Browser Wars: Lost Pretense of Innocence

Posted on December 17, 2017 by ehurst

Nobody is surprised when Google does something sneaky and dirty. We all figured out long ago that Google is evil in the sense that they will not hesitate to lie, and will gladly sell you to the highest bidder. They don’t in the least mind doing things we find creepy, manipulative and invasive.

Google is the Devil we know. We also know that their expertise in technology is hard to match. They’ve taken on the older generation of technology companies and have little trouble competing in areas the Google wants to dominate. The only thing holding them back is their degree of willingness to invest and fight for something that may not be an easy win. But we as tech-savvy users have come to expect Google to act like any government, with their behind-the-scenes “screw you” attitude, but doing it with a great deal of competence because it’s all about the money.

We don’t expect this from Mozilla. Mozilla has positioned themselves as friends of users. They admitted their technology was lagging in some ways, but assured it was partly because they were watching out for our best interests. Maybe they were at some point in the past, but no longer: Firefox Is on a Slippery Slope.

Mozilla has slipped a new bit of malware into their browser without warning. There has been a huge backlash and Mozilla has shut down all means of comment or complaint on this issue. Right when they have just now managed to win back a lot of users with their new and vastly improved browser, they crap on everyone who trusted them.

Let’s be clear: There are no good guys in the browser wars.

Okay, let’s refine this image just a bit. The Internet has become entirely too complicated. When it was a means to deliver documents and information, it was something that changed the world. When it became the means to delivering advertising and applications that run inside your browser, it was turned into a virtual pox on the human race. We can debate whether that transition was inevitable, but we cannot debate the hideous nastiness that it has become.

This is why we seek and use the precious few efforts to dial back the abuse. We use ad-blockers, we seek ways to turn off or tone down certain features in our browsers (mostly having to do with Javascript), and we generally fight back as best we can in what has turned into a technology arms race. Sure, it was all born of the best intentions of delivering things the users actually wanted. But technology is morally neutral in broad terms, so any evil sonuvabitch can get in on the fun. Low and behold, it seems the sonsabitches outnumber the good guys in terms of user experience.

There are two ways a browser project can go: full service or something less. There are three basic projects trying to do the full service stuff: Microsoft’s Edge (formerly IE; the Trident engine), Google’s Chrome (the Blink engine), and Mozilla (Gecko engine). There are some legacy engines that were previously part of this show (like WebKit), but are now relegated to minor projects. Then there are a several more projects taking the other route, with no intention of implementing everything. And the big three are bundled into operating systems, so the typical user never gives it that much thought.

In this market, Mozilla has long been the underdog of the big three. It is currently bundled with a lot of Linux distributions and similar operating systems, which amounts to a tiny minority on Net. Their squeaky clean image was their primary selling point. Whether they might have damaged it in the past won’t matter too much now, because they have thrown it away completely with their latest slimy actions.

So now the only question is which of the evil sonsabitches offers the closest to what you can tolerate. Yes, there are dozens of browsers built of Blink and Gecko, and some of the projects are striving to correct some small selection of abuses. You’ll have to make up your own mind, the question is frankly complex.

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Sermon the Mount 11

Posted on December 16, 2017 by ehurst

Model Prayer 6:9-15

So what would your private prayer sound like? On the one hand, memorizing this passage as some kind of sacred liturgy is a huge mistake. Nothing here suggests it, much less commands it. Rather, Matthew chose Greek words that translate roughly to “along these lines” or “in this fashion.” Nor should you imagine that it’s some kind of holy outline, treating it like a checklist. Again, that misses the point. A proper Hebrew approach is to get the flavor of what He says, to absorb the protocol underlying the words.

Oddly, the first line is standard rabbinical stuff; you can find it in the Talmud. Keep in mind that the Hebrew concept behind “Your name” refers to Our Father’s title, His role as God of all things. Further, the second line is typical Messianic wording. You can be sure that when the Messiah comes, He will assertively require full obedience in His Presence just as He would from the angels in Heaven. Thus, these first two lines are familiar to His disciples already; Jesus reaffirms common practice thus far.

The reference to “daily bread” was widely understood as a Roman term. Without digging too deeply into the details of a Roman conscript’s daily life, his captain was his master. The captain would keep his conscripts in line by keeping them dependent on him. At the end of each day, he gave his troops just enough food to last through the next day. To avoid becoming dependent on local provisions, Rome often provided directly the makings for a very good quality of bread as the bottom line for military rations. It was not at all like the flat bread common in the Levant, but was like a big round loaf and could be quite tasty by comparison. This better bread was one of those small inducements that kept soldiers loyal, but the limited ration would discourage going absent. If you want to keep eating, you have to keep reporting back to the captain.

Thus, Jesus depicts the Father as rather like our captain, giving us better stuff, but just enough to keep us dependent. This line in the prayer was to teach His disciples to think differently about the whole issue of shalom. You should be aware that the false Messianic Expectations blathered about unlimited supplies of food, rather like turning stones into bread. This imagery drawn from the Roman Army overturns the greedy Jewish thinking.

Jesus returns to conventional rabbinical wisdom about repentance. The Talmud says more than once that the burden is on you to move to the place of forgiveness first, so that you stand in the place where Jehovah’s forgiveness is poured out on you. Sins were viewed as debts that burdened the sinner and prevented God’s prosperity, but so was a lack of forgiveness. Forgiveness was an open door to resolving those debts. You cannot compel someone else to repent for sinning against you, but you can open the door. Forgiveness must be offered, but could not be claimed without repentance.

Connected to this was the line about being led away from trials. In the Hebrew mind, it’s one thing to submit as David did to examination (Psalm 139); this is one kind of testing. It preempts the other kind of testing — a fiery trial that falls on those who need encouragement to develop a penitent heart. The word Matthew selects here is more like “discipline” than “temptation.” We should pray for the first kind of testing, so that we can avoid the second. Failing the second testing means we are turned over the Evil one, whose nickname here in Greek can be read as “Calamity.” It’s a picture of being turned over to the nobleman appointed by the king to put you into harsh and degrading slavery until you earn back the debt you failed to pay in the first place.

The doxology line is nearly a quote from 1 Chronicles 29:11, a part of the Jewish ritual for addressing the Ark of Covenant. It’s the standard protocol for leaving the presence of your feudal sovereign. Then, as your final takeaway from the Divine Presence, Jesus hammers home the point about penitence as a way of life. The only way you can lose that is to close off your heart. A primary mark of the Holy Spirit is the reflexive sense of one’s culpability before a Holy God. It broods and burns in the background and never leaves you alone in this life. You can never escape the sense that you are wholly unworthy, but it’s always paired with the overwhelming sense of joy at the grace of forgiveness. How could you not forgive others?

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Phenomenology as Clue to Phenomena

Posted on December 16, 2017 by ehurst

It seems a good time to point out something that may not be obvious.

For those of you familiar with philosophy as an academic pursuit, you recognize that I use the terms and some ideas from Phenomenology. You may also recognize that I take them in a different direction entirely. My underlying assumption is that all of Creation is alive, sentient and willful. If the question is first-person experience of reality, then we have to treat reality as the second person. Meanwhile, every other human is by birth alienated from Creation and from their divine heritage.

Jesus set the pattern in no uncertain terms: We speak to Creation as a person. With His authority, Creation responds as a person under authority. The Roman Centurion had it right (Matthew 8:1-17). This kind of authority is what we surrendered in Eden, and to some degree it is restored by following Christ.

Phenomenology is not a matter of following Christ, but among the other choices we might have in pursuing philosophical questions, it’s the better path. We are missing a vast lore of intellectual assumptions that belonged to the ancient Hebrew people. As we promote the heart-led way of life as a covenant community, some of you will never feel drawn to such questions. That means you are called to trust your brothers and sisters who do have the calling to pursue such things. Not that you swallow everything they say, but that you come with an open mind and pass these things before your heart to verify or deny.

There is no objective truth upon which we all are supposed to agree. There is only a common acquaintance with the person of reality, which would naturally tend to overlap with some common experience. We all get to know this person in our own unique encounter, because it’s part of getting to know God the same way. He won’t react to each of us exactly the same because He made us all to be unique. Thus, what we share is not binding truth, but suggestive truth. The proper use of words to share these things is not as containers of truth, but as indicators to where one should search out truth. Heart-led communication is not descriptive, but indicative.

Thus, all of my teaching is suggestive, not binding on you. I rely on the Holy Spirit to witness to the truth of my words in terms of applicability. The question is not whether I am right, but whether you can use it.

In the past I’ve discussed something called the “Game Theory of Socio-sexual Response” as proposed by someone else. In particular, this theory proposes a hierarchy of male types. You should understand that this is an inherently Western model, not biblical. This hierarchy exists only in Western society; it is not fundamental to human nature. It can be applied to non-Western societies to some degree, but largely because Western values have leaked over into the whole world. Those archetypes of masculine identity don’t fit well into the ancient Hebrew society. There are some useful observations in the map of hierarchy, but it’s not the whole truth. The biblical shepherd male is not in that hierarchy.

Thus, I do not suggest you aspire to any of those listed roles. All of them presume a pagan background, a non-biblical approach to truth and reality. They do reflect what you will find in Western society, but not what you find in the Bible. We can use that theoretical model for what it gets right, but not as God’s truth. The gospel requires that you escape that matrix.

So, for example, that model explains the likes of Trump as a classical Alpha Male, particularly in the weaknesses of that role. He’s a blowhard, a highly competitive man of inflated ego and demonstrated arrogance. It works because he’s dealing with a Western nation.

It also explains why the alleged “Deep State” lacks the total control they would like us to believe they have. There aren’t any real Alphas in the Deep State apparatus. A basic rule of Western Alpha Males is that everyone caters to them in broad general terms, so they have no use for bureaucracy and rules. The Deep State bureaucracy rests entirely on non-Alpha resentment.

Don’t get drawn into that trap. Trump is not a good guy; in biblical terms he’s repulsive. He’s just moderately successful in the context. Meanwhile, there is a huge army of even more repulsive creatures opposing him and trying any and every way possible to remove him from office. This whole drama is part of God’s plan for destroying the US government, and bringing His wrath on America. Trump is an important manifestation of that wrath; his behavior and character help us to understand the shape of God’s wrath.

This takes us back to quantum moral reasoning: Reduce things to their simplest terms and apply those moral truths at multiple levels. Within the context of doomed America, the whole Trump show is almost amusing. In heart-led terms, he’s a total boor whipping up a frenzy from resentful Deltas and Gammas, who are in turn deploying their army of twisted Omegas to attack him. Meanwhile, the Betas are drawn to Trump as the only way forward with the plunder.

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American Demon of Retaliation

Posted on December 15, 2017 by ehurst

A demon of retaliation stalks America.

Granted, it’s been around the US for a long time, but recently it’s become far more active. We are seeing the spirit of retaliation like never before, a whole new scale of things in both breadth and depth. It’s new in the sense of how shocking and egregious it is, coming from sources you simply could not imagine previously.

Granted, we’ve come to expect this from government agencies. The concept of accountability has been turned on its head; it’s an Orwellian reversal. The only accountability is one-way — we to them. If you haven’t experienced it directly, brace yourself. Even the training of those in direct contact with the public has embraced this retaliatory spirit. They are ordered to be abrasive with us.

But have you seen how this has arisen also in business? We are awash in petty lawsuits from various thin-skinned professionals and companies. The very notion of “customer service” is considered passe, a quaint notion from ancient times. Can you believe a consumer relations department assessing monetary penalties on customers who dare to complain?

And yet, sometimes you can’t blame them. Customers themselves have become petty and vindictive. Your average Joe Consumer will demand an entire company be shut down and the employees jailed for the most minor disappointments. No, I mean that people have literally demanded just that. The ancient Lex Talionis is quite tame and friendly by comparison.

This goes far beyond mere bad manners. It’s more than a threat to civilization; this is a broad evil seeking to devour human existence. This is precisely the kind of misery and spite that Satan has always sought to implant in human society. It represents the kind of “violence” we see in the Bible when the prophet Jonah prophesied against Nineveh.

This thing is devouring America. The mouth of Hell is wide open, swallowing the whole nation. Do you see how this guarantees people will transgress every part of Biblical Law and allow Satan to absorb every blessing God offers? This is the snarling beast at the very core of Western Civilization.

Obviously this is what’s behind the New Testament teaching of patiently enduring trials and tribulations. If you feel drawn to the shalom and the calling of Christ, you have to know that this demands we pull away from retaliation. This has nothing to do with a vigorous defense of your feudal domain granted from God. One of the hallmarks of Ancient Near Eastern dominion was the grand placidity in the face of roaring spite. It came from a willingness to absorb inconsequential losses by making it obvious they didn’t hurt.

We don’t promote the snarling arrogance of contempt, but an honest rebuke that asks, “Are you trying to hurt my feelings?” When your feelings aren’t attached to the things a fallen world scrambles to hold, you aren’t going to rage at small losses. In the mind of Christ, it’s not a matter of correcting and coercing fools, but calling their attention to how foolish their concerns are. Learn the distinction between guarding something entrusted to you by God and scrabbling over something our Lord can easily replace.

Live shalom; be ready to shrug off the petty bitterness of people who are consumed by demonic powers they can’t comprehend. It’s going to get far worse before the Lord is finished pouring His wrath on America.

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Bigger Than All of Us

Posted on December 14, 2017 by ehurst

This is a work in progress. I’m trying to gather together some threads that have pulled out of the fabric; at the same time, I’m trying to untangle some others. A good rug under your feet can turn shifting sands into a sturdy floor. We need a place to stand so we can deliver the message of Christ.

Persecution and tribulation are the natural state for followers of Christ. That our symbol of victory is His Cross should be all the explanation needed for such a doctrine. The fallen nature is hostile to God’s revelation. If we aren’t persecuted, it’s because either we have compromised, or simply that we haven’t yet been noticed. Given that we are starting freshly something radically different from the mainstream, the latter is more likely.

We have to get noticed. This is not the case of provoking trouble and generating persecution, but we know that trouble is the manifestation of God’s favor. In the case of Our Lord, He got noticed by the miracles that accompanied His teaching. I’m not trying to make anyone feel ashamed and guilty for a lack of miracles; there could be good reasons why we aren’t chattering here on this blog about all the mighty wonders and signs. Mostly it’s that we haven’t yet begun to ask. We’ve been busy just trying to figure out what the message meant for us individually.

A primary factor in the absence of miracles is the two millennia since believers lost sight of the heart-led way. It was easy to lose because it wasn’t quite so openly explicit in the message, but assumed as the background. I’m not saying the first century Christians made a mistake on that point, only that they didn’t use our terminology. So we have two thousand years of Christians reading the New Testament and not seeing it. Assuredly souls have stumbled across it all that time since then, but they continued talking about it in different terms. It was too easy to invest their words with a totally different meaning, so the message was lost repeatedly.

I can’t promise you that our explicit approach is better, but I am utterly certain that the Lord is blessing it right now. We still run the risk of the words being filled with false meaning, but we have a fighting chance against that.

Still, I believe Our Lord is asking us to seek ways to share this message with a lot fewer miracles than Jesus used. Miracles were germane to His message then; I believe they are less important right now. It’s not the same atmosphere. Science, technology and the manipulation of human perception is at an all time high. Genuine miracles we have, but they aren’t the primary means of getting attention. We have to rely on something else. We have to demonstrate shalom some other way. The greatest miracle of all is internal peace with God.

While I am confident Our Father will grant other measures, I feel certain that our current best opportunity is to emphasize Biblical Law and the resultant harmony with Creator and Creation. A sense of peace and joy that cannot be broken by any power on this earth is pretty hard to ignore. At the same time, we should expect a vast reservoir of confusion about our message because the mainstream is convinced they already have as much peace as anyone can get from God. In this we are like the early disciples dealing with synagogues, where materialism and orthodoxy were the barriers to truth.

Our message will seem to work a whole lot better once the people around us have been driven out of their comfort zones. That comes with God’s wrath in the form of multiple crises here in the US. What is hard to see from our current position is that this will be a fairly slow process. There will be sudden changes, of course, but the general sense of panic won’t simply burst onto the scene. It will develop slowly. What we have seen already is a good example of that. To a great many observers, it seems that we are muddling along as we always have. But the Lord has been quite clear to those who are paying attention: The end game for the US is now in play.

This is what I mean when I assert that this is no apocalypse — it’s going to be slow and teeth-gritting painful for the most part. In biblical parabolic language, this will be like a birth that took way too long from the mother’s perspective. In the end, it will kill her from sheer exhaustion. Something new is coming and it will have to make its own way.

You and I as practitioners of Radix Fidem will have to buckle in for a long rough ride. As soon as you read those words, your heart should witness of their truth. Your sense of conviction alone will carry you through.

Do you share my faith? Will you pray with me that we can gain attention? You know that it will bring persecution with it. Will you pray with me that we gain sponsorship to pay the bills? This is going to require a grant of resources from Heaven. We’ll do the best we can on a shoestring budget, and we challenge you to watch us in the process. See what mighty miracles God will do with just a handful of dirt! But I believe at some point this will be big enough to require a regular budget to “house” this virtual parish.

But first we need souls. We need people who have a sense of calling and a drive to push this forward. If it never gets beyond me and a handful of supporters, it deserves to die, and you should expect God will end it. But if this is really His plan, it has to keep touching a wider audience, an audience that includes future shepherds. If this is a work of God, not merely my hobby, it means there are people who will make this thing their own. Even if I live past 100, this has to be bigger than me or it’s not worth the trouble. There’s plenty of room for you to put your own stamp on this thing; I won’t stop you.

Don’t just help me; do this for your own sake. All we are doing is getting involved in a project that existed long before us. This is the carpet laid out before the throne of God. He has provided a solid place to stand in the midst of chaos, and it’s big enough for everyone who is tired of wading in the sand of lies.

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Wiggle Those Fingers

Posted on December 13, 2017 by ehurst

Good things come to those that wait,
Not to those who hesitate…
(a line from “More Power To Ya” by Petra)

How do you build on ancient ruins? You build with living stones.

On the one hand, much of what once stood has been permanently lost. On the other hand, what little we can see of it is shockingly better than what has been built since then. But we can’t just preserve what once was; God Himself has commanded us to live here. His Temple is made up of living stones, people in whom His Spirit is active.

It’s one thing to study the ancient past of biblical religion; it’s another thing to realize it still makes demands on us today. This is the record of what God has done, and it speaks in terms of claiming the fundamental nature of human existence itself. This is not a hobby; this is Life. Of all the things mankind could bother to investigate, this is the one thing we simply must do or risk losing the very reason for living. This thing doesn’t rest on human endeavor. It’s answering the divine call.

A part of what God has revealed warns us that we cannot possibly make it universal, but we also cannot play hermits. The record of God’s action with the human race indicates boundaries between the individual and various levels of cooperation. The record also has much to say about how to cooperate; the whole thing rests on the fundamental nature of God’s character woven into Creation. Reality itself has strong biases about these things.

Yet it’s painfully obvious those who claim His name have done a crappy job of it. Some things they’ve gotten right, but nowhere near as much as they could. I’ve been sharing a vision of what I believe we could do better, and somehow God has seen fit to use my blather to catch the interest of a few others. You’ll have to ask Him why He chose to use me this way; I’m just trying to obey and serve faithfully. All I know for sure is the driving passion to share. I’ve tried to make it as open as possible without losing sight of my own calling. I want you to have a taste of this sweet shalom.

Here’s what we have up to now: We call our religion Radix Fidem. No one has come up with a better name, so it sticks. And from day one I’ve tried to get people more involved, but it’s been slow going. In seeking to follow the biblical model, I am your senior elder by calling, and your acting pastor because no one else wants that job. We have one junior elder, Jay DiNitto. We’ve had a mama elder, and may have another soon enough, but so far no one else has expressed any interest in helping to lead.

But we are on the threshold of opening up a forum soon. Hopefully that will seem more comfortable for some of you to speak up and get more involved. I realize a blog is more restrictive; it has to be. On a forum, you can express yourself more openly.

One of the critical elements in my vision is that we learn to act like an ancient Hebrew family. Our Western culture has left us a huge pile of broken debris that doesn’t belong the foundation of Scripture. The meaning of “family” has been highly perverted in the West. I know I struggle with it, and I’ve spent decades researching this Hebrew stuff. I think a forum would be a good setting for helping us get closer to the Bible on that. We can’t be slavish about the ancient past, but we sure can’t keep doing what our Western heritage teaches us.

But if you keep sitting there staring at the screen and reading what I write, and the comments of others about it, but never have your say, you can’t receive the full benefit. Do I have to spell it out? God will not give you the full measure of His blessings unless you start posting something that expresses your own experience with faith. We are trying to make that as easy as we know how, but we can’t grab your fingers and make you type.

Jay and I will be working on a forum setup. You can email him (jay@jaydinitto.com) or me (ehurst@soulkiln.blog), or post a comment here, if you have anything to say about it. Get involved; break the chains of the past and explore the future of God’s provision for yourself. Your silence holds back the blessings of Heaven.

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Draper South: A Real Adventure

Posted on December 12, 2017 by ehurst

Yes, it was an adventure. I had to carry my bike across rocks or other obstacles at least four times. This was after riding 15 miles to get there, followed by another 16 miles to get back home. On the satellite view, the big “X” marks where I started; the numbers correspond with the following images.

The first rocky point required only a little bit of lifting to get past the initial tight spot. It wasn’t gorgeous, but pretty enough. Sadly, this was the only shot there that turned out. I was able to ride about a third of time as I wandered along the shore. Again, the satellite image shows a higher water level than I found today, so more of the shore was exposed.

As you can see from the approach here, I had to carry my bike past the initial part of the second rocky point. I was rewarded with a continuous rocky surface all the way around that point and some distance beyond. It was just gorgeous. My bike should indicate the scale of things. With a light breeze out of the north, the water was just noisy enough to produce a lovely sound. I stayed quite a while clambering around on this part. Eventually I stopped to sit and eat my lunch. The place made a dandy prayer chapel, too. There was a hollowed out spot that was out of the wind. Consider that it was just about 42-43°F (6C), so it was chilly. It’s hard to describe how peaceful it felt to just sit there in splendid isolation. This fifth image is looking back up the shore to the rocky point.

The next image is a small protrusion of rocks out into the water, but with good shade cover. Once again, I had to carry my bike over the rocks. But this was just a short distance to the outflow chute of the water coming up from Lake Atoka. I tried to capture the whole chute, but the sun was directly over the opening no matter where I stood, so all my efforts came out with bad glare. It just dumps unceremoniously into the lake here. It was a bit of a jog getting up around the head of this thing, and pretty rough, as well.

This last image is one of the easiest spots to get to just below a picnic table and parking ring. However, it was quite a slug up that sandy slope with the bike. With just another foot of water, this whole thing disappears. By this time I was whipped, so the ride home was slow with that headwind.

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Bits and Pieces 29

Posted on December 12, 2017 by ehurst

Simply as a matter of accountability, I report that the laptop with one added accessory (a dongle with extra ports) has been ordered. Everything should be here by 27 December. I’ll take pictures of the unboxing for your amusement, and let you know how well it’s working. Its official name will be “harvest.”

Last night I had some time to fill and, on a whim, decided to check out sci-fi movies on YouTube. Some of you know I generally dislike movies. That’s because most of what comes out of the movie industry is not just Westernized, but it’s usually the worst of Western immorality. For once, I found something I actually liked: The Host. It was panned by the critics, which is a good start. It’s basically an alien invasion from critters that borg humans as hosts and take over the world. It’s all so nice and Utopian, except that some humans resist and make it tough. Also, a small number manage to escape this bonding process. The story follows one resistant host gal who manages to convince her occupier to change sides and see that being human isn’t such a bad thing. There’s little that even approaches risqué in the movie, but the thing that got my attention was the high value on persons, trust and kindness. There’s a strong feudal shepherd figure in the movie. It’s rare that something out of Hollywood even approaches the values we teach.

Despite some barriers, I’m going to try riding out to Draper today and catch the last bit of unexplored shoreline. If it works out, there’ll be pictures later today.

This isn’t just a little sparkle in the sky for me. It’s more like a tectonic shift with all the shaking and fire that none of us could escape. I’m naming my laptop “harvest” to represent its purpose, and the utter certainty that grips me: God is going to bring a harvest of souls to our heart-led way of religion. Given what I know of human nature and history, it can come only when the population is driven from their comfort zone. That means some tribulation. It occurs to me this is a good time to finalize big purchases like that laptop, because what I see coming will make using funds like that quite difficult. God will advise you; your heart will know His plans for you. Still, it’s my prophetic calling to warn you to be ready. He’s bringing His wrath to America; there’s no way to know when things will start to shake and crumble. There’s no way to predict what He will leave standing, only that His wrath will be measured, tempered by mercy. Whatever it is, it will be enough to see a harvest of souls for us. Be ready.

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Networking Elder

Posted on December 11, 2017 by ehurst

This business of eldercraft could use a little more declaration.

As always, the biggest problem is the mountain of sludge that is our Western culture. And it’s worst of all here in the US. I’ve lived in other parts of the Western world. In the give-n-take mixture of what is useful and what is harmful, I find the American brand of Western culture is by far the biggest threat to genuine holiness. The only significant virtue in America is a particular type of room for maneuvering that is missing in other parts of the West; it’s a primary weakness that we can exploit.

This will appear to be chasing a rabbit, but it’s germane: The big brouhaha over Net Neutrality and the FCC is a symptom of this. It’s going to cause us very real trouble as we move forward, so it’s worth understanding a few basics. The fundamental nature of global networking requires that every device connected is treated as a peer. The server-client relationship is purely contextual. Thus, the infrastructure for transmitting all this traffic between theoretical equals demands a certain neutrality, once we account for the demands of protocol. The system itself suffers when the middleman plays favorites. The theory behind the term “Network Neutrality” is an utter necessity.

The problem is that America is the worst place to handle such a thing. That is, we are caught primarily between the power of two pernicious forces: government and industry. The existence of both reflect the hideous nature of American culture. In this case, “industry” refers to vast corporate empires that control the infrastructure that makes up the current Internet. When it comes to the Internet, government and industry are codependents in destroying everything they touch.

Don’t get lost in theoretical doctrine here. It’s a question of how things developed and how they turned out, specifically with the Internet itself. Back when the Internet was controlled by DARPA, it was egalitarian, though tightly access limited. Thus, there were no bad actors because none were admitted to the club. As more and more entities piled into the mix, bad actors showed up and gained a foothold. At first, the system was responsive with good universal protocols. At some point, the enforcement became too complex.

It got out of hand slowly as more and more corporate entities got involved. Today, government controls directly very little of the infrastructure, and industry owns it all. For awhile, the reserve sense of public accountability held industry in check, alongside the sheer number of competitors. As time wore on, competitors were bought up as the corporations formed a de facto oligopoly. The current problem is that those who sell the consumer access are the same people who own the backbone of the Net. They have a choke-hold on the consumer access at all levels.

They are not consumer-friendly. They have become big enough and powerful enough to begin shaping and manipulating consumer demand itself. They have colluded together to create an environment in which consumers seldom question anything because they are too distracted by the flood of degrading provision. It’s not total, but it is overwhelming. More to the point, it is overwhelmingly hostile to what we seek to share. We aren’t big enough yet to get their attention, but their plans and manipulations are inherently threatening to our mission.

Instead of messing about with artificial regulations on Net Neutrality as law, the only useful thing the federal government could have done was forbid the backbone folks from getting into the consumer access market. It’s too late to fix that problem; declaring the Internet as a common carrier or utility service would not work now.

We are on the threshold of a general decline in service, simply because the oligarchs can get away with it. There is no effective market pressure on them, and for the time being, they control enough of the government process to get what they want. Their past behavior is all the proof we need that this is going to get ugly. The other half of the industry that provides content and services other than access will either have to barge into the access market or pay a lot to maintain their own access. Meanwhile, the consumer access market will quite likely become more expensive and far less useful.

This is what an elder can see, a sketchy historical outline based on some limited acquaintance with the technology and social sciences. I haven’t touched on the part played by local governments, who vary widely in their accountability to the people. Meanwhile, there remains the vision of God’s divine plan and the assurance that He means business. I have no end of confidence and faith that our heart-led approach to religion is God’s own way for us, and that He will not allow all of these problems to hinder His revelation. However, you have to understand that what hinders the message will be resolved through called and inspired servants of God exploiting His miraculous works.

My calling and inspired vision tells me we need a networking elder, someone who is well acquainted with how this stuff actually works, and where it is headed. Need I remind you that Radix Fidem was born on the Internet? This is our turf; God has called us here and intends to use us here in virtual space. While we may well get by with a hired gun, I am convinced that God wants us to pray together for a genuine network elder, someone who shares our vision as part of the family of faith.

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Unconcealed City on a Hill

Posted on December 10, 2017 by ehurst

Matthew 5:13-16 — What we have is too good to keep to ourselves. Worse, failure to share it would violate everything we value.

A couple of years ago when I tried to set up a more substantial website for Radix Fidem, it turned out to be too soon. Worse, it was way more than I could handle in the first place. I knew how to put a machine on the Net, but that wasn’t the issue.

We need someone with a vision and expertise to develop a full blown site, something that will serve as a more worthy point of contact than my little blog, or anything else I could come up with. I know this can be done far better than what I can do myself. Again, this is not a one-man show. If it were, it’s past time to quit and find something else to do.

If the heart-led way of Christian faith is worth anything at all, it needs to come to the world’s attention. I think all of us can sense that. What hampers us is the burden of centuries of doing things in other ways that simply do not translate well into virtual space. We need to stay away from any approach that won’t survive a transition to the Networked Civilization. At the same time, I am not the expert to decide how to do it. I know just enough to recognize that it’s possible, but not see how.

There’s nothing wrong with failing; there’s nothing wrong with trying things that won’t work if you have no idea how to go forward. I’ve done what I know to do; it’s time for someone else whose hands can go beyond my reach. Maybe one or more of you should be in charge of this, but it requires a sense of calling and a vision. Or perhaps it is someone we’ve not yet encountered.

Pray that the Lord grant us a networking apostle. Pray for the resources to put it together and make it happen. The core issue is building something that can’t be ignored, while not being pushy and compromising with morally false techniques.

Meanwhile, let’s all keep doing our part to spread this gospel.

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