The Pillars of Society

Religion as a system helps maintain morality, meaning, discipline, and impulse control in a society and its existence in a secular state helps prevent said Secular state from co-opting its role in society as its own fueling intolerance to those that oppose the State, e.g., Nazism, Constantine of the Roman Empire adopting Christianity, Caliphate, etc. which concerns itself with the increase of worldly power and authority in its own affairs.

One could make the argument that the major religions could not have been so long-lasting if they weren't created as religions of State in their past, however, because secular authority contributes a great deal to religious authority whether we want to believe it or not the two at this point are quite entangled in a Gordian knot. Religion is just integral as any other well-functioning part of society and is a pillar to be maintained. The curious thing about religion is that it can convince the State to adopt it because its moral authority threatens the moral authority of the ruling class; religion is a vehicle that helps many people find the sacred and eternal meaning in their daily lives.

Many ideologies can be constructed as religions, but not all religions are ideologies. Religions tend to create internal societies founded upon the traditions and mysteries found therein. Mystagogues, demogogues, and ideologues inform us in many ways about society and where it's heading as have the of prophets, seers, and shamans of yore. Many will claim they are free of indoctrination, but that is quite implausible considering one must live their life while considering the best possible course to do so.

Propagandists, proselytizers, pastors. Some consider them the same, but this a bit facile. People love to talk about rational skepticism as if to say it didn't grow due to the contributions of Christianity on Western society. Western society is a co-mingling of Pagan and Judeo-Christian values, and these two traditions tell us a lot about our culture just in the same way that China has the Buddhists, Taoists, and the Confucians.

The continuity of major religions speak for themselves as a major contributor to stability in many areas even though Secular governments meddle in their affairs and internal politics the same as they do in minor Secular societies and vice-versa. It is a luxury and privilege to consider them feckless in a society inundated by materialism.

It's best to think of society as a whole resting upon various schools of thought which each within their ranks have those wishing to conserve and those wishing to profit by destroying via catabolism or cannibalizing another pillar.

Philosophical religious people should disown those who use religion as a shield against philosophy, rather than defend them based on doctrinal familiarity. One doesn't need religion so much as they need moral philosophy and Confucianism-Buddhism showcase that quite well, but that's merely looking East. We can't ignore the effect of Paganism and Roman-Greek philosophy on the Western mind and upon Abramhamic religious concepts. They've merged quite a bit. Religion is one of the vehicles that prepare the mind for philosophy, and is a huge function of memory, wisdom, and knowledge in society.

You need a method and way of living your life
[11:06] <BAnt0s> and invariably all things exist at the same time
[11:06] <BAnt0s> just not in the same proportion to each other
[11:07] <BAnt0s> conserving or increasing your power
[11:08] <BAnt0s> surviving society for some, religion has more bearing on their lives than a philosophy or ideology 

<@apotheon> BAnt0s: Philosophy is what one needs.  Religion is just a prepared way to get philosophy.
[11:10] <@Mahjong> lots of google pages have been broken in FF since chrome
[11:11] <BAnt0s> apotheon: I like that.
[11:11] <@Mahjong> ^
[11:11] <@apotheon> It's prepackaged, ready-to-consume.
[11:11] <BAnt0s> What kind of relationship does one have with philosophy?
[11:11] <@apotheon> depends on the individual
[11:11] <@Mahjong> microwavable philosophy meal
[11:12] <BAnt0s> Well here's the thing, philosophy implies a love of wisdom through the intellect
[11:12] <@apotheon> Some people use religious doctrine (but not religion per se, really) as a way to have as little philosophy in their lives as possible, of course, and they give all religious people a bad name.
[11:12] <BAnt0s> and according to the definition moral self-discipline
[11:13] <BAnt0s> Religion is one of those things that increases the level of impulse control and self-discipline which was formative for rationalism and the enlightenment
[11:13] <@apotheon> Philosophical religious people should disown those who use religion as a shield against philosophy, rather than defend them based on doctrinal familiarity.
[11:14] <BAnt0s> Of course
[11:14] <BAnt0s> Sadly, I'd say a lot of Muslims in the media choose the 2nd installment ;)
[11:15] <BAnt0s> and even Christians are co-opted into the Israel Zionist narrative in the same way
[11:15] <BAnt0s> That's a very powerful distinction you defined.

Things I won't be able to understand until many years in the future

So it's like people born in the 50s want to do what they were told in the same way that those born in the 1980s did, but are stuck in this mentality of they just-can't-not-yet-because, shock and awe.
I'd prefer not getting in stranger's cars, unless of course, they were driving a taxi, then I'm okay with it.
They seem to share in common the tendency to be gaslight for social decay, far before they were ever in the know concerning it. Once they learn about it, they aren't in a position of power or influence to break the cycle in their youth.
Maybe the standards went down concerning who is or isn't a stranger in the professional sense, instead? :P How do you explain Presidents hugging babies? Anything is possible when you're Strange or not far from impossibility!?
Things are not 'normal' today by any default factory standards of how things should be based on expectations engendered or otherwise. They are tragic, or should we also feel that way in kind as a result of facing the music? I think not.
Now you get far more familiar with others much sooner than you otherwise should and as a result: Utterly opaque/transparent to others or an enigma to oneself? Future victim, accomplice, or hero: A No-Face? Someone who has internalized values that don't seem redeemable. Someone to later scorn and scapegoat, because of different standards. Symptomatic or systematic?
What is public and what is private information? What is the extent that others are entitled to know about you tacitly, as a given, and you are beholden to how they feel about you, in turn, even if it is a false representation of your subjective reality what if it were closer to being objective?
In these situations I find the most confusion. What is and isn't real in those moments? How do we know when we've reached consensus anymore or we're merely being lied via omission or unspoken norms? What is the byproduct of group consensus and political clout? Political correctness, self-righteousness, and indignant cynicism perhaps.
Just to be playfully absurd even further:
It seems that there are two generations and mentalities that branch and recycle indiscriminately: Cain and Abel. One who does what they are told, because that is their core identity, and the Other, the exception to the rule, the person who breaks the mold for whatever reason, and is therein held to a lower/higher standard in terms of sensibility, based on the passive increase and devotion of the One who does as they are told, without personally disciplining themselves accordingly are otherwise insolvent in all appearances, feckless in the material/sensual/spiritual world, blinded and subjected to circumstance and gravity. Inconsistencies don't solve themselves by passing the buck. Instilling and inspiring virtue can sometimes outdo itself: you've obliterated the consequence of installing and sequestering vice simultaneously in an effort to appear good, mistaking one for the other, because you've confused abstracts as concretes through a guise of belied gravity or grace in response to stress or lack of impassibility toward acting and being. Incapable of suffering or feeling pain.

When you don't condemn violence, no matter the source it grows. Good intentions mean little here.

 

This image is really intellectually dishonest, because it perpetuates the myth that ANTIFA is innocent. I'm not here to say who started it, but I will condemn ANTIFA as violating the non-aggression principle just the same as any self-identified extremist, fascist or communist. I will also say no to Authoritarianism when it shows its ugly head in the streets: political militias on the left and right won't be tolerated. Red shirt, brown shirt it's all the same to me as a Progressive-Libertarian. Free speech is not hate speech, and only in regards to the Law, not mere subjective opinion. Defamation and libel are hate speech, but they are words nobody teaches anymore or even understand as such for they are being rewritten in the minds of us all. There's not much respect for others anymore because of all the abuse. It's terrible.

The Media storm is also profiting off of this and it is creating a platform for violence to be perpetrated against American citizens. The political extremists in our country, if anywhere else, would be called political terrorists at this point. The sad reality is the abuse.

Look at all the outbreaks of violence on Universities by students on the Left and the censorship of alternative, usually Libertarian viewpoints, which is in violation of free speech, which is called hate speech now— in most cases a false equivalent. This coddling does us no good. Allowing defamation to continue is disingenuous: ideas possess people, people don't possess ideas. Calling someone an outright Nazi (a tactic of the far Left) who obviously isn't, doesn't give you any moral authority (authoritarianism) to deal with them as a vigilante — it just makes you an agonist, and before you know it you're playing the same game at the cost of liberty.

As a student of history, this is very similar to the fall and collapse of Germany's Weimar Republic, because the Middle abandoned the highground for fear of their safety from one side or the other. This is just bad politics today, and I'm equally attacked by extremists on both the Left and Right, because I condemn them both equally. Trump destroyed the old conservative establishment in his party. The Democrats destroyed the populism within their party by supporting an undemocratic candidate within their ranks, due in part to how the DNC superdelegate system works, which is effectual for maintaining power, but poor for responding to revolutionary demands. The sad reality is that the DNC elected Trump because of their incompetence, and they won't admit to it.

When you don't condemn violence, no matter the source it grows.

The problem I find is that many on in the center are simply clueless that they're creating the violent extremists on the other side by lying in the same bed prepared for them by left and right extremists. This is how politically unaware people are of the situation. By not condemning them, they find it a great comfort instead to create the problem out of ignorance and then punish it that which their coddling created: Moral grandstands for days.

Honest and responsible Progressives and Libertarians, if they don't take moral leadership, then an extremist group will, and then nobody of any Moderate inclinations will be able to protest or demonstrate out of fear of retaliation or risk of their public safety. Progressives and Libertarians have been working hard for 20 years to unseat the NeoCon/Lib establishment, and we won't see our Republic held hostage in its political course.

The not so Velvet Revolution of Seattle

This map is a prescient reminder of where we are as a Nation, and our future outlook in our municipalities and their corresponding industrial bases. I couldn't help think of the variegated layers that constitutes such a Regionalism, much like an onion would peel, or an orange unraveled. This sort of doctrine while not entirely causal implies a certain correlation to the Chinese model, belied by our Globalized economy and logistics. Western-styled Democracy in our Metropolises seem to be in their last throes - wrangled by its betters - while it can still exist, it is rendered feckless through the maldistribution of resources: the Ends justifying the Means of such theft, not beholden to the Common Good, which is an oxymoron to makers of the world to be. My interest in this topic is purely academic and to document for myself observations I've made over the last 10 years living within Seattle and to give a glimpse on where my scholarship has taken me, while holding true to my belief in the suffrage and self-determination of We the People.
As Metropolitan regionalism trumps State sovereignty, or Corporate interests hold sway over Municipalities and Federal authorities (seemingly): we should be ponderous of a few things, even if from time to time States like Alaska are thrown a bone for the sake of maintaining a constituency. P.S —I should also bespeak my foresight herein so as not to write another op-ed disaster circa Q2 2017, that Amazon is opening a homeless shelter— wagging the dog I speak about in this post as if it were clockwork.
Namely, the concentration of tax revenue into industrial havens— this is why there is such a political divide from East and Western Washington: it creates an inequitable relationship for the purpose of iniquitous gains. It even extends to the quasi-corporate, federally subsidized nature of its primary educator: the University of Washington, which as a result, has its own microcosm and corresponding bureaucracy to direct the expansion of its enterprises similar to the Californian model, and all its blunders transposed into greener pastures. While the FAFSA economy is one way public Universities can shore losses, I wonder if this trend is truly beneficial in the long run, because the indebtedness and loss of productivity it can create for new entrants into the job market already burdened with accelerated housing costs with the need to be in localities with the highest prospects for return on their educational investments.
The corporate investiture and out-of-State money that uses our Direct democracy Initiatives, cultural and political values, which are the hallmarks of Washington State's institutional heritage, in an effort to divest resources from their democratic bases into a corporate-based hegemony, calls for the incremental usurpation of direct-democracy and civilian reform by using it as a means to lobby government according to its market needs. Much of this is done thru a Liberal guise, cloaked in the faux-reality of academia and the ideology of an illiberal Leftist bunch, but contains a noose that undoes its good intentions. Education has been used to wag the dog of voters who will automatically vote for anything which would improve it, even if at a later date, that money is used for something other than its reason for existence. Why the need for the deception? Lies while they work, also create nested inefficiencies and grey areas that increase public distrust of their institutions. People forget that injustice of a higher node tends to increase the incentive for administrators and bureaucrats further along the line, providing wiggle room they need in order to commit rather heinous financial decisions within their institutions in order to line their pockets, which I believe work against the grand vision of oligarchs, because they terrorize the public economically. Local, not out of State oligopolies, who are largely in charge of the politics within Seattle, should work alongside the public in a more monopolistic fashion in order to root out middlemen, and discourage corruption and collusion which have every intent to fleece the consumer and tax payer in rent seeking behavior. I want to believe this trend is merely a period of transition and not a slippery slope.
Classical Liberal values are always usurped by various illiberal detractors working in their own self-interest in a manner that spells the death of things such as common sense. Only at the end, when corporate socialism has utter governance do we see the outcry of public social initiatives from politicians seeking to create dependencies out of their ivory towers now subfusc light. The minimum wage is a distraction from the real problem: people moving here with a lack of affordable housing. There are always a bundle of nerves creating crisis points e.g., out of state investment real estate, out of state rental corporations, no caps, no rent controls. The city has had many opportunities to listen to advocates for microhousing, rent controls, and measure to prevent rent collusion from rental associations — or even put an end to homelessness! They blew up the King Dome which was owned by the City and replaced it with two corporate stadiums, and would rather in spend $100 million in renovating the Space Needle instead of getting people off the streets.
Citizen efforts have been thwarted for the most part from having any meaningful impact unless there's corporate backing, because they aren't supposed to have any, remaining feckless without momentum. Government officials have not protected the People. Weeding and scything economically vulnerable people in this way actually robs Seattle of the very people it needs to have a vibrant culture and tourism industry, unless it wishes to sell out entirely, which it seems contented to do, staying the course its on why do we further pretend there is any authenticity or vibrancy in the culture today. It's just a sick circus for the common man, a malady.
Lux Sit — that is the obscenity of our primary educator. Prolapsed from a bloated administrative and bureaucratic federal University system— a failure in California— usurping the passions of youth with bankrupt and hollowed ideologies, divorced from reality in order to line the pockets of an upper crust, have robbed the Public. Who thru land acquisitions, bookstores, student housing, stadium building, branding, and a monopolisation of affordable clinics, have demonstrated their lack of integrity through the utilization of federal funds from student loans to create an entire generation of highly 'miseducated' youth, with comfortable tenured professorships and meager pickings for adjuncts— hiding their disfigurement and shame — denying any wrong doing as they commit abuses for the sake of career by creating new departments and infrastructure which require more administrators and bureaucrats to run, deflecting responsibility onto young adults after partaking in none, having created an institution that starts to resemble a elite Mill rather than an elite Ivy. A dystopia of the mind, not subject to those who teach, but of those who preach and leach.
The People knew what should have been done, but their betters only aided and abetted those that captured the keys to the City, but the truth of the matter is their hearts were corrupted— at the end of the day all people have price tags. 'Pricing out the People' almost takes on a metaphorical and dystopian edge.
From a citizen's perspective, you could say we live in a sordid state of economic and social control — two signs of the same symbol — one authoritative principle: corporatism of which communism and fascism combine, vie for a stake in the almighty economic engine blooming in the fullness of its supremacy, which it deems benign, but is seen as asinine by those being priced out economically.
It is a system where a Public Ivy school (marketing is wonderful) can take public dollars and invest them into the stock market without handing in their resignation: it's obvious this behavior is motivated not in an effort to make tuition affordable and improve education, but to increase infrastructure spending and pay raises for unnecessary niceties.
It is a system where adjunct professors live on paltry sums in an area that is so eager to educate, with professors who want to do their work, but who can do little to emotionall connect and engage with students. Institutions that are unable to support its own faculty, shouldn't be educating students. Juggling multiple part-time jobs, earning little-to-no benefits, depending on public assistance: This is the financial reality for many adjunct professors across the nation. Where administrators easily are left to their own devices and bloat their salaries accordingly.
To Zizek, at least, "unknown knowns" as a critique of the popularization of Rumsfeld's Unknown Unknown (which led us into Iraq), are "the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values." Greed is good would be dying out if not for the titan grip the old guard has upon its horde of public treasure. And it is those things unknown which control us, we don't control them. Many administrators, superintendents, and so forth aren't even educators themselves. This is largely overlooked, because their loyalties have little to do with faculty and student relationships, and in fact in extremes, is antagonistic towards such a thing occuring.
This causes limitations on the self-determination of local Peoples, too: metropolitan elementary and secondary public educational budgets have been spent on increasing the market value of corporations, and Paul Allen, thru increasing land values (two Stadiums). The People voted against these new projects.
Other examples of corporate enrichment at the public's expense is the South Lake Union Trolley (ironically called the S.L.U.T by locals but might just be the troll in the room), especially when Civilian-led infrastructure projects were rejected in favor of corporate ones, namely, the historic conceptualization of a green core where the new Denny development took place instead: the corresponding economic and infrastructure allocation to private entities for their employees and long-term real estate development plans, and the subsequent relocation of local demographics due to the gentrification of the polity - as skilled-workers transplant and replace local workforce lacking in the necessary skills or proper access to transportation.
Some buildings have met a compromise and buildings with thoroughfares, as demonstrated by the Amazon boom, but rarely does this occur, because that is a private benefit made public and while it makes for better city planning isn't itself cost effective. Why did Public funds need to be used to increase infrastructure for workers and tourists that would push locals and natives out of the city? If we speak in large, overarching and decade long plans, then why isn't the Commons spoken about and emphasized — simply coddled? You can't have a vibrant, inclusive city with just white collar workers. It's got to have a soul too.
Dehumanizing conditions and policy towards the homeless: no concentrated rehabilitation efforts (why would they even exist when there's no affordable housing), yet they are encouraged to come here in droves it seems on tickets from New York: an obvious lack of shelters (which created tent cities, which now are dissipated and atomized across public spaces). It demoralizes local inhabitants and makes everyone more vulnerable— it's not what people want. The homeless are furthering the concept that loitering is a public offense, when it is merely poor city planning and regard for citizens.The problem inherent in the City's lack of attention to homelessness is pushed onto neighborhoods without hostile, exclusive business park architecture.
The International District, a cultural gem, faces a huge wave of homelessness. This would invariably increase the rate of gentrification for corporate neighborhoods and their architectural-style which is inherently inhospitable to the homeless. You begin to see that neighborhoods who don't adopt this architecture, inevitably feel the malaise upon their neighborhoods, imposed by the threat of homelessness without concentrated efforts from the Council, pushed into small confines; under freeways, on treed slopes, into the streets - creating a huge public and private crisis: the City isn't making sense of its inherent inconsistencies and contradictions - that's what homelessness is all about. How the homeless are integrated into a city can show how inherently exploitative a lack of authentic, passionate attention can be. It is socially threatening — both to the homeless and to the housed — because the city is failing in its duties to both, the epitome of disingenuous decrees. We know the money to help the People who pay taxes and live in Seattle exist. We have to call out corporate welfare and subsidy in the extremes it manifests, but would Seattle be Seattle without it, or was that battle lost long ago?
As land-values plummet relative to the surrounding neighborhood, shocks of vagrancy sprout about it as a new economy forms: one of delinquency, criminality, exploitation, and vulnerability. And as people move out of the city due to the chaos, they will be replaced with more transplanted subsidiary workers of large-stock corporations, or affluent local White-collar workers in gated high-rise communities, lacking in rent control or microunits, isolated from their low-density. As culture centers move further away from Downtown, as rent forces local independent artists out, new neighborhood communities are then reared culturally only to be gentrified, whereas the process could work in an entirely different way if only those in charge of development could pay attention to it.
An inherent lack of due diligence, mismanagement, misappropriation of funds, and in all appearances, intelligence, regarding how the Seattle educational budget is spent, even though we are one of the most educated cities with a high tax base. This is the elephant in the room, and the ostrich with its head in the sand. Bread and circuses for a select and subsidized, Commons neglect. This isn't a durable model and tourism could be more profitable if everyone could participate in their city's culture regardless of their social class.
The lack of money spent educating children in poor urban areas with the skills they need to compete in the domestic economy: lack of ability to partake in the local economy: lack of rent controls: lack of micro-units in new land developments: invariable displacement and subsequently uprooted peoples relocate via the economic principles of corporate subsidies and by the passive increase of the bureaucracy, which funnels more public money into corporate-led > citizen-led endeavors. Micro-housing continuously curtailed in favor of high-rise condominiums in the downtown core, isolating the People from their City, and the City from its Citizens - who are now, it would seem, unwelcome guests to our large-stock corporate Overlords. It doesn't have to be that way.
Large cities are being turned into large white-collar factories and playgrounds for those who can pay to play, collaborate, share, and otherwise care to participate in the Velvet Revolution that is underway. The City of Seattle is anything but in my view, it is a complex conglomerate of oligarchy, and it should be considered at what cost to the future of Seattle.
Private wanton speculation, be that as it may, this is a cursory glance from a Seattlite being led away. Should we expect more Vancouver skylines and foreign direct investment in real estate? People have less say than they realize, but there's value in keeping all income brackets within the city, not sectioning them off into ghettos or suburban landscapes which increases traffic and overburdens the tax base in those areas. The controllers of Seattle need to take more responsibility for how its tax base, zoning, lack of rent controls, and federal resources are utilized so that they don't threaten the free market and instead work for the betterment of King County, such that all can partake in its wealth and entrepreneurial spirit and innovation.
TL;DR section and post-scripted — The laundering of public money for private gain is so widespread and prevalent, as is the the lobbying of public institutions for private, iniquitous gain at the cost of the Commons and the Common Good. We've been in an economic and cultural warzone since the implosion of the King Dome (which was still unpaid for in 2000) to make way for two corporate stadiums, funded by the Washington State Lottery of which the Public Education Fund was to be the recipient, which they now portend this fund "doesn't work" to finance education, while being ostriches with their heads in the sand disregarding the embezzlement that has occurred in pursuit of Public Education under false-flag Superintendents and contracts! This is just an example of one grandstand after another, and there are many others. The dream of the 90's is alive in Tacoma or Boise, not Portland. Seattle is a trap, don't move there if you have a care, many from Seattle don't live there any where. Please add to this conversation, even if my thoughts are borrowed and proper citations found. All these thoughts are from my personal experiences living, schooling, and working in Seattle while participating in its local culture having lived in King county my whole life.

I carry all my effects with me

I'm a selectively right-handed person. I use my left for most things requiring "dexterity", but then had to use a mouse, scissors, can openers, etc on the right — mechanical tasks. For example, have difficult finding which side of the mat to bat on in baseball. Also similarly, I couldn't figure out which hand to throw with in baseball, and could catch a ball better with my right hand. Played a lot of soccer and loved to dance to medieval music like the saltrello.. Had the same experience in school with behavior, but with exceptional grades. I read a lot of classics from 4th to 5th grade when peers later only discovered them in high school, same boredom in class— disruptive or tardy often. Everyone thought I was weird, entertaining, eccentric. It was like going through the eye of a needle when I had to learn latitude and longitude in the 8th grade; I had learned it on my own and won a national contest online in 5th grade, but was doomed to repeat it. I was suspended several times for behavior or dress code violations. I struggled with learning to ride a bike, but eventually did after continued efforts and many falls. Somehow convinced myself when I was 8 years old that walking my bike on the curb made it appear to others that I was riding my bike— was always comparing myself to people 2-8 years older than myself probably due to having a psychotic older sibling. It may be because I'm left-handed (better balance being the cat I am), because while physical tasks were hard, I had a desire to prove myself accomplished in them, including my penmanship. Fekk. I also keep a garden and grow herbs while commenting on current events, hahaha xD It's so crazy, dear doppleganger, but isn't that a terrible superstition? I too wear coats inside (my 3rd grade teacher would always ask if my coat was still on — it was!), am sensitive to cold—enjoy scalding water, and my family Vermonter. If I didn't know better, then I'd say you took all my trappings, including my long hair, narrow face, and favorite spectacle shape.. I'm more of a demented child prodigy raised religious turned technologist turned botanist turned artist turned writer turned turned philosopher turned madman turned farmer, in that order.

Very odd thing to find yourself staring back at you.

In Response to "Five Strange Facts" by Tarl Warwick, 

God is dead. History is dead. Democracy is dead.

I don't want to intrude where not needed, but both political parties are governed by neoconservative and neoliberal bureaucrats which are both apart of the same corporate payroll and pocketbook. They're like a team. Anyone is welcome to create a new seat of power based on an ideology, but it inevitably fails to deliver on its promises — why? Because our system of governance is by corporate and banking interests, and not only that, from aristocratic oligarchic ideology, which is what created capitalism in the first place, which always is a monopolistic force seeking hegemony control of production. This is usually done thru the ideology of progress alone. Technology keeps creating inequities that infringe on sovereign liberties enshrined in our constitution.

Ever since we moved from an agrarian and traditional American society to an industrial one where many don't value their work nor find fulfillment in it arose with it a whole host of problems. It's amazing w have endured as much trauma as we have, endowed with as common folk, with an enormous respect for our fellow Americans —they have tried so hard to divide this country and have slowly usurped its wealth and bankrupted its values.

We have problems in our society, and before we can address them they are paved over. Trumpism, Celebrity, there are all kinds of corporate distractions from the truth of this reality.

Our energy model is disastrous and the inefficient. Eventually, it will become that the only power we truly have as citizens is to live off the annual solar supply, but that could very well be criminalized decades from now, and made impossible thru bureaucracy, zoning, permits, and taxation.

America used fertilizers to accelerate its economy into more advanced forms of mercantilism and resource extraction, best practices in order to gain market access to more capital to increase the wealth of the oligarchy. It has also forced farmers to jeopardize their livliehoods because change the price of commodities. This creates rural retreat, and urban creep, because one cannot live off their labor alone.

When we reached peak bird poop, we had to accelerate a still nascent technology to convert ammonia out of the air thru the use of natural gas, then to coal, and later to oil. The monopoly on how energy and production can be used and employed is a large part of why we're in trouble. Those in power know there are better ways to run this planet, but if they methods they would lose their power. Most people ignore this entirely. 90% of them easily.

I'm kinda abrupt when I say this but Hillary Clinton is apart of the same oligarchic regime as Trump, ties with racist organizations and affiliations, and when she couldn't cinch victory gave it over to him. Her family is renown cloak and dagger NGO philanthropy but instead uses its money in order to make money off the most vulnerable in society thru rendering them as capital instruments.

I love how you both can disagree so poignantly and in a mature way, but in the seats of power when your children grow up together and are friends it means something entirely different altogether than what the common American person can understand. These families behave dynastically and they are in alliance with each other against the hungry masses such as we who have no access to the throes of capital because we cannot behave in a sovereign like they do, having been mentally colonized and corrupted thru propaganda. Having no power to influence corporate hegemony with inherited wealth, we try to navigate a system that is set up for us to fail within, because we have not understood at true autonomy comes from being able to have control over your ownpower generation. Isn't it ironic that the common word for electricity is power, yet we have lost the meaning entirely? Eletricity is the means of production that citizens want, but cannot have save for it being allowed under preconditioned ways thata hedge for oligarchic powers to maintain their monopolistic control over our very lives..

It is an entirely different context, and it is silly assume we have any idea what really is going on behind the curtain. The constant Trump reporting is only a means to an end, which is to keep the curtain closed to the Holy of Holies— the conspiratorial nature of their brand of politics. Trump may have catabolized all 12 candidates of the Republican party, but he has still failed to convince me he's anything more than a different tripe and fashioning. He was the only one who wasn't a muppet and it could be well enough assumed that it was planned from the beginning. The common people will never research and know that he was once a Democrat. There is but one end: the accumulation of wealth and power in a globalist elite world in the making. Frank Herbert's novels become much more compelling when you understand this is how the world works and has worked for many millennia. Marxism and progressive liberalism is used when the oligarchs fear pitchforks, invoking the rights of the individual while simultaneously depriving them the People of authenticity, which they then sell to them in a multitude of ways.

Democracy has failed. We live in an Autocratic state with no civilian decentralized energy self-autonomy energy production. We have only a consumption model and thus we get consumption politics, and it is we who are consumed by them parasitically. Hillary champions Marxist values, but knows that it is only a means to destroy traditional values and create a dependency class of people subservient to the oligarchy. It's like having a mascot in team Sports, exactly how most Americans treat politics. We don't actually discuss ideas, merely more ways to give the oligarchy more of our money. Similarly, Trump champions values that esteem him in the eyes of his dependencies, but they would rather use the dinosaur term "constituencies", which have no power, and it is Trump whom is dependent upon a much higher authority in order to do what he does and get away with it.

If you want politics to change, then you need to be aware of how gentrification, suburanism, and ruralism lay together and there needs to be a countervailing rural trend in order to shore our collective trauma and shared American values before they disintegrate by creating communities that become stewards of their land and create opportunities for others by the creation of their own fuels, convertible into propane substitutes. The economics of it is quite compelling. The split in American society is in the energy economy, and not the suburban push to adopt solar panels from market forces controlled by the oligarch elites.

http://www.biomass2methanol.org/

Since you two are still friends it means you have not been mentally enslaved or enshrined, unwilling to sacrifice your friendship to feed a false ego idolatrously in self-righteous indignation. Bravo and much respect.

I almost said Vikings when thinking about what you said of paganism being pacifistic, but then thought you'd counter with the fact that they were defending themselves from Rome's imperialism. Great, thorough analysis. I am grateful, amazed at my sheer luck for being betwixt between the two Great Ages of Piscean and Aquarius. The Piscean Age was so varied and it seems to have given us a time capsule from which to view all of this in a wider, much greater evolutionary process, an ebb and flow. You said it perfectly: a bottle neck. Who knows how an Age starts? Does it continue rising into it's Golden Age, from the mud and mire of the one before, slowly losing its luster at a predetermined space in time? Or does everything collapse due to the accumulation of far too many bottlenecks? My prediction is a bit of both. Morally progressive is something you said towards the end and that resounds quite a bit in our contemporaneous times. The Old, lucky skin is drying up and the fractures readily allow us to peer into this new vessel being formed. Maybe towards the end of our future Golden Age, our culture will begin to look more like Frank Herbert's Dune universe, before it is then spread to the furthest corners of the Universe in one great economic and spiritual shattering, much like the Tower of Babel purportedly Sumerian. I find it more provocative if one things of the shattering of tongues to be as you have said before, a kernel of truth, which then makes this concept available to other modalities and applications. It is a plurality principle. The Catholic Church will most surely survive. It has failed in the past to live up to the name Catholic, implying Universal. It has persecuted many spiritual revivals and movements to maintain its hegemony and power. It is hard to judge any institution that has outlasted so many others before it and present. It too has its own ebbs and flows. Both Saints and Sinners can be found leaving their mark on its institutions. The Christian Church had a Shattering due to secular and provincial lords not wanting to pay taxes anymore to Rome, able to fend for themselves, rebelled, creating a great flowering of great religious and cultural idealism, invariably forced the Catholic Church to plan the assimilation of its former Churches all over again, slowly. It is far too big of an animal still and Western culture owes a great deal to the scholarship of intellectuals in Monastic orders for being so arduous and diligent in the preservation of antiquity. Also and it is only recently with the addition of new Coptic texts and other Gnostic works that we are seeing the more mystical traditions of the Christian faith, centered within the Platonism of the Hellenized world that created such fertile soil. I find people quick to forget that Christianity and the New Testament is very much hellenized, reformed judaism. A lot of the early Churches that we have writings of are out of Greece through Paul's letters and so on, but due to enforced Orthodoxy under the Roman institution of the Church of Rome it was able to solidify and monopolize dogma, divine authority, and the door to salvation... so this whole notion of Christianity as an aggressive religion is only partially accurate. It is a religion of slaves and scholars. Not all Churches follow the same creeds either, and you're right about the Unitarians and Episcopalians. These branches have inherited the Anglican heresy, which is much different than the Lutheran one (using heresy here in the jocular sense), a, and also we can't forget Scripture itself which has been jeopardized - it's an entire industry making new versions of the Bible from new translations. How its interpreted depends primarily on the level of exegesis applied and if it is thorough in examination or superficial. It almost has this terroir about it much like you'd use to discuss something like wine or coffee beans. Because the Bible was originally written in Greek and Hebrew, going to the original source material helps theological study immensely. When we consider how many different Churches there were, scattered throughout the Old World we would find them as far as the Tarim Basin to the east, and as far south as Ethiopia and Socotra in antiquity. Therefore, in reference to the Episcopalians surviving and all that, yeah. That's why Herbert Crange Catholic Bible. Orange is a favorite color of Dharmic religions. I can see readily how they would interpret Jesus' passage regarding eunuchs in order to sanction same-sex marriages.. Maybe you can share your guess? I personally thing same-sex marriage is a misnomer, because marriage is a heterosexual term in religious law and dogma. Domestic or civil partnerships are more apropos in our secular State and wish that they used these words instead of marriage when the law was passed. "For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it," (Matthew 19:12). At that time being a “born eunuch” was a common phrase for a homosexual. Rather than condemning them, Jesus asserts they have a place. I mean isn't it illogical to think that Jesus would hate gay people when he hung around the most undesirable people in his day, people who were unclean, or despised. It has also been suggested that Mary Magdalene was actually his consort. Instead of Pretty Woman, a Lady from a Whore, we have the Whore becomes Disciple. So yeah, bogus and bogey. People forget their history these days. I thought it was the coolest thing as a kid and self-studied only to find out adults didn't have a clue what I was talking about.   There have been inquisitions over this as we know and much of the Gnostic church tradition was wiped out. It was without a doubt the more individualistic form of Christian philosophy. In the same way that Confucianism won out as a model suitable for the vast majority, it did not satisfy those who had achieved material succor, and in old age Taoism became a personal art and spiritual practice in lieu of the former. There is guidance and there is revelation. One leads you to the gate, but only a seeker walks through it. Fun Fact: Did you know King Henry upon making the Church of England lost the keys to the City of London to Venetian bankers, because he was excommunicated by the Pope? Read the paper trail, but lost my notes.

The real insight here is that we may finally understand how dumb ideas become "common knowledge" and public policy: an inverse relationship between the quality of an idea and its likely social exposure. We should also be aware of unhappiness and how consent is apart of that, because it will seek to absolve and resolve itself outside of biological constraints and physical reality. Children with unsuitable toys to their disposition, dispossess others through the fragmentation of knowledge, creating further infantile discourse.

Politics is always downstream from culture. If common knowledge is common ignorance, then this indubitably makes sense as one is unable to see wisdom and instead creates consent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWgM2gBRQrA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snqXOvnHzcQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B553na_skKI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8-jRZiXbe4

https://youtu.be/ARTLckN9e7I

Man, Machine, Modernity

Unlike us in this Age, our creations will find ways to overcome the flaws of those who have created them. This appears to be the modus operandi of today, as if humans are inferior, defective, and lacking. It is an artifice and edifice of a civilization who has lost Reason and destroyed spiritual life and replaced it with the secular one. A moral philosophy that is not given reproof in relationship to reality. It seeks to recreate the tower of Babel, ever upwards, higher and higher in pursuit of measuring and monetization. It is there at such heights one forgets the need for mental flight, becoming consumed, as the mind becomes burdened and dross under the gravity of its own monstrous manufacture, irrespective of natural laws and delimiters that the whole structure inadvertently crumbles, piece by piece. Each new stage of consciousness if not properly arrived at creates undue suffering. As the tower grows, we lose connection with our own consciousness as if it were something unconscionable to even cultivate an understanding. When one has a higher vantage point, he forgets his own depths. When one has plumbed his darkest depths, they are able to realize things as they are , while simultaneously disregarding the monumental mirage that they have climbed prior.

This is merely the schizoid temperament of the human mind, which has allowed it to be so adaptive for survival. It needs to be disciplined in order to be self-reflective, otherwise it destroys itself through the displacement culture alone. An immortal body, a mortal soul; A mortal body, an immortal soul. As the soul grows, the body diminishes; The soul diminishes and the body grows. We should be increasingly vigilant about the role of technology in our lives so we can learn best to navigate it's effects on the human psyche.

While technological advances are not unprecedented, the rate of adoption regarding technology is accelerating faster than our ability to respond collectively with best practices in mind, creating gross inefficiencies and negative externalities, which are not fully realized until a later date, because we have no included enough variables through rigorous application and due diligence. Advanced science and technology bring as much risk of disaster as opportunity for progress. Scientific openness with today's advances in telecommunications have created an environment that threatens human life. Where is our precautionary principle? It should be at the forefront. Scientific understanding has progressed to a point where we must favor slow advances in order to fully integrate humanity. Otherwise, we seek to instead enslave, rather than liberate.

The mind is usurped into the realm of the passions and of material progress that it forgets about the delimiters imposed upon our species and planet. It seeks to dissolve all barriers and structures we have created, inducing chaos and the fragmentation of knowledge. We are always dancing on the edge of a knife.

We are increasingly detached from our environments and bodies, and while it can be argued and sustained that technological improvements increase the available knowledge and lead us to deeper understanding, functioning outside of limitations, it can also denature the role of reason, tradition, and common sense. Increasing technological advances requires with it new institutions and additional complexity. You do not create an ordered world through increasing complexity to deal with problems arising from said complications.

You have to fully integrate the old way and the new unless you seek to destroy the very foundations which have allowed it to sustain itself for so long. Our way of life is an attempt to recreate nature, yet nature does it for free if we work with it instead of controlling it. We have freed ourselves from the tyranny of nature. Whereby destroying her, we have imposed the same tyranny on each other, our brothers and sisters. In such a system, I would surely die, authoritarian and collectivized as it is.

I find it remarkable how much faith we give to progress without question, that it begins to shade itself into its own secular religion and ethos. At this stage, I find it disingenuous. And with it, our nation has become further fragmented and parochial, tribal even. Some are taught how to argue and debate different ideas, and others to simply slur past them unequivocally, unable to entertain an opposing opinion or viewpoint. Humor is being replaced by the grey-face.

We are losing our ability to sustain our own attention and empathetic link to others, because the social infrastructure in each individual has been debased, creating an unequally yoked civic life, which has only seemingly increased the distance between people, even though technology brings them closer. A rise in mental illness due to neglecting and loving our fellow man, replacing it with materialism and consumerism which threatens our very lives.

While we thought the internet would make it easier to push forward to save the planet and cultivate new ways of being and identifying, it has with it the vestiges of the old, which seek to squelch anything of the sort due to its lack of perceived profitability due to their continued myopia and disregard for the essential components that constitute human life. Food, shelter, and a healthy ecosystem. If any of these are compromised for the sake of profitability: deconstructing nature and biological necessity into the realm of monopolization: humanity suffers. Forsaking progress for its own sake, we can instead focus on progress for goodness sake, one that doesn't seek to undermine the fabric our very lives.

Sometimes I wonder if this is a natural course of events. When we look at all the tribes who still live in a way they have for thousands of years, we begin to see their wisdom and the depths of our folly. Those who move away from cities inevitably will be tomorrow's Amish and ascetic communities.