psychicism left out of god's mix

today part of me feels lucky. i have money, people who love me. a cool place to live. a nice dog. several lovers. i'm good looking, creative, smart and funny. sad, too, but i think of that as a kind of philosophical sadness that's unrelated to "happiness", it's more about "this vale of tears" and sort of getting it that it's a rigged system to set up these smartass monkeys to think they're so important than "disappear" into the woodwork if you will (i'm thinking of god) yet stay just present enough to give us joy and orgasms and delight and babies and dogs and all this beauty and great shit. it would have worked just as well (?) with about half the beauty i think, i mean people live with very little hope and beauty and still go on.
i think the gift that god was toying with giving us was psychic powers... what a strange and different world it would be if we could tune into each other's thoughts. both "good" (less lonely) and bad (random thoughts would hurt feelings)... of course had that happened a whole magister ludi / zen culture would have evolved to train us NOT to invade other people's space, yadda yadda... so maybe it was good that it stayed out of the mix.

trap of reasonableness

I like Obama's reasonableness. It's a good quality to have in a friend, a parent, or teacher. I'm not as convinced that reasonableness is a quality that prepares one for a full encounter with the world. In my opinion the world is not reasonable, thus religions (however extreme) are in a odd way more attuned to the nature of the capricious universe than reason. We wish it were not so, but it is. A reasonable person always wants to talk things through, believes in educating more sins, crimes and character defects away. Sometimes reasonable people are capable of firm and decisive (disciplinary) actions, but they are reluctant to deliver it and feel as if in some way their reasonableness has failed them if it comes to this.
The "unreasonable" conservative Christian has much in common with the unreasonable Muslim. There are subtle differences in their inspiring (revealed) sources, and more importantly differences in the amount of time their unreasonable philosophy has had to bump up against other philosophies and inevitably made more reasonable compromises. People have said this before, but a big issue with extreme Islam is that is it a
"young" religion (1300 years vs Christianity's 2000 years or vs Judeo-Christianity's 5000+). Still, 1300 years is a long time. But take 700 years off Christianity and we're in the age of the Inquisition, with decades of religious wars to follow. Christians still fight (Northern Ireland) but few would argue it's over the finer points of doctrine versus class, ownership, patriotism and generally transmitting grudges through education.

Save the Earth and the Taliban

the green movement arising out of a projection of our own desperation, projected onto the earth, our petty complaints (money, work, sex, who isn't cleaning up what) shrink into the background obfuscated by huge Save The Earth (and/or polar bears) concerns. it makes perfect sense and whether or not it is "true" or warranted (or unwarranted) it does what most religions USED TO do. What are my troubles (here in the muddly Middle Ages) compared to the importance of saving (my and others') souls? Soul-saving is soul-making. We need it. Right wingers rail against ecology as a religion, but perhaps their best defense would be to come back and say, so what? It's a good a religion as any. If it gives people "meaning" (purpose, reason to get out of bed in the morning) how can we argue against it? Conservatives argue we are inadvertently giving up our freedoms (to drive big cars, smoke, use electricity) but their religion has limited our behaviors too. Sex, drugs and other behaviors remain criminalized by our Judeo-Christian culture, all rationalized by "civic need" but that logic doesn't alter the fact that they limit our choices. So the new religion (which MIGHT in the end be easier on sex and drugs, though the jury's still out) will be tougher on different areas of our lives. In the end the government will (probably) sanction gay marriage, legalized pot (and probably other drugs), but will criminalize smoking, gas guzzling, and using the wrong lightbulbs. All religions eventually limit our freedom, the tradeoff is inherent in the bargain. You "feel better" by being connected to something greater than yourself (Salvation or Saving the Earth) and you "give back" some freedom (freedom to fornicate, freedom to drive). It's all logical and there is no good or bad in it, unfortunately. Christians are "shocked, shocked" at the failure of their religion and the widespread embrace of a form of civic paganism, but they can't change it. The Taliban are able to do what they do because people in their districts are uneducated, unenfranchised and poor. The freedoms they give up to the Taliban (women to be educated, for example) are not deeply valued by the population. What they get in exchange is connection, belief, certainty--things the West aren't so good at countering.

why are people liberals?

i keep wondering, why, way down deep people want to be liberals? i know if you're one this must sound awfully smug, but i invite you to do the same to the other side, only you probably already have and know they (we?) are upright, sexually repressed, control freaks, etc. i think that essentially liberals are (ready?) lonely. Lonely and envious. I say envious but what I actually mean is they feel slighted that they somehow have not gotten their "fair share" which oddly they still feell no matter how wealthy they are. if they are wealthy they transfer this feeling of having been slighted to "others" (native peoples, minorities, women, gays, etc) who they need to stand up for and in solidarity with.
Now back to loneliness. Liberals love the idea of community, the idea that the truly functioning human unit is (don't laugh) something like The Shire (hobbits) where low-tech (by choice) unites the community in happy and rewarding work, roles for everyone. And lots of parties where even the fat girls dance. This fantasy is evident in science fiction (often) where Star Trekkers or others come upon an apparently peaceful quasi-medieval society that often integrates some key elements of high tech into their otherwise 16th (?) century life. Lots of goat feeding and rawhide clothes. Maybe they're vegan, but that's not important. But if they eat meat they kill it themselves, praying to its spirit before and after.
So, let's review, lonely and envious. They aren't lonely for everyone. In fact certain types (old white males from Texas for example) aren't desirable as friends (or rulers) though perhaps could be tolerated as a village elder/idiot. The dream of inclusiveness extends to "other tribes" often people they have had no contact with like Maoists in Nepal, or inner city gang lords in Baltimore,... the fantasy is undeterred by "reality" that many of these groups would want nothing to do with them other than to rob and/or rape them. That is irrelevant to the fantasy.
I suspect if one could look at culture in a Freudian (?) way there is a paradox here. On the one hand the last desirable person, let's say that Texan Cowboy Patriarch, is a clear pariah, but at the same time these same people have a "weak spot" for The Good King. The Good King should be young, "of color", etc. but if he qualifies as the Good King our lonely envious liberals are willing to give unto him many of their freedoms. They want desperately to believe he has arrived and will MAKE THINGS BETTER. Their "tribe" has won, is in the White House, so if standards of living decline, so be it, we will all decline into friendly cafe-life Europe together. We'll be poorer but feel better, and we'll all be in the same boat, so many privations can be endured. They know it will hurt the people they don't like (the christian-texan-patriarchal-owners) more than it will hurt them. The rich have farther to fall.
So appeals to loss of liberty will fall on deaf ears.
There is an expression Kill the King, Long Live the King. We shall see how long the fantasy holds. This is probably why our current king is trying to move so fast. he knows the people are fickle and will only love him if he moves radically and quickly so that he cannot easily be deposed as he is our captain and taken us into unfamiliar waters. without him we will be lost.

Unfortunately for the human primate the only way to fight tribalism is with more tribalism which is probably why war will never be obsolete. the other side, feeling as they do ATTACKED and OVERWRITTEN (or written out)... will appeal as survivalists to some primordial group instinct to watch out for their own.

The King is King until a new King arises. A new king would have to see the "chinks" in his armor, places (like christianity) that were must-haves for the old king but signals of subterranean loyalty to an order that excludes them. you see some of this in the debate about gay rights, gay marriage, etc. a new king will have to be more "radical" (perhaps a Queen)... yes, a queen could do it, could claim a territory of authority that has never been owned before. take us to new-new lost territory and be our guide in the darkness.