Killer cults

The difficulty in calling one bunch of lunatics a cult is that it opens up one's own group to the same criticism. Today's New York Times describes the maniacally destructive religious cult, now embedded in the Israeli army, that kills Innocent Gazans because it fulfills their insane cultish beliefs. The essential message of this murderous cult is "We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land." Don't try to argue with these nutcases; they have their proof; it's right in the holy book. Thou shalt not kill...except of course when you should. They are not the only cultish nutcases; there are those Zionist Christians who in a fundamental sense are their allies. Their rock-solid belief - also backed up by the holy book - is that the Jews must conquer all of Palestine in order to fulfill biblical prophecy. Jews should not be too enamored with these allies since the end of this prophecy is an age old choice for Jews: convert or finito.The basic disease of all cults is their conviction that they know what is unknowable. Existence is a mystery that does not lend itself to simple-minded fables. Instead of these cockamamey belief systems that justify superiority, righteousness, oppression, and murder, cult members would do better to cast off their beliefs, live with the uncertainty of existence, and act on the basis of one simple principle: Do not do unto others what you would not have others do unto you. See where that takes you.

Rihanna, Chris, Love and Power

For those who are uninformed about American pop culture, Rihanna and Chris Brown are two young musical superstars - she 21, he 19. Recently Chris apparently severely battered Rihanna. Pictures and commentary have since flooded the internet with positions ranging from "She's nuts not to leave him" (they do appear to be back together) to "It probably was her fault." I'm less caught up in the debate than with a factoid that popped up in one article (sorry I've lost the reference) stating something to the order that it takes the average battered woman five assaults before she leaves the relationship. You have to wonder what's keeping her there, with explanations ranging from economic to emotional dependency.
My current obsession is unraveling the threads of power and love, lately the consciousness associated with each. The consciousness of power centers around difference and separateness. Power consciousness at the personal level is "I", at the territorial level it is "Mine," at the cultural level it is "US," the deep emotional connection with our religious, ethnic, national heritage (see Leading Systems, chapter 17, for more on US consciousness.) By contrast, Love consciousness is about connectedness. At the personal level it is "We," at the territorial it is "Our," and at the cultural level it is about "Oneness."
I suspect that in many battered relationships, we have the clash of power and love; he in his "I" she in her "We." He strikes out of his separateness, competitiveness, jealousy, and territoriality, and she experience that violence in the context of their fundamental connectedness. I am battered but we are still a "We."

Pay the AIG bonus...but not with our money

Andre Ross Sorkin in today's New York Times makes a case for honoring the AIG bonuses - his position being that honoring legal contracts is an essential foundation for enterprise; it would be chaotic if corporations, whether recipients of bailout packages or not, could simply choose to break a legal contract. Let's accept that. Still, the question is: Why would those bonuses be paid out of government stimulus money? AIG should pay its bonuses out of its pre-stimulus fund. Isn't that what it would have had to do if there had been no bailout? Pay the bonuses, but not with our money!

Sense and Stupidity

There has to come a time when one needs to stop being rational, intellectual, or even polite. For me, this is such a moment. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. With all their current tirades against "socialism," we are witnessing what has all the sense of a play put on by the residents of the lunatic asylum.Maybe it's the shock treatment. Something has selectively destroyed their memory if not their sanity. Remember their last play - Free Us Now! Wasn't it hilarious how they all dressed like Ronald Reagan and killed every regulator in sight. What a triumph. Of course, we, the audience, are now buried deep in that triumph.

A pause for sense. Unrestrained freedom has led us into the mess we are in. That is what unrestrained freedom inevitably will do. Unrestrained government would create an equal and opposite mess. That is the sad story of its history. These are two poles. Systems survive by negotiating their way between the two.  Neither pole  is or ought to be a final destination. Ideologues, in spite of all evidence, insist on making them destinations thereby cause great havoc to our systems and to us. Continuing to insist on these as final destinations makes them either stupid or venal or nuts.

There is no sign that the current administration is in favor of unrestrained government. Just take a look at who Obama's  economic advisors are; these are free marketeers of the first stripe. They have no taste for "socialism." Their job is to clean up the mess resulting from unrestrained freedom. 

Joshua Bolin of Augusta, Georgia has founded a new web site, Reagan, org. Prominently displayed is an oft-quoted  line from one of Reagan's speeches. Sure to draw great applause from the enemies of "socialism."

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

It may have been cute once, but there are millions of people across the globe who would be more than pleased to hear "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."