The fact that so much mass murder is couched in religious phraseology is the most egregious example, but God filters on the way we think and act have prevented us from even attempting to figure out what we're doing to ourselves.
True people, with real hearts, have less a say in the the issues that affect them than ever before, owing to the lifelong media mindlock that limits their choices, the very same formula religion uses to condition the populace into conforming behavior, in order to conceal the fact that every death in warfare has been the murder of a brother or sister.
In order to treat anybody honestly, you have to treat everybody honestly. How is it that we have political leaders who treat nobody honestly, not even themselves? There can only be one conclusion. We are not being honest with ourselves.
The finest things we say are totally dependent on our ability to listen. We postpone our own gratification because our friends need us, and the deal is always worth it. What harmful childhood injury, what hateful, xenophobic creed warped these wealthy white men into twisted, thoughtless butchers interested only in the number of zeroes following a digit?
The more likely - and unpalatable - story is that these men are just like us - busting (as in "busting a move") their bogus rationales on the world simply because they can.
I don't want to be confused with those who are addicted to disaster news as some kind of horror film, people whose minds are glazed over in apoplectic stupefaction at the unending succession of atrocities that bedazzle our attention spans and numb our senses. Though I am stricken by the horror of what surrounds us, I try to remember information is nothing without context, and in the barrage of daily revelations from the cannibals' corporate spin machine we lose sight of the really important stories in the ceaseless cacophony of crises. Downing Street. This is the story that proved the American people are cruel, heartless idiots, out to destroy themselves, and everybody else.
The nightmare murder machine is not going to be defanged overnight. I myself have been contemplating what society will be like AFTER Armageddon, but, of course, being a pampered child of American affluence, I simply can't, so I probably won't survive.
But more and more I find the absence of basic information in the minds of most people, especially young ones. So I'm starting to think in terms of useful information that we should try to retain and spread around after human society has been destroyed. Here's what I came up with ...
How to cure every problem the world faces, in one, three-world sentence.
"Fix the bridges."
Life is a bridge in time from nonexistence to infinity, with this too short organic animation we call our lifetimes coming in between and providing the roadway for our journey. It's not about the origin or the destination, it's about the trip, the search, and what you do with it. THAT is the universe. It's a bridge from what was to what will be, and we are, among all the critters in existence, among the selected few to witness this complex drama of what actually is transpiring right in front of our bewildered eyes.
And what a pretty bridge it is. Prettier than the Golden Gate. My bridge spans from my grandfather's horse-drawn memories to being able to send this story to Chennai in 15 seconds. In the long passage through this unfolding path over troubled water, I have had the good fortune to be able to discern the patterns of how we deceive ourselves into thinking that we're really doing something that we're not.
Some people appoint themselves herders and create thoughtforms that the rest of us blindly follow, the urge to merge with the herd being much stronger than we realize. Humans are party animals, but we're also groupies. We like to be together, and who can blame us, because it can be so much fun. A recurring theme of human civilization is that good ideas, that is to say functional and successful strategies for human happiness, tend to start out good but then turn bad when those who maintain the legends decide their own personal success is more important than the success of the mission. Can you say Roman Catholic Church, oppressor of Galileo, which still puts the holy blindfold on our vision?
But THAT bridge - the solution everyone finds (or doesn't find) to the worrisome problem of their transitory and temporary status on this plane of existence - is simply a matter of personal choice. I don't care what religion people use to rationalize their existential dilemma as long as I don't see it hurting people, like I see with Christianity, Judaism and Islam all chanting, among bleeding bodies in the dust, that their team is better, and that the others should be killed if they don't agree.
Wouldn't you agree that humanity would be much better off without this childish arrogance? Poisonous parochial petulance ... in the truest sense.
As a bridge's foundation is firmly planted in the terrain it seeks to overtravel, so the phrase "fix the bridges" is a resonant mantra that applies to all levels of human endeavor, and is an obvious prescription for ailments that adversely affect everyone in all situations. As a reflexive default mechanism response to adversity, it's not bad. It minimizes hard feelings. A woman taught me that.
Political reality has always revolved around control of valuable commodities, those items in the world that through trade are converted to currency and thereby create power, a psychological fuel that through the tangible energy of the ability to buy things accrues social hegemony to its user. All the other things in life that we use to gauge the success or failure of a single life are controlled by one's ability to wheel through this world in a competent and comfortable fashion. Money is motor oil to the engine of our social lives. Not so odd wars should be fought over oil. But it is a bit over the top that money should have become God. Then again, maybe it always was.
All people have an aura, an electric perceptual field, that extends out from them about four feet. From that realization are magic steps to the future, a whole new way of life as odd to us as shopping malls would be to Australopithicenes (Lucy's tribe of four-footers in the Olduvai Gorge two million years ago), out there waiting to be discovered. First rule to be implemented: mandatory courtesy at the principal point of interface in recognition of the bond we share with all life. If you don't do that, it should be obvious to everyone that you simply don't know what you're doing.
And that your behavior is dangerous to others (this applies to all religious zealots; excessive religious zeal, of course, being an obsessive-compulsive disorder).
Or that you're here for some other reason than to be a decent, honorable human being. Though inequity makes thieves of us all, trust me when I say the last thought you will ever have will be complicated by all the things you stole, and all the horrors you chose to overlook.
Fix the bridges. A simple step. Our true task as a species. A much better idea than piling up toys to see who can be the first one dead. If we fix the bridges, we'll always have something to eat, and friends who want to see us.
It's time to stop treating the world as a business, and start treating it as our family, because it is.
The minute you are polite to someone, it greatly reduces the chance you will murder that person.
All those innocent people have died because we all insist on living the lie that we have created for our world, and we kill people to prove the lie is true.
***
I know this would be a tidy ending to this story, but permit me just one more, not too cloying attempt at what I'm trying to convey. A long time ago I used to know this cantankerous Mayan philosopher who insisted humanity's fate all depended on the song it sang, and that very soon, when the 30,000 year long Mayan calendar came to an end (now only seven years from now), humanity as a single voice would be required to sing a song that would signal larger, more advanced civilizations that we were ready for introduction into the galactic community.
I want you to ponder what is happening in the world, consider the things we talk about, and then take a stab at predicting what kind of song the rest of the universe is hearing from Planet Earth. I tend to think of the Jimi Hendrix version of the American national anthem, as poignant and horrifying as anything the devil himself could compose in the bowels of Hell.
To say the very least, it is a song that would not attract decent friends. In fact, if you conducted a poll of all the animal species on this planet, guess who would get voted off the island?
But one thing is certain: We all will be required to sing that song. What kind of song will it be?
* From 'An Afternoon With Eustace Mullins'
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/07/268064.shtml
John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, who after sixty years has regrettably come to the conclusion that he lives in a country that has broken every promise it ever made to anyone, and continues to do so.
http://www.johnkaminski.com/
What Song Do You Sing
