I wish we lived in a world that self-regulated.
I wish we lived in a world that produced abundant free food by itself.
I wish we lived in a world where you can litter because everything biodegrades.
I wished we lived in a world of infinite beauty and mystery, and peace.
A world that cleans its own pollution, and where my body heals itself.
A world without factories or weapons of war.
A world without chains.
Oh wait, we do.
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right…. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you maybe see a file of soldiers… marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.
-Henry David Thoreau
(Makes me think of “Genesis is exactly backwards. Our troubles started from obedience, not disobedience. And humanity is not yet created.“)
“Whoever can see through all fear
will always be safe.”
You know, religious folk like to talk about faith a lot. They have faith in God, yadda yadda bs. Here’s the thing; I don’t think these people have any faith at all. I think that faith is a tool to use against fear. So, when something scary is happening you can have faith that you’ll get through it. But these same faithers also want to control everything. They want to go to war because they have no faith in other forms of coercion. They want to legislate morality because they have no faith in people to be good. When faced with a fear, they always choose the most direct coercive action, they never let things play out. Sometimes, if you overreact to something you make things worse. Sometimes your overreaction blinds you to the fact that what you’re afraid of really isn’t as threatening as it first seemed. So you start walking these paths of fear, and once you do that you have lost control of your own life because anyone can get you to do anything just by eliciting frightening consequences for not listening. Eg. “We have to invade Iraq or we’re all gonna die” or “We have to let the govt buy up shitloads of bad debt, or we’re all gonna die.” And when they put it like that, we always listen. We need to stop being so easy to manipulate. We need to have faith that we don’t always need to control everything. Because we can’t control everything. And taking the scarier rout is what we call a leap of faith.
That favicon up there may look like a yin-yang but it’s not. It is in fact the sacred chao, the holy symbol of the Discordian religion. Here’s the full sized image:
It doesn’t come across so well in the favicon does it? Maybe I can get a better one. Anyway, that apple with the K is the apple of discord, thrown by the goddess Eris (aka Discordia) into a party of gods to which she was not invited…no one like chaotic guests. The K stands for kallisti which means “to the prettiest” or “to the fairest” and arguing over who’s apple it was sparked tensions among the gods that ultimately lead to the Trojan war. The pentagon is a sacred symbol of Discorianism because it is a five sided figure…it’s a long story.
Anyway, “Andrew why do you have a discoridan symbol on your blog, are you a discordian?” Good question Andrew, I suppose I am somewhat of one yes. “But why worship a religion based on chaos?” I wouldn’t say I worship it, but to sum up a complex thing in as few words as possible lets just say this:
Chaos created everything in the universe. It created the sun, the earth, human life, and it created order. So you tell me, who or what is god?
So apparently the Wright comment that’s got everyone up in arms, the chickens coming home to roost one, was actually a quote. That’s right, Reverand Wright was quoting ambassador Edward Peck. Or if I were to be more detailed in my description I’d say white ambassador Edward Peck. And if I were to be even more descriptive I’d say white ambassador Edward Peck on the Fox “News” Channel. Yes, that’s the same channel that’s been criticizing Wright for his comments. His comments that he quoted from their broadcast. From now on we should spell hypocrisy f-o-x.
I actually watched some more of that sermon, to get context, and I’ve got to say this Rev. Wright talks some serious sense. He talks about how we took this country from the native Americans, how we enslaved Africans, how we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the point of all this? The reason he feels the need to remind us of such unpleasantness? “Violence begets violence, hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism.” True, true, and true. And those are still not his words, he’s still quoting. Not that that should matter because he’s making sense anyway.
Why is it that white people are so scared by angry black people? It must go back to slavery and segregation. It must be because we know we’re guilty. No, what am I saying? This guy is a hate-filled racist. Obviously.
—update—
So I’ve been trying to find the transcript of Peck’s remarks, but Fox News doesn’t seem to put it’s transcripts online. Apparently they’re available on Lexis-Nexis but I don’t have access. If anyone does I’d really appreciate it if you tried to find the transcript. Thanks, Andrew.
