Many a true word is spoken in jest. I'm not normally one to pay much attention to cute little panels published on the internet, normally they share a lot in common, to much in common, with some carcass off-gassing the politically correct toxin that ended up killing the creature. But when one is walking along practicing modern mindfulness by being grateful for being up-wind of what is rotting on the downhill downwind side of the path? When fate sees to it that right about then something hits ignition temperature and all that reeking methane becomes a fireball throwing a flaming face into the sky right through the hide of the steer who died a week ago? Well, yes. That is something to take note of, file it under "omens I've witnessed" category and keep right on truckin'. This little psuedo-meme landed in that category things tying up a huge loose end pointing out an obvious I'd overlooked.
For some time now I've been preaching the idea that Empire Academia's Kingdom of Psychology (EAKP, for brevity's sake) is a major and quite covert force operating in the political affairs of mankind, a force playing both ends against the middle, a force which has an agenda of its' own in play.
It's obvious EAKP is moving into the social power vacuum that was created as the religions, Christianity in particular, began to lose their potency in the affairs of men. It is equally obvious that EAKP desires the immense social power Religion once commanded… the power to grant or withhold a universally recognized social certification of acceptably moral behavior. Watch the world with eyes that see it is quite plain the Empire does not desire to be the power behind this throne, or that throne, they want power over any and every throne.
Not hard to see, and not an acceptable solution in my book. Fools we'd be to trade Peter for Paul. Paul never met Jesus, but he was steeped in the mechanisms of Roman civic and political organization, he was a tax collector the way I heard the story. He'll stick to what he knows, just like EAKP's shrinks, whose forte is understanding mental illness, are showing every indication of trying to rule the world viewed through their original lens.
A serious allegation I'm quite willing to defend, and yet measured against my own standards as gm-ct a thought I've never quite signed off as complete. From time to time, in this scenario or some other, when I've thrown that thought into service it still returned a bit of that… itch… that indicates an incomplete thought, a thought with one angle left open and weak. As is usually the case when such itches show up the cause is something inside the self, some blind spot bias shadowing the needed line of thought.
Mea culpa, and on more than one front. You have to confess your mistakes if you're to claim your victories, and the hole I'd never filled involves how the general public could be duped into allowing such a trade-Peter-for-Paul power play in the first place. That never made sense to me.
To wit? If superstition is truly fading then why do they accept what Empire Academia offers, which to an objective view displays all the same properties as the Religions? Particularly since it's not hard to see that accepting the Empire's claims is still an act of faith… there are ninety-nine people who believe in science for every person who actually understands any part of the science the others believe in. How does this work? It's obviously working, but how?
Religion bases its' authority on the concept of a, any, God or Deity, and in point of fact those entities are spectacularly absent everywhere but in the thoughts and judgment parameters of a believer. Through EAKP's lens though this must translate somewhere close to believing the propensity for delusional thinking, magical thinking they call it, is very widespread.
Eh, probably… but moot to the point because as the meme shows? There is a force already up and running to take the place of the God(s) those joining the Empire had to reject in the process of rejecting the Religions the Empire competes with.
Yup. The issue of human beings needing to believe in something bigger than their own lives to avoid all those painful philosophical positive feedback loops of pure humanism was neatly resolved. And it didn't take EAKP two shakes of a donkey's tail to realize that they had the inside track. That's what the internet is for. After all, The Internet as it is called did escape from Empire Turf back in the day, Empire Academia selling to the United States military to be specific. EAKP was there then, of course they were and that means they had a very good chance of understanding how to play it to their own advantage right from the get go. Kind of resolves a couple of developmental chronology issues, you know? Yup. It fits.
And, on a slightly more sarcastic and maybe even comical note? From that same little meme it is pretty obvious the new religions forming around the new God are already fragmenting into divisions, Protestant and Catholic as it might be called. Only took a couple of decades where in Christianity it took over a thousand years. The new God and affiliated Religion is obviously not nearly as stable as the one it proposes to replace. How do I know this? Because I was taught to pray (to that deity I DO NOT pray to) in the name of the Modem, the Router, and the Holy Packet… not the Holy Signal.
