tell me, tell me, tell me, pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease

by **Floyd Smoots** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 12:57 am

Dear Brother (or Sister?) sceneshifter, I really didn't join this board to preach; God, himself, knows I didn't. But, since you have asked all these rightous questions about why our world doesn't "work" as we mere mortals think it should, I have to say, nay, Shout, one word, one name, SATAN!!! I know it comes to my mind due to my fundamentamentalist Christian upbringing. You cannot understand what is going on now in the political, unfair world of "Business as Usual" until you come to terms with the concept of satan. Many, many of the members and posters on this board do NOT believe in his actual existence, but, they have had to acknowledge the absolute FACT that the Powers That Be, truly believe in, not only his existence, but, also the fact that "THEY" really think he's going to win, in the end. We Bible-believing Christians take the opposite position, in that, we believe that Jesus Christ, the crucified, killed, resurrected, SON of GOD, will soon come back to this troubled planet of ours and make "All things new". From my point of view, NOTHING you can do or say will make any difference until HIS arrival. I TOTALLY AGREE with you about the "unequal distribution of wealth" in the here and now. I just don't think we can really do anything constructually about it on any kind of personal (or collective) level until the "Blessed Appearing" occurs. As a firm believer in "Free Speech", as long as it lasts out here in the "blogosphere", feel free to disagree with me at your convenience, but, at least, TRY to hear what I have to say. ........Saint Alex the Foolish, A.K.A. Uncle Floyd

by **BajaSur** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 1:44 am

Hi sceneshifter, You should check out this ParEcon site: <a href="http://www.zmag.org/parecon/indexnew.htm">www.zmag.org/parecon/indexnew.htm</a> Alot of info here, and perhaps a way to be an active player in this movement.

by **sceneshifter** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 3:27 am

hi floyd, thanks for replying - for having faith you might have a good discussion - for giving me a chance to spout, as i wish to do - because i want my world sorted, with hearing less of the bushes and hitlers you say: it's all the fault of satan, and there is nothing we can do, jesus will sort it - i dont disagree with anything in that sentence, just with the definition or meaning of satan and jesus and us - and 'will' i hope you will grant that all of us, any of us can be wrong, can have confused ideas, incorrect ideas, miss the point, be deceived, by words, by this and that - the history of the church is littered with controversies - so one side must be wrong, and both sides wrong is perfectly possible too - words deceive - interpretations, emphases abound - and the people who have decided what shall be orthodox belief have been none of the purest - have been the worst of humanity sometimes - why we had the reformation - and we didnt necessarily get it all corrected then - is god sane? - every christian will say: yes - well, if god is sane, then we get close to god by being as sane as we can - so lets try to be sane - if god is sane, we are positively enjoined to think - because it is by thinking that we weed out our insanities - bigots interpret christianity as a license to be bigots - but bigotry is a form of insanity - we are enjoined to be openminded, to develop our understanding, to think things through to a selfconsistency - and we are not permitted to pamper ourselves by thinking we have a right to our beliefs whatever they are, whether selfconsistent or not - we have a duty to be selfconsistent - we cannot indulge ourselves in the luxury of believing what is pleasant to us to believe and never bothering to suffer being open to finding out we are wrong, ie, we are hurting ourselves if we seek god [love], we seek sanity, for love is sane i think i have detected a major error in most christian belief - i believe i can prove to you that most christians are unwittingly breaking the first commandment - now, that is not going to please you - to learn you have been breaking the first commandment, and have been worshipping a false god - but again i say, we do not have the right to judge matters by whether they please us, but by whether they meet the criteria of sanity, of selfconsistency god is infinite, right? - infinite means unending - if there is anything outside god, then god ends, so that the other thing can begin - but god doesnt end, so there is nothing outside god - ie, god includes everything that exists - includes world, 'flesh' [sex], devil, sin, hell, pain, death - everything - and that is supported by the bible: god calls himself I AM, that is, existence - god is existence - his essence, his nature, is existence - existence and god are one thing - or else god is finite or ending - now christians generally allow some things to be outside god - therefore the god they worship is finite and ending, not the real god, which is infinite and unending, which is existence - and again, god says: i make good and i make evil [isaiah 45,7] - so god admits that he creates evil - and he creates evil in hardening pharoah's heart, so he [god] can show off his plagues [exodus 5 and 1<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/alien.gif ALT="0]"> - so, again, the bible differs from the christian accepted idea - jesus is supposed to have said, god is good, but this contradicts isaiah 45, 7 - and contradicts I AM, which means that everything that exists is god - and evil exists, or we are in heaven - if satan exists, satan is god or in god, or else god is ending so satan can begin what is more worth worship than existence? - what is more love than existence? - nothing - what is more fantastic, amazing, strange, curious, wonderful, awful, than life? - nothing - obviously - obviously it is love that has given us the universe, existence, life - again, if god is good, and god is allpowerful, then god will destroy evil - no evil will exist ever, if god is good and allpowerful - now life-existence-universe-love is allpowerful - so life-existence-love is not all good - and we know it isnt - there is this mystery of the existence of evil - if satan was not created by god, then god is not allpowerful - there must be another god who made satan - but christianity believes in one god - if there is one god, that god must create everything that exists - must create evil - and the bible says god creates evil, and the bible shows god creating evil - and existence creates evil - that god is good is a greek, socratic idea - and it leaves the gaping hole of not explaining evil if you believe god is sane, you will believe that the pursuit of sanity is the pursuit of god - and indeed the church has not always been against a little thinking - although the catholic church forbids having opinions - ie, forbids mental life - it says freedom of thought is just freedom to be wrong - although it permits itself to think and have opinions - and change and develop its mind - they dropped the index prohibitorum in 1967, for instance - before that, you couldnt read milton or rabelais or flaubert then to your other point - we can just sit back and wait for jesus to sort it - but if we have means to help and do not help, we are not christians - so jesus expects us to do all we can to increase happiness, increase sanity, increase realism in thinking, increase selfconsistency, increase selflove, increase love - for he doesnt say: dont love yourself, love only others, he says love others as much as you love yourself - and i dont think he means that if you love yourself little, it is okay to love others little - i think he means love yourself much, and love others as much we make the mistake of personifying jesus, which leads us to make mistakes - jesus was there when moses struck the rock - so it says in the NT - [moses got into trouble for striking the rock when he was told just to point at it - god wouldnt let him into the promised land] - and you are kind to jesus if you are kind to any human - so the NT says - so jesus is not just a person - and jesus is not just coming, he is also come - or else he is not with moses and with any human you help - it is easy to forget the bible is a spiritual book and speaks spiritually not literally - not according to the world of time and place, but according to the timeless and spaceless world of spirit - so i say that 'will' in the bible is not necessarily 'will' in time, but in spiritual 'time' - when you love - when you stop supporting pride=satan=insanity=selfharming all words are at least partly wrong, even when they are right - if there is only one thing in existence, called existence or god or life or love, then words, which are many and which therefore continuously imply plurality, are wrong, and constantly misleading - there is a story that someone went to go to get a *****ure and god gave him a book of blank pages - god gave him a *****ure with writing only when the man jumped up and down and said he didnt come all this way for a book of blank pages - and god warned him the written *****ure was misleading - people would run away with a misreading, and say: its my misreading and im sticking to it - as though happiness was having a reading to call my own - whereas the *****ures are trying to explain something - explain that the only thing in existence is existence, and that, evil notwithstanding, existence is everything, is love and indeed, who can make an atom? - no one - exactly no one - and yet they exist - some 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them - pretty neat, eh? - should we look a gift horse in the mouth? - 'fun' and 'trouble' are not mutually exclusive - have you seen someone with high hilarity explain some 'disaster' that happened to them? - have you enjoyed explaining how something went all wrong? original sin, the mistake we all make - remember what it was: it was thinking in terms of good and evil, it was looking the gifthorse of existence in the mouth - if someone gives you a universe for christmas, you are going to gape pretty wide - and someone or something definitely indubitably has given you a universe for christmas - that's what christmas means - granted the universe is badly made, and there are too many things in it, and the planets going round and round will drive you crazy, and accidents can happen, and horrors and terrors, much multiplied if people are stupid, still, it's pretty neat - better than a bike - if you have a choice between a bike and a universe [with millions of bikes], it's a no-brainer and if you happen to have proofs that we are not our bodies and we are immortal [contrary to popular opinion] and you learn that pain doesnt hurt, well, things are even better - do you want my solid proofs that we are immortal? - they may be new

by **sceneshifter** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 6:43 am

thank you, bajasur for the link - i have read two introductory essays there and i want to put down my initial impressions - 1. there is no consciousness in parecon of the enormously superpowerful - it is a model or vision without the realism of the fact that if we are to have freedom, we have to master the superpowerful - centuries of the rich get richer and the poor get poorer has made very rich people - very rich very powerful - what is more powerful than the superpowerful? - historically, nothing but the people in unanimity and cohesion - big business is more powerful than government, and the superpowerful control big business - if a great majority of humans can be got to see that greater equity is essential to survival and happiness, the superpowerful will be left in too small a minority to control things - and the fact is that 99% of people will be better paid under equity or lower inequity - so 99% of people should be easy to convince - 100% of people will be 100 times better off in terms of safety, peace and happiness - so even some of the remaining 1% can be convinced - and i can prove in a minute that everyone already agrees that things will be 100 times better with equity - therefore my plan is doable - there are very strong good reasons for even the 1% to embrace this plan - so all those among the 1% who are accessible to reason can be convinced - sufficient people can be convinced, without pressure, that the superpowerful are not left with enough people to be superpowerful - 'their' money [the money they have legal title to and havent earned] cannot buy enough people to control the will of the rest - when 99+% 'know' that something is so, no dictator can gainsay it - no dictator can walk around naked - too many 'know' that that is wrong 2. the parecon thing does not address the root of the problem - it seeks to deal with lesser matters, but fudges dealing with the root problem - the inequity - in fact all the other things are caused by the inequity of power - the parecon thing points out things that would be nice to have, but suggests no way of getting there - the parecon does not measure the inequity, does not know the cause of the inequity, cannot prevent the inequity - they have not identified the root problem - the thing that causes all the other problems, and millions of problems besides - they talk of justice, but are no nearer quantifying justice sufficiently to aim towards it - in short, they do not see the root cause, and so cannot do anything with the effects - unfortunately, people will give a lot of time to parecon before they see this it is necessary to have a realistic idea of the superpowerful - they have a million times as much money, and therefore a million times as much power - they are as giants 100 times taller, 100 times broader, 100 times deeper - 100x100x100=1,000,000 - this is a fact that is faced by a realistic plan - if people are not serious about changing the world, and just want to play at changing the world, there is no need to face this fact, or any other - a realistic plan looks at reducing to a minimum the numbers who think the present way is good or okay for them, and then winning by default over the remainder who are too few to even try to fight - before an individual can judge whether 99+% of people can be convinced, the individual has to go through the process of being convinced - if that individual can be convinced, others can - there is no alternative to education - the alternative is force, which has produced the worldmess we know - no one can pre-judge how many can be convinced - we can only hope that sufficient can be convinced - optimism and pessimism are irrelevant - because it is the only way - we must strive till life is extinct - because it is the only path to happiness, and happiness is the only goal - so i say that equity will solve most problems - and with inequity, nothing can be fixed - money is extremely important, because it is all necessities and millions of pleasures and desires, as well as power - the inequity of money/power is the only problem and the equity of money is the only solution - and can only be attained by people seeing it is so - all the rest is violence and extinction - money is good when it is selfearned, bad when it is stolen [otherearned] - and our economy is full of large holes by which money moves from earners to nonearners - all which holes, and all others that may emerge, are automatically plugged by limiting fortunes to the maximum that one person can truly earn in a lifetime - US$4 million - or US$2 million if you limit paid weekly working hours to 50 [to inhibit overwork/underplay] - calculations available - www.globalhappiness.org [not an org] no one can work more than twice as hard as the average - the average is 50 hours a week, the maximum is 100 hours a week - so no one earns more than double the average [which is US$15 an hour, paying housewives and tertiary students too - US$75,000 per family working average hard] - so incomes can be limited to double the world average without injustice another thing is that this plan is simple - a few laws limiting fortunes as soon as the great majority see it will have very very good consequences - nothing else is really wrong with capitalism - inequity is wrong in itself and in its vast evil consequences - no realistic plan can ignore inequity, or fail to deal with it first everyone already knows that, if a govt altered incomes in a country to the present world range, from $1 to $1 billion a fortnight, enormous disturbance would result - that would be extremely tyrannous, and it would need an enormous army to enforce - and all that force and disturbance would disappear if the govt dropped that plan - everyone already sees this, so they know what will be the effect if the present world inequity is dropped - everyone will be 100 times better off without such a mad plan - 99% of disturbance will disappear - everyone can see that - so everyone can be convinced - so it is practical - focus on any other issues and not the root issue is blindness - if there is equity, it does not matter if the country is run under a dictatorship, because power will be well distributed, and power to do anything against the people will be very limited - if there is inequity, it doesnt matter if the country is a democracy, power to do things against the people will be unlimited - in fact, democracy is better for dictators, because the people's partial delusion that they have a democracy works in the tyrants' favour - 'better to be in a country where you know that the press is corrupt than to live in a country where you dont know the press is in the pockets of the richest' it was obvious to jefferson that european tyranny depended completely on inequity - and the land of the free was built on limitation of fortunes - defeated by the corporation - but we can return to that very simple principle - by a noble spreading of discussion and explanation and learning it - everyone knows it and yet no one knows it - not well enough to act on it - it is necessary to get it into the air, into the magazines, into custom and convention, till it is universally accepted - and, as i say, it is already known to all [somewhere inside people], so no coercion applies - just the development of consistency, of every part of the human mind knowing it virtue, goodness, happiness are impossible without striving for justice - and money justice is the important justice, since money is just about everything, since it is a joker good, good for almost everything, including power - i may suggest that the tyrants spread the confused notion that money was not nice to talk about, so that people would be blind to money's laws - how else explain the purblindness of people to allow the moneymaking power in private hands? - the federal reserve decides when money is cheap, when dear, so they know when money is cheap, when dear, so they buy when cheap and sell when dear, and thus pump money into their pockets perpetually, with every up and down of the money supply - which they make happen how else to explain the ignoring of the handling of the thing that is the medium of exchange for all needs and most pleasures? - to allow the govt to write money into existence and give it to the banks to lend to the people - which taxes the people twice, by deflating all the other money, and then making them buy the money made by destroying part of the value of their money? - paying over 30 years maybe three times the value of the money borrowed - and the borrowed money is made by devaluing all the money people had - they run a global inflation of 6% - a 6% rakeoff every year from everyone's money - and then lend it to people economics is still totally under the power of the tyrants - economics is still not capable of pointing out the gross robberies - the superrich are laughing all the way to the bank - the people are still economically illiterate, as they were kept illiterate in every way for 2000 years of christianity - they dont know that many ways of stealing are legal - fool and his money are soon parted - and moneyfolly has been cultivated by the ones who profit by it - so successfully that it has occurred to no one that no one can work more than twice as hard as the average, so no one earns more than twice the average - in fact, i think i could repeat the point a million times without anyone really getting it - it is just too far from the accepted ideas - it is just too new, or something - i'd be interested to know if anyone sets aside an afternoon or a week to get it and gets it - really has an aha!!!!!! moment with it - i think the brain just cant get hold of it - it just slips around the outside - we think the meaning goes in if the words go in they steal $60 trillion a year - over 90% of all money, all earnings - can anyone really grasp that? like a waterspout sucking up all the water in a lake they steal so much, 50 million die each year from no food - and another 50 million die each year from fighting over the crumbs left after the theft - 100 million a year - 2% of the human species - 1 in every 50 people every family would have US$75,000 a year [2006, doubling every 12 years] for working average hard if it wasnt for that theft - and 3 billion people are left with less than US$750 - a hundredth - 5 billion left with less than $7500 - a 10th - the most incredible story never told by economists - nor by newspapers, documentaries, books, magazines, films, oliver stone, michael moore, nobel peace prize winners - anything

tell me, tell me, tell me, pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease

The Big Picture, as I see it........

ParEcon

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