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by James L. Secor

Even when the economic situation is fixed, we will still be left with a broken system. Something more needs to happen than an economic recovery, for economics is not nor has it ever been the cure for humanity's ills. Economics is not the true defining characteristic of human social organization, despite the last century of Marxian ideology penetrating all levels and strata of society. Economics only ever benefits a portion of a population; that is, it excludes people. Economics looks at the world in great generalizations: the people, the masses, the rich, the middle class, the poverty-stricken. This attitude denies the individual. This is important as each generalized group is made up of people who are not the same and do not have the same needs and wants. I am a Ph.D. so I'm middle class. But I'm from the working class. And I've been poverty-stricken. My salary is less than a journeyman tradesman's or disability check. I am an artist, too, which only complicates matters. Which generalized group with imposed and pre-dictated needs and wants do I fit into?

Economics puts a price on everything. How much is a life worth? What is worth other people's deaths? What is needed in all this mess is humanism.

But the inhumanity of social organization goes much deeper than economics. The inhumanity of societal organization underlies the very basic concepts of definition. (I am speaking here of Western society, European and especially American society. I am not speaking to details but to the broad underpinnings of society, to the kind of inhumanity we've got now.)

The West is a Christian world, even outside of Catholicism and Protestantism and any splinter groups. Even atheists are defined (framed) by Christianity. Modern Buddhism compares itself to Christian ideals. Islam as well. Definition requires framing: a hermit is not a hermit without the rest of society.

Judaism? Judaism, a Middle Eastern importation to the West, is the basis for the Christian worldview and is, therefore, culpable. So, perhaps it is better to say that the underpinnings of society are Judeo-Christian.

I speak most pointedly about the US that labors under the delusion that it is a Christian faith nation; a delusion that has taken the country by storm despite the fact that most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution were not of Christian faith. They all made it very clear that government and religion were separate entities in their bid to escape from the intolerance of religious persecution of Europe — which is why most immigrants came to the New World to begin with (my family included). Nevertheless, the moral and ethical imperatives of the country are Christian — Judeo-Christian. These beliefs affect — and effect — behavior, aggregate behavior. This does not mean we are therefore worshippers of Jesus Christ. Many of us are not.

Our Founding Fathers were much broader educated and far better read than the modern US citizen. Even the stoutly Christian-faithed of them were reading beyond the pale: religions and philosophies of the East (India) were making their way into these people's libraries. But, by this time, there had been nearly 1800 years of Christian ethics pasting society and culture together. That's 1800 years of attitude and behavior to escape. Can you do it? This is what I mean when I say the ethical imperatives of our country are Christian. (Obviously, we are not a Christian nation if by this we mean we follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, a disaffected Jew.)

I maintain these imperatives are inhuman and that until they are replaced by a more positive humanity the system, the dysfunctional social system we have, will remain broken and inhuman. Nostradamus supposedly spoke to the downfall of Christianity and its replacement by a more humane religion (the next Pope, Peter, will be the last, a prediction also made by an Irish monk before Nostradamus' prophesy). When the Church goes, religion will tumble.

It is most interesting that though Jesus was rebelling against the Old Testament God and putting forward his own, new God of love and compassion, the Christian world as codified by the Roman and Orthodox Catholic Churches prefers to look to the Old Testament for its laws, ethics and learning. Too bad that Jesus' "new testament" is no more than an appendage and, like an appendix, easily cut off if it bothers. Thus, in truth, Christianity is much more Judeo than Christian. Because the organization of the Church was for power and control, this is much more possible via authoritarian mandates and fear-mongering than namby-pamby love and affection. Islam, too, saw the efficacy of pre-scientific dogma and hell-fire-and-damnation. The Protestants only rebelled over how to worship, not doctrine. The heretics of the late Middle Ages who did believe something different were wiped out. Acceptable genocides of schematics. Jesus' teachings were apparently for naught.

The most pervasive foundation of society is that we are bad, sinners from the very start. The sins of the father are visited upon the son and Adam was everyone's papa... despite Lamarckian genetics having been proven wrong. We are marked. We are in the bad track. That nobody is on the good track is amply illustrated by the sexual perversion of priests, God's own... which kind of puts the lie to the teachings as premeditated sinning (sexual abuse of little boys) and knowing it is a sin before doing it and then doing it anyway, makes the act a mortal sin. The punishment for mortal sin is eternal damnation. If this were true — eternal life in hell — whyever would God's elect commit a mortal sin over and over again? Do they think they're buggering little angels? And the Pope explains it away — and forgives them. Mortal sins are unforgivable. In any case, it sure does prove humanity is bad to the bone: the teaching, that people are bad, is being acted out by the teachers!

Did the teaching of badness come first? Is the teaching a dogmatic rationalization for observed behavior? And just because it's been this way for eons is no reason to believe that it evermore shall be so. Except the teaching says so. Caught in a trap!

Even worse, women are the cause of the sinfulness. All women are daughters of Eve, God's second thought. So women are even worse than men. Those uncontrollable bitches! Listening to a damned snake (phallic symbol or symbol of natural-earth wisdom?). As if to prove the teachings, women have been demonized and victimized into behaving appropriately since... time immemorial. Does it have to continue to be so (despite Madeleine Albright)?

In the end, though, it all comes down to the fact that some authoritarian God told Adam and Eve not to do something — eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge — and they disobeyed. Bad bad bad. The teaching here is as much of humanity's errant ways as the necessity (goodness) of doing what you're told by some authority (or other). And... remaining ignorant is good and right amen.

Authoritarian rule-makers are notoriously tyrannical and intolerant. Which kind of makes them as bad as the ruled. Is "sinning," then, a characteristic of humanity... and God? Where does evil come from anyway?

Since we're off on a metaphorical tangent here, let's look at this myth in a different light. A little more humane light.

The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (a phallic symbol?) is an apple. The fruit of Love, which also grows on a protected tree, is an apple (split an apple down the middle and what's it look like?). This means the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and the fruit of Love are the same thing — and conversely: if the fruits are one and the same, the Tree of Knowledge and Love must be the same. Apples and oranges do not grow on the same tree, neither do roses and Venus flytraps.

Is the mythical teaching telling us that love (and sex) is bad? Well... Christianity is a decidedly sexually repressive ethic — and it is taught that the body, despite being created by God, is dirty (bad). The contradiction here is noteworthy: God's great creation, our immortal soul, was stuck in a dirty, unclean body. Now, why would he do that?

To be more concrete in our metaphorical analysis: given humanity's propensity for doing just what we're told not to do, an indication that God wanted Adam and Eve to eat that apple seems self-evident. Thus, to become knowledgeable of life and death was the plan. Which happens when you bite into the fruit of Love. God the authoritarian wanted an end to ignorance?

Hmm... let me tell you a story...

Don't think of pink elephants.

Jim Palmer tells the story of how he lost the World Series for the Baltimore Orioles. Seventh game. Baltimore leading. Ninth inning. Two out. Men on base. The opposition's big bat comes to the plate and Earl Weaver runs out to the mound. He tells Palmer, "Whatever you do, don't throw a curve." Palmer threw a curve. The batter hit a homerun. Game over. Why did he throw a curve when told not to? According to Palmer, "curve" was the most important element in the equation, so it was foremost in his mind. His lesson was: never tell someone not to do something unless you want them to do it.

Tell a child, don't touch that pot and she will.

How are those pink elephants doing?

What's wrong with Love? What's wrong with Knowledge? What's wrong with learning? What's wrong with freedom?

But if you're bad, if you're sinful, you never learn. You remain a lost soul. Always in need of someone to tell you what to do.

The Judeo-Christian underpinning to society is inhuman. Or perhaps dyshuman is a better word, as the teaching preaches, "Don't be human." And because we are authority-driven, we do what we are told... and continually fail. You know, we just never learn, never have learned how to not be human — but we keep trying. It's humanitarian to put people in a no-win situation and tell them up front they can't win? Just try.

Take a look at the system and tell me what the end result has been.

Y'know, even God couldn't keep his own commandments... and encouraged his Chosen flock to ignore them, on demand. Which, of course, we can do — and do do, in God's name... or some authority's name, any authority. It doesn't matter. As long as you're told to do it, you're not responsible. Considering there are found in the Old Testament "600 passages of explicit violence, 1000 descriptive verses of God's own violent actions of punishment, 100 passages where God expressly commands others to kill people" that we break the rules is not out-of-the-ordinary (Cf. The Old Testament and the Genocide in Gaza by Gilad Atzmon at http://www.mwcnews.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27732&Itemid=26). So, violence, murder, torture (punishment) and genocide are okay. Which is understandable if we're bad to begin with. It's just what we'd do anyway. So... inhuman, yeah? But it undergirds our social ethic.

Sick.

Tied into this is the tenet that we are special, God's Chosen People. It drives our behavior like a piston. Which would mean there are at least three Chosen People, all by different one-and-only superior gods: Christian, Jewish, Hindi. Each excludes everyone else in the world. If you're not God's Chosen, you're expendable. Things get worse: within the chosen flock there are groups of excluded, some changeable, fluctuating between being included and excluded depending on the "present" need. Women, the disabled, blacks, Catholics, Protestants, immigrants, Leftists... pick a satisfying category, it's okay! Excluding others is a sign of psychosis (Pepper); while others find the chosen people designation to be fascist Wilhelm Reich states outright that religion is fascist: I'm right, you're wrong, so you are unworthy, uncountable and therefore can be eliminated (Cf. The Mass Psychology of Fascism).

We're looking more and more like a psychotic society (Cf. Stephen C. Pepper, World Hypotheses).

And you wonder why we humans are so inhuman? How utterly blind! How lacking in insight. How hopeless. The more so because our science divides us from ourselves as well; that is, it, too, is inhuman. There is the body and there is the mind (the soul). We are in constant opposition, never whole... never wholly human. Kind of inhuman. Even the humanists of the 11th century could not break the Church's hold on the division of the body and the soul.

That there are some within such a system who see this and reject it, seeking a different road, is a sign that all is not lost, a sign that there is some humanity left in us. The possibility of a more humane metaphysical system is real. For eventually the 100th monkey theory of social saturation and the Non-Locale Principle of quantum mechanics will come into play.

What's the 100th monkey theory?

The 100th Monkey

A story about social change.

By Ken Keyes Jr.

The Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years.

In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.

An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.

Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes — the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.

THEN IT HAPPENED!

By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!

But notice: A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea...Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.

Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.

Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people.

But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone! (http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm also, see Keyes' book, The Hundredth Monkey)This is a theory of social saturation that accords with the Non-Locale Principle of effect at a distance. (There are other ramifications to this scientific fact.) No one knows just how this happens but it is irrefutable.Thus, if enough of us override the present inhumanity of our social system for something more positively humane, then, eventually, "everyone" will begin thinking this way. ("Everyone," if we do a little extrapolation, comes to around 70% of a population. See Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority.) Perhaps, in the Nostradaman view, there will be some leader (Religious, as opposed to religious*) to take us there. In any case, it will happen.

I feel safe in saying this because it is based on scientific fact, science being the reigning tyranny these days. Science, to the exclusion of the humanities. Another inhumanity.

* Religion has been around since the beginning of humanity's consciousness. Although there are many religions, each is an expression, however perverted, of Religion, the explanation of why we are here and how we fit in and what makes things happen and where we come from. Religion with a capital R is a life philosophy and it takes, as is quite evident, many forms (religion, with a little "r").

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