Understanding faith & human history

There is a lot of talk about two historical issues:

1. How can the Bible be "accurate" (and the Qur'an) when so many incredible events are documented?

2. Do we as adults, and our children as students, really understand human history (whether of our country or of the world), and related to this question, how can anyone understand genuine history when whoever is in power cooks the books?

Here is the most essential thing to remember and help you to understand how to learn about and correctly perceive history.

When it comes to human history, even the best of history courses, books and curriculum barely convey one percent of the truth of that time. That's correct, you are reading right, even the best of history books, classes, teachers, and even original source material (letters or archaeology of the time for example) do NOT convey 99 percent of the truth, but only 1 percent. Wow, you paranoids are probably saying, who is "hiding the truth," aliens? Ha ha, no, nothing so dire. It is simple human nature that no one can understand the previous generation of humans, say nothing of humans many generations ago. That is because it is increasingly impossible for humans to understand themselves when you live under totally different circumstances.

Here is an easy example, one you can see as a living case study today. When Americans read about the Founding Fathers, for example, you cannot at all comprehend what life was during that time because, just for one example, they had no electricity. The entire world lacked electricity. But it was not "a lack," because they had what they needed to cope, which was fuel and fire. So much of their life day by day, you know, the way people actually lived day to day between glamorous "historical" events was that a lot of people had to keep busy gathering and storing fuel (usually wood) and the means to utilize it (for cooking and heating) when needed. It is impossible to imagine just that one fact of life today.

It is impossible to imagine because even in poor countries that lack electricity for the public (like Haiti, and that is one reason the landscape is so denuded is that every tree that could be burnt for fuel was long ago cut down), people still know electricity exists and also have access to it via places that have it, like refrigeration in stores. You see, when I point out there was NO electricity I mean it, there was no electricity anywhere in human history up until the past one hundred years. You cannot compare even a poor country where most people have no electricity to those times because 1) electricity does exist in the structure around them (main street lights, the grocery stores, other public places such as schools) and 2) in a way, people were "wealthier" in fuel and heat/lighting in times when they had a cycle by which they harvested and stored wood than people today who lack both that cycle AND electricity. So you cannot look at an electricity deprived place like Haiti and say "hmm, it must have been like that during the American Revolution" and during "colonial times." No, it was not like that at all because no electricity was "the normal" and not "the lack."

So you cannot read the historical facts about Thomas Jefferson, for example, no matter how numerous the facts and how accurate they are, and yet have any genuine comprehension of those times because modern humans cannot imagine the human context as it really was. Modern humans look back with two simultaneous errors: glamorizing certain aspects of human life, and demonizing/diminishing the good qualities of that life. Thus one might think that if someone in Haiti suffers due to lack of electricity in their home, that "it must have been like that in colonial times." No, my friends, it was not like that. No household, no matter how poor, suffered in that respect if they had able bodied men and women who gathered, chopped and stored the wood. They lived the life of the times, which was the back breaking work but the satisfaction of having one's sufficient supply of fuel, gathered by one's own family's hands.

I can now list for you all sorts of fuel issues (such as not understanding the horror of whaling without understanding how whale oil relieved so many poor people of back breaking work) that are just a small part of the backdrop of many eras of human history, but I've made my point and don't want to distract. Just the single issue of not understanding (and in fact, when it is mentioned, demonizing or making it look more primitive than it was) how life was totally different when people ALL had to self gather fuel demonstrates to you that understanding Thomas Jefferson, for example, is more than figuring he was rich enough (or had slaves) to light candles when he sat at his desk to write. Everyone was in the same boat: everyone had responsibility to collect fuel for their household, or they suffered and died, and all of humanity has always been organized around the need for fuel (since that is a cornerstone of food and shelter, of course). That was the normal and one cannot jump to the conclusion that those were "worse" times than today, because they "lacked electricity." More to the point, to really "get" history one must understand the normal of the time one is studying in those boring everyday contexts because that shaped everything.

A bigger example is that one cannot understand (just like the mistake of over-whaling) the world busting error of Communism without understanding how the people were actually living at the time. You cannot understand how people in Russia could have made the incredibly stupid error of Communism without understanding how people lived (and suffered) day to day, including the excesses of the Tsars. I'm not going to go into all this but just remind you that people are perfectly able to go from one horribly unjust situation to another opposite and even more unjust situation (remember, Communists threw out God, who is the only Truth that anyone ever really has).

So whenever you read anything from history, whether from one hundred years ago or thousands of years ago, one cannot really understand it at all, despite the accurate "facts," (and those are lacking enough in modern education) without understanding the normal life people led in those times. Without understanding normality of day to day existence, no history is genuinely comprehended, whether of a person, an action, or those times in general. Most of history "is what it is" of millions of people leading normal lives of necessity in those times. The "dramatic" events are always punctuation marks, not the full sentences of those times.

Now, more urgently, to get to understanding how the Bible (and the Qur'an) can be so "accurate" when such marvelous events are recorded there. There are two reasons you can be assured they are accurate, but let us focus on the Bible since that what I will cite from. The first reason is that God knows humans far better than they understand themselves (obviously, since God not only made humans all all life and all the universe, but he knows the answers to all "what if" scenarios as he is the All Knowing) and thus God knows that humans need written Truth as they can barely interpret reality of events they are living at that very time, say nothing of the past. That is why God carved for Moses the Ten Commandments. It's not like people could not memorize ten things, duh. God as All Knowing knew that people can barely record and comprehend their own history from generation to generation. So God gave the first great history lesson in his many talks with Moses, and that became the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Moses learned about early faith history and the events of God's hand (such as creation) from God, and then had what he learned inscribed. God is therefore, through Moses, both providing the truth of what happened prior to the Exodus and also demonstrating to all people how to record (witness to) human and faith history with accuracy and truth.

The second reason one can rely on the Bible is that things that seem "wrong" or "unlikely" are no longer unlikely if one actually understands the context of the event. I'll give you an obvious example right here.

After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision....Then the Lord led him outside and said, "Look at the heavens and, if you can, count the stars." And he said to him, "So shall your posterity be" (Genesis 15:1, 5).

Now, here is an example where a modern person who is an unbeliever (or weak in faith) can say, "Ha. God promised Abraham that he will have as many descendants as there are stars in the heavens, and that's obviously bogus because there are trillions of stars and there's never been more than a few million Jews. So obviously those Jews wrote this to look important."

Um, slight problem. That's first of all not what God said. The main point is that God promised that Abraham's descendants would be uncountable, and God meant those who believe in God due to their spiritual (Jewish and Christian) lineage to God from Abraham forward.

But here's the history lesson context point I am going to make. "Back then," before the telescope was invented, people did not realize that there are trillions of stars. They thought there was the number of stars that they could see with their own eyes and count, in theory. They did not realize that the Milky Way (the part of our galaxy that we can see like a fuzzy band across the dark sky) is fuzzy because its trillions of stars. People thought stars were just as they were, exceedingly numerous, but all visible in the sky, and thus in theory countable, but too many to have the human time to count and many so faint that they are not clear in vision. So the number of stars meant to people before the telescope was invented, "thousands and thousands and thousands..."

To understand the conversation between Abraham and God, you would have to do this. Walk outside on a clear, dark night where your visibility of the stars is maximized. Imagine God saying that you will have as many descendants as the stars that are right in front of you, in your vision, that you could, in theory, count. You have to forget all the stars that actually exist (outside your vision) and you have to forget that there are many stars that you cannot see, as they are too dim, too distant, and are part of the fuzzy nebulae and galactic clouds. You would nonetheless be wowed and impressed, and have the accuracy of God's message, knowing your descendants will be as numerous as the stars you can see in the sky at that moment and if you had the time that you could count based on your own eyes. THAT was God's point.

You see, God is very precise when speaking to humans. He stoops down to talk, but not at all in a condescending way, in the lingo and frame of reference of people at the time. He speaks their language, but always uplifting, always so they, the humans, better know God. God is not making a promise he cannot keep, which if you misunderstand by using modern knowledge to ruin the analogy God is using, you falsely assume. God did not say "Someday astronomers and computer scientists will be able to look with enhanced vision and know that there are trillions and trillions of uncountable stars and that's how many Jews will descend from you." I mean, duh, could that be any clearer? God took Abraham outside and had him look at the stars that he could see in his sight and understand that his descendants, his FAITH descendants, will be that numerous (as the stars he can actually see with his eyes above the horizon) and uncountable (as the faith and knowledge of God goes on and on and on....)

I hope this has helped!

understanding Bible: sin definition case study

I started out planning to blog about something else (which I will), but I came across this historical information that will help you in your faith & reasoning development. In the past few postings I've mentioned how the Bible states that even foolish thoughts, and then of course obviously mean and unrighteous thoughts, are sins, even if no one takes action on them. I explained that and gave the scripture references in previous posts some time ago.

Well, I know that one of the things you need to think about is: how has accurate and complete understanding of the Bible diminished so much over the two thousand years of Christianity that my explaining the Bible has this information has become a news flash? Something that very, very, VERY few pastors and other moral leaders know about or if they do, even mention? Why does no one warn their flock that even foolish thoughts are considered by God to be sins?

Before you, or anyone, can answer that question, you need to "fact find." Young people (yes, hi there, I think of you fondly as always), the scientific method and the use of problem solving logic means that like a detective, you trace how far in history from the time of the Bible writings to the present that awareness of this particular admonishment in the Bible exists in both the religious and secular consciousness.

Thus I want to give you an example of how, while leafing through my prayerbook, I came across written evidence that just over three hundred years after Jesus Christ lived that people still knew full well and embraced the Bible teaching that foolish and sinful thoughts are actual sins. So while I'm not planning to spend time studying this for you, I thought, hey! What a perfect example to show you how to reconstruct how modern thought has gone so wrong. So the first step is to trace since the time of Jesus, using impeccable written factual sources (not imaginings of false prophets and 'psychics') what people actually thought and did regarding the topic that you are studying, in this case how the Bible states that foolish and sinful thoughts are sins, even if no actions follow.

Here is some background of the person I am going to quote. Ambrose was born around the year 320 AD (and thus was born nearly three hundred years after Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected) into a upper class family in the Roman Empire. Ambrose's family had been Christian for several generations. Ambrose had in his family tree, in fact, a Christian martyr, St. Soteris. Ambrose and his family received classic legal education, so they were well educated and prepared for high civil office, so Ambrose became a lawyer and a governor. When a local bishop died, Ambrose was sent to help sort out arguments among the people about who should be appointed bishop in the place of the deceased. As he addressed the crowd on this subject a child in the crowd called out that Ambrose himself should become bishop! The crowd agreed and the two arguing sides with their respective candidates fell into agreement about Ambrose (who was shocked and did not want to be the bishop). He was well on his way up the lawyer and government "career ladder," and was still studying and deepening his own individual faith. But because the people wanted him so badly and basically drafted him, he was baptized, received the holy orders of priesthood, and was consecrated Bishop of Milan (Italy) all within a month of time! He was very obviously a pious and sanctifying man from the start (the people's instinct was correct!) He gave to the Church and the poor his considerable personal wealth, he sorted through the problem of the genuinely poor from those who were shams, he studied scripture and doctrine for twenty three years, was a prolific author and being a priest, as all bishops are, Ambrose celebrated Mass (the Holy Eucharist) every day. He even raised the three grandchildren of a friend.

With that as background, seeing this was a holy man who didn't even in fact seek out fame or a livelihood due to his sanctity, here is what he wrote, with his opinion of his own sinfulness! This is a long prayer he wrote that he recited before celebrating the Holy Eucharist (the "Lord's Supper") in daily Mass and I include here the opening of the prayer and the places where you see evidence of the realization of those times that all people are considered prone to sin, including of mere thoughts that are foolish or unworthy:

O Gracious Lord Jesus Christ, I, a sinner, presuming not on my own merits, but trusting to Thy mercy and goodness, fear and tremble in drawing near to the Table on which is spread Thy Banquet of all delights. For I have defiled both my heart and body with many sins, and have not kept a strict guard over my mind and my tongue....

...To Thee, O Lord, I show my wounds, to Thee I lay bare my shame. I know that my sins are many and great, on account of which I am filled with fear. But I trust in Thy mercy, for it is unbounded...

...Hearken unto me, for my hope is in Thee; have mercy on me, who am full of misery and sin, Thou who wilt never cease to let flow the fountain of mercy. Hail, Thou saving Victim, offered for me and for all mankind on the tree of the cross...

Remember, O Lord, Thy creature, whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy Blood. I am grieved because I have sinned, I desire to make amends for what I have done. Take away from me therefore, O most merciful Father, all my iniquities and offences, that, being purified both in soul and body, I may worthily partake in the Holy of Holies...

...I purpose to partake, may be to me the full remission of my sins, the perfect cleansing of my offences, the means of driving away all evil thoughts and of renewing all holy desires, and the advancement of works pleasing to Thee...

Do you see how often this obviously holy man (remember, the crowd proclaimed him when he had no clue of wanting to leave a high career for the sanctified priesthood) emphasizes and repeatedly confesses and asks for help for his sins of thoughts????

If you ever wonder what holy people confess to God, that is what it is. Truly holy and sanctified people continue to "renew all holy desires" by acknowledging that all humans have foolish, evil and sinful thoughts. This is the genuine humility before God that ALL believers should have, which is the acknowledgment that even the holiest of people have, due to being broken vessel human beings, regardless of their level of faith, have to mindfully struggle against having even silly and mean or vain thoughts, say nothing of how profound a sin that thinking, even idly and fleetingly, thoughts about sinful matters are.

So, young people, and others, this is how you can see that no, we don't "lack evidence" of "what the church was like" and "what people believed" "back then" in "Biblical times." This lawyer/governor who became priest/bishop only a few hundred years after Christ left plenty of written evidence of his thoughts and what the people believed, and what they retained of their understanding of the Bible, both Old and New Testament. The notion that even idle, foolish and sinful thoughts are actual sins (as the Bible states) was a hot forefront belief several hundred years after Christ.

Thus, young people, and others, you now have a piece of your investigation, if you were doing so, that for certain in the four century that the knowledge that bad and foolish thoughts are sin was well known and frequently meditated about and prayed regarding, including DAILY by this Bishop of Milan, Ambrose.

Those of you new to studying the saints, let me explain that they were not tucked away in a corner. Ambrose, while he was living, was studied by many who would become great saints themselves. Further, while there was no email, ha, or post office, there was indeed snail mail and these people were all in correspondence. So if you continue your investigations you will see that a writing by a priest or bishop was never a "personal" so called "interpretation of scripture." This was the prevailing belief, kept intact from Old Testament times and the times of Jesus, that foolish and bad thoughts are indeed sins.

I hope that you have found this helpful both in further understanding what I have been reminding people about what the scriptures actually say, but also as you can see that you don't have to imagine and make stuff up, but you can look at written agenda-free evidence to deduce what people knew and believed, and how the word of God is preserved, and when parts of it started to fall out of public consciousness. Here we have filled in the blanks of several hundred years, knowing that the early Christians were keenly aware of what the Israelites knew and what those who followed Jesus knew, which is that God states that foolish, bad, mean and/or sinful thoughts are indeed actual sins, whether actual action follows or not.

Cross honoring WWI dead under attack

Some guy filed suit that it was "unfair" that a plain wooden cross placed on national parks land seventy years ago to honor the dead of WWI because it allegedly promotes one religion on federal land. What? How dumb is that. It's now being argued at the US Supreme Court.

There are two errors in "logic," such as it is, by this clown and his supporters, who filed the original suit in 1999. Here they are:

1. The first error is that a "specific" religious symbol refers only to that religion's followers (as in only the Christian WWI war dead are being honored). I can easily prove the error in that. Suppose that a bunch of Buddhists got together and created a memorial, with one of their symbols, that honored all women who died in childbirth. I would find that touching and would never assume that they only meant all Buddhist women. I mean, DUH! Likewise a Jewish monument honoring all lost in the Holocaust, I figure that they are sending "good vibes" to all who died, and not only the Jews. If Muslims had calligraphy somewhere honoring all grey haired middle aged women who grew up in poverty, I'd be flattered, and not assume that they mean only Muslim grey haired women. Only a moron would reckon that a cross honoring all WWI dead is somehow selective and an insult or omission, rather than an honor to everyone. Sheesh.

2. The second error is that having a "Christian" symbol, a historic one, not a new one, on federal land is somehow enticing or coercing people to recognize Christianity as a "state" religion. This is totally bogus and I can prove it. Yep, I can prove it. How? OK. Attention all hikers in federal lands and national park systems. If you come across an ancient carving of American Indian cultures that depict any part of their religion, since it's on federal land it's wrong to put it there, so I guess it's OK for you to remove the carvings. Either deface them or chip them out and sell them in the antiquities market (maybe help to balance the budget). Why not? Would not the presence of an American Indian religious symbol carved into a rock on federal land be endorsement of the "state" religion? Better get ready to remove any and all American Indian religious carvings anywhere on federal land. In fact, I think I might even insist on it, if the cross is so bad... gosh, think how we've been living under the insult and coercion of American Indian pagan faith symbols being protected and treasured on Federal lands. Hmmmm.....

There, now that was not so difficult, was it now?

;-)

More about diplomacy

Read, study and think about each of these quotations, as there is a lot of wisdom and experience, seasoned with wry humor and painful truth.

I found this list when looking for the one I really wanted to share with you, the one by Moshe Dayan.

www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_enemies.html

The Jewish proverb one is also interesting. It comes from scripture, where God has said that he will raise up enemies against the Israelites when they were disobedient to him.

Young people, I hope you spend extra time thinking about these quotes, as part of detaching yourself from combative and bumper sticker mentality, which infests your parental and teacher generation, *sigh*. Behind every wise saying there is a lot of thought, experience and nuance to appreciate, ponder, and incorporate into your thinking, viewpoints and approaches.

Yes, I'm posting this because of all the flack about "bad people" and "enemies" visiting because of the UN gathering! Read the Moshe Dayan one, one that I've quoted many times, but often thinking that Golda Meir had said it! (They were amazing leaders and are worth studying for both their successes and their misses).

Exercise examples and more context information

Based on what I wrote, imagine this.

1. You turn on "past TV" and watch the earliest of human development, where they first organized into groups and then at some point used weapons to war against other groups, for whatever reasons. You watch day after day of one group overpowering the other group and slaughtering everyone in the group, including, in fact, especially the infants. So one group would war and wipe out the other group: not armies but tribal family and clan based units. The whole objective of each conflict is to kill all of the others, probably because they competed for the same food. You watch day after day of these events over a period of thousands of years.

And then one day you notice one group declares war on another group, but instead of slaughtering them all, this winning group decides to keep the other group alive and force them to work for them. You applaud... and then you just realize that you've applauded the development of slavery.

2. You oppose inoculations against disease because you think something about them "causes" other ills, such as autism, or that they are a privacy imposition.

You turn on "past TV" and watch day after day of people walking around with even one disease, let's say smallpox because it is so visible. You can watch as it actually happened millions of individuals suffer from and die from the selected case study disease. So you can "be there" in true "reality TV" as every family loses at least one child, maybe more, to rampant disease, and entire families are wiped out. Like true "reality TV" you feel their pain and you say, "If only something could have been done." Your heart is wrung after watching let's say the hundredth episode of "past TV" of a smallpox infected person suffering and dying. You then flip the channels and listen in as generations of scientists wonder what caused the disease and work to develop cures, some of them primitive and totally wrong, while, as intellectual knowledge grows, others start to understand and work on cures. They start to develop inoculations. You applaud them. Huh?


With these examples of "past TV" you can structure your own logical imaginings of the day to day, like watching paint dry or a faucet dripping, of how humans really lived, and how they reached the conclusions and outcomes that they did. It puts your modern opinions within their proper context of what factually actually happened.


Think of any of the social, environment, moral or business issues we face today, and imagine what "past TV" would show you about those day to day experiences, and how humans without drama lived and adapted. Adaptation is different from evolution or enlightenment by the way. Humans adapt their behavior according to real circumstances, and that can occur within a moment in the blink of an eye or over generations.

Some terminology and concepts:

Quick adaptation is, for example, you change a driving habit instantly when you find one day you have an accident due to it (you may stop texting while driving after an accident). Slow adaptation is a group of people learn to grow different crops for food when the weather changes and they no longer have enough rain for what they used to grow.

Evolution differs because that would mean the people who used to eat the original food die out and only ones who can eat the new food survive and reproduce, so it is a biological outcome to a long time "opportunity" (an advantage or disadvantage that one's body must respond to through survival or not). So a bad opportunity (not enough rain to grow your crops) for evolution arises and one way that would be "solved" if adaptation is not used (because humans are too primitive) is that they stay in place and everyone dies out except the few people who can eat the local shrubbery. Evolution takes place biologically, while adaptation is mental. Humans adapt to the loss of rain and their original crop that they depend on by growing a new crop that is drought resistant or moving to a place where their original food can be found. Primitive humans and animals have evolution "imposed" on them when they lack the ability to act through adaptation. Thus they evolve by dying out until only the population that has the minority ability to eat what is available survives and passes on those genes.

Enlightenment is not "answers to problems" such as what to eat. Enlightenment is having the proper spiritual context for the ongoing human condition. For example, Jesus pointed out to the disciples that the lilies are the most beautiful of beings all on their own, without human adornment, and that the sparrows can find their own food. Jesus is enlightening the disciples about how much God proportionately loves humans for if he bestows the love of beauty and the finding of food on the humblest of creatures, how much more so does he love humans who are conscious and who know him? Jesus does not give a textbook exposition of the genetics of lily colors and spots or pointers on where the sparrows can find even more food. Thus moderns must stop thinking that "enlightenment" is "problem solving." It is not. Lack of that understanding is part of the "aliens with answer" and "psychics tell you what will happen" dead end trap of much modern thinking.

The human problem solving tools are:

1) Adaptation (change behavior)
2) Evolution (have circumstances of life and death imposed on you).

Enlightenment is not a problem solving tool.


So, by the way, go back to the modern person who opposes inoculations based on let's say an autism fear. I am not telling that person to stop being cautious or even to change their belief. What I am showing them is that they need to understand the other position fully. They need to understand the full context of consequences of no inoculation or spotty inoculation since it is not an "individual" decision. Past TV shows that it's called "public health" for a reason: disease management is not an "individual choice" or "individual risk" by its nature, even though free society to some extent respects individual non-compliance. What I am saying is that those who support more research or who have fears about inoculations, in that example, need to understand the context of risk profile and history for all, not just themselves, that they are making their assumed argument. If people truly understand their own history and the facts they find themselves cheering the very developments that they may later question, whether the questioning is legitimate or magical thinking.

Part of problem solving, via adaptation, is having the facts. Suppose the texting driver has an accident because she was distracted while texting and looked away from the road and crashed. She would reasonably stop texting. However, suppose her accident was caused because her tire exploded? Adaptation would then shift to ensuring that future tires are safe and properly pressurized, while not texting is a secondary adaptation because if she was not texting maybe she'd have a split second advantage as she fought to control the now out of control car. Improper adaptation would be to continue to have unsafe tires and to text, but to put a bigger bumper on the car. See, this is why people must have clear thinking about past and present reality, and primary and secondary causes and effects. This, actually, used to be taught in school :-) That's why I'm teaching you the terminologies and principles as they used to be taught in your average every day educational system to the young.

A creative writing and mental cleansing exercise

A creative writing and mental cleansing exercise

I’ve noticed that this modern society is very much into “cleansers,” usually for imaginary “detoxing” reasons, including the puzzling popularity of “colonics.” Well, detoxing and cleansing are of course worthy and important concepts in general, so here are a mental and spiritual cleansing exercise. Its purpose is to help people realign themselves into a more realistic perception of actual life and prudent separation from the depressive and paranoid imaginations that moderns now suffer from (and inflict on each other). This is also part of the faith and reason case studies, with a focus on regaining more authentic reasoning capabilities. Since it is a creative visualization exercise, you can also use this is part of my series on creative writing and arts exercises that focus on reality to provide positively imaginative and cutting edge creativity.

The basic premise of this story, this visualization, is that we are going to think of a scientifically and realistic, factual way to determine what actually happened each day in human history. In this story the reason that such a capability is created is that humans have lost the ability to look on their own past with any balance and reason. Here is an example of the problem. Some people are fascinated by ancient Indian cultures, such as the Aztecs, Mayans and Incans, because they consider certain segments of their culture to be either “cool” or “enlightening and mystical.” Thus they think that because there are certain cultural developments in their pagan mythologies and supposed forecasting of world events and so forth through their calendars that are exciting, mysterious and cool that the whole society had undue merit. By “undue merit” I mean that rather than just appreciating that they were fellow human beings who raised children and did the best they could, they are given, by some people, a numinous elevation in their importance. In fact, this elevation obscures the very unpleasant facts of their bloody torture and sacrifice of thousands and thousands of innocent people, including infants. As schools have become less judgmental and more “politically correct,” young people are less exposed to the mundane realities of human history and as a result turn to the imaginary entertainment media and other “soothsayers” who focus on the “cool” parts of human history and ignore the rest. This has led modern society into an awful mess and the ability to reason for millions of people has been polluted and damaged.

So let us suppose that there is a factual and scientifically valid way to take someone who has such a viewpoint, put them into a room, and turn on a television that allows them to see what actually happened on any given day in, let’s say, an Aztec city. This would be an actual viewing of the minute by minute genuine activities as they occurred. So there would be many hours of footage of watching people just do their day to day lives, raising children and slogging and toiling in the fields.

Here is the scientific principle of how this would work. It is important to understand that there is a way that pure factual science could in theory provide this capability. It is important to have a factual and scientific approach as part of the mental cleansing exercise so that one does not imagine that “aliens” or “seers” “provide” this “gift.” It is that mindset, both conscious and unconscious, that has gotten society into this dire mess of toxic mentality. So here is the science. Most people know that we are able to see and hear things because energy is reflected and/or emitted outward where the ears and the eyes then “catch” that energy and therefore perceive what is happening. We also know that the light continues onward into space. This is how we see the stars, because their light travels long distances until it reaches our eyes. Many jokes have been made on this principle that imaginary aliens will someday receive the first beams of our first television programs and enjoy (or puzzle over) “Howdy Doody” and “I Love Lucy.” So using that scientific principle, let’s take it a step further and build a system where not just television and radio waves but all waves, light and sound, are picked up in space to provide a real time image of what was happening on the surface of the earth.

So imagine that a million light years from earth (the distance that light travels in a year) we had cameras that were so powerful that they could collect the light of everything that was actually happening on earth, and so refined that they could detect down to the individual human or animal’s activity. In other words it is like installing a powerful traffic live cam except the events have already taken place and these cameras are positioned far enough out in space to collect all this light. Similarly microphones would be installed so that all sounds that were ever emitted were captured and matched to the visual images. This is, of course, where the science breaks down since all light and all sound is not preserved indefinitely nor are they powerful enough to actually live on in space. If you drop a book in your house the people on the street do not hear it because the sound waves do not travel farther than the walls of your home. But for the purpose of this exercise, let us assume that it is possible to gather all of the light and sound waves that were ever emitted on earth and view/listen to them as a genuine live stream of what had actually happened minute by minute on earth.

Thus one could take an Aztec admirer and put him or her in a room that receives these transmissions and they could watch and see and listen to any particular day of events in a given location in that time. So the viewer could flip the dial and watch a selected location on a selected day. Remember, they are not “back there” “in time” as if in a supposed “time machine,” they are simply watching, like on TIVO, what had actually happened in the past.

Nothing would restore mental balance and sanity faster. Anyone could watch day after day of reality, the boring mundane existence of people who had to labor for the food that they ate. However, one would also see that the one joy that people had was their children. People could watch day after day, year after year of this “television into the past” and essentially observe as it happened the reality that life was difficult compared to today in that everyone had to labor long hours just to survive, growing their food, building shelter, obtaining water and heat and raising their children. People could then also observe that children were the one gift that everyone had and valued… children were the treasure that even the poorest could “afford.” Such observing would take the glamour out of the few minutes of prurient and occult activity and perception of the culture as a whole, and restore the luster of understanding that through the generations it was children that were the goal of all of day to day human activity. Children were the reward for living, and rich and poor both agreed and were able to share in that common perception of the priority of life.

Thus one could restore through this television into the past a dose of the day to day reality as it occurred, not as compressed summaries or sound bytes of the exciting and mysterious “bits.” Further, one can then debunk the mystery of how things happened. One would see that no alien spaceships arrived to “give” the Aztecs or the Mayans “their calendar.” They could flip the channel and watch those who worked on those labors scratch their heads and observe phenomena that they did not understand (such as the stars), and then assemble the “facts” of what they saw into theories of world view. We could see if maybe the calendar turned out the way it did because King Freddie the Stubborn was in charge and the palace astronomers knew that he wanted the calendar to turn out a certain way. We could see that maybe one of the court astronomers is nagged by his hag wife and thus is in a bad mood whenever he works on the calendar. He thinks it is funny that he carves one of the snake gods to look like her. And then flipping the channel the observer could see how very uncool the roundup of the month’s bloody sacrifice of village people really was.

So using this television into the past people could book time in the television room to see what really happened in life in the past. It would serve two purposes. One is the obvious exciting ability to see what is true. For example, one could dial in and see the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. One could see that slaves built the pyramids, not freaky aliens who flew in on a ship and told the slave masters what to do. So with the television into the past one could settle all sorts of debates about what actually happened and what did not. But more importantly, and you may not believe this but it is true, the second purpose would be to observe how human life is like watching paint dry. It is NOT about the supernatural and human power mongering moments that occur in a period of moments or days, or during the reigns of forgotten despots and kings. It is about millions of people at a time walking around doing what they have to do to survive in a day, and build a society where their children can at least live and eventually thrive.

This is why such a capability is so detoxing and mentally cleansing. It would counteract and refute the over stimulated and distorted “sound byte” and “visual byte,” say nothing of the “enlightenment byte” that has polluted modern faculties. Nothing would restore genuine balance more than watching, oh let’s say a million years, of early humans walking around picking berries and roots, hunting for animals to eat, finding caves to live in, and raising their children, and that’s it. A day of viewing would reveal exiting things such as what prehistoric animals existed and how humans got by in such a difficult life, but quickly one would see that the real message is the “typical day:” drink water where you can find it, lapping it like an animal, dig for roots, pick fruit, eat some leftover animal kill, shelter from the sun and from predators, carry your children. What an exciting “direct TV” package that would be! One could watch millions of days of people trudging along trying to survive and valuing their young (that’s their young, such as their children, not their youth, such as the lack of wrinkles).

One could see, as I mentioned, that Jesus Christ really existed. One could also watch the real Buddha sit under the real tree. One could see the miracles of Jesus, including, of course, his resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven. But the television would not ultimately give one faith in God, of course. All one can do is see and believe the reality of God’s prophets. One could look down on the Israelites and see the great Theophany of God on Mount Sinai as they did, where God descended like a thunderous cloud and appeared to Moses alone. But of course watching the real events does not infuse faith into one’s heart thousands of years later. That is the whole point of the scriptures: you have to have actually been there to feel that full infusion of belief. The Apostles repeatedly explain that in their writings that they saw all of this with their own eyes and participated. One of the early Church fathers wrote about people who had seen Jesus and been cured by him still being alive and witnessing to the reality many years later. When one is part of the day to day one receives the full infusion of belief because you are part of the reality. But even the most perfect TV that allows one to look back in time, even in the side by side minute by minute way, cannot give the same fullness of infusion of impact of the events and the faith that is engendered as having actually been there and participating. That is the entire point of genuine history: you study and believe the people who were actually there.

So now I’ve created almost a longing for this past TV capability among you, I would guess. That is a good thing even though it cannot be technically fulfilled. That craving can be satisfied as it always was traditionally, until these modern dreadful times, which is through study and discernment of the facts, using faith and reasoning. There is a plentitude of literature by those who lived, for example, during the time of Jesus, the decades after Jesus, the hundred years after Jesus, and the two hundred years after Jesus. Moderns can actually read the facts of what people said, saw and believed and then decide on the impact on their faith. Instead we have people running around thinking that either nothing can be believed or everything can be believed as having actually happened, or worse, “could have happened.” I’ve pointed out in this post and other previous postings that there is a vast difference between the facts of real people who lived and existed, such as Jesus Christ, the Buddha, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and giving equal credence to writings that are mythologies (such as the fictional Greek and Roman pantheon of deities) and even worse than that, not reading any of the facts of who lived and what happened and making up by pulling out of one’s own mind and paranoia imaginary scenarios of “aliens” and so forth.

Sane thinking and sane living involve this order of progression:

1) Read and study factual accounts where they occur, whether writings or scientific records, such as fossils and geological formations.
2) Identify correctly those productions of humans that are pure imaginary that are done for cultural reasons and thus have value, of course, but are not factual.
3) Develop theories (called “hypotheses”) for the missing gaps, for what is not understood, but starting with the firm foundation of what is known and what can be reasonably inferred and deduced.

This used to be the way that individuals, groups and societies used to think and perceive reality. I am horrified to the very roots of my hair at how fewer and fewer people think in a clear, cleansed and factual way in these dreadful modern times. The imaginary has overthrown and distorted the reality.

Why has this happened? The obvious two reasons are that prosperity has separated too many power brokers from the reality and tempo of actual life, life that used to center around survival first and prosperity second. The second reason is that entertainment media has taken over the thought process of the vast majority of people, also the result of prosperity. People no longer value facts and reasoning, all they care about is “imagining,” “escapism” (which then becomes their new and horrible reality) and artificial or extreme sensation seeking. Any given hour of modern media gives more stimulation than an entire year of actual life would have among even the Aztecs. That is what has been totally lost in the modern psyche and what our theoretical “past TV” would provide the instant cure for.

So what do we do? We have to get back to genuine reality of perceptions within a reasonable tempo of life. Humans never lived in a time where our children, for example, can experience a daily diet of overstimulation. Even in the most dreadful times of war, for example, in human history, the vast majority of people had to plod each day to the fields to tend to the crops, their herds of animals and their children. No human ever experienced a daily or even a monthly or yearly diet of over stimulation as do our children and adults in just one hour of video games, television viewing, celebrity antics or the news, which contains so much that is dreadful. I’m not calling for censuring, but rather an understanding of times that have passed. It used to be, when I was young, that one could go a year without hearing about, for example, a father or mother killing their entire family. Now one cannot go through a day without hearing another example. I’m not saying that the news should not be reported, by using this example. I am pointing out that the news all by its self is over stimulating because of these events in these awful times, so why in the world is fuel being added to the fire of overstimulation on top of the sad reality? As I said, even in the worst of human times no child or adult experienced a relentless hour by hour day by day exposure to tragic real or imaginary over stimulation. Even work has become combative in modern times, with people having warlike analogies for their every day activities.

Think about that. If you could watch our “past TV” you’d notice that it’s not like the Smiths who grew corn on their acre imagined “marketing war” with the Jones who grew barley on their acre. Rather, even the Bible documents rules for how farmers should lend each other their tools. Yet we have corporations who are structured in totally warlike “free market competition” and individual “competitiveness” (look at the torture of the “human resources” departments with their “performance review system”) and you’ll see what I mean. I've spent years in corporate America and it is unrecognizable from where it was in the 1950’s where one could be competitive on one’s own initiative rather than competitive based on principles of looting, torture and war.

If you watched our “past TV” you’d see that generation after generation tried to do better for themselves and their family, not compete, loot and over stimulate. Farmer Smith would hope that next year he could extend his field another few feet in one direction in order to fit in another row of corn, and thus do a little better. Farmer Jones would hope that she could extend irrigation to another part of her field, and thus ride out times of low rain better. They didn’t plot against each other and instead they supported each other. Their kids did not go home believing that aliens talked to bug eyed Egyptians and played video games of how many they could slaughter. Humans simply are not meant to be as they are today; they are not meant to be like the moderns are today either spiritually or biologically, as “past TV” could show what kind of lifestyle and outlook humanity is evolved to be part of. Humanity is meant to be in a reality based incrementally improving standard of living that is individual, family and community based, punctuated by moderate stimulation as needed (times of crisis, sports, adventurers), and all revolving around one’s treasure of investment which is children, the present and the future.

To summarize, therefore, “past TV” would provide the following mental cleansing:

1) It would remind people that factual evidence exists to discern between what actually happened and the imaginary works of humans.
2) It would remind people that there is a tempo of life that people emerged and evolved into, and have now totally lost in the vast parts of modern society.
3) It would starkly demonstrate that modern humans have become paranoid and combative by their own choice and thus the imposition now of society, particularly modern workplace and “entertainment” ethos and that such an attitude never existed in even the most pained and troubled times of human history.

It is of the most desperate importance that everyone, individually and in our systems such as schools, return to a reality based process of learning and thinking. I hope I’ve provided one small but helpful visionary tool, where people can once in a while stop and think, “What would ‘past TV’ show us about what actually happened and how people genuinely lived?” You will develop a much refined and truer taste for everything, from intellectual to entertainment, if you do this, without losing any of the benefits and pleasures of genuine imagination, including for diversion.

What a mess.
:(

Case study: Lincoln using logic

I have been sharing with readers tips on how to use reasoning and logic to carefully explore even (and I'd say even especially) those things that seem simple and obvious. Read this famous example of how Lincoln described the problem of slavery, and developed principles through which to reason and deduce the available options and implied consequences:

If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I may seize the nearest stick and kill it. [Slavery in itself.]

But if I found that snake in bed with my children that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. [Slavery in the South.]

Much more, if I found it in bed with my neighbor's children, and I had bound myself by a solemn oath not to meddle with his children under any circumstances, it would become me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the gentleman alone. [Slavery in the South as seen from the North.]

But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was any question how I ought to decide. [Slavery in the territories.]

Lincoln was very careful in framing these parallels (delivered to a Connecticut audience early in 1860). He does not speak of Southerners as belonging to different states, but as "neighbors" with whom one has a solemn agreement. Nor does he palliate the evil of slavery-it is a snake no matter where one finds it, and it endangers the Southerners' children. But in denouncing the evil, in trying to contain it, in hoping for new agreements, Lincoln will not divide the "one people" that declared itself united in the Declaration... (Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg, page 138-9).

Now, notice that being rationale and thoughtful about the layers of consequence of action did not stop Lincoln from taking the fateful and correct step of eradicating slavery. So one should not fear that being honest about the layers of implication and potential consequences of a monumental problem or decision will lead to inaction. Lincoln followed the steps of his logic, thoughtfully escalating, and it was the South who repeatedly refused to use a similar process of accommodation. Thus Lincoln concluded that the South had removed itself from the protection and rights of the Union, and thus was no longer the neighbor with whom he had a solemn oath (the third analogy) and realized that war would be necessary, and there would be the damage (the high price of war) of analogy two, which is to remove the snake of slavery that is already in bed with the children (as Lincoln continued to insist and explain that it was one nation, one set of children, not the "north" and the "south.")

Think about Iraq. When the decision was made to invade and occupy Iraq, you can see reading this excerpt from Lincoln's thought process how inadequate the thought process was regarding Iraq and the implications of various sets of actions. For example, one of my biggest criticisms of the Iraq strategy was the incomprehensible dismantling of the Iraqi army, rather than turning them into the service of the country without Hussein. Lincoln was very diligent and rationale in "enemy identification," which was slavery itself, not the people. The USA spoke the game of liberating the people, but they had obviously assigned "snake" categories to groups of people and institutions without any genuine reasoning and thoughtfulness. Thus to conclude that the army was part of the problem rather than solution, once the head of the snake was cut off, was a dire and stupid error.

Diplomats and other government officials can benefit greatly from the study of Lincoln, as you can see in this example, and use what they read to illuminate a more mature and well informed steps of progress in international relationships and in the necessary conflicts when they do arise.

If Lincoln, for all the evil of slavery and all the provocation he was subjected to when trying to reason with the South, can and did retain his view of them, ultimately, still being Americans, still being neighbors, still being children with his children, then we all would do well to do likewise in world affairs and diplomacy.

Case study: error of messiah complex social work

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-kaiser8-2009feb08,0,984334.story

***

The interesting story of Father John Kaiser, Catholic priest, in Kenya, part one of three. We don't even need to read the upcoming parts two and three to use this as a case study and a cautionary tale. His example is a caution against those individuals who believe they have either a divine mandate or a personal responsibility to "change the world" via "social justice."

Let's use deductive reasoning to help see the problem. Father Kaiser and others assume:

If A is true: There is terrible oppression, criminality and social injustice and
If B is true: And I am witness to it then
C must be true: One must either "speak up" to "fix the problem" or "be silent."

In other words, whether religious or laity it is easy to assume that there is only one choice to be made: whether to "speak up" and/or "fix the problem" or "be silent."

Genuine life demonstrates that this is a totally erroneous path of logic.

No problems are solved simply through the process of 'denouncement.' For example, we have the problem of tainted peanuts (with salmonella) in the United States. The solution is not to have a loud rhetoric of denouncement since accusation and shaming usually results in people thinking they should have hidden the problem better. That is a problem of human nature. Denouncement triggers a human response, which is to not modify the behavior but to hide it better.

The second problem is that there is an assumption that people are just too ignorant and weak to solve their own problems and change their own government. That is ultimately paternalistic and racist. Father Kaiser fell into the common problem in Africa, which is to assume that unless "bwana" "leads the people to freedom," that they will continue to suffer in injustice. Maybe they will and maybe they won't. Every country on the planet has a different history that demonstrates that there is no "one man or woman bwana fixed the mean bad government to free the downtrodden." Every country and culture achieves freedom and social justice in its own organic way of life, with many swerves along the way.

The key to freedom is education and the uplifting out of poverty. I would argue that if Father Kaiser and others focused on quietly building good and simple Catholic schools, for example, that perhaps instead of him thinking he is "bwana" himself, he would have raised twenty graduating classes of well educated kids out of which a handful might have gone into politics and achieved much, much more themselves.

If you want to help an oppressed group you do so by grassroots provision of, of course, spiritual resources (the sacraments if you are a Catholic priest, for example) but on a secular level by teaching people how to make the best of their situation and improve in their poverty mitigation and their educational goals. It is not a coincidence that generations of Catholic priests, brother and nuns worked the fields among their flock, and built and taught secular educations in addition to religious, rather than run around denouncing injustice.

That does not mean one remains silent. However, the tone must be set by the bishop, not a priest. The bishop has the responsibility for any denouncing that must take place. There are many reasons for that and all of them match human nature and what works and what does not. Throughout faith history it is the bishops who would confront, for example, an unjust king, not a priest. The priest must preserve himself for the uplifting of his flock, not risk his head in a spiritual clash with a high secular power. That is why the bishops, like the cardinals, wear red.

The middle ground offers many solutions that are invisible to someone who is too extreme in their zeal, too black and white in their view of injustice, and too inflated about their own individual role and "destiny." Father Kaiser could have been a thousand times more effective if he had understood that.

For example, what if he built a Catholic school that offered a solid and noncontroversial education, and had stayed put in one place, nurturing that school and class after class of kids? Who know what stability that would have brought to that one community, that parish, and all the kids and their families as they progressed through the years. What if that good example did more to shame the corrupt powers than loudly denouncing them?

Want to win a corrupt power over? Build a school and name it after him or her, and show decency through your own quiet example. What if we could have been reading in the LA Times about the "Father Kaiser and Kenya President" schools, and all the poor kids who received hope over the generations (while also receiving the sacraments), rather than a self doomed messiah complex priest who "made his own bullets."

What would Jesus have done? Isn't that awfully obvious to someone is has not driven themselves crazy with messiah complex? Jesus would have had the whole country covered with grass hut schools within twenty years, naming them after anyone who at the very least did them no harm. Jesus would have set up "Caesar's school for poor kids" all over Jerusalem if that had been his mission, even if Caesar did not contribute a single drachma, denaris, piece of silver or whatever. Jesus would not and did not run around head butting and confronting every secular injustice, of which there were aplenty. This is partly because that was simply not his ministry, as he made perfectly clear. But it is also because Jesus is not there to take away people's normal lives from them. People need to evolve their own cultures and governments, and reach their own justice as a group, not by looking for a "bwana." This is why the cream of Europe arose from people who believed, who were Christian, but who attended schools that taught secular subjects and ethics within the framework of the monasteries and other real life institutions. People followed Jesus and developed appropriate institutions; they did not try to "be" Jesus.

The point is not to pretend to be this generation's "social justice Jesus" but to recognize that no one is or will be Jesus but Jesus himself, and, rather, to role model one's self after what has worked. People achieve social justice when tribal and other hostilities are overcome by a common grassroots lifting out of poverty and the establishment of even the most humble of schools (laptops really not needed, thank you very much).

Just to recap: be alert for error in logic if you find yourself thinking "I 'must' 'do something' about this 'social injustice.'" The emphasis on "I" and "must" should be a warning that you have assumed that there is a problem that other people have that only you can fix, and that is an error in logic. People fix their own problems when given the tools and the accurate facts.

Here is a silly analogy, just for a smile. Suppose you encounter a village that is starving, and you find it is because someone has convinced everyone that the seeds they plant for their crops will only grow if you throw tar over them first. Do you confront and insult the elder? Maybe, but if you fail, the people continue to starve. Go down the road and buy some land. Start planting the seeds the right way. As the crops grow give them to the people to eat. You've now given them face saving room. The elder can say, "Well, he probably is lucky and got ground that does not need the tar" or "the tar must be invisible in that patch of land" or whatever. The point is that by not confronting you are not "being silent," but instead, you are letting your actions speak for you and not cornering people in a place where they have no choice but to fight you.

Humility, humility, humility.

American Presidency case study: FDR

I have a small case study for you about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In this I want to demonstrate how accurate understanding of history must be personal but not personalized. Here is the difference.

One cannot really understand a period in history without having been there, or spoken to someone who was there. People who were on the scene in a historical period are called “contemporaries.” Sure, you will find a difference of opinion among contemporaries, but very rarely will you find a difference of opinion about the essential facts and zeitgeist (spirit of the times). Thus it is essential to obtain and preserve the personal experience of contemporaries during any historic period.

However, it is a mistake to “personalize” a historic period. By that I mean to impose a theory or belief of one’s own back in time onto a previous period. That is one of the greatest and most common intellectual mistakes of the past forty years. I saw the beginning of it in college in the early 1970’s. Another word for this phenomenon is “revisionist” history but there is a difference. Genuine revisionist history is an attempt by the current state and intellectuals to rewrite or reshape history in a way that is less embarrassing and more supportive of the current regimes, and there is a long history of that. However, that is not as serious a problem as what I am speaking of in the “personalizing” of history. Governments and their toady intellectuals may produce “revisionist” history, but scholars always maintain the facts of contemporary accounts and thus when the zeal for revisionism passes, people can pick up again with studying the actual facts of the previous times.

Personalizing of history is a far murkier, sloppier and dangerous endeavor and habit because it results from a genuine misunderstanding of how people used to live and think. People who personalize history think that the way they think now is the way people used to think and thus motivated their behavior. Here is a silly example as an analogy.

Suppose that years from now scholars try to understand why the IPOD was so popular, because it has gone out of existence. Perhaps society has changed so that everyone likes the same music and so no one has personal players and custom play lists anymore. So scholars are trying to understand why IPODS were so popular. They study the historical information and learn that there was a wide variety of tastes in music, that everyone had their own favorites, and that also the IPOD allowed the listening of one’s own music in a variety of settings. So these scholars understand by reading contemporary accounts why IPOD was so popular and how it was used even though they no longer “relate” since in that theoretical time in the future everyone likes the same songs.

Now, here is how revisionist history would work. Suppose the government has just spent millions of dollars installing public address systems that play the songs that everyone likes. They are genuinely worried about an individualistic “retro” movement whereby people are interested in marginal types of music again and thus would oppose the shared investment in the public music systems. Revisionists would not hide that people used to have IPODS but would “explain” via “spin” that people were “forced” to spend their own hard earned money on individual systems because the government did not provide public shared music systems. So one still had access to the facts and contemporary accounts, but revisionist history “explains” the facts in terms that put a more positive light on current agendas.

A personalized view of history would honestly misunderstand even the contemporary accounts that are right in front of their eyes since those moderns are no longer capable of understanding people who used to have individual taste in music. Thus they would make up totally bogus interpretations of the past usage of IPODS that are “natural” and “obvious” to how they are living at that time. They might say, for example, that “IPODS were so popular because the government at that time sent out subliminal secret messages that kept the IPOD users ensnared in IPOD use.” So they would read the playlist of someone who lived a hundred years before them and go “Yeah, sure, I bet” as the long deceased author wrote about how much he liked his own mixed playlist of rap and jazz. You could show them a thousand playlists, each different and each reflecting an individual love of music, and these people would sneer and say, “Oh, sure, the hypnosis worked really well.”

Even if they are not conspiracy theory oriented (that being one of the great fuels of erroneous personalized views of history) lack of intellectual rigor and empathy for earlier times in history can also cause erroneous personalized view of history. For example, suppose the people are all miserable and kind of bleak souls in the future (even with their shared liking of the same music, LOL). They assume that people have always been miserable and bleak. So they would figure that IPOD usage was popular because people were trying to escape that period’s “misery and bleakness.” It would never occur to them that people were not always the miserable sad sacks that they are, and thus they interpret history by imposing current feelings on the past and thus totally distorting and warping history.

By looking at FDR and what he did during the two great crises, the Recession and World War II, one can see an example of a current personalizing of his era. So I want to tell you a small story that illustrates the importance of not doing that, and instead embracing contemporary zeitgeist of the actual time as it truly was.

In the middle 1970’s I visited FDR’s home at Hyde Park.

http://www.nps.gov/hofr

It is a beautiful house in New York State on the Hudson River. There was a warmth and humanity about the house that I was able to directly compare to the other mansion we toured that day, which was the Vanderbilt mansion that was grander but colder.

FDR died April 12, 1945 so we visited his house almost thirty years after he had died and, therefore, there were many people alive who remember those times. In other words, there were many contemporaries walking around who lived during FDR’s term in office from March 4, 1933 for the twelve years until his death. His house was a popular touring spot and so we ran into many people who were there, and there is no other way to describe it, to pay homage to his memory and express their gratitude for what he had done.

As we chatted with the various others touring the house and the grounds, time after time we were told that they were there because they loved FDR and were grateful for what he had done to combat the Recession. These tourists would tell us specific stories about jobs he created that they benefited from, or other activities that helped them to keep body and soul together and survive those terrible long years of the Recession. In particular in his office, looking at his very desk, there would be a hush and often people’s eyes would tear up.

Political commentators today like to cast aspersion on how much FDR “really did” and they have a cold and clinical view of those times. They are not being scholarly because they are totally dismissive of contemporary accounts of not only the facts but the zeitgeist. Thus it would be easy for one of them to be on a talk show or to talk to an individual young person and tell their audience that FDR “really didn’t do all that much” and that “much of what he did was harmful.” That simply is not true.

I cannot emphasis enough that you cannot have an accurate view of history by looking only at a “catalog of mistakes.” Modern commentators totally dismiss zeitgeist and the reality of the ordinary people in favor of only listing “mistakes” and “overreaching” that completely misses the genius of what FDR did accomplish. This is true not only of FDR but of all historical eras and personages. Modern people think they are being all clever and skeptical by looking for warts and listing mistakes and then drawing conclusions about the goodness or effectiveness of a person or a historical era. Yet reality is the sum total of all that was being done and not just a list of what people think were shortcomings.

To use the IPOD example, suppose that future historians only reported how many people did not have IPODS. So if you looked up “IPOD” in the future Wikipedia, you would read only one entry: “One hundred million people did not have an IPOD.” That is it. There is no information about what an IPOD is, how many people had one, what they used it for, and how much they valued having one. All that you found in the Wikipedia entry is the bleak and repressive statement that implies elitism and some sort of wrong done, “One hundred million people did not have an IPOD.”

That is what modern pundits and would be historians have become, in both secular and most egregiously in faith history. All they report is the “problems” and the “errors” and ignore the ninety nine percent of normal life that is good and in times of crisis maintained through either secular or faith deeds. FDR is becoming the poster child for this erroneous and even sinister personalizing of history. There is no way one can truly transmit the look in the eyes of the people I saw, humble and ordinary people, who had come to Hyde Park to see the desk and the home of the President who they said “saved the country.”

I was and am still today remarkably moved by the encounters with those who loved FDR so much, those who were the “real people,” the average people, who were certain because they lived it that through his jobs creation and other programs they were able to survive. By the way, during that time I was married into a very astute family of professional historians, so this was not schmaltz. Even when they knew he had done “bad things” like “pack the Supreme Court” they knew the facts of the overall context of all the positive and essential that he had achieved. So there is no substitute for historians who have a comprehensive view of the full context of the time, both the facts and the actual experiences and perceptions of the people who lived in those times.

So to summarize, be aware that there are two problems in modern interpretations of historical times. One is deliberate and quite customary, called “revisionist history.” The other is an unconscious and thus pernicious and dangerous imposing of the cloud of emotion and distortion of the present by some onto their view of history, casting it into a mold that it simply did not occupy at all. The best cure for this is to read contemporary literature of the time as much as possible, including textbooks that were written soon after and not years later when they themselves tend to be very agenda and revisionist driven. I see this, for example, in writings about George Washington. Even if there is a glow around the older works they are more accurate factually, because in the effort to “stamp out the glow” moderns also stamp out their understanding of the times and thus a lot of the context and the facts too.

Readings from FDR’s inaugural addresses:

…Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only the by standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honestly, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.

Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the value of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relieve activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly…
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt
First Inaugural Address
Saturday, March 4, 1933

When four years ago we met to inaugurate a President, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision-to speed the time when there would be for all people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. We of the Republic pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it; to end by action, tireless, and unafraid, the stagnation and despair of that day. We did those first things first.

Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively we recognized a deeper need-the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men...
Second Inaugural Address
Wednesday, January 20, 1937

Well, if you think about it, it is not too difficult to see many parallels between what FDR said and the great financial crisis and damage to the economy and self esteem of the workers and the homeowner (to say nothing of the homeless and the jobless) today.

Case study: religion of the American Presidents

Listening to the, in general, very good coverage of pre-inauguration commentary, I realize that there is something I need to explain that has been kind of purged out of public school education. So this is in particular directed toward the young people so they can appreciate even more their own historic and faith heritage.

On FOX news they commented, correctly, that American Presidents have typically had a Protestant faith background and belief system. They also correctly pointed out that Catholics were a minority in American faith history and government until relatively recently. However, one could draw the wrong conclusions from these two facts so this is why I want to give you the brief history.

Remember that humans have not shopped around for the “correct” religion until the past forty years. But that does not mean that mean old religion was “forced” on individuals either. Like a heritage one’s religion was loved and passed along to the next generation, like an inheritance. Thus entire countries tended to have the same religion, not because it was imposed on them, or because they all “chose” the same “most correct” religion, but because each family generation after generation passed along their faith, and that tended to be along the lines of countries or large regions since, obviously, that’s how cultures group at the largest scale.

Thus when you look at America you are both correct to say that it was “mostly Protestant” in its founding, but you are incorrect if you are referring to the landscape, the actual land mass, of America. The English and the Dutch brought along Protestantism, their historic faiths. But the Spanish and the French brought along Catholicism, their historic faith. Wherever in American the French and Spanish settled, those were Catholic areas, not Protestant. The Spanish settled the west of America, much of the south, all of Mexico and all of the countries of what would be central and South America, and that is why they are Catholic. So, actually, in terms of land mass, and in terms of millions who converted to a Christian faith, Catholicism is the “invisible” majority in terms of North, central and South America and was even during the Revolution. Remember: the American Revolution was against England, where the English colonies broke away. So of course it was all Protestant (and legacy Dutch, who were the earliest settlers of regions such as New York City). It’s not like the Spanish colonies joined in with the English colonies to declare independence from England because the Spanish colonies “reported to” Spain, obviously. So while the Revolution of the states was taking place, under its faith umbrella of its heritage of Protestantism, it’s not like Catholics weren’t here. They were here, of course, in the millions, in the Spanish and French (such as around New Orleans) colonies that were never part of the English colonies, obviously!

So it’s not like America was founded by the Americans who “picked” the ‘best’ religion. America was founded by English subjects rebelling against English rulers and they were all Protestants. The Dutch were Protestants by choice; they, as a culture, embraced Protestantism. The English, however, had Protestantism forced upon them by King Henry VIII. He, wishing to divorce his wife and marry another, and not getting permission from the Pope, wrested the entire country away from Catholicism. England used to be devout Catholic, like Ireland. King Henry VIII, in order to “have an heir” wanted to put aside his first wife, contrary to Catholic doctrine. So he established a Protestant church, called the Church of England, which is the origin of the Anglican and Episcopal denominations. So everyone who runs around today worshipping in Anglican and Episcopal churches does so because Henry VIII forbade Catholicism, burning down churches and monasteries, killing priests, and forcing conversions. It’s not like people sat down with Protestant and Catholic doctrine side by side and “made a choice” “which was the one for me” or “which was the most ‘correct’” or “most liberal.” That is why in doctrine and liturgy there is still much of the Catholic within the Anglican and Episcopal and why the churches have a special relationship regarding their core Christian theology, despite the introduction of secular sexual and social agenda into segments of the Church of England.

So yes, the American Presidents and Founding Fathers had deep faith, all of it manifested in Protestant denominations, but you need to understand it is precisely because they were English subjects rebelling against English, all of whom were forced to convert to Protestantism nearly two hundred years previous to the American Revolution. The Spanish colonies of the west and south, and the French colonies of the north (Quebec most notably) and the south (New Orleans, and areas of the Caribbean) were all numerous and matter of fact Catholics, based on their over one thousand years of Catholicism in their cultures and families. But the structure of the new United States was formulated by English subjects against English rulership; hence it is rooted in Christianity of the Protestant denominations and viewpoint. Thus it took years of new immigrants who were Catholic, the Irish, the Germans, the Polish, for example, to bring grassroots Catholicism into the eastern and Midwestern part of the growing America. President John F Kennedy, the first and only Catholic president, was the son of the line of Irish Catholics who became mainstreamed into the Protestant power structure of the United States. But that doesn’t mean this was when “Catholics” “arrived” and “were tolerated” by Protestants. Um, all of the west of the United States that was under Spanish influence were already Catholic and were there before many of the Protestant explorers and settlers.

George Washington: Episcopalian

John Adams: Unitarian

Thomas Jefferson: none declared but a Christian believer

James Madison: Episcopalian

James Monroe: Episcopalian

John Quincy Adams: Unitarian (like dad, John Adams)

Andrew Jackson: Presbyterian

Martin Van Buren: Dutch Reformed (see, he, the 8th President, is scion of the very early Dutch
Protestant heritage in the Dutch colonies)

William Henry Harrison: Episcopalian

John Tyler: Episcopalian

(So now you’ve had ten Presidents, where five of the ten were Episcopalians and it’s not like each President sat down like moderns seem to assume and went, “Hmm, which is the ‘best religion.’” This continues to be the legacy of English colonies having rebelled against an English rulership that was Protestant by culture and history, not by having “selected” the “best” “religion.” I mean you all have watched the great “John Adams” miniseries and seen how President 2 John Adams, Unitarian, raised son who became President 6 John Quincy Adams, in their family Unitarian faith!)

James Knox Polk: Presbyterian

Zachary Taylor: Episcopalian

Millard Fillmore: Unitarian

Franklin Pierce: Episcopalian

James Buchanan: Presbyterian

Abraham Lincoln: None declared but a Christian believer

Andrew Johnson: None (became President after Lincoln assassinated and had opposed all of Lincoln’s agenda, including racial equality)

Ulysses S. Grant: Methodist (The 18th President is the first one who was not Episcopalian, Presbyterian or Unitarian).

Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Methodist

James Abram Garfield: Disciples of Christ

(So you can see that it is not until the second half of the 1800’s that there was much diversity among the Protestant denominations themselves as represented by the Presidents. It’s not like the Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Unitarians were working to “keep out” the other Protestant denominations, say nothing of the Catholics. American government continued to be comprised of the descendants of those English colonists who rebelled against English rulership).

Chester Alan Arthur: Episcopalian

Stephen Grover Cleveland: Presbyterian

Benjamin Harrison: Presbyterian

William McKinley: Methodist

Theodore Roosevelt: Dutch Reformed, Episcopalian

William Howard Taft: Unitarian

Thomas Woodrow Wilson: Presbyterian

Warren Gamaliel Harding: Baptist (First Baptist! Yeah! Notice the first Baptist President did not happen until 1921).

John Calvin Coolidge: Congregationalist

(So you can see that the third set of ten Presidents, even with the first Baptist, was still very reflective of the traditional culture in power and in numbers, the Episcopalians and Presbyterians with touches of Unitarian and Dutch Reformed. It’s now been one hundred and fifty years since the American Revolution).

Again, you can see just by looking at the facts that it’s not like each President sat down as a young lad in college and said, “Hmm, which religion is the ‘right one’ because that’s the one I am going to be.” Religion is the legacy and treasured inheritance passed along in their family within the community, cultural and national context of people with the same heritage and thus values.

Herbert Clark Hoover: Society of Friends (Quaker)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Episcopalian

Harry S. Truman: Baptist (Yeah! The nation’s second Baptist President).

Dwight David Eisenhower: Presbyterian

John Fitzgerald Kennedy: Roman Catholic

Lyndon Baines Johnson: Disciples of Christ

Richard Milhous Nixon: Society of Friends (Quaker)

Gerald Rudolph Ford: Episcopalian

James Earl Carter: Baptist

Ronald Wilson Reagan: Baptized Disciples of Christ, later attended Presbyterian churches (according to Wikipedia)

(The fourth set of ten Presidents again demonstrates that the faith of the Presidents is not a cynically chosen one, but the legacy of their families’ heritage and cultural context and upbringing).

George Herbert Walker Bush: Episcopalian

William Jefferson Clinton: Baptist

George Walker Bush: Methodist

I hope as we celebrate the inauguration of President Barrack Obama that everyone uses this as an opportunity to have a more accurate and less factionalized view of the secular and faith history of the United States. It is only in the past forty years that people have come to think of faith as a “choice” of the “most correct” and “best ‘for me’” “decision,” and fine, think that way if you want, though that misses the whole point of families passing on witness to their faith, but don’t look back on the “role” of faith in the United States in that context, because that is simply factually wrong. The United States was founded on principles and belief in God because that is the spine-the backbone-of the people who comprise the country in the first place: people of faith.

Thus when people select, for example, inauguration speakers and so forth according to their faith they totally miss the point of the faith heritage of the United States. For example, it doesn’t matter if President Elect Obama has a Catholic there or not: many Catholics voted for him and all Catholics, including the Pope, pray for him and his success. This assignment of mouths and fanny occupying seats as statements of some sort of agenda is so bogus and contrary to the authentic history of the United States. I mean, I’m a Roman Catholic and you don’t see me whining that most of the Presidents were Episcopalian. It’s not a bingo score card, folks. Pray that whatever the President’s faith is, that it is orthodox and sincere.


I hope that you have found this helpful. I call this a case study because I am also showing to you how to take an assumption that you have and use some simple visual and research tools to make the facts and context more understandable. In this case all you needed was to hear from me what used to be taught in schools (the facts about how culture and faith migrated around the world) and a tool, which is to look at the denominations of each President in groups of ten as a way to clump meaningful groups of time since the American Revolution. Organizing like this is an easier way to analyze, learn and even memorize, if that is your intention.