WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

[shiny!]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

2. Ernest Hemingway put poignant words in the mouth of one of his protagonists. "How did you go bankrupt? Gradually and then suddenly." (Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 1926).
3. It's already started, it is just slow. A Russian described living through the Soviet collapse as waking every morning, trudging down the stairs, then a few years into it suddenly realizing that is is not the country he was used to.

Very insightful. Thank you.

[shiny!]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

Those are fabulous quotes, jtabeb. Where did you get them from?

[shiny!]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

I wonder why the path of enlightenment is so filled with fear sometimes. Why is letting go of the false meanings and accepting the true meaning of insights so hard to do?
I'm asking for myself here. Sometimes it seems I make a lot of progress, other times it seems I "Run home to mamma" and have to run back to the flawed idea of having others tell me what is the RIGHT answer. Why do I do that?

A spiritual teacher once told me, "Getting enlightened is easy. Staying enlightened is hard." The process of Enlightenment is just that, a process. Speaking for myself, my "mistakes" have taught me far more than my "successes".

[Dave Stratman]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

East is East and West is West and neither the twain shall meet. True for Kipling's time and True now. Islam and Judeo-Christian Theologies are incompatible. And Judeo-Christian Theology is the basis for the ideologies of the American Founding Fathers. Islam, Sharia, The Califete...they are all incompatible with the American way of life. As far as I'm concerned, everything I need to know about Islam I learned on 9/11. Where are the moderate Muslims? They don't exist.

And to the basic point, beyond politics - When Christ said "I am The Way, The Truth, and The Life. Nobody comes to the Father but through Me.", that is about "in your face" as you can get. Sorry. You must take a stand on either side or sit down and shut up...and then wait for God to spit you out for your tepid nuetrality.

Oh...and lest I forget. The collapse is bound to come eventually. Gold will spike as the horseman with the scales rides. A quart of barley for a days wages? Sounds like hyperinflation to me.

This is so full of ignorance and "Christian" hatefulness that it's had to know where to begin to discuss it. I'd like to make two points though:

1) It shows that serious discussion of the facts of 9/11 is desperately needed, if there are still people who think that 19 Muslims directed by a guy in a cave in Afghanistan pulled off the implosion of the WTC and Building 7 in its own footprint. Both logic and the evidence, as well as the answer to the question, "Cui bono," point to the U.S. government as the perpatrator of this "new Pearl Harbor," needed to get people to accept the "new normal" in America that we are now experiencing and discussing.

2) The War on Terror is a scam, designed to frighten the American people into obedience and to legitimize a police state at home and the projection of U.S. military power in the Middle East and Central Asia. Radical Islam is an ally of the U.S. government and has been for years. The U.S. has promoted, trained, and armed radical Islam at least since 1947, when we allied with the radical Wahabi House of Saud and supported King Faisal as our man in Saudi Arabia.

Since then the U.S. has been overtly or covertly allied with political Islam in numerous key situations. The U.S. covertly supported TIME's 1979 Man of the Year, the Ayatollah Khomeini, to save the Iranian Revolution from the mass of anti-capitalist revolutionary workers and students, tens of thousands of whom Khomeini executed in June of 1980. In October, 1980 George Bush Senior arranged the October surprise with Khomeini (agreeing to keep 52 Americans hostage until after the election) to guarantee the election for Ronald Reagan. At the same time, the CIA undertook its largest project to date, arming and training over 100,000 mujahadeen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets there; the CIA recruited Osama bin Laden as a moneyman and leader who assisted in providing arms and setting up bases and madrassas--religious schools--in Pakistan and Afghanistan to train recruits in the radical Islam that the U.S. was preaching. During these same years the U.S. was working with Israel and Khomeini in the Iran/Contra affair, to send weapons and funds to Reagan's "freedom fighters" to bring down the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. Also at this time the U.S. was funding both Iraq and Iran in the Iraq/Iran war in which over 1,000,000 young men died--a war that was needed to build Iranian nationalism and solidify the mullahs' shakey hold on power. Around this same time, Israel began funding Hamas, to establish a radical Islamic alternative to Fatah. Throughout the present war in Iraq, the U.S. has worked with the Iran-based SCIRI and Iran-based Iraqi Shia leaders (Iran is a Shia country) to manage that war and to curtail the power of the Sunni Muslims there. (For more on this, see Dave Stratman, "Inventing the Enemy" )

Political Islam is the perfect enemy for the U.S. ruling class: it is anti-democratic and reactionary, but as it appears to fight the Great Satan, it can be used to draw restive young Muslims away from truly revolutionary ideas into a religious cul-de-sac. At the same time at 1.3 billion people Islam is large enough that it can be credibly used to frighten the American people.

At the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin said, "We are going to do something very terrible to you. We are going to deprive you of an enemy." Political Islam is being promoted covertly by the U.S. ruling elite as the replacement to communism--to provide an "enemy." How else justify a $700 billion Pentagon budget and nearly 1,000 overseas bases? Far from being enemies, political Islam and U.S. rulers need each other.

Instead of letting our ruling elites divide us on religious or racial lines, we should realize that ordinary people of whatever faith or no religion at all are not our enemies. Ordinary Iraqi or Iranians and Americans have more in common with each other than with the billionaire sociopaths who rule and divide us.

[shiny!]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

Getting back to your original question, Mike, I agree with others here that the collapse is already in process. It isn't an event, but a series of events.

I suspect that one of the problems you and I share is that we have access to too much depressing information, and we can't tear our eyes away from it. Every click of the mouse brings us more doom, gloom and depressing statistics. To some extent that knowlege can help us prepare, but it can also dull us to the joy and beauty to be had in the present moment.

Harder times will come soon enough, but it might be years down the road. We must not spend every day between now and then making ourselves miserable because we might be miserable in the future! If we do that, then in the future we'll look back to these days and wish we had enjoyed life more when we had the chance.

I've survived cancer and far worse things that I had no earthly reason to survive. If I've learned anything at all, it's that life can be snatched away from me in a moment, and every day I have now is a precious gift, not to be squandered.

During hard times in the past (which is the norm for most of human history) people didn't know the details of what caused their hardships, and they didn't know what was coming next. They accepted that life was hard and still managed to be happy. For sanity, whenever I need to get perspective on how hard my life is not, whenever I need a reminder of how the simplest joys are the best, I re-read the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I'm not talking about the anachronistic saccharine-sweet TV series, but the books. I appreciate them so much more now as an adult than I did as a child. I highly recommend them to everybody:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Littl.../dp/0064400409

I also recommend a limit clicking on depressing news, and make sure you get your daily quota of cheezburgers:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/

[Raz]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

Yes, that is pretty much what it is saying. When Jesus supposedly spoke those words, he spoke them as the Christ, which is the equivalent of a lower impermanent state of 'enlightenment' (in Eastern spiritual terms). Thus you can not reach union with the 'Father' (where Father=God or 'Kether' in kaballistic terms, or state of Satori in Zen buddhism, Moksha in Hinduism, etc) without first passing through the lower stages that lead to that final ultimate and permanent state of consciousness. So "me", and "I am" is not a reference to the person Jesus (a very common misunderstanding), but rather his state of consciousness that is available to all who follow the way. 'The way' (as they say in Taoism), is as you stated self perfection. Self perfection is not of the body, but rather of the psyche and purification of the mind which requires one to still and calm the mind. Which is why he later also says "Be still, and know that I am God". This is not a request for his followers to worship him, but rather the opposite - practice calming the mind and empty it, and you too will realize internally (not intellectually) "I am God" (everything in everyone everywhere in all of Eternity).

Christianity takes on entire new levels of meaning after you study Eastern spiritual paths

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming of the economy and dollar $igns... *grin* ;-)

Adeptus

No, that is NOT what it is saying.

You have just posted the Gnosticism of the First Century and it's modern sibling - the present "New Age" theology that is a mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism and Gnostic "christianity", with the seasoning of Kumbaya thrown in. This is a heresy older than Arianism, Caperniatism, Chilliaism, and most any other "ism" you can think of.
St. Thomas the Apostle preached in India and was murdered by Hindu Brahmins who certainly didn't hear his message as anything related to your explanation.

Christ was a Jew, he spoke like a Jew, and the Jews of His day were shocked at His words.
And they were not ignorant of Eastern "mysticism".

Here is the truth of the claims of Christ. Everyone is free to reject it.

"Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time.
Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.

One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men's toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to
consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.

Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is "humble and meek" and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice: Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. And He didn't intend to."

C. S. Lewis

[shiny!]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

No, that is NOT what it is saying.

You have just posted the Gnosticism of the First Century and it's modern sibling - the present "New Age" theology that is a mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism and Gnostic "christianity", with the seasoning of Kumbaya thrown in. This is a heresy older than Arianism, Caperniatism, Chilliaism, and most any other "ism" you can think of.
St. Thomas the Apostle preached in India and was murdered by Hindu Brahmins who certainly didn't hear his message as anything related to your explanation.

Christ was a Jew, he spoke like a Jew, and the Jews of His day were shocked at His words.
And they were not ignorant of Eastern "mysticism".

Here is the truth of the claims of Christ. Everyone is free to reject it.

"Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time.
Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.

One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men's toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to
consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.

Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is "humble and meek" and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice: Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. And He didn't intend to."

C. S. Lewis

This Sikh does not want to step into this theological discussion even with hip waders on. I don't care about beliefs, I only care about how people treat one another.

[Raz]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

This Sikh does not want to step into this theological discussion even with hip waders on. I don't care about beliefs, I only care about how people treat one another.

The way people treat each other cannot be divorced from their beliefs.

I didn't want to wade into this either, but such a misrepresentation of
Orthodox Christian teaching should not be left unchallenged.

[BigBagel]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

1. Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.
2. Ernest Hemingway put poignant words in the mouth of one of his protagonists. "How did you go bankrupt? Gradually and then suddenly." (Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 1926).
3. It's already started, it is just slow. A Russian described living through the Soviet collapse as waking every morning, trudging down the stairs, then a few years into it suddenly realizing that is is not the country he was used to. You just had the gift of being a little ahead of the crowd.

That said, it takes incredible stamina to shut your ears to the vested interest's constant 24/7 propaganda, so you have my sympathies. Denial is a very strong emotion.

Great quote from Hemingway. The hardest thing to see is what's right in front of your face.

[iyamwutiam]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

CS Lewis's trilemma argument has been acknowledged to be flawed by many. It is another form of imperfect syllogism that infests the non-critical who devote energies to slavish regurgitation and have neither the courage or discipline to invest a life into true meaning. This shallow way of thinking - shows once again the limits of logic especially when met by the fallacy that there exist only 3 options. This is often the curse of -that they are proffered 'insights' by someone who is supposed to have talent in one field -say writing and the presumption that due to this talent -they have sagacity and depth in issues unrelated to their areas of expertise.

Discussions relating the 'veracity'/'validity' of some scriptural text (usually by minions after centuries of oral tradition -deeply ingrained with error and self-interest) and interpretation after the death of the nuances and intent resplendent in the original language (that has since been transformed over time as the course of a river) would be to assert with false confidence that one 'knows' definitively something. Impostors generally clothe themselves in inference, arcane extrapolations and tenuous links abetted by useful idiots who would falsify or purposely inject extraneous and damaging distraction like promises of being 'chosen'/ 'saved', reborn etc.

All things are necessarily and factually impossible to know completely -so how can one reduce the complexity of the question of God to a farcical trilemma or pernicious dialectic? Of the many who may have experienced directly this 'connection' -even fewer have come forth to expound and release their fellow humans from the bondage of causality and the chains of consequence. Of the few for whom we have been fortunate to have 'direct' words from -even their misuse, mis-assertion or mis-interpretation is cloaked in equivocality. To suppose that one 'knows' because of scripture is beyond foolish and to pre-suppose that a quotation is a refutation is preposterous.

[Chris]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

CS Lewis's trilemma argument has been acknowledged to be flawed by many. It is another form of imperfect syllogism that infests the non-critical who devote energies to slavish regurgitation and have neither the courage or discipline to invest a life into true meaning. This shallow way of thinking - shows once again the limits of logic especially when met by the fallacy that there exist only 3 options. This is often the curse of -that they are proffered 'insights' by someone who is supposed to have talent in one field -say writing and the presumption that due to this talent -they have sagacity and depth in issues unrelated to their areas of expertise.

Discussions relating the 'veracity'/'validity' of some scriptural text (usually by minions after centuries of oral tradition -deeply ingrained with error and self-interest) and interpretation after the death of the nuances and intent resplendent in the original language (that has since been transformed over time as the course of a river) would be to assert with false confidence that one 'knows' definitively something. Impostors generally clothe themselves in inference, arcane extrapolations and tenuous links abetted by useful idiots who would falsify or purposely inject extraneous and damaging distraction like promises of being 'chosen'/ 'saved', reborn etc.

All things are necessarily and factually impossible to know completely -so how can one reduce the complexity of the question of God to a farcical trilemma or pernicious dialectic? Of the many who may have experienced directly this 'connection' -even fewer have come forth to expound and release their fellow humans from the bondage of causality and the chains of consequence. Of the few for whom we have been fortunate to have 'direct' words from -even their misuse, mis-assertion or mis-interpretation is cloaked in equivocality. To suppose that one 'knows' because of scripture is beyond foolish and to pre-suppose that a quotation is a refutation is preposterous.

Ooops! I thought I had clicked on a thread about the collapse of the world economic system. Must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Please carry on, i'll leave quietly.

[raja]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

People's beliefs, and the behaviors that derive from those beliefs, derive from the lessons learned through their life experiences.
Therefore, it is very difficult to override what a person has experienced by using rational discussion. After all, we are much more likely to believe what we see with our "own eyes", rather than the words coming out of someone else's mouth.
Even if one does have "the Truth", sharing it is often like casting pearls before swine . . . it will not be appreciated. ("Swine" here is not necessarily derogatory, it's just means that pigs -- or any other animals -- are unaware of the value human society places on the shiny accretions formed inside oysters.)

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

Ooops! I thought I had clicked on a thread about the collapse of the world economic system. Must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Please carry on, i'll leave quietly.

That's OK -- it looks like this thread took a "different" turn about 37 posts ago and quietly left the economic matters behind.

[cjppjc]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

No, that is NOT what it is saying.

You have just posted the Gnosticism of the First Century and it's modern sibling - the present "New Age" theology that is a mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism and Gnostic "christianity", with the seasoning of Kumbaya thrown in. This is a heresy older than Arianism, Caperniatism, Chilliaism, and most any other "ism" you can think of.
St. Thomas the Apostle preached in India and was murdered by Hindu Brahmins who certainly didn't hear his message as anything related to your explanation.

Christ was a Jew, he spoke like a Jew, and the Jews of His day were shocked at His words.
And they were not ignorant of Eastern "mysticism".

Here is the truth of the claims of Christ. Everyone is free to reject it.

"Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time.
Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.

One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men's toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to
consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.

Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is "humble and meek" and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice: Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. And He didn't intend to."

C. S. Lewis

These events happened some 2,000 years ago. With no way of recording what really happened. Imagine if 2,000 years from now, with no way to record what is happening, what people will think of this time. Adaptus hits the nail on the head for me when he says:

of consciousness that is available to all who follow the way. 'The way' (as they say in Taoism), is as you stated self perfection. Self perfection is not of the body, but rather of the psyche and purification of the mind which requires one to still and calm the mind. Which is why he later also says "Be still, and know that I am God".

Kumbaya not withstanding. All real teachings lead to the same place. A person who is able to live like a Christian....needs no education in Christianity.

[Chris]

Re: WHERE IS THE COLLASPE ? (Off Ed by Mega)

This thread shows that there is a huge misunderstanding of what Christianity is. Let me wheel out a quote from the most modern of the post-modern philosophers, Jurgen Haabermas:

"For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk."

This interview with Rene Girard is worth watching but requires some patience:

http://www.youtube.com/user/HooverIn...24/BNkSBy5wWDk