Ever since I started this blog on a lonely night in Mito, Japan, in 2009, I have promised myself (and my reader/s) that I would post my personal triumph and public outrager where I declare and explain that MONEY is GOD.
Here it is.
In the post preceding this short note, I have published, finally, my first part of my magnum opus. I hope you can understand it.
The second part, which will consist of a further in depth continuation of the Realisation, is coming momentarily, and will go immediately after this post.
Enjoy! (I have!)
From The Tominator.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
GOD IS MONEY (part 1)
Money. It is God.
For ever-so-long, I held an idea about God that could have had me branded a number of names, from Atheist, to Blasphemer, Heretic, or even Devil.
I would not have called myself any of these names, as I don't agree with any of them, so if I happened to be the only person in existence in this world, none of it would matter. But, as reality dictates, I am not alone. Around me, in the present day of 2010AD, there are over 7billion human beings on this planet. At least 90% of those that have been asked and documented have admitted to believing in a Supreme Being of some sort, namely, a God.
In earlier ages of my species, there were many Gods. Their names still exist, and those of use who speak English or any of the Western European languages, say them on a daily basis. Hardly anyone is aware that we are doing this, but the facts are not changed by negligence of mind.
In the current ages, God has been largely agreed upon as a single being, not many; and is said to be the most powerful being in existence. Indeed, God is the Creator of all existence.
So what was the view that I held until recently?
I would have said that "God does not exist". I suppose I am lucky, if luck is the right concept, to exist in a free and developed country in the early 21st Century, because words like that last sentence would have had my head separated from my body in earlier times or a different nation.
Before I tell you my new perspective on God, let me first define what the subject is, in the most exact terms.
There are, in terms of population size, five dominant religions in the world today, in 2010AD. In terms of cultural dominance, I am safe to say that the number cuts down to THREE. To be clear, these dominant religions (Big Three) are Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The other two to note are Bhuddism and Hinduism.
Through not coincidence at all, the Big Three are related as closely as any religions can be. Depending on which Biblical story you choose to believe, there was first Judaism, and Islam split from that. Jesus Christ was a Jew at birth, and the religion that bears the same name separated from Judaism (if Biblical stories are to be believed again) over the idea that Jesus is the Son of God.
All the Big Three are Monotheistic religions. This means that their followers worship only one God: 'mono-' meaning 'one', and '-theis' or (some derivation) meaning 'God'. Jesus Christ's status as the Son of God has been carefully defined by Christians as not betowing God-classification upon Christ.
The Other Two, Bhuddism and Hinduism, can be classed, in the most general terms, as native religions of the Asian region. For historical reasons that can be explained and discussed at another time, the peoples of Asia stayed put for centuries and harboured their own religion. Hinduism never really left India, and Bhuddism remained in southern Asia for a long time, extending only as far as Japan through time.
Conversely, the peoples of the Middle East, birthplace of the Big Three, spread their religion through migration, wars, and, most importantly, Empire building. Right up into the pre-World War I age, those empires were still spreading their religion, actually counteracting the Asians' slow starts, and for very strong reasons.
So, the first big question: WHAT is God?
Using my ambient knowledge of the Big Three, I can put up a general and agreeable definition of what God is.
God is the Creator. Biblical stories of Genesis tell us that God created everything in the space of six days, and rested on the seventh.
God is supreme. With the power to create everything, God also has the power to destroy everything. This is epitomised in ideas like the Rapture and Revelations, the final book of the New Testament of the Bible.
God is a he. All of the Big Three have made a point of defining God as a male, and always using the male pronouns when talking about Him.
God looks like us. On the sixth day og Genesis, God decided to create Man in his own image. Woman, apparently, came later; there is some story about God making Eve out of Adam's rib (?).
God has a very colourful attitude and personality. I suppose you'd want Him to have some, after all - it would be a boiring world if God was a pencil-pusher.
According to the Ten Commandments, the rules that God dictated to humanity via Moses:
1) I am your God:
He wants to make this very clear.
2) You shall put no other gods before me, or make yourself an idol:
God is jealous, and this may or may not mean that God is aware that other gods exist.
3) Do not take the Lord's name in vain:
God wants us to take him seriously, and never say bad things about Him.
4) Remember the Sabbath Day:
God wants us to rest at least once a week. Personally, I think this Commandment stems from a very human desire to slack off at least once in a while.
5) Honour your Father and Mother:
God prefers us to recognise a hierarchy of society, and there is no better place to start than at home.
6) You shall not murder:
That's God's job. We humans are to respect the fact that if we cannot give it willy-nilly, we should not take it willy-nilly.
Commandments 6, 7, 8 and 9 all relate specifically to issues of personal self- control. The biggest question raised collectively would be the idea that all- powerful God cannot control us all individually.
7) You shall not commit adultery:
God wants us to control ourselves. This is a VERY interesting rule. Given that Abraham, the guy who starts the Jewish story, had sex with both his wife Sarah and his mistress Hagar. It also brings up the first questions about the nature of Marriage.
8) You shall not steal:
God wants us to recognise personal property and privacy. This is interesting only in so far as notions of personal property only came to the fore in human history with the development of western liberalism.
9) You shall not lie:
God wants us to tell the truth. "What is the Truth?" is another epic question, though...
10) You shall not covet your neighbour's wife:
This has been more widely recorded as "do not covet anything your neighbour owns". It's all about God not wanting us to be greedy or jealous. Again, matters of personal self- control (because God can't control us all directly?).
What is interesting to note at this point is that vast majority of the Ten Commandments are "do not"s. As for the "do"s, it really only covers worshipping God exclusively, recognising hierarchy, and of course, taking a rest.
Some smart-arse scholars might suggest that the "do not" nature of the Ten Commandments means that anything not covered could easily be permissable. It would therefore be OK to be sexually promiscuous, to beat someone to within an inch of death then stop, or even to simply borrow and forget to return.
But then, of course, equally smart-arse theologians will declare that the inherently broad nature of the Dos and Don'ts can be argued to cover any number of human interactions.
I want to concentrate on the conflicting ideas presented by the First Commandment, and by Commandments 6-9. To be sure, Commandment #1 can be ambiguous. But if we take the Creationist story into account, when we call God "God", we are calling Him the Creator of all things, all life, all objects. His power is omnipotent, and he is therefore everywhere, watching, and in everything. he is so important that we are supposed to start all pronouns relating to Him with capital letters.
Why, then, does God insist, with four subsequent Commandments, that we control ourselves?
Is He realistic about the nature of humans as hedonistic and greedy beasts, or did he stuff up on the Sixth Day, and only create aesthetic copies of himself (as opposed to spiritually pure and clean, like Him)?
That last paragraph can only be reconciled through the Orwellian action of doublethink! but since Big Brother ain't around, I'm taking the liberty of dissecting it.
If God is everywhere and omnipotent, or at least powerful enough to create all of Existence, why can't he control all of us?
Why should God have to tell us how to behave, if indeed he created us?
Wouldn't the Omnipotent God be powerful enough to create human beings that can behave themselves?
Does God simply enjoy watching us from on-high, like some sort of ant-farm?
Did he create us as we are - insecure, emotional, and greedy (to name a few imperfecetions of my race) just to watch it all unfold?
Why does the Supreme Being need that sort of dramatic entertainment?
To say the least, God seems to have some very human attributes about him, and not the other way round.
To keep this all on track, I am going to answer some of the questions I have already raised. it will be easy, because many of them have the same question.
For all Questions of God's control over us, the answer is this: He DOES.
"Whoa!" I hear you say. What am I talking about?
Well, let me get empirical for a moment.
Most Atheists have spent their entire lives attempting to disprove the existence of God. This sad fact is the main reason I do not call myself an Atheist. But to borrow from them for just a moment, the idea that they all keep putting forward is that there is no proof of God's existence. God cannot be scientifically proven to exist, nor can much of what He is said to have done.
This is true. Even the religious among us can agree that there is no scientific proof for God.
The question this raises for the Atheists, then, is "how can you still believe in God if you know he cannot be proven to exist??".
The answer can elude those Atheists for more than a lifetime. it is, as always, a question of perspective.
An Atheist will never understand a Religious person's thought-patterns as long as he/she thinks like an Atheist. Most Atheists require that scientific proof, and usually resort to demanding it. Religious people simply do not demand it.
Blind Faith, as demanded by the First Commandment, is all that is needed to keep God alive, real, and true for ANY religious person. Blind Faith, by no conicidence, is also a very easy thing to do. It requires: (1) no thought, (2) busying oneself with other matters, (3) stubbornness. Each of these three factors comes instinctively to all members of the human race. After all, what I'm doing in my life is infinitely more important that listenting to what you have to say, isn't it? And vice versa? Right??
That last sentence, as a matter of art, contained all three factors mentioned. Read it again, and see if you can find them. When you're done, move on from HERE>
So, Science is not going to answer the question "What is God?". At least, not in any direct way.
However, if we move away from the need for measurements and documented proof, and into the intellectual reality, the answer can be found.
"What is God?"
So far, God is everywhere, all-knowing, and affects everything that humans do. He creates the world, and it is only through God that anything can be changed. He places broad and heavy restrictions on what humans can do in their lives, and He also provides the basis for our day-to-day culture. God professes to have total control over everything, and could easily be assumed to actually have it, too (based on his past achievements), but God still requires humans to watch their own step and control themselves.
He is present, He can inflict great harm, but he takes no responsibilty for it.
At this point, with that summary I just gave you, it starts to become clear how desirable a God-like lifestyle would be, doesn't it? All the power and none of the responsibility?
It should come as no surprise that the larger part of modern society, everywhere in the world, has sought to live this way. The High section of all societies has made the effort to live like Gods in their own realm. And, interestingly enough, they have all failed spectacularly.
But more on that another time.
Before we find the latest incarnation of God, let us first agree on what sort of incarnation God could possibly have. To do this, we need to reconcile the mutually contradicting ideas of the Atheists (prefix "a-" meaning "no", "theis" meaning "god"), and of the devoutly religious.
One says God does not exist, the other says He is everywhere. One says God cannot be proven, the other sees not reason for proof. These really are mutually contradicting, mutually exclusive viewpoints, and they cannot be reconciled in their more popular forms.
But if we branch out for a moment, and think of other ways God might EXIST, both the Atheists and Believers are magically in complete agreement.
God is not a person. God is not a being. God has no real physical form whatsoever. Who decided that there had to be a physical form, anyway? That's remarkably arbitrary, isn't it? There are many, many ways for a thing to exist, why just settle on the physical?
Answer: The physical is the first, and easiest, form of existence for human beings to understand. We like to take the easy way out whenever we can. Arbitrary assumptions are also a powerfully seductive mode of thought for us humans.
God is a concept. He is an IDEA.
Why have I chosen this form of existence? No, it is not arbitrary. I choose idea because it fits the facts.
God is everywhere, he is omnipotent. Once we confront the fact that our reality is really only what our senses tell our brains, and that an idea is born and borne inside the brain, God is suddenly realistically omnipresent and omnipotent. The idea of Him, or of becoming like Him, can consume human minds utterly.
Ideas can exist, and they can be remarkably resistant to logical rebuttal. God as an Idea, therefore, can both exist, and not require any proof of his existence. It becomes a simple matter of "I think God, therefore, He IS". This definition of an Idea is completely plausible, and satisfies the scientifically-minded.
There you go. Two paragraphs, and suddenly the Believers and the Atheists are in total agreement!
Most importantly, Ideas outlive human individuals, and even generations. They exist, physically, as written documents and hihg-minded books. God really only physcally exists as a character in the Bible (literally meaning "book"), and as the subject of countless written accords, such as the one I am writing right NOW!
In effect, I am propagating the physical existence of God simply by writing this, and all the Atheists from all the ages have done exactly the same thing.
Since all of this is undisputable, the only possible way that God could cease to exist is if we were to burn all the books that mention Him, and erase him from our minds, and never talk about Him again. The Atheists would then be out of a job, and by no coincidence, out of a reason to live.
But by burning that many books we'd be left with nothing to read, and like I said before: ideas are notoriously difficult to push out of your mind. Aren't they?
As an idea, God achieves so much more than He ever could if He were truly corporeal.
Not only is he omnipresent and omnipotent, ("omni-" meaning "every"), invading our minds and staying there no matter what; God also comes up in any recorded form of culture. The central raeson for His omnipresence in this sense is the seductive simplicity of His Idea. Since time immemorial, God, singular or plural, has served as the stand-in explanation for any gap in human knowledge. The sun rises, not because the Earth is round and revolves around an enormous ball of thermo-nuclear energy (the Sun), but beacuse God did it.
Humans are not the dominant species of this Earth as the result of a very long and involved, continuous process of physical and intellectual evolution; God did it.
Even now, in 2010AD, in parts of the Developed world where Convenience has become paramount, people are turning back to God as an excuse for everything because the mere idea of exerting effort to learn scientific reality is just to damn inconvenient.
We didn't win that war, or get pregnant, or enjoy or suffer any of the good or bad things that happened to us because of any from of personal responsiblity.....
.....GOD DID IT!!!!!
So now that the Atheists and Believers can agree on what kind of incarnation God can have, we can look at the Incarnation itself.
God is:
omnipresent
omnipotent
invades our minds
subject of almost every book and story ever written
exists much more on paper than in the physical world (and questionably even then)
a simple idea
an idea that will not die owing to its seductive simplicity
a good stand-in reason to explain anything at all
an effective and all-encompassing stopper on any kind of advanced thought
In the modern age, 2010AD, what is the physical incarnation of God?
What fits the bill of facets laid clear and simple for us just above this sentence??
One word:
MONEY!
For ever-so-long, I held an idea about God that could have had me branded a number of names, from Atheist, to Blasphemer, Heretic, or even Devil.
I would not have called myself any of these names, as I don't agree with any of them, so if I happened to be the only person in existence in this world, none of it would matter. But, as reality dictates, I am not alone. Around me, in the present day of 2010AD, there are over 7billion human beings on this planet. At least 90% of those that have been asked and documented have admitted to believing in a Supreme Being of some sort, namely, a God.
In earlier ages of my species, there were many Gods. Their names still exist, and those of use who speak English or any of the Western European languages, say them on a daily basis. Hardly anyone is aware that we are doing this, but the facts are not changed by negligence of mind.
In the current ages, God has been largely agreed upon as a single being, not many; and is said to be the most powerful being in existence. Indeed, God is the Creator of all existence.
So what was the view that I held until recently?
I would have said that "God does not exist". I suppose I am lucky, if luck is the right concept, to exist in a free and developed country in the early 21st Century, because words like that last sentence would have had my head separated from my body in earlier times or a different nation.
Before I tell you my new perspective on God, let me first define what the subject is, in the most exact terms.
There are, in terms of population size, five dominant religions in the world today, in 2010AD. In terms of cultural dominance, I am safe to say that the number cuts down to THREE. To be clear, these dominant religions (Big Three) are Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The other two to note are Bhuddism and Hinduism.
Through not coincidence at all, the Big Three are related as closely as any religions can be. Depending on which Biblical story you choose to believe, there was first Judaism, and Islam split from that. Jesus Christ was a Jew at birth, and the religion that bears the same name separated from Judaism (if Biblical stories are to be believed again) over the idea that Jesus is the Son of God.
All the Big Three are Monotheistic religions. This means that their followers worship only one God: 'mono-' meaning 'one', and '-theis' or (some derivation) meaning 'God'. Jesus Christ's status as the Son of God has been carefully defined by Christians as not betowing God-classification upon Christ.
The Other Two, Bhuddism and Hinduism, can be classed, in the most general terms, as native religions of the Asian region. For historical reasons that can be explained and discussed at another time, the peoples of Asia stayed put for centuries and harboured their own religion. Hinduism never really left India, and Bhuddism remained in southern Asia for a long time, extending only as far as Japan through time.
Conversely, the peoples of the Middle East, birthplace of the Big Three, spread their religion through migration, wars, and, most importantly, Empire building. Right up into the pre-World War I age, those empires were still spreading their religion, actually counteracting the Asians' slow starts, and for very strong reasons.
So, the first big question: WHAT is God?
Using my ambient knowledge of the Big Three, I can put up a general and agreeable definition of what God is.
God is the Creator. Biblical stories of Genesis tell us that God created everything in the space of six days, and rested on the seventh.
God is supreme. With the power to create everything, God also has the power to destroy everything. This is epitomised in ideas like the Rapture and Revelations, the final book of the New Testament of the Bible.
God is a he. All of the Big Three have made a point of defining God as a male, and always using the male pronouns when talking about Him.
God looks like us. On the sixth day og Genesis, God decided to create Man in his own image. Woman, apparently, came later; there is some story about God making Eve out of Adam's rib (?).
God has a very colourful attitude and personality. I suppose you'd want Him to have some, after all - it would be a boiring world if God was a pencil-pusher.
According to the Ten Commandments, the rules that God dictated to humanity via Moses:
1) I am your God:
He wants to make this very clear.
2) You shall put no other gods before me, or make yourself an idol:
God is jealous, and this may or may not mean that God is aware that other gods exist.
3) Do not take the Lord's name in vain:
God wants us to take him seriously, and never say bad things about Him.
4) Remember the Sabbath Day:
God wants us to rest at least once a week. Personally, I think this Commandment stems from a very human desire to slack off at least once in a while.
5) Honour your Father and Mother:
God prefers us to recognise a hierarchy of society, and there is no better place to start than at home.
6) You shall not murder:
That's God's job. We humans are to respect the fact that if we cannot give it willy-nilly, we should not take it willy-nilly.
Commandments 6, 7, 8 and 9 all relate specifically to issues of personal self- control. The biggest question raised collectively would be the idea that all- powerful God cannot control us all individually.
7) You shall not commit adultery:
God wants us to control ourselves. This is a VERY interesting rule. Given that Abraham, the guy who starts the Jewish story, had sex with both his wife Sarah and his mistress Hagar. It also brings up the first questions about the nature of Marriage.
8) You shall not steal:
God wants us to recognise personal property and privacy. This is interesting only in so far as notions of personal property only came to the fore in human history with the development of western liberalism.
9) You shall not lie:
God wants us to tell the truth. "What is the Truth?" is another epic question, though...
10) You shall not covet your neighbour's wife:
This has been more widely recorded as "do not covet anything your neighbour owns". It's all about God not wanting us to be greedy or jealous. Again, matters of personal self- control (because God can't control us all directly?).
What is interesting to note at this point is that vast majority of the Ten Commandments are "do not"s. As for the "do"s, it really only covers worshipping God exclusively, recognising hierarchy, and of course, taking a rest.
Some smart-arse scholars might suggest that the "do not" nature of the Ten Commandments means that anything not covered could easily be permissable. It would therefore be OK to be sexually promiscuous, to beat someone to within an inch of death then stop, or even to simply borrow and forget to return.
But then, of course, equally smart-arse theologians will declare that the inherently broad nature of the Dos and Don'ts can be argued to cover any number of human interactions.
I want to concentrate on the conflicting ideas presented by the First Commandment, and by Commandments 6-9. To be sure, Commandment #1 can be ambiguous. But if we take the Creationist story into account, when we call God "God", we are calling Him the Creator of all things, all life, all objects. His power is omnipotent, and he is therefore everywhere, watching, and in everything. he is so important that we are supposed to start all pronouns relating to Him with capital letters.
Why, then, does God insist, with four subsequent Commandments, that we control ourselves?
Is He realistic about the nature of humans as hedonistic and greedy beasts, or did he stuff up on the Sixth Day, and only create aesthetic copies of himself (as opposed to spiritually pure and clean, like Him)?
That last paragraph can only be reconciled through the Orwellian action of doublethink! but since Big Brother ain't around, I'm taking the liberty of dissecting it.
If God is everywhere and omnipotent, or at least powerful enough to create all of Existence, why can't he control all of us?
Why should God have to tell us how to behave, if indeed he created us?
Wouldn't the Omnipotent God be powerful enough to create human beings that can behave themselves?
Does God simply enjoy watching us from on-high, like some sort of ant-farm?
Did he create us as we are - insecure, emotional, and greedy (to name a few imperfecetions of my race) just to watch it all unfold?
Why does the Supreme Being need that sort of dramatic entertainment?
To say the least, God seems to have some very human attributes about him, and not the other way round.
To keep this all on track, I am going to answer some of the questions I have already raised. it will be easy, because many of them have the same question.
For all Questions of God's control over us, the answer is this: He DOES.
"Whoa!" I hear you say. What am I talking about?
Well, let me get empirical for a moment.
Most Atheists have spent their entire lives attempting to disprove the existence of God. This sad fact is the main reason I do not call myself an Atheist. But to borrow from them for just a moment, the idea that they all keep putting forward is that there is no proof of God's existence. God cannot be scientifically proven to exist, nor can much of what He is said to have done.
This is true. Even the religious among us can agree that there is no scientific proof for God.
The question this raises for the Atheists, then, is "how can you still believe in God if you know he cannot be proven to exist??".
The answer can elude those Atheists for more than a lifetime. it is, as always, a question of perspective.
An Atheist will never understand a Religious person's thought-patterns as long as he/she thinks like an Atheist. Most Atheists require that scientific proof, and usually resort to demanding it. Religious people simply do not demand it.
Blind Faith, as demanded by the First Commandment, is all that is needed to keep God alive, real, and true for ANY religious person. Blind Faith, by no conicidence, is also a very easy thing to do. It requires: (1) no thought, (2) busying oneself with other matters, (3) stubbornness. Each of these three factors comes instinctively to all members of the human race. After all, what I'm doing in my life is infinitely more important that listenting to what you have to say, isn't it? And vice versa? Right??
That last sentence, as a matter of art, contained all three factors mentioned. Read it again, and see if you can find them. When you're done, move on from HERE>
So, Science is not going to answer the question "What is God?". At least, not in any direct way.
However, if we move away from the need for measurements and documented proof, and into the intellectual reality, the answer can be found.
"What is God?"
So far, God is everywhere, all-knowing, and affects everything that humans do. He creates the world, and it is only through God that anything can be changed. He places broad and heavy restrictions on what humans can do in their lives, and He also provides the basis for our day-to-day culture. God professes to have total control over everything, and could easily be assumed to actually have it, too (based on his past achievements), but God still requires humans to watch their own step and control themselves.
He is present, He can inflict great harm, but he takes no responsibilty for it.
At this point, with that summary I just gave you, it starts to become clear how desirable a God-like lifestyle would be, doesn't it? All the power and none of the responsibility?
It should come as no surprise that the larger part of modern society, everywhere in the world, has sought to live this way. The High section of all societies has made the effort to live like Gods in their own realm. And, interestingly enough, they have all failed spectacularly.
But more on that another time.
Before we find the latest incarnation of God, let us first agree on what sort of incarnation God could possibly have. To do this, we need to reconcile the mutually contradicting ideas of the Atheists (prefix "a-" meaning "no", "theis" meaning "god"), and of the devoutly religious.
One says God does not exist, the other says He is everywhere. One says God cannot be proven, the other sees not reason for proof. These really are mutually contradicting, mutually exclusive viewpoints, and they cannot be reconciled in their more popular forms.
But if we branch out for a moment, and think of other ways God might EXIST, both the Atheists and Believers are magically in complete agreement.
God is not a person. God is not a being. God has no real physical form whatsoever. Who decided that there had to be a physical form, anyway? That's remarkably arbitrary, isn't it? There are many, many ways for a thing to exist, why just settle on the physical?
Answer: The physical is the first, and easiest, form of existence for human beings to understand. We like to take the easy way out whenever we can. Arbitrary assumptions are also a powerfully seductive mode of thought for us humans.
God is a concept. He is an IDEA.
Why have I chosen this form of existence? No, it is not arbitrary. I choose idea because it fits the facts.
God is everywhere, he is omnipotent. Once we confront the fact that our reality is really only what our senses tell our brains, and that an idea is born and borne inside the brain, God is suddenly realistically omnipresent and omnipotent. The idea of Him, or of becoming like Him, can consume human minds utterly.
Ideas can exist, and they can be remarkably resistant to logical rebuttal. God as an Idea, therefore, can both exist, and not require any proof of his existence. It becomes a simple matter of "I think God, therefore, He IS". This definition of an Idea is completely plausible, and satisfies the scientifically-minded.
There you go. Two paragraphs, and suddenly the Believers and the Atheists are in total agreement!
Most importantly, Ideas outlive human individuals, and even generations. They exist, physically, as written documents and hihg-minded books. God really only physcally exists as a character in the Bible (literally meaning "book"), and as the subject of countless written accords, such as the one I am writing right NOW!
In effect, I am propagating the physical existence of God simply by writing this, and all the Atheists from all the ages have done exactly the same thing.
Since all of this is undisputable, the only possible way that God could cease to exist is if we were to burn all the books that mention Him, and erase him from our minds, and never talk about Him again. The Atheists would then be out of a job, and by no coincidence, out of a reason to live.
But by burning that many books we'd be left with nothing to read, and like I said before: ideas are notoriously difficult to push out of your mind. Aren't they?
As an idea, God achieves so much more than He ever could if He were truly corporeal.
Not only is he omnipresent and omnipotent, ("omni-" meaning "every"), invading our minds and staying there no matter what; God also comes up in any recorded form of culture. The central raeson for His omnipresence in this sense is the seductive simplicity of His Idea. Since time immemorial, God, singular or plural, has served as the stand-in explanation for any gap in human knowledge. The sun rises, not because the Earth is round and revolves around an enormous ball of thermo-nuclear energy (the Sun), but beacuse God did it.
Humans are not the dominant species of this Earth as the result of a very long and involved, continuous process of physical and intellectual evolution; God did it.
Even now, in 2010AD, in parts of the Developed world where Convenience has become paramount, people are turning back to God as an excuse for everything because the mere idea of exerting effort to learn scientific reality is just to damn inconvenient.
We didn't win that war, or get pregnant, or enjoy or suffer any of the good or bad things that happened to us because of any from of personal responsiblity.....
.....GOD DID IT!!!!!
So now that the Atheists and Believers can agree on what kind of incarnation God can have, we can look at the Incarnation itself.
God is:
omnipresent
omnipotent
invades our minds
subject of almost every book and story ever written
exists much more on paper than in the physical world (and questionably even then)
a simple idea
an idea that will not die owing to its seductive simplicity
a good stand-in reason to explain anything at all
an effective and all-encompassing stopper on any kind of advanced thought
In the modern age, 2010AD, what is the physical incarnation of God?
What fits the bill of facets laid clear and simple for us just above this sentence??
One word:
MONEY!
Friday, September 10, 2010
Democratic Peace
I feel compelled to write a little something tonight about the Democratic Peace Theory.
In my personal musings over "Societal Evolution" (my own theory, in production, likely to become my future University Masters thesis), I have a stage of "the country" called "Hegemonic Pax". Hopefully, one day all three of you reading this will know more about these stages (if I ever get around to writing it, and by golly, I WILL!).
"Hegemonic Pax" follows directly and inextricably (as far as I can tell) from its previous stage, called "Full Democratisation".
Tonight, in spite of my limited research resources, and in efforts to avoid the easy-come approach of looking at Wikipedia alone, I have sought the internet for other sources.
Again, I am not at Uni again yet, but the Internet has its own unique way of providing sources that range from credible, con-artist, all the way to outlandish.
Tonight I found an online essay that I would, upon first glance, class somewhere towards the outlandish end of the spectrum.
This guy, whom I will name only so you can form your own opinion: see this site here: type this into Google and take the first hit: "The Myth of Democratic Peace".
I haven't bothered to read it through all the way yet, but from the first few paragraphs, and the old TOMAC analysis of a source (which I learnt in high school History class - didn't you??)
I can give you this preliminary assessment:
Type: website, online essay
Origin: self-published (ie not vetted or edited by anyone of particular import)
Motivation: to get his idea out, to challenge the Democratic Peace theory, and hopefully start a new wave of political paradigmatic thought (.....we all feel like that sometimes....)
Audience: whoever will read it. or whoever happens upon it after a Google search.
((I'll be honest, I have forgotten what the C in TOMAC stands for.... this does not bode well... and Google isn't telling me either. That does not bode well for the internet at large! AAAAAAAH!)
Maybe the C stands for Credibility? in that case, for this essay, the credibiltiy is LOW on the outset.
Anyway, let me explain that preliminary assessment:
The author, whoever he is, calls the USA the "quintessential" democracy more than once in the opening paragraphs.
The USA is NOT the 'quintessential' democracy. Reasons::
1) Ancient Athens was the quintessential democracy, with all (free, male, of-age) citizens having a vote, and the population small enough to get them all in the same area to call out at each other.
2) An Athenian-style Direct Democracy is not possible in the modern age, with sheer population size.
3) The USA's electoral system is so opaque that many, many people are disenfranchised, usually by accident, every year, PLUS voting is not compulsory. A 'quintessential' democracy would have compulsory voting, and all votes accounted for. Would it not?
4) This particular essay was written in 2002, between the Sept.11 attacks in 2001, and the full swing of the war in Afghanistan in 2003. We all knew, even in 2002, that George Bush Jnr. really did steal his election win in the 2000 Presidential election. And if he stole it, it is not a democracy, is it? Let alone a quintessential one!
Also, this essay has hinted at 'dubious examples' of democracies going to war. It has explicitly mentioned India and Pakistan going to nuclear war as a possiblilty, and eluded to this eventuality being a counter-argument to the Democratic Peace Theory.
This is simply wrong.
As far as I know, unless they had ana election in the last year which I missed totally, Pakistan has been through a slew of leaders over the last decade, and NONE of them were democratically elected. The tradition in Pakistan had been to quite literally stab your predecessor in the back. More recently, it has been figurative, but certainly never democratic.
India is claimed to be "the world's largest democracy", by virtue of having over a billion people, and having a parliamentary, Westminster-inspired governmental system.
.......however:
I recently worked the Federal election in Australia (which was only JUST decided three days ago, two weeks after I worked at the polling place!).
I have witnessed first-hand the amount of paperwork and bureaucratic sorting, counting, etc. etc. that has to go on to make it all legitimate.
Put simply, India has OVER a BILLION people! No parliamentary government of that size could be called remotely democratic, because no matter how big the House of Representatives room is, the ration of Representatives to People will be too large to have any voice heard properly. The paperwork in India is already notorious, so imagine how bad, and HORRIFICALLY UNENDING it would be to hold an election that was transparent, accountable, and true.
India and Pakistan, and their ceaseless border dispute over Kashmir, and their religious disputes too, are not democratic. But maybe if they really were democratic, they would be at real peace!
And just to throw one in from left-field here: we all know that Iran is not democratic, but they hold fake elections every so often anyway.
Despite the fact that the Ayatollah has supreme authority over everything in Iran, you'd only need to look as far as the fact that Iran is defined as an "Islamic" Republic. The religious underpinning of the state's definition renders it immune to peace. The same goes for Ireland and Northern Ireland, and any other religiously-defined state and its disputes.
So, so far, this paper seems to be presenting nothing of any political merit to denounce democratic peace.
For all you peace-mongers out there, this is a GOOD thing. It means that World Peace is theoretically possible, as improbable as it may be.
I will give you a warning though: should Democracy provide Peace, it will not last. I'm sure I've written something on "Dramatism" or "catastrophising" in this blog before. If not, ask me, and I can give you solid reasons why even at the best of times, humans need something to spice up their day.
Peace, in short, would be too boring. Itchy feet, itchy trigger-fingers. You ARE aware that the USA went from Clinton's Pax directly into Bush's War, aren't you? It was no accident, and it was not entirely dependent on the events of September 11.
I shall, though, read the whole essay, when I get the time. He mentions something about the USA's democratic processes directly bringing on the September 11 attacks in 2001. I'd love to know if this has ANY reasoning behind it, or if it is just another baseless, emotionally-charged assumption. there could be a very good reason no-one else has read this essay.
And in a final note for tonight, tomorrow is September 11 here in Australia. It is only symbolic here, because it was on the morning of Wednesday, September 12, 2001, that I awoke to a changed world.
Nine years.
And what have we, as a world, accomplished in 9 years to fix.... anything...?
Ponder that as you ponder burning any books tomorrow. I wish I could write smoething eloquent about that.
From Tom.
In my personal musings over "Societal Evolution" (my own theory, in production, likely to become my future University Masters thesis), I have a stage of "the country" called "Hegemonic Pax". Hopefully, one day all three of you reading this will know more about these stages (if I ever get around to writing it, and by golly, I WILL!).
"Hegemonic Pax" follows directly and inextricably (as far as I can tell) from its previous stage, called "Full Democratisation".
Tonight, in spite of my limited research resources, and in efforts to avoid the easy-come approach of looking at Wikipedia alone, I have sought the internet for other sources.
Again, I am not at Uni again yet, but the Internet has its own unique way of providing sources that range from credible, con-artist, all the way to outlandish.
Tonight I found an online essay that I would, upon first glance, class somewhere towards the outlandish end of the spectrum.
This guy, whom I will name only so you can form your own opinion: see this site here: type this into Google and take the first hit: "The Myth of Democratic Peace".
I haven't bothered to read it through all the way yet, but from the first few paragraphs, and the old TOMAC analysis of a source (which I learnt in high school History class - didn't you??)
I can give you this preliminary assessment:
Type: website, online essay
Origin: self-published (ie not vetted or edited by anyone of particular import)
Motivation: to get his idea out, to challenge the Democratic Peace theory, and hopefully start a new wave of political paradigmatic thought (.....we all feel like that sometimes....)
Audience: whoever will read it. or whoever happens upon it after a Google search.
((I'll be honest, I have forgotten what the C in TOMAC stands for.... this does not bode well... and Google isn't telling me either. That does not bode well for the internet at large! AAAAAAAH!)
Maybe the C stands for Credibility? in that case, for this essay, the credibiltiy is LOW on the outset.
Anyway, let me explain that preliminary assessment:
The author, whoever he is, calls the USA the "quintessential" democracy more than once in the opening paragraphs.
The USA is NOT the 'quintessential' democracy. Reasons::
1) Ancient Athens was the quintessential democracy, with all (free, male, of-age) citizens having a vote, and the population small enough to get them all in the same area to call out at each other.
2) An Athenian-style Direct Democracy is not possible in the modern age, with sheer population size.
3) The USA's electoral system is so opaque that many, many people are disenfranchised, usually by accident, every year, PLUS voting is not compulsory. A 'quintessential' democracy would have compulsory voting, and all votes accounted for. Would it not?
4) This particular essay was written in 2002, between the Sept.11 attacks in 2001, and the full swing of the war in Afghanistan in 2003. We all knew, even in 2002, that George Bush Jnr. really did steal his election win in the 2000 Presidential election. And if he stole it, it is not a democracy, is it? Let alone a quintessential one!
Also, this essay has hinted at 'dubious examples' of democracies going to war. It has explicitly mentioned India and Pakistan going to nuclear war as a possiblilty, and eluded to this eventuality being a counter-argument to the Democratic Peace Theory.
This is simply wrong.
As far as I know, unless they had ana election in the last year which I missed totally, Pakistan has been through a slew of leaders over the last decade, and NONE of them were democratically elected. The tradition in Pakistan had been to quite literally stab your predecessor in the back. More recently, it has been figurative, but certainly never democratic.
India is claimed to be "the world's largest democracy", by virtue of having over a billion people, and having a parliamentary, Westminster-inspired governmental system.
.......however:
I recently worked the Federal election in Australia (which was only JUST decided three days ago, two weeks after I worked at the polling place!).
I have witnessed first-hand the amount of paperwork and bureaucratic sorting, counting, etc. etc. that has to go on to make it all legitimate.
Put simply, India has OVER a BILLION people! No parliamentary government of that size could be called remotely democratic, because no matter how big the House of Representatives room is, the ration of Representatives to People will be too large to have any voice heard properly. The paperwork in India is already notorious, so imagine how bad, and HORRIFICALLY UNENDING it would be to hold an election that was transparent, accountable, and true.
India and Pakistan, and their ceaseless border dispute over Kashmir, and their religious disputes too, are not democratic. But maybe if they really were democratic, they would be at real peace!
And just to throw one in from left-field here: we all know that Iran is not democratic, but they hold fake elections every so often anyway.
Despite the fact that the Ayatollah has supreme authority over everything in Iran, you'd only need to look as far as the fact that Iran is defined as an "Islamic" Republic. The religious underpinning of the state's definition renders it immune to peace. The same goes for Ireland and Northern Ireland, and any other religiously-defined state and its disputes.
So, so far, this paper seems to be presenting nothing of any political merit to denounce democratic peace.
For all you peace-mongers out there, this is a GOOD thing. It means that World Peace is theoretically possible, as improbable as it may be.
I will give you a warning though: should Democracy provide Peace, it will not last. I'm sure I've written something on "Dramatism" or "catastrophising" in this blog before. If not, ask me, and I can give you solid reasons why even at the best of times, humans need something to spice up their day.
Peace, in short, would be too boring. Itchy feet, itchy trigger-fingers. You ARE aware that the USA went from Clinton's Pax directly into Bush's War, aren't you? It was no accident, and it was not entirely dependent on the events of September 11.
I shall, though, read the whole essay, when I get the time. He mentions something about the USA's democratic processes directly bringing on the September 11 attacks in 2001. I'd love to know if this has ANY reasoning behind it, or if it is just another baseless, emotionally-charged assumption. there could be a very good reason no-one else has read this essay.
And in a final note for tonight, tomorrow is September 11 here in Australia. It is only symbolic here, because it was on the morning of Wednesday, September 12, 2001, that I awoke to a changed world.
Nine years.
And what have we, as a world, accomplished in 9 years to fix.... anything...?
Ponder that as you ponder burning any books tomorrow. I wish I could write smoething eloquent about that.
From Tom.
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