It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct. – Sigmund Freud (Civilization and its discontents)
Section 1: Rational
10
Plato wants our rational part to rule over emotions.
“Therefore, isn’t it appropriate for the rational part to rule, since it is really wise and exercises foresight on behalf of the whole soul, and for the spirited part to obey it and be its ally?” (Republic IV.441e)
The Apostle Paul assumed biological instincts spawn chaos and wanted worldly desires purified.
“Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;” (Titus 2:12).
Does discipline give peace? Do we need a manager inside us to control our actions, and do we need our culture to support a rational lifestyle? Consider how Spock, from the “Star Trek” TV series, holds back the emotional side and seems logical. Spock loses control in the episode “Amok Time.” (1967). Spock was too rational.
To portray reason, we will use a strange god of purity called Apollo, whose name means sterilization, according to Plato.
“But isn’t Apollo the purifying god who washes away (apolouon) such evil impurities and releases (apoluon) us from them?” (Cratylus 405b)
In Revelations, an Angel named Apollyon controls an army of locusts that consumes everything in their path.
“And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.” (Revelation 9:11)
Though Apollo kills in ancient mythology, the idea of a rational Apollo, the opposite of the emotion of Dionysus, developed in modern times. I got the idea from the book “Danse Macabre” by Stephen King (1981).
Both emotions and reason work together in our biology. Pure reason alone cannot make choices unless guided by emotion because animals would have no motivation to care without feelings. For instance, you love your parents and rationally choose to take care of them because your emotions care. Pure reason or logic without feelings does not care. Feelings help us develop our sense of how to live, and we must feel the world to discover the world. Without feelings, we have no way of learning how to live.
Sometimes, philosophers and sociologists will try to define something as correct. Can you make truth with reason alone? Suppose I make a claim that a reflection can not reflect because it used its reflection. This argument sounds rational, though it can easily be disproven with two mirrors. I would have never found my error if I had just sat around and agreed with myself instead of testing the argument.
We gather information through sensory organs, and reason or logic uses this information. However, rational people fail to use this information properly when they use reason to invent false illusions. Reason and logic support any argument when people ignore facts. Before proper scientific experimentation, Aristotle used a rational argument to show the Sun goes around the Earth (Metaphysics 1073b). For centuries, scholars accepted the wrong information in the books of Aristotle or the medical manuals of Galen, even though anyone could easily correct these errors with a few simple tests.
Air represents reason, Water represents emotion, and The Lotus flower represents reason when it rises from water into the air. I equate this flower with the Eastern Apollo, called Buddha, who sat under the Tree of Knowledge, listening to nothing but mind. People fall from Nature when reason is used to find ways to act unnaturally. Nothing in the Tree of Knowledge tells us right or wrong; only Nature does, and Nature talks to us through emotion. I believe that Buddha listened to the deceiver Zeus.
For civilized people, Buddhism does offer tranquility when the disciplined person creates an orderly life, but before you follow what Buddhists say, remember it could be a trap. Having unnatural abilities seems like a kind of freedom where the mind can expand into areas that would not have been possible in an untamed state. The structured nurturing of domestication can upgrade people, and civilization provides the resources to create the necessary structures. But what kind of life would that be? This living Apollo could be a hero or a villain. It would be more dead than alive after domestication destroyed the person. It is not the consciousness we should want.
Hippies equate the word OM with cosmic harmony and psychological peace. The way mystics in Eastern religions seek the divine instead of their animal leads me to think the real meaning of OM is “I am not.” The word is part of the destruction haters inflict on the self. Some of you think Buddhism is about mindfulness. So, exactly what do you learn by sitting in a lotus position doing nothing? You learn nothing. Do not expect me to live like Apollo or become a Buddha. Apollo brings about peace after destroying the life of life. Imagine how sterile an orderly world would be. I would rather sink into the ocean of emotion to live life as the beast.
There is an Apollo image for feminine people, which can happen whenever someone refers to a successful woman as bold or courageous. This gives the impression that success is an example of the success of esteem. It also implies that esteem fosters great accomplishments. None of these Apollo myths are true. Some successful people are neurotic jerks who have miserable lives.
In our enormous universe, nonliving things occupy most places. Only a few unusual places ever produce life. Water lets life move. Nothing should stop us from enjoying this unique gift. Too much sun would dry the Earth and leave it sterile, but the right amount of Sun sun provides the energy for life to grow on the Earth. Therefore, the Sun has another personality called Helios. This Sun gets born and dies each day, and this cycle resembles a microcosm of the Sun’s yearly cycle of life that begins during the winter solstice, which coincides with Christmas, the day Jesus was born. Jesus happens to be another role model.
Section 2: Slave of Reason
(Conjecture) 10
“The more violence thou dost unto thyself, the more thou shall profit.” (Kempis, 1418)
I was told that allowing emotions to take control is the highway to Hell, where the Devil sends desires to lead us away from God. Teaching people to control their behavior seems rational if you want a society full of laws. They do not want you to become a slave of emotion. Apollo also personifies structure for rational, organized people.
Of course, there are reasons for having proper procedures when building stuff and for having the discipline to follow these procedures. Still, we have too many organizations trying to impose structure on us. Schools, religions, governments, and businesses want us to conform to their idea of structure. Civilization puts demands on people to fit in, and people push themselves into lifestyles that are different from the way people once lived.
We can also adopt structure to our activity, and the discipline to follow this structure can give us new abilities. For example, soldiers train their minds and bodies to become tuned machines. I assume that reinforcing one ability suppresses another part of yourself. An athletic person has the discipline to conquer their body, training it to become a new image. A successful athlete might equate the athletic self with the true self. Take the illusion of a true self further, visualizing an enlightened person sitting in the East with a halo of the Rising Sun shining behind its head. Plato thought mastering emotion returned us to our divine self.
“And if a person lived a good life throughout the due course of his time, he would at the end return to his dwelling place in his companion star, to live a life of happiness that agreed with his character.” (Timaeus 42b)
Apollo becomes civilization’s strongest ally whenever the domesticated suppress any desires that will not fit the civilized way of life. Workers ignore the need for freedom to become part of the machine. Eventually, one learns to keep the beast locked up and accept frustration. In modern competitive civilization, the regulated person will be more prosperous, but do we not need society to be so pushy? Under different circumstances, the Devils of passion could be friends.
Instead of being friends, civilization breaks people during the domesticating process, turning the wild beast into a domestic sheep, using punishment, the removal of privileges, threats, psychology, persuasion, torture, rewards, or any number of methods. They want to make you civilized, and to resist openly would provoke them to use more efficient domestication techniques. A few decades ago, discipline was implemented through punishment. Then, schools adopted sneakier methods to control us. Now, educators try to make students feel as if they need equity and inclusion to feel secure. The educators give the students an endless series of surveys, which are used to claim that the students need more training. By the time you read this, they might no longer use the words equity or inclusion. They will have new words for you to worry about.
You might think all people are created equal, yet authority figures put themselves on a pedestal above everyone else. In the past, a king embodied law and order. In other cultures, a high priest symbolized authority. In our culture, the police get privileges the rest of us do not get. For instance, an officer accused of a crime gets a paid vacation until a grand jury lets the officer go free. In contrast, citizens get locked up while forced to go through more court proceedings (Packman, 2011). The law should treat everyone equally.
The uniform lets police feel separate from everyone else, and they treat us as if we were the enemy. Police will blame a suspect’s lack of responsibility for an encounter gone bad. However, thanks to video cameras, the public now sees how the police do not always tell the truth. Everyone suffers from occasional bad reasoning; even good people do evil when given too much authority. Tell someone that people are dangerous, give them a gun, surround them with people who support this paranoia, and then do not be surprised when the men in blue see you as the enemy.
We are all put in danger when authority interferes with people’s lives. You could be a harmless old man minding your own business. Five minutes later, the police have you pined to the ground for reasons you do not understand. Police do have a dangerous job, and they will run to save people, but Police are not only there to keep us safe; they also keep us under control and make sure we follow artificial rules. Individual cops are not the primary cause of bad situations when laws allow authorities to abuse us.
The organization Campaign Zero suggested a limited use of the police force (Rao, 2015). Should we vote for representatives willing to try such alternatives? Social activists talk about defunding the police, and they feel glee while rioters burn stuff downtown. These same people are not enthusiastic about reducing security in their neighborhoods. Defunding the police will not prevent wealthy people from rehiring security under a different name. I am in favor of defunding the police, but not right away. People in cities would find themselves in danger without the police, and these people have the right to have security. Though people need to learn how to stop depending on institutions, I am not trying to force society to change. Instead, try living alternatives; if they work, we should invite others to do the same. Some of you might wonder how they would protect their stuff without the police. Why do you have so much stuff that someone would want to steal from you? No one needs to own more than they can carry.
Decreasing your dependence on police does not mean you should stock up on weapons. We should not substitute one false security for another. Nor should we avoid all weapons. Let us learn to distinguish real dangers from fake ones. We must learn to deal with real situations in ways that do not require fear of what lives inside. Our appetites make life worth living, and when one fears desires, one becomes an enemy of oneself, so reject both the external police patrolling your neighborhood and the internal police patrolling your mind.
Section 3: Matrix and the Babe
10
The Hindu Goddess Kali is quite a remarkable symbol. The Violent images are interesting, though I do not understand them. Today, I see a quiet, nonviolent Great Mother. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll feel different, but I seriously doubt it. In our temple, the perspective of time unites with the Earth Mother and gives birth to physical events. I tried to create a religion with few mystic laws, where we go outside to learn about religion. Look at a tree. It is part of Nature, and when we talk about a tree nymph, we talk about what the tree seems to mean.
According to ancient Indian literature, each age is worse than the last, and we live in an age of violent activity, where we must live as part of a complex law (Vishnu Purana bk. 6). In this point of view, rocks and trees are less real than the law, and this story implies a difference between the creator father and creative mother, though both are parts of the great mystic law.
Even though Kali may seem strange, the great religious scriptures of the West have created a stranger version of the great mother. This feminine presence is not giving birth to Nature; this new mother gives birth to a new world order. Jewish Rabbis have a feminine concept called Shekinah (Maimonides 25), and Catholics have a bunch of regulations called the Holy Mother Church.
“We believe that the Holy Mother of God, the new Eve, Mother of the Church, continues in heaven to exercise her maternal role on behalf of the members of Christ” (Catechism 975)
I suspect this new female presence was invented by lonely men who spent too much time commenting on ancient books. People in agricultural tribes once celebrated the Gods of the harvest (Frazer, 1926). Even in Roman times, people still remembered a bit of the old religion.
“First Ceres broke with crooked plow the glebe; first gave to earth its fruit and wholesome food; first gave the laws;—all things of Ceres came; of her I sing; and oh, that I could tell her worth in verse; in verse her worth is due.” (Metamorphoses 5.341-345).
Agricultural cycles repeat yearly, and we portray the cycles as rebirth. The Pythagoreans changed the story of rebirth to fit a less realistic story about spiritual salvation.
“And souls are all exempt from power of death. When they have left their first corporeal home, they always find and live in newer homes.” (Metamorphoses 15.158-159)
As the tribes grew, the Greeks built larger cities where people had less contact with the cycles of Nature. Even if the salvation ideas were around long before cities, after 800 BC, the salvation religions dominate. By the time of the Roman empire, there were mystery cults where a god would live on the Earth, die, get reborn, and help connect believers with the divine. The names of this god included Dionysus, Osiris, and Tammuz according to Frazer in the Golden Bough. In the Christian version of these stories, the death of Jesus washed away our sins, and this allows those with faith in Jesus to be born again.
“By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:10)
Stories about the death and resurrection of Jesus attracted a lot of followers, and Christianity became the religion of Rome. The pagan Emperor Julian tried to encourage a mixture of ideas from Greek philosophy as an alternative to Christianity (Julian Oration). However, the religion of the Roman god Sol Invictus could not compete with Christianity. Sol Invictus was too abstract.
In Egypt, people mixed Jewish mythology with Greek philosophy to create Gnosticism, where finding a divine light allowed salvation from the material world. At the same time, similar religions grew in India, where holy books talk about people realizing the spirit inside.
“As one abandons worn-out clothes and acquires new ones, so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives within.” (Bhagavad Gita 2.22)
Consider the consequences of killing an old self to get reborn. The creative mother gives birth to a hermaphrodite who combines all qualities and carries the primal essence of the universe. Call the Babe Eon, when it lives eternally. Call the Babe The One when it finds completion. Call the Babe Neo when it starts. The creative mother personifies ideas behind civilized culture, and the Babe personifies a person in tune with the purpose of civilization. According to prophecy, this personification of progress will incite a great civilization. The ancient Roman poet Ovid helped to cultivate this myth.
“Even now I know it is decreed by Fate that our posterity, born far from Troy, will build a city greater than exists, or ever will exist, or ever has been seen in former times.” (Metamorphoses 15.447)
Ovid is talking about Rome. When the Roman Empire was going through a period of decline, Augustine replanted the civilization myth in the book The City of God, and the Roman Catholic Church became the new Rome.
“Incomparably more glorious than Rome is that heavenly city in which for victory you have truth; for dignity, holiness; for peace, felicity; for life, eternity.” (City of God bk 2 Ch 29)
In modern times, the civilization myth began again when Hitler wanted to be the chosen one who was destined to start a Reich. In reality, the world has no purpose, and the universe was never created out of supernatural essence. Hitler’s sense of mystical destiny never happened; the Reich lost the war.
After the eternal kingdom fails, the Babe will take the cowardly way out by shooting itself in its bunker. Unfortunately, throughout history, the Babe is born again as civilizations have a habit of rebuilding themselves. Fortunately, the Babe will never be fully successful since the false purpose of civilization cannot happen, and the utopia ends up a nightmare. Once the lie becomes known, One would learn that it must go back to what it was before One became the Babe, but One cannot go back if it destroyed the Grove while becoming the Babe.
The Babe rescues the creative mother from the material world, and the mother becomes the cup to pour the water of death when civilization uses the environment in unnatural ways. Southern Iraq was once a wet place (Al-Sheikhly, 2017). Civilization killed Tiamat and turned the Absu swamp into a desert. Though the drying in Africa and the Middle East could have been natural, domesticated animals eating too much vegetation also contributed to the environmental damage (Wright, 2017). The oldest civilizations grew in green places that were turned into bare sand. Iraq became the mother of modern civilization, and nations still fight over that piece of southern Iraq, where industry drains the Earth of its fossil deposits, turning the blood into smog and poisoning the rest of the planet. Look at what has happened in those scenes of the oil wells burning in the desert during the Gulf War. The area is rumored to have been the Garden of Eden.
Section 4: The Wealth of Nations
8
Do not build the creative mother. Get away from the books, go outside, hang out with living people, feel the sun, feel the rain, and get to know the original mother.
In large cities, people live in tiny boxes with little physical freedom. To pay bills, people need to push themselves to work. Advanced civilizations cultivate trees in areas of managed forest, where workers are allowed to rest. These gardens look natural, allowing people to feel like they have a connection to Nature. The gardens, people, and trees all serve the city’s economy. Civilized gardens such as Zen gardens are too clean for me.
For thousands of years, changes took place across Asia, Europe, and Africa. Cities, nations, and empires expanded. Armies grew larger and became better organized. Professional soldiers replaced tribal warriors.
“but the total of the whole land army was shown to be one million and seven hundred thousand.” (Herodotus 7.60.1)
Trade became more common as wealthy business people would use the land for perverted cravings (Esther 1). Slavery became common for large populations (Diamond, 1997 p. 279). Poverty became more widespread for families who once lived comfortably off the land. The new poor had to hustle in the cities. People specialized in doing particular jobs, forgetting how to live in small independent communities. Eventually, more technological development occurred in response to more demand for improved products (Diamond, 1997 ch. 13). One event caused another event, each a part of a growing chain, leading to ecological disasters, starvation, overpopulation, and disease.
Then, around 666 BC, the pace of progress got quicker, and these changes motivated our ancestors to ask questions about the value of life. Within a few centuries, Pythagoras, Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, and Lao Tzu all spoke. I believe that the new accelerated pace of progress can be explained by what happened in a country called Lydia, where someone stamped a picture of a lion on a chunk of gold and silver.
“They were the first men whom we know who coined and used gold and silver currency; and they were the first to sell by retail.” (Herodotus 1.94.1)
This created a standardized unit used to buy stuff. This planted the seed of business. Of course, our ancestors traded stuff long before money, but money lubricated the machine, allowing civilization to become faster, stronger, and bigger. Now, 2,600 years later, people have become tools whose purpose is to own more money, and the plague of businesses covering the Earth will keep growing as long as money exists.
We now live in a global economy governed by the rules of macroeconomics, where governments try to stimulate economic growth while citizens spend their lives paying off growing debts. We can change the rules that hold the global economy together if we set up economic firewalls to prevent economic situations from taking over our lives. The right set of instructions will protect us, and thinking of an alternative to the global economy takes the first step in creating the firewall.
The world has various services; some services give, and some take. If no one situation fits every person, people need a modifiable society where we choose services and set access privileges on what we let in or out. Our instincts will guide our choices while building our collection of privileges. Imagine a cloud democracy with multiple opportunities from various sources. Start with a small seed pattern and let it grow by integrating more services. After discovering others with desires, imagine all the fun we will have sharing services with those others. Eventually, you will discover the fun of sharing services with all life. Eventually, you will share services with the whole Earth.
Civilization never learned how to share. It takes. These takers fail to realize people can follow their bliss and still give a little. A global civilization manipulates every aspect of our lives, and we might be stuck with it forever. Nations rise and fall, yet civilization can rebuild itself. Western Civilization might outlive us when artificial entities one day carry Western civilization past the solar system. Even if civilization never goes away, the situation will improve if our culture accepts people for what they are. A culture built out of hatred for our feelings ends up hostile to people. Instead, accept the Animal inside us and let us accept the world the Animal needs.
Section 5: Reasonable Goals
10
Before we block out civilization, we need to consider how a world without civilization will not support the large population of today’s world. Technology has made a large population possible; however, improvements did not necessarily cause overpopulation. Overpopulation might have been the result of bad management. Don’t assume better health care and more food allowed the population to grow. This assumption is contradicted by United Nations research on population growth (Prospects, 2012). Western Europe has lots of health care, lots of food, and stable populations, while the population grows in parts of Africa where the poor live unhealthily and hungry. Disease, war, and famine do not reduce the population. Instead, poverty breeds overpopulation, according to the environmentalist Barry Commoner (Commoner, 1975). An enormous economic collapse in this century would create unstable societies, where misery would trigger the surviving people to reproduce quicker, and massive overpopulation would cover the Earth with slums.
To eliminate civilization, we need to find a better way than economic failure. Establishing healthy, happy communities would stabilize population growth. As populations move to the cities, the rural areas will become less populated. Then, if future cultural improvements lead city dwellers to have fewer children, the cities will fade away on their own in a few centuries. Hopefully, some people will develop more permanent communities in the countryside.
The environmentalist Barry Commoner blamed capitalism for the world’s ecological problems (Butler, 2012). Such writers created the impression that Nature lovers need to be socialists. Such a view is wrong because Nature lovers come from all parts of society, even capitalists and even conservative Republicans. The Republican Nixon started the Environmental Protection Agency (Plan 3, 1970). Meanwhile, industrialized Socialist countries also damage their ecosystem. The environmental damage in the Aral Sea came about through socialist programs (Whish-Wilson, 2002). All civilizations commit sins against Nature, and any political organization becomes a biohazard if it has too much industry. The executives in charge are only part of the problem because the factory would not exist if other people did not use the factory’s services. People become part of the machine to get benefits from the machine, and combined efforts keep the machine going.
Traditional Marxists were not environmentalists. Mao did not want harmony with nature and acted like nature was an enemy that needed to be conquered. The left only recently started pretending to care about the environment. So now, ecological groups have adopted tactics used by political revolutionary groups. These include annoying people with protests, destructive stunts, spending a lot of money advertising themselves, portraying themselves as on the side of compassion as if they were a religion, and talking like anyone who disagrees with them is evil. These activities accomplish very little other than attract attention.
Do not let extremists take control of your organization because having too many speakers who support only one side will harm your efforts when they start to exclude potential allies. One person wants to protect the forest to preserve it for the future, and another sees the forest as having its own value. Since both people want to protect the forest, both could work together and ignore minor philosophical differences. The fanatical, puritanical, and righteous cannot ignore minor differences, wasting time arguing over political details. We need calm, practical people to bring common sense back to the group. Practical people will walk away from groups that do nothing but bicker all the time.
Real improvements, such as cleaner cars, are being made by selfish capitalists. So, if you want to protect the environment, you need to be able to work with capitalists. The real protectors of the environment are rational people who know how to complete paperwork. They wear suits and have law degrees and business diplomas. Businessmen negotiate and sometimes get stuff done. I have never seen a Marxist negotiate. They have psychological meltdowns when they do not get everything. This behavior can be used to manipulate people, but nothing good comes out of it. Capitalism is success.
Treating the land as a resource has destroyed a lot of natural ecosystems; however, sometimes owners invest in maintaining their stuff. People might protect an environment if they feel ownership of this environment. Perhaps we can make capitalism compatible with Nature, and businesses will work with the environment (Reinhardt, 1999).
“Stable prosperity can be achieved throughout the world provided the environment is nurtured and safeguarded.” (Thatcher, 1988)
People could develop an appreciation of the land that goes beyond politics, but we live in a culture far from such a level of understanding. Someone smarter than me will need to invent a reliable form of ecocapitalism.
Meanwhile, leftist politicians use environmentalism as a dumping ground for all kinds of political ambitions. For example, Alexandrea Cortez loaded the Green New Deal with socialist plans for job creation, economic growth, and reducing economic inequity (Cortez, 2019). Politicians tend to make high estimates for benefits and low estimates for costs. When a project goes over budget, politicians hide their incompetence by using phrases such as climate change, carbon footprint, and greenhouse gases. We should just call it pollution because pollution is a less deceptive word. Practical people do not need big words when they work out the small details. People who understand what worked in the past will build a pollution program that works with the existing economy.
The West, The Russians, the Chinese, and the Muslims have politicians with different plans. If one country reduces production to reduce pollution, another country will increase production and increase pollution. So, in other words, closing factories for American workers means that China will make their slaves work harder. They do have one thing in common: they all love money. The last time I looked at an international conference on the environment, there was no concern about the environment. Instead, billions of dollars were thrown on the table, and the international politicians grabbed the money while screaming mine, mine, mine.
Perhaps, to save the world, all we need is a good cleaning crew. To clean up our mess, we need people who know how to use a mop and bucket. You might say that a mop and bucket do not deal with the complexities of industrial emissions on the biosphere. Do you have a better solution? Or will you support politicians who keep throwing billions of dollars at agendas? I do not believe global pollution agendas are likely to do anything other than waste money, and politicians will continue to use fancy words to invent big deals that never work.
I joined Greenpeace, which would send letters to politicians about the dangers of nuclear power. The old nuclear reactors were extremely dangerous. I broke away from Greenpeace after learning that new nuclear reactors are safer (Goldstein, 2019). A lot of environmentalists say we should use Solar and wind to generate energy. However, solar and wind plants require maintenance, which can use more resources than they produce. Ultimately, the world needs to stop depending on too much industry, and we need a greener world; however, we will not be able to stop industrial development in Asia and South America. Pollution will increase if burning stuff powers these new modern societies. Nuclear power may be the only option to reduce pollution. Someday, perhaps centuries from now, we will reduce industry and have a greener world, but we are not anywhere near that stage yet.
Section 6: The Monster
(Speculation) 8
People tend to imagine Nature as thinking like a person. Nature is an extremely selective person. A forest can produce billions of seeds, but only a few will ever grow to become trees. You might think that such odds are evidence that nature is cruel. If you are reading this, you are one of the seeds that managed to grow. You beat the odds. Enjoy the privilege.
People can want something, even when it will hurt. These conflicts make life interesting. The image we try to portray for others differs from the picture we portray to ourselves. It helps to ask others for advice since anyone trying to figure this out alone will get lost. Sometimes, others see us better than we see ourselves. The longer someone spends alone, the more one believes one’s lies and becomes confident in one’s opinion. This arrogance makes others want to avoid you. You will remain trapped forever inside a deteriorating, lonely mind. A social creature needs others for a happy, healthy life. However, beware of others who might encourage you to live a lie.
Instead of letting political propaganda tell us right or wrong, we should discover the right way to live by finding our place in the song of the universe. Each of us has a place in the world. You only worship Nature if you worship yourself, and you cannot worship yourself unless you worship Nature. Both live connected in one temple. Therefore, how we treat Nature equals how we treat ourselves.
You do not need to adopt an uncomfortable lifestyle to appreciate the wilderness. No one fits the extreme, and life never needs to become an endurance test for the individual, so no one has to live the way the Unabomber lived. Live anyway your Beast wants, then encourage others to do the same. You don’t do any good by running off into the woods to die. Since ignorance allows the problems of civilization, we need to talk about what it means to live as an earthling, and anyone can contribute a small proportion to this conversation. The Internet provides a useful way to spread information.
Remember to protect your Sacred Grove. You own your body and have the right to choose the setting in your personal firewall and beware of anyone who says choices do not exist. No one knows if the right choices exist or not unless they try. Then you will know if I lead you down the wrong path.
I do not want to be part of the new mother. Our Nature must experience the environment to know which way to choose, and we only get the right experience from the old mother. Go out of your house, take a look around, and learn. Look at how life is part of you, and then imagine how you live as part of it. Then, decide if you want to protect life or not. When people protect Nature, they protect part of themselves. Understanding nature by protecting the natural part of yourself, letting yourself grow, and trusting Nature will lead us to a healthier way of life.
The path people take becomes the world we make, for what we do becomes where we are. The connection goes deeper as each of us needs the Earth. You hurt yourself if you hurt the Earth. Therefore, find your future in the Earth’s future and your Nature in the Earth’s Nature. An even deeper secret says the Earth needs us. Even if the Earth had no conscious desire, losing one of its parts hurts us, and people are the part of the Earth that feels the loss.
So, who is this monster the rationalists fear? The monster says rationalism is unnecessary. I like the monster. We can live without a book to guide us, without a belief in an afterlife, without a sky daddy to rule over us, without police or judges, without kings or presidents, without artificial salvation. People do not need faith or artificial laws, and no one has ever required an Ayatollah, Bishop, Rabbi, Guru, or Lama. These guides are avatars of Apollo, and since elitists do not know what’s right for you, Apollo is the most unnecessary of all the gods.
Next Page Chapter 7
A few mythological names
| Nord | Rome | Greece | Iraq | Egypt | India | Yoruba | ||
| 1 | AIN | Earendel | Lucifer | Phanes | Nusku | Shu | Bodhi | Ori |
| 2 | ANU | Ymir | Caelus | Uranus | Anu | Anubis | Varuna | Orunmila |
| 3 | YEUO | Loki | Saturn | Cronus | Ea | Ptah | Brahma | Oldumare |
| 4 | JOVE | Thor | Jupiter | Zeus | Hadad | Set | Indra | Chango |
| 4 | EVO | Freyr | Bacchus | Dionysus | Tammuz | Osiris | Shiva | Oko |
| 5 | YESUO | Tyr | Mars | Ares | Nergal | Anhur | Skanda | Ogun |
| 6 | OM | Balder | Apollo | Apollo | Assur | Horus | Vishnu | Obatala |
| 6 | OSHA | Sunna | Sol | Helios | Shamash | Ra | Surya | Oorun |
| 7 | MAYA | Frigg | Venus | Aphrodite | Ishtar | Hathor | Lakshmi | Oshuna |
| 8 | ESHU | Odin | Mercury | Hermes | Nabu | Thoth | Budha | Eshu |
| 9 | NEM | Mani | Diana | Artemis | Sin | Bast | Soma | Yemoja |
| 10 | GAIA | Jord | Tellus | Gaea | Ki | Isis | Prithvi | Odudua |
Sources
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“Amok Time.” Star Trek: The Original Series. Desilu Productions, 15 September 1967.
Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by Hugh Lawson-Tancred. London: Penguin Books, 1999.
Augustine. The City of God. Translated by Marcus Dods. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1913.
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith Inc., 1930.
Bhagavad Gita. Translated by Eknath Easwaran. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Nilgiri Press, 2007.
Butler, Simon. “Barry Commoner: scientist, activist, radical ecologist.” Green Left Weekly, 4 October 2012.
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