Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
A Homily For Advent 2007
New Being – Originating Creativity – Religion
The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.
Sir Basil Henry Liddell-Hart
Religions do not clash with religions and cultures do not clash with cultures. Anti-religion attacks and clashes with religion and anti-culture attacks and clashes with culture.
What is anti-religion and what is anti-culture? Mockery is anti-religion and hooliganism is anti-culture.
Demonic clergy and scholars and their demonic religions are the source of anti-religion and anti-culture. Mockers and hooligans are or represent demonic clergy and scholars and their demonic religions, cultures and moralities.
Dis-ease in the world is the work of mockery and hooliganism. Today these are rampant. Mockery and hooliganism can be silenced and a new opportunity for doing that, a new being, is at hand.
Mockers and hooligans are silenced when religion, culture and morality are strengthened and nations align to protect these functions by speedily defeating mockers and hooligans with decisive force — military, police/juridical and rhetorical, as required by the situation.
Three principles(1) guide the functions of religion, culture and morality in the new reality that is afoot:
- “Duty is God. Work is Worship.” guides the function of religion.
- “Culture is the form of religion and religion is the substance of culture.” guides the function of culture.
- “What you talk about do. What you cannot do, do not talk about.” guides the function of morality.
Religions and cultures all over the world yearn for new strength and nations new alignment.
The ur-grunde(2) of life, the dynamic, self-integrating functions of religion, culture and morality on which the existence of all creatures depends, have undergone sustained attack from within and without by mockers and hooligans, with the result that the very ligaments(3) of life have been deeply lacerated and extensively paralyzed.
Life itself is threatened by rampant mockery of religion(4) and morality(5) and hooliganization of culture(6).
Mockery of religion is promulgated by liberal arts faculties, the entertainment-news industry, prelates, priests, rabbis, mullahs, ayatollahs, businessmen, politicians, drug gangs and cartels and demagogues and ideologues of an enormous variety of fanatical utopian fantasies.
Driven by the aforementioned individuals and groups, hooliganization of culture is executed by their students, followers and devotees.
The relationship between mockery of religion and morality and hooliganization of culture is embodied by this individual, who, true to character, forces the “Return” button on a browser to reload his website!
Is it any wonder the world is awash in misery and bloodshed, lies and threats, and that the chief decriers of these negativities are individuals and groups who embody and promulgate them with fanatical, tyrannical force?
Hamas, al-Qa’ida, the Mahdi Army (JAM) and university professors cry “Injustice!” and mock, rape and murder those they hold in derision as inferiors. Prelates, rabbis, priests, clerics, mullahs and ayatollahs call for peace, run guns, foster tyrants, encourage sedition, promote sodomy and subject leaders to unctuous sarcasm(7) and baleful political stratagems. Utopian fanatics claim moral superiority for themselves and their so-called religions or philosophies and terrify populations into submission by indirect (litigation) and direct (bombs and bullets) murder of children and their mothers.
The situation is critical.
Vitiation and paralysis of the functions of life — religion, culture and morality — have progressed so far that present levels of strength in those functions and present alignments of national interest and purpose to support them are insufficient to maintain humanity or life in general.
Mockers and hooligans believe they have the upper hand on the whole world and from their point of view, which identifies vitiated, paralyzed functions of religion, culture and morality and bootless alignments of national interest and purpose as the enemy, they are right.
Mockers and hooligans have the upper hand on the legacy religious, economic, political, legal, educational, artistic, financial, commercial, ethical and volunteer order of the world. They are busy demolishing that order and they will succeed in demolishing it.
The legacy global order cannot be saved and the welfare of humanity and life in general does not depend on saving it.
The welfare of man depends on transferring still-on-mission legacy functions of religion and culture into the new global order that is effectively operating. These still valid functions of religion and culture include sovereign nations, which can act independently of the United Nations and other functions of anti-religion and anti-culture, and the Armed Forces of India, the United States and Russia.
We are at the start of a change of time that has established a new being, a new set of functions of religion and culture especially but also of morality. A new reality, a new time(8) has commenced.
“Time” is used here in the sense of kairos, the purposeful horizontal and vertical confluence of long-developing factors as a new, efficacious and consequential revelation of divine power and meaning. Kairos contrasts with Greek χρόνος, chronos, which is ordinary sequential, non-seeing, infecund, horizontal time.
A new time in the sense of kairos is a new reality, a new eon, a new character-determining and consequential presence of divine wish, judgement and promise.
History is a bearer of power, meaning and purpose. It is teleological(9).
The meanings and purposes history bears manifest to man as eons or concatenations of times (plural kairoi) having unique, specific, efficacious and consequential qualities of character.
History is not of uniform character or line of development. It comprises times or eons having unique, determining qualities and specific. Kairoi are conditioned, even enjoined modes of activity.
History is not asymptotic. It is not measured by a standard external to itself. Nothing is or can be, except in theory(10). For example, the cognitive act of theorizing, itself, assumes the non-asymptotic nature of the phenomenon of theorization.
The victorious rampancy of mockers and hooligans demonstrates that one time is ending and another is beginning. Mockers and hooligans help to eliminate the ending time. They would not be present were not one eon requiring dissolution because another has commenced.
Speaking metaphorically and symbolically, one may say that the devil himself has useful purpose in the Divine Life. He does not stand outside the Divine Life. He works within the Divine Life fulfilling wishes of God.
Nothing at all, no aspect of history, spirit, psyche, the organic or the inorganic, is not rooted in and subordinate to the abyss and ground of being. Nor is anything at all not integral in freedom and destiny with all aspects of history, spirit, psyche, the organic and the inorganic.
The entire phenomenon, simultaneous ending and beginning of times, is consequent upon the telos of history achieving one goal in one eon and reorganizing for movement towards another goal in another eon.
Some want to destroy the time which is ending. This desire is in the nature of wanting “to beat a dead horse.”
Some want to help build out(11) the beginning time, which is in the nature of “not looking a gifted horse in the mouth.”
They are lazy and melancholy who, taking counsel of their fears, hurl abuse indiscriminately from platforms of supposedly non-involved, non-affected superiority — armchairs, editorial desks, computer tables, podiums, lecture halls, websites and automobile seats — at destroyers and builders alike. They should be shunned along with all their works and all their ways.
New Strength – Sustaining Creativity – Culture
There is only one religion, the religion of Love.
There is only one caste, the caste of Humanity.
There is only one language, the language of the Heart.
There is only one God, He is Omnipresent.
New strength in religion and culture and new alignment of national interests and purposes are indicated and yearned for precisely because they are decisively present.
The old functions of religion and culture cannot be fixed. Neither may nor should they be abandoned nor destroyed. Let mockers and hooligans do their worst, the old functions, such of them as remain constant in their purpose, are taken into new functions of strength and national alignment and escape the cruelty of mockers and hooligans.
The working old functions are ecstatically transferred into the new constellation of power and meaning the Divine Spirit has deployed for the need and as the character of this time (chronos) and as this very time (kairos).
Strong religions and cultures, saturated in power and meaning, are the foundation and guarantor of happiness, peace and prosperity for individuals, groups and nations.
Religions inspire yearning and labor to actualize in the daily life four expressions of the essential nature of man: freedom, democracy, independence and the manners of peace.
The germ concept of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom expresses the truth that the happiness, peace and prosperity of individuals, groups and nations rest on the pillars of personal and group freedom, democratic government, national independence, and peaceful participation in the concourse of sovereign nation-states.
This germ concept is accurate, legitimate, pan-optic and reliable. It reflects essential human nature, which is inalienable. It is a bearer of happiness, peace and prosperity for all creatures.
Among the great achievements of the time ending is the world-wide acceptance of this concept as the criterion of the affairs of man. That achievement is being transferred as the basis of success into the time beginning.
Indeed, Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom are the archetypes of operations aiming to transform regions of pandemonium, nations of tyranny and societies of autistic cruelty into the global order of generous mutuality and open concourse that is inspired by religion and is present.
OEF and OIF are criteria and expression of this global order and they model its initial mission.
That mission is to establish the pillars of personal and group freedom, democratic government, national independence, and peaceful participation in the concourse of sovereign nation-states beneath peoples whose lives are adrift, separated from those strength-giving supports of existence and saturated in violence.
It is very basic.
Mohammedan Arabs tell Coalition Soldiers in Iraq to not trust Arabs — unless, so frankly they say, they are Christians. Not trusting one another, unless they are Christians, Arabs are habituated to tyrannizing everyone to thwart being tyrannized by anyone.
Without trust, how can there be either religion, culture or morality? None is possible and this is why among Arabs nearly none is visible.
The louder they shout the glory of Mohammedanism, the more earnestly the world, seeing their works and ways, replies, “Bunko!” Their example exposes their expostulations as cant
Apolo Kivebulaya stated that the banes of Africans are their habits of promiscuity and not keeping the word. A century on, the effects of those habits are everywhere to be seen.
Their promiscuity, which includes bestiality, introduced HIV/AIDS into the world through Haiti, then the United States, where promiscuity was already becoming accepted generally, and then everywhere commercial aircraft and drug sellers operate.
The vacuity of their word keeps most Africans grinding in depletion, civil war, thuggery and genocide
Then there are the Iranians, bereft of the concept and practice of fairness. Fairness to Iranians is the biggest, first and most skillfully wielded club, stone, slaughtering knife or nuclear-tipped rocket.
Those who do not know fair do not know reality and ultimately get laughed and driven into oblivion.
Lastly the Chinese. There is dispute even among themselves whether Chinese can grasp, much less participate in, the dialectics of life. It is not apparent that Chinese can form an awareness in their mind of a centered self whose existence compels and places obligations upon their self, justly conditioning both their freedom and their destiny.
In each of these cases it is desired that functions of strong religion, culture and morality be exemplified to them, protected and guided for them and established by them for the simple reason that at present these people comprise an enormous presence of pandemonium in a world that cannot and need not tolerate their propensity for perpetual disruption.
Who has not come into the general acceptance of freedom, democracy, independence and the manners of peace it is desired to be brought along to it, made to toe the line, to rest their religious, cultural and moral activity upon these foundations of life.
There is not a choice about this, the alternative is unthinkable and unmanageable. The mission is appropriately undertaken and accomplished with speed, thoroughness and diligence.
A question arises, whether religion especially but also culture should be strengthened at all in view of a tendency to become deformed and dangerous to life. Does not history demonstrate that religion generally and Mohammedanism in particular cause unending misery and sorrow for all creatures (and here)?
Is not religion per se a noxious phenomenon that were as well extirpated from the drama of history so far as is possible? Why strengthen that which is destructive by nature?
This question is asked especially regarding Mohammedanism by just about everyone excepting Mohammedans. What value can religion have in a situation of pandemonium that appears caused by religion and its cultural expressions?
This question is on the mind of everyone coping with the phenomenon of evil afflicting the whole world in the name of Mohammedanism, allegedly because of a “victimization” of Mohammedanism but more realistically because of profanized doctrinal elements in Mohammedanism itself, namely, Afro-Mohammedan Imperialism.
The question is legitimate and deserves a serious answer. It is not just about Mohammedanism but about religion per se. Is religion inherently evil? Is religion a definite poison in personal and group development, in society, in culture and in world affairs?
Children of the Enlightenment come of age in an intellectual framework (nominalism, scientific positivism, humanism) disposed to regard religion just so, as a blight on humanity, although, so far, few are prepared publicly to declare it so.
Previously we have noted that religions do not clash with religions or cultures with cultures and that where clashing occurs, apparently between religions or between cultures, the reason for this is not religion or culture per se but self-promoting clergy and scholars, who may be deemed demonic clergy and scholars practicing demonic religion.
That is demonic which claims ultimacy for that which is not ultimate. Demonic clergy and scholars claim ultimacy for demonic religions they are and promulgate. When “religion” poisons culture and history, the actual poison is real demonic religion generated by real demonic clergy and scholars.
Self-promoting or demonic clergy and scholars profanize(12) religious doctrine and the spiritual yearning of believers in order to promote their own social standing and programs that benefit them, such as collecting “alms” and taking “offerings.”
Demonic clergy and scholars produce demonic religions that poison individuals, groups, cultures, nations and historical development.
A humorously ironic illustration of this point comes from an al-Qa’ida operative, Abu’l-Walid, in this description of a remonstrance sent by him to senior al-Qa’ida leadership that also reveals Arab racism fracturing and crippling al-Qa’ida’s structure, program and propaganda:
Withdrawing from its birthplace in South Asia to focus on the “heartland” Arab regions was a betrayal of al-Qa’ida’s original purpose, and Abu’l-Walid writes that he fears al-Qa’ida will go the way of the Egyptian Islamist groups, who splintered into organizations focused on progressively more trivial matters and smaller theaters of action. “I even heard about specific organizations for neighborhoods,” he writes. “These organizations would start out around a ‘fatwa section,’ i.e., some genius suffering from juridical diarrhea who deemed himself capable of resolving any issue in heaven or earth.”
Cracks in the Foundation:
Leadership Schisms in al-Qa’ida from 1989-2006
Combating Terrorism Center, United States Military Academy
Another question arises, whether the intrinsic nature of some peoples, such as Arabs, Africans, Iranians and Chinese, prevent the existence of strong religion, culture and morality by and among them, making efforts to lead out those functions from within them a forlorn hope and a bootless expenditure.
Certainly there is evidence sufficient to beg the question in both the informal sense of to raise a question and the formal sense of to answer a question with the inclusion, implicitly or explicitly, of one or more of its premises(13).
Both usages are legitimate and helpful, the first because it compels facing towards facts and the second because it identifies ground for certainty and confidence in the mission that is the gist of humanity’s yearning and outreach today.
Most Arabs, Africans and Iranians and many Chinese are humans by nature and not merely by soma type. These are capable of strong religion, culture and morality and of grounding their life on freedom, democracy, independence and the manners of peace.
Moreover, because they are human, they yearn to ground their lives in those blessings of religion and so and require only temporary protection from mockers and hooligans and some structural and educational assistance to bring forth from themselves these delightful and delectable fruits of life that nourish them to bear the burden of their own welfare.
As examples of Middle Eastern and African peoples yearning for and enjoying some strength in religion, culture and morality one considers the cases of Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Ethiopia, Uganda and, with visible potential, South Africa, Liberia, Libya and others.
Some individuals and even some peoples, however, are of a different stripe, being human externally but inhuman internally. History displays dolorous evidence of this phenomenon.
Scientific humanism and legalism, the most effective demonic religions in Europe and the Americas today, resist with demonic savagery recognizing and adjusting policy and procedure to address the phenomenon that not all that looks human is. This behavior indicates the origin of scientific humanism and legalism.
Very many individuals and groups today, though not a majority in most countries, mock and hooliganize the human values of truth, proper conduct, peace, love and non-violence. They do this not primarily by choice but from their nature.
Though sheathed in human frames, such as these exhibit conceptual, verbal and behavioral tells or formal characteristics that report inhuman nature that humans may learn to recognize and respond to appropriately when met. Such as these are mockers and hooligans, not humans.
Although inhuman thought, language and behavior report their nature, the rampaging of these activities by mockers and hooligans always has the same driver: demonic clergy and scholars and their demonic religions.
As noted, Abu’l-Walid, an al-Qa’ida operator, mentions this phenomenon sarcastically in these terms: “… a ‘fatwa section,’ i.e., some genius suffering from juridical diarrhea who deem[s] himself capable of resolving any issue in heaven or earth.” Abu’l-Walid is remarking the phenomenon of evil in the center of al-Qa’ida operations. The irony is thick. An evil man abhors evil associates. The point is the phenomenon of evil masquerading as human through apparently human but actually demonic bodies.
Get demonic clergy and scholars — and their demonic religions, such as “fatwa sections” — off the backs of peoples and those peoples, because they are human, will bring forth from within themselves — and in partnership with a structure of divine grace and wise counsel — strong religions, cultures and moralities resting securely on the pillars of freedom, democracy, independence and the manners of peace.
The power and grandeur, the true divinity of human nature is the ground for certainty and confidence in the mission that is the gist of humanity’s yearning and outreach today.
Religion is profanized and culture deconstructed when religious authority (clergy) is linked with civil authority (rulers). Then an alleged impropriety of religion is treated as a criminal offense subject to the state’s penal authority.
We see this linkage occurring at various times in all religions and the result is uniformly evil.
Only one group promotes this evil and that is demonic clergy and scholars. When they succeed, demonic clergy and scholars, who know the evil of their intentions and programs, gloat, loot and bloviate.
For example, university faculties today strongly promote commanding linkage, as if by right, between themselves and government office and officials, subvert elected officials not implementing their wishes, seduce the vitality and dignity of youth to treasons, stratagems and spoils and gloat over those they can estrange from office and society for remarking their pretensions or opposing or not implementing their ideologies, propaganda and plans.
Teaching and learning are religious activities. Academic faculties who expect to dominate civil affairs are linking religious with civil authority. Their intentions and actions are evil, despicable and destructive.
At the root of the identification of religious with civil authority, regardless of the religion in the midst of which the identification occurs, is literalistic reading of scripture. Scriptural literalism is the prius of all deformations of religion. It causes the profanization (mockery) of religion and the deconstruction (hooliganization) of culture.
Culture is deformed, becoming poisonous and demonic, when self-aggrandizement and self-promotion supplant selfless service as the principle of individual, group and national organization. Then radical individualism and group autism (euphemistically denominated “multiculturalism” in schools and “tribalism” in coffeehouses) spread savagery through society and the state and cause the state itself to become a bearer of wickedness and oppression.
Attempts by thinkers of the Enlightenment — especially French Revolutionary ideologues and their principal offspring, Communists — to solve the problem of demonic religions and cultures were based, in several particulars, on insufficiently thorough analyses of the origin and nature of the problem.
It is not our purpose, however, to exposit the deficiencies of those analyses beyond mentioning their actuality and implying thereby the unreliability of doctrines, programs and movements based upon them.
At the root of self-aggrandizement and self-promotion, regardless of the culture in the midst of which it occurs, is ambition. Ambition is the prius of all deformities of culture. It is the driver of evil and an occasion for manifestations of divine power and personality.
In contrast to the aforementioned negativities of the time that is ending, the attitude of the new time that has begun may be expressed this way: “If you are a Muslim, be a very good Muslim. If you are a Christian, be a very good Christian. If you are an atheist, be a very good atheist. … and so forth.”
Anyone who believes in their self is not an atheist, by the way.
The courage to be is the strength to defeat mockers and hooligans. Therefore, the fundamental counsel for this time is be: be who you are, be what you are, be what you are here to bring into being, but be.
The courage to be is the strength in religion and culture that is sought worldwide to silence demonic personalities(14) who are disrupting the peace of the world.
God is man and man is God and when man trusts himself he knows the God-man relationship and how to live it. Man’s trust in himself is the new being of history.
New Alignment – Directing Creativity – Morality
I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting.
I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes …
But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end.
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur
Speech to Congress, 19 April 1951
The particulars most eyed today as requiring new strength of religion and culture are peoples residing beside, above and beneath energy resources.
The security and reasonable, reliable accessibility of energy resources anywhere they exist are vital interests of every nation on the face of the earth.
Energy is comparable to air. Everyone has to have it and everyone is entitled to have of it what they need.
The goal is quiet, reliable, consistent access to energy resources for all who need them to strengthen their culture and the cultures of all other peoples.
Nations need not allow their welfare — including secure, reliable accessibility of energy resources — to be whip-sawed by the black bile(15) of egomaniacal fanatics, the buffooneries of smug academic faculties, the mendacity of pusillanimous financiers, politicians and “activists,” the trivialities of self-promoting reporters, editors, columnists, hosts and other entertainers or the delusional “visions” of self-righteous agitators of “change.”
If energy resources are to be secure and reasonably, reliably accessible for all nations, peoples residing beside, above and beneath those resources require strengthening in all aspects of their religions and cultures.
To accomplish this goal, a new alignment of nations is necessary and available.
The inner genius of the new alignment of nations is Sanathana Dharma, the principle of all religions, cultures and moralities and the sublimation of all desires, including the hags of ambition and envy.
India, the United States and Russia are the decisive elements of this new alignment. They are seconded by Germany and Japan and then by all nations of the EU, Africa, the Pacific and Asia who reject mockery of religion and hooliganization of culture.
India, United States and Russia embody and jointly promulgate the criteria of religion, culture and morality world-wide. All peoples, all nations, all groups, all individuals, may live their lives according to the criteria these three nations represent.
India represents the wisdom of leadership. The United States represents the power of purity. Russia represents the decisiveness of strength. These nations are brothers, children of the same Mother, Sanathana Dharma.
Those who presently cannot live by the criteria that are these three nations, especially if they reside beside, above or beneath energy resources, deserve protection from mockers and hooligans while they are assisted to learn to live by these criteria and thereby protect themselves from mockers and hooligans, who desire peoples to be ignorant, weak and terrified so they can be intimidated, looted and raped.
The strengthening of religion and culture is the only effective protection from the tyranny and wickedness of mockers and hooligans. And while they are strengthening their religions and cultures, people require protection from the same mockers and hooligans.
Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom model this mission, which is mandated by the world-wide requirement for secure, reasonable, accessible energy resources.
The United States lacks resources to accomplish this mission alone.
The United Nations is in the thrall of mockers and hooligans who oppose the mission — principally Arabs, Africans, Iranians, Chinese and their supports from academic faculties in Europe and the United States.
India, the United States and Russia together have resources to accomplish this mission and may align to deploy on it as soon as possible. Success will crown their efforts and the gratitude of all creatures will resound in their ears and redound to their prestige.
In fact, there is not much if any choice about doing this. The vertical component of life has a say in the matter.
Before starting out, citizens and leaders of the United States may scrutinize and replace a habit of thought that is superannuated, unrealistic, unproductive and wasteful.
The policy of containment propounded by George F. Kennan sixty years since never connected with reality and never will because it faces away from facts.
Its origin is a mixture of fear of the cost of silencing mockers and hooligans and secret admiration of them as cool, clever intelligentsia. Its nature is wishful thinking. Its consequence is wasted time, life, property, energy and nobility of character. It is a form of appeasement and, like all appeasements, it does not work.
The Soviet Union, whose presence and multi-national cabal of communist intellectuals occasioned the cloud castle of containment theory in academic faculties of the 20th Century and continuing, went down, finally, for two reasons: internal contradictions in Communist doctrine and the threat of defeat on a field of battle, even of its own choosing, by a President of the United States.
Containment merely delayed the inevitable, at enormous cost, for forty years. Forty lost years, including two life-, property-and nobility-destroying “police actions” that deployed military resources intended — unsuccessfully! — by academic and diplomatic orbits to not succeed.
Finally, a credible threat combined with self-destructive internal contradictions brought down an evil entity that could have been defeated forty years earlier and several times over during the interval and at less cost than was actually borne to do the job.
The fancy of containment is now a habit of mind against the life of the mind in the United States and Europe, where, against all experience, it is clenched with obdurate intransigence for a variety of unsavory reasons in academic, ecclesial, business and government circles. It has always been a stupid, ignorant concept and a self-destructive, conceited policy.
The only realistic policy regarding an enemy is to silence them as quickly as possible and with the least cost to them and to oneself.
- War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory.
- The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature, and all material and cultural developments of the past 2,000 years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur
Speech to Congress, 19 April 1951
The mission upon which India, the United States and Russia are poised is characterized not by containment of mockers and hooligans, which is impossible, but by protection from them(16) and by guidance for peoples they are afflicting towards functions of religion and culture that support freedom, democracy, independence and manners of peace.
An equine metaphor may illumine the reason protection and guidance rather than containment are the operative principles in life and war.
Think of trying to contain a horse. Put him in a box stall? What has happened?
First, the horse controls you, compelling you to take counsel of your fears. What you think — and fear — he can do is determining your actions.
Second, you are going against his nature. This means that at some point he is going to explode at you unless you kill him first, which raises the question of what is the purpose of waiting. Why bother with containment, why not whack him at the top?
Third, all his abilities for work and play and giving you and himself happiness are lost, and so is the purpose and therefore the cost of the food, water and medical attention you have to provide him.
This is wise, to waste the opportunity of a fine partnership in life and frustrate a fellow creature to destruction? What has either of you gained? Obviously, the question is rhetorical?
Observe the case of the Palestinians in the Middle East. Israel contains them. Arab states contain them. The EU and G8 contain them.
Result: Palestinians govern the situation over much of the globe, their humanity is subverted, explosions and threats of explosions accompany them worldwide, Palestinian abilities to contribute to the welfare of humanity and the cost of supporting them, who cannot support themselves, is wasted and lost.
On the other hand, look at the nature of the horse, the abilities he has, the ways he is happy to live, the things he is happy to do, and preeminently, the contributions he can make to the particular welfare and happiness of himself and his steward and the general welfare and happiness of society, culture and the state.
With this in mind you teach the horse to do useful work and play that he enjoys because it gets him out and about and stretching and running and having a good time in ways he and you enjoy, especially together, and you and he are able to contribute to the general welfare as well as your own.
From learning to work affectionately with you he feels fulfilled and so do you. He is proud of himself and you and you are proud of him and yourself. And above all else, love is surging between you and him and in that love is the peace of the world.
Humans are not only creatures of psyche, as are animals, they also are persons of spirit, the dimension of life that unites power and meaning and in which are actualized the three functions of religion, culture and morality.
Animals are centered selves with the power of mind but they are not persons with the power of spirit, the power to originate, sustain and direct religion, culture and morality.
As persons — and also centered selves — humans require for their happiness continuously expansive self-expressions of religion, culture and morality. In classical philosophy and theology this phenomenon is referenced by the numbers 3, 5 and 9 and the geometrical images of the pentagon, pentagram and Platonic Solids.
Both humans and animals are centered selves. However humans, uniquely among all creatures, have power to originate, sustain and direct in all five dimensions of life, the inorganic, the organic, the psychic, the spiritual and the historical. This power inheres in man’s degree of freedom, a degree far higher than that of any other creature.
Man alone of all creatures transcends himself and the conditions of his existence.
So, with implementations appropriate to man as a self-transcending, originating, sustaining and directing personality and not merely an animal with a centered self (which he is also), the metaphor of teaching and learning with a horse(17) to live genially in concert applies to the mission of securing reasonable, reliable access to all energy resources by all who need them.
What has been seen as a national security issue for individual nation states is a pan-national security issue for all nation states.
One God. One World. One Race. One Caste.
For this reason the nations are empowered to silence mockers and hooligans and bring forward into the daylight of freedom, democracy, independence and good manners peoples residing beside, above or beneath energy resources who do not already enjoy those essentials of life through their religions and cultures.
Hook such peoples up to clean thoughts and good habits and stay with them as exemplars until they are so practiced in education, government, economics, industry, science, engineering, arts and all essentials of culture that they can silence mockers and hooligans from their own resources
Is this more than Allied Forces accomplished directly in Europe and Japan and indirectly in Russia and parts of Asia towards silencing mockers and hooligans who had gained dominance in those nations and regions and, true to the manner born, sought to extend their grasp?
The chief allies now for the task of silencing mockers and hooligans, chiefly those claiming to represent Afro-Mohammedan Imperialism but also those bred in church, temple, school and synagogue, are India, the United States and Russia. It is time to get to it.
Concluding Scientific Postscript
Regarding al-Qa’ida specifically, this report from the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy is of utmost importance and decisive for the question, “What next?” Here is the PDF and here is an excerpt from the Forward:
The near-term goals of al-Qa’ida today are well known: force the US to withdraw from the Middle East and establish Islamic states in the region. Its general strategy is similarly well known: provoke the US into committing ground forces to the region, thereby exhausting its will to remain. But these goals and strategy have evolved over time and are as much a product of circumstances and al-Qa’ida infighting as they are of deliberate planning.
Drawing on newly-declassified al-Qa’ida internal communications from the Defense Department’s Harmony Database, Vahid Brown and his colleagues at the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) have chronicled the emergence of two factions in al-Qa’ida: the planners and the propagandists. Each employed different strategies to achieve their common overarching goals. The first faction was committed to building an effective guerrilla organization and attacking the West in ways similar to other irregular military organizations engaged in asymmetric conflict. In contrast, the second faction wanted to establish al-Qa’ida as a global brand, a battle standard that could inspire and unify groups around the world engaged in violent Islamist resistance.
US policy toward al-Qa’ida after 9/11 placed a premium on diminishing the capabilities of the first faction. Thus, US-led efforts have achieved notable success capturing and killing al-Qa’ida’s leaders and operatives, crippling its organizational structure, and degrading its ability to coordinate terrorist attacks worldwide. As this report points out, however, al-Qa’ida’s real strength has never been as a guerrilla fighting force; rather its strength comes from its ability to transform the local concerns of Islamist activists into what this report describes as “a unifying vision of apocalyptic inter-civilizational conflict”. Because these capabilities and their proponents are still in place, al-Qa`ida continues to achieve success.
Effective counterterrorism must better address these capabilities. The tools and prescriptions needed to do so will fall largely outside the realm of the military options that have done so well against the first faction. Eroding al-Qa’ida’s brand appeal—reducing its share of the ideological marketplace —will require innovative and multi-lateral approaches with the US hand rarely seen or suspected. Furthermore, greater efforts have to be made to degrade its media distribution organs. Finally, aggressive targeting of al-Qa’ida’s senior leaders must continue and will complement efforts to limit its brand appeal. As this report articulates, Usama Bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri are the incarnation of al-Qa’ida’s brand and each new image of them only serves to reinforce the brand’s invincibility. Thus, capturing or killing these iconic senior al-Qa’ida leaders will undermine al-Qa’ida’s emblematic appeal and help delegitimize the extremist ideology they are selling to the Muslim world.
The structure and dialectic of the mission identified in this report from the CTC — namely, degrade and destroy ideologues and propagandists of Afro-Mohammedan Imperialism — are addressed and at least by intention illuminated in this essay.
ADDENDUM ONE
For much of time and in most places, the metaphor organizing religion, culture and morality has been a version of the image of hierarchy(18). A hierarchy is a holy order of rulers disposed in rank of sacramental power.
The two most common images of hierarchy are the chain (e.g., The Great Chain of Being) and the pyramid (e.g., The Pyramid of Life, the food guide pyramid and the typical organization chart).
The image of hierarchy includes the metaphor of level and has been applied to everything earthly, including rulers and grades of citizens as well as genera and species of creatures in nature.
The image of hierarchy is often extended to include the realms of the supra-earthly and the sub-earthly. It purports to comprise in this way a metaphor systematically describing the structure and power of being as levels of perfection in the sense of refinement of nature and richness of potentiality from the “top” of subtlety (God) to the “bottom” of baseness or the gross (rock and in particular “lead”).
All objects in a level of a hierarchy are “leveled” to a common plane and kept there. They are equal in relationship to each other but unequal in relationship to objects in all other levels. There is no organic movement between levels. Higher (meaning finer, fuller, richer) levels are not implicit in lower levels nor lower in higher. The relationship between levels is one of independence and interference (by control or revolt) rather than inter-dependence and leadership (by sympathy and participation).
The independence of levels in a hierarchy has been modified on occasion. For example, the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas that grace fulfills rather than denies or violates nature introduces the element of organic sympathy and participation into the otherwise locked-down, locked-out relationship of radical independence between levels of a hierarchy.
However, Thomas’ exposition of this doctrine demonstrates fundamental support — at least at the time of his creating Summa Theologica — of the metaphor of hierarchy as an adequate reflection of reality for development of the theological and, by implication, any system.
After Nicholas Cusanus formulated the principle of the coincidence of opposites and Martin Luther the principle of the justification of the sinner, the metaphor of hierarchy gradually lost its grip on the life and thought of Europe and the Americas. It was replaced in the religious realm by the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers and in the socio-political realm by the democratic principle of equal human nature having inalienable values, rights and responsibilities implied, ipso facto, in every human creature.
The result of this development is a governing metaphor of the structure and power of being Paul Tillich calls “the multi-dimensional unity of life.”
The doctrine of the multi-dimensional unity of life enables a refinement of common thought regarding the nature, practice and support of democracy, namely, recognition that not all that looks human and says it supports human values(19) is and does.
This means, for example, that not all voters esteem democracy and not all votes express wisdom, justice or even elan vital, the primordial(20) power of expansion and self-fulfillment.
The doctrine of the multi-dimensional unity of life also enables(21) the inclusion of animals and plants in functions of morality and the awareness and discharge of duty.
The realm of the inorganic also is taken for integral with the universal power and structure of life. Because it belongs organically to the multi-dimensional unity of life, inorganic matter is not to be pressed or abused into purposes beyond the willingness born of its nature.
The socio-spacio-temporal image of God-man leadership in the multi-dimensional unity of life replaces the image of hierarchy as the governing metaphor of life and thought in the new time that is commenced and within which man’s religions, cultures and moralities live in the mutuality of approbation and peace.
To be elegant it must be grand.
To be erudite it must be precise.
To be helpful it must be sympathetic.
Its author will be pleased if this essay
rises to fulfill all three of these criteria.
Footnotes
1 Latin principium, originating force, the power to make a reality begin.
2 German, the abyss and ground of being.
3 Latin ligare, to bind together.
4 Latin re + ligare, to rebind, reunite that which belongs together.
5 Latin moralis, proper conduct towards a centered-self, recognizing and fulfilling the limitations and obligations a centered-self inalienably imposes on oneself.
6 Latin cultura, cultivation of that with intrinsic power to grow on its own.
7 Greek sarkazein, to tear flesh.
8 Greek kairos, a specific constellation of power and meaning in the dimension of history.
9 Greek τέλος, telos, aim or intention of movement towards a goal.
10 Latin theoria, Greek theoros, synoptic observation.
11 Greek οικονομία, oikonomia, economy.
12 Latin profanum, literally “before the door,” metaphorically the door to the sanctuary, meaning, outside the aegis of holiness.
13 Latin petitio principii, referring back to the beginning.
14 Sanskrit rakshasa, demon, ogre, teratolog.
15 Greek melan, black + khole, bile, melancholy.
16 By defeating them in battle or causing them to cognize that they will be defeated and that battle is imminent.
17 The traditional symbol of power, majesty and honor.
18 Greek hieros, fire, the holy + Greek archoi, rulers, the finer, fuller, richer.
19 Truth, proper conduct, peace, love and non-violence.
20 Latin primordius, first of all orders of being, the original.
21 On the basis of their being centered selves and for that reason having intrinsic values and inalienable rights and responsibilities.
Update 1: 0 Speaks, The Heart Sinks
Update 2: Scott Johnson at Power Line and Elliott Abrams at The Weekly Standard
Update 3: An A-Z Guide To The New PC.
Update 4: Richard Grenier: The Gandhi Nobody Knows.
Update 5: Dan Koboldt: Building A Fantasy Army: Leaders
Update 6: Peggy Noonan: Mr. Trump goes to Washington: No one at this point needs your snotty potshots and your supposedly withering one-liners.
Update 7: The Ghost Of Heidegger And The Sex Lives Of The New York Intellectuals
Update 8:
kevinstroup
Not believing in religion is not the same as not believing in God. You can be spiritual without being religious.
David R. Graham to kevinstroup
Well, Tillich is famous for saying that Christianity is the world’s great anti-religion religion. I add Hinduism to that description, but that will be a bridge too far for many at this time.
Dragblacker to David R. Graham
I’m not sure I follow. Does it mean that Christianity and Hinduism have elements in them that lead some people to eschew religion entirely?
David R. Graham to Dragblacker
Yes, that is what it means. It also is in Hebrew Prophetism. Religion is a means, not an end, much less the end. Like all means, it is fraught with danger because it can lead either Godward or Godaway because there are right ways to be religious and wrong ways. In fact, far more wrong ways than right ways. Far, far more. Religion is very dangerous in the absence of experienced and skilled guidance. Religion (Latin re + ligare) means binding up that which has become unbound. Once a body is repaired, its ligaments (ligare) grown or tied back together, it has no need for the doctor who or the procedures which repaired it.
Lawman45 to David R. Graham
Tillich is correct. Christianity, shorn of the Elmer Gantrys of the world, is a great handbook to living in a large society. Just remember that the substance is correct but all the rest is B.S. And, as I learned at Notre Dame, the “Priests”, the “Rabbis”, and the “Ministers” are just ordinary folk who live life free off of the insecurities of others.
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
