Apocalypse Why?

“It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning. They shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid the general applause from all the wits who believe that it is a joke.”  - Soren Kierkegaard 

“I wouldn't mind if the consumer culture went poof! overnight because then we'd all be in the same boat and life wouldn't be so bad, mucking about with the chickens and feudalism and the like. But you know what would be absolutely horrible. The worst? ... If, as we were all down on earth wearing rags and husbanding pigs inside abandoned Baskin-Robbins franchises, I were to look up in the sky and see a jet -- with just one person inside even -- I'd go berserk. I'd go crazy. Either everyone slides back into the Dark Ages or no one does.” - Douglas Coupland


"Nuclear apocalpse - who do you need?  Actors are probably not top of the list.  What can I do for you?  I can pretend to be somebody who can grow you some nice crops."  - Christan Bale  




Once a week...right.


Well, maybe I'll make up for the great vacuum at my heels called the "No-Bloggy Zone" and get back on this pale horse.  It's not that I dread doing a blog about Abortion...because I do...but I want to take this blog seriously and I find the blog now as this big deal the same way someone is at the Everest basecamp and their breathing is already labored and the stew made from grass and radishes being heated over a fire made from the stool of the sherpas tastes like the best meal you've ever had because you think it might be your last and...meh...you guys go on ahead.


Which is why I've decided to be a yeller coward and not do the Abortion blog today.  I want to revisit my last, more cheery subject...the apocalypse.  However, if I pick up speed now maybe I'll crank out a brace o' blogs here in the next few days.  The problem with The 'bortion Blog is it will pretty much irk everyone and please no one but it will approach the subject objectively, rationally, morally, scientifically...which is what we're failing to do now.  And yes, it's all religion's fault...again.


However, I did want to...seriously...get back to this whole worrisome apocalpyse thingy and examine why we may need such an event in order to give our heads that non-invasive lobotomy.  Now I mentioned last episode that the apocalpse need not involve us having to row our boat ashore on rivers of lava, etc.  Will we need to eat our pets, and repurpose Bass Pro Shops as our new mead halls because there will be a devastating collapse of civilization due to an assortment of natural and manmade disasters?  Ironically climate change...which is at least in part exacerbated by human activity...qualifies to be in both categories.  Will it take tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, (and earthquakes that some scientists think are caused by hurricanes), drought, etc. to bring about the change in consciousness that we need to make this planet not a place where people compete and defraud each other but a place where people can figure out, finally, that if we all take care of ourselves, then everyone is taken care of?


Just yesterday there were at least two calls to our house by storm chasers.  Not the lunatics who drive a SUV that they turned into a tank close to tornadoes and stuff so they can try to "understand" tornadoes.  These storm chasers are like ambulance chasers.  Whenever the weather gets a bit rough, they call around to offer a free inspection of your house, shingles and whatnot.  Of course, these folks work for the roofing companies and are looking to get you to file an insurance claim.  These humans see me as a customer, not a person, and it makes it all the more evil for them to shine me with the spin that they're offering me a free service, while calling me on a Saturday when I'm trying to chillax.  These are the people who will not be missed.  If my house is damaged, I'll call my insurance company and we'll get it sorted out.  These are the same sorts of people who make the commercials asking you if your life has been turned upside down by a tractor-trailer accident...while they are smiling.  Insurance companies aren't evil, they're necessary.  But modern civilization may be a necessary evil.


And one thing  that will certainly help us get ourselves straightened out is to get rid of this whole modern "civilization" thing that has run its course.  In a past blog, and I won't regurgitate the whole idea here, but when we look, in the Western World, at how we're living now and think back just a hundred years, not to mention just five hundred years, there must be some explanation as to why technology has advanced so far, so fast.  Remember, everything we needed to have the sort of live we have now has always been here.  And the Ancient Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, etc. were really really smart.  So why haven't we had iPads for two thousand years instead of not even two years yet?


Well, we have actually found out, through archeology, etc. that the ancients actually did make some important discoveries back then.  The Greeks for example did discover steam power.  They made a device that involved an apparatus...that...Don, give them the wiki-link, eh?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile


Thanks, Don.  As Madonna sez, "lookitup."  If you already knew the Greeks discovered the steam engine, I'd give you some Rice-a-Roni(tm)  (the San Francisco Treat), if we had the budget for it...maybe I should monetize this up in here.  So...why didn't they develop the steam engine.  Well, I think Terry Jones (director of Eric the Viking) had the best excuse...they were wondering what they would do with all the slaves that they wouldn't need?  You see...the Greeks, and other ancient empires like them, like the Persians who discovered battery power...Don, please...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery


...thanks again, Don...you see...they already sort of had it all figured out.  And I mean...LIFE.  One of the funniest, and soul-crushingly sad, phenomenons of the present day is that there actually is all this discussion about life.  We've already been there and bought that T-Shirt.  The reality that there are all these strange, narrow, stupid ideologies out there is an indication of how much of a reboot we really need.  The Greeks and Persians and Egyptians and Mayans and Whohaveyou had sophisticated civilizations and when something like the Steam Engine (for crying out loud) came along, they said...naw, we'll pass.  We're okay without it, and besides, it'll put a lot of people out of work.  News flash...just because you can create a robot to make a car, doesn't mean you should, folks.


Now many folks today would say, they just didn't realize the potential, or they were backward, because hey...they believed in stupid things also like astrology, magic, they worshiped a lot of gods...all the things we think makes a culture backward and dumb.  And they had slavery, which we know is immoral and cruel.  Well, I don't want to do a blog on slavery and digress, but slavery then and the absolute evil slavery in modern times now were two different things.  Yes, slavery seems wrong in any light, but many Westerners are looking at their current situation in which they work for someone else, for a set number of hours a week in a strictly scheduled way, and are given a completely arbitrary salary that is not based on how much the company actually makes in revenue and that they have a mortgage that keeps them in that job, and in which the number of laws that restrict what they can and can't do grows every year and we're going...'ang on a minute...I'm really working on a plantation, too.


One thing the ancients certainly got right is that actors and musicians and entertainers in general should be poor and despised since they don't actually apparently have the faculties to do real work.  I'll have a blog about why we pay these slackers so much money to do not much at all down the road.  This will go for athletes, too.  My gawd, Tom Brady...git a reel job!


But seriously...the whole, "our ancestors didn't know any better and they were disadvantaged and miserable and I couldn't live now without my teevee" thing no longer holds water.  Currently in the Western World we are beginning, yes just beginning to see the cracks in Capitalism and Democracy...two great tastes that we thought went together, but we see have doomed us because human nature, currently, cannot be expected to be responsible enough to allow such an economic and political system to reach its potential.  The experiment of the United States of America, in which the states on the North American continent would unite in a political system of freedom, in which all men would be treated equal, and in which all men would have the freedom to worship how they please, to live as they please, with as little interference from a central governing body as possible...we can now stick a fork in it, can't we?  It has been a complete, abject failure.  The USA was the modern attempt at trying to do such a thing considering how human consciousness currently operates.  And it shows that we are incapable of doing such a thing as we are now.  It was doomed to fail...because such a nation with such high ideals was built on a foundation of genocide against the native population and slavery of an imported population.  It's like Adam Sandler playing Hamlet...it just wouldn't work.


Yes, the founding fathers had their heads on straight...they had sober ideas about things that baffle us today like religion and the rights of man and science and all the other stuff.  They were (Rush Limbaugh) dreamy-eyed intellectuals who had high ideas and they believed in mankind's ability to reason.  Many of them recognized the ability to reason as a sign of the divine within man and that when men can employ their reason, en masse, then you would no doubt have a nation that would be as close to utopia as possible.  And then we screwed the whole thing up and "invented" the steam engine and thought it was a really great idea and then came the industrial revolution and modern "civilization" and now we are hoisted on our own petard.  Which phrase basically means "we've belly-flopped on our own grenade."


You see...we may need a cataclysm in order to reset us back to a more simpler time when our material competence and our spiritual competence were more in balance.  Why didn't the Persians develop the Baghdad Battery?  They were satisfied.  Why didn't the Greeks develop the steam engine?  They were satisfied, content  Why?  They were more balanced.  They had material concerns just like anybody but they were balanced by spiritual concerns as well.  The great tragedy in the modern era is material overcompetence and spiritual incompetence.  I still scratch my head about people like Arthur C Clarke.  Clarke was a tremendous mind, a genius in some respects...and a complete waterhead in other areas.  He saw religion as just a necessary evil, not a way to examine areas of human life that science hadn't, or couldn't, explain.  Oh yes, atheists, you can explain away things like LOVE by talking about the drive to pass on your genetic material, hormones/pheromones, all the biological aspects of that...but you'll find that makes for a Valentine's Day card that will not impress your significant other.  Clarke, along with all the other atheists who are mesmerized by this materially-obsessed, scientific age, demonstrate material overcompetence and spiritual incompetence.  And if you replace "extraterrestials" with "gods" in Clarke's writing...he's really saying smart things.  Clarke's folly is thinking these two classes of entities have to be exclusive...instead of maybe just how the light catches the gem at a certain era in human history.


Now of course we do have the opposite...that of people who are materially incompetent and spiritually overcompetent (or they think they are).  These would be the suckers who buy into the New Agey stuff, y'know what I mean.  Recently a woman was cooked to death...yes...because she took part in an exercise that basically buried her alive in one of the sensory depriving rituals that are supposed to do something for you spiritually.  She is reported to have already paid out five figures in past such activities and retreats and services.  Lissen.  If you want to have a spiritual awakening, one place to start is just to go to a quiet room and sit in a chair and stare outward for a few minutes.  But such folks are trying way too hard to try and reboot their brains.  And of course the reality for many who say they are spiritual  is that they aren't, but are part of a culture that is hunkering itself down because it sees its religion coming apart at the seams in a changing world and they're either not able to change or scared to.  Of course many of these folks are quite entrenched in the world and are concerned about money and stuff and have bought into the culture of greed.  Only in the Western World would a group of people whose god has commanded them to love their neighbor as they love themselves would not do so but instead build a very large building for their Sunday Morning conditioning sessions while having the nerve to thank that same god for their blessings.


Yeshua bar Joseph and Benjamin Franklin are both right now beating their heads against a wall.  (Are there walls in Nirvana?)  Yes, modern civilization has run its course, it's served its purpose and we're ready to take the next step in our evolution and if we need to go back to wearing togas, then let it be so.


You see, my Theory of Woohoo...of Everything...sees Western Civilization as a virus (and Xianity as a carrier) and European conquest and Xian missionary trips to "convert the heathens" and basically conquer in Jesus' name is the means to bring about the spread of technology in order to bring about this current era of Globalization.  The increased communication between all the cultures and races and nations of the planet is to allow us, when the reset button is pushed, to all be on the same page, globally, and when we rebuild...we'll use technology to benefit us all, not "mess in our own nest."  Because we've seen how the industrial revolution has allowed the few to exploint the many and that technology should be used wisely, or not at all.  Xianity, with its idea that its god is the only god and that it is the only religion compels many of its followers to evangelize and spread their religion...and where Xianity goes, so does McDonalds restaurants and cell towers.  No, Clarke, religion isn't a necessary evil...but religions and small-minded ideologies that insist there is only one horse in this race unfortunately are...but not for much longer.  I hope. 


But this is why the spread of Islam scares the fertilizer out of the Xian.  What?  There's another religion that wants to conquer the world?  Didn't we already do that?  Well...I say let the Muslims have their turn.  Wrong for the Xians to have all the fun, innit? 


Will we need to have all our toys taken away for us to enjoy the sandbox?  Perhaps.  Of course there are some folks who think they will rule the sandbox and only possess the toys and so be able to ride out the apocalypse and be the guys sitting pretty on the pile of cinders.  Obviously we have seen how the wealthy and powerful seem to be more reckless than ever in accumulating wealth and power for themselves at the expense of the environment and civilization.  As I have touched on before...these folks have an inside track, through various means, including black ops and black magic, on how the chips are going to fall.  This idea was explored in the movie 2012, in which it is known in advance that the cataclysm is going to happen and a certain number of people are preparing to escape it.  A great number of very wealthy people are exploring technologies that would make them human/machine hybrids that would enable them to survive the next big change.  I defecate you not.  Of course, we need to all be reset back two thousand years, before the Dark Ages which were brought about largely by the Christian Church supressing the knowledge of the ancients, to have another chance at doing it right.  It would be very unfair for Richard Branson and a few others to be safe and sound watching the lava flows from their space station or whatever while they party like it's 1999.  No, the paradigm shift will take all of our lunch money.


Again...if we all take care of ourselves, we'll all be taken care of.  And stuff and wealth and politics are only tools to bring about that end.  The solution is for us to stop being tools, isn't it?  And if we can't figure that out, but we're supposed to, because that is the fate of life...to not be miserable or at war with ourselves or unloved...then taking away our toys and putting us in a timeout may be the answer.  After we've been spanked to within an inch of our lives, too.


You just wait until your daddy gets home.  Because as Bill Cosby said, what parents want is peace and quiet...unless he's wrong...which is what I'll touch on next episode.  Putting babies on spikes can wait.


Selah.

The Taco Gospel..or Apocalypse When?

If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.   G. K Chesterton

Morning Campers.  Yes, Pope Gregory returns with his blog and (AhhhhCHEW) there's a lot of dust around the sanctum sanctorum.  It's been almost a year since I cracked open the blog.  I've been busy.  Doing stuff.  Video games aren't going to play themselves, y'know.

Why start again...on New Year's Day?  Well, as Bono sang in the song by the same name, "Though torn in two/we can be one."  I stopped doing the blog for a few reasons.  The chief one was I didn't think I was very good at it.  The second chiefest reason:  Geez, pointing out everything that is dishwater wrong is pretty depressing to write and exponentially, I reckon, more depressing to read.  Better to just go eat a taco and hunker down for the apocalypse.  And shoot, anything I had to say has already been said or was being said by other people, (in better ways) so why bother?  There's nothing in my prior blogs that, I am certain, is novel...or can't be discovered by someone else if they put their ideology in their pocket for a minute and want to know facts...or at least become skeptical about the fictions that have become confused with facts.

So...why turn over the engine again?  Well, I had the occasion to participate in a Solstice ceremony this year.  My post-Xian years have been experimental in terms of spirituality but I had never had the occasion (or frankly the guts) to join hands in a circle while the candles are lit and etc.  While I was in that circle and the candles were being lit and we observed the time when the days cease becoming darker and we realize that the sun is becoming stronger, that the wheel continues to turn, the earth is beginning to wake up, the reason behind the season, ironically an old Xian children's hymn popped into my head:

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine, I'm gonna let it shine...

So yeah...there may be a thousand points of light out there already...but the cosmos can handle a few hugglemuggillion of them...not to mention a thousand and my added ONE.  Yes, I will be pointing out some things that not all my readers will accept.  Or like.  I don't make the facts, I just hang them on the flagpole.  I'm also big on the words "maybe" and "probably."  I will speculate on some things which I ask you to suspend your disbelief about.  I will utter complete bullshit.  The problem is many of you won't know which is which.  Footnotes will be at a minimum.  I will try for one blog entry a week.  We'll see.  Now...before I start officially...scurry off and read all my past blog entries so you uns can be brought up to speed.  I'll be here having a taco in the meantime...

J/K  Here is a short primer for those who are coming in late (if you did read the prior blog entries you can skip this part):

I was a Christian/Xian for about 25 years.  These are my lost years.  So I'm really only spiritually about 17 years old.  These 17 years would comprise the early years before the indoctrination began in Sunday School and the last decade or so.  Currently I'm "other." 

Xian = a Christian who has X'd Christ out of his/her life.  They are the vast majority.  One test:  have they sold all their possessions and given them to the poor?  Another test:  if they have EVER been involved in the practice of loaning someone money and charging them interest and not repenting of it...they'll be taking turns applying Preparation H to Beelzebub's tater hole for all eternity.  Because if you think Yahweh Hates Fags he REALLY HATES USURY.  If you're a racist and f'instance refer to Barack Obama as a "lyin' African" you'll be inside the tater hole.  Yes, Yahweh does hate fags...but *G*O*D* doesn't...and he/she/it doesn't refer to them as "fags" anyway.  Shame on you.

Yahweh = a minor, pathetic, mean-spirited, jealous, bi-polar Semitic god.  Often described in this blog as the Hebrew God of Sheep Molestin'

*G*O*D* = Whatever a supreme god would be, whatever it would be, probably exists as a self-aware supreme consciousness comprised of all consciousness "collected together."  Imagine a couple dozen thousand separate individuals all with their own voice gathering together to cheer on their sports team...individual voices become one cheer.  But they still, mysteriously, are individuals while knowing they are also, at the same time, part of a crowd.

gods = Probably higher expressions of consciousness than us because we couldn't/can't relate to *G*O*D* because such a concept is beyond human comprehension.  We need smaller versions who have smaller areas of responsiblity and authority.  These would be the cheerleaders leading the crowd in the cheer.  Or the boos, as you would not want to invite just any god over for tea.  Hades for one is said to stink up the parlor.  Loki is bound to set fire to the parlor.  My theory is that humans, as high expressions of consciousness (Adam Sandler being human notwithstanding) are ourselves eligible to be gods.  The secret to Jesus' message to me is this...if he was the son of a god, and he counted his followers as his brothers and sisters, then it so follows...

atheists = Oh, don't get me started. 

Vigilantius = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilantius

Taco = http://www.tacobell.com/

This blog focuses on religion as it is very important.  Politics orders our secular life, religion covers everything else.  And since we understand that all matter is really comprised of empty space, that physical reality is an illusion and we interpret the physical world based on our subjective perceptions of it, perceptions based on the limitations and subjective mechanisms of our senses, religion actually covers everything.  As C. S. Lewis himself pointed out...we don't have a soul.  We are a soul, we have a body.  Which is why atheists are pitiable.

Without a soul, all we have is a body.  And if we are only bodies, if things are ONLY STUFF, whether one enjoys tacos or not, not to mention getting out of bed in the morning, is completely pointless.  We are expressions of consciousness because are brains/nervous systems are receivers and transmitters of it.  So really religion is actually about everything.  If everything about life, including love and tacos, is just a biological side-effect explained away by hormones or what goes in the beef sauce, then nothing matters.  I enjoy love and I enjoy tacos...they matter...science doesn't have anything to do with it.  Knowing how a taco is made has nothing to do with my enjoyment of it, unless knowing about the process behind it puts you off...which is why I can no longer eat Chicken McNuggets.  An atheist imagines he knows the only reason why religions exist, and so religion in general puts him off...which is throwing the baby Mithras out with the bathwater.  It's like someone saying they don't like Taco Bell tacos so they will never eat another taco again.  (I told you not to get me started.)

The problem isn't religion...it is religions.  If there was one true religion, true for everybody, then we wouldn't need politics.  We wouldn't need an economy, we wouldn't need speed limits or seat belts or coffee cups with warning labels on them.  We wouldn't need swords, but plowshares.  We wouldn't need the United Way, or the Red Cross.  We wouldn't need religion, even.  Life would be one beautiful fugue of just living as we would all care for each other because we would recognize that all human life is precious, regardless of race, creed, color or whether or not you like Adam Sandler or not.  We would have personal responsibility, we would have love, peace and all the tacos we could eat.

The problem is when one place what makes tacos claims their tacos are better than another.  Well, the funny thing about a taco is there are rules about them.  You need a shell, you need a meat filler, etc.  Claiming your restaurant makes better tacos is wrong...people agreeing that we all sorta like tacos is right...and is the answer to mankind's...and the world's...ills.  If you like your taco, that's fine, eat your taco.  But trying to take away someone elses' taco and replace it with your own...against their will...is wrong.  The above is basically the History of Major Religions, in a taco shell.  Religion ceases to be important when we will no longer need it.  When will we no longer need it?  Maybe not until we reach our apotheosis (look it up).

This fundamentalist approach to religion...whether it is saying no religion is valid, or claiming that only your religion is...is basically trying to define a very mysterious Reality full of maybes and probablys into a narrow category so it is easier to deal with and then mistaking your POV for Reality.  While not trying to be outright insulting...it is abject, hugging your knees to the chest, blanket-sucking, please-Hammer-don't-hurt-me cowardice.  And just like the villagers who feared the creature, instead of staying home and urinating in their Thundercats pajamas, those who fear something usually wage war against it.  Which is why atheists attack those who are religious and are regularly very mean and condescending about it, and why Xians in Tennessee think the word "Mosque" is the codeword for Islamic Terrorist Training Centers.

Of course the moral of the story of Frankenstein is that the creature started out as an innocent, but was feared...then of course hated...and then became the monster that the villagers deserved.  Gotham City doesn't deserve Batman but Transylvania does deserve Boris Karloff.  If Mosques in the US do become Terrorists Training Centers, they'll have every excuse to do so.  Anyway, Xianity has ruled the world for the past several centuries, it's only fair to let Islam have a few innings, eh?

. . . . . . . . .

Which is why I hope the apocalypse does happen on December 21st, 2012, because we really need a reboot.  Yes, neighbors...according to the Mayan Calendar, there are only 354 more shopping days until ZE END OF ZE VORLD!    There's a problem with the Mayan Calendar...and that problem is...it's historically been infallible.  The Mayans knew what was coming before it came, including the end of their empire.  Not that they didn't try to stop it from happening, but that's human hope for you.  Yes, you can try buying flood insurance while rowing the boat, but you're unlikely to get approved for a retroactive policy.  I won't bore you with all the Mayan Calendar stuff here...you can find that stuff online or in old-fashioned paper books if you like.  You've got to be careful about that stuff out there though...a lot of folks are making a lot of money on the hype, the same way the ads on teevee say that the special meatloaf pan is in short supply.  (Trust me, I worked for five minutes for one of those outfits and often they don't even make the things until you order them, which is why it often takes 4-8 weeks before you get the item [and your valuable free gift].  In one case the thing didn't technically exist beyond a couple dozen that were used in the commercials.) 

The issue is with the concept of apocalypse in general.  Don, show them origin of the word, "apocalypse," won't you? 

Origin: 1125–75; Middle English < Late Latin apocalypsis < Greek apokálypsis revelation, equivalent to apokalýp ( tein ) to uncover, reveal ( apo- apo- + kalýptein to cover, conceal) + -sis -sis

 

Thanks, Don.  Now the problem with this word, apocalypse, is a pesky little piece of writing grafted on to the end of the Hebrew Bible called "The Apocalypse (Or Revelation) of Saint John."  Usually just referred to these days as "Revelations."   As you are aware, the idea of apocalypse, or an uncovering and revealing, also is now irrevocably (or almost irrevocably) tied to the cataclysmic destruction of the earth by an angry, jealous, vengeful  (but also extremely loving) god.  The idea is the return of Jesus, his revealing, is also connected to him judging the earth for rejecting him and only a few will be saved.  Yeah, just a few...Mitt Romney and some of his friends.  But "The End of the World" can mean many things.  Of course one meaning, since it is the Mayan calendar, after all, that the world is ending only applies to the very few people left in South America and elsewhere in the world that can still claim that ancestry.

 

But what "the world" is can mean very many different things, based on what your definition of the "world" is.  For comparison, if I say "the end of the Earth," well, that suggests the end of the planet.  But when we generally say the world, what we really should mean is, the world system, the current status quo.  Ax a Sociology Major.  The apocalypse in this sense (streets turning to lava and Adam Sandler winning an Oscar not required) is the end of how things are currently done, to be replaced by a different, not necessarily better, way of doing things.  In fact, those (reputable) scholars/journalists/etc out there who all agree we are in for a big change on 12/21/2012 do not agree it will be for the better.  But what folks do hope for...based on the current state of things...is that we hope it can be better.  Because so much is really fucking wrong right now.  (Oh yeah, you might see some profanity in the blog.)  

 

HOWever, before you soil your G.I. Joe sleeping bag, thanks to a few decades of science fiction and fantasy books, comics, teevee shows, movies, video-games, etc., when the apocalyptic change comes, we'll be ready for it.  There will be a general, "oh right, of course."  A dragon rises out of the ocean as Revelation describes...Godzilla movies have that covered.  Taco Bell beef is made not from beef, but from people...the movie Soylent Green has prepared us for that.  Adam Sandler is the Anti-Christ?  (Insert his last movie here) has us all ready to respond.  The problem is how will we react to this big revelation that changes everything we thought we knew about the world and forces us to react to it and change how the world operates.  

 

One example of apocalyptic change is seen via the superhero comic work "The Watchmen."  What if there was a Superman?  Well, we'd never be the same.  Even the concept of Batman challenges all we know about the idea of law and order versus justice and The Greater Good.  If an alien landed, we'd have to accept the reality of that.  Our religions and cultures would pretty much evaporate just like that.  We'd all live in the Gene Roddenberry world where all humans would unite together (but oh, we hates them Romulans!).   In fact, even now, at this time of day, the writer of The Watchmen, Alan Moore, is pretty much convinced that our culture, Western Culture, is "turning into steam."  Meaning it is itself already washing out due to globalization.  But the evaporation of the cultures that divide us is not turning the world into a beautiful note sung by a choir but instead it's the sound a hugglemuggillion cats make in a room fulla a hugglemuggillion rocking chairs.

 

(Some comic relief.  Saw this George W Bush joke on a greeting card recently.  Barack Obama:  I'm having the UN send 10 Brazillian advisors to help in Afghanistan.  Dubya:  Sounds good...how many is a "brazillian?")

 

But back to the depressing stuff...you see...the more you know about other cultures what you begin to realize is your culture is, in fact, not the only valid one.  Never was.  One reaction to this Truth is to buy that culture a Coca-Cola and a taco and if all cultures are having a party eating whatever brand of taco they like and enjoying their favorite soft drink, then yes, Rodney King, we can all get along.  However, this reaction is not the prevailing response to having everything you know challenged.  If you think your Southern Uhmurkan Culture Klub (S.U.C.K), for example, is the only valid one, and who can blame you, you've been told this since you can remember and your ancestors tried to destroy the USA to prove that point, then you have no qualms whatsoever thinking that all Mexicans are four feet high and oily or that black people look more like apes than apes do or that Islam is "more than a religion."  This is because you are afraid of the Truth and you've got enough people just like you whose brains have been washed clean of independent thought who think just like you do and you all meet on Sunday Morning to congratulate yourself for being such evil waterheads.  So Truth to you becomes a monster to be fought or at least, discredited, oppressed and otherwise discriminated against.

 

The real answer to us all getting along is to have no culture or religion (and of course no nations, which are more imaginary than gods might be) by only having one culture/religion/world system.  The problem is right now we see various cultures insisting theirs is better and this creates problems for us all.  In America of course, we have the issue of 1% of the population thinking the rest of us are here just to work for them and make them wealthy.  Of course in the worldview, America is the 1% and the rest of the world is the 99%.  We think we're better than THEM, for various reasons.  I'll refer you back to The Taco Analogy at this point.  Until there is no religions, no cultures, no need of them...we are unlikely to get along.  Sad, innit?

 

That's why the apocalypse has to be so big, so impossible to ignore, so in your face and palpable.  Because you can point out, f'rinstance, to a "Follower of Jesus" that pretty much everything about the Nativity Story, not to mention how many disciples Jesus had, all the way up to the sacrificial death and rising from the dead was lifted from the pre-existing Cult of Mithras (whose birthday was celebrated by the Romans on Dec 25) and you can show them the physical evidence, all the scholarship, etc...and they'll still explain it away and retain their "faith."  As I examined Christianity for myself, I found out all this history and eventually didn't have anything else to base my faith on.  And sadly, for many clueless Xians all they have now is faith without anything tangible at all to base it on, except cultural traditions.

 

I won't mention at all the controversial but interesting scholarship that suggests that since the major motifs of Jesus' life were plagiarized from the life of Mithras not to mention other more ancient deities like Osiris, Hercules, Dionysis who also share similar themes...coupled with ZERO archeological evidence that proves Yeshua bar Joseph ever actually existed...that "Jesus" was actually the codeword that the earliest Christians, the Gnostics, used to describe a psychotropic mushroom (growing under a manger?) that they ingested and allowed them to directly experience the divine via personal revelation, which is what the term "gnosis" means.  It was only decades after Jesus' death that people who never knew him (assuming he existed) began writing things down that later were deemed "on-topic" enough to be included in the Roman Empire's version of Christianity.  The early history of Christianity is that there were more than 31 flavors of it.  It took a few centuries before one particular version was officially made the religion of the Roman Empire and the New Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, conquered Europe and more in ways Julius Caesar could only fantasize about. 

 

Aren't you glad I didn't mention all that?

 

But you can see how entrenched some folks are in their ideologies, despite easily found, viable facts that invalidate their narrow worldview.  When a person insists that Jesus really existed and rose from the tomb and is now in Heaven getting the mansion ready for that person and that the Hebrew Bible is a collection of facts 'n' figgers...but isn't willing to accept that the current president was born in the US...you really can't reach these people short of an alien invasion or tap water turning to blood or Terminators roaming the streets.  Which is why atheists can discount Christianity so baldly.  The problem is Xianity has done such a good job relegating all other religions as null and void that most Westerners who reject Xianity have dishwater to go back on.  Say your ancestors came from Germany/Scandanvia...Thor may be a cool comic book character, but realizing, based on your Germanic heritage, that worshipping him instead of Jesus makes more sense is difficult for most people.  (Not that I worship Thor.  That's just an example.  I'm not selling any literature here.)  Which is why it somehow makes more sense to an atheist to just declare that for tens of thousands of years, we humans just didn't know any better and that oh NOW, we have it all sorted out.  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.  It makes as much sense saying that tacos never existed if Taco Bell's drive-thru isn't open as it does to say that gods never existed because our science cannot prove their existence.  Of course science can't disprove the existence of gods...but science can prove that a taco shouldn't exist...unless they can find that damned Higgs-Bosun particle awready.  Better to have a true open mind and say maybe they exist and maybe they don't.  Hmm, atheists, no hard feelings?  Next round of tacos is on me.

 

Of course, distilling civilization down to a beautiful fugue state may be impossible "in the flesh."  The Story o' Western Civilization for the last few centuries, not to mention the last few decades where it's really gotten out of hand, has been an obsession with political power, wealth, materialism...the accumulation of stuff...because we keep trying to fill that *G*O*D*-shaped hole with something other than what can fill it.  Europe long ago realized it didn't have any real connection to this Semitic god imported from Palestine that their ancestors were forced to accept so it became obsessed with world domination...but kept the official religion of the state because it kept the 99% in line.  And when church and state are one, not only is not accepting the state religion heresy...it's also treason.  If you want to experience what Spain was like a few centuries ago, please elect Michelle Bachmann as president.

 

When we cease to obsess about the material and the physical, then maybe we can move on.  It's not maybe ultimately until we can pull our genders, our personalities, our individual distinguishing qualities down around our ankles and know ourselves as we are also known that we may be able to sing in perfect harmony...and eat the perfect taco.

 

(Sorry this is taking a while...it's the first blog of the year and I have a lot of flags to fly.  I promise, I'm running out of flagpoles...quickly.)

 

So...it WILL take a major, major shake up to wake up the world.  We may require lava running down the streets after all.  But the change is expected to come.  I'm not guaranteeing it, mind you.  But again...the Mayan calendar was never wrong.  You could fry an egg by it.  Better to be safe, than sorry.  Which is why I've chosen to start the blog back up again...hopefully by doing this blog, I may...in a small way, to the small audience this blog will reach...prepare us for when all goes tits up.  Quite a bit of realizing this quest will involve pointing out how backward and corrupt and outright stupid Western Civilization has become and how Eastern Civilization is failing its exams as well since it has to react to what idiocy we're up to.  I'll be picking things apart and examining them.  I'll be slaughtering your sacred cows.  I'll be eating your tacos and drinking your milkshake.  And just to show how far I'll go...my next blog will be about Abortion.  Fun fun.

 

Until next time...

 

Think outside the bun...and the box.

 

Selah