08-26-2019, 12:50 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-26-2019, 12:52 PM by Eric the Green.)
(08-25-2019, 08:55 AM)sbarrera Wrote:(08-23-2019, 11:26 AM)tg63 Wrote: Some really good stuff in here.
To your third point, religion and tyranny - I submit that they align not because of any shared values, but rather the shared need for authoritarianism by nn% of the people (I'll submit that nn = approx 30, but in the end it really doesn't matter what the number is).
I agree. Religion isn't about helping people; it's about sticking to a strict code of behavior, following traditional rules. It's aligned with law and order, and suppression of women and LBGTQ people, so it fits with the right-wing politics.
Only right-wing religion is about that. The religious left is about social justice and is aligned with the left wing instead, the opposite of all those things. Religion is originally about the revelation of God. That is more than a code of behavior. It is transcendent experience that connects people with the source of all life and the basis for love. It is love itself. That was always the prime energy behind Christian society, and behind Buddhist, Hindu and even Moslem societies too. They expressed their inspiration in great art and architecture. Ancient and even some early modern peoples designed their cities according to the spirit and the sky. There was a greater vision directing them.
You can see this clearly in the Islamic, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and ancient indigenous arts and temples around the world. Our society alone rejects this inspiration. We Americans have been duped that the purpose of life is to make money and mechanize the world. This view also came from England. It has been very influential, but it is a false view, and a society based on it must fall. It is not sustainable. Only a society based on transcendent inspiration can survive in the long run. God and Spirit must drive it.
And in America, it's the Awakenings that drive this only potential source for a sustainable society, and these awakenings have become more and more transcendental and less traditional as each one has come to us. We can if we choose embrace those awakenings, in which the inspiration jumps from one to the next, and continues to unfold the true foundation for a future America that can experience a true golden age, or two or three of them. Unless the Awakenings burst through their current cage though, and inspire society through all its turnings and not just one of them, then this golden age, this sustainable America, will never come.
And the kind of view that I express here, must no longer be the seen as a passing phase that someone has just because he or she is a boomer. What I say has been true for thousands of years.