Guest post: The death of the Western Myth and the cold comfort of “belief” thereafter

Matt Rouge is back with his second guest post. Take it away, Matt!

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In my first post here, I wrote:

[In the Mist, t]here is no one to confirm that, yes, one is just so right about everything. Indeed, the contradictions and issues one perceives impugn one’s ability to sort them all out, to paint the Big Picture once and for all. Should Michael permit, it is lack of ease and comfort in the Mist that I would like to explore in my next guest post.

Thanks, Michael, for permitting!

For more background, please read the above post, but I am going to get right into things here. One tenet of the Skeptic (capitalized per Roger’s excellent recent guest post) mythos is that “belief”¹ is, as Marx characterized it, the opiate of the people. Thus, if we believe in God, we desire the comfort of a Sky Father in benign control of things, and if we believe in the Afterlife, we do so merely because we don’t want to die forever. Skeptics on the other hand, thanks to their superior intellectual constitution, are able to accept the harsh truth that God and the Afterlife do not exist.²

Yet, as I asserted in my preceding post, Skeptics are just as much in the Chamber of Maiden-Thought (and outside the Mist) as the religious fundamentalists and other “believers” they excoriate. Why? Because they have not accepted the death of the Western Myth.

The Western Myth³ is a concept I am introducing here, and I think it’s an essential one. Very much necessary yet currently lacking in the discourse of our culture, indeed of our world. What is this myth? On the surface, it is the strong, confident bones of Abrahamic religion, which includes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.⁴ To wit, there is a God, He created, knows, and understands all, which in turn means that all is understood, known, and created with a specific and perfect intention. Things are designed to work right, and when they don’t, that is our fault. In other words, when things go wrong, it is because we are sinners. Simple.

Thus, if you are gay, that’s your lifestyle choice, and you are a sinner, inasmuch as God didn’t create gay people, and He didn’t design people to be gay. If you stray in your marriage, you are a sinner, inasmuch as God designed the institution of marriage to work; He designed monogamy to work. There ought to be peace, yet due to bad people, there exist crime, war, and every ill of society. But don’t call it flaws in human nature; call it original sin.⁵ Or maybe Satan or Iblis is tempting you. Someone. Something.

Ah, but it’s so easy to ditch all this simplistic thinking, isn’t it? Just stop believing in those silly religions! Then we’ll all be thinking as correct as can be, right? Right?!

Not so fast. However much we wish to reject the surface beliefs of the Western Myth, its underlying assumptions are likely to stick around and mislead us. Let’s look at some examples:

• Freud was as big an atheist as they come, but he saw people more or less as perfect blank slates from birth, mentally. If you have a mental problem or illness, it’s due to things that were done to you. Probably by your mother in a time you can’t remember. In other words, it’s the fault of humans. Genes… what are those?
• Marx was as big an atheist as they come, but he saw class struggle and its end result as a historical necessity. Communism was meant to happen, and it would work. Later he would be treated as a virtual god in a secular religion.
• Similarly but at the opposite end of the political spectrum, Ayn Rand was as big an atheist as they come, but she saw her “objectivism” as being simply the truth, and so do her followers today. They believe that if government would only get out of the way and let the winners win and the producers produce, we would be living in a Libertarian utopia. It would just work.
• In the West and East, on the Left and Right, there has always been the desire to see leaders as right by nature. Comrade Stalin is just right. Chairman Mao is just right—consult the Little Red Book for details. The Fürher is just right. The Party is just right. The guru is just right. The Pope is infallible when he speaks ex cathedra. The Bible, al-Quran, Book of Mormon, and so on are infallible. The Constitution of the United States is a document inspired by God and should be upheld at all costs. The examples of this type of thinking are endless.
• It’s not just the big issues of politics and religion. There is a tendency in matters of health to see the body as inherently healthy—if only people wouldn’t screw it up. Do you have diabetes or heart disease, or are you overweight? Didn’t you know that the right diet and exercise prevent that kind of thing! And if the conventional wisdom doesn’t work for you, then a vegan/low-carb/paleo/gluten-free diet will do the trick, since it just works.⁶
• Shall we delve into self-help and management advice? Let’s not. Suffice it to say there are a million books prescribing some type of mind hack or management method that is the way toward ultimate success. Once you know the truth, it just works. Of course, if it doesn’t work, that means that you didn’t follow the method correctly.
• Here’s one more. I think the whole global warming/climate change things is a good example of the Western Myth at work in a presumably secular but actually quasi-religious manner. There is a right way for the global climate to be, but we humans have sinned by producing greenhouse gases, and thus we will pay for our sins through a global climate catastrophe that will probably make us go extinct. We can only expiate our sins through the penance of drastically reduced carbon output.

Thus, the Western Myth is about much more than believing in a capital G “God”; it’s an approach to ontology (reality), epistemology (knowledge), eschatology (final destiny of things), and indeed all of the big questions we humans face. Ultimately, it is an approach to things that keeps us in the Chamber of Maiden-Thought and out of the Mist. I would say the approach comprises the following three beliefs:

1. The answers to all questions are known by God or an authority figure. At the very least, all things are knowable.
2. There is way to live (or do anything) that will result in optimal results. Things only go wrong when we violate this system.
3. There are no contradictions. If something seems to violate the belief system, the person who experiences this perception is incorrect.

Skeptics think they have escaped the Western Myth by denying the theistic belief system of the West, but they have merely traded one surface for another while maintaining the underlying approach. They’ve repainted that ugly old Chevy, but the engine and transmission are the same. To wit:

1. Science has discovered everything of importance thus far, and it is our only tool for discovering anything of importance. It hasn’t figured out everything, but in time it probably will.
2. If people would simply give up their stupid religions and superstitions, we’d be living in a perfect world, or at least a much better one. Rational thinking is the key to peace and prosperity.
3. Any phenomenon we say doesn’t exist, doesn’t exist. Each and every example to the contrary is the result of a hoax, hallucination, or misperception.

It is true that Skeptics hold beliefs that would pain most people, such as the belief that there is no God or Afterlife. They feel that they are therefore cognitively superior to those who don’t have the fortitude to embrace their surface belief system. Yet, as inheritors of the Western Myth, they have established a world that is as cognitively neat and trim as that of the most believing fundamentalist.

A further error they commit is the one referenced by the title of this post: they assume that people who have not embraced their surface belief system live in comfort within their beliefs. Yet giving up the Western Myth means traveling out of the Chamber of Maiden-Thought and into the Mist, where ease and comfort are not to be found.

As for myself, I have read about NDEs (near-death experiences), read transcripts of ADCs (after-death communications), and had many spiritual experiences of my own. Yet the vast majority of the accounts I have read do not indicate the presence of an ultimate controlling authority, nor have my own experiences revealed one. Put simply, people having near-death experiences do not shake hands with a God who then tells them “how it all works.”⁷

I will not say that the accounts bring no comfort at all; indeed they do. They indicate to me that there is a very good chance that I will not cease to exist when I die, that all the effort I am expending now to gain knowledge and grow as a person will not disappear in an instant. But the fact that these accounts bring some degree of comfort does not bring comfort itself. ADCs and my own spiritual experiences mesh nicely with the information presented in NDEs, and such meshing is good, it gives credibility to the “big picture” that begins to form, but it too brings only some comfort and not comfort itself.

Indeed, I remain in a state of discomfort and yes, to some extent, fear, for one must consider again the nature of the Mist, per Keats:

[A]mong the effects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the nature and heart of Man—of convincing one's nerves that the World is full of misery and Heartbreak, Pain, sickness and oppression—whereby This Chamber of Maiden Thought becomes gradually darken'd and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open—but all dark—all leading to dark passages—We see not the balance of good and evil. We are in a Mist—We are now in that state—We feel the burden of the Mystery.

Put another way, when we are open to what we see and all its complications and apparent contradictions, we go “down the rabbit hole,” as Alice did in Lewis Carroll’s tale. For example, most NDEs are pleasant, but how do we deal with negative NDEs? In most NDEs, people present accurate information (i.e., they see the living as living and the dead as dead). How do we deal with the rare ones that do not? Most NDEs are fairly consistent in how they present God/Spirit/Source. How do we deal with those that present a specific religion as being true? Do we simply ignore the cases we don’t like as outliers, or do we try to integrate them somehow?

Here’s another example, a big one, at least to me. I say we need to be open to all phenomena, a principle that Skeptics of necessity must violate. Thus, I am open to UFO and related phenomena. I think there is absolutely no way that all of the cases come down to hoaxes, hallucinations, and misperceptions. Yet I have absolutely no idea of how to integrate the phenomena into my belief system. There are many arguments against UFOs being actual extraterrestrial craft, and one of the most famous of UFO researchers, Jacques Vallée, believes firmly that they are not. Per Wikipedia,

Vallée proposes that there is a genuine UFO phenomenon, partly associated with a form of non-human consciousness that manipulates space and time. The phenomenon has been active throughout human history, and seems to masquerade in various forms to different cultures. In his opinion, the intelligence behind the phenomenon attempts social manipulation by using deception on the humans with whom they interact.

Very well. If we suppose that he is correct, then how do we integrate that into a Universe in which NDEs are also true? If this non-human consciousness has some power over us, then what prevents it from having infinite power, and so on?

This to me is the most tantalizing fact: Regardless of how we feel about all the phenomena, and regardless of how contradictory or lacking in order we perceive them to be, we still exist in a Reality that is stable enough for us to exist and think about these matters. As a corollary of this fact, we likewise know that there is not a power in the Universe with the will and capability of destroying the Universe and life, since we are here.

Based on this fact and the phenomena I have perceived, I intuit the intention for us to understand Reality, which is in turn undermined by the intention (not necessarily a different intention!) for us not to understand Reality completely, or for Reality not to be completely understandable in the first place. It is this contradictory nature of things that occupies my brain on a daily basis and seems to threaten at times to burn out the neural circuits.

This approach within the Mist directly contradicts the Western Myth, which explicitly holds that the answers are known and contradiction is impossible. This approach I take seems to me correct, and it does give the comfort of feeling I understand something instead of nothing, yet the comfort is ultimately cold. The machine is beautifully designed and capable of efficient and cost-effective production, but there is always a wrench thrown in the works.

The Skeptics think that giving up “God” and the afterlife is the big challenge that people must face and will eventually face, since that’s just right, and the right thing will happen given enough time. But it is not so. The big challenge is to acknowledge the phenomena in all their complexity and let the Western Myth die. To leave the Chamber of Maiden-Thought as a species and go bravely into the Mist.

 

¹Scare quotes because Skeptics use the word “belief” yet it does not operate in the mind as they think it does.

²Skeptics are correct that many beliefs are held out of a desire to assuage our fears and find comfort. They tend, however, to reason fallaciously that whatever belief brings us comfort must be “too good to be true.” Skeptics also correctly point out that religion and superstition bring people a great deal of fear, so in any case it’s difficult to sort out exactly why people believe as they do. It’s no doubt a combination of wishful thinking, social pressures, and the actual truth of many of the things believed. Skeptics are blind to the fact that they too are affected by wishful thinking (i.e., that each and every example of the paranormal is easily dismissible bunkum) and social pressure.

³I am distinguishing the Western Myth from the Eastern Myth (and other belief systems, such as African, Native American, etc.), although of course they share many things in common. Western culture has been dominated by the notion of a unitary, omniscient, omnipotent “God” who created all and therefore intended all in a way that the East has not. Nevertheless, owing to what may be called “human nature,” the East has produced a similar belief in infallible authority, such as the omniscient Buddha. As humans, we really want to believe that the answers are known—if not by us, then by somebody.

⁴There may be a tendency these days to think of Islam as a belief system of the Middle East and East, but it is very much comes from the same geographical and intellectual region as Judaism and Christianity. Consider that Thomas Aquinas cited Averroes (Ibn Rushd), who wrote extensive commentaries on Aristotle, and the picture becomes a bit more clear.

⁵I happen to think that the doctrine of original sin is pretty smart in essence. There is something inherently broken in everything, though not for reasons that Christianity would like to recognize. More on this perhaps at a later date …

⁶It’s more complex than this, of course, now that we understand genetics a bit, but there is still a tendency to see a particular diet or health regime as the way to health.

⁷This is not to say they receive no information at all about the working of Reality; they absolutely do. But the information they receive, outlier cases excepted, does not confirm the beliefs of any particular religion, nor does it confirm the existence of a unitary, all-controlling “God,” nor does it deliver a complete explanation of things. I think the teachings of Seth are a good example of information that jibes well with NDEs and explains a lot while shying away from a definitive explication of “how it all works.”

Addendum to footnote 7:

In reviewing this post, Michael wrote, “Some NDEs do involve the feeling that total knowledge of reality is being imparted, and that it all makes sense, it's all part of a master plan, every smallest detail happens for a reason, etc. I believe some other transcendent mystical experiences also take this form. Of course the NDErs (and others) find it impossible to convey more than a fraction of this infinite knowledge in words upon their return, but they do claim to have seen the whole plan.”

In response, I would say first that the nature and content of the “master plan” that is presented or experienced by NDErs and mystics seems to be significantly different than the nature and content of the Western Myth. From my reading, they see a reality (a kind of final or ultimate state of things) that is unitary and non-hierarchical and in which all of elements (people, spiritual entities, etc.) come together in a fully organic and autonomous fashion. The eschatology of the Western Myth is much more primitive than this: the righteous with God in Heaven, the evildoers in hell, and a “God” who has manipulated the pawns from start to finish. Forgive my negative characterization, but it’s definitely not to my taste, nor does it seem to be true based on observation of the world and history.

Further, NDErs and mystical experiencers describe, in my general interpretation, a kind of “ultimate rightness to things” that vastly transcends the concepts and content of the Western Myth. To cite one of my own spiritual experiences, I experienced a state once either before, during, or after sleep (that was not a dream) in which entities were communicating with each other and I was communicating with them, but we were not using symbolic language or even mental concepts as we know them. This jibes with what I have read about higher-dimensional communication and cognition, and it also jibes with the ineffability that people who experience the “master plan” describe. People who experience the “master plan” are not told “how it works,” and they can’t convey such a thing to others with words, since Ultimate Reality does not “work” on the level of our human cognition.

I think NDErs’ and mystics’ experience of the “master plan” is a true reflection of reality, actually, but I don’t think it solves the “problem” of the Mist. Perhaps I can make this quandary the topic of my next guest post, if Michael again permits!

Comments

[Fred Bloggs]

W Hathaway

Nothing wrong with being in a minority of one, if you conduct yourself as you have done here - in a most gentlemanly and courteous manner. Much appreciated!

I for one have found your input welcome, as it has resulted in some interesting follow-up comments. And it's good for contributors to this blog to be exposed regularly to a different viewpoint. Helps hone the grey matter!

Thank you, Hathaway, and best wishes.

[Lynn]

"But the point about the scientific worldview is that it sees no gods, fairies, angels, monsters, demons or hyperdimensional intelligences,"

Not sure about that statement. Physicists suggest there are up to 10 dimensions, with a different you in each one of them. They also say there are a great many planetary systems capable of supporting life and are yet to determine what form they will take.

Although not readily accepted by all physicists, more and more physicists are seeing the likely hood that we have a conscious universe, which opens up the possibility of there being a god.

If this is the case, what form beings take may be multi-faceted, e.g. angelic (pure forms) or demonic (less fully integrated forms), much as we have on earth.

Lyn x.

[Michael Prescott]

I appreciate W Hathaway's contribution, but I do think he exhibited a tendency to engage in all-or-nothing thinking, which frequently took the form of straw-man attacks. For instance, when some of us questioned his statement that "science gives us everything worthwhile we now have," he (eventually) delivered the parting shot that few people are "heading for the rainforest to live in harmony with the devas and nature spirits there." But this is a false alternative. There's a lot of gray area - that dreaded zone of ambiguity! - between thinking that science isn't the be-all and end-all and thinking that it should be rejected altogether.

My own view, which I've expressed elsewhere, is that materialism is useful and valid within a certain context. I would compare it, by analogy, to Newtonian physics, which is also valid and useful within a (quite large) context, but not within all contexts. The materialist approach is not so much wrong as incomplete. It becomes wrong only when materialists assert that their approach is valid in all contexts, even when dealing with nonmaterial phenomena like consciousness. In the study of physical things, materialism and its associated methodology constitute a very powerful approach. The error lies in assuming that what works for physical things must work equally well for everything, and the usual result is that nonphysical phenomena are either dismissed as unimportant or unreal, or oversimplified to fit materialist paradigms.

[Lynn]

Sounds ok to me in a nut shell. Some of you are well read so I'm sure you are familiar with Cayce.

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/cayce03.html

Cheers Lyn.

[Barbara]

Respect to the Blog owner and Juan, but I think you may have overlooked or ignored the main thrust of Hathaway’s arguments.

As I read it he is saying there’s no reasonable philosophical alternative to the scientific worldview, that we must follow it even if privately we don’t accept it; do you remember that scientist a while ago (was it Gerald Woerlee?) who said scientists must be materialists and reject all parapsychology on principle?

I remember thinking last year about this and coming to an understanding of why anyone would want to adopt such a militant position. And I found answers. For example:

1. Copernicus and Darwin. Oh the agonies of science if it contradicts religious belief!

2. Suppose the planned route for a new motorway passes through a local den of water sprites and fairies. Who says so? The local psychic. And she can’t persuade them to move. Er…what happens next?

3. The ghost of Abraham Lincoln, according to a respected medium, tells her to spread the message that Republican climate denialists are un-American and that he’s turning in his grave (after reading an article by Neil deGrasse Tyson).

I actually had a big list but I think you’ll get the point.

Hathaway seems to be saying that Humans have adopted a certain way of life, and it is all or nothing. Ever since agriculture, we’ve been irreligiously taking more from the World than we give back, and even reducing our consumption won’t solve the problem of diminishing resources and overpopulation. But the alternatives are unthinkable, so we must soldier on and hope for ever rarer scientific and technological fixes. Isn’t that it, Hathaway?

[Julie Baxter]

I wish I had the patience to explain things with the thoroughness that you do, Michael I would have left it at:

"I appreciate W Hathaway's contribution, but I do think he exhibited a tendency to engage in all-or-nothing thinking,"

In fact, if I'd thought of it I would have said just that.

[Michael Prescott]

"Ever since agriculture, we’ve been irreligiously taking more from the World than we give back, and even reducing our consumption won’t solve the problem of diminishing resources and overpopulation."

If that is W Hathaway's argument, I disagree with it. I don't think resources are diminishing (remember "Peak Oil"?), and overpopulation, to the extent that it's a problem, will prove self-correcting one way or another (either birth rates will drop, or famine and disease will right the balance in Malthusian fashion).

The things that worry me are the trend toward technocratic authoritarianism and the threat of nuclear proliferation among rogue states. This is the downside of science and technology - high tech (surveillance equipment, nuclear bombs) in the wrong hands (tehno-fascists and terrorists). But I don't think taking more from the world than we give back is the problem.

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Good day to you Barbara,
I am sorry, but I can't agree that I "get the point"! Perhaps you could flesh-out your comments a little bit. I am left guessing trying to define all of the ‘its’ in your second paragraph, i.e., “As I read it” “we must follow it” “we don’t accept it”. And, I don’t understand what ‘militant position’ you are talking about and for which you provide three answers (?) which I also don’t understand. Perhaps the fault is mine but I am really trying to connect with what you are thinking.

I am not sure that Hathaway is saying that there is no reasonable philosophical alternative to the scientific worldview. That is just putting words in his mouth. What is the ‘scientific worldview’ anyway? Perhaps Hathaway will be inclined to speak for himself and explain his definition of 'scientific worldview'.

I think that Hathaway is stating---generally, that by using the 'scientific method' there have been many advances in knowledge about how the world/reality works particularly in medicine and its ability to heal people. My guess is that he probably is not well acquainted with the esoteric topics that are discussed in this blog and cannot specifically address them.

I wouldn't pick agriculture as a starting point after which humans have "irreligiously" (defined as lacking religious emotions, doctrines or practices or indicating a lack of religion.) been taking more from the world than they give back." From a larger perspective with the start of agriculture humanity began to advance allowing culture, creativity and society to develop and survive. And in many ways the development of agriculture has given back to the world, if not the earth . Farmers in my area cultivate the earth utilizing modern 'scientific' methods and machinery such as rotation of crops, protection of waterways, green manures, and incorporation of plant remains back into the earth each Fall as well as allowing non-productive land to remain fallow, to return to its natural vegetation or by replanting forests. They no onger "irreligiously" take from the earth in my view but give back to humanity through the production of food and various other materials.

On the other hand, chemical pesticides on crops may not be the best way to respect and honor the earth. I have no objections to genetically modified foods---most of our treasured crops, including fruits, flowers, forage, and food for humans have been genetically modified in some way. It is just when that modification is done to allow excessive amounts of chemicals to be used on crops or when the chemical is actually incorporated into the plant that I think we have perhaps gone astray.

And I don’t think that humans have developed a way of life that is “all or nothing”—Hathaway is not saying this although his views are often 'black or white'.

Woerlee is an anesthesiologist I think. Perhaps an understanding of anesthetics qualifies Woerlee as a ‘scientist’ I don’t know, but I think there might be a tendency to cast a wide net when defining the word ‘scientist’. I myself have a couple of degrees in biology, zoology, botany with minors in geology and chemistry and completed a ‘scientific’ study ( thesis ) for one of them. I have also worked for many years in the field of health/medicine but I don’t consider myself a scientist though I have even taught those things to students. (That is, unless I am trying to inflate the importance of my opinions about something, then I miraculously become a ‘scientist’.) - AOD ;^)

[Barbara]

“I don't think resources are diminishing (remember "Peak Oil"?)”

Resources aren’t diminishing?! Really, Michael?

I was reading the other day how iron ore is now so poor in iron that mountains of it are needed to extract enough metal to do the biz. This is only possible because of improved extraction methods and huge machines using masses of fossil fuels.

I was also reading that the next economic collapse will be due to all those fracking companies going bankrupt – and the resulting recession will be way worse than 2008.

I guess I must be reading the wrong stuff! Is depletion of finite resources one of the Western myths I need to drop? Have you gone all woozy because of the new Tesla battery?

When you say that taking more than we give isn’t a problem, are you talking politically or philosophically? Because the whole point about materialism is that it is the modern philosophy of choice. I think we’ve subconsciously understood that we cannot appease the gods, because there are no suitable offerings we can give or noble sacrifices we can make – we need all the stuff ourselves, there’s nothing left for the gods or the rest of nature, and we’re certainly not going to ask their permission to exploit it.

Once I thought the gods might enjoy our culture as an offering. But lately -- nah!

[Matt Rouge]

W Hathaway,

||Yes, historically this has been true. But the point about the scientific worldview is that it sees no gods, fairies, angels, monsters, demons or hyperdimensional intelligences, and is therefore able to examine and use the laws of nature to our advantage without fear or emotional compromise.||

No, it will always be true so long as we are human. For example, science doesn't know how life originally came into being. So we tend to fill in the blank with an image of lightning zapping the primordial ooze. That's just a myth, a possibility at one point, but it helps make the story complete.

Not sure what you mean by "emotional compromise." Scientists are human and want to believe they are right and want to be remembered for having discovered something big, etc. People are biased for various reasons.

||As I say, this will probably eventually rebound on us, but we are entrenched in that worldview now and cannot escape it. Nobody really wants to escape it.||

I think you are conflating the scientific method with materialism. The scientific method is not a worldview.

||Nobody wants to give up the benefits we have garnered (some may *say* so, but so far I haven’t seen many refugees from industrial society heading for the rainforest to live in harmony with the devas and nature spirits there).||

This is similar to the Skeptics' "pink unicorn" trope, and it's insulting. Plus, it underestimates the opponent: "believers," for the most part, have their own internally consistent worldview and tend not to believe in random things. Thus, a Christian, Muslim, or New Ager wants the benefits of science and modern conveniences as much as a Skeptic does. People who return to the rainforest might be materialists who *don't* want those things.

||I won’t answer further points you and other commentators have made –I see I’m in a minority of one here, so I’ll just say thanks for your post- it was most thought-provoking.||

You're welcome! I think you'll agree that people here have been very respectful to you. Someday when you are in a group of Skeptics debating a single "believer," please do the same.

[Michael Prescott]

"Resources aren’t diminishing?! Really, Michael?"

Really. When people talk about a shortage of resources, they mean a shortage of known resources that can be extracted with presently available technology. But this overlooks three things: 1) there are presently unknown deposits of raw materials and fossil fuels that will be discovered by exploration; 2) there will be new methods of extraction that are unknown to us today; and 3) there will be new methods of generating energy and producing raw materials that are unknown to us today.

Talking about diminishing resources is like worrying that the Internet will become overcrowded and stop working; it assumes that there will be no new knowledge or improved technology to address the issue.

There are many things to fret about, and I'm not optimistic about our country or our civilization right now; but at least we aren't running out of materials or fuel.

[Lynn]

I agree with Barbara on resources I'm afraid. There is bound to be new technology and hopefully more eco-friendly ones that nourish the planet, rather than deplete it.

"Talking about diminishing resources is like worrying that the Internet will become overcrowded and stop working".

Not nearly the same, an infinite web page as opposed to a restricted world resource.

Less people would help for sure, this would need a nuclear bomb? I don't think thats an answer. Even population control is a bit of a non starter. No I think we need to help our planet flourish by utilising sustainable methods of energy production.

Here's an article on soil depletion Amos-

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/

Although I agree crop rotation, fertilisers, fallow fields, all help and we need to grow crops, and the best way we can. It suggests depletion does happen.

I love to seeing healthy plant life and nature, and I remember reading on the internet some years ago of a biologist I think, who grew a small forest of sustainable crops for a local tribe. What was astounding was the change in the local biosphere- more clouds came due to the vegetation, producing rain, as well as a myriad of insects and animals. The ecosystem produced a micro-climate that even he couldn't predict. I couldn't find it on the net, has anyone seen it?

I would love to see laws for example, that high rises grow plants and perhaps have grass verges. There will come a time when we will have to house animals in high rises in the future too I would think.

Just my thoughts- Lyn x.

[Art]

\\"But how can an afterlife, if it exists, help us in this life? By definition, it is not here and now." W Hathaway//
-------------

You got it backwards. It's not about "here", it's about over "there". This side is a school that prepares us for life "over there." We are only here for the blink of an eye compared to eternity.

What do we learn here that we can't learn there? We can learn about what it means and how it feels to be separate - something that can't be learned in heaven due to those overwhelming feelings of oneness and connectedness as reported by a lot of near death experiencers.

We can learn about time and space and 3 dimensions and time only going one way because time and space don't exist in heaven like they do here.

We can learn about what it's like to be inside and limited to a physical body and control that body - and the alternative would be to be pure consciousness with no limits and exist everywhere at the same time.

"Space and time are illusions that hold us to the physical realm; in the spirit realm, all is present simultaneously." (Beverly Brodsky)

"There is no distance here. So time does not exist." - Mark H's NDE

"I literally had the feeling that I was everywhere in the universe simultaneously."
Mark Horton's NDE

"I felt an understanding about life, what it was, is. As if it was a dream in itself. It's so very hard to explain this part. I'll try, but my words limit the fullness of it. I don't have the words here, but I understood that it really didn't matter what happened in the life experience, I knew/understood that it was intense, brief, but when we were in it, it seemed like forever. I understood that whatever happened in life, I was really ok, and so were the others here." Michelle M's NDE

We are simply here to learn the things that can't be learned in heaven. Then we shed these bodies like a butterfly sheds its cocoon and transition back to that original holographic film that our Universe is a projection from.

[Bruce Siegel]

Michael said:

"The things that worry me are the trend toward technocratic authoritarianism . . . "

Michael, could you explain exactly what this means to you? I just looked up "technocracy" in a couple of sources so I have a general idea of what it's all about, but I'd be interested in hearing your slant on it, including what you see as an alternative approach.

I'm not fixing for a fight here. :) Just interested. In fact, your concern may well jibe with my own understanding of how technology is simultaneously helpful and destructive.

[Michael Prescott]

Bruce, "technocratic authoritarianism" was my shorthand term for things like: NSA monitoring of all emails and phone calls; surveillance cameras on every street corner; surveillance drones in the sky; and the possibility of GPS tracking of vehicles, cell phones, etc., by authorities.

To this I'd add abuses like forensic labs misreporting evidence to secure a conviction (not uncommon); the IRS targeting specific political groups; social media lynch mobs that try to bankrupt and destroy anyone who disagrees with them; and the groupthink of major institutions who use peer review and peer pressure to ostracize and marginalize dissenters.

Basically I worry that we are headed for an anthill society of enforced conformity and constant high-tech supervision and control. The self-styled "elites" on both sides of the partisan spectrum seem pretty okay with the idea, and populist protests (whether by left or right) appear to have little effect on those in power.

As an individualist and contrarian, I view these developments with dismay and, at times, alarm.

[Lynn]

A trans4mind site that I found interesting for those who might like to read it. A personal spiritual experience.

http://www.trans4mind.com/awakening/

Cheers Lyn.

[Bruce Siegel]

"Bruce, "technocratic authoritarianism" was my shorthand term for things like . . . "

Michael, thanks for clarifying. I wrote a little more about this yesterday, but for some reason, it doesn't seem to have posted.

[Michael Prescott]

"i wrote a little more about this yesterday, but for some reason,doesn't seem to have posted."

It's not in the spam folder or anywhere else, so I guess it just got lost. Sorry about that. TypePad is not infallible by any means.

[Julie Baxter]

"Basically I worry that we are headed for an anthill society of enforced conformity and constant high-tech supervision and control. The self-styled "elites" on both sides of the partisan spectrum seem pretty okay with the idea, and populist protests (whether by left or right) appear to have little effect on those in power."

George Orwell's 1984?

[Kathleen]

But there is something odd going on in the universe, and this goes back to the post Michael wrote about "coincidences." Last summer, I was just watching the series "Mad Men" on Netflix. I watched the part where the main character, Don Draper, meets with the CEO of Hilton Hotels in the presidential suite at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Three weeks later, I was actually staying in the presidential suite at the Waldorf Astoria in New York (I know, there's probably more than one presidential suite, but still...). I wasn't supposed to be in that suite, but there I was and it looked exactly like I saw on the show (I have photos). I'm neither wealthy nor very important, and yet it happened. Since that post, I keep remembering old "coincidences" and seeing new ones. All of this, NDEs, dogs (and cats) knowing when their owner is coming home, etc., has to be more than just "coincidence."