Clearly, what comes first is *the promise* of liberation.
(Cue Queen: We will we will ROCK YOU!)
(Cue “founding fathers”: We will unROCK YOU!)
(Cue Shirley Jackson’s story The Lottery.)
(Draw a flowchart line down the last parenthetical.)
Well, second. Comes first is the fertile soil, & glass houses, into which those seeds-stones are sown-thrown.
(Hugh Laurie’s House was stone, not glass, but was he an addict, or just managing the pain? I don’t remember. )
So sow me not just once. Nor reap me just the once, neither. Cuz I’m just a clod of the continental field. I exist to be planted with flags. The false flags of my fathers’. Blowing in the whirlwind.
How to resist? Simple. But not easy.
Impossible, in fact.
Because the simple is not a selection to be made from an a la carte menu.
You are “selected.” You don’t select.
If you resist you are resist. “Just do it”? Nah.
“There is no do. There is only done, or not done.” ~ Yoda
Because “the blank slate” is a lie, propaganda. Don’t it make you brown eyes blue? No, it don’t.
It doesn’t make Bruce Jenner a woman, either.
Everybody gets what they get.
And Solomon Asch / Stan Milgram “participants” ~ rule-proving dupes ~ in peer pressure conformity & obedience to authority suspension (only seemingly animated) is what is most heavily selected for. I put it at about 96%.
And it is all referred to as “social.”
(“Social” sounds better ~ more “Security” ~ than murmuration, or the madness of crowds. Crowdementia? Are crows smarter than starlings? Don’t bother asking a crow, or a starling, that question.)
The simple is just this: DIY.
(But with the D caveat in mind.)
Neither a lender-leader nor a borrower-follower be. Because those are obverse-reverse of the coin of the federal reserve “realm.”
Which is short for realmein.
My real mien (ei, ie - its up to me-o! ~ Old McDonald, on his farm, where all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others - were those mores sows, or boring boar-boors?) is to be reeled in.
The old hook, line & sinker bit in the saddle-broke horses’ mouths bit.
Variation on the old bumper sticker: Life’s a bit & then you’re rode hard & put up wet.
Theo wasn’t a crat, according to OED, but he was devoted to his artist brother Vincent & did all he could to help him.
Or make art of him.
A wo/man can be an artist at anything said Walken’s character - even death, as he said about Denzel’s character.
Man On Fire was the Walken-Denzel flick. Tony Scott, Ridley’s brother, directed. Some time later he jumped off a bridge. The Vincent Thomas bridge.
If a person gets into an elevator, going up or going down, & the social cohort s/he is going to be briefly lifting/lowering with is all facing the back wall rather than the doors & so s/he faces the back wall too is s/he devoted, compelled, addicted? Or just "social"?
Artists at anything, addicted to anything … sounds like some chaos to me.
(Dunno what “cha” is short for but “os” rings a Bastiat busted windows/android operating systems fallacy … well, fallacies operating is probably better put. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? And shepherds? Like electric force of “nature” Roy Batty, to protect them from Blade Runner wolves? Batty, Roy, that very not stockcar boy, was a much better man than Deckard. But not likely the sort would be ark captain Yuval Noah Harari has in mind.)
But language, symbols, always offer better sounding reframe alternatives. And those sell like hot cakes & Purple Irises & Ridley Scott flicks.
But since property owned is a myth coming, it seems, to ever faster fruition, the stuff isn’t sold so much as lent & borrowed.
& @usury rates net to boot … on human, all too human, faces, forever be thy hallowed goal.
Uh-oh.
But you can always take the stairs ~ &/or the stares, lol: I’ll see your pairs of eyes & raise ya mine own ~ if you’ve got the legs.
“Kick a buck.” ~ Cool Hand Luke (would it were he was cool enough to get to Zihuatanejo … but he wanted room temp, & he got it: no failure to communicate at all)
(Cue the final scene from Catholic Mel’s Apocalypto: The cats name was Jaguar Paw. She asks him what the Spanish galleons are. He says they bring men. Should we got to them? She asks. We should go to the forest he replies.
He doesn’t mean the Forrest Gump. But he had the gumption to eschew the bubblegum … p.)
Would it were defaults, pre-wired, & drummed in, were scrutinized more. Were more scrutinizable. But life, this world, is more determined than most people want to know.
So belief otherwise along the locus of control watchtower gives Dylan, gave Jimi, things to do. Gives Cassandra things to do. And you. And me.
Agree - it's a seemingly endless cycle......rinse and repeat. But why?
Actually not very complicated, after you get the hang of the common thread from Genesis to Revelation - DECEPTION is NOT the exception in this world - it is DaRule! -
Discovering truth is a process - never an end state for us mortals. Our job is to gather the evidence required to PROVE ALL THINGS and hold on to that which is good.
Thank you, Crush. True: the search for truth is a lifetime endeavor. One objective of commercial media -- beyond converting us all into addicts -- is to bury us in diversion and exhaust us with trivia, so we no longer have the energy to pursue the truth and hand the task over to our lords and masters.
When you are made in God's image I expect no different. But I have to write another sentence with the word sin in the flesh. Therefore endless confusion and what it gives birth to.
Rank is with us. Classification of it is not always biological. And again, this is a good thing when thinking of sin. Monetary achievement is the motivator. Once digested by a system it is ready for the next phase. I would not expect anything more from a system of such, other than kicked out of its own supposed ideology. Maybe it even fools itself. Knowledge is what lures the many. When enough information has reached enough minds, the system itself is forced to change its cloak. It becomes welcoming for the sake of a higher level. For a time. The mind cannot be abused past a certain level, or there is no profit in abused compliance. That level is always achieved by using minds to participate. Mc Luhan's terms "user as content" or "medium is the message" nails this for the woe of our times. Again to expect anything more from a system interested in economic reach is our fault. Let's not forget that while all these systems come and go for centuries, there is one system that does not change. Mainly because God does not change. That system is a nation bereft of physical boundaries and languages. It does not obey the distraction of centuries. It has always been a sort of underground nation ever since created, when it could. At the cross. The book of Acts tells of its miraculous beginning. What happened later within a century became a system of suppression for humanity in the name of falsified authority. It's name often mistakenly called The Church. Nothing has happened to the nation God himself sacrified himself for. It is alive as all the sacrifice made to form it would not simply vanish due to artificial systems that rise and fall, time non pertinent. Those belonging to that nation are simply in a type of wilderness, passing through. Yes if you thought of that wilderness, it is a spiritual copy of the one you thought.
Anyway, I like the deductice perspective you show. It is a very helpful tool to unlock truth.
Thank you first for your faith, Persephone. Second, for your kind words and participation. I'm gratified that you find utility in my work. While reason-based, I view it as an extension of my faith...
"Turns out that all great social movements, even the most deist and secular, are born in faith and resolve in theocracy".
Well, I'm gonna tell ya why... because there's nothing new under the sun!
My "mantra" for my current curriculum, the first 11 chapter of Genesis, is, "ALL humans are one. God's humans dwelling on God's Creation".
The writer of those chapters, Moses, is explaining to about 2 million of God's people who'd just come out of 4 centuries of pagan idolatry in Egypt (in which they'd participated wholeheartedly as explained by the exilic prophet, Ezekiel), what human origin actually looked like, what the Creator intended for it, and how the humans messed it up. Those stories are repeated all throughout the Hebrew Scriptures' ancenstral and historical narratives, but summed up well by the prophet Nehemiah.
Recorded in Nehemiah chapter 9 is what some theologians call the Deuteronomic Cycle. Nehemiah recounts many of the times when the children of Israel were disobedient and God Himself came to save them.
The cycle goes like this... God blesses them, they sin disobediently and get in trouble, they realize their disobedience and repent, and God bails them out and blesses them, they sin disobediently and get in trouble, they realize their disobedience and repent, and God bails them out and blesses them, they sin disobediently and get in trouble, they realize their disobedience and repent, and God bails them out and blesses them... Rinse. Repeat.
Your Old Testament analogy is very enjoyable to read, thanks. That said, God bails them out, is not particularly comforting considering today’s rinse repeat cycle. We have created some pretty fearsome tools for defeating our enemies.
Professor Deneen of the post-liberal order Substack calls it “the political Gnosticism of the liberal imperium”. Nice and succinct.
Glad you enjoyed my posts, reante, and many thanks for reaching out. I would argue that religion is the organizing medium of our spiritual animism, that the two are ancestrally identical, complementary, and never designed by our Creator to exist independently of each other. That it took thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- of years to organize our spiritual animism into some form of cohesive religion may be elegant testimony to the enormity of the task -- like the formation of culture. It simply takes time to tell the Greatest Story Ever Told.
Thus the fact that religion ultimately evolved as an institutional hierarchy was precisely the desired result. The problem, of course, occurred when the institution of religion replaced religion as the organizing medium, and -- in doing so -- fell prey not only to the perceived limitations of Dunbar's Number, but also to pride and arrogance and vanity. Your thoughts?
Thanks again for reading my work and taking the time to respond.
Thank you for your gracious response, reante. Yes, spent a short time in West LA back in the mid-seventies in comedy clubs, but decided early on that I didn't want the starving artist lifestyle. Also didn't feel secure enough with myself at the time to compete with the real comedy stars in my family: Harry Einstein, Albert Brooks, and Bobby Einstein -- my grandfather and uncles, respectively. My father was a most gifted and prolific story and joke teller as well, so yeah, I guess you could say I run in the family: the pressure to entertain is always right near the surface in me.
I encountered the endtimes part more than a generation ago, and have been largely screaming into the void and talking to myself ever since. I take the opportunity whenever possible to invoke the family trade, not only as an emotional relief valve, but to help me keep my life and the things around me in proportion -- not an inconsiderable task given my proclivities for addictive excess.
Yes, the Jewish comedians of yesteryear have -- like yours truly -- morphed into the Jewish prophets of today. We all yearn to tell a joke, but seems no one wants to laugh these days. And yes, Jewish comedy is vestigial, perhaps because we have wrested the fate of Jewish survival from the hands of others and learned how to fuck it up all by ourselves...
And now for a joke...
A black man, a Mexican, a Jew, and a bigot are all seated in the same room. The black man looks down and spots a dusty lamp on the floor. He picks it up, dusts it off and poof! A magic genie appears.
“Thank you,” says the genie to the black man. “I’ve been trapped in that cramped little lamp for the past two thousand years. Because you have freed me from my prison of darkness, I will grant you and each of your friends in the room one wish. Anything you want. One wish only for each of you. Consider carefully.”
The black man’s mind starts racing. “I could own homes, mansions, all over the world,” he says out loud. “Or a harem of gorgeous women. Or billions of dollars to buy whatever I want!” Finally, he interrupts himself. “No!” he declares. “For once in my life I want to take the high road. I want to return to Africa with all my African American brothers and sisters to restore the glory of the African Nation!” And poof! He’s gone!
The Mexican picks up the lamp and turns to the genie. “Wow!” he says. “That was truly inspiring. I want to return with all my Mexican American brothers and sisters to Mexico. Viva Mexico!" And poof! He’s gone!
The Jew picks up the lamp next. “I’m so humbled,” he says to the genie. “I want to return with all my Jewish American brothers and sisters to the Promised Land. Next year in Jerusalem!” And poof! He’s gone!
Finally, just the bigot remains. “Let me get this straight,” he says to the genie. “You sent all the blacks back to Africa, all the Mexicans back to Mexico, and all the Jews back to Israel.”
“That’s right,” says the genie. “What would you like?”
Thank you, reante. I most certainly hold reason in high regard, and -- in fact -- position it in the center of my Human Centrifuge (https://open.substack.com/pub/qolrm/p/intro-to-the-centrifugal-map?r=7hc45&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web), right alongside faith. The tragedy of what media ecologist Neil Postman called Technopoly, a society by machines for machines, is the separation of faith and reason (not to be confused with the separation of church and state), and the treatment of them as polar opposites instead of complementary features of our humanity.
I don't know that we can eliminate disloyalty any more than we can eliminate addiction, but we might -- more realistically -- be able to limit the damage they wreak in our homes and lives by moderating our own behavior. Perhaps the best way to do that is to accommodate both faith and reason under the same roof, and arbitrage them as needed, separately or together -- but always mindful and respectful of each other: as essential functions of healthy families and communities.
At least, that's what I'd like to do here with good folks like you. Of course, threading the needle between faith and reason is not a new challenge along the arc of human evolution, but it may be leagues harder today than it was just a few generations ago. Nevertheless, our ability to evolve as a species relies, as you suggest, on our success.
Fool me once ...
Clearly, what comes first is *the promise* of liberation.
(Cue Queen: We will we will ROCK YOU!)
(Cue “founding fathers”: We will unROCK YOU!)
(Cue Shirley Jackson’s story The Lottery.)
(Draw a flowchart line down the last parenthetical.)
Well, second. Comes first is the fertile soil, & glass houses, into which those seeds-stones are sown-thrown.
(Hugh Laurie’s House was stone, not glass, but was he an addict, or just managing the pain? I don’t remember. )
So sow me not just once. Nor reap me just the once, neither. Cuz I’m just a clod of the continental field. I exist to be planted with flags. The false flags of my fathers’. Blowing in the whirlwind.
How to resist? Simple. But not easy.
Impossible, in fact.
Because the simple is not a selection to be made from an a la carte menu.
You are “selected.” You don’t select.
If you resist you are resist. “Just do it”? Nah.
“There is no do. There is only done, or not done.” ~ Yoda
Because “the blank slate” is a lie, propaganda. Don’t it make you brown eyes blue? No, it don’t.
It doesn’t make Bruce Jenner a woman, either.
Everybody gets what they get.
And Solomon Asch / Stan Milgram “participants” ~ rule-proving dupes ~ in peer pressure conformity & obedience to authority suspension (only seemingly animated) is what is most heavily selected for. I put it at about 96%.
And it is all referred to as “social.”
(“Social” sounds better ~ more “Security” ~ than murmuration, or the madness of crowds. Crowdementia? Are crows smarter than starlings? Don’t bother asking a crow, or a starling, that question.)
The simple is just this: DIY.
(But with the D caveat in mind.)
Neither a lender-leader nor a borrower-follower be. Because those are obverse-reverse of the coin of the federal reserve “realm.”
Which is short for realmein.
My real mien (ei, ie - its up to me-o! ~ Old McDonald, on his farm, where all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others - were those mores sows, or boring boar-boors?) is to be reeled in.
The old hook, line & sinker bit in the saddle-broke horses’ mouths bit.
Variation on the old bumper sticker: Life’s a bit & then you’re rode hard & put up wet.
Theo wasn’t a crat, according to OED, but he was devoted to his artist brother Vincent & did all he could to help him.
Or make art of him.
A wo/man can be an artist at anything said Walken’s character - even death, as he said about Denzel’s character.
Man On Fire was the Walken-Denzel flick. Tony Scott, Ridley’s brother, directed. Some time later he jumped off a bridge. The Vincent Thomas bridge.
If a person gets into an elevator, going up or going down, & the social cohort s/he is going to be briefly lifting/lowering with is all facing the back wall rather than the doors & so s/he faces the back wall too is s/he devoted, compelled, addicted? Or just "social"?
Artists at anything, addicted to anything … sounds like some chaos to me.
(Dunno what “cha” is short for but “os” rings a Bastiat busted windows/android operating systems fallacy … well, fallacies operating is probably better put. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? And shepherds? Like electric force of “nature” Roy Batty, to protect them from Blade Runner wolves? Batty, Roy, that very not stockcar boy, was a much better man than Deckard. But not likely the sort would be ark captain Yuval Noah Harari has in mind.)
But language, symbols, always offer better sounding reframe alternatives. And those sell like hot cakes & Purple Irises & Ridley Scott flicks.
But since property owned is a myth coming, it seems, to ever faster fruition, the stuff isn’t sold so much as lent & borrowed.
& @usury rates net to boot … on human, all too human, faces, forever be thy hallowed goal.
Uh-oh.
But you can always take the stairs ~ &/or the stares, lol: I’ll see your pairs of eyes & raise ya mine own ~ if you’ve got the legs.
“Kick a buck.” ~ Cool Hand Luke (would it were he was cool enough to get to Zihuatanejo … but he wanted room temp, & he got it: no failure to communicate at all)
(Cue the final scene from Catholic Mel’s Apocalypto: The cats name was Jaguar Paw. She asks him what the Spanish galleons are. He says they bring men. Should we got to them? She asks. We should go to the forest he replies.
He doesn’t mean the Forrest Gump. But he had the gumption to eschew the bubblegum … p.)
Thanks, Andy. Clearly, the search for meaning doesn't always end well. And everything is on loan, as you suggest...
Would it were defaults, pre-wired, & drummed in, were scrutinized more. Were more scrutinizable. But life, this world, is more determined than most people want to know.
So belief otherwise along the locus of control watchtower gives Dylan, gave Jimi, things to do. Gives Cassandra things to do. And you. And me.
Keep up the good work, Jeff.
Thank you, Andy. I'll try my best...
Agree - it's a seemingly endless cycle......rinse and repeat. But why?
Actually not very complicated, after you get the hang of the common thread from Genesis to Revelation - DECEPTION is NOT the exception in this world - it is DaRule! -
https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2023/08/deception-is-not-exception-in-this.html?m=0 - takes some reading
And then find DaCulprits:
https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2023/09/lose-your-culture-and-you-lose-your.html?m=0 - more reading.
Discovering truth is a process - never an end state for us mortals. Our job is to gather the evidence required to PROVE ALL THINGS and hold on to that which is good.
That's a lifetime job - sorry!
Thank you, Crush. True: the search for truth is a lifetime endeavor. One objective of commercial media -- beyond converting us all into addicts -- is to bury us in diversion and exhaust us with trivia, so we no longer have the energy to pursue the truth and hand the task over to our lords and masters.
When you are made in God's image I expect no different. But I have to write another sentence with the word sin in the flesh. Therefore endless confusion and what it gives birth to.
Rank is with us. Classification of it is not always biological. And again, this is a good thing when thinking of sin. Monetary achievement is the motivator. Once digested by a system it is ready for the next phase. I would not expect anything more from a system of such, other than kicked out of its own supposed ideology. Maybe it even fools itself. Knowledge is what lures the many. When enough information has reached enough minds, the system itself is forced to change its cloak. It becomes welcoming for the sake of a higher level. For a time. The mind cannot be abused past a certain level, or there is no profit in abused compliance. That level is always achieved by using minds to participate. Mc Luhan's terms "user as content" or "medium is the message" nails this for the woe of our times. Again to expect anything more from a system interested in economic reach is our fault. Let's not forget that while all these systems come and go for centuries, there is one system that does not change. Mainly because God does not change. That system is a nation bereft of physical boundaries and languages. It does not obey the distraction of centuries. It has always been a sort of underground nation ever since created, when it could. At the cross. The book of Acts tells of its miraculous beginning. What happened later within a century became a system of suppression for humanity in the name of falsified authority. It's name often mistakenly called The Church. Nothing has happened to the nation God himself sacrified himself for. It is alive as all the sacrifice made to form it would not simply vanish due to artificial systems that rise and fall, time non pertinent. Those belonging to that nation are simply in a type of wilderness, passing through. Yes if you thought of that wilderness, it is a spiritual copy of the one you thought.
Anyway, I like the deductice perspective you show. It is a very helpful tool to unlock truth.
Thank you first for your faith, Persephone. Second, for your kind words and participation. I'm gratified that you find utility in my work. While reason-based, I view it as an extension of my faith...
"Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete."
Rod Serling - The Obsolete Man
Thank you, Gwyneth. Agreed, although maybe we should preface the quote with, "For your consideration..."
"Turns out that all great social movements, even the most deist and secular, are born in faith and resolve in theocracy".
Well, I'm gonna tell ya why... because there's nothing new under the sun!
My "mantra" for my current curriculum, the first 11 chapter of Genesis, is, "ALL humans are one. God's humans dwelling on God's Creation".
The writer of those chapters, Moses, is explaining to about 2 million of God's people who'd just come out of 4 centuries of pagan idolatry in Egypt (in which they'd participated wholeheartedly as explained by the exilic prophet, Ezekiel), what human origin actually looked like, what the Creator intended for it, and how the humans messed it up. Those stories are repeated all throughout the Hebrew Scriptures' ancenstral and historical narratives, but summed up well by the prophet Nehemiah.
Recorded in Nehemiah chapter 9 is what some theologians call the Deuteronomic Cycle. Nehemiah recounts many of the times when the children of Israel were disobedient and God Himself came to save them.
The cycle goes like this... God blesses them, they sin disobediently and get in trouble, they realize their disobedience and repent, and God bails them out and blesses them, they sin disobediently and get in trouble, they realize their disobedience and repent, and God bails them out and blesses them, they sin disobediently and get in trouble, they realize their disobedience and repent, and God bails them out and blesses them... Rinse. Repeat.
Sound familiar to anyone?
Cuz there's nothing new under the sun.
Your Old Testament analogy is very enjoyable to read, thanks. That said, God bails them out, is not particularly comforting considering today’s rinse repeat cycle. We have created some pretty fearsome tools for defeating our enemies.
Professor Deneen of the post-liberal order Substack calls it “the political Gnosticism of the liberal imperium”. Nice and succinct.
Thanks, Peter, for the Old Testament references. Always refreshing...
Amen!
And we all say, AMEN! Once articulated, as you have done here, the truth is so very obvious to anyone with an open mind.
Glad you enjoyed my posts, reante, and many thanks for reaching out. I would argue that religion is the organizing medium of our spiritual animism, that the two are ancestrally identical, complementary, and never designed by our Creator to exist independently of each other. That it took thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- of years to organize our spiritual animism into some form of cohesive religion may be elegant testimony to the enormity of the task -- like the formation of culture. It simply takes time to tell the Greatest Story Ever Told.
Thus the fact that religion ultimately evolved as an institutional hierarchy was precisely the desired result. The problem, of course, occurred when the institution of religion replaced religion as the organizing medium, and -- in doing so -- fell prey not only to the perceived limitations of Dunbar's Number, but also to pride and arrogance and vanity. Your thoughts?
Thanks again for reading my work and taking the time to respond.
Thanks very much for the wonderfully informative response, reante. Guess I'll have to be a little more careful what I wish for next time:)
That said, I'll take the home that houses both the reason-based man and the faith-based man every time, and your appreciation brings me as much joy as your skilled and compassionate argument. Check out my essay, The Weaponization of Humor by Corporate Elites at https://open.substack.com/pub/qolrm/p/the-weaponization-of-humor-by-corporate?r=7hc45&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web. I think you'll like it...
Thank you for your gracious response, reante. Yes, spent a short time in West LA back in the mid-seventies in comedy clubs, but decided early on that I didn't want the starving artist lifestyle. Also didn't feel secure enough with myself at the time to compete with the real comedy stars in my family: Harry Einstein, Albert Brooks, and Bobby Einstein -- my grandfather and uncles, respectively. My father was a most gifted and prolific story and joke teller as well, so yeah, I guess you could say I run in the family: the pressure to entertain is always right near the surface in me.
I encountered the endtimes part more than a generation ago, and have been largely screaming into the void and talking to myself ever since. I take the opportunity whenever possible to invoke the family trade, not only as an emotional relief valve, but to help me keep my life and the things around me in proportion -- not an inconsiderable task given my proclivities for addictive excess.
Yes, the Jewish comedians of yesteryear have -- like yours truly -- morphed into the Jewish prophets of today. We all yearn to tell a joke, but seems no one wants to laugh these days. And yes, Jewish comedy is vestigial, perhaps because we have wrested the fate of Jewish survival from the hands of others and learned how to fuck it up all by ourselves...
And now for a joke...
A black man, a Mexican, a Jew, and a bigot are all seated in the same room. The black man looks down and spots a dusty lamp on the floor. He picks it up, dusts it off and poof! A magic genie appears.
“Thank you,” says the genie to the black man. “I’ve been trapped in that cramped little lamp for the past two thousand years. Because you have freed me from my prison of darkness, I will grant you and each of your friends in the room one wish. Anything you want. One wish only for each of you. Consider carefully.”
The black man’s mind starts racing. “I could own homes, mansions, all over the world,” he says out loud. “Or a harem of gorgeous women. Or billions of dollars to buy whatever I want!” Finally, he interrupts himself. “No!” he declares. “For once in my life I want to take the high road. I want to return to Africa with all my African American brothers and sisters to restore the glory of the African Nation!” And poof! He’s gone!
The Mexican picks up the lamp and turns to the genie. “Wow!” he says. “That was truly inspiring. I want to return with all my Mexican American brothers and sisters to Mexico. Viva Mexico!" And poof! He’s gone!
The Jew picks up the lamp next. “I’m so humbled,” he says to the genie. “I want to return with all my Jewish American brothers and sisters to the Promised Land. Next year in Jerusalem!” And poof! He’s gone!
Finally, just the bigot remains. “Let me get this straight,” he says to the genie. “You sent all the blacks back to Africa, all the Mexicans back to Mexico, and all the Jews back to Israel.”
“That’s right,” says the genie. “What would you like?”
The bigot says, “I’ll take a Diet Coke.”
Thanks for expanding the stage...
Oh, I like Albert Brooks. Malevolent-funny in Drive.
Which is a good & funny word. None of those characters drove. All were driven. Passengers.
Same as here.
Thank you, reante. I most certainly hold reason in high regard, and -- in fact -- position it in the center of my Human Centrifuge (https://open.substack.com/pub/qolrm/p/intro-to-the-centrifugal-map?r=7hc45&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web), right alongside faith. The tragedy of what media ecologist Neil Postman called Technopoly, a society by machines for machines, is the separation of faith and reason (not to be confused with the separation of church and state), and the treatment of them as polar opposites instead of complementary features of our humanity.
I don't know that we can eliminate disloyalty any more than we can eliminate addiction, but we might -- more realistically -- be able to limit the damage they wreak in our homes and lives by moderating our own behavior. Perhaps the best way to do that is to accommodate both faith and reason under the same roof, and arbitrage them as needed, separately or together -- but always mindful and respectful of each other: as essential functions of healthy families and communities.
At least, that's what I'd like to do here with good folks like you. Of course, threading the needle between faith and reason is not a new challenge along the arc of human evolution, but it may be leagues harder today than it was just a few generations ago. Nevertheless, our ability to evolve as a species relies, as you suggest, on our success.
Thanks again.