Happy Hump Day! Sorry for the delay, but we had some email technical difficulties, so we have Stephen’s regular Monday post today. Thanks Stephen!
With hurricanes dominating headlines and everyone’s thoughts, Florida enduring Irma & Texas recovering from Harvey, the normal political diatribes seem a little forced and distracted. Florida and Texas are two of the most populous states, so disasters there affect a large percentage of America. An earthquake in California and we’d have half the nation struggling with natural disasters.
We take some time out of our struggles to laugh at the conspiracy theorists and karmic divinations alike which would attribute natural disasters to the result of political voting or sinful behaviors.
Some exist who wanted to claim that Harvey was divine or karmic retribution for Texas having voted for Trump; immediately to be countered by other who jumped to point out that it centered on Houston which voted for Hillary.
There were those who thought it a government controlled weather program attempting to wipe out the people of color, black and hispanic, but just incidentally taking a few white people along with them as collateral damage.
Still others were of the notion that the gods “Climate” and “Science” were punishing mankind for having used Aquanet in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and Gaia is determined to turn into a ball of flame to show those humans not to burn things like trees, coal, oil, and natural gas. Insisting instead that we should all take up sun bathing to supply all our energy needs and desires . . . or something like that.
I don’t really know whether to cheer for the commonality of the thread in humanity to call upon the acts of Providence seeking meaning in seemingly random events, a kind of primal urge towards a belief in abstract ideals through the mechanism of the anthropomorphizing of divinity.
Or be appalled at the overwhelming urge which appears prevalent to direct said divinity against one’s fellow man like a trained attack dog to get those apostates for daring to disagree with my delusional perception of moral reality.
The aftermath of disaster often brings to the fore the nature of man as a social animal relying upon his neighbor in that artificial construct called society to accomplish far more than any individual is capable of accomplishing on their own.
The accomplishment of building a wall or a house is a difficult and arduous task for a man alone in the wilderness, though it can be done, but with the division of labor and specialized tasks of a social economic web the accomplishment of the very same task not only requires less work from the individual, but is accomplished much more efficiently through the cooperative efforts of men.
In economics, they call it simply economies of scale. Put on a simpler level, ten men can build ten houses working together, far easier than those same ten men could build ten houses each man building his own house.
Disaster cleanup reminds us of this simple economic truth as people come together to accomplish the seemingly impossible work which looks daunting and overwhelming to the family struck by such a tragedy.
The noise of the internet and the media are often just that, discordant, disharmonious, and cacophonous sounds of people who have not put any real thought into their expressions, nor ever stopped to ask why another person believes what they said let alone examine why they believe what they themselves said.
Like those aforementioned, people want to command divinity, or, at the very least, imagine that divinity happens to work towards the goals they have set for reality rather than accepting that reality might have goals all of its own design.
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” Exodus 20:7 There are many sources out there to tell you how to interpret this notion, many pointing to the standing Egyptian practice of writing out curses upon your enemy invoking the name of a god or demon (an anti-god) to effect that harm upon one you despise.
The basic idea behind the Commandment is that, being divine, it is not really within our power to invoke or command the divine. Yet, in all basic form, all religions and magics seek to do just that, to change the shape of reality with words, prayers, supplication, enticements, sacrifices, and pleadings.
The forms are various, and all run afoul of the basic concept. If the divine has power to shape reality, man can ask that divine to intercede to his benefit. However, if man can thus influence or control the divine, then the divine power is not greater than himself but a servant of man. An instant contradiction in the very word “divine”.
If man’s words cannot affect the outcome of events, then why even have religion?
But, if man’s words can affect the outcome of events, then religion is really magic, but a tool of man to change reality.
The other option exists that an independent divinity exists but is not compelled by the words but may be swayed. I leave that to the reader’s conjecture, my purpose here being otherwise.
It is the political religions which have befuddled me of late, the idea that man’s politics and economics have karmic repercussions from hurricanes, that political hatreds from events a century ago are natural divine retribution against people based on their skin color, their political affiliation, their religious belief, or their gender.
We recognize such foolish statements do not originate with the proponents of those statements but are merely echos of sentiments espoused by demagogues of identity politics, the useful idiots being manipulated by the salesmen of division.
A riled up, emotionally driven electorate is good for politicians, because those emotional tirades show that people are acting as mobs, and it is far easier to manipulate mobs of people than influence questioning and reasoning individuals.
Natural disasters are dominating the news, not beclowned AntiFa mobs, and those disasters remind us of the community of man, the social animal which is man. It is good that we are sometimes reminded of just how marginal and minor the demagogues really are compared to real work, real values, among real people.
Laughing at the fools who would politicize the wind and the rain is far better than getting angry at the fools’ rants. I am reminded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhSfZplNbN0
