When I first saw this graphic, it really grabbed my attention. Scripture. Right up there with science and your personal experience. Not how you feel. We are not talking about taking an account of your body’s nervous reaction to stimulus. We’re not asking if you are identifying something good or bad inside yourself. We’re asking you if you have competence to make good choices.
I want to be one of these people to remind everybody a little bit about history. By everybody I mean all of our extremely self-pleased Christian brothers and sisters right now over in America and around the globe. Christianity is winning! Gosh it feels good to be a member of the team, doesn’t it? It seems that religion is the most intrusive species of organization we have ever devised as human beings. The right of self-perpetuation is literally the right to rape. You have the right to go into another person’s life and make value judgments that they have absolutely no right to argue with. And if you’re lucky enough to be the rapist rather than the raped, you know what religious zeal feels like. Don’t you know the way? Don’t you feel the power?
When I was doing those translations from Western Russia talking about the corruption and ecological destruction done by the Russian national industrial complex, I didn’t really think of myself as being a part of a team. I mean, the newspaper that my journalist wrote for won the Nobel prize. It was the second time I was loosely associated with a Nobel prize winner in 2 years. And it all had something to do with my point of view as an activist, don’t you know. I have a point of view. And ironically, when I tried to tell people that we want to Nobel prize, the only interesting reaction to it from anyone was to ask if I got any of the money. I didn’t but it was a pretty cool question. It seems there is no value to being a part of a team unless you’re getting paid.
And here is where things get sticky. In the confluence in this photo here, we see the problems trying to make a clear choice. What we can have is perhaps something called will. This is the item on the left that talks about experience. This is the individual’s desire to do something. And then to this we must add the science. And this is vitally important. We must do the mathematics on whether or not this is a good idea. If you don’t take the time to seriously consider it the negative consequences of your actions, well, perhaps you’re very popular culturally for living life up to its fullest but you’re also working hell-bent to take yourself out of the gene pool. And ruin everybody else’s day in the process.
I used to like going out to the ocean or to rivers and diving from rocks. It was a great thrill to jump off and land in the water. I wouldn’t say I was a great diver but I really enjoyed it. And I remember looking at a giant rock one time. It was like one of those monoliths in Thailand. It was a big giant saying and I could climb to the top and jump off of. And I had a picture of myself doing exactly that. Oh of course I would check the depth of the area around it and find some kind of suitable place. But the more I looked at this rock the more I agreed that it would kill me if I went there. The more I looked at it, the more logical it was that the thrill of the jump was not worth the negative consequences of failure. And I was not getting paid anything for taking the chance except for the thrill.
The difference in this decision is that I was sitting on the beach and contemplating my actions. I was thinking about it. Forethought. It’s good to have forethought. It means thinking about things ahead of time or thinking about things first. I think the real trick is not to include the scripture in any of you thinking. Why? Where does it belong?
I really mean this seriously. Let’s say it’s just a matter of choosing what kind of food you’re going to cook for dinner. You’re thinking about the health of your family but also that they’re happy and what they eat etc etc. I’m thinking from a female perspective or a male perspective. Do you really want to know anything other than what maybe you want and to think of it’s a good idea scientifically going forward? Do you really need to think of anything else but a good or bad outcome that you could evaluate? Because this is my question. What is scripture doing in this thought?
I can answer this question using my own personal style. I give lots of stories and metaphors illustrating my point. If you are familiar with Bible scripture, you can quote it to people and because so many people have read the Bible, you have an automatic audience for your words. You see how that works? When you agree that you’re a club member, you get members of the club joining you.
My question is why? Because the answer is only going to come back as saying that at one point in history, a similar situation kind of existed at least in metaphor and it had the following conclusion. However, do you agree with the conclusion is being righteous? The children of Israel were getting stoned to death for their indiscretions. Whatever happened to thou shalt not kill? Hypocrisy!
And this brings us back to exactly what religion is and why we cling to it so desperately. What is it about old books and stories of desert people that make us so crazy that we cannot live reasonable lives exactly in the world we live in? Why can’t we all just be cleaning up our personal gardens and making the world an absolutely perfect place. Human beings are known for beautifications. We make natural systems better. We help water flow. We help plants and forests grow. This would be a cool reputation on the planet for a change.
It is exactly the disallowance of making a rational decision that is the existence of religion itself. They exist in the right of confusion. You are not smart enough to know the conundrum of God and therefore you have to join the group and follow along and do what we do. If that includes hate, you learn to hate. If it means spending all your day defining which people are good and rich people are bad, you know how to hate.
Maybe one more short story. My friend Elena died. I was returning home from her funeral and I ran into a woman on a bicycle who was sent by the church to pick up the slack on what Elena was doing for me. She was cleaning up and washing and such. I thanked the woman who had a bright smile, bright as sunshine, nothing but optimism at the opportunity to meet me. And I’m sure she believed that she was a bicyclist to mean something. I told her that it was a little early to be thinking about this. I told her it’d be interested in having a look at my life and seeing what happens now that Elena is gone. I’m not really interested in following any artificial routes. I’m not really sure I want to replace her.
She was okay about it but we met again on the telephone to see if maybe we got along. We didn’t. It turns out that she was doing what’s called her Christian duty. It made her very happy to be able to inflict herself on me. It made her feel so free and full of life to walk into my life and tell me that she would now be helping me out and taking the place of the woman who just died. The church had sent her. Hallelujah.
In the conversation, she played a remarkable card. What about the devil? It was one of these vexing moments. I was perplexed. I stopped the conversation and stared at her for a moment. How am I supposed to talk about this? There is no science to anything we’re talking about and we’re not actually doing anything at all. We’re not discussing work or what’s necessary for life. I’m not even asking for anything but now I am to consider the Christian concept of the devil? Why would this woman even use the word in conversation? If she’s such a beautiful Christian angel, what the hell is she doing invoking demons!
The answer is that punishment is a part of it. It’s a sadomasochistic relationship. It’s a relationship based upon dominance and power. It is the thing that disallows anyone from agreeing that self exists. It is exactly that vexing and confusing action of adding in a completely unnecessary additive to confuse people from being able to make logical choices for their lives and the lives of their communities. Literally, we are kept blind, deaf and dumb and as perpetually afraid as any blind, deaf and dumb person might be.
So here I employed clear thinking. I’m okay with God. I’ve read the Torah a few times. I would not say I was a famous scholar. Just a writer who took on an idea. Maybe it was a little like that writer who wrote about the Muslims got a jihad on his head. Salman Rushti. But what I did was not really satire or parity as much as simply taking a practical self-interest plus science look at the politics going on under Mount Sinai. The children of Israel are being written about and I’m in the story. But I’m not lost in the reverence of Moses. I’m not buying into his cult of personality. I don’t see him as a Donald Trump type great man. I’m not awed by his charisma. I’m just asking why we can’t get decent sanitation and if we can get a clarification on the thou shalt not kill law. I just want my vote politically.
Just for the sake of clarity, I believe God is nature. Perhaps nature is the evidence of God. Or God is with us because of nature, our own and our environment. My only point of view is this: I don’t have to remember scripture to tell you that we haven’t toxic wasteland being formed and that life cannot live here. We are not talking about whether or not human beings are annoyed enough to need anything but a smash burger at the end of the day. We are saying that our environment is becoming so polluted by our use of internal combustion engines and providing goods for mass services, basically an economic based system based on profiteering, is killing us and every living thing on the planet.
And we can’t get anyone to stop because of scripture. They don’t know. They officially cannot look at it scientifically because there is always something unknowable. That’s just the way it works. This is called belief. And if you take a look at that model at the top of the page, that’s another way of saying scripture. The belief in the vexing confusion of allowing other people to dictate your decisions. The relinquishment both your right to self-determination. You stop being an individual.
So here’s the thing. I think it’s much more satisfying to solve problems. I don’t really like people who make problems. Most people I know like to stand in the road with their hand out waiting for money. I usually figure out something to do. And even when there is no way to make money, I can always find something to amuse myself. Or if not to amuse myself, to be purposeful and to help out. I can do my job. But you can’t if you truly believe that you can’t make a decision. You can’t really live your life with no personal responsibility at all. You cannot pretend you don’t exist on the planet. You have to join us in reality and frankly, when the delirium fades and you see how disgusting everything is, please try hard to remember how much of the part you played in it. Take a deep dive into exactly how awful you might be as a person and learn the lesson clearly.
I vote no. I like will plus science. I don’t need pleasing anyone else to be a part of my math. I think most people believe they are being watched all the time. I’m talking specifically about my neighbors. They absolutely believe they are under perpetual surveillance, either by the state or by God. Probably both. Me? I live as ecologically as I can. I cheat a little because comforts are available for money and I have a little money. But I generally don’t make pollution. I don’t run around grubbing for peanuts and begging for handouts. I’m not out there fighting brainlessly and mindlessly while my family disintegrates to nothing. I’m not abusing my mind and my body doing the same thing again and again relentlessly for years, decades on end.
I made the decision on what level I was comfortable with. I was the one who made all of these value judgments and then agreed to look at them and see if I had made a good choice or not. That was all with full agency. I’m the boss and I’m here to say I like it a lot better. It doesn’t mean me before anyone else. It means the perfect system is where we are all bosses and we all have eyes and we all know the truth when it’s right in front of our faces.
