THE INSURMOUNTABLE OBSTACLES TO CHANGE!
The movie “The Da Vinci Code” has sparked a great brouhaha which goes to the roots of Christianity. The very idea that Jesus might have had children whose mother was the fallen woman Mary Magdalene has created a great turmoil and upset in the Christian community.
This is the consequence of an even more fundamental schism that developed in the interpretation of the teachings of Jesus; a schism that irreparably diluted and destroyed the impact of these teachings and which has precipitated the failure of the Christian dogma to be the civilizing factor it could be for human beings.
The prescription of Jesus that telling the truth would transform and civilize human beings was substituted with the empty, meaningless dictum that emphasized possession by the Holy Ghost as the way to grace; a substitution, a compromise that was necessary because the telling the truth was impossible under Absolutist regimes but one which consigned humanity to repeating its past, over, and over, and over again.
I dare to make this statement because I actually had the temerity and audacity to practice this prescription, I have told the truth and the truth has made me free.
I am aware, to a degree that threatens my sanity, of the negative consequences that arise out of lies of commission and omission; of the disastrously negative consequences of deceit becoming the small change of social relations.
Every lie or deceit, big or small, transports the individual further out of contact with the existing social reality, and diminishes function; yet more and more I seem to be the only one aware of this.
Yesterday, Memorial Day, I observed Senator John McCain being interviewed on CNN, he refuted the statement made by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, by stating that it was clear that the successful occupation of Iraq had required a significantly larger number of troops than had been currently deployed and agreed that a large error had been made.
However, this ranking member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee left us intellectually adrift by failing to address how this error could be corrected, as he spouted the Party line, that despite this error, the nation should stay the course.
Taken together with the other errors that have belatedly, for some, become apparent, in the planning of the attack on Iraq; that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that there was no evidence that the government of Saddam Hussein was involved in the 911 attack, or that this regime was a sponsor of terrorism, further that the evidence that supported these claims might have been contrived by members of the Bush Administration to create justification for this attack, taken with these disclosures the failure of Senator McCain to confront and deal with this issue, his comfort level with these errors, was further evidence for me that Americans should look elsewhere in the search a viable candidate in the Presidential elections of 2008.
Instead of staying the course, of accepting that to do anything else would be to cut and run; this situation creates a golden opportunity for Americans to at last admit that they are not infallible, and that they are willing to admit and take action to correct their errors, even their gargantuan errors.
What is more important, preserving this tainted with prejudice aura and very tarnished patina of infallibility, or, publicly renouncing the might is right tradition, and embarking on a new and founded in justice era in relations with other nations, even those nations who are militarily weaker?
What has this got to do with the mindset of those who are greatly disturbed by the material in the movie the Da Vinci code, in my view, everything; because in the world we live in today, morality is the bridge between fact and function.
During the first century after the birth of Christ, those who wrote the Gospels, who documented the Ministry of Jesus, could and did ascribe perfection to this human being without regard to the facts, completely disregarding the intrinsic nature of human beings; producing an account tainted by and in accord with their motivations and interests, guilt and ambition being the paramount drives in their machinations – and this worked in the Absolutist milieu that existed at that time.
In fact, whatever they believed had to be taken as fact, because heretics were routinely made to profess the true dogma, they were subjected to exquisite tortures and even death for disputing ‘facts’ as bizarre as the statement that the world was flat.
This is the seemingly insurmountable obstacle to change; for thousands of years the nature of social reality was what those with power said it was, the vast majority of human beings were forced to accept their version of reality, no matter how at odds with the facts, or be subject to brutal and unrestrained coercion.
Dissent was not allowed, dissenters were tortured until they recanted, or put to death or escaped into exile; there was no room in any social system for differences of opinion.
The patterns of behavior that were required for societal function were coerced, in the home, in the workplace, in the armed forces, in every social institution; in these Absolutist regimes in the Church, in government, in schools, everywhere any and every ‘fact’ was valid because it was backed by unrestrained, deadly force.
It was coercion that created and sustained function, and nothing else; in this situation motivation was a ‘given’ and function was assured.
But there has been a change, a radical change in the contemporary situation; democracy and the strengthening of democratic institutions has limited in the workplace, in the home, in schools, in government the extent and degree to which coercion, in any form, can be applied to individuals in democratic societies – without creating an alternative means of motivating behavior required for societal order and function.
So there is no function, as exemplified by low levels of productivity in the workplace; by high levels of divorce; by the disorder, drop out rate in schools and the fact that ever so often students conspire to murder teachers and other students; by the high rates of crime; and by the failure of government to resolve social problems.
Yet low levels of motivation, as pervasive as its effect is, remains an issue human beings cannot confront and resolve.
The turmoil among Christians is one component of the mindset that is an obstacle to resolution of this problem, these individuals are very upset because they cannot question the authority of the Church; they blindly believe the guilt ridden version of reality created by the early Church.
If the Church was wrong about whether the earth was flat or round, does it not follow that they could be wrong about whether Jesus engaged in sexual relations with anyone?
Because of this item of dogma, the sexlessness of Jesus, Roman Catholic priests are required to practice abstinence; in fact Catholics are not allowed to practice birth control.
But is either stricture a human possibility; the evidence suggests that Roman Catholic priests have never actually been celibate, but this was never a publicly discussed issue under Absolutism, and with the advent of democracy and a rising tide of freedom to express, the sexual depredations of these priests, the sexual abuses of minors by these priests has ignited a worldwide scandal.
Another component of the mindset that is an obstacle to creating function without coercion is that exhibited by Senator McCain, this is of course, self interest; he is placing his political ambitions above the national interest.
The national interest requires that President Bush be impeached. The precedent of an Administration launching an attack on another nation on such flimsy pretext cannot be allowed to stand. In fact, the flouting of laws under the pretext that they are inconsistent with the President’s interpretation of the Constitution cannot be allowed to become a precedent for future Presidents or this nation will lose every semblance, every vestige of being democratic.
Senator McCain flinches away from this necessity because it would adversely affect his Presidential ambitions.
Why am I objective, why am I able to think, why do I know these things?
To explain this is like attempting to describe sight to an individual who has been blind from birth; in fact, it is more difficult, it is much more like explaining the advantages of telling the truth to a congenital liar.
Is it not abundantly clear that if the Allies invaded Iraq that the question of whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction would be settled once and for all?
To use this as the major justification for going to war and to risk one’s political credibility on this would only be possible for someone who has begun to believe their own deceits, a characteristic of congenital liars.
To expand this analogy, let us consider the fall back position of Bush Administration; that the attack is justified – if it results in a stable functioning democracy in Iraq.
What would have happened is the Bush Administration had said at the outset that the objective of attacking Iraq was the creation of a functioning democracy in that country, would that position have garnered one affirmative supporting vote in either House of Congress, I suggest it would not.
Why then is this objective being accepted as the reason why the nation should permit and accept the death of its young people at the rate of one or two each day in pursuit of an ideal that arguably has not been attained in this country after several centuries of its application?
Telling the truth is like a catalyst; it speeds up the intellectual development of anyone who adopts this discipline, even as lies and deceits lames the higher mental processes.
I was, prior to deciding to tell the truth in October, 1975, like everyone else, blindly groping for my destiny with my fate deeply embedded in my soul, I had no idea what I was doing.
Since making that momentous decision I have been engaged in a journey of discovery; I have gained control of my rage and every other impulse. I have become rational, logical and objective. More, I have become so objective that I can discern those solutions that would have redounded to the common good.
I have demonstrated that to predict the future is easy, if you understand the past.
It has not been enough, the net effect of my being able to prophesy the future is that I have exposed the intellectual limitations of every other decision maker, observer and commentator.
The other justification for my abject failure to avoid the doom that I saw so clearly in every instance was the fact that in describing the reality I was exposing the inadequacies of some individual or some organization, an unacceptable consequence.
Some of my assumptions were palpably false; I suggested that to save this nation’s soul required that President Bush be impeached. I assumed that this nation has a soul – against overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
This nation as a totality has no soul; it is composed of contending interests, dominated by very powerful vested interests, using all the power they have accumulated to serve their narrow objectives regardless of the effect on the common good.
How else can be explained the failure to educate the young? How else can be explained the denial about this failure?
I saw this failure soon after I entered an institution of higher learning. Its dire consequences were so immediate and clear to me that I ended my retirement from activism in an attempt to sound the alarm, and was ignored. Not because my assessment was wrong, or because I failed to communicate the facts but because those with the power to change the situation, or spread the alarm refused to accept the urgency of the situation.
How valid is the claim that this nation is the richest on the planet, when the net effect of contemporary policies and initiatives will be to leave a debt burden for succeeding poorly prepared and uneducated generations that will destroy any possibility of their enjoying peace and prosperity?
How could any nation with even the vestige of a conscience allow the situation to reach this sorry pass?
There does not exist anywhere the intellectual capacity to deal with the situation, nor will Americans accept help, in a situation that is rapidly becoming completely untenable.
It is a time for patriots, nothing less can stem the tide.
William E. Virtue
Copyright Retained
Memphis, TN
This is the consequence of an even more fundamental schism that developed in the interpretation of the teachings of Jesus; a schism that irreparably diluted and destroyed the impact of these teachings and which has precipitated the failure of the Christian dogma to be the civilizing factor it could be for human beings.
The prescription of Jesus that telling the truth would transform and civilize human beings was substituted with the empty, meaningless dictum that emphasized possession by the Holy Ghost as the way to grace; a substitution, a compromise that was necessary because the telling the truth was impossible under Absolutist regimes but one which consigned humanity to repeating its past, over, and over, and over again.
I dare to make this statement because I actually had the temerity and audacity to practice this prescription, I have told the truth and the truth has made me free.
I am aware, to a degree that threatens my sanity, of the negative consequences that arise out of lies of commission and omission; of the disastrously negative consequences of deceit becoming the small change of social relations.
Every lie or deceit, big or small, transports the individual further out of contact with the existing social reality, and diminishes function; yet more and more I seem to be the only one aware of this.
Yesterday, Memorial Day, I observed Senator John McCain being interviewed on CNN, he refuted the statement made by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, by stating that it was clear that the successful occupation of Iraq had required a significantly larger number of troops than had been currently deployed and agreed that a large error had been made.
However, this ranking member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee left us intellectually adrift by failing to address how this error could be corrected, as he spouted the Party line, that despite this error, the nation should stay the course.
Taken together with the other errors that have belatedly, for some, become apparent, in the planning of the attack on Iraq; that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that there was no evidence that the government of Saddam Hussein was involved in the 911 attack, or that this regime was a sponsor of terrorism, further that the evidence that supported these claims might have been contrived by members of the Bush Administration to create justification for this attack, taken with these disclosures the failure of Senator McCain to confront and deal with this issue, his comfort level with these errors, was further evidence for me that Americans should look elsewhere in the search a viable candidate in the Presidential elections of 2008.
Instead of staying the course, of accepting that to do anything else would be to cut and run; this situation creates a golden opportunity for Americans to at last admit that they are not infallible, and that they are willing to admit and take action to correct their errors, even their gargantuan errors.
What is more important, preserving this tainted with prejudice aura and very tarnished patina of infallibility, or, publicly renouncing the might is right tradition, and embarking on a new and founded in justice era in relations with other nations, even those nations who are militarily weaker?
What has this got to do with the mindset of those who are greatly disturbed by the material in the movie the Da Vinci code, in my view, everything; because in the world we live in today, morality is the bridge between fact and function.
During the first century after the birth of Christ, those who wrote the Gospels, who documented the Ministry of Jesus, could and did ascribe perfection to this human being without regard to the facts, completely disregarding the intrinsic nature of human beings; producing an account tainted by and in accord with their motivations and interests, guilt and ambition being the paramount drives in their machinations – and this worked in the Absolutist milieu that existed at that time.
In fact, whatever they believed had to be taken as fact, because heretics were routinely made to profess the true dogma, they were subjected to exquisite tortures and even death for disputing ‘facts’ as bizarre as the statement that the world was flat.
This is the seemingly insurmountable obstacle to change; for thousands of years the nature of social reality was what those with power said it was, the vast majority of human beings were forced to accept their version of reality, no matter how at odds with the facts, or be subject to brutal and unrestrained coercion.
Dissent was not allowed, dissenters were tortured until they recanted, or put to death or escaped into exile; there was no room in any social system for differences of opinion.
The patterns of behavior that were required for societal function were coerced, in the home, in the workplace, in the armed forces, in every social institution; in these Absolutist regimes in the Church, in government, in schools, everywhere any and every ‘fact’ was valid because it was backed by unrestrained, deadly force.
It was coercion that created and sustained function, and nothing else; in this situation motivation was a ‘given’ and function was assured.
But there has been a change, a radical change in the contemporary situation; democracy and the strengthening of democratic institutions has limited in the workplace, in the home, in schools, in government the extent and degree to which coercion, in any form, can be applied to individuals in democratic societies – without creating an alternative means of motivating behavior required for societal order and function.
So there is no function, as exemplified by low levels of productivity in the workplace; by high levels of divorce; by the disorder, drop out rate in schools and the fact that ever so often students conspire to murder teachers and other students; by the high rates of crime; and by the failure of government to resolve social problems.
Yet low levels of motivation, as pervasive as its effect is, remains an issue human beings cannot confront and resolve.
The turmoil among Christians is one component of the mindset that is an obstacle to resolution of this problem, these individuals are very upset because they cannot question the authority of the Church; they blindly believe the guilt ridden version of reality created by the early Church.
If the Church was wrong about whether the earth was flat or round, does it not follow that they could be wrong about whether Jesus engaged in sexual relations with anyone?
Because of this item of dogma, the sexlessness of Jesus, Roman Catholic priests are required to practice abstinence; in fact Catholics are not allowed to practice birth control.
But is either stricture a human possibility; the evidence suggests that Roman Catholic priests have never actually been celibate, but this was never a publicly discussed issue under Absolutism, and with the advent of democracy and a rising tide of freedom to express, the sexual depredations of these priests, the sexual abuses of minors by these priests has ignited a worldwide scandal.
Another component of the mindset that is an obstacle to creating function without coercion is that exhibited by Senator McCain, this is of course, self interest; he is placing his political ambitions above the national interest.
The national interest requires that President Bush be impeached. The precedent of an Administration launching an attack on another nation on such flimsy pretext cannot be allowed to stand. In fact, the flouting of laws under the pretext that they are inconsistent with the President’s interpretation of the Constitution cannot be allowed to become a precedent for future Presidents or this nation will lose every semblance, every vestige of being democratic.
Senator McCain flinches away from this necessity because it would adversely affect his Presidential ambitions.
Why am I objective, why am I able to think, why do I know these things?
To explain this is like attempting to describe sight to an individual who has been blind from birth; in fact, it is more difficult, it is much more like explaining the advantages of telling the truth to a congenital liar.
Is it not abundantly clear that if the Allies invaded Iraq that the question of whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction would be settled once and for all?
To use this as the major justification for going to war and to risk one’s political credibility on this would only be possible for someone who has begun to believe their own deceits, a characteristic of congenital liars.
To expand this analogy, let us consider the fall back position of Bush Administration; that the attack is justified – if it results in a stable functioning democracy in Iraq.
What would have happened is the Bush Administration had said at the outset that the objective of attacking Iraq was the creation of a functioning democracy in that country, would that position have garnered one affirmative supporting vote in either House of Congress, I suggest it would not.
Why then is this objective being accepted as the reason why the nation should permit and accept the death of its young people at the rate of one or two each day in pursuit of an ideal that arguably has not been attained in this country after several centuries of its application?
Telling the truth is like a catalyst; it speeds up the intellectual development of anyone who adopts this discipline, even as lies and deceits lames the higher mental processes.
I was, prior to deciding to tell the truth in October, 1975, like everyone else, blindly groping for my destiny with my fate deeply embedded in my soul, I had no idea what I was doing.
Since making that momentous decision I have been engaged in a journey of discovery; I have gained control of my rage and every other impulse. I have become rational, logical and objective. More, I have become so objective that I can discern those solutions that would have redounded to the common good.
I have demonstrated that to predict the future is easy, if you understand the past.
It has not been enough, the net effect of my being able to prophesy the future is that I have exposed the intellectual limitations of every other decision maker, observer and commentator.
The other justification for my abject failure to avoid the doom that I saw so clearly in every instance was the fact that in describing the reality I was exposing the inadequacies of some individual or some organization, an unacceptable consequence.
Some of my assumptions were palpably false; I suggested that to save this nation’s soul required that President Bush be impeached. I assumed that this nation has a soul – against overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
This nation as a totality has no soul; it is composed of contending interests, dominated by very powerful vested interests, using all the power they have accumulated to serve their narrow objectives regardless of the effect on the common good.
How else can be explained the failure to educate the young? How else can be explained the denial about this failure?
I saw this failure soon after I entered an institution of higher learning. Its dire consequences were so immediate and clear to me that I ended my retirement from activism in an attempt to sound the alarm, and was ignored. Not because my assessment was wrong, or because I failed to communicate the facts but because those with the power to change the situation, or spread the alarm refused to accept the urgency of the situation.
How valid is the claim that this nation is the richest on the planet, when the net effect of contemporary policies and initiatives will be to leave a debt burden for succeeding poorly prepared and uneducated generations that will destroy any possibility of their enjoying peace and prosperity?
How could any nation with even the vestige of a conscience allow the situation to reach this sorry pass?
There does not exist anywhere the intellectual capacity to deal with the situation, nor will Americans accept help, in a situation that is rapidly becoming completely untenable.
It is a time for patriots, nothing less can stem the tide.
William E. Virtue
Copyright Retained
Memphis, TN
posted by voiceofpeace at 5:48 PM
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