Building on Shari’s statement below, I thought about the faith that drives US.
Shari said, “What is so sobering, is that it’s bribery that steals the heart, not religion.”
Ours is not a religion, but it is a faith.
All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher, 1788-1860
Ours is not a faith in things in things unseen, but of seeing things others do not see.
When Shari and Simmons hammer away at the Chronicles of Culture, their faith is tested in a way people do not understand.
They hammer away at the simple truth and get what history shows us all prophets face: They get ridiculed and ignored. That is the first stage of every revolution. Everyone who reads history can see this in retrospect, but no one can see it when it is happening.
All we say here interrelates. I have repeatedly pointed out that Jesus never said “Praise God.” Groups like the PTL (Praise the Lord) Club always go the way of the original Pilgrim church in Massachusetts: They end up Unitarian (or in Israel worship), because they are going back to the essentially pagan God of the Old Testament. Like JHWH, that deity needed constant attention and praise.
Christ preached a Father for whom the simple Lord’s Prayer was enough. That is a different concept entirely. You asked for what you needed from the Father and then you went out and PLANT SEEDS.
Jesus told his followers to plant the seeds and some of them will grow.
They grew.
As Shari says, the rest is just bribes.
A lot of Russian dissidents said, after the USSR fell, that they were actually happier in a society where their samizdats, their illegal publications, got them jailed instead of living in a society where their opinions are ignored in the avalanche of different ideas. Being taken seriously by those in power is a reward, a BRIBE, no matter how it may seem a punishment.
Respectable conservatives were so happy at being agreed with by liberals who Were Somebody, neoconservatives, that they threw their whole movement away to bask in neo approval.
When you get tierd of hammering away at the Mantra and say something about Obama or Ron Paul, you get hit with fury and arguments. That is a relief after the ridicule and silence.
That is a BRIBE.
But you simply cannot compare the importance of the Mantra and the thinking that goes with it to one more comment about Ron Paul or Obama.
Old Testament fanatics always demand that the world end or Creationism to be proven.
NOW.
I am sure that, two thousand eyars ago, a lot of listeners were disappointed when Christ said that they should plant the seeds and some of them would grow.
EVENTUALLY.
And when Jesus died reviled on the cross and even Peter denied him three times, they were sure that their point was proven. Those were the respectable conservatives of their day.
#1 by Simmons on 02/20/2008 - 2:10 pm
I give up and will readily admit I am an internet ignoramous. So if a quick lesson on how to post a url is available please post it.
#2 by BoardAd on 02/20/2008 - 5:06 pm
Simmons,
I’m using chronicles as an example.
1. click on the comment number.
2. highlight the url in the address bar. ex http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org
3. right click and select copy
4. Just paste http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org here in the comments section
#3 by Dave on 02/20/2008 - 7:07 pm
White people get so balled up because they are so driven by a fear of missing out on something, by fears of regret.
This is what makes them vulnerable to the claims other races make on their conscience.
What a world we live in: You can’t bribe a darkie with anything other than the promise of a mulatto child. And all you can do with Asians is pin a medal on them.
But the white man must be convinced he is not missing out and is accordingly shielded from regret. He will sacrifice his own kin and his own race if he thinks that will liberate him from regret.
That’s what makes a white man vote for Obama, his white man’s liberal conceits have nothing to do with it.
Those Calvinist armies that made a revolution throughout much of Britain and Europe had their white man’s fear of regret buried so deep, that a notion of a payoff, any kind of payoff, was an impossibility not only in this life, but for all eternity, only to obey orders without question, and to fight and die. Regret, accordingly, was unthinkable cowardice and treason.
This came to an apex with the Nazis, who came from fathers where there was no such thing as a payoff, under any circumstances, ever.
We are so far from this today that no one has the slightest inkling of its truth. All of this is literally beyond conception, its units of meaning do not compute. In that, Hollywood’s triumph is complete and irreversible.
So I guess we literally are back to square one. All we can do is go forth and plant seeds, hoping some will grow.
#4 by YearningForFreedom on 02/20/2008 - 11:28 pm
The Stockholm syndrome was mentioned in a previous article.
I think calling all people who switch sides psychopaths is not accurate. I think that people who are continuously insulted from every direction will sooner or later break out into a violent rage — or flip to the opposing point of view and learn to love it.
That can be corrected, right?
#5 by Bob on 02/21/2008 - 8:47 am
Simmons, your and Shari’s admission of Internet ignorance make me fel a lot better and a lot less lonely.
I think our tech people need to take our three admissions to heart and assume that they must be overcareful to bring it down to our level because we are probably typical.
#6 by Bob on 02/21/2008 - 8:48 am
YFF:
“That can be corrected, right?”
Yes! By holding to OUR faith.