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November 2006 |
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Wednesday, November 1, 2006 Automation + Marxism = Public Education. Throughout history, governments struggle with unemployment. When food production became more efficient in the early 1900s, fewer farmers were needed. The "extra" people couldn't be allowed to hang around and make trouble. Factories sprang up to keep them busy, and a "New Age of Mechanization" was heralded. Societal efficiencies ensure engineering and production improvements that require fewer and fewer people to provide the necessities of life. "Extra" people have been drafted into military duty, put to work on temples and pyramids, made to mine, dig canals, or build walls, buildings, aqueducts, or whatever else their leaders thought was important. Catholic Monarchies had, in some cases, rebuilt societies into Garden-of-Eden-like places where crime was so reduced that "A pregnant woman could safely carry a bag of gold across England." Efficient monarchies were helped by the great monasteries. In the thousand years that Europe was Catholic, many of the people made "extra" by technological advances went into convents and monasteries. They ran hospitals, schools, and colleges. They also worked and prayed. Those prayers fashioned themselves into a bulwark that lasted until God decided to grant peoples' desires for more freedom. He did this reluctantly, as when letting the Israelites have a king, but didn't think He should stand in their way. Catholic Fundamentalists imagine Him saying, "What's the point of giving them free will if I don't give them free will?" In His infinite wisdom, Kings were allowed to be replaced with Committees. About that time, automation increased. Instead of thinking about God, men thought about things and new ways to make them. Advances in producing, processing, and transporting cloth, food, lumber, minerals, and medicine allowed fewer people to get more things made and moved. There were too few jobs. At first, they marched the extras into muzzle-loaders. Then, as automation increased, into machine guns. That quickly became very unpopular. Gulags and mass murders were implemented. Nothing could keep enough people off the streets. "Let's try Public Education!", said some of the less bloodthirsty Marxists. "We can make billions of people waste millions of years, sitting around doing nothing but getting indoctrinated." For a century, ever-smaller classes of ever-more poorly educated students have been forced to attend school for ever-longer periods to learn what their parents learned in a few months. Dozens of billions of hours were wasted. As automation and importing put even more producers out of work, "Certification" was developed to keep even more people off the street. Utterly useless, contradictory, often insane theories of education were invented. Experts said: "Even if we do not agree with them, we must respect and study them in order to be certified." Once, only idiots were certifiable. Now, the most highly certified people in the world are school superintendents. They have to be very, very sure that no very smart, very honest person is ever allowed to be a school superintendent. Learning to read, write, and do arithmetic were made complicated and difficult. Elitists thought they were far more secure with hordes of illiterate, uneducated underlings beneath them. Public Education was able to provide throngs of howling incompetents with the brilliant inefficiency and high cost expected from it. One goal of the state is met when millions of otherwise unemployed people are kept off the street, and Public Education met it. More state goals were met as millions were taught to be so thoroughly self-focused they no longer believed such a thing as "truth" even exists. Better, from the state's point of view, is that most are so historically ignorant they cannot understand just why it is that there are so many, many "community" activities, and why participating in them never seems to make things better. Even though so many monasteries were destroyed, believers still pray. Probably more than ever.
Thursday, November 2, 2006 The Horrible Waste of Serving on Committees. Serving on a committee is a foretaste of Purgatory, if not Hell, itself. All committees are begun by an authority who decides: "We need to set up a committee." The reasons for a committee are always the same: 1. No one wants to take responsibility. 2. Opposition must be neutralized. 3. An illusion of meaningful, co-operative, bi-partisan effort needs to be provided. 4. A controlling power needs to be masked. 5. Underlings must be kept busy. Once a committee is set up, four kinds of participants appear: 1. Some sincerely want to serve. They actually want to be part of a bigger decision-making process without going to all the trouble of obtaining public office. 2. Some want to gain power, prestige, and more material benefits. 3. Others are assigned to the committee to be sure that only the "right" decisions are made. 4. The bored and resentful, some of whom actually have better things to do. Those who are assigned to the committee are, one way or another, in charge. Their main job is to be sure that the committee "does the right thing". Another of their jobs is to find committee members who can be used on other committees. Each Federal Reserve Bank, for instance, may have half a dozen layers of committees, all of which exist to rubber-stamp policy decisions. Loyal committee members "move through the chairs" as their fitness for higher committee service is evaluated. At the end of the day, those selected for the highest committees may rest assured that they are the most obedient of the hundreds of people considered, but not selected. Their "integrity is unquestioned". They are also able to give the impression that they feel the committee is "doing important work". If, for one reason or another, we find ourselves on a committee, we should get off it as quickly as possible. Fortunately, many committees have a policy requiring that frequent absences require removal from the committee. Miss several meetings, and then say, "I have to abide by the rules and remove myself." You will save endless hours of involvement and effort on what future years will show to be an utter and complete waste of time.
Monday, November 6, 2006 Passing the bar. Every profession has a test that must be passed. Doctors have to pass medical requirements, accountants must be certified, and lawyers must pass the bar exam. Such exams are an earthly, human reflection of God's reality. He has an exam that must be passed before one can gain entry into His Kingdom. God gives all mankind a simple test with a one word answer. "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" Many answer, "No." Many resent the test. "I am a good person. I don't lie, cheat, or steal. Why can't I go to Heaven when Christians, some of whom do all those things, can? It isn't fair. In fact, it's so unfair that I don't think I want any parts of a God who'd say such a thing or of a religion who believes such a thing." That's a reasonable answer. Its mistake is the egoistic presumption that God values being "reasonable" more than anything else. God does not want people who are only "reasonable" in Heaven. If He was happy with "reasonableness", He wouldn't have bothered with people. He'd be happy with ever larger computers. He is looking for something else. God wants faith. He has given us powerful minds. We can make things. We can program things. "Ye are as Gods.", His Scripture tells us. We just can't get carried away with the fact that reasonableness helps us work successfully with the things of creation. The reason that we have to believe in Jesus Christ to be saved is seen when we look at the Apostle's Creed. Most people have no trouble saying "I believe in God." But, the Jews went beyond that. They understood God as father. To reflect that, one Creed begins, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty." Moslems leave out the crucial "Father" part, and so are forced to leave a lot of love out of their lives, but do agree that He was the "Maker of Heaven and Earth." Christians carried on the Jewish notion of a Loving God, and, added "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord." You can believe in God, and in God the Father, without believing in the Son, but that's not what He's testing. The Son is a test on how faithful we are to His Scripture. He provided prophets to explain to us what would happen, and He is testing us on how faithful we are to the prophetic gifts He gave. When Prophets, like Isaiah, give us prophecies that came true, we can read them, and decide to believe, or not. Many of us believe prophecies simply because men like the Apostles believed them. The personal qualities of St. Paul, who was beaten, jailed, and eventually killed for talking about Jesus bore powerful witness. The fact that all the Disciples were Jews and all but John met painful deaths at the hand of the State was powerful testimony. A worse fate may await those who believe that it is necessary to believe in Jesus for salvation and compromise or remain silent. This is the best explanation I can give: "God set up a test. Jesus is the question, and Jesus is the answer, and belief in the prophets is one reason the answer is what it is. I hope I'm doing a good job explaining it, and I'm sorry that I'm not doing a better job, but, at some point, the choice is yours. The rules are His."
Wednesday, November 8, 2006 Seeking perfection. Every woman sorting through produce in a market is looking for what's as close to perfection as possible. Every man buying a barbeque is doing the same thing. We spend much of our lives trying to find and procure the best value we can for the money we have available. Every purchase, therefore, is possibly perfection. At any given time, only so many things are available for our consideration. At that time, we only have so much that we can afford to spend. We judge ourselves and each other on individual, and the cumulative amount of, such decisions. A good shopper seeks perfection with every purchase. We're "pretty free" to join whatever religion we want. If we're choosing a religion that will force us to "get weird", like some denominations, we will find that concerned friends and family members will pressure us to "stay away". They know we have free will, and don't want us to exercise it in such a way that we may be harmed. In that case, we may not feel as free. On the other hand, many of us tend to encourage people to join religions in which we, ourselves, participate. "I have shopped around, and I have bought this religion.", is what we're saying, much the same way as, "After I shopped around, I bought a Toyota." Marketing experts know that shoppers who encourage others to buy products are some of their best salesmen. They try to get these experts on their side, and try to make information available to them so that good words about their goods and services can be easily spread. Why do some people try to get others to do what they do? Right now, I'm trying, as are others, to convince readers to consider Catholic Fundamentalism. Why? In my case, Heaven Credits. I feel a need for lots of Heaven Credits. Any time that we get a person to move a little closer to God, we get Heaven Credits. If we convince a person to select a religion that takes him farther from God, we lose Heaven Credits. So, evangelists have to be very careful not to lead anyone astray. I haven't been able to find a single flaw in Catholic Fundamentalism. I'm so wrapped up in it I may not be able to. If there are any, I hope you find them. If you look for them, and don't find any, I hope you'll consider Catholic Fundamentalism. If you do, tell friends. You may need Heaven Credits, too.
Thursday, November 9, 2006 Getting in on the ground floor of God's pyramid scheme. Many of us have had the unpleasant experience of finding ourselves approached by salespeople for various schemes. "If you sell our products, you get a commission. If you get your acquaintances to sell our products, they get a commission, and you get a commission on what they sell. "And, if those people find people to sell our products, you get a commission on what they sell, too." Eventually, if you get enough people to sign enough people to sign up enough people to sign up even more people, you could have all the money in the world. Such schemes run into the usual frictions involving territories, ownership, skimming, imitators, and all the temptations that limit the size of such operations to pretty much what they are today. These schemers wittingly or unwittingly follow God's program for evangelization. The 12 Apostles signed up lots of Jews as they went from synagogue to synagogue To be sure, eleven of them were painfully killed for their efforts. They were rewarded not only for the converts they made, but also, for the converts that those converts made. Those converts went beyond the Jews to the other children of Abraham. Other converts went beyond them to all the descendents of Shem. On reaching Hamites and Japhethites, billions upon billions of people came closer to God. The original Apostles and all contributing evangelists continue to get credit for conversions attributable to their efforts. Catholic Fundamentalism is the first new approach to the Roman Catholic Church since Pascal invented probability theory and applied it to choosing a religion. Understanding ever more fully the implications that "God can program particles" gives each one of us an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a new way to draw souls closer to God. No money. All we have to do is encourage people to download New Road to Rome on the catholicfundamentalism.com web site. If understanding God's ability to program three dimensional structures gets them closer to God, we get Heaven Credits. If they, in turn, pass that suggestion on to others, they get Heaven Credits, and we, ourselves, get more. It's better to get busy right now. No matter how old you are when you get started, you get the same amount as lifelong evangelizers, according to the parable of the man finding workers for his vineyard. Still, it's better to get started. Download New Road to Rome. It's in the book section, and get started. If it's too much to do all at once, just read the first few pages, so that you understand what words really are, and skip around. Then, tell others about this new approach to the oldest Church.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006 Tiny bubbles. Sometimes, in a jar of fetid fluid, little bubbles form and rise to the top. If the fluid is thick, and the jar is several miles high, it may take six or eight decades for a bubble to rise from the bottom to the top. As the bubble rises, it grows slightly because the pressure around it is reduced. As it rises, it comes in contact with all sorts of things that want to puncture it. Some chemicals will eat right through the surface tension, causing immediate collapse. Other forces may make the bubble slowly leak and shrink. Such leaks are audible, and the different types of leaks make a different sound. Once the bubble stops rising, it may start to sink and shrink until it collapses. If it collapses suddenly, it makes a tremendous noise that echoes all around it. Other bubbles hear the noise, and may be frightened enough to try to direct their ascent away from anything that may cause them to lose pressure. From their beginnings, some bubbles are larger than others. Others are shinier. They glow with different hues. Such attributes matter little. The only thing that counts is having the bubble make it to the top. There, it's bright and shining nature becomes one with that beyond. Great joy ensues.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 Floors, walls, and ceilings. Most of us are, at this very moment, held up by a floor. Floors keep physical objects from falling lower. Some people spend more time looking for a floor than others. "What's the worst that can happen?" say those most concerned with floors. More optimistic personalities are inclined to continually check ceiling height. "How high can I go?" Others are concerned with getting ahead, falling behind, and moving to one side or another. Horizonists are more worried about running into walls. A good way to direct ourselves is to find out where we stand with God. Do we go to Church every week? Do we obey the Commandments? Love our neighbors? After we see where we stand with God, we know better where we are and where we should be. Then, the space we used to consider becomes less important. As we draw closer to God, the floor drops. We who are in His Kingdom can see way, way down to the lowest circles of Hades. We shudder as we realize that the real floor is a long, long way down. At the same time, we are aware that our ceiling is in the upper reaches of Heaven. We can go very, very high. Walls don't bother us as much because we've learned that the most important views and moves are up and down rather than toward one horizon or another.
Monday, November 21, 2006 The Proclamation of the Kingdom. Pope John-Paul II added the "Luminous Mysteries" to the Holy Rosary. They cover five of the things that Jesus did between the Finding in the Temple and the Agony in the Garden. Proclaiming The Kingdom of God is the Third Luminous Mystery. By that Proclamation, mankind was divided into those within the Kingdom and those outside. Some understood and moved into the Kingdom. Others were too mired in the things of Creation to break free. The difficulty of moving into The Kingdom shows that God did a wonderful job programming us and Creation in such a way that only very special people could escape the mire. We are made in such a way that we want the things of Creation very much. It helps to understand that they are merely a test to see if we can get beyond them. Just knowing that there is a "Kingdom of God" is a great help in getting to it. The battle is daily. Hourly. We all want "just a little bit more". We are all convinced that we need "just a little bit more". With very little prompting, we can make a good case that we do, in actual fact, need "just a little bit more". In most cases, it's a fact. All of us, at any given time, do need "just a little bit more". The most important thing that all of us really will need is a little more time at the end to say "I'm sorry". In fact, it's hard for us to look at things, and not think about having them. "I need one of those." is one of our most common thoughts. It's so frequent that it's not much more noticeable than breathing.
Tuesday, November 22, 2006 Entering the Kingdom requires leaving the world. Each of us is attracted to different things and combinations of things. "Collectors" have wide ranges of interests that indicate how extreme and how specialized people can be in their zeal to accumulate. Many collectors tend to think that their area of acquisition denotes their superiority as a person. Those who collect the most expensive things tend to think that they are "better" in many ways. Every collectible item, which is to say, most of the items in the world, is what it is. In Aquinian terms, it is "prime matter" and "substantial form". Catholic Fundamentalists go beyond Aquinas. Every physical object has a nature beyond its substance and appearance. Every thing exists to become the basis for a human being to decide whether or not: "Do I want that thing enough to lie, cheat, or steal to get it?" Catholic Fundamentalists, while they may be more acquisitive than necessary in this life, have enough sense to know that having "too much" is, at best, an embarrassment.
Wednesday, November 23, 2006 Jesus Christ, our Sovereign Lord, save us from the mess we've made. The title of today's column is not a bad prayer. Paraphrasing Burns, "the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray". His writing, by the way, is so true that the original final three words, "gang aft agley " have definitely gone astray. Very few things we do turn out as well as we intend. Most of them turn out worse, and the damage they do is often so painful to contemplate that we turn away from honest analysis with a shudder. As our station in life becomes more important, the capacity to make bigger mistakes moves into the "disaster" category. Public Officials tend to screw up whole countries. Of all the Public Officials, those who are elected tend to make the biggest messes of all. As they sell their votes to various special interests, they are utterly unable to fix the messes they've made of things. England, for instance, was once one of the finest places in the world to live. Then, generations of depraved socialists intentionally destroyed it. There was no royal figure, no elected official, no Church, no force at all that would, or could, stop the destruction. Error can only be cured by truth. But, not one official in all of once-Catholic England dares to say: "Jesus Christ, our Sovereign Lord, save us from the mess we've made." They are blinded by their own enlightenment. And England devours itself.
Jesus Christ, our Sovereign Lord, save us from the mess we've made. Monday, September 27, 2006
Bigger government allows the greediest to emerge and plunder their neighbors. Any society can only tolerate so much plundering before its peoples ask others to invade it. "Moslems would be an improvement over our own corrupt Visigoth King." said the Spanish nobles who urged the Moslems to attack their him after he used his power to debauch their daughters. Western governments still battle with our old friends from the Middle East. Our ongoing enemy has simplified government and religion by combining the two. Their people live in unrelieved squalor as a result. That squalor is, in turn, a great organizing tool for their leaders: "You are poor because Jews sent their lackeys to take everything that's rightfully ours. Destroy them and their lackeys. Then, we will prosper." We can look at every country they've taken over. Clearly, none of them "prosper". Money made in the initial looting is soon absorbed by wealthy polygamists. They use it to keep the poorer citizens in poverty. When they grow too dangerous, we pray. The prayers of Catholic Fundamentalists are always answered. Richard, Raymond, Godfrey, and Sobieski were all human answers to prayers. Their spiritual descendents are ready to defend us on land. Don Juan is ever on the water. So, this is our prayer: "Jesus Christ, our Sovereign Lord, please clean up the mess we've made." After enough attack, and after governments are no longer able to control us with Moslem bribes, a champion will emerge, and we will, again, be victorious. Then, the rot will begin. Again. And, again, we will pray, "Jesus Christ, our Sovereign Lord, please clean up the mess we've made." In the long stretches of time between battles, souls come into existence, live, and pass on to Judgment. We who live in such times should work. And pray: "Jesus Christ, our Sovereign Lord, save us from the mess we've made."
Wednesday, November 29, 2006 Seeing the Kingdom of Heaven. Imagine that you have been turned into a fish. You are swimming down a river, and go past a city. A little while later, you find yourself in the ocean. After a while, you die. The city you swam by was the Kingdom of Heaven. You went right past. It's true, you did notice some very bright lights, but thought there was a "natural" explanation. You also went under many, many bridges. You thought they were trees, leaning over the water. The water was a little warmer. There were lights moving up and down along the shore. Noises from what you didn't know was a bandstand had a certain rhythm. You may have been dimly aware of traffic noise coming up from unseen tunnels beneath the river. But, you did not take time to investigate. It was more important to go with the flow. True, you did hear a rumor that "If a fish near the big bend swims up on shore, he is carefully picked up and put in a giant, temperature-controlled tank in an aquarium. He's given free food forever and never dies." That sort of rumor was so ridiculous you couldn't be bothered with it. It sounded so silly that you just ignored it. They never taught you about such things back in school. You even felt sorry for the fish who took it seriously, especially when you saw some of them beach themselves on the shore at the big bend despite your pleas to them to keep moving on.
Thursday, November 30, 2006 Seeing the Kingdom of Heaven, II. At nearly the same moment in time, the first Catholic Fundamentalist discovered the concept that God can program in three dimensions and Catholic Fundamentalism. How can God program in three dimensions? He programs with "switching". After He programmed Creation, he programmed Humans with the ability to do simple programming with binary numbers. In human programming, it all comes down to "on" and "off". "Zero" and "One". God is incredibly (but not unbelievably) smarter. He programs with "switching". When we flip a light switch from on to off, or vice versa, there is a tiny piece of time that is between the two. When we imagine a railroad switch, we can see that it is pointed toward one track or the other, and it can be seen moving between them. Ditto with the old style light switches. Faster switches reduce, but cannot eliminate, the "switching" period. So, to begin with, God can program with a "trinary" rather than a "binary" system. That allows Him to program with a degree of seamlessness that makes the programming invisible to all but the most faithful. And, it reflects His Trinitarian nature. Understanding His programming ability helps us see the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is very important that you explain this to others. They can't deny it, though they may laugh and snicker. Your personal goal should be to explain how God's programming ability produced His Kingdom and be glad to be laughed at and mocked. That's one thing that separates the saved from the rest. "Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you |