Epiphany Expanded

NEWS FLASH
As I paused in writing this early morning to check out the television news, the guide showed a half-hour program with Garner Ted Armstrong.  What a whiplash of consciousness for me!  I hit that channel button out of curiosity; just how old would be the video?  Might they be replaying his tapes from the sixties when I was in college and hung on every word he spoke?  When I played basketball with him and marvelled at the many tattoos emblazoned on his body?  Or would they replay video from the seventies leading up to his excommunication by his dad?  Or would it be from the last decade of his life, long after I had seen him and had lost all interest in his product?  But what I found instead was a replacement infomercial about better abs!  Fitting, I would say.  Take care of your body; you'll be better off in the long run!

But to continue my earlier writing - -

Subservient!  Such a demoralizing idea, handed to us by tradition and ages of servitude to something greater!  Such a difficult way to live, always assuming the worst about ourselves and our very tentative existence, all the while struggling to please something beyond our grasp.  Beyond our sight.  Humanity could be great!  But we waste so much energy on traditional nonsense.

My friend, Dr. John Bennett, writes of the magnificence of the cosmos and a healthy reverence humans might pay to the greatness of all that exists - to be better caretakers and stop destructive wars and pollution.  His science is all about energy and a proposed new law of energy.  His philosophy, rather than making worms of humans, shows us that we are indeed small in stature when compared to the amazing, ever-expanding universe, but that we may well be the keepers of the record of life and are probably the greatest product of the awesome forces of evolution.  Each human could be glorious while still human, rather than struggling against ourselves for all our lives to somehow, with great humility and hope-beyond-hope, perhaps qualify to become some other form in another life - finally, maybe, by the skin of our teeth and through ascetic self-denial, becoming glorious.

Personally, I try to be glorious pretty much daily.  Failure to manage this every day is inevitable, but trying is as simple as starting each day with a positive attitude instead of begging on my knees for help because I am so weak and worthless!  Many days, because I am happy to serve other humans without being subservient, I accomplish a decent amount of glory.  Sometimes I even allow myself a bit of crowing about it!  Typically though, I am quietly pleased with a day's outcome and go to sleep contented.  Never again will I see myself as a worm, and never again will I waste morning and evening time on my painful old knees to satisfy some foolish, age-worn concept of humility called subservience.  Not to an invisible supreme being nor to visible, greedy people who see themselves as worthy to be served.  To the Trumps of our society who expect to be served!

In reading the words purportedly spoken by a Son of God, that one should serve others, Christians have turned that into meaning one should be a slave to a belief, to be subservient to the ultimate guide, the supreme being.  The tendency then is to be subservient to the various vicars of that supreme being.  

Why are most of today's religious Americans part of the political right wing?  Why do they readily follow along with Republican policies?  Easier for me to understand now than it was ever before.  In fact, I could never grasp it in any way prior to my epiphany.  [ I'm interjecting here that none of this means I hate Republicans or Christians.  Rarely do I even experience hate; seeing my wife suffer pain - that I truly hate.  Humans, no.  I happen to love some folks who are of both persuasions, Christian and Republican, and I respect vast numbers of people who are both or either of the two.  All I ask is that people look inside their own traditions and habits with a healthy skepticism about the rightness of all their handed-down beliefs. ] 

The religious are taught from the cradle to be followers of strong lords.  If these believers ever stoop to being entangled in governments of this world, who represents the most powerful vicars to be followed within a government of man?  Naturally the wealthiest and most powerful.  Why would so many within the 99% of our nation, in financial terms, be so willing to support and cater to those wealthiest who keep gaining ever more wealth by their greed and their purchased control of our elected representatives?  I believe now it is a simple thing: they are living vicariously through these lords and have some vague hope of becoming the lords themselves - much the way I was an aspiring "God" back in my Christian days.  Our sect taught us to believe we would eventually be part of the God family!  That we would rule our own worlds, that of the increase of His government there would be no end!  Is it not understandable, within the framework of this heavy concept of belief in a hoped-for next life, that once a person tries to flee the madness of one small sect, his sight would turn to new lords and not to self-assertion and independence?  Just ponder the question.

Please understand me here, dear Reader; I am not talking politics.  I am talking, I suppose, sociology in some way, though as an untrained sociologist.  I hope those young students of the discipline such as Joy who writes in that other blog mentioned, will take up where I am incapable of expounding and will do some serious research.  I am philosophizing free-style here.  That's what free-thinkers do.  And don't get the idea I am some kind of bleeding-heart liberal, as a friend named George recently branded me.  I am in fact, extremely liberal.  I am a free thinker!  Far too liberal and free to be labeled a Democrat!  I am truly democratic in my way of seeing the world; egalitarian to the max.  The far-right agenda sickens and angers me!  I see us as a nation, trudging surely to that theocracy concept that so infects the masses of our planet.  That stifling world of subservience exhibited by our sadly unenlightened Middle-East brothers belonging to faiths that gladly throw human life to the wind, killing insanely.  Where is the difference, really?  Any theocracy is as dangerous as the next.  And who wants to live under a theocratic form of government?  Christians do!  And what group of people could supply enough votes to sway our nation toward theocracy?  Christians.  It explains finally to me how our electorate could put back into office, in 2004, a complete incompetent who was far worse than just a buffoon.  He was a menace to the world and had already proven destructive to the American and democratic way of life.  The first president in our nation's history to attack a sovereign nation in an unprovoked war must have come across as powerful to religionists - and don't overlook the subliminal tendency Christians would surely have had then to vote for the guy most fiercely attacking that other huge religious group over there!

And apparently Christians loved our international embarrassment who masqueraded as a leader!  They appear to think a lot of his new clone who struts in the same Texas manner while running for office and scares the crap out of those of us who love democracy. 

So the two problems I have with today's Republicans (remember, I liked Ike!) are: 1.) They have sold themselves to the rich and powerful, and 2.) They have dragged Christians along with them by using the above described proclivity for the religious to follow the highest power available.  Now that these factions have formed their unholy(!) union, they appear determined to take us further down that road to a theocracy, to a restricted life, even as they try to use the word freedom in their appeal to the populace.  Throw in those social issues of when does life begin and is it okay to be gay, and you're all set to grind unbelievers into the dust of history.  And the 1% will gladly pay for the continued demise of democracy in the name of capitalism.  They destroy both.  And by the way, they don't really give a damn about your beliefs, Christians!

There will one day be no freedom left in the home of those not willing to be brave and not willing or able to think for themselves.  Again, I am not speaking politics here except as it applies to the trends that have been set in motion.  As a fierce independent, I detest any form of tyranny over the mind of man, including theocracy!

markman