Year: 2014

The Bible was correct, the “second coming” is upon us. Every two thousand years a change of seasons comes upon humanity. The focus of the change is halfway between two states of humanity. This is the point of transition between the two states.

The last focus was on the Renaissance, at the turn of the 15 and 16th centuries. This focus was on rationality and discovery of the nature of our physical environment.

The key to understanding the changes happening around us is to discover the nature of the next focus. I assume that there is some sort of progress made during the passage of these “Ages” and that time brings wisdom.

Let’s look at the recent past. The last focus was on rationality. The one before was focused on aggression and conquest. The one before that focused on urbanization, and the one before that focused on writing.

So where does that lead us? I can tell that the first several lead us toward greater levels of communication and contact between peoples, both through writing and direct contact. It also brought greater control of many by a few. Does this mean less or more communication, less or more control, or is significant change upon us, a way of life completely different from what we consider normal. I think the latter. Here is why.

A person from the turn of the century would barely understand “modern life”. A person from the 17th century would find it barely comprehensible. One from the middle ages, foreign. One from antiquity, alien.

I imagine that we would find life five hundred years from now as alien as those from antiquity would find ours.

The nature of the change upon us is fundamental. Some in the past have discovered the nature of the next focus and have passed their interpretations to us in writing. Others have passed their knowledge through an oral tradition. I will use the Bible as the most well known of written knowledge.

I wish to make a disclaimer at this point. My use of the Bible as “proof” for my assertion does not cast doubt on any person’s belief. It also means that I accept what the Bible says, but do not accept it as reality, but as metaphor, as a means to teach. If this offends you, I’m sorry, but Absolute Truth is a very slippery thing to grasp.

The New Testament is the story of the last change. It begins as four opinions of one reality. It continues with interpretation of the results of this change, how they apply, and their meaning to humanity. It ends with a vision of the next change, interpreted through the eyes that saw that vision.

This is the key to gaining insight into our current situation. How does what John wrote reflect his vision? Obviously it is filtered through his culture. Next, how do we interpret what he wrote now? No one can do this except John himself. So I will try to make some reasonable guesses about what his words mean, filtered through the 20th century.

John talks about many occurrences that are hardly likely now. Dragons, angels, beasts. He also talks about very real occurrences-fire from the sky, plagues, pestilence, famine. I can only assume that the “unreal” occurrences are figurative, and the real ones, “real”.

The unreal ones convey the nature of the change upon us, and the real ones concretize that change

John talks of the opening of seals, the sound of trumpets. Something is being revealed, something is being heard that makes us all change or be lost.

What is being revealed?

It must be the connection between the rational focus of the past Great Cycle and the next focus, which, seen through the Revelation of John, seems to be anything but rational.

All those who are marked, who have conquered shall pass through to the next place. All those who do not conquer, who are marked with a coarser mark do not pass and are cast to the lake of fire (to try again).

This doesn’t sound physical to me. It sounds more like some sort of spiritual armageddon, a purification by fire that some will accept and some will not.

From earlier books in the New Testament, we see a certain path of love, humility, peace, forbearance, and forgiveness of others. There is also a personal revelation transmitted from one to another, a sending and receiving (see Revelation 3:3).

From personal experience, this is the key to the spiritual armageddon. You receive the unfelt, unspoken Word and send it to others one-on-one. Each recipient attracts others who are prepared to receive, who receive and in turn attract others. An appropriate scientific metaphor is a chain reaction. Armageddon comes at the point of critical mass, the resonance point of the two closest foci, where the tension between the points is at its greatest.

So how do we deal with the fact of this change? I guess that the best course of action is to act on the purest tenets of your belief, and you will receive when you are ready.

How does our modern culture define itself? This definition is the basis of how we think, how we act, and who we are.

I want to find one or two things that act as the pillars of the definition. I’ll start with the general thrust of our culture.

Western civilization is a supremely rational, materialistic, controlling and communicative culture. It must dominate in all things. All other ways will follow in its wake, or be crushed beneath its uncaring feet.

How is this way of life epitomized? Let’s look at things we do all day long, in a “average” Western life.

We work, then we don’t work. At work, we make things, we help make things, or we use things. When we’re not at work, we do things that give us pleasure, which is relative.

Where do we work? Usually not where we live. In the past we always worked where we lived, and work was not separate from the rest of our life. We approach the first keystone.

Work is now separate from “life”. We do work that has no relation to us as people, to who we are. There is distance between us and work. How do we express this distance? We drive to work.

The automobile is the first keystone. Without the auto, and its corollaries, we never travel more than one hundred miles from our home, and our place of birth, with exceptions, of course. We have no idea of other anything!

The automobile has many, many far-reaching effects. I will only mention a few here, and I leave it to you to discover how it affects your life and our culture.

The dominance of paved roads, parking lots. Air, water, land pollution, the loss of mineral resources. Inability to notice your surroundings, ignoring your surroundings. These are some but not all of the ways the car culture invisibly infiltrates our lives.

This culture has moved significantly in one other direction that affects all our lives. This direction can most easily be found by looking at the other focus of modern life, leisure time. What do most of do on our leisure time? Watch TV.

TV is ubiquitous. We cannot escape TV. TV is a keystone in our lives. If you try to avoid it, you will constantly be reminded of it by another who watches TV and wants to tell you what they just saw.

TV in its purest conception is a liberating medium. The ability to see something happening in a faraway place provides perspective, immediacy, and understanding that those far from us are in fact just like ourselves. Fear of others is an instinct-television allays that fear by showing us others who are as we are.

However, as most things rarely come in their purest form, television is no longer a medium to communicate images without extrinsic meaning, but a medium that broadcasts images that tell us who we are.

It has become how we see ourselves, others and the culture in which we are immersed. It has become the basis of our view of the world. It’s real if it’s on TV, not if not. The “electric fireplace”. Reality happens on TV. What happens on TV is reality. (see Ellison’s The Glass Teat I & II)

Finally, to make these artifacts true keystones, let’s see what would happen if these keystones are pulled from their places.

With no cars, our travel would be restricted to how far our own energy could take us. No more 60 mile commutes. No more trucked-in goods-what you can get within 100 miles is what you use.

With no TV, no news reaches us until it’s brought by someone from where the news happened. Nothing is sold to us unless someone comes to sell it. No entertainment is provided unless it’s live.

These changes would be far-reaching. Immense. Transforming. Our culture would not look like it does. Therefore these two objects are surely keystones.

To start, I’ll define terms. I mean by decline, the ending of a culture. By Western civilization I mean the attitudes that result from a certain outlook on life, based mostly on European culture, more specifically post-Renaissance mercantilism and the Industrial Revolution. By moral decay I mean the results that this attitude has on the human spirit and the corresponding effect on the material world. By homicentric, the belief in the superiority of man. By Judeo-Christian paradigm, I mean post-Lutheran Christianity.

The decline of Western civilization manifests itself in two major ways, the spiritual and physical. The spiritual decline presages and is a cause of, the physical decline.

The spiritual decline is caused by the perception of a split between the spiritual and physical beings of man. This split has its root in Christianity itself, but is not the direct cause of the split. The cause of the split comes from the Renaissance and the scientific method.

Christianity teaches the split of man and spirit in the Fall, but resurrection and healing of the split by Christ on the cross. The true meaning of this is that resurrection is attainable, much like the remembering of a lost skill.

How the Renaissance made the split evident was by discovery, the realization that man is not the center of the universe, and the fact new things could be found by logical thinking, observation and measurement.

As time passed, this paradigm became the norm in the West, and began to result in significant changes to the way Man’s two natures were viewed. In essence, the physical was all that could be “real”, i.e. analyzed, dissected, and the spiritual was immeasurable and therefore there is doubt as to its existence. This is a matter of faith, not science.

As time passed, the split becomes one that was so obvious, it didn’t exist. All our lives are lived without a true connection to our spiritual beings, and no method to make the reconnection. The split is something that will be reconciled at death, so no need to worry about it now. This attitude becomes pervasive, and takes many forms. I will mention several as examples.

There is lack of commitment to spiritual progress. Worship is an activity that takes place in a specific time and place, on Sunday in a church.

There is a fatalism about the future of man. This takes many forms, but is most striking in the myth of Armageddon and nuclear holocaust, a “fin de siècle” “if it feels good, do it” outlook, and a lack of regard for human life, especially the lives of strangers.

There is preponderance of cult activity, fundamentalism, and an attitude of “let’s return to the good old days”. This is an attempt to try to heal the mind-body split.

There is an obsession with material objects, possession, and sensation. This is a result of focusing on the body as the only tangible expression of humanity.

There is a need to sublimate our personal lives in the lives of public figures. There is a corollary effect, the lack of interest in “real life”.

But, as there is a connection between the spiritual and physical, this spiritual attitude change causes a physical change. This physical change manifests itself in many ways, several critical among them. I’ll let you discover other effects of the attitude change.

First and foremost among these physical changes is the destruction of the biosphere. This is a result of the attitude that Heaven awaits, and our physical body is irrelevant.

Second is the population explosion.

Third is violence against fellow man, and a corresponding callousness.

To place all of these problems at the foot of Christianity is ridiculous, but some blame has to be placed there, and in Western civilization in general. Other civilizations have lived in harmony with the earth for much longer than Western civilization has been around. The major part of the decay has happened within the last two centuries, coinciding with the rise of the United States and its subsequent domination of cultural events. The United States is the full flower of Western civilization, and its last great blossom.

What are the roots of these problems? In essence, it is the mandate given by the Bible to the Hebrews in the first book, Genesis. The mandate is that man has dominion of the world. This is stated directly in Genesis 1:26, “…and let [man] have dominion over the fish…, the birds…, the cattle, and over all the earth…” Add to that Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it”. These phrases, written at the start of the primary text of two major religions, is a deep part of the Western mindset.

Taken literally, that man must tame a wild earth and take control of all things, is the ultimate justification for doing anything to the earth. Population growth fulfills part of the mandate, that of being fruitful and multiplying. Taming or destroying animals, rivers, the air, the earth fulfills the mandate of subduing the earth and dominating animals.

The evidence of the failure of this mandate is all around us right now. Air, water, land pollution, overpopulation, extinction of species, these are all the result of the Judeo-Christian mandate.

We need to change this mandate. To what, and how, are the questions to ask. Let’s start with subtly changing several phrases in Genesis. In Genesis 1:26 we change, …and let [man] have dominion over the fish…, the birds…, the cattle, and over all the earth…”, to …and let [man] have care for the fish…, the birds…, the cattle, and all the earth…” In Genesis 1:28 we change, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” to “Be fruitful, and respect the earth and worship it”. Finally, in Genesis 2:18, change …I will make a helper fit for him” to …I will make an equal worthy of him”.

With these changes in phrasing, the mandate is completely altered. Care, respect and equality are the words of the new mandate.