in the cae of religious fanaticism the more one suffers the more (s)he feels worthy of what is promised to him. Faith becoming a measurment of irrational resistance to doubt and personal observation. One is told what goes against sensual awareness and the more against it it goes the more faith is demanded by it. The "chosen ones" become those able or simple enough to overcome reason using emotion and instinct and "hope" or those that just cannot reason at all, beyond a certain level. The "chosen one's" virtue gaged by how disciplined it remains to the popular absurd and culturally accetable 'reality".
The 'chosen ones' are truly those who choose, as opposed to those who 'attain'. Knowledge is attained, faith is merely chosen. The new Pope was in the news today...he has decided that the official catholic doctrine regarding 'purgatory' is merely a theological speculation, not a revealed truth. And also that hell is an actual 'place', a peice of real estate...as opposed to the earlier doctrine that hell is merely a 'state' of separation from God. Or at least I think thats the jist of the article...it was a little fuzzy on details.
In the U.S. this method of "dumbing down" is essential to the stability of the system. How else can you convince 300 million people that they live in a Democracy with 2 parties covering the vast spectrum of political thought when there are countries 1/10th the size with 10 times as many political options? How else can you justify the richest nation on earth unable to guarantee the health care of is citizens when other poorer nations do just that? How else can you convince 300 millon individuals using absurd notions of 'evil empires' and 'axis of evil' or lead them to war half way around the world on the grounds of national defence and 'doing the right thing' or 'weapons of mass destruction' or false premises where nobody pays the penalty, afterwards, for decieving imbeciles to go kill and die for money and power others will enjoy? How else do you keep a nation of 300 millon docile and content with T.V. journalism and talk-shows while their civil-liberties are stripped and nobody even pulls a sweat? How, you say? You set up a system where it mass produces imbecils like IceAgeCivilizations. Sheep to the slaughter.....
Yes but it makes for great theatre...I enjoy watching from the relative safety of foreign lands. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It is all illusion, frozen in time, awaiting the eternal sun-burst which will be the closing parenthetical to this empty dance upon life's cruel stage.
I agree and disagree. Americans behave stupidly, but are not relatively stupid, compared to normal humans, now, and in most times in history. It isn't exactly normal to have a population that has high intelligence, afaik. Non-Americans may seem "smarter" for taking the smart, anti-American side, but it is really easy to be critical. None of these anti-Americans would be able to come to America and fix their politics. I don't see many of the foreigners here in America being any less confused about how to handle politics here. Many of the Europeans who talk about American immorality do so while they live in countries that cooperate with the US in their immoral actions. I never hear a European complaining about their own countries multinational corporations exploiting other countries, and they excel at it as much as the US does. This is not to say they are not correct in critisizing the US, just that Americans are not abnormal in this regard -- "stupidity" is the norm.
