Hard Economic Times and Kinder, Gentler Preachers

[jk]

Re: Hard Economic Times and Kinder, Gentler Preachers

the evolving economic crisis will likely be transformational in terms of social mood. [kevin depew likes to write about this from time to time over on minyanville.] as the basic elements of survival - food and shelter - are put at risk, so will conspicuous consumption become frowned upon. this may well be be tied to an ethic of conservation and saving -- out of necessity. "downshifting" to a simpler life will make a virtue of necessity for many. part of the shift of social mood will be infusing a 'spiritual' value to these changes. don't kid yourself into thinking this will represent a great evolution in human and social consciousness. instead it will represent a pendulum swing that has happened before, and will happen again. otoh perhaps that is too cynical a view. alternatively it can be viewed as the latest twist on an evolutionary spiral, resembling past periods of "spiritual awakenings" but also incorporating a progressive, evolutionary component.

[jk]

Re: Hard Economic Times and Kinder, Gentler Preachers

re joel osteen, i can't resist posting this quote from matt taibbi that i just happened to run across in an article about john mccain:

McCain's transformation is so complete that at a recent town-hall meeting in Nashville, when asked to name an author who inspired him, the candidate -- who once described televangelists of the Jerry Falwell genus as "agents of intolerance" -- put none other than Joel Osteen at the top of his list. "He's inspirational," McCain said.

Standing at the meeting, I didn't write Osteen's name down in my notebook -- apparently because my brain refused on some level to accept that McCain had actually said it. Of all the vile, fake, lying-ass, money-grubbing shyster scumbags on the face of this planet, there is perhaps none more loathsome than Osteen, a human haircut with plastic baseball-size teeth who has made a fortune selling the appalling only-in-America idea that terrestrial greed is actually a form of Christian devotion. "God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us," Osteen once wrote. This is the revolting, snake-oil-selling dickhead that John McCain actually chose to pimp as number one on his list of inspirational authors. So much for "go, sell everything you have and give to the poor," and all that other hippie crap from the New Testament.

http://www.alternet.org/story/88211/?page=1

[raja]

Re: Hard Economic Times and Kinder, Gentler Preachers

I am not "religious" in the conventional sense either, but the older I get the more convinced I am that the way the universe is ordered is not a completely random outcome...

If you are implying that non-randomness requires a Creator, then you run into a logical fallacy, which is . . . the Creator itself cannot be random, therefore he/she/it would require a Creator . . . ad infinitum.

"Random" means "having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective." We see ample evidence of patterns and purpose in Nature. But the question is, does the whole of Nature, i.e., the Universe, have a purpose? I see no evidence of that, but would be eager to learn of some . . . .

It is an aspect of language that every verb requires a subject. Thus, if something occurs, there must be an agent of the action, i.e., if there is a creation, there must be a Creator. However, reality is seemless . . . it is only the describing of reality in the units of words that chops up this seemless entity into pieces and forces the use of subject and verb. So, when we think about life, the Universe and everything, we cannot get around the feeling that if there is something, there must be another thing that "created" it. It takes some very deep thinking to get beyond this trap . . . .

[jk]

Re: Hard Economic Times and Kinder, Gentler Preachers

raja, i think you mean 'seamless,' although 'seemless' sounds deep.;)

a few decades ago, i read a wonderful book which i think was called 'energy flow in biology.' it was a non-equilibrium thermodynamic analysis of chemical systems to which an external energy source was applied. what it showed was that increasingly complex structures would 'evolve,' essentially storing some of that energy in the form of structure. neat.

as to creation and creators, raja points the difficulty people have with an infinite regress of causation. in current cosmological models, we get stuck at a big bang, which is logically as good a first cause as any other. the anthropogenic principle says that the earliest setting of universal constants [planck's constant, etc] must have been consistent with the appearance of intelligent life, since here we are discussing it. if there is indeed a multiverse, there is nothing special about this set of initial conditions.

when i was 6 or 7 years old, my parents asked if i wanted to go to religious school along with many of my friends. 'no,' i said, 'i believe in science.'

[Guest]

Re: Hard Economic Times and Kinder, Gentler Preachers

Great quote JK. I read Taibbi's sentiment 4X4 and approve the gist of these conclusions. "Hippie crap from the new testament". LOL. AKA how rampant acquisitiveness became fashionably enshrined in the embrace of pseudo-Christian faith, and anything else which might give these overly acquisitive little fledgeling bigots a pause to think more deeply got pigeonholed in the "New Testament hippie crap" trash bin. :p

And thanks for educating me a little further on McCain via his endorsement of Osteen.

BTW, I'm an agnostic like Raja, and find the premises of atheism to verge upon some dangerous conceits all their own. They need to look carefully at the conceits of precisely people like Osteen on the opposite extreme, and understand how to avoid them when veering in the secular direction. Man must know his limits (many), even (or especially) in secularism. Atheism implies a vast and probing knowledge that none really have.

re joel osteen, i can't resist posting this quote from matt taibbi that i just happened to run across in an article about john mccain:

Quote:

Originally Posted by matt taibbi McCain's transformation is so complete that at a recent town-hall meeting in Nashville, when asked to name an author who inspired him, the candidate -- who once described televangelists of the Jerry Falwell genus as "agents of intolerance" -- put none other than Joel Osteen at the top of his list. "He's inspirational," McCain said. Standing at the meeting, I didn't write Osteen's name down in my notebook -- apparently because my brain refused on some level to accept that McCain had actually said it. Of all the vile, fake, lying-ass, money-grubbing shyster scumbags on the face of this planet, there is perhaps none more loathsome than Osteen, a human haircut with plastic baseball-size teeth who has made a fortune selling the appalling only-in-America idea that terrestrial greed is actually a form of Christian devotion. "God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us," Osteen once wrote. This is the revolting, snake-oil-selling dickhead that John McCain actually chose to pimp as number one on his list of inspirational authors. So much for "go, sell everything you have and give to the poor," and all that other hippie crap from the New Testament.

[flintlock]

Re: Hard Economic Times and Kinder, Gentler Preachers

Good quote JK. Taibbi hits the nail on the head. I'm no fan of McCain, and hearing he likes that Osteen bs confirms my opinion of him.

I'm always amazed at how the modern Christian church tries to rationalize materialism. How they explain away the contradiction between the humble, poor Jesus with guys like Osteen, Falwell, Robertson, etc.

[jk]

Re: Hard Economic Times and Kinder, Gentler Preachers

luke, my take is:
agnosticism + occam's razor => atheism

[don]

Re: Hard Economic Times and Kinder, Gentler Preachers

This is an interesting forum, among my fellow iTulips, to discuss religion. Organized religion, of course, has been used to keep the masses in their place for centuries. That wouldn't fly here, I don't think. If spirituality includes being in awe of what's transpiring on Mars, or getting choked up at an athletic event, count me in. I'm not being flippant.

We seem to be hardwired with a need to explain our environment. Great mysteries bother us until they're at least codified. I love it when astrophysics are suddenly stood on their head by a recent discovery The Big Bang Theory, an ever-expanding Universe, Entropy, an eventual reversal towards a pre-Big Bang state. What's it gonna be? Now the X-factor is Dark Matter. How long ago was it that the chances for an earth-like potentially inhabitable planet were considered zero. Now the only limitation on finding them is our recognised inability to see the smaller ones.

In some way, I suspect, we have our inherent limitations, buried deep in our species circuitry. My dog Mitka loves to ride around in the truck. She knows the routine, can follow the route, knows when to get excited, knows when we're heading home. She'll never understand the combustion engine that gets her there. As far as I can tell she's not bothered by this inability.

Learning all we can, and accepting we'll never get it all- people can't seem to grasp eternity, for example, except in religion- works for me. I don't need a Grand Design. Just a Grand Unknowable. There's some comfort in that. And never settling for less because you'll get it later in an afterlife. That should always sound alarm bells and whistles....

[necron99]

Re: Hard Economic Times and Kinder, Gentler Preachers

the evolving economic crisis will likely be transformational in terms of social mood. [kevin depew likes to write about this from time to time over on minyanville.] as the basic elements of survival - food and shelter - are put at risk, so will conspicuous consumption become frowned upon. this may well be be tied to an ethic of conservation and saving -- out of necessity.

...as if on cue... I just stumbled into this recent article by Kevin Depew on Minyanville, so I searched iTulip to see if anyone else had posted it, apparently not. Don't know where else to put it but here -- the vivid language is really worth reading. You might say that Kevin Depew is a "gentler preacher" in this column... although he's not preaching religion. If you want to move this comment to some other topic, or steal it and write about it yourself, feel free.

Five Things You Need to Know: The Modern Stealth Depression

Yes, it's here. Welcome to the Depression. No, don't drop whatever it is you're doing. Don't get up. It's not going anywhere. It will wait. It's just going to sit over here in the corner and read a magazine while you do whatever it is you need to do.

A Depression doesn't run hot and fierce like some crazed meth burner. A Depression is methodical, purposeful, patient. It will build a shelter out of tree branches and newspaper, light a small, well-contained campfire and wait you out, brother. While you feed on the empty calories of denial and popcorn, it will quietly gather shards of broken dreams and fashion them into a terrible weapon of blunt force reality.

... To understand the mechanics of this, the nature of it, let's look back at the last Great Depression.

Despite the seeming enormity of it in retrospect, the stock market crash of 1929 barely even registered for most Americans. The day before the crash, Time Magazine's Oct. 28, 1929 issue was business as usual; national stories, Washington stories, a review of the newest plays opening in Manhattan, a piece on a cat washing contest in Kingston, NC.

A week later, in the wake of the stock plunge, the cover story was as far from a piece on crashing share prices as you could get - a profile of a man named Samuel Insull, the "financial father of the Chicago opera." The crash did make the magazine, of course, second billing in the Business section in a piece titled, "Bankers v. Panic." The next piece, however, was about a $2.5 million investment by a Wall Street investment bank in orchids: "Last week, however, to the orchid industry went 2,500,000 Wall Street dollars, not squandered, but carefully invested."

Heh. Yes, the dream dies hard, doesn't it?

It took a little more than two full years, Dec. 11, 1931, before the New York Bank of the United States would collapse. Surely that would rattle a few cages. Well, no cover play, that was reserved for Dr. James Henry Breasted, "foremost Egyptologist of the U. S.", but the bank collapse did garner a story in the Business section, below a piece on Lorillard Co., then in the news as "the only major industrial concern in the U.S. to resume dividends in 1931."

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what is wrong with these people? Haven't they even the vaguest sense of the impending doom they face? Someone should warn them. They're headed straight into a vicious buzz saw. It's like watching drunken sheep follow one another off the Cliffs of Moher.

On January 22, 1932 things turned desperate. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was formed to dole out government aid to banks, railroads, farm mortgage associations and all manner of failed business enterprises. By any decent measure of journalistic standards, this deserved top billing in a weekly newsmagazine. So Time's cover story on playwright Philip Barry's 11th play, "The Animal Kingdom," comes as a sharp, kneecap-shattering nightstick blow.

By the end of the following year, 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had squeezed the Emergency Banking Act through Congress, signed the Economy Act, the Credit Act, the Reforestation Relief Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Farm Act, the Federal Securities Act, the National Cooperative Employment Service Act, the Home Owners' Loan Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Emergency Railroad Transportation Act, created the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Civil Works Administration.

In short, everything in America was falling to pieces and going to hell. And yet I am staring right now at the cover of Time from August 7, 1933, just past the mid-point of that awful year, and Marie Dressler is on the cover in full character as a "a raffish, vigorous old woman whose generous heart thumps under sleazy clothes that do not fit her."

Three months later, the November 13 cover is "Football."

The December 4 cover features Seton Porter of National Distillers, whom the magazine, with bald-faced envy, claims has "50% of all U.S. whiskey in his saddlebags."

This is quickly turning into some kind of preverse joke. These people deserve the Depression, dammit! No wonder the country has gone to hell; all anyone cares about is Tugboat Annie, football and whiskey.

Hahaha. Kind of like today. And there it is, finally, the point.

...despite it all, we will continue to live our lives, raise children the best we can and find ways to make the best of whatever situation we are in.

I read a piece in the New York Times several months ago by a woman consistently finding herself feeling humiliated by her parents' reckless disregard for money during the Depression - they didn't have much anyway, but her parents were intent on squandering what little they could accumulate on fancy clothes and cocktail parties. As I remember the story, she asked her mom, "Why on earth are you having a party with things the way they are?" Her mother, without missing a beat, said, "It's times like these when people need parties most of all."

Indeed. The time for preparations and battening down the hatches has passed. It's finally here. Let's party.

[DebtZero]

Re: Hard Economic Times and Kinder, Gentler Preachers

I have a kinder gentler message for you here. Is it any wonder that people seek security and or escape in hard times? There are many true believers looking for someone to tell them what they want to hear.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Hard Economic Times and Kinder, Gentler Preachers

Every time I hear a clip of Barack Obama speaking in front of a large group the inflection and cadence of his delivery remind me of a "kinder, gentler" Baptist preacher. [not intended to be a criticism, just an observation]

you nailed it.