Spiritual Survivalism

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Darth Behemoth, Apr 5, 2013.

  1. Darth Behemoth Registered Member

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    Ok, Ok so I'm starting a new religion dedicated to Survivalism. I'm trying to replace religions dedicated to irrationalism, with a more pragmatic religion that will prepare people for when society breaks down. What should be it's moral system, based on rational basis? What age should we teach gun control? What's the most stable basis for organizing- The clan, tribe or larger? What should be our religious symbol?
     
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  3. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    If you want a religion to survive, it must not use any symbol. It's ideology must survive centuries of constant change, wars, and inactivity...its concept are the ones close to ones heart and soul. A simple surviving is not something people want from their lives, they want full engaging life full of happiness, sorrow, and passion and divine meaning to it all.
     
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  5. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    Look at the way some of the Native Americans lived and use them as an example of a way to start off with a new society. Then add some of what the early Greeks came up with to form their society.
     
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2013
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  7. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    So you think that when society breaks down, it will be nevertheless still possible for people to organize themselves into some kind of social units that consist of more than one person?
     
  8. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    What you're seeing is not the breakdown of society, but rather its homogenization.

    Information is the key to the advance of civilization. The dawn of the Information Revolution can be identified as the first civilian non-experimental use of telegraphy in the 1830s, allowing instantaneous exchange of information over long distances. The telephone, radio, TV and the digital computer increased its speed, penetration and bandwidth in turn, making it increasingly difficult for traditional institutions to control the knowledge and attitudes of the population--governments, churches, schools, the press, even communities and the family.

    But it was the Internet that caused the current quantum increase in the explosion of information. Literacy is spreading quickly, cellphones put people in touch with virtually the entire world population, the web gives everybody access to everything everybody else has said or written and lets them discuss it with each other. People now have an alternative to the "party line" of their autocratic state, their phallocratic religion, or their dictatorial father. This same electronic technology has made virtually all enterprises cheaper and more efficient, including physical movement, allowing migrations on a scope never seen before. The populations of countries are no longer more-or-less homogeneous, as the USA becomes 25% Latino and more people in Paris attend services in Islamic mosques than in Catholic churches.

    It's proving impossible for governments to halt the movement of populations. Or even commodities: the shit-for-brains U.S. government's "War on Drugs" is a dismal failure despite its astronomical cost in dollars, rights and lives. Much less information: People in Tehran watch "The Daily Show" and people in New York watch Al Jazeera.

    The smart money is on the institutions that recognize this and capitalize on it, rather than the ones that desperately try to keep their subjects in the 20th century. Azerbaijan, once a pitiful Soviet republic, is now booming, with its "Islam-lite" culture that rivals Albania, giving women the same rights as men and supporting music (which in some Muslim nations is officially banned) so enthusiastically that it hosted the Eurovision contest. Iranians cross the border in droves to enjoy vacations in a country where women wear bathing suits and restaurants serve pork, but there's still a mosque in every neighborhood.

    Therefore, my answer to your overall question is: "None of the above. You need to realign your thinking with the 21st century."

    But to respond to specific issues...
    • Moral system. I have always said that there is only one rule that defines "civilization": You may never kill another human being except in self defense against an immediate threat of death or major damage to yourself or society. In other words, the other guy has already chosen to secede from civilization so its rules no longer apply to him. The reason for this is that if we each have to devote a significant portion of our energy and other resources to protecting ourselves from each other, the surplus productivity that makes civilization possible will be dissipated and we'll be back in the Stone Age before long. All other "morality" is negotiable. People get to choose how they live, and if they don't like the way their family/clan/tribe/city/state/nation/trans-national hegemony is run, they can rather cheaply and easily go live someplace where they find the rules less oppressive.
    • Gun control. In the USA, this is a sad case of what might be called "the inverse of the tragedy of the commons." So many people have guns that lots of other people feel that they need guns to protect themselves from those people. Then they become "those people" and the rest of the population feels that they need protection against them. But in fact every gun brought into the society makes everyone incrementally less safe. The reason is that each gun in private hands is three times more likely to be used to murder an innocent citizen (by the owner in confusion or anger, often against his/her spouse, or by someone who steals it from the owner or wrestles it away from him in a confrontation) than to be used for protection against an assailant or a rabid mountain lion. AND it is also three times more likely to be used by the owner to commit suicide, whereas if he had to use any other method, it would automatically give him time to reconsider. This means that for every legitimate use of a gun for self defense, six tragedies occur. I don't know what the answer to this is. Certainly "gun control" should be taught to every citizen as soon as he's old enough to understand the words. But first we probably have to physically destroy the NRA offices and dump their leaders in the ocean with concrete shoes so they will stop using their enormous treasury to corrupt local, state and national government. And since they each have about twelve guns, that won't be easy. It would help immensely if the press would do its job and alert us to the scope of the problem: In the USA, guns now kill more people than road accidents! But the newspapers report in gory detail every death wrought by terrorists, but only about 5% of the deaths caused by guns in the hands of American citizens. They make it seem like terrorism is a bigger threat to our lives than our own neighbors with their guns. So our people happily submit to every indignity the TSA can think of to make air travel even more unpleasant, whereas they scream if we talk about the "gun problem." A large segment of the population actually believes the NRA's preposterous, illogical advice that the solution to the problem of too many fucking goddamned guns is MORE FUCKING GODDAMNED GUNS!
    • Religious symbol? Religion is an artifact of the Stone Age. It's time for the human race to evolve out of that era of ignorance and fairytales. So, how about that bumper-sticker graphic with the cross, crescent, Star of David and all the other symbols of the dominant religions, with a gigantic red circle-and-diagonal-line NO symbol through it all? Religions caused, or greatly exacerbated, most of the wars of the last millennium. (Before you shout, "Hey what about communism?" remember that communism is an offshoot of Christianity. Marx's slogan, "to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability," is an elaboration of a line from the Book of Acts. An economy in which what a man takes from civilization need not correlate in any way with what he gives back is a religious fairytale that can't possibly succeed in reality, as we all witnessed.) It's a new millennium. Time to dump religion in the dustbin. With the fucking goddamned guns!
     
  9. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Why did you post this thread to 'Comparative Religion'? It seems to me to just be another of Sciforums' annoying political Stupidthreads that would probably be more appropriate in 'Politics' (aka the cesspool).

    Why does the subject line contain the word 'spiritual'? Why a "new religion"? Can an individual just wake up and decide to "start a new religion" one day? Is that how it works?

    A one-man religion maybe, but what would that offer anyone else? If individuals are all going to be starting their their own new religions, then why wouldn't other people create their own religions for themselves? Why do you imagine that everyone would want to follow yours?

    Do "religions dedicated to irrationalism" even exist?

    Is society likely to break down in the 'zombie apocalypse' fashion that you seem to be envisioning?

    I think Western society, American society in particular, is already deep into decline. But I don't anticipate it ever falling apart into some absolutely individualistic war of all against all. It will just grow more stratified by class and more dictatorial as time goes on. It's already headed down that road. (Today's American politics is increasingly about who tomorrow's ruling elite will be.)

    If you are anticipating the kind of all-against-all anarchy in which survivalism is a viable alternative, then gun control would probably be the last thing on the agenda. People would need to be arming themselves before it happens, so as to be able to defend themselves.

    But I don't anticipate the military unraveling. It's more likely that the military will just slowly turn into the enforcement arm of the new ruling elites.

    That might conceivably be the occasion for a second American Revolution, in the name of popular liberty, and that would probably require some kind of unconventional insurgency (which experience has shown can be quite effective against unpopular conventional armies). Again, that would require that the population have access to arms. No doubt that's one of the reasons why there's so much agitation among the ruling elites right now to restrict the little person's access to firearms out there in 'flyover country'.

    Look, the idea of imagining all this political stuff in terms of inventing a new "religion" isn't even remotely realistic in my opinion. You aren't going to be the world's zombie-apocalypse messiah. And you won't be inventing a whole new culture, a whole new form of social organization entirely out of nothing. Whatever happens in the future will evolve out of the conditions prevailing at that time.
     
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2013
  10. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Our gods typically reflect how we live and who we are in our daily lives. For early Paleolithic hunters, the gods were beasts and monsters to be conquered or sacrificed. For the later agrarian societies, the earth goddess with her young male consort was the model. With the emergence of monarchies and empires the gods became kings ruling over their respective kingdoms. For life in a postapocalytic world, where survivors are trying to eek out a living from inside the wreckage of a bygone civilzation, I can imagine a shift back to a messianic theme. Of a demigod who will incarnate among us and reeducate us in the old forgotten ways of science and technology. A prophet or law giver who could restore order and harmony among the various warring tribes. But more of an Archimedes than a Jesus or Buddha. A god of reason and utility rather than a god of morality.
     
    Last edited: Apr 7, 2013
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Then it's up to the rest of us to keep it within the realm of scholarship, eh?

    Because that's the way Darth is thinking.

    Or at least the way he wants us to believe he's thinking. I admit that when a guy chooses the screen name "Darth Behemoth," which is flippant and tinged with evil, it's not easy to take him seriously about being very spiritual or founding a religion.

    Oh I think it's happened maybe a few times. L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology), for damn sure! How about Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), Joseph Smith (Latter-Day Saints or "Mormons") and George Fox (Society of Friends or "Quakers")? Heck, what about Mohammed???

    Baha'ullah? Martin Luther? When you end up with a religion named after you, you probably invented it.

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    Dictionary definitions of the word "religion" do not rule out the possibility of a religion having only one member. However, Émile Durkheim insists that religion differs from private belief in that it is "something eminently social." [from Wikipedia]

    Indeed, looking back (and sideways) at all the world's religions, it seems that at their core each one contains an imperative to form or build a community, either by evangelism (many Christian and Muslim sects take this to an ugly and violent extreme) or by finding others who share the same beliefs and bonding with them.

    Surely none of their members would put it that way, but they are all based on a world view that is centered on irrationality. They're built upon faith. Their evangelists quickly remind us that science is too, but they carefully avoid distinguishing between the rational faith of science (the Earth has spun at the rate of one rotation every 24 hours since we've been able to measure it, so it's rational to assume that it will continue to do so) and the irrational faith of religion (God deliberately hides from us but we irrationally believe he's there anyway).

    When Mrs. Fraggle was studying Latin American literature for her master's degree 30 years ago, she said, "Mark my words, that region will be the next center of the world economy and culture." She just didn't realize it would happen so fast that we'd live to see it. Brazil is already the world's sixth largest economy, and in a single generation Mexico has changed itself from a banana republic to a middle-class country and is quietly "re-shoring" U.S. manufacturing from those zero-quality slave-plants in China.

    What we're witnessing is the Paradigm Shift from the Industrial Era to the Information Age. It's always scary to live on such a cusp, just see Dickens's observations on the Industrial Revolution. But civilization always emerges stronger, with a multiple-order-of-magnitude increase in GDP courtesy of the paradigm-shifting technology. (The paradigm-shifting technology of the Industrial Revolution was the conversion of the chemical energy in fossil fuel into the kinetic energy to drive industrial processes, leveraging the productivity of human and animal physical labor to an extent that no one could have dreamed of. The current paradigm shift is leveraging the productivity of our mental labor.)

    One of the key results of the information-based economy is a quantum increase in the individual's knowledge, particularly of what life is like elsewhere. Another is a quantum increase in the affordability of travel, and yet another is the loss of power of the traditional institutions to constrain the behavior of their constituents: governments, churches, the press, schools, even family and community are challenged by what people now know about myriad opportunities to live in some other way. As a result, those institutions are losing power rapidly.

    Of course they use any means to slow that loss, including some pretty dishonorable tactics, such as the U.S. government's "War on Drugs" that has killed 30,000 Mexicans but made absolutely no change in drug use. But in the long run they fail. As I've noted before, the U.S. is now about 25% Latino and there are more Muslim religious services in Paris than Catholic.

    What you're seeing is the death throes of the traditional institutions. Surely you noticed the implosion of the Soviet Union.

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    The Chinese were reading their memos and quickly hybridized their brand of communism with a little Confucianism (which teaches people to trust the people in power) and a whole lot of capitalism (which makes them a little less angry as they're watching their brand new TVs). Look at how the labor unions have fallen in the USA, once arguably our mightiest political force. The same is happening to the corporations, which are nothing more than artifacts of the Industrial Era, whose massive projects required more capital than any one family could invest, but are now incapable of competing with small startup firms in places like Estonia.

    Information is the new "commodity," but unlike the old commodities, once you've created it you can duplicate it and distribute it for practically no cost. This is going to turn everything we think we know about economics on its head. And as economics goes, so goes government!

    None of you young people get it. Why does the Old Fart have to explain it to you? The next war will be fought in cyberspace. Guns are obsolete. Only hoodlums (and wackos like the NRA and Al Qaeda) use them anymore. The death toll from actual traditional explosive-based warfare is dropping with every decade. A battle that kills fifty people is now front-page news. In WWII that would have been considered a slow day and they'd break out the hooch. Thirty thousand Americans are killed by civilian gunfire every year (that includes suicides, which are slightly more than half the total)--and in some years that's probably greater than the world's total war casualties.

    No dude, if you want to survive the next war, keep your antivirus software up to date. And lobby the idiots in Congress and the state legislatures to improve the cybersecurity in America's power grid. The Chinese could probably take it down right now. They just won't because their economy is a subsidiary of ours. Their hackers are probably working overtime to fix the security holes in all the U.S. networks so the Russians and Iranians can't get in.

    The U.S. military is hardly the world's leader in cyberwar and cybersecurity. For that you have to hire the Israelis. Who hacked into Iran's last nuclear program and shut it down?

    You're still thinking inside the box. The population already has access to the internet. U.S. cybersecurity is so bad that I wouldn't be surprised if the fourteen-year-old geek who lives in the house next to you isn't already trying to hack into our military networks.

    Huh? The ruling elites cave in to the NRA once a week. This country is basically run by the gun nuts.
     
  12. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    If you think about the right to bear arms, this appeared in the US Constitution, because America began as a country of frontiers. The Old world was all paved over and lacked frontiers. Guns allowed one to hunt and live off the wild land as people pushed west and developed the wild frontier. Guns also allowed protection in secluded frontier places where there was limited law enforcement to protect settlers from bandits and indians or even a greedy neighbor. The right to bear arms put justice within the hands of the people so criminals would not have their ways.

    The current gun ban is mostly about taking guns from legal people but not the criminals, who do most of the damage with guns. I would guess the criminals must have lobbied their democratic representatives and gave them campaign contributions. It does not make any sense to restrict the honest but not first deal with the criminals, unless you favor criminals. Drugs are illegal yet anyone can get anything they want if one is not afraid to break the law. The same is true of guns.

    There is another reason why liberals prefer to restrict the honest and not the criminals. Lawyers contribute more to democrats than they do the republicans. While defense lawyers make their money off criminals. The logical approach is to not only maintain the supply of current criminal (leave them alone), but also increases the supply of new criminals by defining new criminals by the new gun laws. This creates new business for lawyers. It is only fair that the democrats pay back a main contributor in a way that benefits those who need more criminals. If they dealt with criminals first, the lawyers would lose business and they may not see any reason to contribute to the democrats. The republican use this criminal first approach and see what happens to them in terms of donations from the defense lawyers.
     
  13. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Yazata said: "No doubt that's one of the reasons why there's so much agitation among the ruling elites right now to restrict the little person's access to firearms out there in 'flyover country'."

    An elitist conspiracy to de-arm the "little person"? Yes, the "little" person DOES have to compensate somehow doesn't he?

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    Look, there are so many guns in America now there's enough for every man, woman, and child. But that's just a rough estimate see because there is NO national registery of gun owners in this country. The gun nuts are so frigg'n paranoid they don't even want anyone to KNOW they have a gun. Guess they don't wanna lose the element of surprise when the big bad government's F-16's fly over and napalm their asses to Timbucktoo. lol!
     
  14. Darth Behemoth Registered Member

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    First of all, survivalism does NOT mean guns; I repeat survivalism does not mean guns. I repeat, survivalism does Not mean guns.

    Heard me? Survivalism, in my case, is preperation for the total break down of courts, cops , laws , etc. Where you, and only you and the people that support you are the ONLY sense of law, justice or morality that exists. In such a society, you'r computer dosen't work, and yes, GUNS DON'T EXIST because they run ON AMMUNITION. Compare it to the Dark Ages; people are ignorant, the strongest sword or thug rules, and everybody can kiss their pimply, smelly asses.
    Could it happend? Perhaps not, with neurotic, "crazy" states like the North Koreans existing. Maybe with the existence of nuclear bombs, biological agents, dirty bombs, weapons of mass destruction. Maybs we should just HOPE that it doesen't happend. Or maybe not.
    This is how it would operate: 1. People could beleive whatever they wanted about God, gods or no gods. The point is they would have to beleive in a Higher Power, because belief in such thimgs help a lot of alcoholics, drug addicts and meth heads. It has a proven ability to give the extra "umph" necessary in a trying incident, and is used by millions to comfort themselves. I don't care if it can't be demonstrated to be true. 2. the Priests would be trained in subjects useful to recreation of civilized society. They would know and be intimately aware of survival tactcs, pharmacalogical things, hpw to eat wild food, etc. 3. Each Temple would have it's own vegetable garden and cattle, flock of sheep, etc.
    This isn't a debate whether God, gods or anything supernatural exists. This is about the survival of the human race, so we don't become extinct. This is about hte preservation of civilization, and if Allah/Jesus?YWHW/Tao/Buddha/Whatever forbid, iot should happend, what we must do to have the knowledge and experience to pick ourselves up from the ashes and restart society.
     
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    It sounds like what James Howard Kunstler is calling the Long Emergency, when the institutions we depend on collapse. I think the organizing model should be the town. We don't have to re-invent the wheel. Traditional religions will probably survive intact as well.
     
  16. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    It's mostly because we had no standing armies. If we were to maintain a coherent centrally organized country, we would need to be able to call the people to a common defense, hence the need for a militia (being necessary to secure a free people).

    The Republicans make just as liberal use of defense lawyers as any Democrat, what kind of bullshit are you spewing?
     
  17. Darth Behemoth Registered Member

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    Ok, that makes a lot of sense. But should it be democratic or ?... I think democratic, paralleling the structure of the American system. As I concieve it, each "town" would have direct democracy, but who would parallel the Congress and the Senate? Who would be the "Shotcaller", over militia action, over whether the militia would be called out? I don't want a monarchail system, and I DO want division of powers. How exactly does the Vatican run it's government?
     
  18. Darth Behemoth Registered Member

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    What is the best sword, for fighting? Also, which is the easiest to forge?
     
  19. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    depends on who you are fighting and your physique (how tall you are, how long your arms are)...
     
  20. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    forget swords.

    You are better off making giant fighting robots based on the anatomy of chickens
     
  21. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    Spiritual survivalism would literally mean learning to survive cultural assault on the human spirit. When the population become zombies, who are brain dead and only driven by impulse, the survivalists stills keep their wits about them. For example, the instinctive spirit would be the drive of our natural instincts. If culture is damaging the spirit of natural human instinct, with false instinctive, spiritual survivalism would be prepared for the courses of actions needed to overcome the assault, so natural can thrive.

    The first tool in the toolbox would need to be self awareness. If one is not aware their instinctive spirit is being damaged, then you may breath the poison gas too long and not know it. You will not know enough about yourself to act in time. Next, you also need to understand the nature of the collective social pressures which push you into the gas. Nobody wants to be socially isolated or under constant peer pressure, but sometimes running with the herd may not always lead to green pastures. Therefore to stand apart from the herd, if needed, you need self reliance. If you get back to natural, then the last tool is a megaphone to warn others.

    We live in a capitalist world where making money and making political power are important. Sometimes these motivations benefit by a sick herd, fed the gas, so they will blindly follow the leaders. Self reliance in the herd can be detrimental to the leaders. If you need votes or need people to buy, you don't want too many spiritual survival tools in their tool box.

    Like someone placing a virus in a computer, the exploiter need to disable your resistance first (can't use system restore), and then they go for the gas of disruption. Once you become self aware or the virus, it becomes very hard to get to the dusty tools in the virus locked box. They may need to reinstall your operating system on your hard drive, with another version, which generates the programs needed for group exploitation.
     
  22. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    1. Katana
    2. machete.
     
  23. Darth Behemoth Registered Member

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    Katana is hard to forge. It requires high carbon steel, and is folded over several times.

    Machete..Hmm. That might be doable.

    Is the Roman legionary technique of military training possible?
     

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