-based democracy. All over the world, from China to Ukraine to Venezuela to America, the conservative elements of ancient human cultures are wanting to maintain the despotic status quo in the name of the rich and powerful. All over the world the problems are, in this sense, quite the same and rapidly becoming realized as such with the contributions of the Internet to global interaction.
In other words, from the "strategic" point of view, the stage may seem to be set for a "clash of civilizations." At the same time, the stage is also set for a global cultural revolution involving conflict between the "haves" and "have nots," between the rich and the poor, and between those thriving on despotism and those who want to live under the self-rule of democracy. It is the only way the Chinese can be fully Chinese and the Ukrainians can be fully Ukrainian and the Venezuelans can be fully Venezuelan, and Americans can be fully American, i.e., by being fully human.
With regard to Huntington's "clash of civilizations," it is clear that the most obvious and glaring example currently in the world is not between eastern and western cultures or some mixture thereof, but within Huntington's "Western" civilization itself, i.e., between the branches of western religious culture itself.
This is the conflict between Judaism, Old Testament Romanism and Islamism currently playing itself out in the Middle East, all three branches having been head to head and gun to gun since Gulf War I. It is this "internal" western cultural conflict more than any other "clashes of civilization" that poses a strategic threat to western "civilization" itself.. In other words, this "internal" conflict, prophetic as it is, can ultimately only discredit and destroy religion and capitalism in the eyes of the world and discharge both from the global political arena.
It is this very same conflict that will open the doors to a global discussion of precisely what we humans mean by a human rights-based democracy and how we can implement it on a global basis. As Loy points out, "The basic problem is not a clash between our values and theirs, but between our (declared) values and our (short-term) interests".
More specifically, the basic problem is that Americans have been coerced, under threat of being unemployed and abandoned, into allowing the values of greed-driven corporate capitalism to destroy the human rights basis of their democracy, to define the people as consumers instead of citizens, and to blacken the image of America in the eyes of the world with unjustifiabe self-righteousness and belligerence.
The people just need to change their focus to a view of the whole. It is simply not the job of the people to be warring around the world over market share and money in the name of corporate control by the rich and powerful. It is the job of the people to establish free, fair and sustainable markets that acknowledge the needs of the people (humankind) and the land (earth).
The task at hand is to restore and upgrade democracy in America and to upgrade democracy in the European Union and other national democracies - in the interest of human rights, fairness and equality, and at the expense of vengeance-driven Old Testament religion and greed-driven corporate capitalism.
The task at hand is to nourish democracy in every nation, from China to Ukraine to Venezuela. The task at hand is not to endure a "clash of civilizations" but to nourish a global revolution of the people against the ancient cultural "isms" that tie them to despotism instead of democracy and tie them to yesterday at the expense of tomorrow.
Readings
1) Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993.
(http://www.alamut.com/subj/economics/misc/clash.html).
2) David R. Loy, A New Vision: The West Against The Rest? Bush Watch dot Com, June 30, 2006 (www.bushwatch.com).
(http://www.transnational.org/features/2002/Loy_WestvsRest.html)
3) David R. Loy, Globalization: The Religion of Moneyism vs. The Fundamentalism of Islam, Bush Watch dot Com, July 2, 2006 (www.bushwatch.com).
(http://www.transnational.org/features/2002/Loy_WestvsRest.html)
Dr. Gerry Lower, Eugene, Wisconsin
The United Nations has recently been enmeshed in establishing a new "Human Rights Council" and a draft resolution has appeared from the president of the General Assembly, Kofi Annan (1). It begins by reaffirming the concept of human rights and it notes that human rights are "universal, indivisible, inter-related and interdependent" (1). Just how human rights are so related is not specified, although this knowledge is obviously relevant to the work of the United Nations in promoting human rights.
Within the world of Natural Philosophy and Democracy there is a far more human definition of freedom than that characterizing America under the dominion of religious capitalism, one which transcends the freedom to be legal (obedient) or ethical (politically-correct). That would be the freedom to be honestly human. This dialectic synthesis provides freedom OF religion and freedom FROM religious oppression and despotism.
These freedoms recognize that we are already born free TO DO anything we want - provided we are willing to suffer the consequences. The path to real freedom, freedom of thought and word and action, comes down more to eliminating unfairness and injustice and unnecessary oppression - as built right into the ancient cultural "isms."
These are the only two freedoms in a democracy that stand alone, i.e., freedom of religion and freedom from religious oppression, the two essential objectives of the separation of church and state. In other words, democracy allows one to believe as one chooses (we trust ourselves to think for ourselves) and democracy allows one to be free from imposed restrictions and beliefs.
Insofar as we are interested in our freedoms TO DO, we must first have the freedom to think for ourselves, freedom TO BE THOUGHTFUL AND CARING. Here is where HUMAN RIGHTS come into the program. In order to be thoughtful and caring, we need to have the right to honest self-knowledge, knowledge of how we got here and why we are here, not political or religious fabrications. This, in turn, is where freedom FROM oppression and falsehood comes into the program. These are freedoms meant to keep us honest.
Real freedom TO DO is more related to being free to make ones own decisions based upon what one knows and cares about, being free to do what is right (what is honest and fair as opposed to what is legal and righteous or ethical and politically-correct). In other words, our freedoms TO DO in America are embedded in our human rights, rights which free us from unnecessary and imposed restraints. Despots and power mongers (religious and otherwise) uniformly know that the way to usurp peoples freedom is to deny them their natural human rights.
In the minds of Americas fathers, the only way to guarantee our freedoms is to guarantee our rights. Natural human rights really have no direct relationship to what we as individuals can or cannot do in the real world. Human rights have more to do with universal human needs which must be guaranteed and honored in the outside world, e.g., guaranteed educational needs and medical care.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Interrelated and Interdependent
The human rights in Jeffersons Declaration, i.e., Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, can be reformulated within developmental frameworks such that their relationships to each other can be better appreciated. Likewise, the need for lifelong continuity in the implementation of human rights is more readily apparent.
The right to self-determination, i.e., liberty is usually considered the cornerstone of human rights in the western world. This right guarantees that everyone is free to make their own decisions and influence their own destiny. Establishing this right as primary, however, is largely a matter of diplomacy designed to give others the benefit of the doubt, because this right assumes that everyone involved in decision-making is honest, knowledgeable and thoughtful.
This has seldom been the case, and it is clear that before one can make ones own decisions, one must have self-knowledge, knowledge of how and why the world works. In the developmental sense, therefore, the primary human right is the right to self-knowledge, the right to human life itself. All other human rights follow from this right as follows:
LIFE
The Right to Self-Knowledge (always dependent on others)
All of life in the human world begins with values (as the most intimate form of self-knowledge) and self-knowledge. The right to self-knowledge guarantees the right to life, it guarantees being alive in the only way that differentiates the people from other living creatures, knowing where we come from, knowing who we are and knowing why we are here.
The right to self-knowledge is equivalent to the right to be human. That self-knowledge must begin with dialectic human values and human pan-cultural knowledge, not with the various ancient cultural mythologies. That self-knowledge must be personal, and it must be historical and evolutionary, because that is how the real world works.
LIBERTY
The Right to Self-Determination (always dependent on others)
There is little use for knowledge if it cannot be used in decision-making and doing (which is the primary purpose of knowledge). It follows, therefore, that a second human right is the right to self-determination, the right to liberty, the right to make ones own decisions in maintaining ones own path through life.
FRATERNITIE
The Right to Self-Improvement (always dependent on others)
There is, likewise, little use for knowledge and liberty if they cannot be used for self-improvement, to learn and grow and mature. It follows, therefore, that a third human right is the right to opportunities for self-growth, development and maturation, the right to improve oneself in the interest of the whole. This is all a function of fraternité, having family, friends and community and schools to provide an honest, nurturing, learning environment throughout.
PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
The Right to Self-Worth (always dependent on others)
There is little use for knowledge, liberty, and maturity if skills and talents cannot be used to benefit the whole. It follows, therefore, that a fourth human right is the right to self worth, the right to a meaningful existence, the right to know that one has made a difference to someone or something, the right to dignity and respect.
DEVELOPMENTAL CONTEXT
These four human rights, placed into developmental context, are clearly interrelated insofar as each right is derived from the one before it, with the fourth right providing the objective for the first three. The fourth right to self-worth is as fundamentally important as the first three rights in that some sense of self-worth is required in order to devote oneself to self-knowledge, self-determination and self-improvement. We are left with a sphere of highly-integrated, logical human rights forming the core of a human democracy. It is from these rights that all civil rights are properly derived.
Nowhere does anyone have a right to do as one pleases. That position has more to do with license than with freedom. The Bush administration is a global exemplar. Nowhere does anyone have a right to enslave people at meaningless labor for inadequate income. That position has more to do with greed and self-righteousness than with fairness. Enron-style crony capitalism is a global exemplar. Nowhere does anyone have a right to impose religious superstition upon reasonable people. That position has more to do with despotic religious folly than with American wisdom. Under the Bush administration, we in America are a contemporary global exemplar.
One of the more apparent reasons for America's failure to keep up with the European democracies in addressing human needs and human rights is because under religious capitalism's dominion (which places us in competition with each other for necessities), the people have been coerced into giving up the right to fraternitié, the right to be friends with each other, the right to depend upon and care adequately for each other as humans. We no longer share very much, we compete for it.
In a true democracy, people do not give themselves a chance (as if gambling) to experience freedom, people give themselves a guarantee of freedom by guaranteeing their rights, because all human freedoms flow therefrom. Its a fact. It is the only way the world works ... naturally. We really ought give it a try. --posted April 21, 2006
Dr. Gerry Lower, Eugene, Oregon
The bulk of the human world is currently conflicted between the past and the future, and the past is doing everything possible to prevent the future. In doing so, of course, it guarantees the future.
Most of this global conflict is over values. America is conflicted between the values of religious capitalism and the values of democracy. Israel is conflicted between the values of Judaism and the values of democracy. Iran is conflicted between the values of Islamism and the values of democracy. China is conflicted between the values of Confucianism and the values of democracy. All over the world, the conflict is between the values of the despotic cultural "isms" and the values of democracy.
The United Nations is currently enmeshed in establishing a new "Human Rights Council" and a draft resolution has appeared from the president of the General Assembly, Kofi Annan (1). [This week a resolution approved ,with US dissenting, calls for the election of new council members on May 9 and a first meeting of the council on June 19. NYT. --Politex] It begins by reaffirming the concept of human rights and reaffirming various published documents on the subject, e.g., the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It does mention that human rights are "universal, indivisible, inter-related and interdependent," and it itemizes various governmental and bureaucratic approaches to the nourishment of human rights on the global stage.
While the fundamental importance of human rights is reaffirmed, there is no mention of the origins and history of human rights, there is no mention of the role of human rights within a democracy, and no mention of the state of democracy in the world. This knowledge happens to be critical to the goals of the United Nations as an international exercise in democracy.
We seem to have forgotten that human rights constitute the sole bottom line in Jefferson's democracy, not to be compromised by vengeance-based western legal systems and not to be compromised by politically-correct eastern ethical systems (3). In other words, given the importance of human rights, it is the values of democracy that need more to be addressed and how the concept of human rights relates to the practice of democracy.
This is necessitated because the modern world's first formal democracy has fallen from grace under capitalism's bipartisan dominion since World War II. Unable to distinguish between the values of democracy and the values of corporate capitalism, America has de-evolved in half a century to the point of believing itself justified to promote "democracy" (i.e., corporate capitalism) with preemptive war in the Middle East. With the exception of Britain, America's old colonial oppressor, very few nations have been able to see things that way.
In other words, when it comes to nourishing democracy outside of its own borders, America no longer has much to offer, a superficial nation more interested in profit margins than in people and peace (4). For this reason, it is worthy for the United Nations and all people to consider human rights within the context of democracy and not as a stand-alone concept.
Current Conflicts As Values Conflicts
What the entire world is going to witness during the dawn of the 3rd millennium is the prophetic end of religious capitalism in the world. The need to unify the world at the tip of a western sword has been fulfilled over the past two millennia under the auspices of imperialism, colonialism and capitalism, in a journey from tribalism to nationalism to globalism. The world has, as a result, become increasingly an economic unity and there is very real need for a global economic system based on human rights, fairness and equality.
The ancient cultural "isms" that have held the human world together over the past few millennia, i.e., Judaism, Romanism, Islamism, Hinduism, Confucianism, were uniformly conceived in despotism and dominion of the few over the many. They produced a despotism of law unrelated to human knowledge in the west, and a despotism of ethics unrelated to human knowledge in the east, Abrahamism and Confucianism being complementary opposites. All ancient "isms" have returned to fundamentalism in response to globalism, the western "isms" calling for a prophetic end to it all.
There is certain merit, then, in rekindling common discussion as to what America's Revolutionary fathers had in mind two centuries ago when they framed the Declaration and defined democracy. We must reconsider our nascent American values with an eye toward rising to the challenges of the 3rd millennium.
Reaffirmation of the Values of Democracy
With the upcoming prophetic failure of religion and capitalism (already accomplished in the eyes of the world), there will be a need for the western democracies to reaffirm the values of science and natural philosophy (e.g., Honesty and Integrity), the values of Jeffersonian Democracy (e.g,, Fairness and Equality) and the values of nascent Christianity (e.g., Compassion and Human Rights), all within the embrace of a Meritocracy.
Allegiance to human rights (knowledgeable behavior) is taken as the only bottom line, not allegiance to laws (obedient behavior) and not allegiance to ethics (politically-correct behavior). The world does not need legal people or ethical people, it needs honest people with allegiances to human knowledge and the values of democracy. It is only from honest people that laws and ethics properly flow.
Direct Democracy
A direct democracy requires direct decision-making by the people on all relevant national issues. The role of Congressional bodies is redefined, with members serving in an advisory capacity, i.e., to consider knowledgeable options and to offer recommendations to the people, in the people's interest. Democracy was never designed to be a playground for the rich and powerful. It was designed to empower the people (2).
Minimum Income
Each adult citizen would receive half of a living income based on time alone. All citizens would be expected to contribute a portion of their time and talent to organized family and community programs on the local and regional fronts.
Maximum Income
Living mates, couples (regardless of sex) and parents would constitute one working human. In achieving humanhood, it simply takes two. Each couple (one working human) could earn up to four living incomes, each member working a 3 day work week under a meritocracy.
Meritocracy
The concept of a meritocracy requires rejection of the mindless notion that wealth signifies intelligence or merit. More often it does not signify that at all. A human meritocracy is properly based on time, labor, competence and contribution (TLC2 ). As a secular objective this translates as TLC = "Tender, Loving Care." As a Christian objective, if you please, this translates as TLC= "The Love of Christ" (4).
People-Owned National Resources
The people, as citizens, own all governmental real estate, federal buildings, national forests, national parks and all natural resources, e.g., air, water, oil, coal, tritium, etc. Because citizens are provided this natural ownership, all natural resources are delivered at cost or with any revenues returned to general governmental funds.
Employee-Owned Corporations
The people, as employees, own all corporations and corporate assets. No money-handling "upper level" management, no stockholders, no gambling, no greed, no corruption, no taxes. Businesses operate as usual with all profits after expenses directed into general governmental funds belonging to the people (2). The people collectively make the profits, not a tiny handful of crony corporate aristocrats who see themselves as being worth orders of magnitude more than those who actually do the work.
Medical Guarantees
The people are provided health care from conception through death. The marketplace is removed entirely from influencing medical priorities and decision-making, which are properly made on knowledgeable and compassionate ground. Local family clinics are placed once again under local physician control, house calls are reinstated along with physician compassion and personal involvement and everything western medicine has abandoned in the name of corporate greed.
Educational Guarantees
The people are provided educational needs from Kindergarten through PhD/MD (K-20). Nourishment of knowledgeable and logical decision-making within the context of democracy, no matter what hangs on it or who hangs for it. Nourishment of science and natural philosophy in education beginning with Kindergarten. "Higher" education beginning in high school, emphasis on the history and evolution of democracy, the objective being to teach our children how to look at and think about life as a whole - in the material sense, in the spatial sense, and in the temporal (historical and evolutionary) sense.
Community Guarantees
The people are provided programs for the nourishment of community health and maturation. Establishment of "shires" - horizontal communities with vertical voice. Shires are defined and organized around common human ground, e.g., geological, geographical, workplace-related communities, etc. Communities are responsible for stewardship of community turf within the larger context.
Family Guarantees
The people are provided programs for the nourishment of family health and maturation. Nourishment of home-based cottage industry to keep mom and dad at home with the kids. Emphasis on corporate employment that allows as much work as possible on the home front through networking.
Energy Guarantees
The people are provided programs for integrated approaches to the provision of energy while eliminating the causes of global warming. Coordinated prioritization of national energy resources, emphasis on wind power, water power, and nuclear fusion, aimed at the most efficient and least polluting energy for a given region. Harnessing nuclear fusion will eliminate the oil industry altogether.
Agricultural Guarantees
The people are provided programs for the nourishment of a sustainable agriculture, more labor intensive, less energy intensive. Fair and equitable prices for agricultural commodities would allow restoration of family farms and ranches and rural communities, supplying employment for over 20 million people in America alone, emphasis on land stewardship.
Environmental Guarantees
The people are provided programs for the nourishment of a sustainable environment. Massive global reforestation programs, with billions of trees planted to restore watershed quality and arable land. Massive efforts for the a priori elimination of trash (i.e., don't make it in the first place). Massive efforts to safeguard the natural environment from biologically-foreign chemicals. Massive efforts to repair damage already done.
Communications Guarantees
The people are provided programs for the nourishment of cultural exchanges via high-speed Internet access in every home (community-wide WiFi systems). Real-time audio-visual communications (watch my lips move) on a global basis to maximize the quality and fidelity of human information transfer. Development of high-resolution, digital 3D virtual earth tours of the thousands of heavens here on earth to allow anyone to visit virtually anywhere in the world from their homes.
Implementing Necessary Changes
All fully democratized programs require looking at life as a whole, that being the only way to get the details right. Within that whole, the people provide the details most appropriate to their culture, country and climate. All of these programs require looking at life from the local point of view in order to establish how best to integrate the details into a view of the whole. In other words, the only good politics are local politics (6).
The elements of a human rights-based democracy bear almost no relationships to American democracy under religious capitalism. As a result, the implementation of a knowledge-based human democracy will involve the self-elimination of Old Testament religion and greed-driven capitalism from the political arena.
Within the frameworks of cultural evolution (the larger cultural process in which all people have become embedded during the past two centuries), that would be the sole purpose of the Bush administration and its neoconservative agenda of religious capitalism, i.e., to bring an end to the dominion of religion and capitalism so as to inadvertently open the doors to a global democracy.
Without knowing it, the Bush administration is providing a necessary role in the larger evolutionary scheme of things. Making the transition from despotism to democracy will not be easy, but once the transition has been made, the world will be, for the first time, truly human. That, in and of itself, will make the whole world beautiful, because truth and beauty are inseparable. So are human rights and democracy. --posted March 19, 2006
Readings
1) Kofi Annan, Draft Resolution by the President of the General Assembly, Human Rights Assembly, February 23, 2006 (available in .pdf format).
(http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/gazette/2006/02/human-rights-council-draft-resolution.php)
2) Dr. Gerry Lower, Defining the Already-Too-Rich.- Frameworks for a Meritocracy, Axis of Logic, May, 2005.
3) Dr. Gerry Lower, Of, By, and For the People - Direct Democracy as an Evolutionary Imperative, Axis of Logic, August, 2005.
4) Dr. Gerry Lower, Democracy IS in the Balance - Toward a Knowledgeable Humanism, Axis of Logic, August, 2005.
5) Dr. Gerry Lower, The Evolution of Human Relationships to God - Full Circle to Deity, Axis of Logic, September, 2005.
6) Dr. Gerry Lower, The Deist Epiphany - God is Human and So Are We, Axis of Logic, September, 2005.
7) Dr. Gerry Lower, Making the Earth Our Heaven and Our Home - Conceptual, Cultural and Political Unification, Axis of Logic, December, 2005.
(http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_20176.shtml)
8) Dr. Gerry Lower, Life After the "End of Time" - Pink Floyd and "The Great Gig in the Sky"
Bush Watch, February 9, 2006.
(http://www.bushwatch.com/lower.htm) scroll down
9) Dr. Gerry Lower, Anno Domini 2006 The Year of Our Lord - A Brief History of the Christ on Earth, OpEdNews, December 28 , 2005.
(http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_dr__gerr_051229_a_brief_history_of_t.htm)
10) Jim Hightower, All Good Politics Are Local, AlterNet, February 27, 2005.
(http://alternet.org/story/32483/)
11) Dr. Gerry Lower, Systematic Evolution and Life on the Whole, Axis of Logic, January 5, 2005.
(http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_15760.shtml).
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, Eugene Oregon
"Tony Blair has proclaimed that God will judge whether he was right to send British troops to Iraq, echoing statements from his ally George Bush. Contradicting warnings from advisers not to mix politics and religion, the Prime Minister said that his interest in politics sprang from his Christianity and its 'values and philosophy' had guided him in public life." His remarks "invite comparison with President Bush, a born-again Christian, who has made a virtue of bringing religion into politics" (1).
Naming the prime advocate of war first, one can only wonder from where in the four Gospels Bush and Blair came up with justification for preemptory war. Explaining how he managed to live with his decision, Mr. Blair replied: "If you have faith about these things then you realize that judgement is made by other people. If you believe in God, it's made by God as well" (1). While Mr. Blair makes a distinction between "other people" and "God," these two sources of judgement turn out to be one and the same.
If anything, the Bush-Blair embrace of religion demonstrates just how far away these two prominent world leaders have fallen from the values and viewpoints of the modern world's first formal democracy - in the name of a remarkably corrupt corporate aristocracy and an uncaring marketplace (2). Both men are unable to make a distinction between the values of corporate capitalism and the values of nascent Christianity and democracy. Both are unaware that neither of them know what they are talking about, speaking as they do from within a "culture of corruption" (3).
Democracy, of course, is entirely dependent upon the separation of church and state. This principle guarantees both religious freedom and freedom from religious oppression. By bringing religion back into government, both Bush and Blair have broken a cardinal requirement for a sane and meaningful government of, by and for the people. Religious justifications are properly abandoned in government because they do not have a definable basis in human honesty or logic (3).
Both Bush and Blair are willing to have the people believe that they are "doing the work of God." As men of faith in the supernatural, they could be doing nothing but their god's work, a notion that they also take on faith alone. One can presume that they both refer to the god of Abraham, the god at the core of Judaism, Old Testament Romanism and Islamism, a god that embraces capitalism in the west and terrorism in the middle east but a god that has never dreamed of democracy.
In other words, both Bush and Blair are coming at the world with the same religious justifications as their enemies, the same religious justifications used by the British from whom America escaped (well almost) over two centuries ago. This is where both Bush and Blair error in millennial proportions - to the detriment of their own citizens and the people of the world.
God is, after all, the decision-making apparatus of the world. In the natural philosophical world view that gave birth to American democracy, God resides in the "head and heart" of every person, more precisely in "the will of the people, substantially declared" (4). In Jefferson's Deist world view (in which America's Revolutionary fathers lived their personal lives), God was not a supernatural external agent but a real human internal agent (4).
In other words, Jefferson saw that events in the cultural world (e.g., declarations of war, peace treaties) were the result of decisions made by a small number of rich and powerful people (and the people who follow and support them). These people, e.g., the 18th century British colonialists, employed religious arguments to justify their unfair, despotic rule over their colonies, typically in the name of the Christ and, of course, actually in the interest of the British colonialists and the British throne.
Jefferson therefore placed God in the head and heart of every person so that God's authority could be claimed by no one, only by everyone according to the values of democracy, human rights and human knowledge. This fundamental change in the location and nature of God followed naturally and logically.
If one removes god (whatever god's nature might be to the Abrahamists), one removes the source of creativity from the western cultural world, right along with the source of laws, punishments, vengeance and self-righteousness. That creative source must be replaced and Jefferson replaced the will of a supernatural god with the "will of the people." That is what keeps you and me, as humans, in the theological equation.
All authority and responsibility properly reside in the people. Otherwise, the people are being asked to be responsible for the authority and work of fools. The people in Britain and America would never have done to themselves what they have allowed religious capitalism to do them. In order for the people to appreciate the need for responsibility, they must hold authority. Is this too complicated for cultures of "intellectual corruption"?
America's founding fathers were remarkably thoughtful and caring people by capitalism's standards. We refer to several of them as being brilliant because of the light they have shed on what it means to be fully human on earth. Their brilliance is not so much due to the vast knowledge base of men like Jefferson and Franklin and Paine (which didn't hurt a thing) but mostly due to their being honest and caring people who saw themselves in others and others in themselves.
Honesty and integrity and empathy are core dialectic values of American democracy. Honoring these values comes first because this is what confers brilliance upon people regardless of the dimensions of their knowledge base. A person's knowledge base can always be enhanced and enlarged on the fly. It is one's values that make one brilliant or not. It is easily possible to meet preteens in America with more moral fiber than that displayed by Blair and Bush. This is so because values influence how and why one bothers to think at all. Without the values of democracy, one does not think so good, to the point of de facto psychosis (5,6). --posted March 12, 2006
Readings
1) Andy McSmith, Blair: 'God will be my judge on Iraq,' The Guardian UK, March 4, 2006.
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, Eugene Oregon
"Haven't you heard, its a battle of words" - Pink Floyd
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" - John 1.1
As thoughtful people know, of course, cultural world conflicts are actually properly defined as a battle of values and ideas, in spite of the Roman emphasis on "words." It was in Rome's imperial interest to keep the people ignorant of the very concept of ideas and the notion that they might have one of their own now and again. This kept the people ignorant as well of the human spiritual relationships between ideas, words and actions, relationships as old as law and ethics and centrally relevant to science and democracy.
In the year of our Lord, 2006, when the western world is at the peak of its fiscal and military glory, when America under the Bush regime is actively poised to take religious dominion of a global corporate capitalism, why do religious capitalists presume the very worst? Why do they subscribe or pander to those who subscribe to the ancient Biblical notion that the world is soon coming to an "end of time?"
Why do they do so at such an inopportune time in their own ascent to dominion, as if they aware of the utter deceit beneath their ways? How could they not be aware? It is relatively easy to be ignorant, but it is difficult to lie without knowing it. The combination of ignorance and lies blended together by the Bush administration is fatal regardless of all great and good intentions.
"Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" Pink Floyd
This is the enigma of western religion, that it could be so sure that it is doing the work of God on earth (by devoting nearly two millennia to conquest and dominion in the name of the Christ) only to turn around and call for an end to its own dominion in a prophetic "end of time." From their beginnings, all three branches of Abrahamic religion have predicted their own demise on this planet, ostensibly so that their believers might go to heaven. Many adherents are apparently happy to contemplate that end, finally ridding themselves of everything feminine and a life-sustaining fertile earth.
There is a reason for this prophetic belief in an "end of time" and that reason would be that the ancient authors of western apocalyptic literature clearly recognized the harshly despotic nature of their times. They knew that they were defending themselves from despotism and, at the same time, that they were fighting back with despotic approaches of their own. That would be the nature of law held absolutely and punishment meted out without mercy. It is in fact, and always has been, more devil that deity in design, and a despotic Rome adopted it whole heartedly in the 4th century in the name of the Christ.
Fighting fire with fire may or may not stop an existing fire, but it always increases the amount of existing damage. Accordingly, no matter how much holiness they might ascribe to their words, ancient Biblical authors knew that the day would eventually come when religion-based justifications for earthly vengeance and violence would come to a necessary end. The path of despotic conquest is ultimately dead end because both human patience and the earth's resources are finite.
There is a clear need, then, for the people to consider how to prepare for the coming self-inflicted "end of time." This requires that we consider how the "end of time" might come to pass and how we ought think in order to recover from its aftermath, keeping in mind that the "end of time" will involve discrediting both religion and capitalism from the global political arena - forever - with a concomitant rebirth of democracy on the global stage - forever.
"The Great Gig in the Sky" Pink Floyd
Bringing On The "End of Time"
Bringing on the end of time would be the primary evolutionary purpose of post WWII religious capitalism and it would be remarkably easy to ensure, given that the Bush administration has already discredited itself and America in the eyes of the larger world. The only requirement to initiate the "end of time" would be a single act or response to an act that would trigger multiple wars and social chaos among the fundamentalist nations of the Middle East.
In other words, due in large part to the Bush administration's unjustifiable preemptory attack on Iraq, the potential for chaos in the Middle East is greater than ever before. The turnover in Middle Eastern leadership has guaranteed power vacuums that have increasingly been filled with even more extremist leadership.
Because of the Bush administration's approaches to "democratization" (i.e., crony capitalization), Iraq has become more a tripartite theocracy under fundamentalist Shiîte dominion, and with allegiances to Iran. This is easily a scenario in which both the U.S. and Iraq lose. Iran, in turn, has taken an increasingly belligerent posture in its quest for nuclear weaponry and a voice on the world stage. Palestine has empowered Hamas in another fine display of religious "democracy."
"God only knows it's not what we would choose to do" Pink Floyd
Should the Bush administration choose to involve the American people in a directly causal way in the "end of time," e.g., a preemptory military strike on Iran's nuclear production facilities, any retaliatory response from Iran would likely be directed at Iran's perceived regional enemies, e.g., Israel. An attack on Judaism and capitalism would quickly bring hell to earth's surface with counterattacks on Islamism. The Abrahamic religions have been head to head in the Middle East for over a decade and they are well enough armed to be able to fulfill their own prophecies.
The only non-violent way to bring an end to religion-based capitalistic incompetence and corruption would be for those nations to whom the U.S. is in the depths of debt, e.g., China and the European Union, to simply call all U.S. loans back. The Bush administration has little real appreciation that beneath its military and imperial machinations is the requirement for money. Without money there is no machine, no military and no war. With no option but fiscal bankruptcy, the U.S. would have little choice but to listen, for the first time in over half a century, to the logic of human rights and democracy and the hopes and dreams of people all over the world.
"So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell" Pink Floyd
Recovering From The "End of Time"
Without religion and capitalism, the entire American right wing would be immediately lost for causes. In other words, the people who are most likely to have direct and indirect causal involvement in the "end of time" would have no solutions to the aftermath of the problems which they would have created and no solutions to the problem of rebuilding American democracy. This utter incompetence on behalf of democracy provides an opportunity like none seen in two centuries of American history.
Making amends for America's failure to honor nascent Christian human rights is an effort that must come from outside the values of religion and capitalism. This will require a national return to the values of America's Revolutionary fathers, as embedded in Jefferson's Declaration. Following the "end of time," we will not only need but we will want to reformulate America's Constitution so that our operational policies are finally consistent with Declaration human rights, natural philosophy and the wisdom of the Christ that separated supernaturalism from reason (which is why Jefferson separated church from state).
From the beginning, the primary purpose of nascent Christianity was to eliminate the world of con artists, i.e., "lawyers, moneyhandlers" who saw themselves as doing the work of God, those whom the Christ threw out of the temple. Under Bush's religious capitalism, these people run virtually everything they possibly can in America, and that ain't enough. Imagine that.
From the beginning, the primary purpose of democracy was to ensure individual security by guaranteeing freedom - not freedom to do as we please (as fools choose to believe), but freedom from fear and ignorance, freedom from laws that guarantee unfairness and inequality, freedom to be an honest and knowledgeable and caring people.
The End of Man and the Beginning of Human
The state of democracy in America is worse than ludicrous, especially with the emergence of the self-aggrandizing notion that the entire world could and should be like America, a corrupt, crony capitalistic regime, a "plantation" nation without knowledgeable or competent leadership. There are simply not adequate earthly resources to attain that dubious goal. Moreover, the thoughtful and caring people of the world, on the whole, would never tolerate being literally defined by greed-driven corporations.
Adequate concepts of human do not emerge from diets defined by McDonald's and Burger King, wardrobes defined by WalMart and K-Mart, entertainment defined by Sony and Disney, escape defined by Budweiser and Jack Daniels. These are, in fact, all-American escapist lifestyles, compliments of corporate capitalism. Those who pursue money and power thrive at the top by eating the bottom and justifying their rule with the continuous need for war (without which capitalism simply cannot long remain in dominion).
The saving grace of America is the literally millions of citizens who lived through the 1960s and watched as their dreams for a more human world were dashed by capitalism and put on hold in the interest of survival. We now know for fact what most younger people knew in the 1960s, i.e., that capitalism is inherently corrupt, it has no inherent interest in individual human rights or family, community and national values, it has nothing to do with God and even less to do with democracy. Its about nothing but money.
Greed-driven corporate capitalism has destroyed American democracy beyond recognition. It has made a mockery of the concepts of fairness and equality, it has wasted our natural resources, it has littered our land, it has destroyed our family farms and ranches and rural communities, it has destroyed our relationships with our children, it has brought Americans a half a century of war and poverty amidst wealth and political mindlessness, it has snubbed our former allies, it has dumbed us down as a people and it has left us lost from ourselves.
Capitalism has led America into the depths of intellectual crime and corruption and robbed as many honest and talented and creative people of a meaningful existence as any despotic belief system before it, paying all its homage to the rich and powerful, rewarding mostly those who can stomach the greed and the game. All good Americans who can remember the 1960s, those who could see corporate corruption coming half a century ago, will soon have their day in the American sun.
It would be an enormous undertaking to consider the number of deaths in human history that can be directly attributed to belief in wesetern religion, i.e., Judaism, Old Testament Romanism and Islamism, the three vengeance-based, apocalyptic branches of Abrahamic religion. Supporting these ancient despotic "isms" is not the people's job on this planet.
The most important job on this planet is to take honest and loving care of "the little ones." They are tomorrow's people. They are world peace in diapers. They are little citizens admirably suited for a global democracy - and it all begins at home with safe and secure, healthy and happy moms and dads.
Is this too complicated for Old Testament Roman "christians" enraptured by Bush's war on the world and the heavens? Have they not been told all of this before? For Christ's sake, they might once consider believing it.
Take honest care of "the little ones" and the earth from whence life emerges and is nourished. If that be the only job you do while you are here, you will have served the Will, followed the Word, and accomplished the Work of God on earth. Good for you, because it would be good for all of us. --posted Feb. 12, 2006
Readings
Pink Floyd, "The Great Gig in the Sky, Time, Money, Us and Them," The Dark Side of the Moon, March, 1973
Pink Floyd, "Wishing You Were Here," Wishing You Were Here, September, 1975
Eric Margolis, "The 'fin de regime'?" Toronto Sun, January 8, 2006.
Eric Margolis, Bring it on' time, Toronto Sun, January 16, 2005.
Tom Harper, "The Iranian nuclear spectre," Guardian UK, January 10, 2005.
Michael Slackman, Death of Kuwaiti Emir Raises Long-term Leadership Worries, New York Times, January 16, 2005.
James Glanz, A Little Democracy or a Genie Unbottled, NY Times, January 29, 2005.
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, Eugene Oregon
Several European countries have recently published political cartoons that portray the Islamic prophet, Mohammed, in less than saintly terms. A good deal more attention has been provided this publishing phenomenon than it deserves, in both the western world and in the Islamic world.
The cartoons were seen in the Islamic world as being an insult to Islamism and its prophet. The resulting outrage in the Islamic world quickly translated into the torching of international embassies and massive street displays of violent hurt feelings. All in all, publication of the cartoons has been seen as leading to an escalation of violence in the Middle East.
The response of the Bush administration and the politically-correct western world to this new excuse for violence has been to condemn the cartoons as being in poor taste, disrespectful of others and their appearance in print to have been most most unfortunate. The implication is that journalists ought be ethical, that they have a responsibility to something other than expressing a commonly held viewpoint in the western world.
The publication of the cartoons did not destroy the embassies, Islamic radicals destroyed the embassies because their feelings were hurt, nothing else. Is this too tough for the religious and the politically-correct? How can the publication of a few words and pictures on paper justify the destruction of national embassies? How does any of this relate to human honesty?
If the Islamic peoples do not want their god and prophet caricatured in newspapers, they might consider doing as the citizens of most knowledgeable democracies (not the U.S.) have done in keeping their superstitious religious disputes out of democracy's business. The notion of maintaining anything resembling a democracy under fundamentalist theocratic rule is simply the height of blind ignorance. As a contradiction of terms, there can be no such thing and that is precisely why the Bush administration's theocratic agenda can do nothing but fail in both America and Iraq.
If the Islamic conception of Abraham's god were at all honest and true, what could a mere mortal even hope to say that would offend that which cannot be offended? Radical Islamists make the god they claim to worship out to be weak and easily-angered deity, unable to rise above even the concerns of fools, a god prone to ranting and raving and vengeance and violence via Islam's most ardent supporters. In doing so, radical Islamists become the god they worship.
All of this discourse, of course, is based on the assumption that the Islamic version of Abraham's god has observable, material control and influence over the real world. As with the Abrahamic god beneath Judaism and Roman "christianity," the Islamic version of god can only have worldly impact via the words and actions of its believers.
Largely for Christ's sake, poking fun of the Roman god and His worldly spokesmen has been a staple of the Euro-American western world since Martin Luther posted his theses on the doors of the church at Wittenburg in the early 16th century. It birthed Protestantism, it accelerated the decline of the Roman church (the scourge of Islam) and it opened the doors to the modern world of western nations employing scientific knowledge under a semblance of democracy.
While a respectful approach to dealing with the western gods and prophets might be considered to be politically-correct, it is to ignore the overwhelming bulk of American history in making human progress away from despotism (at least until the post-WWII era). In other words, a politically-correct approach to Old Testament British dominion would not have floated many Revolutionary boats in the years just prior to the American Revolution.
How many times in America have we seen political cartoons portraying a devout Catholic priest with his hands down in some little kid's pants? How many times have we seen political cartoons portraying George W. Bush as a born-again nincompoop? How many embassies have been blown up in America following the publication of irreverent and "unpatriotic" cartoons? At least Americans are still able to restrict their religiosity to words.
It has nothing to do with political cartoons, now does it? It has only to do with fundamentalist fanatics, those who would take violent action to preserve a god in which they have only a primitive faith unrelated to human knowledge, whether they be dedicated to Old Testament Romanism or Islamism. We have created a world in which human ignorance is calling human ignorance bad.
In Jefferson's hands, democracy began by declaring nascent Christian human rights as America's new bottomline, not the laws of the gods and not the ethics of the rich and powerful who define the laws of the gods and practice ethics as they please. Human rights came to the forefront by drawing a solid line between the affairs of church and those of state. This essential line merely prevents the fears of religious fundamentalists and the hopes and dreams of the honest American thinkers who founded the United States of America on solid turf, no supernatural ground in sight.
The Middle Eastern nations are populated by millions of educated and thoughtful young people who would happily swap what they have for a little democracy (or so the American people were told). Honest and caring people can have no real hope for that outcome under a theocratic state, not in Iraq and not in America. Bush's belated objective of bringing democracy to Iraq was a dead plan before it was dribbled out into public as an alternative justification to make up for having been dead wrong about previous justifications.
The democratization of Iraq is the responsibility of the Iraqi people and no one else. Bush's replacement of a secular regime with a theocratic regime does not constitute human progress. The re-democratization of the United States will be a job for the American people and no one else. Under capitalism, Bush's replacement of a corrupt secular government with an even more corrupt theocratic regime does not constitute human progress. God is not happy with any of this, all honest people may rest assured. --posted Feb. 8, 2006
Author's note: This topic, by the way, is a clean example of how our modern American concerns for both laws (order) and ethics (political correctness) portray dialectically-opposed cultural approaches that define male and female, west and east, respectively. Both cultural approaches get in the way of human historical and factual truth, and both get in the way of democracy.
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, Eugene Oregon
We really ought be teaching our children how and why to look at life as a whole. If we did so, they would know that female and male are the two sides of being fully human. They would know that eastern and western cultures are the two sides of being humankind. They would know that the living Land and the People are the two sides of life on earth. They do not need to be told these things. They need to think these things ... for themselves.
Seeing life as a whole would do wonders for human comprehension, human cultural evolution and peace on earth. It would nourish honest human relationships with the Land and, as importantly, honest human relationships with each other, as a People. Seeing life as a whole is an integral aspect of human cultural maturation and we need to be going for it. The precedent was set in science (if not yet democracy) by Eintstein's generation.
One of the more compelling reasons for looking at life on the whole is the fact that this is the mind's natural approach to seeing things (even the words you are reading). If, for example, the first and last characters in a word are in place and correct, the order of the remaining characters in the word does not matter so much for the purposes of reading. The word will remain quite readable.
This can be easily proven to oneself.
On of the mroe cpolmielng ronases for looinkg at lfie on the wolhe is the fcat taht tihs is the mnids nuratal apcaproh to sneieg tgihns (eevn the wrods you are rndeiag). If, for expmale, the fisrt and lsat ctaachrers in a wrod are in palce and cecrrot, the oredr of the rnneimaig chcaterars in the wrod deos not mttaer so mcuh for the puerposs of riedang. The wrod wlil reamin qutie redabeal.
The reason the mind makes effort to see things as a whole is because it is so much more efficient to do so. One does not have to expend the time and effort required to contemplate each character in a word in order to read the word. In order to comprehend the whole, it is not necessary to acknowledge all the details that comprise the whole, only the details that embrace and define the whole.
This is all part of the mind's natural efforts to comprehend things as a whole. It is the way the mind naturally works, always looking for ways to connect new found knowledge to everything else it knows. It is that inherent human capacity for absorbing knowledge and employing it in creative effort and synthesis, driven by human necessity and faith in a more intelligent tomorrow. It is the only source and the only seat of human deity.
Seeing things as a whole is the way the mind naturally works if it were not for the extremist influences of authoritarian ethical systems in the eastern world and authoritarian religious systems in the western world. Both make effort to restrict thought toward relative and absolute extremes, respectively, from political correctness to law and order, as if there were no need for honest human thought. Both ancient cultural approaches maintain tradition in the interest of preserving the status quo, in the interest of the wealthy and powerful.
It is difficult to appreciate life as a whole when the ancient cultural "isms" dictate, at their extremes, that we only see half the whole, the maternal side or the paternal side, political correctness or law and order, acceptance or control, sharing or competing, socialism or capitalism, one extreme or the other, no middle human ground. There is a time to be "nice" and accommodating and there is a time to be "obedient" and legal. All the time, there is a time to be honest and ethically moral.
Under the religious capitalism of the Bush administration, the American people have been sold a millennial bill of Roman goods. The Bush CEO administration makes and is able to make no distinctions between the values of greed-driven, crony corporate capitalism and the values of fairness-driven Democracy, human rights and equality in the eyes of God. The Bush born-again administration makes and is able to make no distinctions between the values of Old Testament Roman religion (vengeance) and the values of nascent Christianity (compassion), as the human source of the human rights beneath all existing and would-be democracies on earth.
Under the values of Bush's religious capitalism, nothing can be seen as a whole. To do so would be to expose the Bush administration's cultural halfness and extremeness, its disregard of everything feminine and maternal, its disregard of human knowledge and human rights. This is not the way to win the hearts of honest and caring people, and the Bush administration has long since lost most American citizens.
Under the values of Bush's religious capitalism, the People are disallowed any views other than those of religious capitalism. These inherently half-witted, dishonest and coercive approaches are corruption and despotism defined, right in downtown America. The religious right wing and the politically-correct mainstream press will never survive it. Too many people know that these people lie and fabricate in the name of Jesus and Jefferson. Too many people see the Bush administrations sins of commission and the mainstream press's sins of omission, respectively. We are just waiting for the fat lady to sing.
Author's Note: No pnreesidt deeesvrs ienemahpmct mroe tahn Ggroee W. Bsuh.
---posted Feb. 5, 2006
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, Eugene Oregon
On the second day of December, Fox News Network reported the results of their "opinion dynamics poll" regarding Bill O'Reilly's statement that "There is a war on Christmas in the U.S. today." Of those responding to the poll, 42% said they agreed with Bill's statement. The majority, 48% of those polled, were in disagreement with O'Reilly's statement, and the other 10% essentially said, as always, that they did not know anything (1). In this instance, those who know nothing are in a desirable position because of the high probability that neither active side in the debate knows what they are talking about.
It is O'Reilly's notion that his "War on Christmas" is being hotly pursued by liberals and atheists and those who would have the audacity to agree with the radical notion of separating church and state. Bill just came unhinged, you see, by the media's use of the term "Holiday trees" in place of the term "Christmas trees" - which Bill dutifully interpreted as an effort by evil people to remove Christ from Christmas. In Bill's Old Testament world, it is an absolute requirement that its adherents live in the Here and Now, no history allowed, no evolution allowed, no cultural context allowed. It makes for ignorance defined.
Meanwhile, Fox News is making effort to sell "Holiday" decorations with Bill's name on them (2), a pair of balls to hang on what better be your "Christmas" tree. It makes a little money for Fox News Network and Bill gets his name hanging from some dupe's tree. Bill has taken an overt path to ignorance bordering on the psychotic, while Fox News has taken an overt path to religious hypocrisy bordering on the psychotic (3). Together, they have accomplished the impossible, i.e., to be right and wrong at the same time.
Bill is, of course, entirely right in claiming that there is a "War on Christmas." At the same time, Bill is extraordinarily wrong to assign his wrathful blame to liberals and the detractors of religion and capitalism. Surely Bill must know that wars are far more prone to stem from right wing, conservative interests. It was against these interests that the Revolutionary War was fought. Surely Bill must know that the war on Christmas began long ago, shortly after WWII, when capitalism took over both political parties, leaving America with only liberal and conservative capitalists at the helm.
In the interest of clarity, then, it is worthwhile to consider the real war on Christmas and its causes, of which Bill O'Reilly is entirely ignorant and oblivious, due largely to the enormous degree to which he has allowed his thought to be compromised by greed-driven capitalism and everything that is wrong with America.
Wouldn't it be a boon to America if Bill O'Reilly, as an American champion, knew something about American history? Wouldn't it be helpful for him to know something about the minds of men like Jefferson and Franklin and Priestly and Paine? Wouldn't it be helpful if Mr. O'Reilly knew why our Fathers separated church and state?
Wouldn't it be helpful if Bill knew that the very concept of human rights emerged on this planet in the work of Jesus, that Jefferson and Franklin did their level best to build nascent Christian values directly into the Declaration, without recourse to supernaturalism and Old Testament religious rot. Wouldn't it be helpful if Bill knew that his grasp of nascent Christian values and how to implement them in the real world is an exercise in utter religious hypocrisy?
When someone bedevils O'Reilly does he look to the Old Testament to find vengeance or to the New Testament to find forgiveness? Is he even able to make a distinction between these diametrically-opposed moralities that a Roman emperor crammed into the same "divine" book?
Certainly Bill can remember when Christmas was a coming together of families and friends, when people took the time to make each other presents with their own talents and skills, when a gift was a warm hug and a hot toddy (or a cold beer), when people felt good about being in each other's company.
Certainly Bill can remember when there was a serenity and peacefulness about Christmas that did not require a trip to Walmartâ ¢ or Saks Fifth Avenueâ ¢. He must know that Christ's peace has been utterly shattered by capitalism's greed-driven machinations, its inherent cheapening of everything it touches by assigning a dollar value to everything it touches.
Certainly, Bill can remember when people lived in horizontal communities where they needed each other in order to make their communities work - as opposed to working in a vertical corporate world (with Dick Cheney at the top) and not knowing the names of neighbors two houses down the street, and not caring to know. Bill must remember when our worlds extended a little bit further beyond ourselves.
Certainly Bill must know that in order to preserve himself as a spokesman for religious capitalism, he must blatantly ignore facts that are self-evident to everyone, e.g., that Christmas has become so over-commercialized as to be next to meaningless for millions of people who must deal every day with a world that is a good deal more real than is Bill O'Reilly's mythical World of Bush.
It is, for Christ's sake, some 230 years since the Declaration was penned to define what we in America are all about, i.e., human rights and democracy. That can be taken literally because what Jefferson did in the Declaration was to enshrine the concept of human rights that was birthed in the work of Jesus, the Christ. Why is this so damned difficult to grasp?
Our fathers fully recognized that the values for which the Christ gave his life had nothing whatsoever to do with the values of Romanism that killed him, that the values of nascent Christianity were not something one held aloft and talked about, they were something that were properly the core values of society - to be acted upon in good faith, not used to justify greed and lust for power as the Romans had done.
Nascent Christian human rights were to be guaranteed to all people, end of discussion, and the American people were supposed to pick up the "ball of liberty" and run with it such that it might "roll round the world." We have allowed old British capitalism's greed and faux religiosity to compromise those goals from day one, and Jefferson and Franklin knew it. It would take nearly another century before Lincoln was able to take Jefferson seriously.
Bill O'Reilly, like George W. Bush and the members of Dick Cheney's neoconservative cabal, is one of those people who speaks and takes action based on his own perverted world views and one never knows whether to laugh or to cry; to laugh because of the utter mindlessness of it all (and what it says about the Bush administration in America) or to cry because of the utter mindlessness of it all (and what it says about the state of democracy in America).
Such a pity it is that Bill O'Reilly is unable to make a distinction between the values of religious capitalism and the values of nascent Christianity. There is not a single aspect of American democracy that religious capitalism has not compromised beyond knowledgeable recognition.
So this year, consider celebrating the birth of the Christ, knowing that his blood flowed from east to west 2000 years ago and from west to east 2000 years later. It was from Jesus that the basic concept of human rights emerged on this earth. Every nation on this planet in which the people want human rights and democracy (from China to Ukraine and Venezuela to Iran) is holding the cross of Jesus on high, even if they don't know, like Bill O'Reilly, the least damned thing about Jesus and Jefferson.
Peace on Earth. --posted December 16, 2004
Readings:
1) Fox News Network, Reader's Opinion Poll, December 2005.
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in Eugene, Oregon. His website is at www.jeffersonseyes.com and he can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
George W. Bush has often requested the American people to acknowledge the "big picture," the implication being that his administration's values, ideologies and policies would be better understood if only the people would "see the world as I see it." Organized human effort, of course, always requires that the people make effort to see with the same eyes so that they can sing from the same sheet of music.
Toward this end, ABC TV is airing a series entitled, "The Big Picture: With God On Our Side," a two-part series that explores the rise of America's conservative evangelicals (a.k.a. - the religious right) and presents a "religious biography" of George W. Bush (ABC TV, Wednesday, 8 September, 2004).
>From the conservative Republican viewpoint, seeing the "big picture" requires little more than opening the mind to embrace the values, attitudes and prophecies of Old Testament Roman religion, the ashes from which American democracy was birthed. In other words, seeing Bush's "big picture" only requires looking at the world through eyes that have never had much interest in human rights because of a preoccupation with religion-based political violence in the name of occupation and dominion (e.g. the European colonial conquest of North/Native America).
Since Constantine's Roman perversion of nascent Christian values in the early 4th century, the values of religious chosenness and self-righteousness have been used to accomplish the impossible, i.e., conquer the western world in the name of Christian compassion. The religious Roman program has always been to preach Christian compassion and to be a defender of Christianity so as to justify forgetting Christian values in self-righteous conquest and control.
The chosenness and self-righteousness that goes with along with being a "Christian soldier" has justified and implemented western conquest from Roman imperialism to European colonialism to post-World War II American capitalism. Under this influence, the human population has moved from tribal to national to global levels of organization. That would be religion's primary role in western cultural evolution, i.e., human unification at the tip of a double-edged sword. As the need for further economic unification diminishes (in a global program nearly complete), the need for political unification increases. That is where Bush's "big picture" comes into the picture.
To be sure, one's "picture" of the world does not get bigger by embracing vengeance, self-righteousness and supernaturalism. One's picture actually gets smaller because so much of what one claims to know about the world must be taken on faith alone. More importantly, there are truly "big pictures" based on human knowledge to consider in human efforts to run the world.
Natural Philosophy's Big Picture
American democracy was birthed from natural philosophy, and natural philosophy provides a picture so big as to make religion a matter of choice and not a matter of imposed obedience and blind loyalty. It was the religious freedom guaranteed by the separation of church and state that made real miracles happen in America, a land where religious rivalries were meted out on Sunday afternoon softball fields instead of religion's killing fields.
The natural philosophy of Jefferson's day, for example, transcended religion, seeing it as an early effort to define the world in ways that turned out to be wrong. Defining how the world actually worked had fallen to Isaac Newton. Natural philosophy saw nascent Christian ethics (before Constantine's Rome) as the source of western human rights and it saw Old Testament Roman religion as the source of self-righteous conquest, despotism and "tyranny over the mind of man."
America's Deist fathers made a clear and clean distinction between the values of nascent Christianity (compassion and human rights) and Old Testament religion (vengeance and law), seeing these value systems as being mutually-exclusive and not belonging together in the same book. The rewriting of western scriptures resulted in "Jefferson's Bible," intentionally devoid of religious superstition and supernaturalism, in honor of nascent Christian human rights.
The dialectic values of democracy are neither liberal or conservative, they are human and they transcend the values of western religious systems and eastern ethical systems. That is precisely why these values have acquired human respect on a global basis, as Jefferson knew they would. Dialectic human values are part of a world picture at least twice the size of the Bush administration's "big picture."
With Bush's "big picture" in political dominion, the people in America will have no option but to ride out western religion's blind descent into apocalypse, as religious capitalism makes its deathbed grasp for dominion of the global economy that it has helped create. One way or another, religious capitalism will retain power to its own prophetic end. Bush and the religious right wing leave no other option.
Under the Bush administration, America has crossed too many lines (e.g., the separation of church and state, the separation of civilian and military authority) that are critical to the success of our father's democracy. Returning to the values of democracy will require a return to the natural philosophy (updated, of course) that birthed American democracy in the first place. Because capitalism has survived at the expense of family and community economies, the re-instatement of democracy in America will require, as it did the first time, socioeconomic change of revolutionary proportions.
Making that return to natural philosophy and dialectic human values will require that religious capitalism continue to discredit itself on moral ground, in the name of the American people and in the eyes of the world. That end has been largely accomplished with Bush's unprovoked war on Iraq, a war immoral in compassion-based Christian eyes (do not hit first, do not hit back) and unjustifiable even in vengeance-based religious eyes (do not hit first, do hit back). The world has long since left behind the criminal "morality" of barbarianism (do hit first, do hit back).
Pre-emption is the product of the Bush administration's religious capitalism, and the educated world sees it as a moral failure, no matter how big the Bush administration's picture of the world might be. America's inability to recognize this egregious departure from the values of nascent Christianity and democracy is part and parcel of what is meant by the "dumbing down" of America. All honest and intelligent thought begins with the values of human knowledge (science and natural philosophy), nascent Christianity and democracy, not at all with the values of religion and capitalism.
Reality's Big Picture
Because of America's wealth, military power and political power in the world, the Bush administration assumes a God-given right to be right, to be the world's policeman, judge, jury and executioner, to do whatever it takes to remain in fiscal and political dominion. Accordingly, many Americans have thrived on the notion that America is the greatest nation in the world. That, of course, was only true when America still honored the values of democracy.
Since World War II and the political dominion of corporate America via an "influence for a fee" government, the US has emphasized the pursuit of profits while the European democracies have continued to honor "the people" and the values of democracy. As a result, the US is the only western democracy that does not guarantee medical care for its people, the only democracy abandoning Hippocratean ethics to practice an exclusionary medicine based on money. This is not a characteristic of a "great" nation.
Today, 25 nations in Europe, representing 455 million people, have united to create a "United States" of Europe, the European Union. Its $10.5 trillion GDP is now larger than the US GDP, making it the world's largest economy. The EU has taken over as the world's leading exporter and the world's largest internal market. EU members also tend to have a longer life expectancy, a lower infant mortality and a more equitable distribution of wealth than do American citizens (Jeremy Rifkin, Daring to Dream," Guardian UK, September 1, 2004). In spite of American strength in the world, America has been failing for decades, caught up in cultural extremism.
All of this is related to America's own internal culture war between capitalism and democracy. Europeans see that Americans "live to work" while Europeans prefer to "work to live." The difference is an average paid vacation time of 6 weeks in Europe and 2 weeks in the U.S. The difference is going to European pubs to philosophize and pontificate and going to American bars to escape. Under capitalism, Americans find freedom in autonomy and the nuclear family. The more wealth one secures in America, the more independence and freedom under capitalism. Under democracy, Europeans find their freedom not in autonomy but in community. "It's about belonging, not belongings." (Rifkin, Daring to Dream).
The value of a Euro now eclipses the value of a US Dollar by a third. If the Euro were to become the sole oil transaction currency in the Middle East, the US will be paying more and getting less. Control of that market so vital to the "American way," virtually requires physical control of Middle Eastern oil fields. The underlying desperation and operational rationales for the Bush administration's unilateralism, its intimidation of the European democracies and its unprovoked attack on Iraq begin to emerge. Democracies that take care of their people are a threat to the dominion of religious capitalism in America.
Additional acts of belligerence by the Bush administration on the global stage (and they are coming, one can be sure) will not be taken lightly by those yet honoring the values of democracy. The response of the world, primarily the European Union, will be to discredit religious capitalism by arranging for its fiscal bankruptcy and ouster from the global political arena. With the failure of vengeance-based religion and crony capitalism, the doors will be open to natural philosophy and the redefinition of democracy in human rights terms to include the workplace and the marketplace, the doors will be open to nourishing democracy on a global basis.
For what the Bush administration spends in Iraq and Afghanistan in three months, America could feed the unfed world and, in league with Britain and the European Union, establish compassionate and knowledgeable approaches to world peace in our lifetimes. This cannot happen within the confines of Bush's "big picture," literally the religious world view which natural philosophy and democracy rejected two centuries ago.
The real "big picture" is that the people on this earth are currently embedded in a cultural evolutionary program that is playing itself out, largely without their conscious awareness. We fail to see the "bigger picture," in which the Bush administration is a ideologically-corrupt pawn in a cultural program that was written millennia ago, a self-terminating program to be replaced by democracy's self-correcting program.
The moral and fiscal bankruptcy of religious capitalism will bring to a close an era of human unification, much of which was at the point of a double-edged western sword. This end is not only prophetic in coming, it is required out of evolutionary necessity if the people and the land are to survive. The people and the land, of course, will not only survive but they will thrive in a human world released from political and spiritual dualism and the despotism and violent death it has nourished.
As we stand on the edge of the western religious abyss, we stand on the threshold of an American dream, the real "American dream" of fairness and equality for the people. The amount of bloodshed in between will be determined by the people of America and the world and how long it takes them to recognize and stand up against cultural extremism, how long it takes them to opt for Jefferson's human way out of religion-based political violence by re-establishing democracy with a basis in nascent Christian human rights. That would be the "end of time" for religious despotism and the "second coming" for Christian human rights, would it not?
Author's note: As alluded to in the above paragraph, the imagery of Old Testament religion typically has a counterpart in the real world. Consider, for example, the concept of heavenly "angels," as representatives of and messengers from God. In the real world of natural philosophy, there is an exact equivalent of angels, and they are ubiquitous and easily recognized. All real angels arrive on this earth with one characteristic in common, i.e., they poop their pants. --posted 09.20.04
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in the eastern shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. His website at www.jeffersonseyes.com provides an introduction to dialectic thought and postmodern natural philosophy. He can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
Given religious, right wing capitalistic dominion in western South Dakota, I mentioned to my son and daughter, almost facetiously, that it would surprise me if Michael Moore's film, "Fahrenheit 9/11," would even run in local theaters.
Sure enough, the headlines in the Rapid City Journal the next day read "Fahrenheit Not Hot Enough" (June 24, 2004). In the home of Mount Rushmore, the Shrine of Democracy, "Black Hills residents awaiting Friday's nationwide release of Michael Moore's controversial film, "Fahrenheit 9/11" will need to go somewhere else in the nation to watch the movie ... the closest theaters playing the movie are in Denver and Sioux Falls."
One local theater owner claimed to be simply more interested in making money. "You think I'm going to play a documentary [instead of] 'Spider-Man'? I'm not so sure that [Moore's movie] has commercial appeal compared to 'Spider-Man." The Journal went on to quote Carmike president Mike Patrick as saying, "the call not to show the movie was a business decision," and another Carmike representative claimed, "There's no political agenda [to this] at all." Carmike senior vice president for film, Tony Rhead, took another approach, claiming the movie to be in short supply and unavailable, that "the 700 prints of the movie left the chain out in the cold."
An accompanying article in the Rapid City Journal, however (reprinted from the LA Times), pointed out that Moore's documentary "will be in 868 theaters nationwide Friday" ("No to PG-13, LA Times, June 24, 2004)." Apparently none of those extra 168 prints were available to South Dakota theaters. At the same time, Kai Segrud, a theater employee in Rapid City, claims that local theaters have been "inundated" with phone calls. "We're getting about a hundred calls a day."
This is, no doubt, an example of Bush's newly religious "democracy" at work in the shadow of Mount Rushmore. --posted 06.30.04
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He has a website at www.jeffersonseyes.com and a book entitled "Jefferson's Eyes" which provides a logical derivation of the values of natural philosophy, democracy and nascent Christianity. He can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
In the past few months, several books have emerged, written by "embittered" government officials, that attack the US intelligence community and the Bush White House in condemnation of America's approach to the "war on terrorism." The latest, a book entitled "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror," is set for July publication, reportedly written by a "senior US intelligence official" (Julian Borger, www.guardian.co.uk, June 19, 2004).
In an interview with the Guardian, the author argues that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has "played into bin Laden's hands." The author also reaches into the near future to suggest that "Osama bin Laden may attack the US before the November election to ensure the re-election of President George Bush" (Tom Regan, "Book alleges Al Qaeda will attack US to ensure Bush win," www.csmonitor.com, June 21, 2004).
Renewed attacks on US interests prior to November elections have, of course, already been threatened by Al Qaida and the US intelligence community has likewise forewarned of this possibility. The impact of such an attack on the US elections, however, could easily go either way for George Bush.
The Guardian quotes the author of "Imperial Hubris" as saying, "I'm very sure they [al Qaida terrorists] can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now [the Bush administration]. One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the president."
This inference is made on the assumption that additional US terrorist attacks would renew Bush's image as America's "war president" and rally the people back around Bush's "war on terrorism." This inference of future events, however, is drawn from experience prior to the 9/11 Commission's report and the Bush administration's loss of popular support in the war on terrorism. "Exactly half the country now approves of the way Bush is managing the U.S. war on terrorism, down 13 percentage points since April" (Richard Morin and Dan Balz, "Bush Loses Advantage in War on Terrorism," www.washingtonpost.com, June 22, 2004).
In other words, this inference is based on the assumption that the American people are unable to awaken to the truth beneath Bush's religious Republican follies and failures. Given the increasing public awareness of Bush's failures, it is increasingly likely that the result of renewed Al Qaida attacks on US interests would be just the opposite of what could be anticipated just a few months ago.
If anything, additional terrorist attacks on US interests ought guarantee Bush's ouster in November. Bush's "war on terrorism" is not a war on terrorism at all. It is a war against tribal nations with resources highly prized by America's corporate aristocracy, those beautiful people who net over $4 million in annual compensation (Reuters, May 12, 2004) and think the US government is theirs for a fee. Al Qaida remains as a large, viable network of extremist religious gangs operating in cells around the world, and this continuing fact is the direct result of Bush's failed unilateral bombing approaches to the war on terrorism. We now face a world with more terrorism than ever (Warren P. Strobel, "Corrected report shows '03 terror attacks the highest in 2 decades, Knight Ridder Newspapers, June 22, 2004).
If the US is subject to further Al Qaida attacks, who is Bush going to bomb in retaliation? If the US is not subject to further Al Qaida attacks, who is Bush going to bomb in preemption? The world knows that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had more "connections" to Al Qaida than did Iraq. Who is in trouble here? --posted 06.30.04
"The Taliban Wing of the Republican Party"
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
Senator Tim Johnson (Dem, SD) was rather enthusiastic about the election of Stephanie Herseth (Dem, SD) to the Senate seat of disgraced William Janklow (Rep, SD). Stephanie's election in a religiously Republican state was seen around the western world as an indication that the Bush administration is being increasing abandoned by the American people.
"When Stephanie Herseth fills this seat, we are going to have a rising star in the House of Representatives. And how sweet its going to be on June 2 when the Taliban wing of the Republican party finds out what's happened in South Dakota" (Rapid City Journal, June 5, 2004).
Several conservative Republican newspapers in South Dakota cater to fundamentalist religious self-justifications and they were somewhat offended by Senator Johnson's remarks. They immediately demanded an apology, which Senator Johnson happily provided, "If any Republicans were offended, I apologize."
This, of course, was not good enough, "Close, but no cigar." The Rapid City Journal and the Mitchell Republican promptly published editorials claiming Johnson's apology to be "half-hearted."
In explanation, the Mitchell Republican editorialized, "When he said 'Taliban wing,' Johnson labeled some Republicans as radical, violent, and practitioners of deadly force."
This is an interesting statement because the Bush administration is just as religiously radical and a good deal more violent and deadly in force than the Taliban. After all, in avenging the deaths of 3,000 Americans caused by the Taliban, the Bush administration has eliminated over 11,500 Iraqi civilians in a country which had little if anything to do with 9/11, and a country which posed little if any risk to anyone in the western world.
While the Republican party in South Dakota is concerned about being labeled as "radical, violent, and practitioners of force," they ought be more concerned about the vengeance-based morality and the self-righteousness, infallible religious attitudes that characterize both the Bush administration and the Taliban.
The Republican editorial goes on to point out that "Clearly, the Taliban isn't the kind of group any political party, or person, would seek to be associated with."
Well, of course not. The Republican party in South Dakota certainly does not want to be associated with the Taliban, and Tim Johnson ought be ashamed of his honesty. How could the good Senator make such a politically-incorrect statement?
In being quite unable to answer that question, the religious Republican party in South Dakota provides a remarkable but altogether too typical example of self-ignorance and shallowness in conservative Republican thought. This self-ignorance is largely the result of having supporting Bush's war based on religious justifications and fabrications. After all, the educated world already knows what kind of people "would seek to be associated with" the Taliban.
It was, for example, George Bush's good friend, Kenneth Lay, and Enron who happily associated themselves with the Taliban in seeking rights to build oil pipelines across Afghanistan.
It was, for example, George W. Bush who happily associated himself with members of the bin Laden family, before and after 9/11.
It was, for example, the Bush administration who allowed the bin Laden family exclusive rights to American air space following 9/11.
The good news is that the American people can now look to South Dakota for guidance in the upcoming national elections. South Dakota, a conservative Republican state that voted for Bush, is literally pointing the way to sanity in government by avoiding the Republican party and its dubious associations with the Taliban. --posted 06.06.04
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
Pluralism in Bush's Exclusionary World
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
Given the rampant religion-based political violence in the world, a good deal of emphasis has been placed recently on pluralism as a social objective, largely because because pluralism has come to characterize America and the western democracies since World War II (Webster's: a state or characteristic of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups maintain an autonomous participation in and development of their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization).
In other words, pluralistic societies are those in which people with diverse religious and ethnic beliefs have simply given up fighting and killing each other in the name of their religious and ethnic beliefs. They have, instead, agreed to place greater emphasis on the dialectic human values of democracy. The western exception would be the exclusionary world of the Bush administration in which it is desirable to be religious and permissible to be ethnic as long as one blindly or quietly abides religious Republican capitalism as the sole acceptable approach to global socioeconomics.
Pluralism, then, is an observable characteristic of society and a desirable social objective. In promoting pluralism, however, it is an error to take pluralism as an ethical first principle from which the rest of ethics flow. Pluralism is not a starting point, it is an end state.
In the typically backwards western tradition, pluralism is pragmatically promoted as a "final fruit" without a thought given to the fact that pluralism is the RESULT of implementing social policies based on the values of democracy, values which Jefferson saw as being self-evident in human eyes, and values which the Bush administration sees as a threat to its religious political dominion.
Ethics in a religiously capitalistic America have become essentially irrelevant. In the business world of Bush's religious capitalism, one does what one must do to survive and succeed. If one gets into trouble, one simply calls a lawyer. Ethics in liberal pragmatic America have become final result-oriented and lost from the ideas it takes to achieve ethical results. Pluralism as an end state is given precedence over the human rights and the "first principles" which encourage and nourish pluralism.
To promote pluralism if one desires pluralism is like promoting apples if one desires apples. Ask any old farmer and he will tell you. If one want apples, one does not promote apples, one promotes orchards. If one wants pluralism, one does not promote pluralism, one promotes democracy and human rights.
One does not stand in the path of a 20 ton Chinese tank in the name of pluralism. The good people of China and eastern Europe and elsewhere are not calling out for pluralism. They are calling out for human rights and democracy. The pluralism will follow all by itself.
Do you see how America has come to see and deal with everything backwards? --posted 06.01.04
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. His book, Jefferson's Eyes, can be explored at www.jeffersonseyes.com. On the thesis that the pen is mightier than the sword, the book pretty much leaves the Bush administration standing in a bloody intellectual pool, without a shot being fired. It also provides a logical derivation of the values of science, democracy and nascent Christianity from the complementary values of western religious and eastern ethical systems. Dr. Lower believes that we will soon be needing to revisit the origins of human values. He can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
Michael Tomasky has recently provided a very insightful discussion of the current problems with morality in America based upon the distinction between personal and public morality ("End Times: The Bushies May be Accomplishing What Liberals Never Could - Bringing the Era of Conservative Morality to a Close," American Prospect Online, May 17, 2004).
Tomasky points out that liberals and conservatives in America tend to follow complementary systems of morality, the former abiding public morality and the latter abiding personal morality. In Tomasky's words, "liberals believe in public morality and in adherence to democratic process, while conservatives value personal morality and positive, efficiently achieved results."
All moral systems, of course, reside upon a defineable set of values; and those underlying values are what distinguishes public from personal morality in Bush World. In the current American context, with the conservative religious right wing in political dominion, those values in conflict are the values of democracy and Old Testament religion, respectively.
Public Morality : the morality of all of us
Public morality is the collective side of morality as traditionally (two centuries ago) agreed upon by the people of a democracy; not in the interest of law and order, but in the interest of the values of democracy, i.e., human rights, freedom, fairness and equality, In other words, public morality places the responsibility on society (government and culturally-influential human organizations) to honor the larger values of tolerance and individual human rights. It places the responsibility at the top, in the societal decision-making apparatus.
In this "made-for-anarchy" morality, there are seldom any shortcomings in the people. The shortcomings of democratic society are always due to societal shortcomings, a lack of freedom, fairness and equality.
Personal Morality : the morality of each of us
Personal morality is the individual side of morality as traditionally imposed upon the people by the Old Testament Roman church in the interest of law and order. In other words, personal morality places the responsibility on the individual to be obedient to law and moral code. It places the responsibility on the bottom, in the individual decision-making apparatus.
In this "made-for-tyranny" morality, there are seldom any shortcomings in the church-state and its religiously political systems. The shortcomings of religious society are seen as due to individual shortcomings, a lack of obedience to civil and "moral" law.
Complementary Opposites
As with all complementary opposites, the terms public and personal are not entirely separable, each side containing elements of the other. It is not possible to have a public morality outside of a personal context. It is not possible to have a personal morality outside of a public context. In other words, one side cannot define itself outside the context of the other. To do so is an exercise in cultural extremism, exemplified by the post-World War II elimination of the traditional socialist-capitalist dialectic (Death of the American Politic, (www.jeffersonseyes.com/introduction.html) October, 2003).
Conservatives, for example, believe that public morality is not a matter of collectively agreeing on anything knowledgeable. It is more a matter of collectively accepting the competitive "me vs. you" values of religion and absolute authority, it is more a matter of imposing a given morality on individuals, who then collectively achieve a public morality through their collective obedience. This, of course, is to miss the current "values" distinction between public and personal morality.
Tomasky points out correctly that both personal (conservative) and public (liberal) moralities have their shortcomings, especially at their respective extremes when the expression of one morality is allowed to eclipse the expression of the other. At their respective extremes, the people are given the choice between tyranny and anarchy, as if there were no such thing as the middle human ground defining the values of democracy.
When these two complementary moral systems are taken to their respective extremes, the people end up with Bill Clinton (notably deficient in personal morality and just bubbling over in public morality) and George W. Bush (notably deficient in public morality and just sliming around in personal morality). In the liberal case, we end up with an affable moral idiot. In the conservative case, we end up with an affable intellectual idiot.
There is a world of difference in the social impact of these moral deficiencies. Clinton's personal deficiencies caused serious family damage to three people; himself, his wife and his daughter. Bush's public deficiencies have caused serious national damage to all American citizens, regardless of party affiliation, and to America's national credibility and prestige in the world.
Bush and a self-righteous, belligerent neo-conservative gang have already largely destroyed their assumed moral justification for American political dominion. That is the complete moral flip-flop that has occurred in America with the Bush administration's neo-conservative takeover. America has lost its public morality, supplanted by a personal religious morality, blindly supported by the ignorant and faithful.
The Geneva Convention, for example, is a document that educated and thoughtful nations have agreed upon to establish guidelines for the proper treatment of prisons of war. Its elements constitute an example of human rights-based public morality, an example that is notably absent from an extremist Bush administration.
Dialectic Synthesis and a Human Morality
Where, for example, does moral responsibility reside for the killing, torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison? Does moral responsibility reside at the top with Bush, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft for signing off on abusive and immoral interrogation techniques? Or does moral responsibility reside at the bottom with a handful of low-ranking troops taking orders under an atmosphere of religious self-righteousness and belligerence from above?
The dialectic synthesis of these complementary opposites provides for only one morality, a human morality, neither liberal or conservative. The values beneath personal morality and public morality are necessarily one and the same. These values turn out to be the values of natural philosophy and its political philosophy, democracy, the latter based on the values of nascent (before Rome) Christianity.
In other words, democratic systems of governance, especially those that guarantee freedom of thought and speech and religion, impose a substantial responsibility on both its elected leaders and its individual citizens. Leadership is required to be honest and to honor individual human rights (so much for the Bush administration). Individual citizens are expected to be honest and honor their own government by keeping it honest (so much for the members of the religious right).
That would be the central failure of personal morality. Morality begins at the top, not at the bottom. Without an agreed-upon public morality at the top, based in the values of democracy, the people are screwed. Without an agreed-upon personal morality, overtly based in those same values, the people are screwed. That much we knew 200 years ago.
"All for One, One for All." --posted 06.01.04
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. His book, Jefferson's Eyes, can be explored at www.jeffersonseyes.com. It provides a new paradigm for comprehending the history of American democracy. No longer can we afford to see American history as a fiscal success story. We must see our history as a departure from original values.
Dr. Lower can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
In Bush World, which now consists of a minority "bubble" maintained by those with blind faith in religious American capitalism, it is a little known fact that all human thought is derived from definable value bottom lines. It's just the way the world works, and yet there is no evidence that the Bush administration and its supporters are aware of it. Moreover, it is certain that this is the way the Bush administration needs to keep it.
The political survival of the Bush administration requires the religious right to accept without question its policy justifications and re-justifications as the need arises. When Bush was appointed to the Oval office, tax cuts for the rich were required because the economy was so good. When the Dot Com bubble burst, tax cuts for the rich were required because the economy was so bad. In other words, the Bush administration allows its supporters no stable value bottom lines outside of faith in Bush's world, a world of no discernible value bottom lines (outside of the pursuit of raw fiscal and political power).
If one wants to be a citizen of a democracy, one must begin with the values of democracy, human rights, freedom and fairness as the basis for further thought, word and action. If one wants to be an American (as opposed to a Roman) Christian, one must begin one's thought with the values of nascent Christianity, human rights and compassion as the basis for further thought, word and action. Nowhere in these logically-related approaches (which Jefferson integrated into the Declaration) is there anything bottom lined in lust for fiscal and political power.
Fortunately, it is possible to discern the bottom lines in thought by observing the actions they inspire. As the old aphorism goes, "Your actions speak so loudly, I can see what you are saying." So, in order to appreciate one's bottom lines in thought, or lack thereof, one must consider how they transcribe into words and translate into actions.
In other words, the relationships between ideas and actions work both ways. Ideas can lead to actions and those actions can be back-tracked to the implicit underlying values and ideas. Policy decisions can then be assessed in terms of effectiveness and efficiency in achieving planned objectives, and they can be assessed in terms of consistency with stated values. We call this the operation of conscience and it involves a sense of introspection sadly missing in the Bush administration.
Under no intelligent circumstances do the values of democracy translate into the denial of human and civil rights and the overt favoring of one sect (the rich) over another (the poor). Under no intelligent circumstances do the values of nascent Christianity translate into executions, preemptory war and human sexual abuse and torture. The concept of consistency in thought and action is "over the heads" of those with greater interest in righteousness than in personal honor. A lot of decent people are not being honest with themselves, and that is something of a sin against both self and ultimately others.
Decent religious people in America (who claim to know Bush's God) and otherwise well-healed people (who claim to stand in good favor with Bush's God) have been told lies by the Bush administration and they have been coerced into self-righteous domestic and international policies that have no discernible human rights content.
These deceived people now have no alternative but to continue abiding lies in the name of preserving their own religious self-identity. Lies, of course, have a certain way of piling up on top of themselves until the entire fabricated "bubble" world they support deflates and falls flat. The Bush administration has coerced conservative Americans into looking at the world through righteous religious eyes, on the assumption that western religion is the source of virtue in the world.
In cultural fact, western religious systems are the source of "righteousness" in the world as (in complementary fashion) eastern ethical systems are the source of "goodness" in the world. The dialectic synthesis is found in natural philosophy and democracy, the source of honesty and human rights in the world, and the proper source of human morality and virtue.
Religious conservatives have been led astray by blind capitalism for half a century, in the name of "free" trade . There is, however, a world of difference between greed-driven capitalism and free, ethical trade. Religious conservatives have been more than presumptive in thinking that the entire world ought be like Bush World. More than ever, the world needs people who actually care for themselves as a people.
Does Bush's Christ not advise against worshipping mammon? Does He not advise against vengeance-based violence? Does He not advise against unprovoked, self-righteous violence? Is it possible to maintain America's proper value bottom lines in the face of top line distortions and lies?
What the Bush administration would impose on the world, it has already imposed on the American people, most especially those who do not happen to agree with policies devoid of honesty and the values upon which Jefferson based American democracy.
Does the Bush administration really believe that educated people in the world are so naive as to be unable to backtrack to its sad value bottom lines? Thoughtful people are, of course, quite able to do so, and they will ultimately make the Bush administration out to be the ultimate fools, if only for believing that the people are fools. That is something of a sin against the people, a sin bottom lined in religious self-righteousness and based on one God-awful lie. posted 06.01.04
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. His book, Jefferson's Eyes, can be explored at www.jeffersonseyes.com. On the thesis that the pen is mightier than the sword, the book pretty much leaves the Bush administration standing in a bloody intellectual pool, without a shot fired. It also provides a logical derivation of the values of science, democracy and nascent Christianity from the complementary values of western religious and eastern ethical systems. Dr. Lower believes that we will soon to be needing to revisit the origins of human values. He can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
It is always the little things that give our lies and incompetence away, the little inconsistencies that throw logic in the waste basket, the little slips that caste doubt on competence. It would be possible to keep lies and incompetence pretty well hidden were it not for the little lapses of consistency and coherency.
According to Reuters News Service, "Two rehearsals for his prime-time speech were not enough to keep George W. Bush from mangling the name of the prison outside Baghdad that has brought shame to the US mission in Iraq."
"During the half-hour televised address, the President mispronounced Abu Ghraib each of the three times he mentioned it, while announcing plans to tear down the infamous jail."
The first time it came out "abugah-rayp." At least Mr. Bush knew what Abu Ghraib was portraying to the world. "The second version came out "abu-garon", and the third attempt sounded like "abu-garah".
Of all the revelations about the Bush "war on terrorism," of course, the shame of Abu Ghraib is the one inconsistency that has most discredited the Bush administration and most discredited American democracy and morality in the eyes of the world.
More than anything, Abu Ghraib has shattered neo-conservative dreams for America to become the world's global CEO and Old Testament moral manager, i.e., the world's Roman judge, jury and executioner. It is even worse to considers that beneath all of this religious hocus pocus are neo-conservative dreams of apocalypse and the rapture. America under Bush has fallen entirely off the edge of the pre-Columbian world.
Given the self-induced political devastation of Abu Ghraib, how is it that the man at the world's helm cannot even memorize and master the pronunciation of the one word that has fallen like a wrench into neo-conservative gears?
The appeal of George W. Bush to the neo-conservative elite must be obvious. Here was a man from America's finest schools, a man who could run on his dynastic family's conservative name, a man who had accepted Old Testament "morality" as an alternative to alcoholism, a man of precious little knowledge and worldly experience who could, therefore, be easily manipulated according to the will of the Roman god (as defined by Bush's trusted advisors).
George W. Bush was too good to be true. Now, even the religious right wing and the neo-conservative cult behind Bush can know that for fact. On the other hand, with friends like Bush has attracted, one oftentimes does not need enemies. Bush does not seem to realize that even he is dispensable in the eyes of his Roman god (and his god's neo-conservative handlers). --posted 06.01.04
* "Abu boo-boo: President tortures the name of shame," Reuters, May 26, 2004, (www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/25/1085461759881.html).
Dr. Gerry Lower has written a book on the logical derivation of the values of science, democracy and nascent Christianity. These values are neither liberal or conservative and have nothing whatsoever to do with the values of Old Testament religion and crony capitalism. The American crisis is, after all, a values crisis. In rethinking itself, Americans will need to know where to start. Life begins with values (www.jeffersonseyes.com). Dr. Lower can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
33 Things I Know About Bush
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
Herewith, a list of characteristics and accomplishments of the Bush administration which derive from the fine art of being a Bush watcher.
Under Bush as President: America has a president who
Under Bush as America's Domestic Spokesman: America has a president who
Under Bush as America's Global Spokesman: America has a president who
Under Bush as "War President" in Afghanistan: America has a president who
Under Bush as "War President" in Iraq: America has a president who
This is what Bush watchers have watched unfold over the past three years, as the Bush administration has discarded the global outpouring of empathy following 9/11 and proceeded to discredit America and American morality in the eyes of the world (and all but about 42% of the American electorate). --posted 05.23.04
Is Bush Doing The Work Of God?
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
Either Bush is doing the work of God or he is not.
If God Were on Bush's side:
If God were on Bush's side (as Bush claims God to be) and if Bush were actually doing the work of God in the world, then it is empirically self-evident that Bush's God has not been doing a very good job of being on Bush's side. Bush sidetracked his own "war on terrorism" with his preemptory war on Iraq and he has only made terrorism and the Middle Eastern political situation into a deepening quagmire. If God were on Bush's side, then we (the people) have certainly seen no empirical evidence in support ofthat contension. We, the people, have been restricted to Bush's "bubble "world of faith in faith itself.
If God is not on Bush's side and if Bush is not doing the work of God in the world, then we (the people) see empirical evidence of that Godlessness with every passing day. In this case, of course, Bush must be doing someone else's work, i.e., the neo-conservative work of those with an agenda other than Democracy and human rights.
If Bush were on God's side:
If Bush were on God's side, he would keep his self-righteous smirk to himself. He would abandon faith in his Old Testament supernatural "god" and renew his faith in the people and in Jefferson's God of all people. He would abandon belligerence in the world and establish fair and honest relationships with the world's established democracies. He would reaffirm the values of democracy over capitalism and the values of nascent Christianity over Old Testament religion. He would embrace the concept of human rights and disavow the political corruption of the Bush dynastic family and America's corporate aristocracy in favor of a government of, by and for the people.
None of these acts of atonement (at-one-ment) in striving to be on God's side are possible for George W. Bush, not without a genuine spiritual rebirth and the abandonment of most of what Bush has adopted since going "dry" and being "reborn" in Billie Graham's image. Given Bush's disregard for knowledge (outside of the Cabinet loop) and his disregard for introspection and self-knowledge, Bush's only hope to sit on God's right hand is to simply remove himself from office. --posted 05.23.04
Bush's Authority is a Ghost
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
The subject of authority in the world is of critical importance to humans and human culture because authority properly goes hand in hand with responsibility in the world. The ancient cultural "isms," e.g., Abrahamism in the west and Confucianism in the east, are both steeped in authoritarianism in setting the ancient world stage for western and eastern feudalism.
As complementary opposites, the ancient west placed authority external to the world in a supernatural God's "law" and the ancient east placed authority on earth in tangible family and societal "goodness." Located and defined thusly, authority in the world has been similarly oppressive in both the west and east.
The renowned biologist, Garrett Hardin, has considered the notion of worldly authority within the frameworks of science and postmodern natural philosophy (The Ghost of Authority, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 9: 289-297, 1966).
"Whether or not I personally accept authority, I may urge others to do so for reasons of personal aggrandizement. Each of us,, to a greater or lesser extent, wants to control others. I want to control you. How can I do so?
One of the first things each of us learn is the feebleness of naked power. If I tell you to do something, you instinctively ask "Why?" If I then say, "Because I say so," I make no progress in furthering my will to power.
But if I can first insinuate into your mind the idea that there exists a being or spirit who is always right - say the Zoroastrian god Mazda, to take a non-provocative example - and if I then say you should do thus and so because Mazda says so, I may then succeed in controlling you.
If I am successful, it is because I have succeeded in putting Mazda in the psychological locus formerly occupied by your parents (hence the term "father figure") without your catching on to the fact that Mazda is really me.
In general, the more distant in time and space, the less questionable authority is, hence the more authoritative. As an ambitious, aggressive individual, it is in my interest to maintain in you the illusion that authority exists."
In other words, control over others is dependent on where we place and how we define "authority." If I can convince you that a given seat of authority transcends your authority, and if I can convince you that I speak for that authority, then I am in control. Once you accept my authority, I am in a position to maintain that control with threats of Godly retribution and punishment. Have I become God or a petty criminal?
George W. Bush, in a tradition followed by no president before him, has overtly declared authority to be religious and "out there" (right along with responsibility) and he has employed that "authority" to justify religious coercion in pursuading an entire nation into launching an unprovoked war, generally seen as being immoral by everyone in the world except those remaining in the religious Bush "bubble."
In claiming that God is on his side, and in claiming that he is carrying out the work of God (work no doubt better left to God), Bush removes himself from God entirely, to become God's antithesis by whatever label one prefers.
In securing its authority over the people, the Bush administration has simply politicized every single issue such that no issue need be ever openly discussed on its logical merits. Issues are, in fact, not discussed at all. They are determined on Bush's dualistic religious ground alone, where yes or no decisions distill down to a simple matter of being either for or against Old Testament Roman religion, crony capitalism and Bush's "war on terrorism."
Authority in the western world has been a ghost from the beginning, never a God, just a tiny handful of men trying to justify their dominion and further conquest, their lust for that which is not theirs. Authority in the eastern world is not a ghost at all, but it is likewise not a God, just a tiny handful of men trying to justify their dominion and control in the name of the ethical status quo.
So, just where is real authority in the world to be found if not in law and ethics? How do we identify an approach to authority that goes hand in hand with responsibility? Do we bow to Bush's God and his religious state authority? Or by some lost stretch of the imagination is there a role for reason and compassion in a nation birthed from natural philosophy and nascent Christian human rights?
Right wing America thrives on the expoloitive religious extremes of Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, Billie Graham and a pious George W. Bush. Yet, it was the British mathematician and natural philosopher, Jacob Bronowski, who asked the only question relevant to authority, and that would have to be a moral question
:
"To combine human love with an unflinching, principled, scientific judgment ... This is the highest morality, is it not?" But, of course. This would be the world of Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson knew that the people would be far better able to maintain this sense of morality than any organized religion or corporate aristocracy. If Jefferson's disgust with Old Testament supernaturalism is legend, so ought be his disgust with its justifications of capitalism. "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."
Jefferson addressed the issue of authority in a 1791 Cabinet Opinion and he formally placed God in the "head and heart" of every person, and he placed the highest authority in "the will of the people, substantially declared" (The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Edward Dumbauld, Liberal Arts Press, 1955).
In this fourth year of the third millennium, America has devolved to thrive on precisely the same notions of religious authority that made the Revolutionary War a human necessity. It is implicit in the Bush administration's approaches that we can achieve the realism of Jefferson's Democracy by pursuing a religious, militaristic neofascism on the global stage. It is similarly implicit that current problems in America and the world are caused by inadequate religious capitalism.
Science is the most human of human efforts to comprehend the world because science is ultimately the most honest of human efforts to do so. One can certainly lie and fabricate in science in order to keep the money coming in, but one cannot get away with it for long. It is not so much the truth which characterizes scientific knowledge but more it is the honesty with which science can speak of the truth in the world. In Jefferson's eyes, honesty is its own morality.
Scientific knowledge will always go farther than superstitious conjecture in defining the world and how the world works. Human knowledge will always go farther in nourishing meaningful human comprehension and control. Honesty will always go farther than laws or ethics in achieving justice and fairness in the world. It is the difference between providing our children with their own path to knowledge or beating our path into them.
That has been the simple human reality beneath every western bubble ever blown by desperate and greedy people in the name God (imperialism), Country (colonialism) and the corporate aristocracy (capitalism). That has been the simple human reality beneath every eastern bubble ever blown by desperate and greedy people in the name of family and society and the power status quo.
Given that "the will of the people, sustantially declared" is the only authority on earth that bears some realistic relationship to Jefferson's God in the People, we are left, in God's absence, with essentially an Old Testament Roman world, Godless and lawless and devoutly corrupt, a commercialized and compromised nation in service to everything but Jefferson's God in the People. --posted 05.17.04
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. His book, Jefferson's Eyes, can be explored at www.jeffersonseyes.com. It provides a new paradigm for comprehending America history. No longer can we see our history as a fiscal success story. We must see our history as a departure from original values. Dr. Lower can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
George Bush's God Is Not God
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
In his "war on terrorism," George W. Bush has openly made claim to be doing God's work in the world. To be sure, the elimination of religion-based political violence (i.e., most violence) in the world would be a blessing hailed by all people on a global basis. It is, however, an act of faith to believe that the Bush administration's inadequate and failed "war on terrorism" has actually made the world safer from terrorism (when quite the opposite is the more accurate conclusion).
This situation exists largely because of the utter failure of America's conservative citizenry to comprehend the theological coercion at the core of Bush's religiosity.
At no time during his war on terrorism has George W. Bush ever claimed to be on God's side. Had he done so, Bush would be maintaining a respectful relationship with God, a relationship in which the human side makes effort to be on God's side. After all, we are talking about God here.
Instead, George claims that God is on His side, watching over him, the American people and their worldly interests. That might be the "good news" truth for George and his compassionately conservative followers, but to make such claims on behalf of God has always required more unmitigated gall than honesty or an interest in the truth.
If George were doing God's work in the world, the world would be quickly able to recognize that fact in George's ideas, words and actions. One can think and talk about God all one wants, of course, without changing a thing in the world. One cannot, however, do the "actionable" work of God in the world without others taking notice.
The world has been taking notice for three years and the world has yet to see any of God's work. The world has, instead, seen the work of George W. Bush and his "neo"-conservative, CEO administration. The world has instead seen a global display of self-righteousness, belligerence, fabrication, coercion, unprovoked war and now, in Abu Ghraib, perversion and depravity to boot.
Insofar as George's work has met with the approval of his all-seeing, all-knowing Roman God, it is little wonder that George has lost the support of the entire educated world outside of the conservative American "bubble" (Pierre Tristam, Waiting for the Bubble's Burst to Free America's State of Mind, www.news-journalonline.com, May 5, 2004), a bubble comprised of the same ingredients as the Enron "bubble.
In other words, America's downward religious spiral into despotic Roman imperialism has less and less to do with George W. Bush and the religious cult inhabiting his White House. It has more and more to do with the American people and their capitalized mindset.
America's failure on the global stage now has more to do with a failed American citizenry, a citizenry admittedly knowing very little about the human rights basis of nascent Christianity and Jefferson's Democracy, a citizenry that only knows what it takes to survive the here and now of a shallow, greed-driven crony capitalism, a citizenry that has been coerced into unprovoked religious violence on the global stage.
In doing so, conservative religious Americans have crossed several moral lines to reach the "Point of No Return" (Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, April 28, 2004). The very thought of a return to secular human ground threatens a complete loss of religious self-identity and self-assuredness, and the self-righteousness and belligerence that have led to the current cultural watershed.
Seeing with Liberty's light, after having doused her flames with lies and fabrications, would require something of a spiritual rebirth. It would require a change in how one is seeing the world as opposed to what one is "knowing" about the world as a "born again" Old Testament "Christian" (a notion which is an affront to Jesus and an oxymoron in Jefferson's eyes).
In supporting Bush's "higher" protocol, conservative Americans have loyally left themselves no exit plan, no choice but to be as children in the eyes of George's Roman God. That coerced revisitation of Old Testament imperial religion may be the righteous thing to do in the "bubble" of Bush World, but it has literally nothing to do with citizenship in a Democracy birthed from natural philosophy and nascent (before Rome) Christian ethics.
Jimmy Breslin "can't believe that Bush is so dumb that he thinks he actually talks to God." George Bush, in turn, must believe that Jimmy Breslin is dumb for not being adequately stupid and gullible in the face of Bush's God (A Frank Talk With God, Newsday, April 25, 2004).
For George's loyal conservative cult, it is a simple matter of being as dumb as George believes them to be and requires them to be. Bush is, after all, attempting to run a democracy on faith instead of human rights-based principles. That alone requires an enormous leap of faith. Faith in human nature is essential to human progress. Faith in a bankrupt status quo is the substance of all bubbles, and why they always burst.
For George's dismayed detractors, it is an awkward matter of cultural deja vu, abiding a mindless, meaningless, lawless, Godless world under King George and Tory capitalism. For his contributions to taking America full circle into the despotic religious world from whence democracy emerged two centuries ago, George W. Bush simply does not deserve to have his religious fantasies and apocalyptic dreams reach fulfillment.
If Bush's dreams do reach apocalyptic fulfillment, we will (at the least) all know whom and what to blame for political violence in the world. That knowledge of causation, generally held by the people, is essential to social medicine and efficacious therapeutic intervention. Even in losing, the people win.
If Bush's dreams do not reach fulfillment and apocalypse, it will only be because the people will have seen with the light of human rights that shines through Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin - all the way from Galilee. In making this so, the people can't lose.
It is an honest human blessing to be able to see where things are going and simply choose not to go there. This is a blessing from God, people. Consider how much bloodshed and death could be avoided in the world if the people would only think for themselves.
It is the only path to miracles on earth. It is the only path to Jefferson's God. --posted 05.10.04
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. His book, "Jefferson's Eyes," can be explored at www.jeffersonseyes.com. It provides a new paradigm for comprehending America history. No longer can we see our history as a fiscal success story. We must see our history as a departure from original values. Dr. Lower can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
The Conjunction of Heaven and Earth
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
Carl Jungs work on the human psyche contains several ideas on the nature of God, as set forth in his book, Answer to Job (1973, Princeton University Press, ISBN: 0691017859). Jung saw the Book of Job as "a landmark in the long historical development of a divine drama." As summarized by Jungian analyst, Del Anne McNeely, Jung saw "Job's courage in not giving in to despair." Jung saw Job's adoption of a reflective attitude and his questioning "as the beginning of consciousness for God" (www.stormpages.com/jungianvent/jobrev.htm).
"If the Creator were conscious of Himself, He would not need conscious creatures." In other words, Jung saw God's developing consciousness as the result of human input. In McNeely's words, "Mediated through the mere human being, God evolves. God incarnates and Satan falls." And this is to say what Science has known all along, that all gods are defined by the human mind.
In Jung's view, the Biblical story of Job announces the split between good and evil in the western theological world. As McNeely explains, "The task for individuals then becomes one of uniting these opposites, if we choose to undertake it." What McNeely does not explain is that serious progress toward reunitiing these opposites was made during the latter half of the 18th century with the EuroAmerican Enlightenment and the formulation of Jefferson's Deist Democracy, based on dialectic human values that are neither liberal or conservative, neither good or bad.
What man (apart from God) has struck assunder, humans (in God) must reunite. Jung's contemplation in the early 1950s of the ancient Biblical split between good and evil was concurrent with the Catholic church's contemplation of the "Assumption of Mary" and the "Pleroma," ideas which many theologians saw as changing the traditional western concept of "Dei," by celebrating the corporeal ascension of Mary into heaven to attain the "divine life" and restore the Pleroma, the (Greek) "fullness" of God. Jung saw this hierogamy as evoking the Great Mother-Son Lover mythology of pre-Christian times. In getting Mary into heaven, the Catholic church had also restored the concept of a human (female/male) deity.
Related to the Orthodox "Assumption of Sophia" (the 4th century Gnostic feminine aspect of God), the Catholic "Assumption of Mary" was taken as a corporeal event. The original Gnostic tradition, however, saw the path to the Pleroma as a worldly learning process. The people could be restored to the Pleroma via the process of "gnosis," i.e., the acquisition of personal "knowledge through experience." The nascent interpretation of the Pleroma is that state of "fullness" which the people, in due time, will eventually reach through knowledge to ultimately liberate themselves from darkness.
Apocalyptic thought is the inevitable outcome of competitive vengeance-based moralities and it is, therefore, inherent in fundamentalist Judaism, Old Testament Roman "Christianity" and Islamism. These three branches of western religion, all based on Abraham's monotheistic god, will certainly make effort to fulfill their own prophecies, in their efforts to preemptively "defend" themselves from each other. The fulfillment of religious prophecy (with an "end time" for vengeance-based religion), will complete the millennial cycle and bring an end to the split between good and evil.
Jim Hensen portrayed this "grand conjunction" in his 1982 movie, "Dark Crystal" (by A.C.H. Smith), a marvelous "other world" cinematic portrayal of the confrontation of good (the contemplative Mystics) and evil (the greedy Skeksis), a confrontation resulting in the coming together of light and dark, of good and evil, of heaven and earth.
In natural philosophic terms, this translates into the political self-termination of western religion and crony capitalism - the necessary result of their roles in producing unnecessary political violence on the global stage and ultimately discrediting themselves from the global political arena - forever. The fulfillment of religious prophecy will bring the Pleroma, i.e., the rejection of western religious dualism and the restoration of Oneness to western theology. It will be the end of mutually-exclusive moralities ("eye for an eye" versus "turn the other cheek"). After two millennia, Jesus will finally return home to earth and, in doing so, become His own father in human eyes.
The people will come to realize the inherently despotic nature of self-righteous western religion, its evolutionary role in driving imperialism, colonialism and capitalism. The people will come to realize religion's evolutionary role in human oppression (which in turn inspired its nemesis, i.e., Science, human knowledge and natural philosophy). The people will come to realize religion's necessary evolutionary role in unifying the human race, from tribal to national to global levels of organization.
The people will come to realize the role of dualistic western religion in producing both "good" and "evil." The people will come to realize that "good" is not the absence of "evil" and that "evil" is not the absence of "good." The people will come to realize that "evil" is caused by the self-righteous pursuit of "good." The people will come to realize that the Christ did not die for any sin inherent in the people. The Christ died for the sins the people would commit in His name (for the next two millennia).
Both good and evil will be explained away and both will become irrelevant to continued human maturation, replaced with human honesty and integrity and knowledge of what causes what. We will have finally grown up to take responsibility for our own authority, for our own ideas, words and actions, as individuals and as a people. Our doing so will constitute the return of deity to earth, in the form of Jefferson's God (in the "head and heart" of every person) and in the name of Jefferson's "highest authority" (the "will of the people"). Amen.
The "separation of good and evil" and the "reunification of good and evil" mark the beginning and the end of the larger western cultural evolutionary program in which all people on earth have become embedded with the turn of the millennium (most people without knowing it). Right wing conservative transcendentalists (the Skeksis in Dark Crystal) simply must remain blind to what they are doing in order to continue doing it. Left wing liberal empiricists (the Mystics in Dark Crystal) simply must abide the fact of created evil and sacrifice themselves to human truth in the name of fullness and wholeness.
"Uniting these [complementary] opposites" will require a return to the dialectic human values of Science, Democracy and nascent Christianity, the values of America's Deist fathers, values which provided the first human theology intended to transcend the gap between good and evil. That effort has now been checked by the very despotic Roman theology against which it was directed.
"The task for individuals then becomes one of uniting these opposites, if we choose to undertake it." As citizens of the world's first formal democracy (now under despotic right wing political dominion), we best be choosing to undertake it. As citizens of the world's first formal democracy (now abiding the values of religious capitalism), we already know how to re-unite the opposites. Think realism:
Think the values of Science and Philosophy - think reason, honesty, integrity, consistency and Truth.
Think the values of Democracy - think human rights, freedom, fairness, equality, and Justice.
Think the values of nascent Christianity - think human rights, compassion, empathy, healing and Love.
Given the dialectic values of human enlightenment, all we need to do is think about ourselves (individually and collectively) and think for ourselves (honestly and compassionately). No true God could hope for more on the human path to human maturation and spirituality.
When Satan Fell
When Satan fell, he only fell
--posted 04.29.04
Dr. Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. His book, "Jefferson's Eyes," establishes a new paradigm for comprehending American history. No longer can we look at our history as a fiscal success story. We must look at our history as a departure from original values (www.jeffersonseyes.com). He can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
Bush Says, "We'll All Be Dead."
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
George W. Bush, when asked by Bob Woodward "how is history likely to judge your Iraq war?" replied, "History, we don't know. We'll all be dead." (Woodward Shares War Secrets, CBS News, 60 Minutes, April 18, 2004).
It is possible that Bush's comment "We'll all be dead" might only be subconsciously related to his belief in apocalypse. Perhaps he only meant that by the time "history" is written, we'll all be dead of prevailing disease and old age. If that is the case, the man remains a complete idiot. History did not wait for Hitler to die before condemning him, nor did the Republican party wait for Clinton to die before condemning him. History will not wait for George either. The man is already in deep trouble everywhere but in his half of America.
It is not clear just what Bush meant with his remark if taken outside the context of apocalypse. It is more clear that Bush does not know what he meant either, since his remark doesn't make any sense outside of the context of apocalypse. So, what else is new about our affable guy president?
Interpreting a fool might best be left to fools. On the other hand, Bush does fervently believe that he is doing the work of his god, and we can expect the worst. Given Bush's alcoholic indebtedness to the Old Testament apocalyptic religion that keeps him sober, we are justified in examining his remark in that context, even if Bush did not understand the context within which he made the remark.
In one of those rare moments when Bush actually appeared to provide something resembling a direct answer to a direct question, Bush may have let his psychosis (and the psychosis of his neocon advisors) slip into public view, not much of that psychosis and only for the moment, but enough to allow a reasonable appreciation of the deep trouble into which Bush has plunged a frightened and frighteningly naive American citizenry. Conservative Americans thought they were voting for a good religious family man in government and they got a Jim Jones.
"We'll all be dead." By what empirical and historical evidence does this ill-educated, inarticulate Howdy Doody arrive at this conclusion? This may not be a very correct way to refer to the appointed president of the UnitedStates, but do you realize what this man (trained at America's finest universities) is saying? "We'll all be dead." Cute little children in Japan, wonderfully bright students in Ukraine, stressed out housewives in America, marvelous old gentlemen in Norway ... all dead. Just ask George W. Bush. By any sane criteria, this man and his administration are religiously psychotic.
Bush is saying that he and his crony neocon advisors know precisely what makes the world clock tick; they even know who is worthy and who is not. Bush is saying that he alone knows what is going to happen to the entire human race. Bush is saying that the cultural "isms" of the rest of the world (e.g., Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism) are so much intellectual fluff. It is the manly, apocalyptic world of death that Bush envisions, as if a Shinto farm woman in northern Japan would give a rat's ass. Is this an exercise in megalomania or what?
Bush, in claiming that "We'll all be dead" is apparently aware of ways to kill people even more effectively than epidemic infectious disease, war and natural death. Despite all of that human misery, the human population has still managed to reach some 6 billion in nummber. How does Bush plan to eliminate every last fertile man and woman on this planet? How much of that global slaughter is Bush going to implement himself, directly and indirectly, and how much is he leaving up to his god? Is this an exercise in megalomania or what?
Bush, in claiming knowledge of our upcoming global demise, is implying that he and his advisors alone possess knowledge that ordinary people could never comprehend, hence there is no need for public discussion of the "higher" knowledge driving Bush's political agenda. Because Bush is carrying out his god's work, he actually believes that the world needs the kind of self-righteous, belligerent global "leadership" that he is now famous for providing to former allies. Is this an exercise in megalomania or what?
George Monbiot reports that 15 - 18 % of the American electorate belong to churches which support a literal interpretation of the Book of Revelations. For every one of those people there must be about four more "good" people who go right along with overt megalomania out of loyalty to traditional religious authority and blind faith in their "war president." These are the 49% of the electorate who routinely see the beam in their brother's eye and never the moat in their own.
Written by John of Patmos about 90 AD, the Book of Revelations is an opium-enhanced exercise in Old Testament vengeance. John, a would-be Christian, was so distraught with his treatment at the hands of pre-Christian Romans, he introduced harshly anti-Christian thought into the historical record. Two centuries later, when nascent Christianity was adopted and perverted by the Roman emperor, Constantine, this hallucinatory effort eventually become part of New Testament Roman scripture (despite having nothing to do with nascent Christian doctrine).
The sadly pathetic view which Bush sees fit to impose upon the entire world was written by a chronically-persecuted, terminally-depressed "druggie" living in Roman exile. John's apocalyptic tome was incorporated into Roman "Christianity" by Roman tyrants who proceeded to introduce the western world to self-righteous imperial conquest in the name of compassion and peace.
Four billion years of rigorously-documentable evolutionary progress and the best that Bush can come up with for a finale is death? Millennia of cultural evolution, from the beat of tribal drums to the world wide web, from the depths of biblical despotism to the concept of a global democracy, and the best that Bush can come up with for a finale is death? It would never occur to Bush and his religious supporters that the only thing they are going to eliminate from the earth is vengeance-based religion and corrupt crony capitalism, discredited from the global political arena forever. That is the far more likely outcome. The finale will be the emergence of a global democracy and a new beginning for everything human.
Bush is a man who ought be sent back to a university where he might acquire something resembling a "higher education." It has been a long time since educated people have believed that the earth is flat under heaven's dome. It has been a long time since educated people have believed that disease is godly punishment for earthly sin. It has been a long time since educated people have believed that all people on this planet came from Adam, a man without a belly button. It has been a long time since educated people have clearly opted for democracy over religious despotism.
According to Bush, we do not need to worry about the outcome of his preemptory war on Iraq because "we'll all be dead." There is likely no intelligent response to that ludicrous proclamation that does not employ America's favorite four-letter "F" word. In the world of religious freedom that Jefferson provided for all Americans, Bush has every right to impose his apocalyptic world view on himself. Good for him. Bush has no right whatsoever to impose his apocalyptic world view on another living soul, least of all the children who will outlive Bush by decades.
All thoughtful and caring American citizens ought be afraid, very afraid. Bush is likely inviting us to the People's Temple for a glass of grape Kool-Aide. --04.23.04
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. His recent book, Jefferson's Eyes, provides an evolutionary paradigm for comprehending American history. No longer can we afford to see our history as an economic success story. We must see our history as a departure from original values (www.jeffersonseyes.com). He can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
The Bush Decision-Making Apparatus
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
Every thought emergent, every word issued, every action taken is in the past. Everything in the future remains to be seen. The only thing that actually exists in the universe is the instantaneous "here and now." Everything else is a memory or an anticipation. Within the "here and now" we remember the past and we anticipate the future, we reassess the past and we reconsider the future.
As we divide time on both sides of the "here and now" into past and future, we likewise divide human thought in the "here and now" into a priori thought (before the fact) and a posteriori thought (after the fact).
The Bush administration, for example, considered al Qaida terrorism before the fact of 9/11. The empirical evidence was reviewed and the Bush administration erroneously assigned a low priority to Osama bin Laden and al Qaida terrorism "in the U.S." The call was made and the call was in error.
The Bush administration also considered al Qaida terrorism after the fact of 9/11. The empirical evidence was reviewed and the Bush administration erroneously assigned a high priority to the military removal of Saddam Hussein for his involvement in funding terrorism and building WMD for use against the U.S. The call was made and the call was in error.
It is reasonably clear that neither a priori or a posteriori approaches to thought have worked particularly well for the Bush administration. Either way, the administration's decision-making apparatus has managed to screw it up. So, what's the problem with the most powerful government in the world?
Given its manifest failures in thought, and its inabilities to admit error, the Bush administration has no intelligent options left and typically assumes a self-righteous posture in justifying itself. This approach does secure the loyalty of Old Testament religious people. For the rest of us (e.g., Christians, scientists, philosophers, teachers and citizens), the administration might consider how it went wrong in thought.
A PRIORI THOUGHT
A priori thought is to think about a thing (or event) before one knows about the nature of that thing. In other words, a priori thought is to make intelligent observation-based "guesses" (inductions) about the nature of things. A priori thought also is to think about a thing (or event) before the event has taken place, i.e., to make observation-based guesses (inductions) about the nature of future events.
An exemplar of clean a priori thought is the ancient Greek induction of material causes of disease based on observations of contagion. The process of contagion required the physical transfer of some material cause ("miasmas"). This reliance on material necessity was a necessary aspect of thought, given the Greek rejection of supernatural conjecture. The Greek induction of material causes of disease received empirical validation in the 1880s with the discovery of pathogenic microorganisms.
In other words, a priori thought employs inductions, the results of which represent hypothetical knowledge (larger general inferential knowledge without empirical validation). Inductions are reasoning upward in a hierarchy of knowledge, from what is particularly true to what is generally true. Based on what can be observed, the Greeks concluded (hypothetically) that disease had earthbound, material causes. Over two millennia later, they were proven correct. Intelligent guesses can be right on the money if based on empirical observation and consistent logic.
A POSTERIORI THOUGHT
A posteriori thought is to think about a thing after one knows about that thing. In other words, a posteriori thought is to make conceptual conclusions (deductions) about specific things based on what is known to be generally true about such things. A posteriori thought is also to think about an event after the established fact, i.e., to make conceptual conclusions (deductions) with regard to the causal fabric beneath past events.
An exemplar of clean a posteriori thought is the late 19th century deductions of the causes of infectious disease based on established conceptual criteria of causation ("Henle-Koch postulates"). If criteria of causation could be empirically validated for a specific disease (defined by a pattern of symptoms), one could deduce the cause of that disease and begin to think in terms of agent specific diagnoses and agent-specific specific interventions, both preventive and therapeutic.
In other words, a posteriori thought employs deductions, the results of which represent theoretical knowledge, conclusions based on the empirical validation of established criteria. Deductions are reasoning downward in a hierarchy of knowledge, from what is generally true to what is particularly true. Based on what can be generally known, deductive conclusions are designed to be correct in theory. Theoretical knowledge is probable, hypothetical knowledge is possible, and religious conjectural "knowledge" is improbable if not impossible.
CAPITALISM'S REAL WORLD DENIALS
The Bush administration's trouble with intelligent thought is not new to American government, but rather the current manifestation of established conservative approaches. The Reagan administration, as part of emasculating the Environmental Protection Agency during the early 1980s, introduced a selective corporate pragmatism into American government.
Reagan did not like worrying about "potential" or "unproven" problems. No one, of course, would choose to waste time on problems not worth one's time. But Reagan's approach made no distinction between potential problems with low and with high probabilities of becoming manifest in reality. "Potential" mutagens and the "potential" problems associated with their use by humans, were "non"-problems until proven otherwise.
In other words, problems for conservative Americans do not exist until after the horrible fact, when bodies, lost jobs, bankruptcies and ruined lives can be counted. There can be no regulatory threats to corporate revenue until a real problem related to corporate activity has been "proven" to exist by virtue of its observed existence.
As part of the intellectual and moral "dumbing down" of America under right wing leadership, conservative Republicans took the intellectual position that a priori knowledge, for all intents and purposes, does not exist (or is irrelevant to running a market-driven government). Foresight and prudence were seen as posing unnecessary threats to capitalism and the "American way." First comes the marketplace and its life-giving values, then comes the band-aids and the body bags.
The denial of a priori thought and knowledge (and the resulting inability to see what is actually going on and the inability to foresee what could happen) is legendary in conservative religious governments. At bottom, it is a simple matter of values and priorities, those of religious capitalism versus those of science and democracy.
BUSH FAILURES IN THOUGHT
The human response to a priori thought (foresight) and "actionable" a priori knowledge (our awareness of potential danger) is a function of the immediacy of the apparent threat (minutes to days to years away) and the enormity of the apparent threat (leaving victims scratched, disabled or dead).
In the case of Osama bin Laden and al Qaida terrorism, the Bush administration refused to exercise a priori thought (in the Reagan tradition). It simply ignored that the "system was blinking red" with warnings of potential al Qaida attacks "inside the U.S." and it produced no contingency plans for dealing with this newly emergent threat. The immediacy and enormity of the threat (more important to prevention than the time and place) was simply ignored in favor of other administration priorities, e.g., promoting a missile defense system.
Bush's a priori thinking failed for one reason - it was not based on the empirical evidence available. It was based on overt ignorance of that evidence and the desire to implement a pre-established political agenda aimed at defending America from those equipped with armed, long-range missiles (an old cold war threat).
In the case of Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration employed a priori thought exclusively (against the Reagan tradition), dismissing the unconfirmed nature of the "intelligence" it employed to build its case for preemptive war on Iraq. It even went so far as to employ a priori thought in foreseeing itself as a flower-pelted hero in the eyes of the liberated Iraqi people.
Bush's a priori thinking failed for one reason - it was not based on the empirical evidence available. It was based on fabricated evidence and the desire to implement a pre-established political agenda aimed at securing a physical presence in Iraq and physical control over Iraqi oilfields.
Bush's a posteriori thinking also failed for one reason - Following 9/11, Bush's preemptory assault on Iraq was not based on the general historical and experiential knowledge available. Even after Bush declared the Iraqi "mission accomplished," the Bush administration approached Iraq's occupation without adequate consideration of the historical background and cultural makeup of Iraq and the Middle East, without consideration of the implications of imposing democracy (which always comes from the inside) upon others.
The Bush administration had a military program for liberation, an inadequate program for occupation, an inadequate program for democratization and no program for withdrawal. Had the Bush administration based its a posteriori thinking on the empirical evidence available, it would have placed more emphasis on Saudi Arabia than on Iraq for involvement in terrorism.
BUSH'S INCONSISTENT PREDICTABILITY
The problem with the Bush administration is its reckless inconsistency and devout predictability. The Bush administration is against a priori thought when a priori (hypothetical) knowledge poses a threat to the implementation of its pre-ordained political agenda. The Bush administration is for a priori thought when a priori (hypothetical ) knowledge can be literally created to nourish the implementation of its pre-ordained political agenda.
A priori thought is available and properly employable across the intellectual board. It is not to be selectively employed in only those instances where its application has political utility. Moreover, a priori and a posteriori thought only provide useful knowledge when based on honest observation and interpretation. To think otherwise is to have little regard for the truth, to live an intellectual lie in the name of political manipulation and dominion. It would, by now, seem self-evident that the Bush administration puts politics first because that is all that it knows.
The Bush administration fails uniformly at thought because it routinely abandons available empirical evidence in favor of fabricated evidence and interpretations that put its political agenda first. In other words, the Bush administration politicizes every issue and cannot, therefore, deal with any issue outside of the political arena.
Because the entire Bush political agenda is based upon Old Testament Roman lies and inconsistencies (the notion of a vengeance-based, self-righteous "Christianity" being an oxymoron) and upon capitalism's post-World War II lies (the notion that human progress and fiscal progress are one and the same), the Bush administration's survival is necessarily dependent on continued lies, in order to cover the lies beneath its own political agenda.
Religious psychosis (inherent among the self-chosen) has worked in this manner for millennia, turning all logic upside down and all priorities inside out, in the name of empowering the already-too-rich and powerful. Jefferson and Franklin demanded that fundamentalism be kept out of American government because fundamentalism has never embraced empirical/logical thought and knowledge, and never embraced a knowledgeable ethics (least of all Christian ethics), and it has never, therefore, made any human sense. It didn't two hundred years ago and it doesn't today. --posted 04.16.04
9/11 And Iraq WMD: Bush Zero For Two In Use Of Intelligence
Bushs August 6th PDB
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
CRAWFORD, Texas - Im satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America, Bush said. It said Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that (AP, 4/11/2004).
Bush also "knew" that Saddam Hussein had designs on America. He "knew" that Saddam was manufacturing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and selling WMD secrets to terrorists. He "knew" that Saddam could launch WMD at America on a 45 minute notice.
In bin Laden's case, Bush saw no intelligence prompting action, despite Richard Clark's emphasis and the August 6th PDB warning of al Qaida attacks inside the U.S.
In Hussein's case, Bush justified an preemptory invasion killing over 10,000 Iraqi civilians and over 600 Americans because he saw absolutely convincing evidence of dire national threat when none existed at all.
There is no liberal or conservative about this. We are looking for the word to describe a man who took no action when he ought have done so (and people died for it), and a man who took unprovoked violent action when he ought not have done so (and people died and are still dying for it).
Americans are left with only two responses to this style of "leadership." There is the patriotic response, "If you got a problem with this, get over it, because Bush is doing God's work" and the honest response, "Our president and his god do what Bush is told by self-righteous Old Testament extremists who still, after two millennia, "know not what they do."
Bush and Blair: The "End of Time" and Other Religious Rot
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
The British press has pointed out on several ocassions that both Bush and Blair talk about terrorism in "tellingly biblical language," both seeing religion-based terrorism as being designed "to bring about armegeddon." (Jackie Ashley, "Be afraid, be very afraid," www.guardian.com, March 25, 2004). Accordingly, the Bush administration implemented an "Armageddon Plan" on September 11, 2001 designed to ensure the survival of the federal government in the aftermath of a nucear war (Howard Kurtz, www.washingtonpost.com, April 7, 2004).>
The "war on terrorism" is, after all, a religious cultural war between radical Old Testament Roman "Christianity" (i.e., "compassionate" conservatism and crony capitalism) and radical Islamism. Judaism, the cultural source of both, is appropriately positioned in between its warring children.>
It can be safely assumed that the Bush administration, with its neoconservative "obsession with religion" and religious prophecy, thinks it has all the authority it needs to pursue its "war on terrorism" and its vision of a pax Americana all the way to apocalypse, if that is what it takes. It can also be safely assumed that bin Laden's al-Qaida, a religious cult without a homeland to bomb, is similarly possessed with divine authority and self-righteous incorrigibility.>
The real question is this: "Just what in hell are these people talking about?" Just how does the "unholy religious trimverate" of Bush, bin Laden and Sharon plan to pull this apocalyptic tragedy off? Thus far, for example, all the wars in human history have had only local and momentary impact on the human population. Likewise, the horrors of rampant epidemic infectious disease have had no lasting impact on the human population, which now claims some 6 billion members.>
What pernicious attitudes motivate religious fundamentalists to transcend the ability of their own god (or devil) to diminish the human race? How do these people acquire the authority to summarily determine it is time to terminate their god's work on earth? The egocentricity involved here is of simply monstrous proportions, particularly when one considers the ill-educated sons of oil men from whom the calls to armageddon emanate (neither Bush or bin Laden demonstrating any grasp of what is meant by a "higher education").>
The primary apocalyptic thinkers, Daniel (Old Testament) and John of Patmos (New Testament) lived in a "world" that was only a few hundred miles wide. Without adequate knowledge of the eastern cultures and no knowledge at all of the western hemispheric cultures, the prophetic announcement of an "end time" for the "world" is megalomania personified. The prophets of apocalypse were necessarily being prophetic only about their own despotic, vengeful, violence-filled worlds, originally centered around the Middle East.>
Nevertheless, by coercing American and British citizens into a preemptive, unprovoked war on Iraq (in pursuit of an ill-defined "war on terrorism"), the Bush and Blair administrations have successfully drawn the western democracies directly into the center of a millennial religious maelstrom, to nourish the growth of terrorism and expand the dimensions of the apocalypse into Europe and the western hemisphere.>
This ludicrous scenario, of course, is the product of imposed human fear and ignorance.>
The entire notion of a global apocalypse and an "end of time" is produced entirely from the individual point of view. Through that tiny window, life is self-evidently the story of birth to death, alpha to omega. Maintaining this exclusively individual point of view, western religions uniformly extrapolate their tiny world view to the world as a whole in declaring that all of life is alpha to omega, beginning to end. The western world looks at the whole world as if the western world ought dictate how the whole world works.>
At the same time, every single individual on earth is aware of the collective point of view, wherein human life on earth "keeps right on going" despite the death of individuals. From that larger point of view, human life is self-evidently continuous. No matter what our cultural points of view, we are uniformly prone to make new human babies to ensure that life "keeps right on going." Before we die, we typically see to it that we are replaced (to the point, in fact, of overdoing it and creating current problems related to overpopulation).>
In other words, while western apocalypse and an "end of time" may seem to be an ordained outcome from the individual point of view (e.g., that employed by western religious systems), that same outcome makes no sense at all from the collective point of view (e.g., that employed by eastern ethical systems).>
It also makes no sense at all from the human perspective and what is commonly referred to as "common sense," at least since Thomas Paine rallied the American colonies by writing the definitive book on the subject.>
As it goes for individuals, so it goes for human societies. Individuals die but typically after replacing themselves. Human societies fall from grace and their political philosophies die on the public stage but typically with replacements waiting in the wings.>
In other words, following the fulfillment of religious prophecy with its "end of time," there will still be plenty of time around and the world of homo sapiens will "keep right on going" as always. The people will, however, have learned a few larger lessons on the global stage. It will only be the "end of time" for those caught up in it all, for those making and/or allowing it to happen under conservative religious dominion.>
Given the current global culture wars, western fundamentalists from all three major branches of western religion - "Compassionate" Old Testament Romanism (masquerading as "Christianity" for 1700 years), Islamism and Judaism, are thriving under right wing leadership (George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, and Ariel Sharon), uniformly suspecting that "the end is nigh," all three actively and blindly working toward that prophetic end.>
The megalomaniacal religious notion of a global apocalypse and an "end of time" for the world examplifies the remarkable ability of the religious mind to transcend, define and dominate reality (to walk in individual psychosis among the gods). The west has been abiding this pathology since Constantine "Romanized" Judaism and perverted nascent Christianity in the early 4th century AD, introducing the western world to self-righteous imperialism in the name of Christian values.>
The contributors to the apocalyptic literature of the biblical world were uniformly men who lived under despotism, in a world of conquest, persecution, enslavement and genocide. These were men who had lost faith in their own absentee god, defeated men who proposed, in desperation, that their god (ineffectual in the face of worldly powers, e.g., Babylon, Rome) would return to earth some day and square things up with those believing that might makes right. Islamic notions of apocalypse, emerging centuries after the emergence of Roman "Christianity," contain, as one might anticipate, elements of both Jewish and "Christian" prophecy.>
>From natural philosophic viewpoints, the individual point of view and the collective point of view are complementary opposites. The dialectic synthesis is the human point of view which embraces both the individual and collective points of view. The individual point of view sees the world coming to an end. The collective point of view sees this as a lot of individualistic nonsense.>
The human point of view sees the reality beneath the cultural surfaces. The people of the world are currently embedded in a cultural evolutionary program that has employed religion-based imperialism, colonialism and capitalism to move the human world from tribal to national to global levels of organization - at the tip of a double-edged sword.>
The human point of view sees that the human world now needs political and spiritual unification. It sees that religious fundamentalism will guarantee the fulfillment of religious prophecy and apocalypse. It sees that discrediting religious capitalism from the political arena will open the doors to a global democracy and world peace.>
The human point of view sees that the people will survive apocalypse, learn from the experience, and "keep right on going." To doubt that is to have no mind, no faith, and no God fit for the people of the world.>
In between the "end of time" (apocalypse) and the "beginning of human" (global democracy) is a world of millennial religious lies and coercion, a world of self-righteousness, greed, political treachery and violence. Just how much violence is required to get the people beyond what is clearly a millennial cultural watershed is largely a function of how much violence the people will tolerate in the name of false gods.>
With over 600 American deaths in Iraq since Bush declared the "mission accomplished," most Americans remain far too tolerant of the Bush administration. The religious capitalism of Bush's CEO administration is well known for its willingness to assign a price tag to any and every thing in the world. From that cheap point of view, it ought be possible to calculate how many American lives a lie is worth. Maybe someone will be so kind as to ask "president" Bush. --posted 04.11.04
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Dr. Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. His book, "Jefferson's Eyes," establishes a new paradigm for comprehending American history. No longer can we look at our history as a fiscal success story. We must look at our history as a departure from original values (www.jeffersonseyes.com). He can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
The Conjunction of Heaven and Earth: Good, Evil, And Bush
Dr. Gerry Lower
Carl Jungs work on the human psyche contains several ideas on the nature of God, as set forth in his book, Answer to Job (1973, Princeton University Press, ISBN: 0691017859). Jung saw the Book of Job as "a landmark in the long historical development of a divine drama." As summarized by Jungian analyst, Del Anne McNeely, Jung saw "Job's courage in not giving in to despair." Jung saw Job's adoption of a reflective attitude and his questioning "as the beginning of consciousness for God" (www.stormpages.com/jungianvent/jobrev.htm).
"If the Creator were conscious of Himself, He would not need conscious creatures." In other words, Jung saw God's developing consciousness as the result of human input. In McNeely's words, "Mediated through the mere human being, God evolves. God incarnates and Satan falls." And this is to say what Science has known all along, that all gods are defined by the human mind.
In Jung's view, the Biblical story of Job announces the split between good and evil in the western theological world. As McNeely explains, "The task for individuals then becomes one of uniting these opposites, if we choose to undertake it." What McNeely does not explain is that serious progress toward reunitiing these opposites was made during the latter half of the 18th century with the EuroAmerican Enlightenment and the formulation of Jefferson's Deist Democracy, based on dialectic human values that are neither liberal or conservative, neither good or bad.
What man (apart from God) has struck assunder, humans (in God) must reunite. Jung's contemplation in the early 1950s of the ancient Biblical split between good and evil was concurrent with the Catholic church's contemplation of the "Assumption of Mary" and the "Pleroma," ideas which many theologians saw as changing the traditional western concept of "Dei," by celebrating the corporeal ascension of Mary into heaven to attain the "divine life" and restore the Pleroma, the (Greek) "fullness" of God. Jung saw this hierogamy as evoking the Great Mother-Son Lover mythology of pre-Christian times. In getting Mary into heaven, the Catholic church had also restored the concept of a human (female/male) deity.
Related to the Orthodox "Assumption of Sophia" (the 4th century Gnostic feminine aspect of God), the Catholic "Assumption of Mary" was taken as a corporeal event. The original Gnostic tradition, however, saw the path to the Pleroma as a worldly learning process. The people could be restored to the Pleroma via the process of "gnosis," i.e., the acquisition of personal "knowledge through experience." The nascent interpretation of the Pleroma is that state of "fullness" which the people, in due time, will eventually reach through knowledge to ultimately liberate themselves from darkness.
Apocalyptic thought is the inevitable outcome of competitive vengeance-based moralities and it is, therefore, inherent in fundamentalist Judaism, Old Testament Roman "Christianity" and Islamism. These three branches of western religion, all based on Abraham's monotheistic god, will certainly make effort to fulfill their own prophecies, in their efforts to preemptively "defend" themselves from each other. The fulfillment of religious prophecy (with an "end time" for vengeance-based religion), will complete the millennial cycle and bring an end to the split between good and evil.
Jim Hensen portrayed this "grand conjunction" in his 1982 movie, "Dark Crystal" (by A.C.H. Smith), a marvelous "other world" cinematic portrayal of the confrontation of good (the contemplative Mystics) and evil (the greedy Skeksis), a confrontation resulting in the coming together of light and dark, of good and evil, of heaven and earth.
In natural philosophic terms, this translates into the political self-termination of western religion and crony capitalism - the necessary result of their roles in producing unnecessary political violence on the global stage and ultimately discrediting themselves from the global political arena - forever. The fulfillment of religious prophecy will bring the Pleroma, i.e., the rejection of western religious dualism and the restoration of Oneness to western theology. It will be the end of mutually-exclusive moralities ("eye for an eye" versus "turn the other cheek"). After two millennia, Jesus will finally return home to earth and, in doing so, become His own father in human eyes.
The people will come to realize the inherently despotic nature of self-righteous western religion, its evolutionary role in driving imperialism, colonialism and capitalism. The people will come to realize religion's evolutionary role in human oppression (which in turn inspired its nemesis, i.e., Science, human knowledge and natural philosophy). The people will come to realize religion's necessary evolutionary role in unifying the human race, from tribal to national to global levels of organization.
The people will come to realize the role of dualistic western religion in producing both "good" and "evil." The people will come to realize that "good" is not the absence of "evil" and that "evil" is not the absence of "good." The people will come to realize that "evil" is caused by the self-righteous pursuit of "good." The people will come to realize that the Christ did not die for any sin inherent in the people. The Christ died for the sins the people would commit in His name (for the next two millennia).
Both good and evil will be explained away and both will become irrelevant to continued human maturation, replaced with human honesty and integrity and knowledge of what causes what. We will have finally grown up to take responsibility for our own authority, for our own ideas, words and actions, as individuals and as a people. Our doing so will constitute the return of deity to earth, in the form of Jefferson's God (in the "head and heart" of every person) and in the name of Jefferson's "highest authority" (the "will of the people"). Amen.
The "separation of good and evil" and the "reunification of good and evil" mark the beginning and the end of the larger western cultural evolutionary program in which all people on earth have become embedded with the turn of the millennium (most people without knowing it). Right wing conservative transcendentalists (the Skeksis in Dark Crystal) simply must remain blind to what they are doing in order to continue doing it. Left wing liberal empiricists (the Mystics in Dark Crystal) simply must abide the fact of created evil and sacrifice themselves to human truth in the name of fullness and wholeness.
"Uniting these [complementary] opposites" will require a return to the dialectic human values of Science, Democracy and nascent Christianity, the values of America's Deist fathers, values which provided the first human theology intended to transcend the gap between good and evil. That effort has now been checked by the very despotic Roman theology against which it was directed.
"The task for individuals then becomes one of uniting these opposites, if we choose to undertake it." As citizens of the world's first formal democracy (now under despotic right wing political dominion), we best be choosing to undertake it. As citizens of the world's first formal democracy (now abiding the values of religious capitalism), we already know how to re-unite the opposites. Think realism:
Think the values of Science and Philosophy - think reason, honesty, integrity, consistency and Truth.
Given the dialectic values of human enlightenment, all we need to do is think about ourselves (individually and collectively) and think for ourselves (honestly and compassionately). No true God could hope for more on the human path to human maturation and spirituality.
When Satan Fell
Dr. Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. His book, "Jefferson's Eyes," establishes a new paradigm for comprehending American history. No longer can we look at our history as a fiscal success story. We must look at our history as a departure from original values (www.jeffersonseyes.com). He can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
The Unholy Religious Triumvirate: Apocalypse Guaranteed
Dr. Gerry Lower
As a result of Richard Clarke's recent exposure of Bush World from the inside out, George W. Bush's public approval for his "war on terrorism" has slipped in two months from 70% to 57%. Yet, his overall approval remains a solid 49% (Blow for Bush, Brian Braiker, MSNBC, March 27, 2004). The same people who voted for Bush because of his feigned "morality" and religiosity are still supporting Bush, not so much in defense of Bush's deceitful and unsuccessful policies but in defense of their own religiosity. It is hard for self-righteous people to admit error.>
It would appear then that about half the American electorate (mostly religious conservative Republicans) are going to remain loyal to the Bush administration's demands for loyalty, despite its celebration of self-rightousness and belligerence on the world stage. They will remain loyal to the Bush administration despite its lies and coercions in taking the American people into an unprovoked war in Iraq, a war that has proven to have very little if anything to do with the "war on terrorism.">
A lot of otherwise decent people in America are being mislead by allowing their fear of terrorism, their ignorance of history, their loyalty to Old Testament supernatural religion and their loyalty to capitalism and markekplace "freedom" (license) to rule their day. In maintaining their proud loyalty to Bush World, they remain necessarily unable to see what is going on through honest human eyes. A lot of otherwise decent people restrict themselves to believing only what is claimed to be true by the Bush administration, which has already proven to the outside world its unique talents for political distortion, religious coercion and political violence.>
From viewpoints well outside of Bush World, the situation is a good deal more grim than Bush loyalists are able to contemplate or comprehend. On March 25, for example, the British press ran two commentaries, one entitled "Be afraid, be very afraid" and one entitled "It could be the death of us all." Both commentaries address concerns to which Bush loyalists must remain either aloof or blind and ignorant.>
The former analysis by Jackie Ashley (www.guardian.co.uk) concludes that Bush and Blair have "squandered their efforts in the wrong country" and "obstructed attempts to deal with al-Qaida" terrorism, resulting in a "climate of fear" throughout the western world. Ashley also points out that both Bush and Blair talk about terrorism not in honest empirical terms but in "tellingly biblical language," both seeing religion-based terrorism as being designed "to bring about armageddon." By seeing the world so, they make the world so.>
The latter analysis by Ron Ferguson (www.theherald.co.uk) suggests that already "the apocalyptic horses are pawing the ground." Ferguson concludes that Bush's "doctrine of the legitimacy of preemptive strikes" (in order to effect regime change in Iraq) has "certainly loosened the fatal lightning of somebody's terrible swift sword." He accurately points out that the one thing uniting Osama bin Laden, George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon is "an obsession with religion" and religious prophecy.>
These three men do, indeed, symbolize the three major branches of western religion, i.e., Judaism, Old Testament Romanism (masquerading as "Christianity" for 1700 years) and Islamism, all three with roots in Abraham's monotheistic supernatural religion, all three notable for their fundamentalist disdain for human scientific knowledge, all three notable for their fundamentalist preference for the values of vengeance and self-righteousness in the millennial maintenance of religious political violence.>
While religious Bush loyalists in America see themselves as defending the values of Democracy and Christianity, those outside of Bush World see Bush loyalists as defending the values of Old Testament Roman religion and crony corporate capitalism. Bush loyalists are accurately seen (given their willingness to abide White House lies and fabrications) as being religiously blind and incorrible, above reason and honest human truth. They are seen as blindly setting the stage for armegeddon and the fulfillment of religious prophecy.>
These are remarkably disparate views of precisely the same damned situation, the view from Bush World being based literally on blind faith in Bush's self-righteous Old Testament religiosity and the view from outside of Bush World being based on empirical observations and interpretations consistent with the historic role of Old Testament Roman religious attitudes in driving imperialism, colonialism and capitalism.>
Even a cursory historical awareness of the scientific, natural philosophic and nascent Christian origins of Jefferson's Democracy would quickly convince honest observers that American Democracy has devolved 180 from the liberal values which birthed it, to currently occupy the despotic position of its former right wing monarchical oppressors.>
Even a cursory evolutionary awareness of the factionating reforms of Old Testament Roman religion (from Lutheranism to Unitarianism) would quickly convince honest observers that American "Christendom" has devolved 180 from the Protestant values which birthed it, to currently occupy the despotic position of its former right wing papal oppressers.>
Bush loyalists, in their spiritual quest to defend everything that is wrong with American Democracy, ought keep in mind that empiricism has never, in 2500 years, lost an argument to religious supernaturalism (which has been wrong about everything from the movements of the planets to the causes of disease to the origins of life on earth). In their self-righteous blindness and fear of human knowledge and truth, Bush loyalists guarantee the apocalyptic outcome which British observers see coming to the world.>
Osama bin Laden, George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon (and the "obsession with religion" of their followers) are, at the same time, fulfilling both religious prophecy and cultural evolutionary necessity. The world and her people cannot much longer survive the violent machinations of vengeance-driven religion and greed-driven crony capitalism. Discrediting those views from the global political arena will only open the doors for a return to Deist sanity, the emergence of a global democracy and the realization of world peace.>
Given the unholy religious triumvirate currently in charge of western culture, it will make little difference whether the American people condone or condemn the blind fulfillment of religious prophecy. The final outcome will necessarily be the same, i.e., the "end of time" for religion-based political philosophy, the "second coming" of the dialectic values of human enlightenment, the beginning of time for a global democracy, the rapturous birth of humankind and the return of deity to earth, freckles, dimples and all.>
Jefferson's Deist God, the personal God in the "head and heart" of every caring and thoughtful person, the God made manifest in "the will of the people," can hardly wait to come home. --posted 03.30.04
WHY RELIGIOUS PEOPLE SUPPORT BUSH'S LIES
Dr. Gerry Lower
To para phrase Michael Kinsley (The Limits of Eloquence, Slate, Nov 14, 2003), How can one's current beliefs be accepted as being "transcendentally correct" if one has recently stated beliefs quite the opposite. How can one say "up" and point "down" and then turn around and say "up" and point "up"? In that regard, "George Bush's powers of persuasion are apparently so spectacular, at least to some, that almost all the pro-Bush voices in Washington and the media have remained pro-Bush even when "pro-Bush" means the opposite of what it did five minutes ago."
The truth of "up" and "down" does not matter in Bush World. All that matters is the power to dictate which is which, control mania exemplified. Bush World is a religious manipulation unfettered by the restrictions of knowledge and elementary logic. In this regard, Kinsley gives too much credit to Bush's "powers of persuasion" and not enough credit to the gullibility of religious conservatives.
In the wake of the World Trade Center tragedy and in preparing for an unprovoked war on Iraq, the American people initially supported George Bush because George was, afterall, their president and America had been attacked. In fulfillment of their collective need for vengeance, the people wanted to trust in George Bush's embrace of fundamentalist religion and its ready provision of justification for "getting even."
Rallying around religion and the flag was seen as a wonderful thing for an American citizenry that had moved far away from its collective roots in farm, ranch and community life and into the world of individual competition for raw survival and unrestricted wealth. Rallying around a human tragedy seemed better than no rallying at all.
Unfortunately, as ought now be apparent, it is honest agreement on the truth, not the common need for vengeance, that provides the more stable ground upon which to rally. Despite our post-911 rallying, Bush's popularity has dropped back to the 49% of people who voted for him, and America is more divided than ever. Our Father's, by the way, requested that we practice independence from papal and monarchical authority, not independence from each other.
External Fears
The people wanted to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the World Trade Center devastation, they wanted to believe that Hussein was connected to al Quaida and bin Laden's terrorism, because these beliefs provided an outlet for vengeance. Insofar as George Bush has received blind support from those willing to act with a vengeance, this decidedly non-Christian need has been, by now, adequately fulfilled in Afghanistan and Iraq, not by achieving anything remotely resembling justice but by bombing both "nations" of tribes back into the stone age.
The people wanted to believe that Hussein was in possession of nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry and that, in being able to use this weaponry at a moment's notice, he posed an immediate and dire threat to America and the "free" world, a belief that nourished further rallying of the religious right by fabricating a common, external enemy worthy of the people's fear, a traditional approach to religious rallying.
Today the entire world knows that most everything George Bush told the people and his religious supporters was fabricated and designed to lead the people into an unprovoked war (immoral by definition in all but self-righteous eyes). The only remaining reasons for the war on Iraq are traditional religious attitudes and capitalistic greed and control mania, none of which are justifications for war with anyone.
Internal Fears
While external fears still linger in the American cultural air, the Bush administration is no longer supported by those with a dire need for vengeance or for protection from Saddam Hussein. George Bush increasingly gets his support from internal fears on the part of his religious supporters.
To admit that the war on Iraq was launched and is maintained on immoral ground would be nothing short of a crisis of self-identity and self-concept for religious fundamentalists. How can Old Testament believers possibly be immoral? How can the people of the "Good Book" possibly do wrong in the eyes of their all-seeing and all-knowing Old Testament God? How, indeed? How can the religious right wing come to terms with Bush's lies and failures? The answer is that they simply cannot. They have no choice but to rest their case on fabrications and transcendental self-righteousness.
For religious fundamentalists to admit error would be to denigrate their heavenly source of authority and themselves for abiding that authority. It would require admiting their humanness and fallibility. It would require giving up on the notion that George Bush's words are somehow transcendent (when they do not even transcend the realm of cheap lies). America's neofundamentalists have, in the western religious tradition, locked themselves into an untenable position by their own beliefs and actions. There is no escape from religious blunder, no way to return to empirical reality without losing control over both the faithful and reality.
This is always what happens when one administers violence based on "transcendent" belief. There is simply no way, in case of failure, to cover one's ass honestly and intelligently. In the face of lies and failure, Bush's support is no longer based on belief in his policies and practices. His support is based increasingly on the need of his followers to maintain their religious self-identity as "compassionate" conservatives and would be "Christians" (They do it all for you in the name of the Christ, you know).
This fear of losing one's religious self-identity on the part of Bush's supporters will ensure that the Bush agenda of capitalistic neoimperialism, however inconsistent that might be with the values of Democracy and Christianity, will be preserved and fulfilled to the extent possible, until it all falls flat in the eyes of the world for its utter lack of honest human truth and human values.
The most encompassing freedoms beneath Jefferson's democracy are the "freedom from fear and ignorance." It was freedom from the fear of religious oppression, for example, that demanded the separation of church and state. So, we must note that Bush World thrives on religious fear and ignorance, so that Bush's policies and programs will remain transcendent in the eyes of his religious followers.
The Bush administration has dumbed even good religious people down such that they can no longer make a distinction between the values of democracy and the values of religious despotism, between the values of Christianity and the values of Old Testament vengeance-based religion, between the values of fairness and equality and the values of crony capitalism. Because they have sacrificed themselves to Bush's god (never mind your God and my God), most religious people in America no longer know what they are talking about, and will not know what WE are talking about until such time as they are done talking. --posted 02.23.04
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in Keystone, South Dakota in the shadow of Mount Rushmore. His primary interest is the development of a rigorously-definable global philosophy and ethics suitable for a global democracy. His recent book, "Jefferson's Eyes," can be explored at www.jeffersonseyes.com and he can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
Jesus, Jefferson, and Bush
Dr. Gerry Lower
It is rather striking how many great scientists have contributed to western cultural evolution without having very much to say about where they were "coming from," the nature of the world within which they made their contributions. Many brilliant thinkers were simply too active, e.g., Jesus and Jefferson, to take time for such introspection, hoping that their contributions would stand on their own merit and knowing that it is always possible to backtrack and identify starting points from the results of their work.
It is, for example, not particularly difficult to comprehend where Charles Darwin was coming from. For starters, he was coming from a natural One world in which everything is related and connected in time, a world in which it is implicit that Life comes of itself, a world in which it is implicit that supernaturalism and an external source of authority are unnecessary if not irrelevant to self-comprehension.
In other words, Science has had its own theological ground all along, its own spiritual world unrelated to that of religion. Science has its own answers to "why" questions, both in terms of human origins and in terms of human purposes. Once that has been recognized, one is left to deal with nothing but the actual, tangible, observeable world (where all good Science has begun since Greece).
A primary feature of Science is that no matter how complex a subject can be made from the bottom up, it always remains simple from the top down, it always remains simple in the conceptual sense and in the elegant sense. If a scientist cannot explain what he is doing in "street" English and precise analogies, he quite likely does not know what he is doing.
Darwin's "Theory of Evolution," for all its complexities, is conceptually very simple and elegant in saying that all life forms evolved from the molecules of the earth, that all of life is related, that all of life is bound up in one evolutionary process. Darwin was able to see strands of that larger process all about him in the living world and in the fossil record. He was able to see structural, functional and behavioral relationships between living things that outlined the inherent creativity of Life. Darwin set all living things to the music of time and order. What Lyell did for geology and the evolution of the earth, Darwin did for biology and the evolution of life on earth. This posed such an overwhelming threat to supernaturalism, the Papacy was forced, in 1870, to declare itself infallible, not that Science was wrong. The church had no option but to bow out in a cop out.
In essence, Darwin observed existing life forms and their fossil records and provided temporal organization and order to the natural processes he observed. That could be accomplished on empirical/logical ground, by virtue of Darwin's living in a conceptual One World in which such order would seem likely to exist. All of human brilliance is found in looking for things that others, living in smaller worlds, would never think existed and would, therefore, never seek.
The provision of a causal explanation (the "why") for observed natural processes (the "how") was likewise accomplished on empirical/logical ground by demonstrating mutation and natural selection as providing the earthborn motivation for biological evolution. By integrating empirical knowledge into larger viewpoints, Darwin made it possible to conceptualize the core evolutionary process beneath life on earth. Darwin made it possible to see Life on earth as a unity involved in an integrated, ordered process with inherent direction.
By answering "why" questions in a scientific context, Darwin provided a pan-cultural knowledge base and a world view that united all people on earth in one living program, independent of cultural background and without need of supernatural intervention. Life comes of itself. We now know about actual human origins on a global, non-exclusionary basis.
The same situation unfolds in considering the "Germ Theory of Infectious Disease," the "Great Sanitary Awakening" and the work of Snow, Pasteur and Koch. Once again, the men who gave us epidemiology, preventive medicine and public health were coming from a world in which the natural history and causes of disease are entirely earthbound, a world in which supernatural intervention, e.g., a retributive god, is not only unnecessary, but dishonest and unethical by both Hippocratean and nascent Christian standards. "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents" that he be born blind (John 9:1).
One story in particular sheds light on how these views were developed. Pasteur had discovered the bacillus that causes anthrax in cattle and the recommended approach to stop the spread of disease was to kill and bury all infected cattle. That worked just fine, except in certain areas of France where burying diseased cattle did not prevent the spread of disease to new herds. What gives? What did the gods have against some farmers and not others?
Pasteur quietly amazed his colleagues by noting that areas where burying cattle did work were marked by chalky soils devoid of earthworms, and that areas where burying cattle did not work were marked by loamy soils with bountiful earthworm populations. He quickly proved that earthworms were physically transporting anthrax bacilli from buried cattle back to the surface to infect new cattle. Pasteur's brilliance was directly related to his living in a world of processes. There had to be a material process to explain the transport of anthrax bacilli across several feet of earth. Pasteur addressed the problem head on by overtly looking for the material mechanism beneath that process, i.e., earthworm traffic.
By answering "why" questions in a scientific context, Pasteur's generation of medical science provided a pan-cultural knowledge base relevant to all people on earth, independent of cultural background and without need of supernatural intervention. Disease comes of itself, with identifiable earthly causes and necessary (if inadvertant) human involvements leading to exposures, this knowledge providing the basis for preventive medicine and public health. We now know about the origins of human infectious disease on a global basis.
By observing the strands of process beneath the origins of life on earth, Darwin was following the trails of God's thought in producing a world view applicable to the origins of all people. By observing the strands of process beneath the natural history of human disease, Pasteur was following the trails of God's thought in producing a world view applicable to the health of all people. Pasteur did not live in a world of horrendous disease problems that left the people praying to the gods and begging for mercy. He lived in a world in which problems could ultimately be comprehended and controlled, entirely with human knowledge.
It is rather enlightening, therefore, to consider the thinking of Jesus within a scientific context, because doing so provides an image, not of a man with good supernatural connections, but of a man of science, an enormously insightful man who did His thinking in essentially the same ways as other notable and brilliant thinkers of His day. There is no need to invoke supernatural influences in order to comprehend the origins and purposes of His thought.
Jesus was a Hellenic Jew with ample room in his spiritual world for scientific thought, human knowledge and compassion. By the time Jesus was a young man, Greek approaches to formal scientific thought and the values of Greek democracy were long established, several centuries old in fact and available. The Greek libraries in Alexandria were not destroyed by zealous Romanized "christians" until the 4th century AD, after Constantine had perverted the message of Jesus right out of the JudeoRoman program.
Jesus, like Hippocrates before Him and Jefferson after Him, was a dialectition who based His further thought and action on the dialectic human values residing at the core of science, democracy and nascent Christianity. All three men saw the causes of human problems to be entirely earthbound. For Jesus, the causes of political violence and human misery were not supernatural in origin but the result of competing despotic political philosophies with God-awful values and priorities.
Accordingly, Jesus confronted both Judaism and Romanism, out loud and in public, pointing out the despotic nature of absolutism, the unjust nature of legalism and harsh penalism, the counter-productive nature of vengeance-based moralities, and the greed-driven, life-cheapening nature of marketplace values. These diagnostic efforts were entirely empirical and in full recognition of the spiraling nature of vengeance-based "moralities." Jesus offered instead a political philosophy born of human knowledge, honesty and compassion. For that contribution to a saneand honest political philosophy, He was silenced by those prefering to honor religious despotism and rule by the rich and powerful.
In nascent Christian philosophy is found the source of human rights, e.g., "Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more." (John 8:11). In nascent Christian philosophy is found the wisdom of separating church and state, e.g., "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are Gods." (Matthew 22: 21). In nascent Christian philosophy is found the "purest system of morals ever before preached to man ... calculated to heal and not to create differences," the core ethical morality upon which Jefferson constructed His Declaration and would have built American Democracy were it not for the supernatural religious right wing.
Implicit in nascent Christian philosophy is the concept that deity resides on the human inside, that god is defined by how we think and act. If we be blindly obedient, vengeful and self-righteous, then so goes our god. That is precisely why Jesus appealed, not to the heads of church and state, but to the heads and hearts of the people, requesting them to ground their spirituality in honesty and compassion. That is precisely why Jefferson appealed, not to the heads of church and state, but to the heads and hearts of the people, requesting them to ground their political philosophy in nascent Christian values and human rights. Both requested only that the people think for themselves and judge other's judgments using nascent Christian values as their standard.
The fact that the thoughts of Jesus can be analyzed like any other human thoughts, without recourse to supernaturalism, points to the profoundly human nature of the Christian message. Jesus was likely a small-framed, dark-complected, young Jewish man with faith and courage and knowledge that transcended that of both the Jewish and Roman empires. So sure was He of the spiritual content of dialectic human values, He was willing to die for them. In contrast, the Roman church built in His name three centuries later was willing to launch self-righteous, pre-emptive conquest in the name of those values. In Jefferson's mind, nascent Christianity had been "adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions [JudeoRoman supernaturalism] into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power ... perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, so as to constitute the real Anti-Christ."
Insofar as the thought of Jesus can be considered "divine" or "from God," then those same definers can be applied to all great thinkers, from Socrates and Hippocrates to Newton and Jefferson, from Lincoln and Pasteur to Einstein and Bohr. Insofar as the emergence of modern democracy, the abolition of slavery and the eradication of infectious disease can be considered blessings on this earth, then the God of Jesus can be found in the thought of healers like Jefferson and Lincoln and Pasteur and Koch. All thoughts and acts of deity on earth are human thoughts and human acts.
The humanness of Jesus cannot be denied. That His message was born of scientific thought with profound spiritual content cannot be denied. That His message was perverted by JudeoRoman supernaturalism for two millennia in support of self-righteous imperialism, colonialism and capitalism cannot be denied. That His message was enshrined by Jefferson and Franklin in their Declaration cannot be denied. That His message was perverted by Tory capitalism and ultimately placed in check (momentarily) by Republican crony capitalism cannot be denied. That all worlds are created by the human mind cannot be denied. That one of those worlds, the one we all live in, could be honest and caring and human cannot be denied.
Jesus came from the world of science, the world of intuitive and empirical/logical thought about the material world, a world that He could observe and interpret and comprehend. He developed a larger world view from which He could clearly comprehend the cultural causes of despotism and human violence, and what needed to be done on earth to set the world straight.
Jesus lived in a world having no relationship whatsoever to the supernatural constructs which the JudeoRoman church employed to justify empire in His name. Implicit in that Romanized view, Jesus was second to god's law, the implication being that Jesus was a devout legalist/penalist who would never break God's laws and who enjoyed a good execution or a good war to spread the word. In other words, Jesus was characterized most of all by blind obedience to the Pope. In Roman eyes, Jesus was unattainable. Christian values were not to live by, they were to justify self-righteous conquest and control, in the name of Jesus, but in the interest of the rich and powerful. Is this not the same approach used by the Bush administration in promoting capitalistic right wing dominion on a global basis?
Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and their enlightened Christian friends brought Jesus down to earth two centuries ago. In order to make Jesus real on earth, we must do likewise. We must accept the humanness of Jesus and the fact of His death. We must accept that He can only live now through the people, and know that He is uniformly attainable because of His humanness.
After two millennia of fabrications and lies in the name of the rich and powerful, we must become Christian "in the only way He ever intended." We must abandon supernaturalism, vengeance, self-righteousness and choseness and we must become citizens of Jefferson's Democracy, steeped in the values of Science and nascent Christianity, steeped in human knowledge. We must take our place, for the first time, as a Democracy among Democracies, in the interest of human maturation and world peace. --poasted 02.05.04
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.
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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