[lit-ideas] Re: Contemplating Geary, the Omphaloskeptic
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:31:31 -0600
LH:
You, a lapsed Catholic want to argue about religion?
I'm not a lapsed Catholic, I'm an apostate Catholic. Don't sell me short.
And I'm not wanting to argue about religion -- what is there to argue?
There is only one religion and that is Religion. There are different
institutions that started out as Religion but all eventually took on dogma
which is, of course, not only antithetical to Religion, but fatal.
Your "some religions get silly" strikes
me as silly.
I was afraid you couldn't handle the truth.
There is Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Shintoism, etc. What
"religion" do you see as getting silly?
When a religion turns into an institution it becomes silly. All religions
that pervert the yearning for the infinite into dogma become silly and lose
the essence of Religion. Some religions are more silly than others.
And what does "dogma is not religion" mean? All religions have dogma. One
learns what a religion teaches through its dogma.
Dogma has nothing to do with Religion. Dogma is the silly nonsense of
frightened little men desperate to control their craving for existence. The
only way they know how to stop loving the world is to blind themselves to
it. Dogma is blinders of the soul. Dogma turns Religion into an
institution.
Unless you are
recommending that one should learn about a given Religion through another
mystical embrace.
There is only one Religion and that is the mystical embrace of existence.
Why does the word "mystical" frighten you so? It simply means friendship
with the unknowable and unexplanable.
I wrote in my last note, that Religion for you is Hinduism and you believe
in the Atman joining the Brahman ultimately.
You see, there you go with the dogma. I don't do dogma. I don't believe
that I will eventually become one with the godhead. I don't believe there's
a godhead. But I desire the godhead. I desire infinite existence. I
desire infinite bliss. I desire infinite knowledge. Therefore I have
Religion. But I certainly don't subscribe to any institution. I hold no
beliefs. I do have great respect for Hinduism and it's protestant version,
Buddhism, and for the Abrahamic religions and for what some refer to as
primal religions. What I respect in them is their impulse towards the
oneness of being. What I reject in them is the apparently human need
(especially on the part of male humans, it seems) to take a beautiful
impulse and spit on it and drag it through the dirt of dogma until they have
made it unrecognizable, made it into something as dirty as they fear
themselves to be and then they decorate their dogma-defiled impule with a
thousand rules and call it God's truth. But it's still just themselves in
their self-hatred made manifest.
But enough of this. What does this have with the steps one has to take to
get from now to _Peace_? Nothing. And peace after all is what you are
after with your mysticism, isn't it?
You use the word 'mysticism' as though it were a synonym for mumbo-jumbo. I
use the word to mean a particular type of psychological experience, usually
described as transcendence, that can't be explained rationally. So the
answer to your question is no, peace is not what I'm after with 'my'
mysticism. I have no mysticism. I've only had one mystical experience in
my life -- but that was on acid, so it probably doesn't count.
Let's hear about the steps.
I've told you the steps several times in various formats. You seem to have
a problem getting them into your operating system. Here we go again then,
in good old HTML, all 8 of them:
(1) " No more war. War, never again!" We commit ourselves to that as a
nation.
(2) Starting the first day of President Obama's enlightened reign , I
recommend that for the next 50 years we maintain the military budget as it
now exists ($700 billion -- 29 times that of the rest of the world combined:
Hey, ya gotta be prepared) with increases to keep up with inflation.
(3) Also starting on the first day of President Obama's enlightened reign, I
recommend that for the next 10 years we divert each year 2/3 of the military
budget to social and economic programs at home and around the world to
eradicate poverty and injustice. I would recommend that we urge other
industrialized nations to follow suit, but if we must, then we go it alone.
(4) Secondly, for the next 10 years in the benevolent reign of whomever, I
recommend we divert 3/4 of the military budget as above.
(5) Thirdly, for the next 10 years, I recommend that we divert 90 % of the
military budget as above.
(6) Fourthly, for the next 10 years, I recommend that we divert 98% of the
military budget as above.
(7) Fifthly, for the next 10 years, I recommend that we divert all the
military budget as above.
(8) All the peaceful years beyond, I recommend we spend melting down all
those useless, anachronistic weapons. It'll take forever.
Mike Geary
Memphis
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