Modern Myths that Destroy Humanity
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Russell Lee Birds of a Feather May 1939 “Farm woman. Vendor of chickens at farmers’ market in Weatherford, Texas.” “All things are subject to i
[See the full post at: Modern Myths that Destroy Humanity]Modern Myths that Destroy Humanity
I now get “Article cannot be shown”
Too bad … I already read it.
Summary … hehehe
Christianity reversed the earth magnetic pole, 2,000 years ago and my compass has been pointing the wrong way all my life.
A reset will reverse the magnetic poles.
Trying to post to this article gets me ” invalid post ID”
Quotations from The Antichrist
Christianity “…turned every value into an disvalue, every truth into a lie… it created distress in order to eternalize itself.”It has “…contempt for every good and honest instinct… and its Beyond is its will to negate every reality…” Nietzsche believed that Christianity is a conspiracy “…against health, beauty, whatever has turned out well, courage, intellect, goodness of the soul, against life itself.One more try to post.
Porkpie post=796 wrote: Vandana Shiva is a woman.
Fixed.
jal,
I’m getting similar errors when I try to hit the “thank you” button. I believe it is because I deleted the initial thread and created a new one. Anyway, the ability to comment should not be hampered.
Great article, Ash. I have held a seething contempt for Sachs since Yeltsin put him in charge of stealing everything from the Russian people in the 90’s. I’ll take a Cheney or a Rumsfeld over these pseudo-progressive creeps like Obama or Sachs any day. At least you know exactly what you are dealing with. They are wolves with wolves’ fur.
But I disagree that said pseudo-progressive creeps don’t know the truth about wealth extraction. Like Bernays and Goebbels, they know the truth, but consider it their job is to turn it on it’s head. You know, the big lie repeated ad nauseum. Now we have electronic devices to pound them into our heads incessantly. You give them too much charity.
As to Nietzsche and Christianity, I would only agree in terms of the institutionalized churches whose main job is also wealth extraction, both for their bosses and for themselves. Jesus would not have nice things to say about them.
As to YesMaybe’s strange comment, I heard that Francis Drake was also a woman 🙂
I just meant it as in “better luck not assuming an author is a man next time.” It’s an honest mistake that I’m guilty of as well sometimes.
This article fell apart for me when I got to: “fundamental myth … crawling through the bowels of modern religions such as Christianity” as in my understanding to equate these myths of hard-work=success, and no need to fight for earthly justice, etc with Christianity is a gross misunderstanding of what Christianity is. However, it certainly not an uncommon understanding; so, in that sense you’re correct.
I would actually say that those myths comes much closer to matching with much more modern religions such as Islam, Mormonism, etc. (i.e. non-Christian religions). That is, all these religions say you have to work hard to get into heaven, Christianity doesn’t say that; however, there are plenty of people in power positions of so-called Christianity that say that.
I suggest one read Jesus’ words and understand the context he spoke them as opposed to what these church power mongers say he said.
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Some thoughts on growth
“My how you’ve grown!” Can be a source of pride for parents and child alike. Somehow they take credit for a biological imperative, since we come into this world so undeveloped. I think those words get imprinted into our minds early and it becomes easy for us to automatically identify with growth as a positive.
But when you get to a certain age, “My how you’ve grown!”, can be a source of dismay as clothes get too tight.
When physical growth ceases humans grow mentally till about 25 for some brain functions, while wisdom can grow endlessly, unless we become inactive, then we can get in a rut.
What if society and businesses, modeled on wisdom as a source of growth? How would we measure that? Not on the door frame with a pencil as a kid grows. What could be used to measure of wisdom-growth? Flexibility and the perspective of history?
Great post, Ash! I must say, your posts have been getting more clear and well-written and more to-the-point lately. This is a masterpiece. So can we infer from the logic here that being poor will soon become both “a sin” and “illegal” and therefore subject to punishment? Surely this state of non-participation cannot be allowed.
Ridiculous assertion. So the ‘wealth’ of neolithic tribes was stolen in Africa and North America and this enormous horde of beaver pelts, stone tools and animal skins was transmogrified into the industrial revolution.
These discussions usually leave me sitting in the uncomfortable middle, not being able to agree with either side. On one side Sacks and followers are looking at poverty as if it is a disease. So long as we find the right vacine and the correct clinical proceedures we can make it diappear like smallpox or leprosy have disappeared. The causes of poverty are too complex, too overlayered in history, culture, oppression and personal reations to ever be solved by a “process or proceedure.” On the other hand I am uncomfortable with the idea of the “noble poor” and viewing poverty as sort of an alternative life style to be cherished and left to itself. The reality of the last two hundred years is that there has been progress and much of that has come through growth. Infant mortality, death in childbirth, malnutrition, lack of education, clothing, housing have been dramatically reduced in many parts of the world. Few of us would voluntarily return to the former realities. I can not help but believe that the truly poor of Africa, South American and Asia do not want to be freed of these affilctions or that they would object to sharing the “progress” and growth that we take for granted. The key is to find a way to promote progress and to promote a sustainable growth without colonialism and oppression as its moving force. How we do this; I don’t know. Hopefully many of you are more intelligent and insightful than I am about how to get there.
sangell
That’s some very selective reading there, focusing on beaver pelts, stone tools, and animal skins. Granted, fur coats are damn expensive. But you seem to neglect, force example “without the genocide of the native American tribes, without African slavery.” Consider also the case of china: there was practically nothing the chinese wanted to import from europe, except opium which of course was known by both sides to be immensely damaging, and which the chinese allowed only after being forced to through war. The industrial revolution was significant, of course, but it did not make either human labor nor natural resources unnecessary, and europe did plunder for these in america, africa, and asia.
Well I’ll come out and say what everyone else seems to be avoiding – this article is great and mostly true. Sachs is simply a minion of the elite status quo and an extraordinary shill on par with Thomas Friedman.
Basically the real economic utility of Industrialization comes from its power to build a War Machine that can roll over everybody else who is not industrialized. Carz weren’t invented to take J6P to the Mall, they were invented to beat the crap out of anybody still riding Horseback.
Capitalism is and always has been theft on the grand scale of the Nation State, utilizing the Big Ass Military as Enforcer. As Al Capone put it, “Capitalism is the Legitimate Racket of the Ruling Class”. “Legitimate” because the guy with the biggest gun makes the Law and only enforces them to benefit himself.
Not forever though. These systems are all destined to go the way of the Dinosaur. They are not sustainable. When they pass into history, and pass they will, then the Playing Field will be levelled. Then the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth. Right AFTER the Meek get very, VERY angry.
As a non-productive food grower, this post really hit home with me. I work full time off-site, then bust my ass at home to grow food that money can’t buy. It is really tough for many people to understand why I do this to the extent I do (i.e. subsistence farming, not a hobby garden) when I can just buy cheaper food elsewhere.
And food is just one facet of this systemic problem. People are taught that accepting a more hands-on life is either ‘cracker’ or elitist depending on the point of view. What we the people need to know is the true cost of store-bought lifestyles, of externalization.
Those ‘poor’ susbistence farmers in other countries, and in our past, used to have access to common lands, grazing areas and “waste” lands. Loss or degradtion of these buffer zones threw people into hunger which led them to accept terrible conditions in return for a cash wage to buy the food they could no longer grow or glean themselves. I think that is the real tragedy of the commons.As far as liberal progressive types, I think they like their money as much as the rest of that class. They just like to feel philanthropic AND wealthy. So their resource acquisition comes with ‘aid’ and ‘progress’. There, all better. Never mind the destroyed societies and lifeways, have some Plumpy’nut.
Myths are everywhere.
Since this article is referring to christian myths, I thought that you might like to take apart the 50 virgins myth with a few questions. The answers might make someone think twice before dying for such goals.Those 50 virgins had to die to be in the afterlife to do your bidding. There cannot be that many left on earth.
Is the pool of 50 virgin in the afterlife limited by age, religion, race, looks or relationship to you?
Are the deflowered virgins discarded and replaced with a fresh supply? Eternity is a long time.Perhaps, it would be best for those young men to put their destiny in their hand rather than to rely on the promised pleasures of the afterlife.
Ash,
Bageant must be delighted to see you pick up the gauntlet dropped with his mortal coil.
On Christianity, in my recent efforts to reestabish separation of Church and State, I have thought that joining an organized religion dims the spirit that Jesus said he left within each of us as the comforter. I have met a rare few who I perceive as true Christians who don’t know the Bible nor any cant at all.
Also I am fed up to the gills with people smugly describing themselves as ” a person of faith “. Oh such self righteous exclusivity! I don’t care what you believe, I care what you do.
If Jesus does come back he’s going to need a BIG bulldozer.
Enough temples already!!!Ashvin if your worldview is correct why did the USSR go broke? The USSR stole untold wealth from eastern Europe and the near east and yet the country was impoverished.
What about Hong Kong? It has few natural resources and was once a British colony. Despite that Hong Kong has one of the highest standards of living in the world. Same story Singapore.
Ash I really enjoy your article. With the caveat that like others I take exception to the conclusions on Christianity. I will say, the conclusions nail a dead-ringer portrait on Churchianity.
Listen, I would like to mention a certain elephant in the room about which I’ve tried to comment before but Blogger previously stuffed the issue every time. Of course the second the comment should take, probably a shotgun blast of denials will rip forth too… As delicately as I can put this, recently I have noticed this among my friends of that other tribe who share the previous half of THE BOOK: they are growing nervous.
Flipping out here and there, post-OWSer movement. Why? Because things are starting to rhyme with what took place in Europe almost a century ago. The banks passing bad paper, the proverbial tribe getting scapegoated for the sins of certain families high up the economic food chain, and… then…
I just want to say to everyone who dishes on those of the book – and I’m not defending the behavior of the thumper-class – realize that controversy about the book will also come back to bite the proverbial tribe. Sooner or later it is going to bust loose.
You even read Kunstler fretting over the possibility here and there.
Just saying.
jal post=815 wrote: Myths are everywhere.
Since this article is referring to christian myths, I thought that you might like to take apart the 50 virgins myth with a few questions. The answers might make someone think twice before dying for such goals.Those 50 virgins had to die to be in the afterlife to do your bidding. There cannot be that many left on earth.
Is the pool of 50 virgin in the afterlife limited by age, religion, race, looks or relationship to you?
Are the deflowered virgins discarded and replaced with a fresh supply? Eternity is a long time.Perhaps, it would be best for those young men to put their destiny in their hand rather than to rely on the promised pleasures of the afterlife.
If you postulate Heaven is run by an Almighty God, the Virgins don’t have to Die to be in Heaven. God could simply snap his fingers or wiggle his nose like Samantha on Bewitched and conjure them up into existence. He could also recycle them and make them “Eternal Virgins” by sending them to the Cherry Repair Shop and wiping their memory so they would act like Virgins and be indistinguishable from “real” Virgins in all their behaviors.
Heaven doesn’t necessarily operate by the same set of Natural and Physical Laws that we elucidate in our Corporeal Existence. Much like when you Dream, you don’t have to obey any of these laws, you can Fly, walk through Walls, whatever your mind conjures up here. So if Heaven is non-corporeal and an eternal existence of Ideas, then really Heaven is just what your mind makes it up to be. So if some guys really BELIEVE they will get 50 Virgins when they go to Everlasting Glory in the Kingdom of Heaven, they very well might get that, on the assumption their thought process holds together without containment in the physical world. If you DON’T believe its possible, then you probably would not get 50 Virgins, but only what you figure is really possible.
Conclusion: Don’t be too locked in to what you think is Possible or likely in Heaven. If it does Exist, then you will do a whole lot better in Eternity if you have an Open Mind and a Good Imagination 🙂
In addition to Vandana Shiva being a woman, I think this post is excellent, and I forwarded it on.
I particularly like the “left behind, as if ten minutes late for the train.”
For everyone protesting about Christianity: the beef is with Nietzsche, and Ashvin did not (in the article) endorse his claims, so your protestations are misplaced. I say this as a great admirer of Christianity (the religion and its true followers, keeping in mind Matthew 7:21).
This privatization of drinking water topic, mentioned in this article, is a much overlooked situation that needs immediate public outcry and remedial action. It could very well turn out to be the greatest robbery of all. The nerve of them!
FrankRichards post=830 wrote: F=ma
PV=NRT
E=IRHow could you forget the other 2 important Fundamental Equations of Existence?
E=Mc2
and
S=G/E ?
HDP post=824 wrote:
Listen, I would like to mention a certain elephant in the room about which I’ve tried to comment before but Blogger previously stuffed the issue every time. Of course the second the comment should take, probably a shotgun blast of denials will rip forth too… As delicately as I can put this, recently I have noticed this among my friends of that other tribe who share the previous half of THE BOOK: they are growing nervous.
Flipping out here and there, post-OWSer movement. Why? Because things are starting to rhyme with what took place in Europe almost a century ago. The banks passing bad paper, the proverbial tribe getting scapegoated for the sins of certain families high up the economic food chain, and… then…
I just want to say to everyone who dishes on those of the book – and I’m not defending the behavior of the thumper-class – realize that controversy about the book will also come back to bite the proverbial tribe. Sooner or later it is going to bust loose…
Just saying.
to HDP
(sorry owe you one)
RE,
It’s not that I forgot them. I was reacting to the all too standard implication that the West contributed nothing, just stole.
Physics, chemistry, engineering, vaccination and sewers. Yes, other civilizations contributed, but, hey, we have electric lights and don’t have smallpox.
Spin me how either of those is bad.
RE,
Just a bit tired of the meme that western civilization is now and always has been nothing but a parasite on the rest of the world.
I’m personally a big fan of vaccination and electric lights
DR01D post=821 wrote: Ashvin if your worldview is correct why did the USSR go broke? The USSR stole untold wealth from eastern Europe and the near east and yet the country was impoverished.
What about Hong Kong? It has few natural resources and was once a British colony. Despite that Hong Kong has one of the highest standards of living in the world. Same story Singapore.
Well, first speaking to Frank’s issue, my “worldview” isn’t that Western civilization is evil and has provided no benefits whatsoever to other countries (and it’s certainly not that countries which colonize/steal are invincible, which should be obvious enough by now). That would just be another myth. The issue here is to dispel the simplified myths that are used by elite groups in the West to attempt to perpetuate an extremely oppressive, unjust system as a whole.
There are many different inter-related factors influencing metrics such as “standard of living” in various countries, yet there has also been a clear trend of increasing wealth inequality between “developed” and
“under-developed” nations as well as within developed and developing populations. Again, it’s not as simple as busting out a map and color coding which countries belong to which group and are destined to remain there. More myths.Sachs and many others like him would like you to believe that he has identified the reasons why much of the world’s population has remained in poverty, most of which are internal to their institutions and populations, and that they can gradually help these people lift themselves up through endless rhetoric, international meetings, economic integration, liberalization/globalization and monetary “aid”.
Yet, those are exactly the policies we’ve had for decades now and the situation has only become worse for most people. While the masses patiently wait for some sort of final salvation, the poverty, inequality, environmental destruction, wars, etc. will continue on and will directly benefit many of those same people preaching the end of poverty.
re: Christianity
I certainly understand the hesitation people would have to accept Nietzsche visceral hatred of all religions, but especially the more modern varieties. For me, what he really provides insight into is the nature of power and the increasing discrepancy between personal empowerment and minority groups wielding power over others. There is no doubt in my mind that many aspects of modern religions have reinforced the mentality which helps make the latter dominate over the former, especially in a country like the U.S. Perhaps that was not all the original intent/message that came with the religion’s founding, but that’s a bit irrelevant now.
Gravity and I have had similar discussions/debate regarding the U.S. Constitution. Regardless of what positive principles were meant to be enshrined in the document (equality, justice, personal/political freedom), it has been irreversibly compromised as a mechanism for achieving any of those things, and is instead merely invoked as the “supreme law” for the convenience of the wealthy elites.
FrankRichards post=835 wrote: RE,
It’s not that I forgot them. I was reacting to the all too standard implication that the West contributed nothing, just stole.
Physics, chemistry, engineering, vaccination and sewers. Yes, other civilizations contributed, but, hey, we have electric lights and don’t have smallpox.
Spin me how either of those is bad.
Electric Lights come at the expense of burning millions of years worth of fossil fuel energy. They burn brightly for a while, but then they burn out. They aren’t perpetual. Besides that, in order to keep your McMansion lit up, somewhere somebody is fracking some NG and shoving tasty chemicals into the water table.
Far as Smallpox is concerned, first off all disease is a form of population control, which is overall a bit more fair in its distribution than War is. Second, Smallpox and most viral diseases we suffer from come as a result of animal husbandry putting large numbers of animals in close proximity to each other and to human beings. Virial diseases mutate and spread this way through the populations of both animals and humans. Ths is why natives on the NA continent were so susceptible to these diseases, they did not practice animal husbandry in this way and so had not been exposed to these diseases previously.
So, we most likely would never had smallpox to begin with had we not stupidly domesticated animals and forced them to live in little pens and cages before slaughtering them for food. This only sent us on the road toward Overshoot and the possible extinction of our own species.
Frank, all this stuff has Blowback. The Progress Narrative isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Frankly this article is ill constructed and Asvand seems to be losing it. He want to blame the ills of the world on liberals yet practically every example is a conservative ideology. Liberals and progressives are the ones who help the poor while conservatives and libertarians try to destroy any safety net. Conservatives want to control your life (see the recent idiotic statements over birth control). Yet they are the first in line when disaster happens.
On the other hand, without technology, trade, manufacturing most people would be starving. Nothing wrong with growing your own food if you have the land, tools and the time but that is a pipe dream for most and not a good one. Society only advanced when most people no longer had to work on farms.
Babble post=848 wrote:
On the other hand, without technology, trade, manufacturing most people would be starving.Incorrect. Without Technology, Trade and Manufacturing, most people on Earth would never have been born in the first place.
Society only advanced when most people no longer had to work on farms.
We advanced? I don’t see any advance in society. It’s an advance to run bigger Wars with bigger Weapons? Its an advance to turn entire countries into Polluted Sewers? Its an advance to create massive Dead Zones in the world Oceans? Its an advance to have spent fuel at Fuk-U-shima puking poison out from Nippon every day?
The only thing we are Advancing towards with this paradigm is auto-extinction.
silence is a virtue of fools
-francis bacon
Good topic, Ash.
Your follow up comment shows a clear grasp of the techniques that TPTB (IMF etc.) use to trick countries into jumping on the band wagon of progress and prosperity, but for whom that is the question. TPTB, of course.
Probably should post this on the earlier thread about prisons, but……
the prison industrial complex is very real in this film. It was a fine documentary about conditions in the city of Philadelphia. The images of police beating a black man could have been from Oakland or any major US city. I found watching the short beating section of the film the most disturbing and haunting. It’s heart breaking to hear of young men who were sentenced at age 15 who have spent more than half their lives in prison. And the crowding is almost as bad in PA as in CA, though the photos of CA prisons with triple bunks in gymnasiums seems worse to me.
Elaine Brown sang beautifully for us of young Black Panthers lost to violence and prison. I hope that is not in our future here for more young people. But they are already there, a huge lost generation of black men.
There seems to be an accretion of groups that have been weak on their own, when they intersect with the Occupy movement they become strong, or so it appears. ‘Occupy4Prisoners’ has become a newer stronger development. The Occupy center is acting like the hub of a wheel.
****
Angela Davis to Speak at Occupy4Prisoners Benefit – Grand Lake Theater, Oakland – Thursday, March 1, 2012 – 7:00 PM
Angela Davis, Elaine Brown, and Barbara Becnel will speak about the prison industrial complex during the program accompanying the showing of the evening’s film. Statements of incarcerated people will also be featured, and will be read aloud by others.
“Broken on All Sides: Race, Mass Incarceration, and New Visions for Criminal Justice in the U.S.” is a recently released documentary that takes us inside the prison system, exposing the racism and brutality at its core. The film features Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
All proceeds benefit Occupy4Prisoners.
Destructive Myths – economic theories:
Jeremy Grantham wrote: You don’t have to be a PhD mathematician to work out that if the average Chinese and Indian were to catch up with (the theoretically moving target of) the average American, then our planet’s goose is cooked, along with most other things. Indeed, scientists calculate that if they caught up, we would need at least three planets to be fully sustainable. But few listen to scientists these days. So, do you know how many economic theories treat resources as if they are finite? Well, the researchers at the O.E.C.D say “none” – that no such theory exists. Economic theory either ignores this little problem or assumes you reach out and take the needed resources given the normal workings of supply and demand and you can do it indefinitely. This is a lack of common sense on a par with “rational expectations,” that elegant theory that encouraged the ludicrous faith in deregulation and the wisdom of free markets, which brought us our recent financial fiascos. But this failure in economic theory – ignoring natural limits – risks far more dangerous outcomes than temporary financial crashes.
Mr. Pandurangi, I am disappointed. I have read your spate of recent posts with interest and, in general, agreement. I’ve also enjoyed your words with the guys at the Extraenvironmentalist. But this time your arrow has flown clear of your target.
I am reminded of the scene in Good Will Hunting, when Sean tells Will that he’s just a kid and has no first-hand experience with what he’s talking about, never smelled that Sistine Chapel…
You see, I lived in a small village in northern sub-Saharan west Africa for two years, among subsistence farmers. And they *don’t* have clean water. And they *can’t* grow enough food. And it’s *not* big US agribusiness that makes them poor. And they *want* economic opportunities beyond their moribund millet fields–they would happily work in a sweat shop for $1 a day because that would be $1 that they wouldn’t get otherwise. They want indoor plumbing, or at least a toilet. They want refrigeration, lights that don’t produce smoke. They want a floor instead of dirt, roofs made out of at least tin. Most of all, they want their kids not to die of vaccine preventable disease, or at least, they don’t want their kids to die of something as easy to cure as diarrhea. These families want their kids to be able to go to school, but they still need to be able to plant and harvest the fields. How dare you speak for them?! How dare you suggest how wonderful their lives are?!
If you admire their situation so much, any one of them would be delighted to switch places with you. I can get you some names and addresses–let’s make it happen.
Our products’ cheapness is depressing the prices these subsistence farmers can get for their crops on the international market, yet our biofuels program is driving up prices of food (complaints about which have appeared on this page). So which is it? Do we want low food costs for poor people, or do we want poor people to be able to sell the food they grow for more money?
Sachs has never lived in an African village, but at least he’s fracking been to Africa, and he’s been conducting *results-based, outcome-driven* projects that actually work to lift people out of poverty. You denigrate academics, but your essay is worse than any moldy academic treatise, because you don’t even deign to consider any data or experience, you just regurgitate and extend the unfounded opinion of someone with whom you already agree. What shall we call your type of ivory tower?
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