Tiresome accusation of "empty pews" motivations

As usual those who are either malicious or ignorant of the facts and the faith portray the Anglican initiative against a false backdrop of "concern about falling memberships" and "empty pews."

Yes, of course, all faiths are concerned about those who become lukewarm (whom God warned he would spit out of his mouth... not a good thing for avoiding hell) or fall from faith in total. So of course "empty pews" are a concern.

This is totally separate from "poaching" and other competitive motivations. Let's face it: politicians and the media have a total "winner and loser" "game" approach to life. So they see everything through those sooty glasses, so to speak.

Any Christian who knows the faith (and Muslims know this too about their faith) realizes, however, that sacred scriptures order unity: ONE church. Jesus himself repeatedly exhorted that Christians are one body and one global church.

So any unity efforts cannot be accused of being a "competitive" move. It has been one of the most grievous failures of Christians as a whole, generation after generation, that they have schismed and split. Trust me, God won't be handing out "belonged to best denomination" medals at a person's death and individual judgment; quite the contrary indeed.

Hope my friend wasn't planning on Hughes

I have a friend having a movie made of his life (who isn't these days, I guess?)

Anyway, he's been interviewing producers, directors, whatever... looks like John Hughes is not on the list as of today.

How to get out of deep trouble

Many people have, in their personal lives, their work, or in their "beliefs," have gotten themselves into a lot of trouble, and wonder how to extricate themselves. They also worry about their children, particularly to protect them from making the same mistakes or, as is also true in many cases, how to help extricate the children from the same mistakes the adults had made.

One can receive no better advice for this problem than consulting the first Psalm. Here it is and I will comment on specifics.

Psalm 1

1 Happy the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked, nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent,
2 but delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted near running water, that yields its fruit in due season and whose leaves never fade. [Whatever he does prospers.]
4 Not so the wicked, not so; they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
5 Therefore in judgment the wicked shall not stand, nor shall sinners, in the assembly of the just.
6 For the Lord watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes.

This is one of my favorites psalms, even though it is not full of beautiful song and imagery, even though it is only six lines long, and even though it seems obvious on the surface. It is one of my favorite psalms because I can point to it to advise people who are in serious messes how to get themselves out, in a very practical step by step way. You can also think of this psalm as being like an abstract, a summary of what is in the rest of the psalms. It is also like a prescription for an ailment.

If you and/or your children are enmeshed in a bad situation, here is how to follow the "prescription" of Psalm 1, step by step.

1. "Follow not the counsel of the wicked"- no longer take the advice of the troublemakers and that includes stopping both conversations and also your reading of their writings.
2. "Nor walk in the way of sinners"- no longer emulate any part of the behavior of those who you had been either associating with or looking up toward.
3. "Nor sit(s) in the company of the insolent"-no longer hang around with not only the troublemakers listed above, but also anyone who has a sneering, irreverent attitude toward ANYTHING, since insolence is contagious and a barrier to further development and understanding.
4. "Delight in the law of the Lord"-this means to start to understand how God's unmeasurable love for each human being is the source of all of his instruction, even the "don'ts" that people do not easily understand. So read scripture and other (authentic) religious writings and practice understanding that the source of all the "law" of God is founded in his love for each person.
5. "Meditate on his law day and night"-This does not mean give up your job or your activities and just sit around thinking about God. It means that your awareness of God and his sayings and instructions should be like a constant companion who is valued, not something brought out of the closet only once a week during worship service.
6. "He is like a tree planted near running water"-Recognize that if you are to be a good tree, you need to be near constantly running, new refreshed water. Thus "plant" yourself where you can receive this type of constant encouragement in goodness and renewal. This may mean transferring from a low morals school to one of higher spiritual goodness, for example, as a practical step. This could mean changing jobs or co-workers, so that you are surrounded by those who constantly refresh with positive attitude toward each other and life, and not the negative. New friends who bring constant refreshed goodness into even the small parts of life (like shopping, sports activities, etc) should be cultivated and surround yourself with them, rather than those who recycle the same stale water of depressiveness and negativity.
7. "The wicked...are like chaff which the wind drives away"-To explain the image, when one harvests wheat for making bread, the outer layer must be removed from the grain, and this paper thin coating is called the chaff. Wind (from hand held fans) is one way that people in Bible times separated the heavy good grain on the ground from the light chaff which blows away and is discarded. So goodness is "heavy weight" while the wicked are "light weight," even though it may not seem that way because of the power of the assets and persuasiveness of the wicked. Thus this advice means to start withdrawing any assets you have invested in the wicked, whether it be actual assets (money and time) or virtual assets (the attention that you pay to them and their messages). When you withdraw your money, your time and your attention from supporting the wicked, you move your assets to the good and "lighten" the wicked, so they can be blown away, by removing their base of operation. So do not donate your money or time to "causes" that the wicked advocate (even those that are supposed or even legitimate charities) because your good intended donations keep the wicked weighed down in place. As you pull away you and your children's involvement with even "good" activities that the wicked pursue, you will start to lighten the anchor of the wicked, and they will more easily topple when it is their time.
8. "The Lord watches over the way of the just"-You must remember EVERY DAY and also teach your children that God knows absolutely everything you have ever thought, to say nothing of what you have actually done, whether in secret or open, whether openly aggressive or passively aggressive: God knows ALL of it, even before you do it. It is important that your children and YOU understand that, because that will give you the knowledge and strength to pull away from wickedness NOW and not "later." God's knowledge is not delayed.
9. "But the way of the wicked vanishes"-When support for wickedness is withdrawn, it vanishes. Think of all the evil people who have existed in history whose names don't even exist in history books, etc. Life is good and forward looking, and if left alone, wickedness dries up on the vine, blows away, and vanishes for good. HOWEVER, humans have a temptation, which is to do "research" and record the deeds of the wicked (and write "suspense" fiction novels about wicked people, both real and fictional) which hinders the natural drying up and disappearing of evil. You must wean yourself and your children away from documentation, either fictional or non fiction, of wickedness. Stop producing such works and stop consuming them.

Now, more about point 9. I'm not an old party pooper who is trying to censor. I enjoy a good murder mystery novel, such as by Agatha Christie, as much as anyone. But it is the dosage that is the problem. Normal human beings living during normal times are not supposed to be immersed in the constant awareness, study and entertainment that are created based on wickedness! It's like the debate about TV. In a normal life, unless there is war, most humans never saw except maybe once in their life the criminal killing of a human. Yet within a few years after TV was developed children have seen dozens of killings, both real and imagined, a DAY on TV. It is a matter of dosage, whether in reality or entertainment.

Understand that humans have short memories for a reason: that is part of God's plan to allow wickedness to dry up on the vine and blow away in the wind. People hinder their own health and God's plan when they chase the evil "chaff" in the wind, capture it, put it on film or laminate it, so that people can be "entertained" or "never forget" or "learn about history." You must wean your children-and your selves-away from contemplation of the works, either fictional or real, of wickedness, so that in the natural cycle of things they dry up and vanish. Water yourselves with the constant flow of goodness (or at least reality based normalcy!) Do not chase after or feed the works of the wicked, and let them vanish as their support does. Do not succumb to the hubris and temptation (like Saruman in the "Lord of the Rings") of "studying" or, worse, as people do today, are "entertained" by rehashing and recycling wicked deeds in the past, the present news, and certainly not the flood of "entertainment." It is like judicious salt, once in a while, sure, read such a book or produce such a movie, but in the way it is now, the wheat is trampled underfoot while the chaff is glorified, put on digital or other media, and floods the lungs and the air of everyone who is trying to follow the way of good, but is saturated by echoes of wickedness.

I hope that this helps! It will if you just do it!

Belgians mourn creche deaths and wounds

I am with the Belgians in spirit and solidarity, praying for those who have had to bear such an unbearable loss.

It is difficult to imagine, but unfortunately, no longer impossible, to contemplate a 20 year old man painting white face with black eyes, telling a child creche minder he "had a question," and then slashing and murdering tiny babies with a 12 inch knife. One victim was six months old. One was nine months old. A 54 year old woman died protecting the infants. The assailant sought out every baby to slash and attempt to kill, though leaving aside some of the "older ones," toddlers. My God in heaven, this is what the world has come to.

And here in the USA the Screen Actors Guild is full of themselves, handing out to each other awards, especially praising the late Heath Ledger's performance as "The Joker" in the Batman movie "The Dark Knight." The Joker had a question too, "Why so serious?" That question was parlayed for months on the Internet as the "promo" for that film, and specifically for that knight of chaos and nihilism performance. When the warning signs were there, when the role began to haunt him, disturbing his sleep, did anyone wonder why people should see this? No and instead, the narcissists praised Ledger's brilliant and intense "commitment" to "acting," until the morning he no longer woke up and they could not praise him, except, of course, in now seemingly endless "tributes." I suspect Mr Ledger's soul has quite a different perspective about how "inspirational" his performance is on the world today. But not Hollywood and not the media. There is no downfall like one that is wilfully in perpetual motion, driven by hubris and greed, and a lack of understanding of simple and good life, not one filled with angst and self inflicted pain.

Who could out joker The Joker? Someone who slashed the throats of babies in a creche, I guess.

People, as Belgians mourn and wonder how their peace of mind could be so ruined by such a deed, I must remind everyone that nihilism, violence, and contempt of children is viral. No country, no culture, no small town like that sad place in Belgium is safe from the viral culture of dark nihilism, one that amplifies and distorts the increasing neutrality if not even disdain that much of the culture has for infants, for innocence, for the helpless, and for the pure.

How can you not all see that, as New Agers like to parrot, "it's all connected," except unlike them I am not speaking of airy-fairy "karma" and "coincidences?"

I am talking about empty people, those who are impoverished of the spirit of life, who then, vampire like, fill that emptiness with imagined or real notoriety, fueled by Internet and media magnification of the freak show who then, with ready access to knives, guns and other forms of mayhem, frighten, wound and kill the most innocent, in order to create the most "shock value" in a society with less and less values and more and more shock.

In the Columbine school massacre one of the shooters asked a teenage girl, as he pointed his gun at her, "Do you still believe in God?" When she said yes, he drilled her with his bullet.

It is all connected. Those who fall into the pit of nihilism, one that is widened, deepened and honored by the media culture, whether they are considered "insane" or merely "depraved criminals," look ever increasingly for innocence, which is harder and harder to find. So they kill those who still believe in God, they kill children, and then, to find those who are the purest of all, they kill the babies.

The youngest of these nihilists grew up in a society where abortion is not only normal and was always legal in their memory's time, but also a "right" to be "fought for." Not a sad and regretful reality, but something to be praised, to be fought for like Lara Crofts wielding a suction equipment and scalpel.

So the nihilists are confused, but certain in one thing. There is no innocence, but for the greatest shock value, one must kill the innocents, so where do you go? To the Internet to kill them visually, to video games to kill them at play, and to the creche to kill them in reality.

"I thought these things only happened in the United States," one mourning Belgian said. This is what I am trying to tell you, what I have been warning about for years. It is a viral horror that has not only been unleashed on the world but is glorified by the media mandarins who actually profit and praise each other's artistry as the world falls into nihilism, one tragedy, like a dripping faucet, at a time.

I am reminded of how Britain is reeling from so many youth knife murders and I recall how years ago, Britain was astonished when a crazed man murdered little school children in Scotland. What did people say then? "I thought these things only happen in America." I remember watching, with horror, the news coverage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre

These days the Britons, who are excelling at a whole generation of nihilistic yobs all on their own, know what the Belgians do not yet know. It may have at one time been "only in the United States," but no longer, no longer. The United States may not have Islamic terrorism but it sure enough has its own terror export, cultural nihilism combined with violence.

Some Americans say, "Why do they hate us?" Well, if things do not change, be prepared to wonder that some more, because unless the world has totally lost their basic ability to see and to reason, more and more will start to wonder about America media's unique mixture of nihilism together with violence-much of it targeted toward children, as both victims and consumers-and they will start to connect the dots.

I am praying that everyone will come to their senses and climb out of the dirt soon.

In the meantime, there is the usual infant murders here in the United States. One "father" asked to see his toddler only once, so he could kill him and not have to make child support payments (allegedly). This was a few weeks ago. Every day, however, there are beaten and dead infants reported in the paper, usually by "the boyfriend of the mother." Today we read that the ex girlfriend of a pro basketball player was found shot in her apartment. Oh yeah, and her nine month old infant girl was shot dead too.

Young people in particular, I can only assure you that there was once upon a time, not all that long ago, but it seems a galaxy and a century away, when it was not just "news as usual" that a tiny baby is murdered, at all, for any reason. It was absolutely unthinkable to murder a baby as recently as fifty years ago, with very few exceptions. The worst dirt bag and thug in the world might do something dreadful to an adult (again, nothing like these days though) but would never harm the baby, never touch the child.

Young people, I beg you not to accept this murderous nihilistic culture that you have been fed for the last generation and worse, you actually pay for and enrich those who are perpetuating the downfall of culture and society.

However you feel about a woman's "right to choose," for example, understand one thing. A culture such as that of the United States cannot have three thousand pregnancy terminations A DAY and have a populace that is unscathed emotionally. You are not the same people as those who lived when terminating a pregnancy was an unthinkable agreed cultural prohibition, reflecting the value of the innocent baby's life. You can still believe in a "right to choose," but be intellectually honest enough to recognize the truth of what I am saying that like post traumatic stress disorder, you survive the violence but you are not the same. This society is unrecognizable and you, young people, have been cheated of peace of mind, whether you realize it or not. Worse, you've been taught to applaud those who cheat you of your peace of mind, to honor them, to admire them, and to give them money and your precious attention and time.

When, young people, will you explode not in violence, or a frenzy of attention deficit behavior, but in an explosion of righteousness? When will you all finally bust loose and demand decency and peace of mind based on loving genuine life, not a nihilistic love of artificial existence? When, when, when?

You must stop drinking at the dark water fountain of nihilism and narcissism and say "no" to it, and instead, fill yourself with goodness, no matter what the stresses are in life, again. The cure for the hardship and stresses of life is not nihilistic behavior or "entertainment," as that not only increases stress and alienation, but it is the rapid road to ruin, despair, and ultimately the loss of one's soul for all time.

You must not only stop yourself from going to that dark and dank water of nihilism, but you must take a family member, a friend, or a member of your community by the hand and lead them away from it too. You will not change society if you only take care of yourself; you must also partner and buddy system someone else who is at risk away from the nihilistic side and back to the light of normal life.

Fight to get genuine and uplifting entertainment and shun the darkness of the violence and depraved genres, and wean your friends away from it too.

I was at a mall where there was a display of student computer graphic artwork. I was so saddened to see much of what was on display as kind of half human half cyborg visions of self and society. Young people, you have been so brainwashed and deprived that, as I've written about before, you seem to have such a dark agenda behind all of your scripts, your art work, your creativity, your advertisements, everything that you produce. It is like you no longer can think of just drawing a landscape or a tree, without having a leering robot face or demon in the clouds. Don't expect your art teachers to point out your options, because we all know the older generation, the "teachers" are the problem, because they are the ones who have taught despair and nihilism as "speaking 'one's truth.'" What a lie that is.

I never thought I'd see a time where an entire village in Wales is suffering through youth after youth killing themselves because they think they are achieving some sort of solidarity of Internet immortality! Yet, there you have it. I am in my fifties and I think about the extra cool classes I could have taken in university, but didn't because I was eager to go to work, and here young people who have not even started to work or go to college are killing themselves to be "immortal on the Internet."

I spoke to a young woman who is a college major in advertising and I loved hearing about her classes and her potential thesis topics. The world is so good and so filled with wonderful things that people can enjoy, yet so many do not even try, opting instead for some bizarre quest for supernatural "fame," which simply does not exist. Without sounding like a mother hen, or at least trying not to be obvious, I encouraged her to think of new and more positive and wholesome (and yes, one can still be daring and "edgy" without being depraved) ways that she can contribute to the advertising field. I worry about all of you because like I said, I have seen the changes in your art, your creative production, and your mindsets.

So try to find your way back to a place where you have a peace of mind and a love for the core and potentials of life, even if things are dismal in specific problems. Avoid substance abuse at all cost because "even a little" tarnishes greatly one's ability to ever have genuine peace of mind and fondness for life and fellow human beings. I live next door to a man who often thinks about with great regret of how he raised his children in his previous drug using lifestyle, and how they all paid prices for that. Mend yourselves and take someone by the hand and using buddy system mend them too.

Avoid gangs and cults and help a friend to avoid their temptations too.

If you can't have a baby, help someone out who has one. God knows that today we can't even trust anyone as a babysitter, with sitters doing unspeakable things to infants and the helpless. If you are of honor and integrity, give up some of your dark and bull crap Internet surfing and volunteer to work with infants and children in need. And take along a reliable friend.

If you do these things then in some larger picture the deaths of these innocent people in Belgium, and elsewhere, will not be so in vain.

President Obama: 1st step back to USA dignity

Congratulations on the closing of Gitmo declaration and the statement that the military should never torture and instead stick to what they are supposed to, which is the Army field manual. These steps are a first step back to dignity, morality and decency, after years of having gone far over the edge.

To those new to this subject or my blog, follow the "torture" label to my post of February, 2007 (yes, two years ago) on this subject, explaining that "we need the information" scenarios are fallacious "justifications" for torture as a policy.

Now the American people, especially the media, need to understand that torture is never a "tool," it is always a mental disorder and one of the signs of the warping of the human soul. Thus it is not "entertainment." I was disgusted to see torture quickly glamorized in early episodes of "Lost" (you know, the dark hero Iraqi Republican guard character 'had' to try torture because they 'needed' the information). I never watch "24" but understand it has much in it about torture, thus mainstreaming it as entertainment.

I don't even need to point out that the glut of violent slasher films have all polluted a generation of young and older viewers into seeing torture as entertainment.

Torture is a sign of humanity's great potential for depravity. Some of it results from mental disorders, as you see in criminally insane cases. The other potentiality for torture resides in the reservoir of the darkness that almost every human is capable of (witness the experiments where the subjects will happily torture people using electrical shocks for absolutely no reason whatsoever). With the potential for torture within humans they have absolutely no reason to crow about how evolved, enlightened or "clear" they are.

The elimination of torture as entertainment is a critical next step. In the meantime, congratulations to President Obama for being a man of his word and decency.

Too much false shame, not enough real shame

The human body and its functions, both those of intimacy and those of natural processes, are nothing to be ashamed of. It is ironic that rather than being more enlightened in this regard people have become laden with shame about the human body.

The reason that is happening is that people lack enough shame in how they promote usage of the blameless shame free body. For example porn and sexually explicit entertainment people ought to be ashamed that they are promoting exploitation and degradation of the human body and its functions.

It is one of the great lies that those who use sex in entertainment are "celebrating the beauty of the human body." That they are most certainly not doing. What they are doing is pimping for sexual dysfunction and promoting amateur and professional sex trade mentality. THAT is what they should be ashamed about.

Thus, let's look at stalking. The person who is photographed naked by a stalker has nothing to be ashamed of, although embarrassment is natural among many people who are so cruelly victimized. However, the stalker is usually the first hypocrite who claims that the human body is "beautiful" and "natural," but what they do with the exploitation of both the victim and the viewers belies their proper placement of shame.

Everyone in the media, including advertisers, who focus so much on nakedness, intimate acts and bodily functions in the flogging of their products claim they are just "getting the information out there" and being "liberating" because there is "nothing to be shamed about." They are being deliberately deceiving. No, there is nothing shameful about nakedness, intimate acts, or bodily functions, but their explicit marketing of them for money, entertainment, or cruelty is degrading to humanity.

Here is an example that is separate from what I am speaking of, but will best explain through analogy my point.

I had a dear friend, a man, one who is remarkable in both being a "regular guy" and also his very interesting life experiences. He's a guy who one would never run out of fascinating things to talk about, what he has done, who he knows and his interests. But he decided to no longer be a guy of many interests, but he is now "gay." His entire identity and all he wants to talk about with me is gay, gay, gay. In other words, rather than being a composite of being an average guy and an extraordinary guy, with tons of dimensions, one of those dimensions being that he is gay, he has packaged himself and will only communicate with me as being one dimension, being gay.

Suppose you had a friend who was a shoe maker. What if he refused to speak to you unless it was about shoes? EVER. He dressed like a shoe, lived in a shoe, would only speak in words that have to do with shoe or rhyme with shoe, and refused to discuss any topic that does not involve shoes. This is what my gay friend has become. He has no identity or interest in life except being gay.

This is what it is like when people claim they love the human body, yet then exploit it constantly in the media, and personally. It is a warping and a skewing of what is only one thread out of the total fabric of life. Sex, being naked, doing intimate acts and having bodily functions are only individual threads out of the entire fabric of a man or a woman. Coarse and exploitative entertainment, advertising and stalking pull that one thread of life out of context and rub people's faces in it repeatedly, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until they have ruined the "naturalness" they claim to tout.

This is how my gay friend is. I wish I could just go to a restaurant with him, discuss his car or his airplane, shop for clothes, or just hang out together and discuss how one's day went. But all he wants to talk about is gay, gay, gay. He's no longer an uncle: he's a gay guy. He's no longer the guy who smiled about his first car: he's a gay guy. He no longer wants to talk about himself, unless it is about how he is gay. Before he broke off with me as a friend I would have to strain to find ways to discuss being gay with him for hour after hour after hour. Literally, he would insist on speaking of being gay for hours on end and refuse to make even one sentence comments on any other subject. I'm not joking when I say that I think he has studied if he can replace the entire twenty six A through Z English language alphabet with only the three letters A, G and Y. Likewise, I think that he no longer wishes to use the numerical digits 1 through 9 but only the numbers 6 and 9. I'm not joking.

Likewise the constant pimping in the media of nakedness, intimate acts and bodily functions render humans into nothing else but skin bags, rectum holes (for sex or gas) and pimps and procuresses (that's an old fashioned word for female pimps) for 'careers' or 'self images' to the young to think of themselves that way, as pieces of a whole rather than the entire human being.

So no, there is nothing to be ashamed about in the human body, but yes, there is something that everyone should be ashamed about, which is the dehumanizing of the the dignity of the human body in an overall life context, and not as a weapon or recruiting agent in a visual war of coarsening dehumanizing.

Sad anniversaries & problematic societal change

The problem with sad anniversaries

Modern humans have an obsession with remembering sad anniversaries. It has become such a powerful and self reinforcing part of the culture that it is now assumed that it is a “natural” part of the human experience, and that it is “helpful” to the “grieving process.” Now, before I continue the discussion, let me explain that I do not critique or question the mourning of a loss or thoughtful remembrance of the tragedy or loved one. I am talking about the feeling that one must be weighed down and focused upon the tragedy on “significant dates,” usually the anniversary of the loss. Many people this past weekend, for example, are commemorating the horrible and inhuman loss of Flight 103 to terrorism on this, its twentieth anniversary. This is a complicated subject, and one that has given me a great deal of concern about human health and well being, so let us use this as a case study.

First of all, do recognize that sensitivity to calendar dates and times is a very recent human development, one that cannot be argued as being inherent to the human condition or an evolutionary “advantage.” For example, many people did not know what day they were born, right up until the last century. They may barely have known the month. My own stepfather had two different traditional birthdays, separated by four months, and no one was positive which the correct one was. Large farm families, and large urban families, lacked any “day of the week” context except for going to Sunday worship services. For most of human history people did not read, count, have calendars (or even know what they were) except for two purposes. One was the natural calendar of the seasons, so that one could plant and build shelter according to the needs of that time of the year. The second was the religious calendar, according to the local faith. This is something that the Jewish and Muslim faiths, for example, have in common: they love the moon as a gift from God, because it provides them with a natural light at night and a means to measure seasonal time for planting and for worship, but they do not worship the moon, or the time that it represents, itself. So to be accurate, one must understand that a sense of date, week, month or even the “specific” numeric year is not natural to the human condition nor did it evolve to provide some sort of survival instinct advantage.

In fact, the significance of secular dates and times of the year did not come from religion, as some would suspect, but because pressure to have reliable means of accounting for time came from the aristocracy, the ruling class, military leaders, tax collectors and other accumulators of wealth and power. The demand for a secular calendar did not come from “God’s” side of civilization but from “Caesar’s” side, to use the analogy first expressed by Jesus Christ of religious obligations compared to secular obligations. The religious people possessed calendars as inheritance of the agricultural and the worship cycle heritage, and thus they had a great say in how secular calendars were established but they were not the drivers or motivators for secular calendars! It was those who accumulated wealth in cycles, power in cycles, and who controlled the subservient populace according to cycles who motivated the development and intense focus on secular calendars. Look in the Bible to understand the difference. No one gave a hoot about when a baby was born; they only cared that certain religious obligations took place a certain number of days after the birth. The ancient Israelites following the Law given to them by God offered a precise amount of sacrifice at the temple at a precise time after a baby was born, but no one really cared what particular day, week, month or year the baby was born.

In fact, if anything, you must realize that religious focus on calendar time actually loosened in direct proportion to the increasing focus and tightening of the rulers grip on secular time. We see this in the Catholic faith where there is infant baptism instead of a temple offering, but the timing of when the infant is baptized is very loose. Further, the Protestants did away with infant baptism and view it as a childhood or adult decision to make when they “accept Christ as their savior.” So far from being concerned about calendar time, the great faiths have all moved away from even their relativistic interest in dates (this number of days after a birth, instead of caring about the birth day itself) to one that is more significant only in the liturgical year and in the individual path to salvation, the sacraments and other milestones of intersection of human life and faith. As society became less agricultural (the first “calendar”) and less ritualized in worship (the second “calendar”), it became more time, money, resources, body count and elite power transfer absorbed, and this required a strong, common secular calendar. Thus focus on specific dates and “anniversaries” were the tools of tax collectors, rent collectors, army builders, men and women of title and lineage, and “office holding” rather than any natural inclination of humans, either biologically or spiritually. Sensitivity to specific dates, and later to “anniversaries” is not at all a natural trait of humans, either individually or socially. Calendar dates and their sensitivity is a tool of ruler ship of the majority by the minority. It is not a coincidence that date obsessed practices such as astrology did not percolate “up” from the masses as a form of “common knowledge,” but rather was invented and pushed down by as a handy dandy tool of pharaohs, rulers, despots and those in their courts who practiced occult “arts” in service to those absolute rulers.

It’s not like ancient Egyptians or Indians were all sentimental and loving of their children that they cast their horoscopes in order to make sure they had the right “career” or were “happily married,” since neither concept existed for either the elite or the common people. No one had “careers,” they all farmed the land for survival, and no one had as an objective to be “happily married” since that presumes a leisure and survival rate of individuals that just did not exist during the time that secular calendar obsession started via tools such as “astrology.” Rulers and the power elite wanted tools to enhance their holdings and their war capabilities, period.

In fact, focusing on sad events and making them part of numeric ritual is an anti-survival strategy, one that works against human survival and thriving, rather than as many assume, being a “civilizing” and hence helpful practice. Again, one looks at the Bible for historical guidance. The Israelites were nomadic people who very quickly buried their dead and “moved on.” This does not mean that people individually or as a group mourned any less deeply the loss of their loved ones and leaders, far from it; they felt the love and loss very keenly for the rest of their lives. But they did not compartmentalize mourning and memorializing on the calendar: only religious ritual was performed according to a calendar, and that was the natural one of the moon. Why is it anti-survival strategy to do otherwise? You can understand this on many practical levels. In a time of high infant and child mortality, one needed to be ready to have another child as soon as one was physically and emotionally ready; no one could afford or wanted to be stultified into a calendar driven mentality of grief or recovery. Thus a parent who lost a child might think about how, sadly, they lost their most recent child during the harvest moon, and thus they would have memories around that time, but they were not focused on the mindset we see today which is “Well, on this day it was exactly one year ago that he or she died.”

To explain this more broadly, humans are biologically and mentally programmed to remember the pleasant far longer than the painful. The obvious example is childbirth. If humans were more sensitive to pain memories over a long period than over pleasure memories over a long period, they would have been immobilized by fear of pain from not only childbirth, but from the pain and risks of agriculture, hunting and necessary travel. A survival trait that is essential to all life, and especially to humans who have the brain capacity to “think about things” is to shed memory of bad pain as quickly as possible and retain memory of good sensory experiences as long as possible. That, by the way, is one reason addiction is so hard to kick. Substance addiction relies on the fact that pleasurable sensation is stronger and longer lasting in the memory than the feelings of pain associated with the consequences of addiction. If humans had evolved to cling to painful memories stronger than to the ordinary memories that are hallmarked by the pleasant memories, depression and fear of pain would have stunted the evolution of humans at all. Humans would have avoided childbirth and any at risk activity, which included the daily working in the fields and hunting that was their only means of survival.

So there is absolutely no reason that humans should, to return to our case study topic, self-remind and focus emphasis on normal grief and return of normality according to the calendar. If anything, calendars are a set back to recovery. Yet what does society do? Society focuses more and more on the calendar, especially whenever the power structure is involved. Just think about “grief counseling” and how that is offered, controlled and reimbursed by insurance (if even covered) strictly by calendar, and not by natural healing or periods of deep and spontaneous need. Society has become enslaved to the secular calendar and it is to such an extent that people no longer remember what I am describing, which is the natural and pro-survival healthful way to grieve and heal. In fact, people now give dirty looks to those who have suffered a shared loss if they do not put on the sackcloth and ashes on the “anniversary dates,” yet those same disapproving people do not at all understand the individual nature of the healing process.

In fact, timetable grieving has joined all the other slaveries of the calendar to contribute to the mental and physical health breakdown of individuals and society. For example, it is well documented that heart attacks congregate just before the “work week begins,” which is for western society Sunday night into Monday morning. People feel enormous stress that builds up on Sunday (which is supposed to be their day of rest) and often peaks Monday or Tuesday with a heart attack or other condition. This is an entirely fallacious condition that should never have developed the way that it did, where humans are expected to be automatons that turn on and off their work and rest “clocks” according to work week schedules. When God mandated the Sabbath, the day of rest, remember that was against a backdrop of not a “work week” but the continuous labor that humans had, without peaks or valleys, to tend to their farms, flocks and crafts. God forced humans to take one full day off with no work pressure whatsoever; the Sabbath was never meant to be the “gearing up” day to the first day “back at work” in a calendar driven work week! You can make all the arguments about how organization is necessary for civilization that you want, but you must remember two things. One is there is a difference between necessary organization and obsessive slavery to the date and time. Thus, yes, if companies must have work schedules, do so, but do not then layer additional stress filled time constraints one on top of the other and then call that the “natural” condition of humans, as it most certainly is not. For example, when humans were agricultural, the work was hard but it varied by month, not in lockstep in a work week. A month would be spent preparing the fields, then the next month sowing the seeds. Work was scheduled on what inventory managers call today an “as needed basis.” But that is certainly not how the vast majority of “work week schedules” are designed and strictly enforced today!

Therefore, even if you accept that modern life requires a rigid workweek schedule, society as a whole is crazy to add layers of pressure of time sensitivity that is optional, but they have come to think of as logical, natural and mandated. I mentioned the example of mental health, where the very people who are in a great deal of confusion and pain are given long drawn out schedules of “relief,” such as a once a week therapy session, and a once every half year or so fifteen minute checkup with a psychiatrist who provides their medications. Even if health care professionals were more numerous and had more hours to give, the insurance companies and the state payers would never tolerate a natural flow of resources as the individual patient needs; if they need “more” they are told to check themselves in on an inpatient basis, regardless of family situation (and then inpatient is heavily regimented but usually too short in duration and certainly is not residential in cycle or benefit). Thus a patient with great psychic pain is told to suck it up for a week, and then spill it all out in their given one hour therapy session. To say that is unnatural is to put it mildly. Having seen my share of patients it is obvious to anyone with a brain and a heart that one patient may need someone every day for a while, while another needs intense periods of “on call” availability, while a third may flourish with a cycle, and a fourth needs a residential role modeling experience, which they do not get in inpatient structures, obviously. Whether a patient has a psychosis, a low grade depression, or is a healthy person who just suffered a trauma, all of them are expected to “obey the tyranny of the calendar obsessed society.” Worse, that is even condescendingly explained to them as “part of their therapy” to “restore structure in their life.” What? It is no joke that the system is crazier than the patients, because at least the patients know when something is wrong and they yearn for it to be right.

So do you begin to see the foundation of the problem as I am explaining it? Humans are biologically and emotionally evolved to follow a natural calendar that is of nature and of religious ritual that punctuates and frames a less defined calendar of day to day ordinary necessity. Farmers would have busy periods during, for example, harvest, and then in some climates do almost nothing during the winter except tend to the animals and repair their gear. Contrast that to the mess that humans have made while “organizing” themselves in modern times. They have the necessary schedules of schooling and genuine job needs. Fine, that is obvious and logical. But the workforce with their work schedules are far from being managed on genuine job needs basis; they are structured to be cookie cutter mindless enslavements to schedules. This is especially true as we’ve gone from a manufacturing to a paperwork society. The service industry seems to remain the sanest because it is truly “on demand” and thus logical in its workforce scheduling, with natural flows that employees can benefit from. My point is, though, that society as a whole has created a dictatorship of the work week that has little or nothing to do with either productivity or employee natural health.

Then, on top of the necessary school and work schedules, you have unnecessary work schedules and assessments and compensation that depend more on the delusion of work than the delivery of actual productivity. For people to “get ahead” they have to work “longer hours,” provide more “face time” to the influential and, often, have to “get another degree,” thus cramming education into what is left of their non-office time. Honestly, I’d rather have a sane employee who works half time in the office and is the other half time in school (if the degree is really necessary) than to have the new form of slavery that I have seen over the past thirty years. To make it worse, recreation (especially for children) and health care are also all too, as I explained, slaves to their own overlords of the calendar. Certain days of the week, hours, times of the month, all artificial numbers and constructs that make up the “calendar” have taken over, growing to mutant giants of “importance” that steer, for better or for worse, every aspect of one’s life. Even those who say they want to “fix it” only push their fellow slaves further into the tyranny of the calendar, rather than guide them back into natural life. How many times have we heard these gurus talk about children’s “play dates” and even the wisdom of adults who “do not have enough time for their love lives” to “make dates with each other?” What? Sure, that’s what every couple needs for their libido, another schedule, another pressured “delivery date.” Everyone has become enslaved to the calendar and have both forced and lured everyone else into the same pit.

And so we come to the anniversary of a tragedy. The media has been brainwashed by this magical thinking of the significance of the calendar into being some of the worst promoters of the slavery of the calendar. I am not criticizing them; far from it. They think they are being respectful by bringing up tragic anniversaries. But please notice two things. One is that they rarely bring up a “good” anniversary. For example, when was the last time that someone mentioned in March that “so many years ago today George Washington, our first president, took office?” The media has been brainwashed into thinking that they must mention tragic anniversaries to show respect (and sometimes that is true, and sometimes it is not) but they NEVER mention positive or educational anniversaries, including ones that changed history in a meaningful way. For example, how about mentioning on the nightly news, “This is the anniversary of when President Abraham Lincoln first mentioned the problem of slavery in a speech.” But the media has been brainwashed and now have become the obedient slaves in turn to the calendar mentality that one must mention only the tragic and the heartbreaking, and only on the anniversary of when it occurred (or an "in progress" or "update" “human interest” story of a survivor.) It is unbalanced and hence not ultimately respectful in the long run, even though very well intentioned at the time.

Whenever you analyze the goodness or error of something, do not just look at “what is there;” look also for “what is missing.” If you look at the anniversary grief of tragedy syndrome, you must look at what is missing, which is the entirety of anniversaries of good and positive events. One is much more respectful of loss and can put it in perspective if those losses are not the only news, as if the rest of life does not happen, and there is nothing to learn from or role model on “their" anniversaries and, instead, have a more worldly perspective. If the media is going to do the tragedy anniversary business, they MUST also do the “let’s not forget on this day these great things happened” side of human history.

The second problem with the media tragedy anniversary business is that like the teachers, workers, health care workers and recreationalists, they are buying into the lock step calendar management of grief and social progress. For an example, let’s look at someone very good in the media who has fought this tendency with mixed results. Anderson Cooper on CNN has had an admirable holistic appreciation of what happened to the Gulf Coast, particularly New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina. Anderson is the one example I can think of in the entire mainstream or cable media who attempts to keep understanding of Katrina reality in a real time continual natural life context, rather than as the tragedy anniversary. It ought to be like that for all of the news. Progress should not wait for reporting until a grief anniversary. Otherwise even those who grieve find themselves being structured by the media and the calendar in presentation of the messages they may genuinely want to deliver. Why is a loss assumed to be felt the worst, and also most logically reported, on the tragedy anniversary?

Here is an example. My father died on a certain day forty two years ago. My mother is one of those people who has been totally brainwashed by the magical thinking of the grief anniversary and here is what happens as a result. Several years ago I was there on the death anniversary, watching late night television. She came storming out and attacked me for “not seeming to care” that it was the anniversary of my father’s death. When I said, “Um, mom, I miss him every day and think of him every day” she was dumbfounded: that never occurred to her. Why? Because she has compartmentalized her grief by calendar, so that she feels lousy (and a lot of self pity) on the actual date, but does not really miss him (she of course remarried so that is logical and healthy) the rest of the time. I, however, do not forget a father because it’s not like one “moves on” from having had a father. As a result of calendar slavery people have forgotten what each other feel and think as normal people. Gosh, it never occurs to my own mother that I might actually you know, miss my father on dates such as my birthday, Christmas, or when I see a bowling alley (he loved to bowl) rather than just missing him on the day he died? This is the tyranny of the calendar in action.

Those of you who have lost someone dear to them know what I mean. You see something and you think, “Wow, he or she would really have liked to have seen that.” You don’t wait until the death anniversary to think that, do you? Of course not, but we have as a society given a magic power to the calendar that almost dictates that very restricted slavery of thought. Thus when someone, like me with my father’s death anniversary, does not put in face time of grief on that day and only that day, people feel entitled to judge and assume! Nowadays ordinary people who lose someone due to accident or crime are often interviewed on the spot and often become media personalities, and thus go into the file folder based on calendar slavery. The disappearance of a child such as the little girl in Florida becomes an entirely time driven event, with regular reports on the number of weeks missing and key tragedy anniversary dates. The same is true with the plane crashes that receive ongoing attention: the natural power of healing has become enslaved to a calendar mentality, both privately and publically.

Part of the reason this has taken place is that modern society for all its brash confidence has really kind of lost its way, and looks for numinous or “special” reasons-almost magical-for how and why tragic things happen. One component of this almost magical thinking is to put great weight upon the tragedy anniversary especially as one can explore “What if” and “Could that have happened to you or me” scenarios. This is a cousin of the natural distancing human reaction that some use toward crime victims (“Well, what was she doing out so late at night and alone?”) When one reflexively blames the victim one is trying to distance one’s self from the thought that such a crime or tragedy might ever happen to you. The focus on the anniversary tragedy rather than the day to day reality of healing, or not healing, is related to that impulse to distance one’s self from the thought that one could have been in that or a similar tragedy. It is human nature to do this, but the problem is that the media is inadvertently codifying a “too close for some” and “too distant for others” emotional rollercoaster by focusing only on tragedy anniversaries. The slant of much of the media (and the consumers’ interest) is in people who didn’t take that flight, for example, and thus “cheated death.” That is human nature but it is only one of the many resilient mindsets and reactions that the well balanced human has. No one used to think like that. When a chariot ran wild in Rome and trampled down a bunch of poor people, no one was philosophical about “why him or her” and “if only she had gone to the agora earlier.” People grieved and bemoaned their fate or lot in life but nothing like today because back then everyone, even the wealthy, understood that life itself is risky. Today it is like people live in cotton fluff of illusion that life can end suddenly (and it will end for everyone eventually, of course) but only for someone else and that there is some sort of great hidden meaning in every date and every event and every circumstance. In the old days when often half of the infants born in a family died in their first year, people understood that life can end suddenly and with no particular “meaning” or “message” in the “timing.”

Another reason that there is this misbalanced tragedy anniversary focus is that as I pointed out, people live increasingly less calendar and ritual based religious lives, and more and more calendar and secular based lives. When religious participation used to be the majority of the structure in one’s life, one had a perspective of continuity that gave greater strength and fiber to those who lived through very tough times, such as tragedies or wars. A religious based natural calendar strengthens fortitude and provides more assurance of the continuity of life, while a secular calendar seems to be comprised of “reward” or “punishment.” One shows up at work at the right times, look busy, has the right attitude with the right people at the right times: one gets good performance reviews, raises, perks. One shows up whether one is sad or not for therapy on the appointed time and one gets his or her weekly hour of therapy: miss it for some reason and you are punished by not being given a replacement hour. If your kid misses football practice he’s in trouble. If you miss your filing for tax returns or for insurance reimbursement, you are in trouble. The secular calendar is a slave driver of reward and punishment. The religious calendar is the continuity of God’s presence, love and promise of eternal life. Oddly, secularists call God the bully for having heaven and threatening hell, yet one can go a year or a decade to church and never hear hell mentioned once. Go ahead, just try being late to work one day if you are not the boss, and try getting through one month at work without hearing about an upcoming performance review. The religious natural calendar (being close to the natural cycles of the earth and life with religious observances the steady markers) is actually the positive and uplifting reality based foundation for balanced life, while the secular calendar is so highly artificial and heavy in its burden that it has contributed to much of the malaise, depression, fright, seething anger and despair that stalks society today. The secular calendar is like a cruel stalker that society has not only invited into one’s house, but has given to it increasing power every year, and forced more and more to obey. Eventually the stalker takes over and one does not even realize that he or she not only enabled the stalker but invented it, handed it some of its weapons.

Here is another example of the irrationality of the calendar. When I first went to work for a Wall Street bank in the 1980’s I had severe allergies. I was otherwise a healthy person. We had two weeks of sick leave per year, and since I was rarely ill, but did have occasional bad and disabling allergy days, I would call in sick perhaps three times for one day, compared to a person who was out sick with the flu for a week. I quickly received a warning letter of bad performance for having had “3 incidents” of being sick, while a person, who is out for the entire week, or even two, receives no such letter. That was the bank wide corporate policy based on calendar days and number of times one used the same block of two weeks. I could not believe that for using three sick days that I was entitled to for genuine miserable allergy spells I got a warning and an incident report in my personnel file (and I was a vice president no less) and was highly embarrassed. Their explanation for this quaint practice was that all employees used to be tellers (the clerks that served the public) and thus being out for a day at a time was a higher inconvenience than being out for a week. The fact that this was no longer true meant nothing to the slave drivers of the calendar. The calendar rules and overrules common sense. People came in sick rather than use the days they were entitled to, and I learned to do the same.

In a related story I worked for a petrochemical company that had on site medical facilities. One day my office mate told me that she had seriously bumped her head over the weekend and that it still hurt. Alarmed, I realized she might have a concussion and walked her across the driveway to the medical facility. There the staff was angry and refused to see her. Why? I’m not making this up: the sign said “Emergencies from 10 to 11 a.m.” Yes, the expensive medical facility for employees accepted employee “emergencies” only one hour of the day. You had to schedule your emergency to happen between 10 and 11 o’clock, otherwise they refused to see you. I am still boggled when I think about this and how I knew it boded very poorly for where medicine, ethics and attitudes were headed back in 1980-1981 when that occurred. By the way, they thought I was the bitch for not understanding their refusal to treat my office mate.

The religious calendar is about mercy; the secular calendar is about punishment. It is never a good time to do something bad, and it is never appropriate to delay doing something good. Yet the secular calendar and the tragedy anniversary mentality, and other dysfunctions of societal attitude, have created a system of inappropriate response, like laughing at a funeral. Here is another example. I was told by corporate trainers to give employees bad news on Friday so they would suffer with their families over the weekend and not be a bother at the workplace. Yes, that same Wall Street bank taught all managers to give bad performance reviews to employees on Fridays, to lay them off or fire them on Fridays, and to have difficult conversations with them on Fridays, so they would then go home and be their loved one’s problems and not be miserable at work and thus make everyone else “uncomfortable.” Friday (the Jewish Sabbath by the way) was by policy transformed into the killing fields’ day. The secular calendar was used to hurt people in a way that they could get no immediate relief or continued dialogue because they were enforced away from work due to the two day weekend and rather than sympathy for the family, managers taught this with glee that the injured employee was “now the problem” of the loved ones. These are the same banks who are taking handouts and bailouts of billions of dollars on the tax money of those they fire on Fridays (and they happily accept the loot any day of the week). This same bank, by the way, had a history of doing painful reorganizations on Pearl Harbor Day. The long time manager who told me that didn’t know why they did it, but knew it was deliberate and thought that they thought it was funny. Yep, nothing like using a tragedy anniversary of hundreds of bombed and burned American veterans to do a reorganization that rewarded or punished in new assignments. Gosh, who can’t see the connection? Very funny-not-and again, this was in the 1980’s, so this is what I mean about multiple decades of a disastrous trend for humanity and well being of individuals and societies. And conservatives wonder, by the way, why the auto unions hesitate to give up anything they have, even if it is the right thing to do? When a society lives and dies based on a reward and punishment secular calendar mentality, you’d be a fool to willingly give up any protection and buffer zone that you have, even if it harms the long term well being of the company itself.

So you see what I mean? I am far from saying that we should not mention or cover tragedy anniversaries, such as the weekend’s Flight 103. And first let me say something about that particular horrible event. I was glued to my chair in horror as I watched the reporting from Locharbie, and I can remember it as if it was yesterday. I will never forget the astonishment and the horror of seeing the first reports, and of the burning hole that fell upon that town, killing townspeople along with all those on board. I was horrified and stricken and remain so to this day: and that was well before I realized that many students from the city near my hometown were on board. I grieve for all and do not need to think that it was “my people” on board. Further, while the pathos of Christmas week when this happened is obvious and heart rending, it is no less so for people who lose loved ones on an “average” day in an “average” week. You know what really hurts me? When I read one of our soldiers was killed in Iraq weeks or only days before they were scheduled to return safe and sound. It’s not the date that matters, there is no “magic” or “luck” or “destiny” in the day, week, month or year, it is the individualized tragedy of personal loss, of the pathos that he or she was just about to arrive home safely when tragedy strikes.

The other side of the coin is those veterans who return home safely and then end up killed in an auto accident or some other mishap. I grieve when I read that too, and I think of how the surviving family is just as hurt by that irony as they might have been had he or she been killed in action before coming home. At least they have the time together of having returned home. You see, it’s all about the heart and not about the calendar.

People are too stressed and burdened by the tyranny of the secular calendar and how those in power wield that calendar like a mace or a pointed spear; I think they need to stop and recognize what has unconsciously crept up on them and what they themselves have enabled. What happens when Presidents decide there is “no more time” “on the calendar” for negotiating? What happens when thousands lose the calendar game and therefore their jobs, while the money looters “won” the calendar game? In Wall Street you don’t just “follow the money” you “follow the calendar.” What kind of societies fire on the Sabbath so that the sad, frightened or angry employee gets “escorted to the door” by security and dumped on their family, so that Pontius Pilate can wash his or her hands of them? So why does the media buy into the brainwashing that only the tragic must be reported on anniversaries, and that there is nothing in between? Why have children lost their childhood to the calendar? (Another reason I think homeschooling for all its drawbacks is now the more natural route, or at least a faith based school that does not view the calendar as the means for reward and punishment). Why is tragedy elevated and memorialized in the media while absolutely nothing of joy is given the same attention? Why are calendar “face time” “jobs” more important than real jobs? Why is Sunday evening the saddest and least favorite time of the week for the vast majority of employees? Why is healthcare, such as it is, one of the worst of the slave drivers of the calendar?


One of the things I had hoped to do by this time and since that didn’t happen maybe in the future was to try to get people to understand the flexibility and health of a more natural calendar, one that is reality based and not reward and punishment based. Remember, civilization arose from a natural calendar, not a secular calendar of enslavement. Even schools were not forced march identically scheduled full days but were scheduled around farming and ranch activities. Yes, in the 1800’s the hours of school in a locality varied by when and where the children were needed at home. Even the wealthy students at private schools had structures that recognized apprenticeships. Calendars used to be tools of convenience for growing industrialization, but now they have become slave drivers and bull masters that bludgeon people into reward and punishment conformity. Where calendars are used for joy (such as Christmas) they are attacked but where they serve the masters dominating purpose, people wring their hands and claim that “it’s the rules” and “they can’t help it.” With every innovation and recreation we enslave our children more and more toward calendars, away from real life, rather than toward real life. Now even the youngest children have timetables for unrealistic goals and joyless waiting, instead of fruitful natural ordinary life, until the “key dates” and “events,” such as “wealth and fame.” One could not write a more insidious science fiction about robots “taking over” than what society has already unconsciously done to its self and worsens with every passing year.

I hope that you will give what I am advising some serious thought.

When "soul stealing" is not superstition

This post kind of falls into a “thought for the day” topic, though it is specifically about one of my ongoing subjects, which is how did we get into such a freak show society, to put it bluntly. I decided to write about an observation I’ve made for many years now because I think people are receptive to looking at things differently and more clearly.

Most people know from watching old movies the old stereotype about “natives” who first encounter the “white man” with a camera at first fear the camera because the natives believe that it “steals their soul.” (Again, it’s a sad truth that most of people’s knowledge of culture and history, such as it is, comes from the old movies who inadvertently preserved some truth in addition to their purpose of entertainment and escapism.) So yes, it is true that many native people feared cameras because they did believe that it stole the soul. Have you ever thought about the fact that while superstition is, in general, just false beliefs based on “magical thinking,” that this one example of “superstition” has proved out to be startlingly true??

Here is my standard declaimer: I am not about to bash photography or photographers in general and I enjoy good photography and like to snap landscapes myself. But if those of you who are cell phone with camera manufacturers AND those of you in the mainstream media, both entertainment and news, feel a little uneasy about what I’m going to say, you would be showing good instinct.

Let us first look at photography in general when it first came into usage during news reporting. I’d like to talk about one famous photograph, just to work with a familiar example. There was a famous, heart breaking and seminal photograph taken during the Vietnam War of a small girl, naked from her clothes being burned off by USA dropped napalm, screaming as she runs down the street, burned over her body. This is an example of an outstanding photograph because of its capturing of a pivotal truth in Vietnam, which was the brutality of the collateral damage. It also was outstanding because she became a stark representation of the mostly nameless and faceless civilians, and everyone who saw the photograph was correctly shocked and moved. It also was outstanding by the measure of personal photographer skill and luck in combination, as he or she was in the right place at the right time to take an incredible photograph, and do so skillfully. Just about everyone would agree that the photograph of the girl is one of the most important photographs of the century.

But what about her soul? How would you feel if forever and ever you had been defined as being a naked and burned girl running down the street? So obviously I am not saying that her soul was sucked into the photograph. I am asking you to think about what a slippery slope the camera and media have taken people on, reducing the total identity of both public and private figures to one shot, to one image, to one message. You are probably also thinking of the other famous Vietnam photograph, of the kneeling Viet Cong man being shot in the head by the standing South Vietnamese army colonel or whatever. Again, it was one of the most important photographs of the era since it brought into people’s homes what a battlefield and some would argue a crazed and unjust execution looks like, what it really means to “have one’s brains blown out” by a bullet. (Gore fans, it does not actually show that, but the shocking moment when the impact of the bullet causes his head to move and his face to contort). And now, forever, this Viet Cong guy is preserved in a photograph that summarizes his entire life as the moment the bullet hit his brain.

When such “message oriented” photography first became popular, people had only the mainstream TV news channels and the news papers and magazines for their news. So in a way it was a manageable problem and this is why it never occurred to the photograph takers and publishers that perhaps even the greatest photograph has a problem of distilling an entire person’s life and identity into one visual image of trauma and degradation. People would see such a photograph and be shocked, obtain the news or message from its viewing, and then turn off the TV or eventually throw away the newspaper or magazine that published it. So these first early incredible news photographs, often taken in war, had an impact but they as an object of reduction of the individual’s entire life did not linger. One would have to do some research in order to see that photograph again.

But now everything has changed. First of all, we’ve gone from professional photographers to millions of amateurs who want “the money shot.” Now our children are taking naked pictures of themselves and each others and instantly messaging them to each other. Second, instead of naturally encountering sadness or horror, let’s say on the battlefield, or in a crime ridden neighborhood, our children are staging “beat downs” and “bum fights” so that they can film and photograph degradation. Third we have stalkers who photograph their victims and who have no constraint at all. Young people, those of you born too young to remember the times of the camera that needed development, this was how stalkers and perverts were kept in line. People who worked in development centers, far from getting giggles from dirty pictures would turn such film over to the police. This is how we used to be able to stay on top of the perverts who photographed children, or naked neighbors. Decent people were outraged and that’s why we didn’t really have stalking laws in those days: it was very self-regulated. A pervert who photographed his or her naked neighbor, or who stalked children with a camera, was not able to develop his or her own pictures, in general. So the appetite for such behavior was cut in the bud the first time a pervert took his or her pictures in for developing, and ended up getting a visit from the local police, who would personally know the victims. So now, thanks to both the technology and the prurient coarsening of values, we have just about smoothed and paved and enabled the way for everyone to be a pervert, even cultivating those desires in our children. This sort of stuff was kept under control by the lack of enabling technology and by the personal involvement of the decent citizens who would not stand for having such pictures taken of their children, neighbors, family or even acquaintances or strangers. Therefore we now see that victims of child pornography, both professional porn makers and amateurs, have their pictures circulated for years and years, being reduced to “that child” in “that room” “doing that sex act.”

But I am not done yet in my criticism since I’ve only discussed the problem with photography. We now must look with honesty at the entertainment industry and celebrity “PR.” What a vicious circle of negative feedback that has become, doing nothing as noble as even what the early Vietnam War photographs genuinely claimed to be. Actors and actresses run on a hamster wheel, where they do incredibly stupid surgeries to “enhance their looks,” who when that is not enough have standard use of air brushing, pancake makeup and “lighting” to look as “hot” as possible, only to then “dress down” to “get into role” of looking like, you know, the ordinary freaks of society that they are supposedly portraying in their films. It’s viewed as “bold” if someone in a film looks “natural.” Suddenly being larger than a Size 0 dress is “making a statement,” you know solidarity with the unwashed fatsos. So actors and actresses role model doing sick, depraved and false things to their own bodies to look “hot,” and then they use technology to make the resulting images even more impossible to achieve, and THEN they act like they have talent to look like the “ordinary, unbeautiful people.” If that is not a “loss of soul” due to the slavery of the photographer or cinematographer, I don’t know what is. Even more disturbing, then, is the backlash of now defining the “money shot” as being celebrities in “embarrassing poses,” such as blowing their noses (due to colds not cocaine, LOL), wearing something unflattering, or having an unsightly bulge. I’m not even talking about self inflicted disasters, such as scum boyfriends who make and sell personal sex tapes. I’m talking about the expectations of the viewing public, where photography is used to build up and/or tear down a person by making an image that millions view, that lasts and that “defines them” in the triviality of the real or artificial moment. They teach millions of fans and role model to young people the schizophrenic views of themselves, and also by example tell them “not to mind” and instead “work with it.” And then we wonder when our own children use cell phones to be violent stalkers and perverts. These celebrities and their handlers have taught “how to have your soul stolen via photography and cinematography.” There is, however, a difference because the big money making celebrities outlive bad photographs and their poor choices, while the “average person” aspires to be like them, but having to live with the real coarsening and consequences of their willing or unwilling posing.

So now we must look at the whole problem of the film making industry. The problems are so obvious (the violence, the perversion, the boring dismantling of real families and substitution with hip vampire zombies) that I’m not going to discuss them here except in support of my point about the soul stealing nature of photography. Compare the films of the past forty years with the films of prior to that time. As silly as some of the epic films were of the “good old days,” one can actually watch them without having one’s soul stolen. People “back then” were trying to provide entertainment and that’s why it came to be called the entertainment industry. Sure, they wanted to make money too, but in general, despite the celebrity hi-jinks and personal bad decisions, actors and actresses of those times were moving within a stable set of cultural values and did not have an agenda of coarsening and depravity, of either themselves or their audience. Even an old fashioned horror movie tried to scare the viewer with a specific situation, not an implied depressive impending Armageddon that is inevitable and cannot be escaped. Actors and actresses today have used their faces and bodies to “brand” false and depressive soul stealing scenarios that are repeatedly mass marketed and forced upon the public. Even stinker films make money, either overseas or going straight to DVD. They exploit people’s genuine and normal hunger for escapism and entertainment. But knowing that people are constantly hungry, to use an analogy, they teach them to only accept depressive polluted food.

See, in the really olden days, when people used to go to live theater and vaudeville, if you saw something awful once, it may have an impact, but when you walked out the theater you did not take with you a video and an action toy for your children. The liberal and conservative dummies who defend the depravity and depressiveness of the entertainment industry like to point to violent Greek plays, for example, or the opera (even calling science fiction “space opera.”) They imply that violence and depravity were always strong themes in entertainment. Well, um, yeah, duh, but they did not film and photograph them, since the tech did not exist, and so a one time strong “entertainment” experience did not live on forever and ever. People used to walk to observe a street or a stage performance, view it, and leave. That is why even strong entertainment in pre-electronic media times was valid, authentic and self regulated, because the experience was not created and preserved in order to indoctrinate to coarseness and traumatic (or at best mindless) agendas. For the past forty years I have resisted viewing just about every movie for exactly that reason. Folks, I’m not one of the sheep. I know exactly what has been going on all along, and I hate seeing the damage that has been done to two generations now. The unbelievable explicit violence of “realism” that infects even the most worthy of films is excusable. Just when I think, “Oh, here is a great film about a US President that children could learn from and enjoy,” there is an obligatory “body covered with pox sores” scene or “leg being blow off in navy battle” scene. I have a surprise for you. In ancient theater they did not try to make the awfulness of battle, illness or crime as “realistic as possible.” I mean, duh, think about it. It’s entertainment to get away from the hopefully unlikely viewing of some such thing in reality. I don’t need, and my kids certainly would not need, to see puss sores being carved off of a suffering dying boy when they want to see a film about President John Adams. Even if one staged a strong scene in live theater, at least it’s not on film to hold the viewer hostage again and again.

People need entertainment and they need movies. But people are also broken and prone to coarsening and addiction. I do not understand the soul stealing and soul losing decisions of forty years of film (and TV) makers who have a deliberate agenda of imagining themselves as the Vietnam War era prize winning photographer and who instead codify dehumanizing thoughts, feelings and behavior. It is not exactly a coincidence that many who erupt in violent crime watch reinforcing films over and over again. Defenders of the crap in the media try to argue those instances are rare. That is not the point because the point is not the ones who erupt, but the vast majority of the viewing public that have become indoctrinated to depressive, explicit and negative agenda ridden “entertainment.”

Not a day goes by that local news somewhere does not report a young mother, father or “boyfriend of the mother” who doesn’t sexually abuse or just torture and beat the living shit out of a crying helpless baby. Every time comments are allowed, normal people are, of course, enraged. But there are always those who just focus on the “unfit parent” aspect. Well, duh? These are the generation who view a steady diet of people as being unreal, of pain and rage as works of art, as justifiable. So a crying baby enrages these people, and they beat the shit right out of that crying baby. You have two generations now of young people who have been deprogrammed of normal feelings of restraint, self comprehension and empathy. Liberals want to teach “empathy” in the classroom, while they stir the depressive rage and depravity on the “silver screen” and on the TV. In Boston an aunt has been arrested for beating her niece, including stuffing frozen hot dogs up her vagina. Everyone makes excuses for individual “drowning” such as this without admitting that the past two generations have been already swimming in the tidal tsunami of dehumanizing depressive sewage called “entertainment.” That’s not being “realistic” and it’s not being “edgy.” I don’t even go to the movies yet I cannot avoid knowing the “big scenes,” you know, like sexual ejaculation being in the hair of an actor or actress, and that is in a “light comedy.” Or, are you really so blind and not self aware that you do not see the correlation between endless mortuary, CSI and "slab" scenes of "forensic" entertainment and the ability of a young man or woman to take that stupid demanding ugly crying baby and bash every rib, poke out her eyes, and just get her to shut the hell up? Fill a person with rage and teach them that humans are props, and that is what you have as a result, just look around and stop denying for the sake of your craving of false power and money.

So those unsophisticated and naïve quaint natives were not so far off base when they feared the camera as being soul stealing. It’s been done.

"DaVinci Code" psycho stabs priest + 3 others

This is what blasphemous irresponsibility breeds, just as violence in video games and other media helps to unhinge the young and the unstable. Gosh, I hope "Dan Brown" and company are happy now.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=13891

Priest seriously wounded by crazed knife-wielding Da Vinci Code viewer

Rome, Sep 25, 2008 / 04:24 am (CNA).- A Rome priest was in intensive care on Wednesday after suffering serious injuries from being stabbed in the neck and stomach by a disturbed man who had recently watched the movie The Da Vinci Code on television.

The 25-year-old attacker, Mario Luzi, reportedly asked to see the 68-year-old Father Canio Canistri, parish priest at the church of Santa Marcella on the Avantine hill. According to the Times Online, Luzi then attacked the priest with a knife hidden in a cloth.

Retired policeman and parishioner Antonio Farrace, 78, was wounded by the attacker after coming to the assistance of the priest. He was reportedly in serious condition at a hospital.

The assailant fled through a park, stabbing a Peruvian nanny in the shoulder as she protected the three-year-old in her care. One policeman was lightly wounded in the stomach as he and his fellow officer detained Luzi.

Luzi, a former medical student with a history of psychiatric problems, admitted to watching the film of The Da Vinci Code the night before the attack.

He told police he was the antichrist, claiming he had heard voices telling him to attack the priest.
“I have carried out my mission,” he said. He carried a rosary in his pocket and a note reading “This is just the beginning: 666.”

At his apartment investigators found material on the Apocalypse and the antichrist, in addition to the phone number of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.

His apartment also contained a large copy of Leonardo’s painting The Last Supper, which is featured in the Dan Brown book on which the movie is based.

A note on the painting pointed to one of the disciples and said “This is the hand in which a knife is hidden,” the Times Online says.

***
As a survivor of a knife assault I can tell you it's no fun and not a joke.

Another rant about occult beliefs

Sometimes the desire to view classic TV shows or movies overcomes my natural rejection of needlessly exposing me to the cultist diarrhea that permeates most media of the past forty years. And so once in a while I will buy a CD collection, hold my nose and watch.

For example, I’ve been watching a show I really enjoyed when it was on TV, Hawaii 50. But one has to not allow the psycho babble of the cultists, who worked “numerology” and other references throughout many scripts and settings, to ruin the good episodes.

It’s too bad because this was classic and fantastic entertainment. And despite people thinking that I was some ignorant dummy during my youth (since we were all supposed to “remember” “who we really are” and I and my family seemed particularly stupid and dense in that regard), I noticed the warning signs even when these shows were popular. Not the numerology or the deliberate references to my family, but I knew something occult oriented was very wrong in these shows.

For example, I was repulsed back when Hawaii 50 was featured in the magazine TV Guide because of the hero being “tortured” being suspended in a freak show sensory deprivation device. I knew that the idea for that came from sick cultist types of influences because this was really a large blip in the entertainment radar, which did not have abusive events imagined and depicted as they do today, almost forty years later.

Likewise the popular show “The Wild, Wild West.” When it got extremely bizarre in a hard to describe way, (but let’s say perverted “futuristic” scenarios were worked into what was supposed to be an Western adventure that yes, had some interesting technology but really got strange and creepy) I knew then that what I thought were simply depraved moral degeneracy plus some drug assisted mental illness was having an influence. So I became repulsed by even the best of the TV shows around that time, and have been since. I guess I just wasn’t as “stupid” as everyone thought I was. It’s hard to “realize” “who we really are” when no one is anything other than a dumb ass sinful human being born and living only because God for some reason in his mercy continues to love humans.

I continue to be baffled by humans and their egregious self hatred that is wrapped in the disguise of excessive self love and glorification. Yes, I can be baffled, not because I don’t “know” the reasons (I’m pretty expert in the ways of humans, life, and the universe in general), but when I say “baffled” I mean, I just can’t relate to it. Humans hate themselves for no reason at all. (They have given reasons to be hated by their behavior, but that’s another story and subject for a different day).

I know humans (and here I mean the type of human that is engaging in cult beliefs, not your average Joe or Mary Chinese farmers who are just decent people) hate themselves because they insist of having “real extra hidden identities” rather than “just” accepting being who you were in a ‘what you see is what you get’ realization of one body, one mind, one soul, one life, that’s it. If people were proud of being a human being, born with God’s full knowledge and care, and just accepted reality, they would not have to make up depraved “reincarnation,” “manipulative karma,” and “stupid alien” identities.

These types of humans are so mentally unstable that they would rather think they are some “bad” or “tormented” “past life” jerk than be an “average good guy or gal” that’s a human, period. I cannot relate to people who are not satisfied with the reality that everyone is born with one new clean pure soul and then they live their one life, hoping to find their way back to God when they die. Who can relate to someone who would rather imagine they have a “past life” of being raped in a potato field? Or that they were one of Jesus’ best buddies? Or that they have alien cobwebs around them and now have to “save humanity?”

I mean, even typing this it is so bizarre and strange to even acknowledge that thousands of people run around ruining it for everyone and themselves because they’d rather believe something imaginary and bad than real and good. Again, remember as I've said before, I am not bashing mainstream Buddhism. Mainstream Buddhism does not try to "figure out" the "past lives" of individuals and then actully manipulate others based on those "results."

And then this is where the inflated egos and excessive self love comes in. The occult practicioners hate themselves because they were raised in sick belief systems and/or they developed that mental instability, so they imagine all these freak “past life” identifies, and THEN they self glorify themselves so that they have a “role” in the “defense of good” “in the universe” and give themselves “tormented superhero” status. It is something so unstable and so unhealthy that while I of course can see what humans do to themselves and others, and even explain to them what they are doing and what the error is, I so cannot relate to it that it’s not funny.

Mainstream Buddhism on the other hand avoids the arrogance and ego of "thinking one knows" who one really "used to be" and certainly never puts it in a military and conflict context. Cultists are obsessed with the sick idea of a fight and a beef going on and on and on. That is NOT mainstream Buddhism.

I wonder, sometimes, how people who have done this and who now know the truth feel, knowing they tormented and stalked my family, thinking they were something “special” (good and evil) and now knowing they were just indeed mechanics, housewives, average people with one body, one life, one soul, and one death, just like everyone else.

Another example of how I knew there was this unbelievably creepy insanity is that the woman I learned Jungian psychoanalysis from once called my mother “the head witch,” and she did not mean “witch” as in a big mean woman being insulted. I know that this asshole woman thinks I didn’t pick up on that, but I did.

I know because I let her “instruct me” in creating an “amulet” that would “protect me from harm” by using the “power of my mother, the head witch.” See, this asshole woman thought that occult stuff is real and that my interests in some of my Native American adopted family member’s spiritual practices was “validation” that I believed too.

For example, I liked reading about Navajo medicine men, and the creation of “medicine bags.” I made a few for myself, but just because I like to do certain activities that humans do, it does not mean I have given them some sort of “seal of approval.” The medicine bags, obviously, have no numinous power that has any impact on reality what so ever. But they have, just like a photo album, a personal meaningfulness. For example, I put two little tokens that were from the mom of one of my Indian families, and they meant something to me because they were from her childhood, and I cared very much for her.

So the Jung asshole thinks because I would sit down and make a medicine bag that I must believe in the occult background of it to “wield power.” Ugh, they are sickening, sickening, revolting people who ruin everything decent about humans. So she could not wait to show her true colors by leaping to advise me on what to do in an “amulet” kind of way, profiling "my mother, the head witch to 'protect me'". Um, who needs amulets and “magic” when there is God, only God?

So when I look back in the media I can even see sly references to my alleged “head witch” mother. Gosh, she has her mean moments but there’s nothing magical about her or anyone else. She’s just another soul that God created to send into the embryo in her mother’s womb, to live out her one life as best as she can. Ditto my father, whose birthday is tomorrow and I’ve written before how people have defamed his name by spreading the most disgusting occult beliefs about him. (Routine curse request sent to God for those who created this problem).

So, alas, I wonder how all the thousands of people who believe they have “past identities,” both human and alien (and don’t even get me started about animals) are doing as they realize they are just “not so special one shot” humans who were born, will live, die, and then face God in judgment, period, are doing.

What do they talk about, now that they no longer can spend time dreaming up sick alter egos and “past lives” filled with “destiny” and “tragedy?”

Have they taken up healthy hobbies like growing vegetables in a garden, instead of being as stupid as rotten vegetables in their heads?

Maybe stamp collecting instead of stamping on the lives and souls of the “little people” who are their “chum” by which they fight their imaginary alien wars?

Perhaps they’ve gone back to talking about what their children are learning in school instead of teaching their children that they are reincarnated fuck holes.

Gosh, I do hope they have found decent normal sane things to do. Maybe they are even learning about God in a sane and normal decent way, the way humans did for thousands of years before they went insane with depraved hidden assholes manipulating them over the last few decades.

Well, God knows what they are up to now. They have not turned off all their filth machines, though, and I’m very angry about that. And if I’m angry, oh boy, you don’t want to know the fullness of what God himself is feeling.

By the way, if you think I rant alot, as in large quantities, consider this. All my bloggings are a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of hidden conversations and manipulations (such as recordings and humiliating photographs) that have taken place to harm me, my family and others. God sees, knows all.