The prosperity gospel is quintessentially an American theology. It is 17th century Puritanism colliding with 19th century New Thought; a spiritual movement that included unconventional and nonconformist thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James.
This strange mix then gets hitched to capitalism with a generous sprinkle of hand raising, hallelujah happiness on top; a highly energetic spiritual movement emerging out of little old Topeka, Kansas, in 1901.
The prosperity gospel makes it alright to be rich. In fact, if you’re not rich, you are probably not a good Christian and probably going to Hell.
“The Lord is my banker; my credit is good”
This is Charles Fillmore’s reinterpretation of Psalm 23.
Fillmore founded Unity in 1889 in Kansas City, Missouri. He wrote, “Unity is a link in the great educational movement inaugurated by Jesus Christ; our objective is to discern the Truth in Christianity and prove it.”
It is one of the many religious movements towards the end of the 1800s coalescing and growing out of the New Thought movement.
Fillmore was known as an American mystic who was renowned for his spiritualist interpretations of Biblical Scripture.
His beliefs paved the way for even shinier and more fervent believers who felt God rewards those who are most deserving and faithful to him with money and wealth.
The Lord is My Banker; My Credit Is Good | Music: Money so Big (Sped Up)| MADAX | [1] Money so Big (Sped Up)
Laws of Prosperity
By the early 1900, the blending of the Puritan work ethic with New Thought was fully fermented into a very bubbly, verifiable, abiding religious zeal that would be enough to put any over-worked, poverty-stricken, overly anxious worker into a state of heavenly glory, at least for a little while, say the typical time of a religious revival promising wealth and prosperity to all of God’s law-abiding, hardworking sheep (Christian-speak for people of faith).
With earthquake-like economic disruptions caused by the Industrial Revolution, this refreshingly fervent religious pastime came just in time for greedy corporate capitalists who needed people to work hard, really hard, so they could make more money.
Add the Holy Fire of the Pentecostal church that believes spiritual gifts are the miraculous ways God works in the world today, and the bomb fire of the Prosperity Gospel Movement ignites into a big and growing spiritual fire of everlasting glory–Hallelujah…praise the Lord, our savior Jesus Christ!
Never mind about deep structural inequalities built into capitalistic systems that are designed to elevate and reward individuals who hold the reigns of power while holding down and keeping poor people who are not born into such privilege.
Russell Conwell and other very charismatic ministers (such as Kenneth Hagin, Ken Copeland, Oral Roberts, and Jim Bakker) blame poverty on an individual’s failure to believe hard enough or to be good enough people who deserve to be rich or to not giving enough of what little money they have to the preacher man.
The idea that you have to give money to get money is a fundamental message preached in the Prosperity Gospel like a little money seed that might grow into a great big money tree one day.
Trumpism Is the Prosperity Gospel Running Wild in American Politics
Since its beginnings in the early 1800s, the Prosperity Gospel has ebbed and flowed. It grew rampantly in the 1900s, then waned during the WW I and II years. It rallied again during the postwar boom of the 1950s, then waned only to return bigger and better than before with the big hair days of the ostentatious 80s.
The mega fall of mega church tele-evangelical preachers and power couples such as Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye or Becki and Jerry Falwell Jr. might have hinted at an incredible reservoir of hypocrisy bubbling underneath all the pretty God Loves You, hallelujahs, and Praise the Lord, but it wasn’t enough to inoculate the masses from the powerfully, tempting, very yummy Gospel of Prosperity.
THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE | Official Trailer | Searchlight Pictures — Story of the rise and fall of the Bakkers during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s
Pool Boy Shares Details of Affair With Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Wife — The pool boy whose affair with Jerry Falwell Jr.’s wife brought down an evangelical dynasty is telling his story in an upcoming documentary called “God Forbid.” Giancarlo Granda was working as a pool boy at the Fontainebleau Hotel in 2012 when he says Becki Falwell began flirting with him. In his new book about the eight-year relationship, he described the bizarre first encounter in a hotel room with Jerry Falwell Jr. watching them. Granda now says he regrets the affair.
Enter televangelist Joel Scott Osteen and his non-denominational very charismatic brand of christianity to save the day. He offers 40 powerful promises right from the mouth of God that he, little old Joel Osteen, can let you in on…if you buy his book, believe hard enough, and oh yeah, donated to his mega church in Lakewood, FL.
Jumping into the very big wake being made by Osteen and other mega-ministers who shepherd their ever growing flock of faithful followers with bigger, badder, ever better televangelism programming is the man with the yellow hair and permanent orange tan… and oh yeah, about half of the Republican Party who want to get in on all that fun and money!
And WOW-WE! Look how the Repubs are battling it out for who gets to have the biggest slice of followers! Looks like running down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring on Trump’s orange hand after January 6, 2021 wasn’t enough to save you Kevin. God isn’t shining his spiritual gifts of prosperity on you today Kevin–that’s for darn sure!
NBC: For the first time in 100 years, Republicans have failed to elect a Speaker of the House after GOP leader Kevin McCarthy fell short of the 218 votes needed to secure the leadership position.
But, I digress, let’s get back to Trump who makes a pretty simple political pitch that Jonathan Last sums up nicely in a piece he wrote after Trump whipped out a front page story about himself on February 6, 2020 at the 69th annual National Prayer Breakfast: Acquitted.
Trump’s simple pitch is this:
"God wants you to have what you want! I should know, because I have it! Come get yours too, for a small contribution!"
Ignorance Is A Choice | Music: Ignorance (Deluxe Version) | The Weather Station | [3] Tried to Tell You 3:39
It might be interesting to note that at this time, while Trump was at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 6, 2020, COVID-19 is already spreading in the United States.
Trump says nothing about COVID. Days and weeks after the prayer breakfast, Trump continues to gloat about his Acquittal but still fails to say much of anything about COVID.
He says nothing despite advisors warning him in December 2019 and in January 2020 and February and March of 2020 that COVID is coming!
Bob Woodward interviewed Trump during this time for his book Rage. Woodward repeatedly asked Trump about his response to COVID. Trump repeatedly played it down saying he didn’t want to cause a panic.
Rather than cause a panic, Trump turned commonsense ways of staying safe, such as wearing a mask, into a culture war.
The U.S. has one of the highest death rates from COVID since the beginning of the pandemic in 2019 and 2020. The vast majority of deaths occurred in 2020 while Trump was President and playing it down so he might get re-elected as President so he could make more money!
Personally, this doesn’t sound like a very good way to enjoy the fruits of the New Prosperity Gospel that Trump touts. Dying seems the very opposite of enjoying prosperity.
Wrapped & Tied in Knots of Powerful Positive Thoughts
Tara Isabella Burton sums it all up very well in her 2017 article published in VOX.
It’s difficult to say that the prosperity gospel itself led to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Again, only 17 percent of American Christians identify with it explicitly. It’s far more true, however, to say that the same cultural forces that led to the prosperity gospel’s proliferation in America — individualism, an affinity for ostentatious and charismatic leaders, the Protestant work ethic, and a cultural obsession with the power of “positive thinking” — shape how we, as a nation, approach politics.
Also see, Throughline’s very excellent episode, Capitalism: God Wants You To Be Rich, which aired July 8, 2021. Towards the end of this episode, they play a soundbite from an archived recording from a Trump rally.
TRUMP: You know, I said the other day - 'cause so many people, they carry around "The Art Of The Deal" because they're begging. They're begging their politicians, please, please read "The Art Of The Deal" when you negotiate with China and with Japan or with Mexico and with Vietnam.
One of the speakers in this episode unpacks what Trump is plugging into here.
BUTLER: And I think this is crucial for right now. It flows into a kind of Christian nationalism. It means that God is especially favoring, you know, the nation as a special place. And so the people who live in it, who follow after this particular kind of thing, are going to be more blessed than anybody else in the world.
And another speaker unpacks it a little further.
BOWLER: I think people crave - even if they might hate it, they crave a gospel where the responsibility always falls back on them. Because it's always the one thing we can control is ourselves. So if you preach an empowered individualism, you've got a gospel you can believe in, which is always us.
The prosperity gospel goes by many names: Word of Faith, Health and Wealth, Name It and Claim It. This “different gospel” teaches that God provides rewards, including personal happiness, financial wealth and physical health, for believers who have sufficient faith. Prosperity theology developed in America in the last century and has been called a “baptized form of capitalism.”
The preachers associated with the movement — including Kenneth Copeland, Joel Osteen, and Creflo Dollar — have some of the largest congregations and best-selling books in the country, and they host television programs that seem to air at all hours of the night (and are some of the most-watched programming around the world).
1. John 10:10 — “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
The signature verse of the prosperity gospel, John 10:10 is used to suggest that God loves his followers and wants them to have every good thing. But interpreting this verse to promise physical gain neglects the depth suggested by its context.
The preceding verses illustrate the parable of the sheep and their good shepherd, Jesus, who calls them by name. The sheep know the good shepherd’s voice and follow. Verse 10 contrasts Jesus with false shepherds who steal and kill and destroy. The abundance of life suggested here has to do with knowing and being known by Jesus, not material things. The Tyndale Commentary explains, “He does not offer them an extension of physical life nor an increase of material possessions, but the possibility, nay the certainty, of a life lived as a higher level of obedience to God’s will and reflecting his glory.”
2. James 4:2 — “You do not have because you do not ask God.”
This verse is used to bolster the “name it and claim it” part of the prosperity gospel — if you don’t “have,” it’s because you haven’t prayed enough. This interpretation ignores the verse that follows, in which James says, “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
Creflo Dollar says this of prayer: “When we pray, believing that we have already received what we are praying, God has no choice but to make our prayers come to pass.”
While prayer (including intercessory prayer) is crucial to the life of a Christian, using it to force God into appeasing the believer’s desires also goes against the very prayer Jesus prayed on the eve of his crucifixion: “Yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42
"We think we can congratulate ourselves on having already reaches such a pinnacle of clarity, imaging we have left all the phantasmal gods far behind. But what we have left behind are only verbal specters not the psychic facts that were responsible for the birth of the gods. We are still as much possessed by autonomous psychic contents as if they were Olympians. Today, they are called phobias, obsessions, and so forth, in a word, neurotic symptoms. The gods have become diseases; Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus and produces curious specimens for the doctor's consulting room or disorders the brain of politicians and journalists who unwittingly let loose psychic epidemics on the world." -- Carl G. Jung, Psychology & the East | Secret of the Golden Flower, p. 39
We are living in troubled times. Pick your issue. There are many, and each one is getting worst–accelerating climate change, accelerating economic hardships and global inequalities, rampant misinformation campaigns leading to real life misery and deaths. Adding insult to injury are deniers, fanatics, and maniac visionaries (each one with a different vision of how to save the world). Deniers flock to the manic visionaries. They amass in huge groups to the most charismatic ones; believing them when they say that only they possess the knowledge to save us from this mess. And, they are worshipped by their followers like Gods for they believe that their manic visionary (their savior) does indeed know the secrets to saving them, and they will blindly follow them anywhere, even if the destination is over a cliff.
DC Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith took his own life after protecting the Capitol on January 6. His widow, Erin Smith, has a message for those who deny there was an insurrection. -- CNN
Denial of Reality Has Real Life Costs…There is a Price to Pay in Everything We Choose and Do, Especially When We Act Based Only on Beliefs
Huge groups of people have been swept up into the worlds of maniac visionaries where fantastic alternative realities have been created for their anxious and fearful followers to inhabit. Here, everyone is informed by their own “trusted news” sources (typically the maniac visionaries and his or her “parrots“). In these alternative worlds, followers soothe each other with testimonies about what they believe to be true, how misguided everyone else is in the world, and how they will fix the world when the world either “wakes up” from its delusion or they kill everyone off who does not “know” or believe what they “know” is true.
They tend to each others wounds after coming back to the group from another brawl with reality. The fight is endless because there are so many people who do not “know” what they “know“. And they “know” they are right because their maniac visionary tells them so.
Each and every day, they suit up and go out into the world for another battle with “the mainstream“, with “Big Pharma“, with “the government” (any government because they are all rotten to the core), with “experts of any kind“, with pretty much anyone who believes or knows something different from what they know.
Anti-Mask Protests Erupt At Tennessee School Board Meeting | 16,874 views | Aug 12, 2021
This is happening now! Are you terrified? I am.
Is this really how we want to be as a people, as a country, as a world? Do we really want to devolve into a bunch of fractured groups who are nursing on intolerance, bigotry, parochialism, partisanship, insularity, and fanaticism? This sort of food for the mind turns ordinary, good people into rabid animals. It transforms them into people who are ready to inflict terrible brutality on each other over wearing a mask?!!!
Currently, these groups are small and very fractured. But all of them are in a great deal of pain and fear. And most of them include people who are very, very angry and very vocal. These groups mainly exist developed modern countries. This is because for the majority of people living in developing countries, they know what reality is because they live it every day.
The people I am focusing on in this blog have become very comfortable with their lives and their comfort. They like things just the way they are (or used to be). They are terrified by all the changes and upheavals happening around them. It is very threatening their way of living. It is eroding their beautiful island of being comfortable. The real world is encroaching on their paradise, and they don’t like it, one bit. No one is going to tell them what to do in their promised land!
But the changes keep coming like relentless waves on a restless sea. They can’t understand what is causing all this mess. They only know they must resist because if they don’t, it means they will have to change and that might mean losing their promised land.
What we see playing out in real life, right now are groups of people who are afraid and have flocked to insufficient theories about what is going on and why it is happening to them. It is always about them because they have not yet grown their capacity to empathize with anyone else’s burden of reality. We all carry a burden of reality. That is what we are supposed to do. This is why we are here, now. These untethered groups are small and scattered now, but they won’t stay small. This thing is growing. This thing feeds on fear, anger, misery, hate, and it has ample food supply on both sides of the divide.
What is the true source of all this misery, fear and pain?
Stubborn Denial
Stubborn denial of what other people are experiencing and suffering through or enduring because of… (…climate change, racism, Jan. 6…or add your issue or event) is cruel and feeds The Thing between us.
Officer testimony on Capitol insurrection: ‘The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful’ 35,491 viewsJul 27, 2021
I want to highlight here what Officer Fanone said during his testimony to Congress about January 6, 2021. And about the denial of its brutality. He is specifically aiming his words at the Congressmen and women are perpetuating this false idea through cruel denial about what happened to him and his fellow officers that day. Men and women who fought to save our fragile system of democracy from a growing lunacysown by lies and false narrativescarefully crafted to fuel fear, mistrust, and general anxiety. The sowers of such destructive seeds prefer to live in an authoritarian, autocratic, despotic, dictatorial system.
“SO MANY OF THE PEOPLE I PUT MY LIFE AT RISK TO DEFEND ARE DOWNPLAYING OR OUTRIGHT DENYING WHAT HAPPENED. I FEEL LIKE I WENT TO HELL AND BACK TO PROTECT THEM AND THE PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM, BUT TOO MANY ARE NOW TELLING ME THAT HELL DOESN’T EXIST OR THAT HELL ACTUALLY WASN’T THAT BAD THE INDIFFERENCE SHOWN TO MY COLLEAGUES IS DISGRACEFUL!”
— Officer Fanone at January 6 Commission to Investigate What Happened & Who Is Responsible
The Right Means in the Hands of the Wrong Man…Will Lead to Ruin and Disaster
Circling back to Jung’s quote above, he continues saying:
"So it is better for Western man if he does not know too much about the secret insights of the Oriental sages to begin with , for, as I have said, it would be a case of the 'right means in the hands of the wrong man.' Instead of allowing himself to be convinces once more that the daemon is an illusion, he ought to experience once more the reality of this illusion. He should learn to acknowledge these psychic forces anew, and not wait until his moods, nervous states, and delusions make it clear in the most painful way that he is not the only master in his house."
The Cost of Denial & Feeding Your Mind with Misinformation
Two examples of people who believed misinformation about COVID-19 and got COVID and what happened to a little girl who is too young to get the vaccine and caught COVID because it is raging through the area where she lives among the unvaccinated.
Blake Bargatze told his parents told his parents “he was putting off receiving a COVID-19 vaccine because he felt uncertain about its possible side effects, WSB-TV in Atlanta reported.“
Senior Writer David Knowles writes, “He wanted to wait a few years to see, you know, if there’s any side effects or anything from it,” said Paul Nuclo, his stepfather. “As soon as he got in the hospital, though, he said he wished he had gotten the vaccine. Bargatze was the only member of his family who passed on getting vaccinated, Cheryl Nuclo, his mother, told Fox 5 Atlanta. Once hospitalized, however, he asked to be inoculated.”
The child, Ava Amira Rivera, tested positive for Covid-19, according to Amanda Callaway, a spokeswoman for Harris Health System. Callaway said Ava was having seizures and needed to be intubated but Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital, where she was first taken, does not offer pediatric services.
What Are the Top 10 Killers of the World?
Three examples above are real life tragedies, and yet, I know people who continue deny their realities as well as the reality of 4,320,728 people (including children) who have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began a year and a half ago.
I don’t want to hear the ready list of top 10 killers around the world deniers pull out to prove they are right. I’ve heard too many times: “COVID is no worst than this or that disease.” This is a sorry-ass, lazy excuse made by individuals who no longer trust anyone but themselves and refuse daily to see the whole of reality playing out in front of them now!
We are 7.8 billion people in this world and growing. There are a lot of realities playing out each and every day. How can anyone believe “they know” the full of reality and “they are right” while everyone else is wrong? Only a fool takes such a stance due to their overwhelming ignorance and refusal to grow beyond it.
Let’s look at this list. You can click on each one to see the sources I am drawing upon:
Since the beginning of the pandemic, which too many people to this day believe it is a lie, a hoax, a trick by the ruling elite, 4.3 million people have died.
The actual death count is believed to be much, much higher because countries like Japan, India, Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Pakistan, Tunisia, Jakarta, Eastern Europe, Jerusalem, Mississippi, and I could go on, but I think you get the picture, their health systems and hospitals are collapsing. They are utterly overwhelmed and under resourced to care for the numbers of people coming for treatment and help. When a health system or hospital collapses, it is very hard to record the daily death toll and track new cases. Also, when a health system or hospital collapses, they lose the capacity to help people coming in due to a heart attack, a stroke, a car accident, diabetic shock, children who are starving, or other any other respiratory disease or crisis.
Death is going up across the board across all diseases and emergencies.
And you know why? Because hospitals are overwhelmed. Doctors and nurses are exhausted and demoralized because of deniers and those who have not been inside a hospital recently who are resisting reality.
In India alone, it is believed 4 million people could have died. This would double the current numbers of deaths worldwide due to COVID.
But still, I know people who continue to believe COVID is made up, COVID is a lie, COVID is a trick made up by demonic people who want to control us all. “Watch out!,” they cry, chant, and shout, “They’re coming to eat us all!”
Fanatics, Deniers, and Alt Reality
Deniers, political fanatics, and the “do gooders” out to save the world by making it more beautiful again continue to say COVID is a lie cooked up to control us. One of their most favorite chants is:
“Don’t trust anyone, especially experts!”
Scientists and doctors are high on their lists of people not to trust, but if you are going to not trust experts, then at least be consistent about your beliefs! Deniers and distrusters must also include any experts with whom they come into contact. This would include people who they do not personally know or have put their nose into what these “experts” know. And so, if you are among the deniers and distrusters of experts, you must add to your list: airline pilots, dentists,nurses, or anyone who has spent any amount of time studying a subject to gain expertise in it so they can help others.
If we cannot agree on simple fact that masks (even cloth masks) work to stop the spread of COVID-19, then how the hell are we going to come together to solve Climate Change?!!
Borrowing from Officer Fanone’s testimony: “Refusing to see the reality of the suffering of millions of people due to a global pandemic is a disgrace!”
Time to Wake Up
“Verily, I say unto thee, thous shalt by no means come out thence, until thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.” It is not a matter of indifference whether one calls something a “mania” or a “god”. To serve a manis is detestable and undignified, but to serve a god is full of meaning and promise because it is an act of submission to a higher, invisible, and spiritual being. The personification enable us to see the relative reality of the autonomous system, and not only makes it assimilation possible but also depotentiates (i.e, The action of a substance that reduces the effect of another substance). the daemonic forces of life. When the god is not acknowledged, egomania develops and out of this mania comes sickness. — Carl G. Jung | Psychology & the East | Secret of the Golden Flower, p. 40
Additional Relevant Materialson the Topics Explored Above
Two things I heard yesterday that are very germane to the ideas explored in this blog include:
A syringe is filled with a first dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at a mobile vaccination clinic during a back to school event offering school supplies, Covid-19 vaccinations, face masks, and other resources for children and their families. | PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
Few people want to be where we are now, but it feels like those who are vaccinated have reached a breaking point with those who aren’t.
The question now isn’t whether the anger some of us are feeling is valid, but what do we do with it? And how do we find a way forward when a difference in opinion costs lives?
Neil deGrasse Tyson Teaches Scientific Thinking and Communication | Official Trailer | MasterClass | 11,299,669 views | Oct 5, 2020
"One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you're right but not enough about the subject to know you're wrong." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson
And then also, just for extra measure on these very complicated ideas about what’s going on now, here’s some Alan Watts:
The Illusion of MONEY, TIME & EGO – Alan Watts | 3,910,318 views | Sep 1, 2020
"Well, I have a sort of suggestion and that is this that before we decide either to save the planet or to destroy it we pause for a moment of silence. I don't mean that kind of grim silence which one observes when somebody says such and such a famous person has just died, and we'll observe a moment of silence in his honor and everybody frowns and thinks very serious thoughts that's not silence at all. I mean real silence in which we stop thinking and experience reality as reality is because after all if i talk all the time i can't hear what anyone else has to say." -- Alan Watts
The False Idea of Who You Are – Alan Watts | 394,064 views; Jun 8, 2021
"You see the problem is this we identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us. We have a certain number of actions that we define as voluntary we feel in control of those, and then over against that there is all those things that are involuntary. But the dividing line between these two is very arbitrary because for example when you move your hand you feel that you decide whether to open it or to close it. But then ask yourself how do you decide when you decide to open your hand do you first decide to decide you don't do you. You just decide and how do you do that, and if you don't know how you do it -- is it voluntary or involuntary? Let's consider breathing..." -- Alan Watts and the many veils of who we think we are
Finally, These Are Partial Posts about Conversations or Observations I’ve Had, Mostly with Myself, As I Try to Understand Deniers
August 5, 2021 at 1:30 p.m.
This is such an important concept needed so desperately now…
In responding to a post about the death of expertise:
“You have described something that has been deeply bothering me for sometime, and in the last few weeks, intensely as I have come to know a group of antivaxxers who fall into this category that “…their guess is as good as anyone else’s.
“So often when I see one of their posts bemoaning the growing public pressure they are getting from family, friends, workplace, local/state/federal governing bodies, I am tempted to ask: “Have you called your local hospital recently and asked if there are any COVID patients there?”
Post after post is about their tremendous confidence that this is a hoax contrived to control us all forevermore into some dystopian future. Each post also casts anyone who have followed the guidance of governing bodies and medical professionals as ignorant people who have fallen prey to the evil dictators who have devised this malevolent but utterly fake killer virus. “After all, one person said, we are surrounded by viruses everyday.” They express sorrow about how misunderstood they are but also ridicule for those who “take the jab”, seeming to imply anyone who does this is nothing more than minion for the evil empire plotting and scheming to take over the world.
They paint themselves as resistors to all authority. In trying to understand the logic of this by pointing out, “So if all authority figures must be doubted because you don’t know what they know yourself, then does this mean you should never again step on an airplane because the pilots are authorities in how to fly a plane?”
Airplane pilots have spent hundreds of hours learning how to handle all sorts of weather conditions and how they affect the aerodynamics of a plane. They have had to learn about all the machinery, how it works, how it all goes together, and what to do in an emergency. They have flown for thousands of hours to gain the experience to handle any situation. They have become an authority of how to fly a plane and keep everybody safe. But because they are now an authority, they must be doubted?
“It is the same from this group about doctors and nurses who are working themselves to the bone to save people dying from a novel virus racing through the human population. But, they too are thrown into the paint can and dipping their broad brush to explain reality casting them as surely simple minions of the evil empire seeking to take over us all.
“What happen to the ideal/idea that we live in complex systems consisting of lots of individuals… each one unique and different and valuable.”
These pro disease individuals shout, cry, and console each other with resist, resist, resist… because when this is all done, we will be the only ones left standing, then we will insert the Earth and bring in a more beautiful world.I have been shock and horrified at this circular logic for do they not realize that they too seek to take over and rule the world?
It is impossible to use logic or reason with individuals caught in the circular thinking… indeed, they are trapped inside spherical cow thinking and making themselves madder, more fearful, and more crazy everyday. Constant thinking is part of this all too human problem… most of us only think, which makes us scared and crazy.
“Thinking is a good servant but bad master.” — Alan Watts and Eastern Masters
Alan Watts
My friend Glenn responded to this post:
Glenn Gaasland: “The vaccine hestitancy is a peculiar kind of insanity, that can afflict even very clever and good people. It behaves very much like a virus. I know some good people who are somewhat afflicted by it. It seems to be a result of some mixture of a general distrust and disgust for governmental institutions and especially the medical industry + some concern about new kinds of experimental vaccines developed very fast + group identity issues + believing that the Covid virus is not so serious for others than the sick and elderly and that immunity by infection is a good alternative. The unusual nature of the Covid virus seems to play in, we are used to thinking of viruses behaving a certain way, yet this one behaves very unusually. Then this meets a very weak information ecology full of profeteerin mechanisms, a media culture that walked in the wrong direction almost a generation ago and has continued on this path, and it becomes a perfect storm of crazy. The fact that medical authorities communicate with the public somewhat like kindergarten teachers, and big pharma insists on making a profit instead of dropping their patents, plays right into the narrative. All the lies about the origin of the virus, including established scientific magazines ridiculing the lab-leak-hypothesis ( which seems the most likely origin ) was also a terrible blunder that enhanced the mistrust. Along with this, the pressure is growing, and the amount of data is growing, to make the anti-vax position less and less tenable and the need for general vaccination increasingly obvious.”
July 28 at 2:29 P.M.
This is a response to a comment on this post about Sagan studying social sciences a little more.
The implication I interpreted is that Sagan would probably revise this statement somewhat. I commented to this comment as follows:
“Please say more on this… or can you indicate reading material? A man named Peter who recently moved next door is a retired sociologist who taught about the Holocaust. Indeed, he survived it as a half Jewish boy living in Nazi occupied Europe. His father died having been sent to the concentration camps.He recently asked my husband and me if we knew how long it took after Hitler was elected for Nazism to rise and the brutality to begin. We did not know.
This Peter who survived Nazi Germany said, “Four months.”Now consider the United States of America and the testimony of four officers who defended the Capitol on 1/6/21. Can you imagine what would have happened if those rioters had gotten a hold of even one Congressman or woman who they considered the enemy?
They did not get ahold of a single one because the thin blue line of officers fighting for their lives held back 8,000 to 9,000 angry, mostly middle age white men from encountering them and creating safe passages so they could escape and hide.
“A thin, blue line… it is very Carl Sagany… the cosmos the the thin blue line that sustains all life on Earth. And, now we are that thin, blue line, if we can stop polluting our consciousness with racism, fascism, authoritarianism (just pick your ism) and clean our minds so we can treat each other with dignity and respect and compassion.”
This is Peter Stien’s book. It is a must read for anyone seeking to understand reality. He wrote this after 4 of his students came to him in tears after encountering another professor at Peter’s university who was a Holocaust denier.
Peter Stein | Friend and Neighbor | Survivor of the Holocaust | Professor of Sociology & Writer
July 28 at 1:31 P.M.
The first “anti-vaxxer” movement, which began as soon as the first vaccine was discovered and used, began in 1796. At this time, the British medical and scientific community of the early 1800s was known to be very cliquey and dominated by highly influential people. They didn’t like that a a country surgeon was promoting a safer alternative to dealing with small pox and mounted a blistering campaign against him (the man who observed that milk maids who had become infected with cow pox did not catch small pox). These jealous doctors blurred the boundaries between opinion and fact, which continues to this day. They were also in fear of losing their income and status.
Witness the United States of America where a lively anti-vaxxer community thrives and generates lots of money for persons dedicated to misinformation. Also, getting vaccinated against the newest virus that has evolved to infect people and has proven it is highly infectious and deadly has been weaponized as a partisan poisoned arrow. This partisan poisoned arrow and new love child for anti-vaxxers is of course COVID-19.
This article says, “Many of the arguments against vaccination that we see today stem from this period: the idea that Jenner had no qualifications, that vaccination could actually cause smallpox, syphilis, or any number of diseases, and that vaccination would affect the way the body worked by the introduction of material that was not meant to be there.”The reason many of these claims have pervaded is mostly because they are based on the tiniest grain of truth which, when taken out of context, can give them an air of veracity that isn’t deserved.”While it is true that Jenner didn’t have a formal qualification, that’s because he trained as a surgeon at a time when there were no degrees for surgeons.
According to Gower, in the early years of vaccination people were sometimes contracting other infectious diseases, or blood poisoning, as a result of vaccination but that was because it was not a sterile procedure at the time and there was a risk of contamination, which is not the case today.”
NPR did a segment on dirty needles recently, which are still very prevalent in the developing world and estimated to be the cause of death of 3 to 4 million people in the coming year.”The iconic photo of the two boys — one vaccinated against smallpox and one who hadn’t been vaccinated — was published in 1901, and taken by Dr Allan Warner at the Leicester Isolation Hospital.”
Who do you want to believe–someone spouting unsubstantiated opinions crafted to get you worked up, afraid, and angry OR someone who has dedicated years of their life studying things that make people seriously ill and how to stop or treat these deadly things (we call these people doctors, researchers, virologist)?
It is wrong, indeed downright evil, to conflate the work of doctors and virologists with the evil Pharma industry that wants to control us all (or insert your favorite evil doer of our time: the illuminati, Corporations, governments of all kinds… you can put anything in there to stoke up the fear factor that spices up your real intentions).
Or perhaps it is the evil Bill Gates who wants to plant a chip inside of you (or have you heard the one about he wants to grow inside of you so he never has to die… now we are tracking down the QAon poisoned pansy path of fear inducing fantastic fiction).
From a friend Jean on this post: Also great background context on the “anti-vaxers’…. Very interesting to me. I grew up GRATEFUL for ALL vaccinations… But I’ve actually MET people recently who started telling me, “oh you only need vitamins and you cannot get COVID-19”. Here’s a link to a DOCTOR who is one of the “influencers” around one of the many disinformation being spread re COVID-19.
“Americans’ growing interest in alternative medicine has helped turn suburban Chicago doctor Joseph Mercola into one of the most popular voices in natural health. So why does he have so many people riled up?” — Chicago, January 31, 2012
July 27 at 6:46 P.M.
A response to a friend:
I understand you speak of a reality little visible to the ordinary Western man and woman. It is a spiritual-psychic reality that is just as real as pooping, sleeping, and eating.
And also, so you do not misunderstand or underestimate me, I have and continue to pay close attention to the numbers, who is giving the numbers, and a whole lot of other things going on in this world. It is not within your ability to perceive or know what I have been paying attention to and what I have failed to perceive, or even worst what I have chosen to deny exists and have created an alternative reality to explain. Only I can do that, just as only you can do that for yourself. The words we use to share our experiences and our understandings of what we observe and what we have come to understand are woefully lacking, and even more so when we have not experienced a certain situation together and know without any doubt whatsoever the reality of what we have just experienced in this world.
The interview (with numbers) is not about Coronavirus and who has died, but rather use of dirty needles for all sorts of treatments for all sorts of life threatening diseases and conditions in the developing world. It is no less a tragic state of affairs than the number of children worldwide dying of starvation each year, while developed countries do a little but not enough to stop starvation in its tracks! We can do so, we choose as a massive collective of human beings not to do so.I also understand that we will not agree on the severity of this novel virus (known as COVID-19) that is marching its way throughout the human population across the world. The reality of what is happening Now will speak for itself as time goes by. However, this is not new. Being decimated by an invisible microbe has happened to the human species again and again. We have fallen victim to lots of deadly disease throughout time, I mean the whole of human history.I do not think you would deny how deadly Rabies is — low and behold, it is a virus. Nor do I think you would bother to debate how infectious and deadly Smallpox Variola major – specifically the malignant (flat or hemorrhagic type) has been to human beings. Dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) is also a virus that does ugly things to the human body.
I had Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever earlier this summer. It made me really sick. It almost sent to me to the hospital. Of the spotted fevers (which are cause by another microbe, a bacteria), it is the most deadly. It can also cause long-term nasty effects on the human body if left untreated.I did not deny the reality of this disease. I sought medical treatment. I took the doxycycline even though it caused nasty side effects that I will not get into here because it would really gross most people out to describe what happened to me.
Coronavirus, yes, it is new; yes, it is making the world crazy; yes, too many of us have become obsessed with who is a trusted source of information and who is a lier. But the reality is, it is leaving hundreds of thousands of people without mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, and even children have died from it. To deny the reality of what these individuals have endured is to inflict a psychic wound on the people who have lost individuals the love. It is also taking a spiritual step onto the very same psychic-spiritual path that all the “lying politicians” and “lying people of any authority (I guess??!! — does this mean a pilot who flies the airplane you get on to go visit someone you care about cannot be trusted because he/she is an authority on flying, even though he has trained for hundreds of hours and knows about all sorts of conditions and how to handle them? Or, does this mean, you cannot trust a doctor who has spent years studying and learning about the human body and disease to become an authority on how to treat disease? If you are true to your beliefs, then you must be consistent all the way and not trust the farmer who sells you food to eat because you have not raised it yourself; you must not trust another person to dig a new well for water; you must not trust any other authority but yourself. This is a very lonely world to live in, at least, I think so.)” Yes, I whole-hearty agree there are power hungry people who have climbed the steps of power and authority who are willing to do anything to maintain their power, including lying to and killing their people. But to clump all people who have dedicated huge amounts of time to become an authority on something is a dangerous movement of thought.
You are not wrong to fight evil. We must all fight it when it rears its ugly head. However, it is my humble opinion that you don’t need to be lopsided and cruel to people who have lost their loved ones to this novel virus to make your point about the perils of our time and the need to wake up consciously and fight like hell.Indeed, I believe your point and fight would be much more powerful and potent by holding the reality that people are dying from COVID-19 in great numbers alongside the reality that children are dying of starvation in great numbers and we as massive collective let them die. This is evil. It is also possible to hold the reality that a little tiny virus is killing lots of people exceedingly fast alongside the reality that people are dying in huge numbers by by brutal government using brutal tactics. Holding these two realities does not lessen what you are speaking and calling people to action one little bit.
You are calling them to psychic illness and spiritual decay such as the hundreds of thousands of black and brown people in my country who have been lynched and brutalized for centuries. I am disgusted by segments of people in my country who project their psychic illnesses on others. It is a most insidious illness that is rearing its ugly head again such as the events (the REALITY) of January 6, 2021. I have blogged about this horrible day in depth when an estimated 9,000+ (mostly middle age white men clinging like tormented children having a tantrum to their belief in white supremacy) stormed the Capitol. These tourists (as Trump and most of the Republicans of my government) call them — gouged out eyes, severed fingers and toes, tasered officers at the base of their skulls (causing one to have a heart attack), hit them with sledgehammer, baseball bats, and even the American flag.
The civil war never ended… it went underground and grew in foul and malicious ways. It was carefully poked and prodded and stoked by evil men until it erupted in what I saw unfold not more than 9 miles from where I live. And almost the whole Republican party is denying the reality of that day… following Trumps lead who says the air was filled with love.
One of the officers testifying today when asked about how this particular statement Trump said made him feel said, “If that was love, then let’s all go down to mar a lago and share some of this love with that man.
“Yes — you are absolutely right… when you are facing a monster… and if you have a molecule of consciousness to chart a moral course forward… you have no choice but to fight it!!!!!!
This is the way of all life on Earth. This is reality, which does not lie, but fools will fall when they deny the rock of reality that human life has sprout out of.
Alan Watts says this much better. Don’t bother listening to that interview above… I only shared that as another and different tragedy playing out in our collective reality of now. Rather, if you can stomach it, listen to this talk. It’s one of Watt’s shortest. He even talks about the very same thing you are calling us to pay attention to… he even uses the analogy of the wasp and the bee who are locked in an eternal, mortal struggle against each other. And so too is man when evil rears its ugly head, it must be fought as well. But, Watts says because we are a conscious living being there is another level that must be kept in mind as we fight the endless war of good and evil.
Tribute to Carl Jung — 1961, Alan Watts
July 26 at 1:16 P.M.
On Living in Sin… and other terrible things we do to each other as human beings… this is my response to my friend who wrote this blog and posted something else that I responded to with a question:
“To be honest, I am not sure how fast I will get to your blog. This is a time of remembering; a time when 3 years ago my father died. I can not help but remember the events that played out and pay homage to the lost despair, and darkness I was flung into in the aftermath of this time, three years ago.Terrible people exist everywhere on this Earth — in high positions, like your terrible leader in India and previously in my country of the US with the devil disguised as Trump — and they exist in low places like the funky little nonprofit I worked for whose CEO fired me for being by my father’s side as he struggled for life for 10 days then died.
But frankly, that devil lives inside you and inside me and inside every single human being on this fragile planet. It is a disease as real as COVID-19. This human disease will probably guarantee that nothing will be accomplished in the next 9 years to mitigate Climate Change. This is the burden of consciousness and how we respond (or do not respond) to the problems of our times.
I will read your post, in time. I have always been illuminated by your insights and abilities to perceive things below the placid surface of being human; a surface of normality that we all like to pretend exists, but really we are vortexes of chaos in the world when we become blind to our own inner devil and demons.
I will leave instead this quote from Jung I found while looking for another that fits the current global situation:
“Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life…If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature…Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.” ― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition
Garden of Eden and The Fall
Where did the term Toxic Positivity originate from? (This was asked by my friend Barry Kort)
My response:”It is as old as human beings being self-aware. It is a price we pay for being conscious and able to see inside ourselves and reflect on what we find there — the good, the bad, and the ugly.Most of us love to see the good in ourselves! You see it all the time on Facebook. “Look how productive I am!” “Look at this great thought I just had.” “Look at this great project I’m doing.” “Look what a good man, good woman I am.”
Owning our bad and ugly parts, well, that’s not so fun. I know hardly no one with whom I can have an honest conversation about the ugly thoughts and downright evil thoughts I have.
Toxic positivity is just a new word for a very old psychological coping mechanism — mainly denial and splitting. Below these “normal” methods of coping with stress, you descend into pathology. Here’s a great article on it:
"Zuckerman says that “toxic positivity, at its core, is an avoidance strategy used to push away and invalidate any internal discomfort.” But when you avoid your emotions, you actually cause more harm."
The situation you helped me with last year with Ecology for System’s Thinking that was a case of Toxic Positivity…. you know who I’m talking about. That person was doing great harm to me, and then blamed it all on me and my inability to be as “happy” and “positive” as he was. What a deep and dark well of unconsciousness resides inside this individual; indeed, resides inside each and every one of us… “Oh, but let’s not talk about that… let’s be positive and look on the bright side of things… we got Climate Change to solve and COVID to get through…”
We are headed for hell by ignoring the dark depths and failing to give comfort to each other when we encounter adversity and despair.”
“I think in our times today, especially on platforms like Facebook, we all believe ourselves to be physicists, we all reduce the complicated problems swirling around us to the simplest formulas, and we all preach our views to the void of obscurity and untenable realities… and so we have our overly simplified Now with solution makers that know little to nothing about what they are proclaiming will save the world and everybody in it. We might as well be living on a spherical cow.”
The spherical cow is a humorous metaphor for highly simplified scientific models of complex real life phenomena. Wikipedia
July 22 at 9:52 P.M.
“As the old Chinese master took us on footage if you ask any question you get thirty blows with my stick; if you don’t ask any question who get thirty blows just the same–in other words what the hell are you doing around defining yourself as a skilled and defining me as a teacher. In other words you have raised the problem.” — Alan Watts – Buddhism As Dialogue (Full) [around minute 19]
Synchronistic stories are like bread crumbs I like to gather for a rainy day when I can ponder them more deeply and seek out the connections (to me, to others, to the moment). They are stories or conversations that have gotten me thinking about things beyond what I would normally ponder in the business of surviving another day. During these extraordinarily abnormal times, synchronistic stories are especially good to contemplate. Who knows, perhaps they hold the key to a new idea, an insight, or understanding how to move forward in a difficult moment. Here are a few more stories that got me thinking about how having a boring life isn’t so bad…if fact, highly desirable.
“Writing Forces You to Think Through Things” — Now is a Good Time to Think Things Through
“Young people often have this desire to try to make their life interesting,” says actor, author, and director Ethan Hawke. “Life is so interesting all by itself. You do not have to try to goose life.” He’s pictured above in Paris on Nov. 25, 2019.
Words of Advice
While on book tour in Berlin, Hawke met a German editor who gave him some advice: “He said, ‘The problem is you’re having the same dilemma that famous writers have at the end of their career … You are not a famous writer — you are a famous person who’s writing.’ “
The editor suggested he just embrace it. “He advised me on my next novel not to run away from it, but to run into it … and then, of course, it took me 20 years to do it.”
On why he framed the story around Shakespeare’s Henry IV, a play he performed in 2003
I started trying to do King Lear, but I’ve never performed King Lear, and I realized that I just wasn’t intimate enough with the play and that the play’s themes didn’t speak to my themes that I wanted to write about. You know, Henry IV probably explores fathers and sons and masculinity and the attempt to arrive at some kind of, quote unquote, manhood or adulthood about as well as literature can do. And that was what my story was.
So I kept kind of coming back to Hotspur. One of my favorite things about acting is seeing yourself as your character’s lawyer and defending his position. And in the novel, I have this sense that William is trying to prove to himself — that he’s the good guy and he’s trying to do the same thing for his character and there’s something kind of wonderful about that realization.
On revisiting a difficult time in his life – he was performing in Henry IV around the time his marriage to Uma Thurman ended
I had a lot of growing up to do, and one of the things that I really love about writing is it forces you to think through things, and think through situations, and create a fictional universe where you can see things that maybe you can’t see inside your own life. That’s what the title is about, you know, “a bright ray of darkness” is the unity of opposites, so to speak, that we learn by suffering.
On the complex relationship between celebrities and their fans
I’ve spent so much time thinking about this because I experienced celebrity young. I’ve had a desire to break that glass wall. … When I look at Michael Jackson, or Elvis, or any of these people who have reached extreme celebrity, it’s like they’re in some isolation tank and they’re just going mad. And we’re watching them, kind of loving watching them die.
When everyone else is staring at you, it’s hard not to start staring at yourself like them. You start to see yourself in third person. You start to be writing the narrative of your life and it’s just a toxic way of thinking.
And yet, it’s fun to sell out a theater. It’s fun to get a standing ovation. It’s fun to move people and have them tell you they were moved. So the positives are this huge high and the negatives are just people chopping at your ankles. It’s been very confusing throughout my life.
Danny Hensel and D. Parvaz produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.
Threads from Facebook – Weaving Stories Together to Understand Things
I shared this post on January 27, 2021 in one of the last remaining groups I belong on Facebook, adding the following comment:
Truth… wisdom… bearing witness to the world as it is… does this what the image conveys… perhaps… I am getting attacked right now for making an artistic, celebratory video on the inauguration of Biden and Harris… someone asking where are the fact checkers… (perhaps they meant to say where are the fantasy checkers?).
I suspect he was referring to the stories that inspired the raid and sacking of the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021. It was an insurrection inspired by lies, misinformation, and fantasy. An alternative world created by alternative facts that compelled people to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and then it didn’t take much to poke at this fantasy and pop the mind bubbles making them burst into a deadly reality. How much of our human world is shaped by fantasy and by beliefs that we’ve ceased to examine critically by using all our human faculties of thinking, feelings, sensation, and intuition?
These things (beliefs, story, fantasy) become shortcuts we hold inside our mind to explain reality. So cherished they can become, we can be inspired to act on our short cuts for reality. If they are lopsided and out of whack with reality, bad things tend to befall all humans involved. This is the danger of creating alternative worlds inside our minds that become more precious to us than the world we share with each other.
The only antidote is to grow your mind, your light of consciousness by using all your conscious abilities: critical thought, feeling, sensation, intuition.
Image probably from a Tarot card deck
The original post came from: Chaim Mendel * January 25 at 7:00 PM * If there were one philosophical truth that you could teach everyone in the world, what would it be? What is the most interesting philosophical question?
An Online Conversation
The following conversation ensued. It is a story. But it takes an open mind to explore and unlock the possibilities explored.
That’s what we are here to help each other do—unlock our inner possibilities.
All of us have infinite inner possibilities, but we must squeeze them out one at a time as we travel through space and time.
Being an ancient species and new species at the same time, we confront many paradoxes, obstacles, and challenges as we try to remember who we are and what we are here to do.
Many tools of insight and understanding have been developed by every people and all civilizations to help people find, cultivate, and grow their inner power. Most are cloaked in mystery and numinosity. Most have been lost to modern man.
This conversation explores the wisdom of the Tarot and traces its deep, enigmatic roots.
Auntyflo says about the Nine of Swords: “When the Nine of Swords becomes present in your reading there is an experience in your life that you are going to need to analyze very carefully.
Focus on your priorities and keep moving. This card is representative of ill tidings coming your way. Sometimes life throws us curveballs that exist for the purpose of giving us the experience of working through the problems that they create and this is the case for you at this time. Often this card is depicting some kind of loss that has thrown you completely off of your normal routine.
The image that is depicted in the Rider-Waite deck shows a woman waking up in the dead of night in despair. Her head is in her hands and there are nine heavy swords hanging over her head. This is symbolic of loss, suffering and sometimes misery or oppression. This card could be symbolic of a loss of a loved one either in an end in a relationship or a death. When you have gotten this card in your reading you will need to take a step back emotionally and take a look at your situations as they currently are.
If you are experiencing this level of loss and you are right in the middle of grieving this could be hard to do. But this card tells you that it is important for you to keep focused on your end goal primarily because for one thing it will help with your grief and for another you will find that even though this is a difficult time, much growth will come as a result of you having the strength to keep on moving. You will definitely need to prioritize because you will not be able to take on very much right now, so what you do take on needs to be gentle and easy for you to handle. When you prioritize then you are giving the pain something positive to transform into, and often times pain and suffering can be excellent motivations. You need a distraction that will help you get through your grief. Immerse yourself totally and trust that you know what you need to do to succeed. At this point, the higher mind can take the wheel, and you should allow it to. Healing is found when one connects to their higher source energy.
Right now the combination that can be found in Knowledge and in Wisdom should be treated as interrelated. You cannot carry out a responsibility without the knowledge necessary to do so and you can’t be truly informed or knowledgeable on anything without the assistance of responsibility. There is a copasetic relationship here that cannot be denied. At this point in the Suit of Swords, you must take the responsibility inherent in the Knowledge that is at your fingertips so that you might get through this devastating time unscathed.
The time to fine-tune your personal philosophy and set goals for this lifetime is now. Even though it may be difficult to do so, there is nothing healthier for you at this time then to focus on improving yourself in life. Take the time now to consider how you are putting yourself down and being counterproductive, what is causing you suffering at this time? What is causing you to be depressed?
During this time of COVID-19, we are all experiencing deep loss and most probably depression at some level. Go to Auntyflo to read more of this ancient wisdom contained within the cards of the tarot. She explores The Nine of Swords in Love,The Nine Of Swords As Feelings, The Nine of Swords in Health, The Nine of Swords in Work and Wealth, Nine of Swords Advice,Nine of Swords Outcome, and Reversed Meaning – Nine Of Swords (this is like Runes of Ancient Nordic cultures. I was writing about runes and reversed meaning at the time my father died two years ago.)
Note : I am an atheist, but the card is interesting indeed: “If there were one philosophical truth that you could teach everyone in the world, what would it be? “
Summarize Philosophy to One Truth
The Desiderata seems to find a balance with metaphysical Naturalism … Humanism … Desiderata (things that are desired)
GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
This is such deep, beautiful wisdom. Sage advice for how to live a boring but deeply meaningful, productive, shining life. I told Colin this was gold. I never heard of it before. Thanks to Colin digging deeper, my post (which I had not thought very deeply about) suddenly went much deeper into a vein of wisdom I would have missed had Colin not paid attention and contributed this work above.
Tarot Cards, Major Arcana & the Kabbalah
Then, Barry Kort continued the dive, going further back in time and space.
The Tarot Deck (especially the Major Arcana) come from the Kabbalah. Originally the 22 cards of the Major Arcana were illustrations of 22 passages in a generic life story. I’m not sure of this, but I think Colin’s version of a life story is what he calls a Journey Map.
A 20th Century secular version of a generic life story would be found in “Passages” by Gail Sheehy.
By Journey Map or Quest Map is for a specific journey of one endeavor. I will be explaining the various “maps” in the next while. Defiantly cognitive sense-making tool. Not a solution to life, that is 42. (22 for Dave M)
Thanks for your interest.
Shared by Barry Kort — not sure origins
There are many variations on illustrations for passages in a Life’s Journey. Here, for example, is a kit of cutout illustrations for “Life’s a Journey.”
Life’s a Journey — Collection Reveal
Here is an artisan in Italy who makes custom Tarot Cards for any passage in a Life Journey.
The Handmade Art of Tarot Cards
By the way, ‘Tarot’ is ‘Torat‘ spelled backwards.
In Hebrew, ‘Torah‘ and ‘Torat‘ are the same word, meaning ‘Theory‘ or ‘Science‘.
If you want to say, “Epistemology” in Hebrew, you say, “Torat Emet” (literally the Science or Theory of Truth).
The reason for adding the consonant is so one can understand two successive words where the first word ends in a vowel and the second word begins in a vowel. So you don’t say “Torah Emet” because it would sound like “Toramet.” Adding the extra ‘t’ helps separate the two words when they are spoken aloud.
So don’t be tormented by “Torah Emet” but say “Torat Emet” to mean Epistemology — the Science or Theory of Truth.
The totality of a generic life journey is known in the lore of the Kabbalah as “The Fool’s Journey” and it’s illustrated by the 22 cards of the Major Arcana.
The totality of a generic life journey is known in the lore of the Kabbalah as “The Fool’s Journey” and it’s illustrated by the 22 cards of the Major Arcana.
«The Fool’s Journey is a metaphor for the journey through life. Each major arcana card stands for a stage on that journey — an experience that a person must incorporate to realize his wholeness. These 22 descriptions are based on the keywords for each major arcana card.»
“We begin with the Fool (0), a card of beginnings. The Fool stands for each of us as we begin our journey of life. He is a fool because only a simple soul has the innocent faith to undertake such a journey with all its hazards and pain.
At the start of his trip, the Fool is a newborn – fresh, open and spontaneous. The figure on Card 0 has his arms flung wide, and his head held high. He is ready to embrace whatever comes his way, but he is also oblivious to the cliff edge he is about to cross. The Fool is unaware of the hardships he will face as he ventures out to learn the lessons of the world.
The Fool stands somewhat outside the rest of the major arcana. Zero is an unusual number. It rests in the exact middle of the number system – poised between the positive and negative. At birth, the Fool is set in the middle of his own individual universe. He is strangely empty (as is zero), but imbued with a desire to go forth and learn. This undertaking would seem to be folly, but is it?“
Barry Kort relays: «When the Nine of Swords becomes present in your reading there is an experience in your life that you are going to need to analyze very carefully.
Focus on your priorities and keep moving.
Sometimes life throws us curveballs that exist for the purpose of giving us the experience of working through the problems that they create. Often this passage is depicting some kind of loss that has thrown you completely off of your normal routine.
The image that is depicted in the Rider-Waite version of the Tarot Deck shows a woman waking up in the dead of night in despair. Her head is in her hands and there are nine heavy swords hanging over her head. This is symbolic of loss, suffering and sometimes misery or oppression. This card could be symbolic of a loss of a loved one either in an end in a relationship or a death.
This passage tells you that it is important for you to keep focused on your end goal because for one thing it will help with your grief and for another you will find that even though this is a difficult time, much growth will come as a result of you having the strength to keep on moving.»
How to Grow Your Mind Space: N.E.M.E. — Notice | Engage | Mull | Exchange
It is altogether fitting and significant that this thread is an instance of “N.E.M.E.” ~ Notice / Engage / Mull / Exchange.
John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath | In his iconic novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck portrays the hardships of life during the Great Depression in the United States.
Just as in “The Grapes of Wrath,” we’re all fermenting the same w(h)ine, but affixing different labels to the bottle.
Whiniest Heroes
Have to take a side note here: The Whiniest Heroes In Movie History (whiners might just play a critical role for humanity)
Whiniest Quote: “It just isn’t fair! I’m never gonna get out of here!”
Though Luke grows into one of the greatest heroes in the galaxy, he begins his days as a rather angsty, reluctant teen. His journey is a rough one and he is rarely afraid to let those around him know it. His list of complaints is so long that whole compilations have been made that show off his whiniest moments.
The 22 Cards of the Major Arcana are similarly numbered by the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet.
Each card of the Major Arcana corresponds to a major passage in the life of a typical person on a typical Life Journey.
The remaining numbered cards within each of the four suits of the Minor Arcana — Swords, Pentacles, Wands, and Cups — correspond to specific Cognitive-Emotive States that a person may find themselves in somewhere in the midst of any given Life Passage in their Life Journey.
I really liked Heidi we had some fun talking and we had a little bit of a dispute going with our takes on Jordan Peterson although I agree with a lot of what Jordan Peterson’s academic work. At least I think I do.
One thing to note about Heidi is that she always had a hard time understanding Doug because he would use such flowery language and go on and on and she would try to get him to get to the point or explain it in a way somebody could understand/I don’t have a hard time understanding Doug for the most part although I do think he stays at a high level where more concreteness could help with verifying understanding.
We did several shows on the alphabet code hopefully I’ll have my query database running soon.
I’m starting to become more of a video producer than programmer and plus I got several other things on the go like this guy who’s giving me a lot of grief in a difficult conversation coexistence group I’m in.
Around the world, people are grappling with the risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. How do our minds process that risk, and why do some of us process it so differently? This week, we talk with psychologist Paul Slovic about the disconnect between our own assessments of risk and the dangers we face in our everyday lives.
Jaws | Final Face-Off With the Shark in 4K Ultra HD | 27,527,510 views•Jun 10, 2020 | Look how many views in less than one year of posting… we love scary things as human beings… we really do…
Shankar Vedantam says, “Our feelings are shaped by stories, images, and the people we are with. (…) Our sense of control determines our sense of risk. Take for example calculating our sense of contracting and getting COVID-19. We perceive that we have greater control going to a restaurant and thus might believe we have less of a risk getting COVID there while we perceive less control of making the vaccine and thus perceive this as more dangerous to us.”
Psychologist Paul Slovic says, “The modern world has a whole range of dangers much different than the world in which our brains evolved, which were inside hominoids who were living in caves. (…) There is no gatekeeper in our brains that vet feelings. This was very adaptive a long time ago helping humans survive by accessing their instincts at a moment’s notice (e.g., hearing growl in the grass). There was no time then to analyze every possibility. But our feelings do hijack the mind and this can be dangerous in our complicated modern lives that have Collective Consequences that are very different than Stone Age Consequences. (…) Take example wearing a mask to reduce the risk of transmitting COVID. We don’t see the consequences of taking such a collective action right before our eyes, and thus may underestimate the harm of not wearing a mask to ourself and others. If we then choose to not wear a mask, the virus wins and spreads and mutates. But, if we wear a mask and pay attention over time to the results of lots of people also wearing masks, we see the collective benefit and reduction of the spread of COVID-19. But many people don’t connect long-term results with short-term sacrifices, and thus continue taking wrong action. This is the same phenomena playing out in taking right action to reduce the harmful effects of the coming massive, global climate change.”
This podcast is profound because to explores how our feelings shape our actions in the world. Often they do so in ways we are very unconscious of, but they do so in ways that have huge impacts on our shared reality.
What Does 2021 Have in Store for Children? | Save the Children | 1,634 views•Dec 18, 2020
Psychologist Paul Slovic says, “We tend to help others because we feel good when we can do something that makes a difference. But when we realize there are others who we cannot help, then bad feelings enter our minds and this dampens our empathy capacity and lessens our action to do something. This is crazy because we should do what we can where we are at with what we have.” For more, see Arithmetic of Compassion.
And BEWARE how Save the Children has been coopted by QAnon to hook people into crazy beliefs. More about this soon in The Story of Q.
QAnon, coronavirus and the conspiracy cult – BBC News | 188,994 views•Premiered Jul 27, 2020 | A bizarre conspiracy theory has surged in popularity in the US since the pandemic, according to exclusive research seen by the BBC. | Since this video was posted, QAnon has been linked to the storming of the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021 — it is a violent conspiracy cult that baths its followers with ancient, awful myths of imagines that trigger their most primitive feelings, which trigger ancient animal instincts in vile ways.
Frightening Stories That Fascinate Us
The Sixth Sense (1999) – Official Trailer
The Shining – Official Trailer [1980] HD | 916,305 views•Apr 6, 2012 | “Here’s Johnny…”
“Heaven And Hell Are Not What Jesus Preached,” Religion Scholar, Bart Ehrman, said during an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air about the end of March of 2020. Bart Ehrman talked about how the ideas of eternal rewards and punishments are not found in the Old Testament or in the teachings of Jesus. He was discussing his new book Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife when at about 36 minutes in he mentioned the End Times. Ehrman said that so many people were talking about how we we all living though the End Times now (i.e., the time of Coronavirus). However, Ehrman points out people have always thought the hard times they were enduring were the End Times. In reality, it was usually due to man’s stupidity.
This is not exactly what Ehrman said. He phrased it much more elegantly than I have paraphrased it, but what he said reminded me of two recent encounters with this idea of man’s stupidity. The first time occurred 2 days before Christmas when my beloved dog died suddenly and unexpectedly in my arms. She had been bleeding internally, but I had missed all the signs. As I stood over her dead body, stroking her soft chocolate hair, I said over and over, “We were so stupid, so stupid, so stupid…”, meaning myself for I knew I had missed all the signs that might have saved her life.
I encountered it again in February, as the gravity of the Coronavirus was sinking in around the world. At this time, terrible reports were coming out of Italy, which had quickly become the epicenter of the novel Coronavirus that was making its way around the world. I was listening to an interview on the BBC with an Italian Emergency Room doctor who said, “Man was stupid in dealing with this disease. We let whole families come in with their loved one who got infected themselves and then spread it far and wide.”
Again, this is not an exact quote, but what the doctor was expressing echoed my own sentiments about my stupidity in the death of my beloved dog. And now Bart Ehrman was expressing this idea with Terry Gross. I haven’t learned much in life, but I have learned to pay attention when things happen in threes.
In the Wake of Death, I Found Comfort in Alan Watts
In the wake of my dog’s death, I had found comfort listening to Alan Watts who often danced around the idea of man’s stupidity in his lectures. In this particular string of 3s, I remembered a particularly memorable tangent he had taken in one lecture. Watts was famous for veering off on tangents in his lectures, but he always linked them back to his main points. Before veering off on this tangent, Watts had discussed the limits of man’s thinking.
Watts artfully drew his audience’s attention to the thing behind the eyes looking out onto the world–asking his audience: “What is the thing that lies behind the eyes?”
Then, Watts answered his own question by saying: “It is the thing we cannot think or perceive or name. It is the nothingness from which all form has risen.”
Watts and His Riddles
Watts’ lectures were full of riddles he attempted to explain through stories, thus the reason for his tangents. In this lecture, Watts veers into this tangential story in this way:
“…the farthest we can go in thinking about nothing [is a question…to try and get to the root of the matter]. Let me put this in another way. The world is formed, [and] now you cannot look for the origin of form in form because what you would get then would be maybe a universe where you couldn’t make out any form at all. [This is] because of us [because of our thinking] so much of it would be like writing a letter on top of a newspaper, and then putting a picture over that, and then doing something else until there wasn’t a single square millimeter of paper left of blank paper! Nobody could read anything. One can read, one can see form, one can see the world because [there is] emptiness:Emptiness [is] the mother of form.”
Watts goes on to talk about how people are really just rascals at their core, playing games and tricking each other. He told the audience he was doing that to them Now. He had hoaxed them all into coming to hear him that night. It was a trap, but he was going to make it an entertaining trap, so they wouldn’t feel so badly about it. He continues talking about how all of life is participating in this game: “The water is going around all day going tttt tttt. The fish and ducks are doing the same going dddd dddd.” Then he gets to the outrage people natural feel upon hearing this, “Well, what do mean we are all just fiddling around…and this is only a game?!”
This is where he gets to his really interesting tangent for he has anticipated the audience’s question: “What do mean life is a game?” And, he answers it for them: “Well, what did you want? Didn’t you want a game? Did you want it to be serious in the end?”
The Van Eyck Tangent
Watts continues saying:
“What I mean think about the question. What kind of a thing would you like God to be what would you like to do for eternity? Really, here is young Van Eyck who paints the eschatological picture of the Last Judgement. What a strange man he must have been where we have heaven above and hell below…and in heaven, here’s God the Father Godthe Son God the Holy Ghost all there together and Virgin Mary and the apostles and they’re all sitting in committee, and they have an aisle you know just like in church. And there they are facing each other. and they’re all sitting there very solidly. I don’t know what it’s about…but below [them] right at the end of the aisle you [can] see where all these apostles are sitting is [the archangel Michael.]”
“Isn’t Michael a rather gorgeous figure in beautiful armor with wings and underneath him is a bat winged skull and beneath those bat wings are all [mannar of] horror let loose. Michael is about to squash that skull. See [there] with his sword. But below whoow! There are nude bodies some of them pretty comely. They’re all squirming in there, and they’re being eaten by worms, and they are eating the worms, and there’s a kind of a mush. It’s like the sort of situation you find when you turn up a big rock and there’s all that going on underneath.”
“Now, there’s no question whatever the van Eyck the painter had more fun painting that part of the picture [than the top part!] So [it was] the same way with [many of the great painters of those times] they painted every kind of weird surrealistic deviltry going on and they really loved it but they couldn’t admit it…”
Watts goes on, of course, but that’s another story. To me, the crux of what Watts was conveying in this lecture was our inherent ability as human beings to be stupid simply because we are not paying attention to all of who we are as living beings. When something bad happens, we may not consciously think of feel that we have chosen thisthing or that thing to happen in our lives, but if one settles… to really sinks down into the fullness of who one really is… there is something else entirely going on within us. All that stuff going underneath that rock we just have not gotten around to turning up inside our psyche.
I first scribbled this post in a Facebook group where not very many members found it particularly interesting. However, a couple members commented, and one member in particular commented and extended some of Watts thinking, which I will share a little bit below, referring this member as GG and to myself as Bébé.
GG: “If I remember rightly, Alan Watts made the point about what you would do for an eternity, connecting it to the idea that the universe is “playing hide and seek with its self”.
I have contemplated a lot on infinity and eternity during the last few years, since this seems to be the basic deal, that whatever it is we are a part of it could never have begun but must have been going on forever. Since there is movement inwards and outwards ( this seems somehow even like the basic architecture of timespace: a movement inwards and a movement outwards which at every point is always meeting, and thus giving rise to complex and strange kinds of forms ) this also points towards a truly infinite world also in extension, as well as in depth. All our experience also points towards this: we never see an end to life, everywhere there is movement and transformation and events happening, we see neither the smallest nor largest units, there always seems to be more. Physics becomes increasingly exotic, as does mathematics, as does psychology, the more we learn. And so on and so forth, this pattern can be seen everywhere, and it all points towards this infinite eternal multidimensional manifold where for some reason there is even mind and consciousness and experience.
This being the ground of my being, I have wondered, if I could have my greatest wish fulfilled, what would it be?
And the best I have come up with so far, is I would really enjoy to be able to shape shift between all possible and imaginable lifeforms, in such an infinitely large as well as deep space, forever. To live forever, and also live as all possible lifeforms, and thus see and know and experience reality from all possible angles.
The suggestion from Watts that the universe is playing hide and seek with itself might be that this is actually what is happening, and this is the reason why beings are born without strong memories of where they come from, go through an enormous drama of birth and living and death, experience an inner yearning and nostalgia for something timeless and unchanging, until eventually again becoming united with the ultimate source.
The Multiuniverse is among the cosmologically popular explanations for what was before the big bang, this also assumed to be infinite and eternal, along with this exists other models of something more sequential, but even here the main theme is that it never begun and never can end and always have been and will be ongoing.
With this in mind: Is the Multiverse yet another name for God?
It seems clear that both God and the Multiverse share the basic characteristics: forever having existed, full of life in all directions, endless potentiality for new form to arise within it, processes of evolution and learning, and of course intelligent conscious life with self-awareness on a variety of scales and levels. If we assume there are even more intelligent lifeforms than ourselves somewhere in this infinity, or simply assume that evolution of intelligence is a possibility, then this already implies that this possibility has been fulfilled forever ago.
Therefore, both God and Multiverse is a myth of something that contains SUPERINTELLIGENCE and contains as much of it as anyone could like, it having always been a part of the package: the highest possible intelligence forever ago realized and an inherent part of our existence.
Watts indicates that such a superintelligence may be quite playful, feeling in its roots completely secure in its never ending foundations, there might be good reasons to play some games in the meanwhile for nothing other than the pure fun of it, even play some extreme drama, and even pretending to not remember ones origin, searching to come back to it, and since knowing that we have all the time in the world to find the thread back, eventually succeeding. Once again.
That would explain a lot!” 🙂
Bébé : “You are absolutely right! That is exactly what Watts says–the universe is playing a game of hide and seek.
It is a mind warping idea, especially for us living in Western Civilization that does a pretty good job crushing most minds to accept the collective norms of this civilization. Jürgen Hornschuh writes about this a lot, but I believe he is taking a break from this platform as he lives in India and this country is in a massive shut down now.
Where you ask yourself… I have wondered, if I could have my greatest wish fulfilled, what would it be?
How you answer is exactly what Watts says… you would be you doing you right Here & Now. I will attach a song that incorporates this in their music.
Then, you ask: With this in mind: is the Multiverse yet another name for God?
I think you may be right! Have you heard Watts’ lectures about this idea of a super intelligent universe? I can try to find it for you. I was listening to it just before we went into shut down here in VA, so now for whatever reason, I am just not listening to Watts… just trying to feel into what I have heard over the last 2 months of listening. In several of his lectures, he talks about the Earth peopling just like an apple tree apples… and this would not occur in a stupid universe as we have been taught to believe that the universe is a mindless machine… he says that is as crazy an idea of a man with a white beard sitting up on high ruling over heavens and earth… Watts did piss off a lot of people with his ideas… he was a myth burster… but really he was teaching people to release their minds for the boxes of thought we have trapped ourselves inside.
Thank you so much for responding!” ❤️
GG: “We are something the universe is doing” is another idea which when hearing it sounds perfectly reasonable, yet involves such a change from the habitual point of view, a change towards feeling more as a part of the great whole. For me this feeling of being part of the great whole brings a lot of peace, while also makes it all seem so much richer and more interesting. We who live today sure have an enormous gift in the sense of how we can listen to the voice of some of these great masters all the way to our living rooms. Just listening to wise people like Alan Watts, contemplating it and using it as a mirror to reflect back on ones own life, this is a kind of food for the soul.” 🙂
Bébé : “I have been reflecting on your previous comment of if we are eternal energies that your wish might be to be and experience as many forms of being as possible, and I think that would be my wish too. Even the scary ones… I supposed… though that seems insane really! This short song, which is not the lecture that I still need to find, hints at this.
And, yes, Watts goes back to this idea again and again about we are what the universe is doing. It is a beautiful idea. I think I am incubating it right now for the new material I am adding to my story… this the universe is doing man, just as man is doing the universe at the point of Here & Now… I find this so deeply comforting some how.”
GG: “Some of this may move into the realms of speculation but it has been on my mind a lot for several years.
Lets say we accept that the universe is ultimately eternal and life has existed forever. That something like big bang would be yet another moment of change, yet part of something larger pre-existing it, also part of something larger pre-existing it…forever. So some kind of action, movement, transformation happening forever.
Lets also say we believe there is such a thing as evolution. That under some circumstances, life progresses in stages and ascends levels, which means a process of increasing awareness, intelligence, ability, understanding. Learning. We can all relate to this during our own life, some things do evolve, learning and maturation does happen.
Lets also assume there are higher levels of intelligence, awareness, consciousness than humans have known so far. Much points towards this. It seems very unlikely that we are at the top of the evolutionary ladder. More likely that there are enormously much higher levels.
All this seems to me as highly probably true. That the universe could begin out of nothing, for no reason at all, seems like the most impossible of all possible impossibilities! That evolution happens is supported by all our experience. That there are higher undiscovered levels seems overwhelmingly likely.
If this is true, must it then not by necessity be true that Superintelligent life which has evolved to the highest possible levels, has also existed forever? And evolved and developed forever? And created new versions of itself forever?
Then the universe as a whole would indeed be superintelligent. And these higher levels, and dare I say these far more advanced Beings, might be an inherent part of timespace itself. So that all the talk about spirits and angels and gods and entities, are all true, only that the whole truth is exponentially wilder still?
This would explain a lot. I can not see any weaknesses in this reasoning. If we do live within eternal action, there is consciousness, there is evolution, then the highest possible results of this evolution must be expected to always have been a part of this action, at every place where life and consciousness and evolution is taking place.
All this points towards humans having enormously great possibilities if we can somehow get in contact with these higher powers and get help from them.”
Bébé : “I think everything you say is most definitely, highly likely… I agree with all you have said… we each can help evolve and reach higher levels of consciousness by developing ourself. Alan Watts found Buddhism and Hinduism to provide the most helpful daily practices and narratives to possibly do this. But, Watts would always say that it is an individual journey and everything he said should be taken as a story and a form of entertainment. He always nudged his audiences to do their own thinking and make their own conclusions, which is what you do so well Glenn!
