Theodor Herzl and Sayyid Qutb - founders of the Zionist State and Moslem Brotherhood...

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Compare the writings of Theodore Herzl and Sayyid Qutb.

At the turn of the 19th century, a German journalist witnessed the persecution of millions of people excluded from participation in education, the legal systems and institutions, and the public life of Europe. He witnessed injustice reaching an invidious height in the Dreyfus prosecution. Herzl's response was to create a place where people could thrive and work for a better life without persecution. He became one of the Founding Fathers of modern Zionism.

In 1949, a wealthy Egyptian educational reformer, came to the United States to study and write. He was given a scholarship. He was invited to participate in social, educational, cultural and institutional life. He saw crassness and materialism, and lust for life which disgusted him. He saw women, none of whom met his standards of subservience. He went on to become the intellectual light of the Moslem Brotherhood.

The similarities and differences between the two "founders" are worthy of study.

Qutb was quite devoted to writing, which he regarded as his art and livelihood, although it was not the source of his income, which derived from his family wealth. His two most important works: a commentary of the Qur'an Fi Zilal al-Qur'an (In the Shade of the Qur'an), and a manifesto of political Islam called Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq (Milestones). These works represent the final form of Qutb's thought, encompassing his radically anti-secular and anti-Western claims based on his interpretations of; the Qur'an, Islamic history, and the social and political problems of Egypt.

Qutb focused on issues that occupied Egypt after Great Britain voluntarily turned the control of the political power over to Egyptians. Gamel Abdel Nasser, a secular dictator seized power in 1952, with the aid of the Moslem Brotherhood. After an assassination attempt on Nasser's life, Qutb was imprisoned for 8 months and then executed in 1966 after a "show trial".

Ironically, Herzl had witnessed one such "show trial" himself, although not as a defendant. The defendant was Theodore Dreyfus, a Jew. The trial demonstrated that all Jews in Europe were subject to such "trials".

Working Paper in progress...

Religious Fundamentalism falls from inside itself; it is entropic enhancement.

Notes on Religious Fundamentalism, and its erosion of itself from within:

1. HEAVEN. The Fundamentalist is seeking to control. He chooses the easiest path -- to suppress others. It is easier to stop things than to permit things to grow, and the hardest of all is to contribute to growth. The Fundamentalist does not desire Heaven, but rather is jealous of it. The jealousy of kite-flying, of music, of dance, of the arts, is not because these activities are not righteous, but because they move us closer to heaven, wholesale. The Fundamentalist is buried in Hell. He wants to charge us for Grace, retail.

2. TIME. The Fundamentalist wants to stop the passage of Time. He seeks to stop everything. For example, it seems inconceivable to forbid the playing of music. One can only wonder that anyone would do such a thing. Yet that is one of the first things a Fundamentalist insists upon. To stop the flow of music is exactly like trying to stop the passage of time. The Fundamentalist forsakes the Past, dispenses with NOW, and lives only for his hope of Vengence in the future.

3. BELIEF. The Fundamentalist appears to be strict in his observances. He claims to believe certain things. however, this is an illusion. He is profligate -- throwing even his own better talents and judgments into the bushel basket of suppression. This can only be understood as a great waste. And his nihilism is revealed to the extent that he seeks to prevent others from flowering as they would. There is no Belief which justifies suppression of others. No real Truth requires suppression of error. The suppression of others' reveals the lack of substance or Truth in the Fundamentalists' beliefs.

4. FEAR. The Fundamentalist is all about fear. All attempts to extinguish or annihilate disbelievers are admissions of the insecurity of the Believer. Religion is the mother of fear. Curiously, the Cave Paintings of Lescaux and Chauvet (and 10,000 other preserved sites) are very revealing about true "fundamentals". There is not a single depiction of a King, a Priest, a God, or even a hierarchy. The works created prior to any of the current "religions" seem designed to inspire many things, but they do not inspire FEAR!

5. CONCLUSIONS. We are left with a few hard conclusions. Let's review. We have heaven and hell, here and now. People who leave others alone, enable others to choose and even create their heaven or hell. The Fundamentalist fights for hell. He wants to stop the passage of time, as if there is no difference between our episodes of eternity. The Fundamentalist does not believe in "fundamental" things, except Fear alone. He believes in nothing, but his many fears. He must suppress others, because he has nothing to offer. Fundamentalism is entropic. A dead end.

God is Moot;

David Gelernter provides some unique, although ahistorical, insights for all in his book, JUDAISM: A WAY OF BEING (2010). He presents Judaism, with its ranges of beliefs, practices and philosophy, as the "world's first monotheistic religion". Of course, it is not that, and Abraham was not its first practitioner. (Abraham lived and died believing in multiple gods and angels, according to the very words of Genesis). But it does appear that Jews created the idea of congregational worship and "study" of religious texts -- of which they provide the earliest examples. Powerful texts.
While Gelernter's provocative themes of "Separation", "Veil", "Perfect asymmetry", and "Inward pilgrimage" are beautiful but unprovable, I must here preserve two concepts he richly rewards us with:

"The problem of evil is man's problem. The central question is not why God hasn't saved the world, but why YOU haven't." This moots theodicy as well as Belief.

And he draws from the Lamentations: "Make us new again, as we used to be."

Law's futility < Love's Labour's Lost > Act I, scene I

"These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn." Lord Biron's soto voce as he is tasked with delivery of Costard the Clown to the keep for his violation of King Ferdinand's proscription against wenching.

King. Sir, I will pronounce your sentence: you shall fast a week with bran and water.
Cost. I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge.

Dog Person God

LibraryThing: State of the Thing -- March 2010 - tkey@tustinlawcenter.com - Tustin Law Center Mail

I want to be the person my dog thinks I am. Is it possible to be different from what a knowing-God thinks I am? The very suggestion pierces the inflation of belief. Uncanny certitudes. I bark, therefore...

Desiderius Erasmus Quotes

Desiderius Erasmus Quotes

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.
Desiderius Erasmus

Lucille Clifton 1936-2010 gritty optimism thru hardships passing in the night

From Blessing the Boats:

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back. may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

Those who prey upon credulity and hope
take away the lives of their victims.
That is to say, fraud is a capital offense,
greater in scale and consequence than
taking bread or things. For prudent persons
can guard their stuff from thieves, but
honesty has no protection from cunning.

Where fraud is permitted, where it has no severe consequences visited by law upon the perpetrator, then honest traders are always undone by knaves. Decency is at a great disadvantage in the face of misrepresentations of fact made by fraudsters who are not punished in any way.

This truth was observed in laissez faire Europe by the dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin in 1726. The good dean wrote GULLIVER's TRAVELS among other great satires and reports. Jonathan Swift lived 1667-1745, tirelessly exposing the graft, corruption, and mendacity of hypocrites. His efforts had little effect upon the morality and laws he sought to uphold, and he was driven insane in his last years.

Theodor Herzl and Wagner - add to collection of Ironies

In 1895, a modest but highly educated German journalist was sent to Paris by his Editors to report on the "trial of the century". Theodor Herzl duly reported the details of the trial, of which he was an eye-witness. The French Army had imprisoned and then tried the highest ranking Jew in its ranks, convicting him on the facially implausible charge of being a spy for Germany. These legal proceedings were the culmination of the notorious event known as the Dreyfus Affair. The conviction of the Jewish officer was confirmed by the Supreme Court of France, even though there was not a scintilla of "evidence" supporting the charge, and in fact, another man admitted to having served as a spy.

Herzl walked away from the trial with the CERTAINTY that Jews, without a homeland, would not be treated with justice in Europe at that time. Where Captain Dreyfus, a fine officer, with undeniable competence and accomplishment, unsullied by any taint or corruption of any kind, could be blamed for losses in a military campaign in which he was not even involved, and where it was shown to the Supreme Court of France that there was no evidence in support of the charges, which were brought by incompetents who needed a scapegoat, his conviction was upheld on the single ground that he was a Jew. Blaming Jews, a largely unarmed people, had become a successful method for avoiding responsibility on the part of authorities across Europe. Here, it reached an apex.

After filing his reports during the day, Herzl would attend the Opera in the evenings in Paris. By coincidence, the Ring Cycle composed by the German composer, Richard Wagner, was being performed. Herzl was well-aware of the ugly anti-semitism of Wagner, who was a prolific essayist as well as composer. Yet, to his credit, he was able to appreciate the artistry and sublimely beautiful compositions. Even more extraordinary, he was able to take inspiration from the libretto itself.

The operas are loosely drawn from the bardic saga mythology of a Norse people. Wagner obtained copies and outlines and translations of the Poetic Edda, the Volsunga Saga, and the German Nibelungenlied. Like many intellectuals in this period of relative peace (late 1800's), Wagner found "Romantic" inspiration -- profound feelings -- in the epic literature of pagan gods.

Contrasted with his other compositions, Wagner's Ring Cycle is positively sunny and refreshing. Wagner invented most of the plot of the first music drama, the Rhinegold, by combining three unrelated Edda stories, developing a theme of Love versus Greed and Power. In the Valkyrie, the theme is Lover versus Law. In Siegfried, he practically defines Love as Freedom (from law and greed), and in Twilight of the Gods, he develops Love as a redeemer for those who resign themselves to it.

Virtually all of the sagas available to Wagner came out of Iceland, centuries after the isolated island had become Christianized by force. Transmitted with both apologist and euhemerist views, Wagner took the Myths as proto-science (explaining the mysteries) and proto-psychology (explaining ourselves).

Wagner was dead before Hitler was even born. However, Wagner's anti-Semitic views had been published, and he stooped to inventing a character in the Cycle who mimics the public caricature of greedy Jews -- although the character is in fact, a Germanic divinity. The Nazis did not invent anti-Semitism, or much of anything else. Nor do anti-semites, even talented ones, bother with logical consistency or decency. And to be "fair", Wagner did not express any great love for Germans or "Deutschland" -- which was not yet an independent united State, but from its various communities he had to flee on several occasions, and in which his music was banned until 1861.

So, what did Herzl draw from the musical dramas which had been drawn from ancient pagan poetry by a talented "Romantic" German exile?

Herzl was inspired to create Zionism. It was the only, the ONLY, remedy for anti-semitism. His fellow-German's artistry and the bardic ideas about community-building helped shape the concept of a Jewish homeland. Recovery of what was lost. Herzl, the Founding Father of Israel, was a devoted, lifelong Wagnerian.

Bold Action and Big Ideas

President Obama said, as he took the office he is re-making: "History reminds us that, at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas."

Somehow, incredibly, there are folks who hear this challenge and think that he meant "bold talk and big government". No. Just not what he said, and not what he is leading us toward. Still, where are the bold and the brave? Who has ideas, large and looming with hope?

Financial Crisis - Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. and the Cause

Former Secretary of Treasury Henry M. Paulson, Jr. has written a book entitled ON THE BRINK; Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System. His account is revealing. He clearly had no concept of any oversight function, although he had a background and employment exposure to investment banking opportunities and risks.

Of particular note is that he dealt with the crisis -- as it came to a head in the 48 hours (48 hours!) preceding the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 13, 2008 -- by seeking to find another lender to cover the obligations which were due. In other words, he was trying to solve a situation created by bad loans (securities tied to defaulting mortgages) by finding a bank willing to chase good money after bad. Knowing the nature of the toxic assets, he looked for a sucker.

When Barclays (President Bob Diamond) was unwilling to make the deal because the British Financial Services Authority (Finance Minister Alistair Darling) did not support it, "we were beside ourselves". To the group of CEO's he had assembled in his lobby, he blurted, "The British screwed us!" I'll bet he used other words. He was "stunned" that Mr. Darling was unwilling to permit him to unload the problem "on the British tax payer".

In the book, Mr. Paulson falls upon his faith (Christian Science). He asks his wife "to pray for me". She immediately quotes Timothy II, 1:7 : "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind".

The problem is that he admits he kept bottles of pills -- sleeping pills -- which is medication prohibited by his invoked religion and contrary to the Scientist belief that he cannot sleep. In addition, exactly WHAT is he fearing? For his failure to find a sucker to be the last one holding the bag of increasingly toxic assets? Does he understand that the only "risks", the only thing at stake, is the collapse of Lehman, and of course, with that, the spiraling problems that would hit the insurer, AIG.

However, the real danger was that the failure of large financial institutions would cause all of his chums to lose their shirts. All of his associations were with investment bankers. (He had been Chairman of Goldman Sachs).

In Spring 2007, Secretary Paulson told an audience at the Shanghai Futures Exchange that "An open, competitive, and liberalized financial market can effectively allocate scarce resources in a manner that promotes stability and prosperity far better than governmental intervention."[19] He actively lobbied to remove all regulatory oversight from the financial industry while at the same time subjecting consumer rights organizations (lawyers, loan modification consultants, etc) to increased and burdensome regulation).

In August 2007, Secretary Paulson explained that U.S. subprime mortgage fallout remained largely contained due to the strongest global economy in decades.[20] The economy was already tanking and was way down from the levels reached during Clinton.

On July 20, 2008, after the failure of Indymac Bank, Paulson reassured the public by saying, “it's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.”[21] He had to know that the people pretending to be "our regulators" were in fact the predators who had already scammed homeowner-borrowers by placing them into inappropriate loans and OptionARMS.

On August 10, 2008, Secretary Paulson told NBC’s Meet the Press that he had no plans to inject any capital into Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.[22] On September 7, 2008, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into conservatorship.[23]

Quoted from Wikipedia.

Conflict, and the Effects of hate-mongering

We can despise the extreme wings of our politics all we want, but we seem to have them: Little mobberies pushed by the lies of tyrants -- perhaps the revenant Marxists, and the eruptive reactionaries, anyone willing to boil the stew. Anyone crying that compromise "makes you look weak"!

We have no better example of the instructively negative consequences of extremism than what can be drawn from the modern epoch's history of France. Of course, it is difficult to avoid the simple allure of the earlier milestones composed by the ancien regime, the Revolution, and Napoleon. None of those events, however, glittering, bloody, and instructive, were "modern".

The tumultuous era from 1830 to 1905 has been narrated by Frederick Brown, author of FOR THE SOUL OF FRANCE (2010). In this period, France ingested four different Constitutions, three dynasties, two republics, three revolutikons, one coup that worked and two that did not, two civil wars, one defeat in war that led to the German occupation of one-third of the country, two major financial scandals (neither of which involved Jews) that destroyed most savings accounts, and of course, the "trial of the century" -- the judicial and military scandal known as the Dreyfus Affair.

Now here is the lesson: What was The Cause of this turmoil? How did a nation that had brilliantly used accomodation and compromise to finally recover from centuries of corrupt oppression (Bourbons), the extremes of ideological terror (Robespierre, Orleans), and loss of almost all of its fighting age men (Napoleon), only to erupt again into chaos? What was the unrelenting driver for this self-destruction?

We know there is almost a genetic tension between Conservative and Liberal. In France, according to Brown, most of the turmoil during this period in France stemmed from battles between the conservative royalty/church clerical camp on the one side and the liberal or communard seculars on the other. And the conflict was painfully self-destructive. Even when the Protestant Prussians invaded in 1870, the two camps failed to reconcile.

Interestingly, the defeats and injuries suffered by France only further inflamed the idiotarian extremes of both these wings. Die-hard reactionaries (notably the L'Ordre Moral, and the pretender to the throne, Count de Chambord) took the defeat as God's punishment for the sin of failing to adopt the papal infallibility of Pope Pius IX. Secularists insisted that the losses were the result of betrayal of the Enlightenment thinkers who had created the Republic. Grace, whether divine or inspired by human creativity, was taken off the table. Again, as before, blood ran down the gutters, coloring the Seine red.

What is striking in this conflict is that as the tide of history rises against the clericals, they resort to more extreme and outlandish behavior, and ultimately, to an unprecedented degree of Hate-Mongering. After the misbegotten coup of 1889 led by the reactionary general, Georges Boulanger, the clericals sought to rally the public by claiming religious affiliation. Ironically, the means they adopted was to launch an anti-Semitic campaign. Thus, the attention of the world was diverted from the crimes, corruption and incompetence of the French rulers and military -- which had NO Jews (except for draftees and a jr. officer, Captain Dreyfus) -- to the fictions and false accusations made against shopkeepers and cobblers, the Jews. The hate-mongering took the forms of false charges against Dreyfus (blaming a Jew for the collapse of the French Army), the virilent fiction of the "Elders of Zion", etc.

The take-away point today is that we see the reactionaries now taking the same course -- in response to the rise of Obama liberals, the conservatives resort to hate-mongering and the scape-goating of blacks and Jews (compare, Dreyfus Affair). The Conservatives -- the true Conservatives -- should not do this. However, it is irresistable to the royal houses trying to stay in power and fearing the anger of the mob should the public ever demand an accounting.

The Sun drinks the Sea, the dark earth drinks the sky-rain

Unusual for Southern California, our 2d of 4 days of rain. We love it, but do not know what to do. Anacreon, in 500 b.c. under a squal showered on his arid isle (Teos), cried out, in my poor translation of the same quandary:

"Hephaestus, carve me a hollow cup!
The dark earth drinks the rain,
The flowers drink the earth,

The sea drinks the wind,
The sun drinks the sea..." (!)

Shut up. I am drunk in the rain
offering a wet garland of flowers
kissed everywhere by the watered wind
coming and going
tasting everything.

Carve me a hollow cup! Funny how it looks like Anacreon had totally figured out the Water cycle. 500 b.c. We are such SLOW learners, even about things that are right before our eyes, our senses. We taste the rain...It drops from the sky after the sun has drunk it from the sea....

Blanziflor et Hecuba-aa-aaa!

One of the many emotional peaks in the music-libretto of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, is the invocation of "Blanchiflor et Hecuba"! In the penultimate verse, just before the hearty ending cheer on the scaffold of malevolent destiny-- O Fortuna! The Ave Formoisissima invokes beautiful women as the Light, the Rose of the World.

The names of these two Queen Mothers would presumably be familiar to Europeans familiar with homiletic sagas in the Matter of Britain (King Arthur), France (Charlemagne) and Rome (mythology and Homer), and with Virgil's Aeneid.

Still, when rehearsing, I was always curious that these two specific women were invoked in the lament-filled paean to life-drive und das ewig-weibliche. Both women are expressly elevated to adored Venus stature. But who are they?

Hecuba seems pretty clear. The fertile wife of Priam, mother of Hector, and queen of Troy. As I recall, there are a number of different versions of her fate. Not content with killing her husband and number one hero son, the Aeneans burned her city, hauled her off as a slave, and killed most of her other 19 children. The youngest son, was not killed by the Greeks, but was murdered by a Thracian ally who usurped the Trojan treasure he undertook to guard. Hecumba, having been such a wonderful mother, is pushed over the edge with the news of this last and final infamy. Homer says she started barking like a dog, and howled at the moon. Hence the expression, "went to the dogs". Still, I like to imagine her impulse to bark was a perfectly rational response to what she was experiencing and led to her release from enslavement. With Hecubated breath.

Blanziflor is more difficult. The monks reference familiarity with Grail quests and Icelandic Sagas, in addition to the standard Homer. Blanchefleur is the heroine of an eponymous tale, is the beloved of Percevel (Parsifal), and is also the mother of Lohengrin (as Condiwiramurs). Finally, Blanchefleur is the mother of Tristan in Tristan and Iseult. (Tristan is the knight in Arthur's court, whose mission it is to safely deliver Iseult to his friend and her brethothed. On the way, the two fall for each other, hard.) It is possible the monks wanted to remind themselves of these powerful women.

But I do not think so. None of these "Blanches" seem to be connected with Hecuba, or the Hecuban form of lament -- a beautiful woman who has everything but whose destiny is to lose everything, including sanity. THAT sort of invocation seems to make sense in terms of the Carmina collection. So let's revisit Troy.

Looking closely at the entire text of the collected Carmina, one may be drawn to the conclusion that THIS Blanchiflor is one of the other women invoked by Virgil, in addition tol Hecuba. After all, the monks do seem to be tracing the tragedy of Troy -- the possibility of greatness, the reduction to flames and destruction on the whims of malevelent gods.

Obviously the woman whose fate it is to be most tightly connected to Troy, is Helen. Is "Blanchiflor" connected to "Helen" in any way? Is it possible the poets were alluding to Helen?

Ἕλλην (Hellen) has long been the traditional name Greeks have for themselves. A Greek's Abraham is a woman. The capture of Sparta's queen, and King Menelaus' wife, by Paris was the signature casus belli, purportedly as a repatriation effort.

It is Helen of Troy whose history, and even the etymology of her name, is most connected to the Venus the poets appeal to. It is of course, vanity to search for etymology, ever. Or for that matter, a "golden age" of Sparta -- archeological evidence of Mycenaean palaces have never been found.

Still, we can content ourselves with the foreshadowing themes drawn from Helen and extending to the continental medieval Blanchiflor. For example, the Tristam theme is foreshadowed by the fact that Agamemnon undertook to court and win Helen on behalf of his brother Menelaus.

Why not just sing "Helen and Hecuba-aa"! My thinking is that the poets were drinking. They loved Venus, not by her Greek name Aphrodite, and they loved her through Virgil, the Roman. The Castor-Pollux link between Sparta and Rome was a theme for Virgil. Here the poets are mimicking a famous epithalamium of Catullus, whose work was also put to music by Orff in a separate work. It is sexual love, not motherland and Mom and the happy home which are the starting and ending point of the monks' diversions.

So, it really is Helen, the founder of the cult in Laconia, a hangover of the fertility cult of the caves which never stopped and is invoked even today. The Homeric account (Helen walks around the Horse, mimicking the warrior's wives), gives way to the different stories dramatized by Stesichorus (both Greeks and Trojans stone her), Euripedes (in which Helen never went to Troy), and even Herodotus. In previous iterations, she was a vegetation goddess -- Helen of the Trees, in Rhodes with roots going back to the Minoan, where they had very similar terracotta female figurines.

And there on Rhodes we find the most tragic account of her fate. Having conquered all men with her beauty, and having been queen of the greatest cities, she came to Rhodes. Believing she was enjoying the hospitality of the queen of the island with handmaidens attending her bath, the queen in fact was seeking vengence for the loss of her family. She had her handmaidens disguized as Furies and set upon Helen, hanging her on a tree. Full circle. O Fortuna plango.

Music is not a Language

Often after playing music, never during, I fairly burst with expression and insight and desperately yearn to "communicate" it. Of course, this may be a side-effect of playing itself. The hunger, the need to express. Words are much more linear, of course, but both conversations and tunes are parsed by Time.

The difficulty is the shift, the translation back to "words". One can feel a knuckle between the word-net of "language" and the ringing-fruit basketry of "sound". We are able to do things with things we little understand -- words and tunes come from somewhere, loaded with skill-sets and feelings, and components which are shared. But most of the expressions are unique to their respective continents. Usually after playing, I literally have nothing to "say".

One of my favorite memories of performers in my youth were the lovable randy couple, Marais and Miranda. They were famous for telling musical stories. Their performance was both words and puns, and sounds sweeping across the arc of arts, with wisdom, flirtation, eyebrows and twinkling, and skillful bowing on vibrating strings. Their songs and sounds were blended, and now I deeply appreciate their skill at beckoning both.

Language can be used to perceive, to extend our perceptions. Music can be used to dip our toes into experiences. Both Words and Music can hit the sweet-spots of the brain and bounce thoughts aloft. Feelings can be lit up. Or smothered. But each is rooted and routed on separate places in the central nervous system. The mysteries of both are not the same.

Music - composition mysteries

Music is the only true "religion", by any definition of redemption or grace or self-realization. And like Religion, not all can be saved. Some of us will never "get it". Mozart could compose in his head, play in his sleep, and remember what he intended to do later in performance. Yet his peers treated him like a circus curiosity, not the high priest for which office he should have been annointed.

None of us know where music really comes from or what purpose it serves. Where was evolution headed, or where was your Creator going with this? We are lit up by timbre, tempo, meter, pitch and mode. We contend with tunings and tonalities, burning the circle of fifths inside melodies held together in ribbed vertebra of rhythm and rhyme. We feel the textures of sound, held in the suspense of lacunae and progression, modulating to a cadence of a drum we listened to from the womb.

World War II - assessment

A sufficient time has passed, and enough players with egos at stake have died, so that we can clear the slate and confirm what REALLY happened in the paroxysm of WWII. Here are a few notes:

1. FACTS. Hitler's personal secretary for a decade was an educated eye-witness to his rise to power and conduct of the War. She was never interviewed by anyone -- the military, the academy, the journalists. This single anecdotal fact reveals an enormous disinterest in facts generally, and a huge bias against women, that colors all accounts of the War.

2. ECONOMICS. A British economist spent the post-war decade appraising the value of the real estate and stock of Germany before the war, and comparing the value to the cost of fighting Germany. It cost much much more to wage war than to buy the materials which appear to be at stake.

3. GOLD. We know that the Nazis were pillagers. Like all thugs with guns, as they conquered Europe, they walked into every bank in every city, town and village and removed the gold. The Imperial Japanese Army systematicaly removed the gold from every bank, temple, and estate they could find from Manchuria to Indonesia. Together, the Axis consolidated at least 80% of the world's gold. This bullion has never been fully accounted for. It did not actually disappear -- it was not destroyed. Still, its "story" has never been told or ventilated by the press or by historians. We know the numbers of men at arms in numerous engagements across the globe, and we know the gold is important to thugs. But "military historians" seem to lose interest when "following the money".

4. VICTORY. Not surprising for such a complex event, but surprising considering what was at stake, there are many examples where but for a small and largely overlooked fluke, the AXIS would have won the war.

5. ACTUAL COST. We resist the attempts to assess the actual losses and damage because of the enormity. The losses of Nanking, Nagasaki, Dresden, and the Jews and Gypsies of eastern Europe, are simply not calculable, for even a start.

Stones and Bones

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CAVE ART Blogged 2009 “Stones and Bones”

Anthropologists have confirmed that homo sapiens was thriving in communities in Africa 500,000 years ago. 30,000 years ago we were painting the walls and ceilings in underground caves. We lived without the physical culture we enjoy today, apparently enjoying each other and the natural wonders of this world...for hundreds of thousands of years. What changed?

Culture has clearly "advanced" -- the stones and bones show improvements and increased specialization coupled with organization. Tools become more efficient. The "fitness" is adjusted. Today we can physically see the changes we describe as neolithic revolutions which in turn led to "civilization" marching through its bronze, iron, and steel iterations.

Still, we look at the Cave Paintings and their absences -- no God, no King, no weapons, no hierarchies of men -- and the predominance of gravidity, of color and wonder. We really have to reconsider the direction we have come. In the recent blink of 10,000 years we seem to have wandered into an obsession with personality cults, superstition and weaponry. Have we wandered into a dead end? What is the real vector? What is going on now, and why is it so difficult to comprehend our actual History? Surely what we did for 100,000 years is significant compared to a few centuries of risings and fallings and futile prayers to pantheons of gods.

The point is, looking at Cave Art (which is only 30,000 years old but which was already "advanced" in the caves ((there is no evidence of slow beginnings which probably began "outside")), we had Art. We had the sciencia of the minerals and pigments. This is what makes the ABSENCES so startling. Cave Art depicts no gods, no weapons, no armies, no hierarchies. But we had Community and we had Art and yes, Science -- for hundreds of thousands of years.

The recent 10,000 year old obsession with superstition and vengeful slaughter of "others" is all very new and unnecessary. No, it was not as if evil did not happen, or Mankind did not suffer. The Ice Age extinguished the Cave culture. But there in our Past, it was still Eden compared with the mass suffering to which we have lately become accustomed at the hands of Kings and Priests.

Consciousness

Why do we cling to MORE than life? Why do we press for Understanding and self-realization -- my gawd What is that? -- as well!

Yet every night, we surrender to LOSS of consciousness and Will. We fall asleep. We do not "change our mind" easily, and we almost never change our Personality. But gratefully we take to the pillow, and whatever we are, disappears.

Scripture

Scripture is never clear. There is no bible or spiritual text which is not disputed over life-times of believers, and the dispute is often and always ironic to the death!

The Tanakh, or Old Testament, was written by many authors over a period of 1000 years. This is a book of infinite inspiration and contradiction. It is glossed and tortured and translated in ever "new" ways. While its main purpose was to preserve the power of the priests against the kings, it shares a million minor agendas which continue to entertain and beguile.

Of the 27 books of the New Testament, there is a certain provenance to none of them. Many of the contemporaneous texts were curiously omitted without explanation provided by the anonymous Councilors meeting at Nicea in the fourth century after the Subject of the gospels stopped teaching.

Of the legendary "founders" of the great Religions, not one is alleged to have written a word -- Abraham, Buddha, Jesus -- all silent and absent from stone, papyrus, or clay. Mohammad and Smith appear to have written texts -- on leaves, skins, tablets -- but they each claim that an Angel (the same one, Gabriel), not God or Allah (again the same), dictated the text to them.

We have only recently discovered and authenticated long-lost but referenced "gospels", such as the gospel of Judas, Thomas, and several female writers.

St Paul, of course, is a historical figure and his letters -- actually penned by him -- have been preserved. Accord, the work of St Augustine, with his gospel of grace and invention of a trinity. What is significant is that in subsequent iterations, changes were made to the texts by so-called Believers with the intent to deceive others!

During this formative time Jews and Christians were maintaining graven images in the hearths of their homes, and continued to bury their dead with as many as 30 different deities. Even after the attempt to collate an "official" scripture 300 years after Jesus by order of the Mother of Constantine--that pagan Emperor who died as a non-believer--the copyists continued to use widely varying translations.

Of particular significance is the fact that the myth of inerrant "oral tradition" has been completely exploded. Most "traditions" trace back only a few generations. Most texts are interpolated and falsified, almost none are "copied" accurately verbatim and without new purposes and agendas. Translations are impossible. And memories? They are false.

Scripture is not history. It is fascinating. But it is not Truth.