Radix Fidem Blog

The Threat of Contemplation

Posted on December 23, 2010 by ehurst

There several kinds of human intelligence, several ways of measuring human intelligence. Despite the ocean of educational literature regarding the importance of encouraging development of synthesis of ideas, you will seldom see any evidence of synthetic intelligence arising from any government controlled educational institutions, and darn few private ones.

Even more remote is the likelihood of contemplative intelligence. Indeed, the very ability to contemplate is the last thing TPTB want to see. Our Western culture has been reduced to commercial exploitation, and it was easy to do, since it was founded on materialism. The very essence of middle class lifestyle is an empty legalistic morality paired with conspicuous consumption. Contemplation is the enemy of such a culture.

Contemplative intelligence is the very foundation of ancient civilizations. Contemplation comes at a high price in material terms. To become contemplative means to back off from investing so much energy in efficiency and production. Were we suddenly smitten with a genuine wave of contemplation, life would slow down, and people would stop scratching for the next consumable fixation.

We see today a consumer culture driven by acquisition for consumption. Durability of anything is counted against its value, because there is no newness and freshness inside the consumer. It must all come from the outside. Herein is the key: A person easily bored is himself boring. He has nothing inside himself, nothing within to produce the flowering freshness of creativity. Thus, creativity itself is limited to what can be sold, not because it is moving, but because it fills the emptiness. It need not result from any truly artistic talent, only the ability to thrill, or simply to shock.

We are a people as empty containers, leaking and lidless. We rush about splashing whatever has been put in, adding nothing to it, and certainly taking nothing from it, since it contains nothing of value in the first place. We have no idea what we are, much less what we could be. Western Civilization is corrupt and empty, collapsing under its own weight. Were any of this frenzied seeking stop, and people begin to build from within, we might have a shot at seeing something worthwhile replacing this mess.

Posted in sanity | Tagged culture, education, intelligence, psychology | 1 Comment

Word for Word

Posted on December 21, 2010 by ehurst

The words in any given language for “word,” and their definition, gives a clue to the orientation of the culture behind the language. In English, we have only one. In biblical studies, we see the Greek offers two commonly used terms: rhema and logos. The second (logos) we are quite familiar with, as it forms a root with many of our words. It comes to us as the term for the basic intellectual grasp of an idea. It implies something which is or can be written down. The first (rhema) bears the connotation a live performance, something you are hearing right now. Thus, we think in terms of written word or spoken word.

But the Bible does not carry with it the cultural foundation for such a distinction. In the original Hebrew, there is only one term: dabar. Other Hebrew words get translated into English as “word,” but that does not change the basic and radical departure between the two cultures. The Hebrew word emphasizes spoken communication. Indeed, many have said Hebrew was not meant to be written in the first place.

There is a good fundamental reason for that. Clear and meaningful communication requires context. In Hebrew and related tongues, context is everything. There are but some 800 root words in Hebrew, and while there are combinations and conjugations, the whole point is those words are all about verbal communication as a live performance. This is what makes Hebrew Scripture so difficult at times to translate. The Hebrew people suffered a massive shift in cultural and intellectual assumptions when their scholars embraced Hellenism a few centuries before Christ. To this day, their scholars insist this was a good thing. Most Gentile scholars agree. I’m among a tiny minority who decry the shift, and decry the defense even more.

I take the position God Himself does not approve of the shift, that something in what Jesus taught reflects that. His debates with the leadership of His nation are often sensible only if you realize He calls them back to the ancient Hebrew epistemology. That intellectual foundation is the one laid by God upon which to build His revelation of Himself. Moving out of that ancient territory offers no advantage, but a severe hindrance.

In my life I’ve had many opportunities for public speaking. I’ve also written an awful lot of stuff. No one is surprised when we discover there is quite a difference in the impact between the two forms of communication, even covering the same material. Why do so many writers get asked to lecture on their writing? It’s because it makes a big difference in understanding the writing. I freely admit I am less talented in speaking; my writing is far better (however good it may be). I am not a polished speaker. Yet, I know from personal experience my spoken presentations have far more impact.

Despite the differences in various learner styles — visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc. — the point remains we learn the most from someone personally present sharing some experience. That’s because a personal presentation strikes just about the whole range of perception, and when artfully done, is much harder to forget. But our Western cultural heritage has done all it can to destroy our ability to sit still for such a presentation.

We have been conditioned to demand high speed, high efficiency transfer of data and impressions, all of which serve to isolate us from each other. In the Hebrew culture, you do not learn facts from a presentation; you absorb the person giving it. That is, if someone wants to recount an event for which you weren’t present to witness, you don’t get the facts. You get the impression it made on the person who is telling it. You would naturally realize this and place what you received in context. You would consider the source. Not because you expect to filter them out and get at the real objective truth, because there is no such thing. Rather, you translate their impressions through your own filters and decode it into your own impression. That’s good enough. You weren’t there, and it didn’t change you, but it will change those who were there, and you have to live with them.

Reality, such as it may be perceived, is not about knowing it in the raw, but how it affects your life. You need to know, more than anything else, what to expect from your fellow humans. From them you learn something about the non-human world you experience, but you can test most of that by direct observation. People are a totally different game. There is no objective reality about people, because they, of all the creatures you encounter, are burdened with a moral responsibility.

Everything in the universe is infused with a morally guided response to the morality of our actions. This whole business of revelation from God is not about knowing some objective reality, but knowing a moral character, the personality of the Creator. Facts are just tools for choosing a moral response to the context. Thus, the Hebrew culture posits “word” as a revelation, an expression of some personal character. You can suffer some serious misunderstanding of that divine character — I know I still struggle with it — but to refuse the moral burden is wrong regardless of the facts. It won’t matter if you do what is objectively appropriate as discerned by the weight of scientific observation and testing; it remains wrong when you approach the question from the wrong angle.

We have a very long way to go, a vast territory to cross, before we are in a position to face the moral obligations inherent in the tangible universe in which we exist.

Posted in social sciences | Tagged culture, education, religion, scripture | 2 Comments

I’m a Terrorist

Posted on December 20, 2010 by ehurst

Chances are you are a terrorist, too, if you read stuff such as I write.

Today that label — terrorist — is the tyrant’s excuse for any convenient oppression. Thus, Julian Assange is a terrorist. Of course, I’ve written here Assange is helping the real terrorists, the shadow government which runs the US and a few other nations, so perhaps there is a sense in which it is true. But of course, not in the sense of the fear mongering by our national leaders.

By their definition, I’m a terrorist. I’ve written often, as compellingly as I know how, the proper understanding of our ruling regime’s policies (just calling them that earns me the label “terrorist”) is to call them sinful and evil. From every possible angle, it is impossible to allege they fulfill any valid function of government. I’ve laid out the proper biblical understanding and backed it up with clear theological explication. It’s your turn; use your own metaphysical approach to show how it’s bad stuff.

More, I would with alacrity expose any similar secrets which came into my hands. The difference is, I would never edit or filter the contents. If I understood some part of it, I might offer some commentary based on my long experience with the US military and other government funded service I’ve performed. Otherwise, I’m all for simply laying bare the truth of matters.

Yes, I would name names, because I expect nothing less regarding myself. My greatest aspiration is utter transparency. Let me be the first one to tell you my flaws, in case they weren’t apparent to you. Don’t trust me to get things right; be entertained and moved to think for yourself. Yes, I have an agenda, not at all hidden. That’s my calling from God, so fuss at Him if you are bothered. I can do no other. Poke at me with your own words and be sure you tell folks my name so they’ll know what you are talking about.

I invite that because that’s the antithesis of everything we see from human governments in the world today. That’s what makes us threats to them, terrorists. We want to change the policies of evil. We are willing to perform explosive acts of defiance, destroying the vast infrastructure of lies, trying to shake people from their slumber. We want people to join us in storming the citadel of hatred and slavery. Of course, none of this metaphorical language can be taken literally, but you may have heard how government thugs lack the intelligence to differentiate; they have been ordered to think like blockheads, to look for any excuse to feed any random individual into the brutal system for torture. Their superiors are psychopaths.

I’m trying to expose that. I’m trying to lay bare the foundations of humane thought as contrasted by evil secrecy. I want to rip off the cover of their filthy hatred for humanity, their lust for control and their greed. I want them to howl in misery as they are confronted with their own nastiness. I want to use these terror tactics to force a change in government policy.

So that makes me a terrorist by their definition. Are you a terrorist, too?

Posted in social sciences | Tagged government, peace, propaganda, resistance | Comments Off

Quirk the Internet

Posted on December 19, 2010 by ehurst

The Net, as it exists more or less, is an uncontrolled means of communication. That is, whether the information is good, bad or indifferent, it is unrestricted. It is the ultimate expression of freedom and voluntary cooperation. There are numerous forces at work trying to destroy the Net as we know it, and they have already made some progress.

The corporate world has been trying for a long time, using several approaches. Most obvious to me is the dope dealer approach with entertainment, trying to get the average consumer hooked on a particular type of content. If the demand is strong enough, no one can argue when the system becomes dominated by the delivery of this content.

One of my most popular posts on this blog continues to be the brief examination of running one Linux distro without a GUI on an old laptop. The heart of this article is not the technology, but my dissatisfaction with graphical computing. Not just a personal bias, this is the result of years studying how the mind works, how it should work. I don’t care how radical and curmudgeonly it sounds; I insist we would all be considerably more intelligent if computers didn’t have a GUI. Yes, I appreciate the visual richness of the graphical interface, and use it every day. But at the same time, I know I it more because there is really no other way to get things done. There are no really good text-mode browsers for a graphical Internet.

Graphical representations of mere information — charts, scales, meters — are not the problem. It’s the vast billions of dollars spent researching how best to overcome human resistance to false information by use of enticing graphical and auditory massaging of the message. Folks now assume it can’t be done any other way. People working so hard to get truth out in the open can’t imagine doing it without Youtube. If we want their information at all, we must pull down whole megabytes of data, use up big chunks of computing power, and surrender fifteen minutes of our time for, say a tutorial which could be typed up in less than a single page.

This seduction by corporate interests would not be possible were it not for the corporate raider tactics of Bill Gates and Microsoft. Windows is the ultimate example of dope dealing as a metaphor. It is not the least bit good for you, but once you’ve used it much, you find you can’t do without it. It completely rewires your interaction with the Internet by offering a shallow and selective enhancement of certain useless features, certain “wow” factors which distract from what really matters. You come to the Net seeking rain for the dry fields of your fertile intelligence. What you get is someone pissing on your leg and telling it’s raining.

The Windows-based ecosystem is shot through with frauds against the consumer, but the government stands ready to protect the big technology corporations. Most especially government protects Microsoft, with show trials which only serve to acknowledge near-monopoly control of the consumer market where it really counts, at the lower end of the price range. So great is the monopoly control, even the government can’t function without that ecosystem, so nothing really happens except a little better cooperation between the government and the industry.

Now the government is in on the act of seeking control. This business of Wikileaks is merely a reverse psychology game. Give Assange a bunch of embarrassing stuff. Make sure it contains nothing really damaging, and make darn sure it all boils down to supporting the primary propaganda already presented in other avenues. Make all sorts of noise about how horrible and irresponsible it was to threaten government’s oh-so essential secret operations, all so we have an excuse for government to take a much tighter control over this wild frontier in the virtual world of the Internet. Even the antics of Anonymous appear to play into this theatrical production.

During this brief interval of years, those who really wanted and needed free access to information have been shoved aside. It’s not so much they were hugely outnumbered by the mindless hordes who merely lusted for the next fix of entertainment, but the number of dollars which those hordes were willing to spend. That’s all the corporations and government really ever wanted. You see, I used the word “government” ambiguously on purpose. The point I make here is the face of government with which you interact is not the real government. There is a shadow government behind all this, which seeks to control for one reason, and that is to gain control of all the wealth.

I suppose the hackers and Net geeks will always find a way around these things. The hackers are merely truth seekers expressing their search for truth in a particular field which offers a rich opportunity to the rest of us. We can’t do much to save the hordes, but we can strive to keep the channels open for those who share our drive for truth. We are wise enough to realize truth to us is noise for another, and vice versa, so it’s the freedom itself we must try to save. We have to invest our energy, and our dwindling resources, into keeping at least some part of the Internet accessible to that free flow. Given what I consider the zero likelihood we can steer policy in safe directions, we have to focus more on using and promoting the technology which will keep us free.

That could be an argument for migrating from Windows to Linux, but that’s not my point. We have to be ready to acquaint ourselves with methods, with ways of using a computer which don’t lend themselves to cramming useless features down our throats. That means learning how to do stuff with computers for which the hordes would never bother. This is more than my simple infatuation with the plain-text interface (AKA “TUI” — textual user interface), but a call to keep an eye open for anything which secures and maintains that open link.

The forces we are fighting seek to gain centralized control over something which is inherently de-centralized. It won’t work as they hope, but it will hurt. With my limited knowledge of such things, I strongly suspect we will end up with a Net which is essentially the same at the machine level, but with extra helpings of barriers for those who aren’t aware of the way things work behind that pretty GUI, or that there is even anything behind it. I don’t mean becoming a networking technician, because the hackers and developers are all too willing to meet us halfway. What makes things more convenient for them makes it simpler for us. But the point is to help my readers consider what it means to invest a little more effort in finding a reasonable half-way point.

I don’t pretend to know, nor even estimate where that point would be, but I am utterly certain it means learning more than how to turn the computer on, and how to use more than a standard graphical browser and Google. Surely it will mean examining what’s out there in terms of specialized tools, some of the dozens of odd-ball browsers and other communication tools which by-pass the mainstream computer and Internet experience. If the computer matters to you, and you intend to keep using it until the situation becomes hopeless, you’ll need to treat it like the important tool it is. This applies equally with just about every other tool.

Be quirky. Networking protocols have to be standardized to some degree, or they won’t work at all. So it is with any human language, but within that standardization is a wide range of possibilities for individualization. Learn the limits; understand what you have to accept, but always be willing to push at the boundaries. Find your own way, because the biggest threat to the shadow forces is a high variation, all over the map of what’s possible, imaginable, and even some unimaginable. For you as in individual, that means being unique and independent.

Posted in computers, sanity | Tagged culture, government, linux, propaganda, resistance, windows | Comments Off

Voluntary Peace

Posted on December 18, 2010 by ehurst

It’s the time of year, when a frequent catchphrase is “Peace on Earth.” A primary message symbolized in the Nativity narrative is that peace. Not simply a cessation of hostility among humans, but an absolution of God’s wrathful justice against human sin, and a means to healing human hostility.

That sin is not simply a matter of doing this or failing to do that. Those are mere symptoms. Even on the purely human level of things, we understand justice is rooted in a human commitment to equity. It is an equity not in outcomes, but in seeking a natural path, the best possible path, letting people follow their own inclinations so long as such following does not unnecessarily transgress someone else’s opportunities.

So we can explain it, but if we have to enforce it, we haven’t accomplished much. That’s because justice, and the resulting peace on earth, is a matter of voluntary self-enforcement.

Living as I do with a foot in two worlds, it’s not news to me we don’t have much voluntary compliance in this world. It’s bad enough on the individual level, but it really screams at us in the broader scope of human activity. That’s because when humans are conscious of banding together, it is often in the wrong spirit, the spirit of fear. Communal fear is not just the combination of fearful individuals, but an exponential magnification of fear. It becomes the excuse for horrific evil, all the worse because it’s called “good.”

When I wrote my fictional series on training peacemakers, Sanity Subversive, I pushed the idea peace can only come from within the individual. There is the sense it may well be futile, but that it was the only way at all. As much peace as we are going to have in this world will arise from the tiny select minority who find the call of peace too strong to ignore. The problem is, we have too little calling out to the slumbering spirit of peace in those who should have it. That is complicated further by too many of those feeling the call having such a poor understanding of what it means.

Because of that failure of clarity, we have a vast sea of useless, and even harmful, action in demanding peace. It is demanded as if there were some power capable of enforcing peace. That is simply and utterly contrary to what peace means. The only sort of peace possible with enforcement is killing everyone, since peace is not our natural inclination, even if it is a fundamental wish.

Frankly, there is a sense in which Peace on Earth is not possible. That is, impossible if we seek only the sort of peace which can be quantified and enforced. Simply stopping hostile action doesn’t mean peace, and it’s simply not going to last very long. Peace on Earth is an offer made, knowing precious few will actually look beyond the mere words, much less seek to accept the offer.

It won’t matter what your religion is; there is something fundamental about peace which appeals to a desire in all of us. A few of us will actually have a concept of peace which is big enough to warrant some commitment to making peace. We know, in that place inside where doubt cannot abide, peace is only what we make of it. Peace is our own, something no one can take away. When we hold it forth to another, we cannot compel acceptance, nor would we want that. We know it is rooted in the voluntary mutual reaching, touching each other’s existence with the same desire to erase hostility, to find a common ground. We want a negotiated live-and-let-live, not for itself, but as the means to opening things to that higher plane.

Peace.

Posted in sanity | Tagged peace, psychology, religion | Comments Off

A Friend Gets Good Press

Posted on December 17, 2010 by ehurst

Let me celebrate for a moment here. A couple of days ago, Gordon Duff at Veterans Today featured Charles Carlson in one of their articles, and his project, We Hold These Truths. Even better, the article links to a series of Youtube videos which together offer Carlson’s DVD Christian Zionism. It was picked up by several other websites, and I’m thrilled Carlson got such exposure.

I became friends with Carlson a few years ago. We talked by phone a few times when it seemed I might be able to offer him some help with his website and email service. It wasn’t a good match, but I stay in touch and visit his website often. If you’ve read much at all on this blog, you know I don’t much support the idea of demonstrations and protests, but I have no quarrel with Carlson’s efforts to inform people the best way he knows how.

His message overlaps a lot of mine. We agree Zionism is a very evil force in our world today. We both understand all too well where it came from, and why so many Christians support it. At one time, we both were blinded by the popular Dispensational Theology, but God led us out of that slavery. Carlson’s emphasis is different from mine, but it’s the same basic stance. My own teaching deflates Dispensationalism, but I address it more often on my other blog. Duff is a Muslim, and Carlson is friendly with Muslims, and I don’t much care for some of their entanglement there. Not from hostility to Islam, but it carries it’s own excess baggage. I take strong exception to Duff’s view of Islam as a reform movement for Judaism, but I don’t feel the urge to make much of that, except to note it indicates a bias which does affect his writing in lots of ways.

But we can all agree Israel and Zionism is easily the primary problem with our human existence in this world today. We agree God is not glorified by Zionism, nor by Christians supporting it. This problem looms so very large, our differences recede into insignificance. If those men asked my help in any way, I’d gladly contribute what I could. I’m frankly disappointed I was unable to do Charles much good with his ministry at WHTT, but I’m still ready to help. I would have hitchhiked from Oklahoma to Arizona, and slept on the ground outside the building, if it would have put me in a position to help. I’d do the same for Duff and anyone else working to point out the biggest, most obvious lie to the world world. I’m not interested in any particular action against Israel, but I’d love to see the US and other countries stop giving them so much support, particularly at the cost of neglecting their own people. This pernicious beast has hijacked the whole world, and very honestly I tell you: Were it not for Israel and Zionism, the world would be very boringly quiet and peaceful by comparison. It would hardly end all wars and sorrow, but this one particular evil seems to be the seed and fertilizer for most of what is wrong with this world today.

Posted in social sciences | Tagged demonstrating, government, propaganda, religion | Comments Off

Selective Control

Posted on December 16, 2010 by ehurst

This is not about computers, but relies on human interaction with computers as the primary example of seeking selective control.

Everyone wants convenience. That is, we want to avoid bothering with mechanisms, however necessary, which enable spending time doing what registers to us as important. Every bureaucracy is founded on the unspoken principle of reducing variations in the humans being processed through the system by refusing to acknowledge those variations. Managers imagine this makes things more efficient; there are X number of categories and acceptable responses listed with check boxes on the forms. Pick one. If none of them fit you, that’s your problem; pick one or be crushed. One man’s convenience is another man’s inhumanity.

Welcome to the hive culture. This was bluntly proposed as the good and right thing to do with the population of America a century ago, and today we live with the results of that philosophy. In Scripture this has been condemned, particularly in symbolic references to Rome. Indeed, the very foundation of Western Civilization is this very dehumanizing assertion of control. All of the East depended entirely upon the endless variation in human character, but the West made it illegal.

I have just spent a week running Windows 7 on my laptop. The hardware never worked better. It was pretty fast and light, and everything was convenient. That is, everything except my needs. I’m not going to say it’s evil by intent, but it was uncomfortable for me. During the whole week I tried to embrace what was possible, explored numerous avenues making sure I hadn’t left out some optional choice. It was usable, but I didn’t have control over the things which mattered most to me. Quirky I am, but I have a work flow, a set of habits and assumptions based on what I need to control. The reason for that control arises from my sense of calling and character. I’m sure there are plenty of self-deceptions, but I am at least trying to understand the fellow in the mirror, and I am not comfortable just taking what the corporate bureaucracy of Redmond and partners want to offer.

The details won’t matter to you. The point is, it wasn’t “home.” I’ve held residency in more than a hundred structures in my life, but few of them were actually home for me. The factors varied, but if I had to compromise on what really mattered most in life to me, it can’t be home. So it is with computer operating systems and the software running on them. It’s not really about the collection of choices, but whether those choices help or hinder my pursuit of that burning sense of mission. I have “Microsoft” stamped on my keyboard, but not on any of my software, so it’s not about whether I see Microsoft as evil incarnate. It’s not a boycott fired by some moral indignation. It’s a rejection of what I see as unnecessary constraints.

Do you really need a Microsoft OS? Hey, I know where you can get a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate for free. You like MS Office? I can get that, too; what version do you like? You name it — I can probably find it. And I really don’t care about copyright and intellectual property rights. It’s a matter of I don’t care for how that stuff works in the first place.

It only matters partially whether the likes of NSA has a back door to every Microsoft product. The problem there is the existence of a back door at all is a threat. It’s a threat to my choices, my control. I’ve already made the commitment to transparency, as one of the pillars of Christian Mysticism. Want to know about me? How much time to do you have? I’ll tell you all you want to know, and plenty you may not want to know. What I don’t want is for some miscreant to be able to change how my computer works without first discussing it with me. It’s not that Linux or BSD don’t have holes, but it’s how likely they are to be exploited, which is just about nil. If attacks start piling up against Linux and start succeeding, I’ll be moving to another OS.

That other OS will have to offer some of the same tools, though. There are two issues here. One: Can I get and keep sufficient control over interferences which are assumed the norm in this fallen world? I don’t have to understand all the elements, the nuts and bolts of security in computer code. What I need to know is just enough to evaluate how much time and effort will be siphoned off by threat management. In Linux, and more so with BSD, that’s not very demanding on me.

Two: Can I get and keep sufficient control over the various tools so I can get some work done? I have an investment in habits. Could I have continued using the old Enable office suite on DOS and meet the needs of number one above, I would still be doing that. I had hundreds of keystrokes memorized, and what that software produces is still acceptable to me today. But the hardware ecosystem has long ago left Enable behind, so I’m forced to learn new stuff. The new stuff is not better, not faster, not more efficient in terms of what I need to do. It’s possible I can still get hardware which would run DOS, and software for numerous tasks, but I can’t imagine DOS being secure enough to take care of my needs. Not even the newest incarnations of FreeDOS and friends will work for me, though I admit I would be willing to play with it if I could find the right equipment.

It’s not simple nostalgia. It’s the collection of habits which were carefully considered and well tested, not layered on willy-nilly. I’ve gained some new ones, and they’ve all been carefully honed, as well. Those habits don’t migrate to Windows very well. Not just the habits of work, but the habits of which issues I want to confront. I don’t fear digging into Windows security details, nor am I too lazy. I keep track of it every day. But my experience and reading from others who love Windows has taught me it can’t be trusted. Indeed, that’s why I keep track of it in terms of my computer service ministry. As often as possible I encourage clients to switch to Linux, and some have. It sets them free, and I don’t spend as much time fixing their systems as I do helping them adapt. For those who can’t adapt, I do what I can to secure their system for the uses they make of their computers, for the habits they have, whether carefully considered on not.

They need control over the things which matter to them. I’m trying to manage selective control for folks and their computers.

Posted in sanity | Tagged computers, culture, linux, windows | 2 Comments

The Evils of Efficiency

Posted on December 15, 2010 by ehurst

People are the greatest treasure of great men.

A fundamental feature of most ancient civilizations was the supreme value placed on good servants. When one empire conquered another, only the titular rival was killed or imprisoned, along with anyone who resisted the take-over. The court officials and imperial staff were always kept on as the rich resource of those who really understood how to make the most of the domain’s resources. Yes, it meant allowing them to conduct a little intrigue for their personal benefit, but only outright spying against the new regime would be punished.

Business managers who have lived a long time have learned a 10% loss from waste and petty graft is the cost of doing business, and will not harass their employees over it. This plane of existence is irreparably broken, and there is a built-in ratio of friction when handling material goods and services. In the context of this life the numbers may vary, but corruption is not inherently harmful against the opposing force of enslavement. The best we can hope for includes some loss of efficiency, and demanding more is inhumane.

Without apology I clothe discussions of “the best we can hope for in this world” in terms of God’s Laws and the moral nature of Creation. It is not necessary to buy my parable to understand the truth. Balaam told Balak you can’t always get what you want. Balaam did not worship Jehovah (by any other name), but knew what He required, knew how things worked, because he was acquainted with the nature and power of the higher realms. While the Exodus narrative does not tell us, we learn later Balaam did give Balak something he could use against Israel, a way to get them in trouble with their own God. It involved tempting them to transgress the moral order of things.

The ancient world in which those men lived understood the necessity of valuing people, if not human life in general, over inanimate property. Our modern Western obsession with squeezing the last inhuman drop of efficiency from our contrived systems for material profit is the very thing which will destroy us. I taught Economics long enough to know the entire intellectual frame of reference is flawed, in that we naturally assume any economic decision which does not maximize the measurable economic efficiency is somehow wrong. Economic choices driven by non-material considerations are regarded as superstition, something less than the best wisdom of logical reasoning. Yet outside this brief flash of time we call Western Civilization, everyone else knew better than that. Those other civilizations were not primitive or ignorant; we are.

If all you have for your reference point is this plane of existence, you have nothing in the first place. When Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah, he wisely conscripted the best and brightest of Judean nobility for his own court staff. Daniel was not merely a prophet who occasionally got some useful secret whispers from God; he was incredibly wise and discerning. He lived on that higher plane, and his superiors knew it. When the Medo-Persian Empire managed to oust the Babylonian imperial family, they kept Daniel on staff. They knew a good servant when they saw one.

And down to the smallest petty nomad sheik of that region of the world, they always valued people over tangible assets. When Abraham defeated the Mesopotamian alliance and rescued the plunder and people of Sodom and Gomorrah, the rulers were content to simply have their people returned. The property could be replaced by people who knew the area and how to profit from the resources. Abraham could have neatly rescued only his relatives, or simply bartered for them. No one in that land would blame him. But Abraham lived on a higher plane, and even the wicked residents of the Dead Sea Pentapolis were people who deserved a chance to turn away from their evil until moral considerations from the higher plane said otherwise — God alone gets to choose such things. It was not as if the Sodomites were ignorant of the moral laws of this plane, because they knew people were more important than property.

The business of the 8th and 10th Commandments was not about property rights, but a matter of respect for other people and their prerogatives. In case you were wondering, the ancient Hebrews would snicker at the notion of intellectual property. God’s Laws reject the concept. The temporary advantage of the Philistines over Israel, keeping the secrets of iron-working at the beginning of the Iron Age, was regarded as unjust oppression. Even the business of owning real estate was in the context of “mine to use for some purposes,” not an absolute control with denial of passage and such. Those “NO TRESPASSING” signs are an offense to God. Such total ownership would be offensive, because it’s unfair to other humans, as God defines fairness.

Efficiency as commonly understood in our modern times is an offense to God, a rejection of His values. In other terms, it an offense against the moral order of this universe.

Posted in social sciences | Tagged culture, economics, government, law, scripture | 1 Comment

On the Necessity of Fables and Myths

Posted on December 14, 2010 by ehurst

During my years working in public education, I was constantly faced with a segment of education professionals who insisted on promoting a sterile, pure “fact-based” education environment. It was not popular, yet for its harsh ideology, it’s presence remains strong. It remains simply because most of those who don’t share it don’t have a good response when defending cultural traditions. That, in turn, is because most of what they defend is indefensible.

It won’t matter what flavor it comes in, this intellectually sterile movement is the underlying assumption behind much evil we all recognize: fascism, communism, religious fundamentalism, and any other form of harsh control atmosphere which seeks to take away freedom.

The point here is we don’t understand very well the necessity of myth and fable in human development. Because of this, we have a very bad intellectual landscape in the West where we have allowed the most pernicious influences to construct our mythology, making it patently harmful. This merely feeds the fire, giving the controllers an excuse for trying to destroy the flavor of culture.

For example, here in the US, our fables regarding Santa Clause are entirely the result of materialistic marketing. The current imagery does draw on more noble mythology from European history, but it has become entirely the domain of junk sales pitching. It’s so bad, even the Christmas Story of Jesus is perverted as a sales pitch. Every holiday in the US is just another opportunity to make people feel obliged to spend money on junk which clogs the landfill the week after.

Fables and myths are the stepping stones to understanding reality. Surely we all recognize children learn by first grasping the widest generalities, and gradually refining until they reach a modicum of awareness of the finer points about the world around them. In the process, we make broad generalizations which are never quite accurate, but which form the foundation for gaining accuracy. It’s not that kids can’t handle truth; they’ll ask for it all too soon. It’s that we all need an imaginative flavoring to stimulate the interest and curiosity of the human mind.

The brain is designed to respond more strongly to narrative than any other identifiable form of input. Story-telling is the single greatest form of education over all other methods and frameworks put together. We know this instinctively, even when we have no idea how to make it work.

In the broader sense, then, mythology becomes “truth” because it is opens the pathway to reality. The ultimate truth of things cannot at all be put into clinical terms. It defies human language because it cannot be received in the intellect; it must be handled on another level. We use symbols and parables for the mind to become comfortable with what that higher faculty will suggest is necessary in our choices on this plane of existence. Parables are not lies, though in the sterile imagination of materialists, it would seem they are. Parables are necessary wrappers for truth.

The burden upon us is to build mythology and fables which properly open the door to truth. To this day I regret surrendering to the religious fundamentalists in robbing my children of some of the better fables of childhood. On the other hand, by no means do I regret trying to steer them away from what was merely popular, provided by Hollywood and Wall Street, much less the filthy trash from our lying government.

Posted in globalism | Tagged culture, education, government, oppression, propaganda | 2 Comments