The mind is detached, and easily separated from the reality of the body, world, feeling, and the experience of things - not mind. I believe that a more natural life (than so much today) is a more direct and spiritual experience.
My goal is to be an integrated person - with body, soul (mind, will and emotions) and spirit as whole as possible now and constantly striving for more wholeness.
I think that the "mind focus" and the "detached mind syndrome", is probably largely due to our mechanistic, mind focused "educational" indoctrination programming.
A more "natural life" definitely reinvigorates our spiritual roots, viciously suppressed and even slashed by our "secular education" - indoctrination in atheism.
And another kind of indoctrination. I see the rigor of this technologized environment. We don't congregate locally as much, but we do in cyberspace bubbles more-so. A young person says to me, "Don't call, text." That was because I said "Call, don't text." But also, we're not in our jurisdictions here. And why do we all stare at Washington when 99% of those people are not in our jurisdictions? If we were locally connected to our people, then it would be local, district, state, and we'd be on top of them that way, and it would be closer and more real. The whole infrastructure is geared for mass-media and dissemination. [Add: We can have local identities by knowing people where we live]
I was witness to a conversation about a person who needed urgent surgery over the weekend. The tech said I don't understand why they give everyone pressors (blood pressure reducing meds) and then they expect their surgeries to be successful. The person ended up with an amputation. The MD present said actually the problem was US healthcare because in Europe a person over 75 would never get an ICU bed. Many people are very healthy at 75! This isn't the first time I have heard a doc mention doing too much for an elderly patient. This isn't the healthcare I was trained in and they're intentionally causing harms (through algorithms). The evil is at play everywhere and I doubt many know they are culpable. Stay healthy!
Dr. Vernon Coleman mentioned this in his Substack article today about how the medical industry is using the excuse of combatting climate change to withhold and/or give insufficient care, especially for the elderly.
I don't know when or where u trained, but I remember a friend during their internship & all the fellow doctors had a phrase GOMER used re old patients: Get out of my emergency room! This was 30+ years ago in a respected area/med school. This attitude towards our elderly is not new & is STILL prevalent, particularly in the U.S. where the elderly are not revered, as they are in many other countries.
The psychopaths will reign over the earth until the day integrity becomes preponderant. For now they get their 15 minutes of fame, their day in the sun, but once integrity becomes the true standard, they will be avoided and pitied.
If I were a political architect, I'd say to the customer, "You want morality? You show me accountability and transparency, and I'll show you morality."
Concentration camp survivor and Nobel Prize–winning author Elie Wiesel must have been speaking of these vile creatures when he wrote, “Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.”
Nah ... Wiesel was talking about us - ALL of us!
We are mostly responsible for the mess we are in!
The vile creatures could have little and decreasing power, if not for our indifference.
The dark lords grow in power in the shadows, because we don't invade the darkness with the light and expose them, before they can consolidate power.
Why is that?
Perhaps we have some darkness in our own lives, that we want to keep hidden.
Why did the German people enable the Holocaust?
Were they all evil?
They were mostly good protestant Christians supposedly.
Yet because they were indifferent, they died before they died.
Perhaps more Germans than Jews, died in the Holocaust.
Many evil Germans and others, knew exactly what they were doing and didn't care.
The indifference of the rest, enabled the suffering and death.
Thus it was, is now, and evermore shall be.
Unless we do something very different, as suggested in this forum.
This was put into the US health code under Medicare guidelines with the Affordable Care Act and their Alzheimer's Plan for America (which was to find a "cure" by 2025). They both had proposals to push for hastening "end of life care," which was to train doctors and hospice workers in how to get families to understand that patients with dementia should have DNRs, as their "quality of life" didn't justify hospitalization costs versus doing nothing. When some people said this was a way to euthanize elderly people, the Obama Democrats said it wasn't true, but after passing the ACA, nursing home patients who had been hospitalized and returned to a facility were not readmitted to a hospital for future events, but were allowed to die in the facility (due to penalties that would be assessed on both the facility and hospital). I witnessed this myself on several occasions, as well as a lack of appropriate aggressive treatment for older patients in hospitals.
I don't think this passed because of citizen indifference; it was politicians who lied, media who sold the lie (like COVID lies), and non-profit groups that were trusted like the dementia organizations who encouraged them to vote for it because it would help the people they cared for. The only people who understood it were people who did a lot of research because they had a reason to, like me. Trying to educate people got me shut down and thrown out of said group. They are powerful people.
I have been progressively uncovering lots of dirt under the carpet.
There are many covert and overt "protocols" to hasten the death of the elderly.
I am alarmed by the ignorant compliance of most "health care" workers and "professionals", who never question these "protocols" and are incapable of intelligent discussion of the real facts justifying them.
This is highlighted by those who do speak out about the real situation.
I am wondering now about recurrent claims, that elderly people have conditions needing surgery but they would never survive the surgery, so they are left to die.
Do these people really have conditions needing surgery?
Do they die naturally or through covert "assisted death"?
1. the embodiment of evil that you mention, would in fact require an oppositional force. The embodiment of good and that would be a noticeable force with an unmistakable signature in all of our lives. Now before anyone says, "God is..." to paraphrase from Genesis, "...you were created in the image of a God who created both the dark and the light." Which brings me directly to my next point-
2. We, everyone of us including the philanthropaths, have within us the full spectrum capacity for doing totally self dis serving evil and total self dis serving good. By going in either direction fully, we destroy ourselves. Both extremes come with their own destructive sequences, such as on the one hand, a total lack of concern for the well being and suffering of those around them or even an active compulsion to harm those around them. Either way, they end up with no one around them willing to do anything but tale advantage and end them when the situation presents itself. On the other hand the total lack of concern for one's own well being or suffering or even the altruistic compulsion to give everything of oneself to others, they end up with no one around them but those wanting to take advantage and end them when the situation presents itself.
2b. We exist in a material plane wherein we must consume from a finite set of resources in order to survive. On this plane, the only thing more detrimental to survival than giving all of that resource to others, is gathering it all to oneself while surrounded by those whose own survival requires them to take it from you. Accepting the fact that we are born with both the dark and the light within ourselves and working from that frame of reference is the only way to go forward. We must fight when we have to. It is not indifference or disinterest that keeps the "Good Germans From stopping the Bad Nazis." It is cowardice and that is unforgivable. As evil knows and does not care, we know and yet, do nothing. That is because each of us is too afraid to be the first to say "Stop" and mean it, backed up by our own blood. We need to overcome our own cowardice by realizing that this life will no longer be worth living if we fail to put our lives on the table for what we know is right, right now.
3. Dealing with the philanthropaths... the first step is kinda simple and is really just a change of mindset. "Power corrupts" and anytime anyone says that cliche, they follow it with "absolute blah blah blah." The human brain can't conceive of absolutes so it renders the whole thought process moot, the lesson unlearned. Start thinking of it as this, "Power corrupts and petty power corrupts petty people. We are all petty, therefore once anyone has been given any power, they can no longer be given the benefit of the doubt." Power should not be respected. It should be actively suspected of everything imaginable and treated appropriately. This is a first step. Fixing this world is going to take a number of steps greater than 12. We'll solve the other steps when we get the 1st one accomplished.
Side note- We must remind our journalists that no one other than themselves and the powerful benefit when they "speak truth to power" since the odds are power has not gifted them the with the truth. All power has done is enthralled them with the possibility of getting that gift. That codependent and exclusive relationship needs to end, now. What is needed of them is to "Speak truth about power to the people after taking the time to lie, cheat, steal or straight up shovel the truth, by any means necessary, from the powerful.
Have a great revolution and future or apocalypse and enslavement, which ever you choose!
They do know and don't care because they've succumbed to evil forces due to their love of money. The devil and his minions don't care about money, they can acquire it easily from bankers who create it at no cost. They care about acquiring souls in this world to prevent their eternal life with God through salvation in Jesus and get additional joy and power from the suffering of the innocent and unaware people who are caught up in their plans.
We are all tempted many times in the course of our life and make choices between following the wide and easy path with many others or the narrow and difficult path by ourselves. God has given us free will to choose for ourselves whether or not to have integrity and be righteous despite the personal cost and effort.
Anne Can't Stand it wrote and drew about this in her post today regarding Stefanie Turner, collegiate fencer who refused to compete against a former male athlete. The doctors and nurses in the Abbotswood Care Home Massacre chose the other path. See this and try not to be moved https://substack.com/home/post/p-160122913
"We are all tempted many times in the course of our life and make choices between following ... the narrow and difficult path by ourselves. God has given us free will to choose for ourselves whether or not to have integrity and be righteous despite the personal cost and effort."
Thank you for acknowledging this fact. It is sometimes lonely and takes a toll on friendship and family relationships. People don't often understand that. It causes us to often be silent and not engage fully in conversations, even less so seek counseling, because we're automatically labelled. It's been tough the last 5 years, and God doesn't talk out of my Moses' Burning Bush.
The great reset is the great awakening. We always have a choice. It's called free will. The Hawaiian prayer "Ho'oponopono" I'm sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you, I love you, promotes healing and self-love. Getting back to nature is necessary, forest bathing has proven to be immensely helpful. I concur, mistakes were not made.
Have you considered intimacy as a multiplier? To me, like other species we're a species that needs (local) intimate interaction. I think it gets right into our biology and survival that we have it, and I think our modern world throws a twist. Out of intimacy arises a grassroots, organic movement of the people, and this is what we've been missing.
It may seem hard to see, but I think the rearrangement, reformatting, and re-modalizing of us in the modern world has gotten us out of our nature. On my substack, I focus on old-timey, generic, democratic architecture. I welcome you to check out the intro (I'll link it). This includes an idea for implementing our own (democratic) NGO. ;-) Democracy, when done properly, is intimate.
I agree! Once everything became "automated" we lost touch. No more customer service you can do it all online! I hate it and try to interact with people when possible. It broke my heart when my company did this and it severed relationships we had with our CS team. I bet it ruined them too. We are being turned into automatons whether we want to or not.
"If there is an all-wise God who made everything, how could he/she/it make a mistake and create evil … or was this part of some plan?"
Folks who ask this question overlook that the creator is, in human terms, inhuman. The creation of evil was part of some plan. There is no need for a salvation plan if there is no need for salvation.
God didn't create evil. He allowed all creatures to have free will. When people and angels have free will to make their own decisions, someone's going to choose not to do the right thing. Satan was the first to make that choice. God didn't create Satan to be evil; Satan decided he could be as powerful and equal to God. He rebelled against God. When he recruited followers, God threw him out of Heaven. Satan told God that it wasn't fair; he hadn't had a trial. God agreed. Humans are the trial, the testimony that creatures can be made with free will, and have the same choice Satan did. Adam and Eve lived an unknown number of years before Eve fell for Satan's lie that she could know as much as God, and then she talked Adam into following her sin. As a result, her original sin is passed to all human beings genetically through the female line. That's why Jesus Christ was born to the Virgin Mary. He was the Son of God, but had the sin of man through his human mother, Mary. When He died on the cross without having committed any personal sins after 33 years on earth (no anger, no lying, no stealing, no jealousy, no cheating, etc.), all the personal sins of every human ever to exist were imputed to Him during those three hours. When He said, "It is finished," God accepted His substitutionary payment for the sins we've all committed. After that, anyone who tells God they believe that was done for them is born again into the family of God, a believer, and has life everlasting. If they commit a personal sin afterwards, and they will, they admit that sin to God, and since it's already been forgiven by Christ's sacrifice on the cross, they can be in fellowship with God again. Prayers are all directed by the Holy Spirit in the name of Christ to God. There are no intercessions needed, no priest, no Mary, no pope, no preacher. You have a direct line to God. (Free info is available, really no obligation, free, streaming, and written information, at Berachah.church).
The need for salvation was not "created" by God; it was a free will choice of Satan, then man. We humans are part of an angelic conflict, a trial in heaven, and we are the testimonial witnesses to prove that free will can result in beings accepting salvation, in changing their minds, and following the Plan of God. The final testimony will happen sometime in the future, unknown after all the battles and history told in Revelation. If all this is BS, when we're all dead, we won't know; if it isn't, we'll know then too.
The creator is, in human terms, inhuman. The creation of evil was part of some plan. There is no need for a salvation plan if there is no need for salvation.
I am not a Biblical scholar, so I can't participate in a worthy debate regarding spiritual truths or protocol. I'm a student with a bit more knowledge than some, but not enough to engage in the philosophical discussion you've presented. I have thought about it, but don't have the Biblical background from original languages, nor the extensive information on the essence of God, His relationship to man and Satan, or the Divine Plan, or how that fits into the Angelic Conflict and the trial of Satan, to explain that God did not create or cause sin.
I do know that parts of God's Essence wouldn't allow Him to create or cause sin - Righteousness, Justice, Omniscience, Immutability, Veracity. Those attributes would prohibit Him from having anything to do with sin. Creating a being with free will doesn't mean that He created sin. He may have created beings that had the ability to sin, if they chose to do so, just as Satan and the angels who followed him chose, but He didn't create their sin. I think that's a doctrinal point that I may not be able to "argue" without more knowledge of original languages or specific verses to perhaps begin to open your mind.
As I mentioned earlier, the pastor/teacher I follow is at Berachah Church in Houston, TX, and their information is available online and always free.
I've led such a sheltered, privileged and blinkered life that it took until my fourth decade to personally encounter the prospect of evil. It is the only concept I have to 'explain' that our society injects babies with poison. Repeatedly. An act of violence, delivering poison, held up as life-saving. It doesn't get much more vulnerable and defenceless than a baby.
Completely agree with "“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn’t exist.”
Also have no trouble believing that "They know and they don't care". The belief by many that the cruelties don't know and would change course if they did provides the cruelties with even greater capacity to continue to do as they please. But for many (most?) people, reality is too much too bear; they prefer the lie.
Whenever people bring their concerns about evildoing through systems, or power/control hungry groups and individuals, to a beloved spiritual master, the response is often, “It’s Kali Yuga.” As in: duh, this is the age of immorality. The typical, cryptic advice on how to navigate it tends to boil down to “do good things and don’t do bad things” or “just give love.”
Your piece describes what that looks like and why it matters. Whether for tikkun olam or to resist the demons of indifference from infiltrating our minds and souls, this kind of care is crucial.
Mental, emotional, and spiritual hygiene is the boundary work of our time, like the internal equivalent of gray rocking a narcissist. The more of us who commit to not feeding the beast with our attention, our outrage, or our desperation to be understood, the less power it has. Eventually, it loses interest.
Peck...! Interesting, I think that's still on my mom's bookcase somewhere. He was pretty good, as this fine guest piece reminds me.
Anyhow, MAA, I'm mainly here to announce my new substack gig to you and any others who may remember me here. I've been writing at PostModernConservative substack for three or so years now, which is a group stack thing, and covers a wide-variety of topics. I've now got my own stack, which will be far more focused on the topic of the Suppression of the Covid-vax harms story, and particularly on the "conservative" side of that Suppression. Hence the name: DISSIDENT CONSERVATIVE. I intend to get quite a bit more confrontational with established conservative thinkers and platforms, something I had to hold myself back on when at Pomocon. Come give it a look, Looking Glassers! https://dissidentcon.substack.com/p/dissident-conservative-and-its-mission
Your words are so profoundly insightful and comforting! Thank you.
It's always humbling to realize I am the one who needs what I'm writing about! Indifference... what a scourge it's been in my life. Changing!
Behind the lie that "the devil" does not exist is the lie that "God" does not exist.
A society that descends into atheism is sliding into "hell".
More common sense, meaningful input and wisdom than I have seen for a long time.
Thank you for your thought-provoking words, Seeds, and I’m grateful to hear you appreciated Will’s essay as much as I do.
The mind is detached, and easily separated from the reality of the body, world, feeling, and the experience of things - not mind. I believe that a more natural life (than so much today) is a more direct and spiritual experience.
Thank you for your input mark.
My goal is to be an integrated person - with body, soul (mind, will and emotions) and spirit as whole as possible now and constantly striving for more wholeness.
I think that the "mind focus" and the "detached mind syndrome", is probably largely due to our mechanistic, mind focused "educational" indoctrination programming.
A more "natural life" definitely reinvigorates our spiritual roots, viciously suppressed and even slashed by our "secular education" - indoctrination in atheism.
And another kind of indoctrination. I see the rigor of this technologized environment. We don't congregate locally as much, but we do in cyberspace bubbles more-so. A young person says to me, "Don't call, text." That was because I said "Call, don't text." But also, we're not in our jurisdictions here. And why do we all stare at Washington when 99% of those people are not in our jurisdictions? If we were locally connected to our people, then it would be local, district, state, and we'd be on top of them that way, and it would be closer and more real. The whole infrastructure is geared for mass-media and dissemination. [Add: We can have local identities by knowing people where we live]
I was witness to a conversation about a person who needed urgent surgery over the weekend. The tech said I don't understand why they give everyone pressors (blood pressure reducing meds) and then they expect their surgeries to be successful. The person ended up with an amputation. The MD present said actually the problem was US healthcare because in Europe a person over 75 would never get an ICU bed. Many people are very healthy at 75! This isn't the first time I have heard a doc mention doing too much for an elderly patient. This isn't the healthcare I was trained in and they're intentionally causing harms (through algorithms). The evil is at play everywhere and I doubt many know they are culpable. Stay healthy!
Dr. Vernon Coleman mentioned this in his Substack article today about how the medical industry is using the excuse of combatting climate change to withhold and/or give insufficient care, especially for the elderly.
I don't know when or where u trained, but I remember a friend during their internship & all the fellow doctors had a phrase GOMER used re old patients: Get out of my emergency room! This was 30+ years ago in a respected area/med school. This attitude towards our elderly is not new & is STILL prevalent, particularly in the U.S. where the elderly are not revered, as they are in many other countries.
The psychopaths will reign over the earth until the day integrity becomes preponderant. For now they get their 15 minutes of fame, their day in the sun, but once integrity becomes the true standard, they will be avoided and pitied.
I appreciate your insightful, Apocaloptimistic comment, William, not only because I agree but also because I consider integrity my core value from which all my other values (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/my-two-year-stackiversary-lattice) naturally flow.
I once wrote in a Substack Note:
“Never compromise your integrity. It is your most precious possession and the only one that can never be replenished.” (https://substack.com/profile/35383324-margaret-anna-alice/note/c-15182066)
If I were a political architect, I'd say to the customer, "You want morality? You show me accountability and transparency, and I'll show you morality."
Concentration camp survivor and Nobel Prize–winning author Elie Wiesel must have been speaking of these vile creatures when he wrote, “Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.”
Nah ... Wiesel was talking about us - ALL of us!
We are mostly responsible for the mess we are in!
The vile creatures could have little and decreasing power, if not for our indifference.
The dark lords grow in power in the shadows, because we don't invade the darkness with the light and expose them, before they can consolidate power.
Why is that?
Perhaps we have some darkness in our own lives, that we want to keep hidden.
Why did the German people enable the Holocaust?
Were they all evil?
They were mostly good protestant Christians supposedly.
Yet because they were indifferent, they died before they died.
Perhaps more Germans than Jews, died in the Holocaust.
Many evil Germans and others, knew exactly what they were doing and didn't care.
The indifference of the rest, enabled the suffering and death.
Thus it was, is now, and evermore shall be.
Unless we do something very different, as suggested in this forum.
This was put into the US health code under Medicare guidelines with the Affordable Care Act and their Alzheimer's Plan for America (which was to find a "cure" by 2025). They both had proposals to push for hastening "end of life care," which was to train doctors and hospice workers in how to get families to understand that patients with dementia should have DNRs, as their "quality of life" didn't justify hospitalization costs versus doing nothing. When some people said this was a way to euthanize elderly people, the Obama Democrats said it wasn't true, but after passing the ACA, nursing home patients who had been hospitalized and returned to a facility were not readmitted to a hospital for future events, but were allowed to die in the facility (due to penalties that would be assessed on both the facility and hospital). I witnessed this myself on several occasions, as well as a lack of appropriate aggressive treatment for older patients in hospitals.
I don't think this passed because of citizen indifference; it was politicians who lied, media who sold the lie (like COVID lies), and non-profit groups that were trusted like the dementia organizations who encouraged them to vote for it because it would help the people they cared for. The only people who understood it were people who did a lot of research because they had a reason to, like me. Trying to educate people got me shut down and thrown out of said group. They are powerful people.
Thank you very much for this input.
I have been progressively uncovering lots of dirt under the carpet.
There are many covert and overt "protocols" to hasten the death of the elderly.
I am alarmed by the ignorant compliance of most "health care" workers and "professionals", who never question these "protocols" and are incapable of intelligent discussion of the real facts justifying them.
This is highlighted by those who do speak out about the real situation.
I am wondering now about recurrent claims, that elderly people have conditions needing surgery but they would never survive the surgery, so they are left to die.
Do these people really have conditions needing surgery?
Do they die naturally or through covert "assisted death"?
What are the real facts?
A couple points, of possible contention.
1. the embodiment of evil that you mention, would in fact require an oppositional force. The embodiment of good and that would be a noticeable force with an unmistakable signature in all of our lives. Now before anyone says, "God is..." to paraphrase from Genesis, "...you were created in the image of a God who created both the dark and the light." Which brings me directly to my next point-
2. We, everyone of us including the philanthropaths, have within us the full spectrum capacity for doing totally self dis serving evil and total self dis serving good. By going in either direction fully, we destroy ourselves. Both extremes come with their own destructive sequences, such as on the one hand, a total lack of concern for the well being and suffering of those around them or even an active compulsion to harm those around them. Either way, they end up with no one around them willing to do anything but tale advantage and end them when the situation presents itself. On the other hand the total lack of concern for one's own well being or suffering or even the altruistic compulsion to give everything of oneself to others, they end up with no one around them but those wanting to take advantage and end them when the situation presents itself.
2b. We exist in a material plane wherein we must consume from a finite set of resources in order to survive. On this plane, the only thing more detrimental to survival than giving all of that resource to others, is gathering it all to oneself while surrounded by those whose own survival requires them to take it from you. Accepting the fact that we are born with both the dark and the light within ourselves and working from that frame of reference is the only way to go forward. We must fight when we have to. It is not indifference or disinterest that keeps the "Good Germans From stopping the Bad Nazis." It is cowardice and that is unforgivable. As evil knows and does not care, we know and yet, do nothing. That is because each of us is too afraid to be the first to say "Stop" and mean it, backed up by our own blood. We need to overcome our own cowardice by realizing that this life will no longer be worth living if we fail to put our lives on the table for what we know is right, right now.
3. Dealing with the philanthropaths... the first step is kinda simple and is really just a change of mindset. "Power corrupts" and anytime anyone says that cliche, they follow it with "absolute blah blah blah." The human brain can't conceive of absolutes so it renders the whole thought process moot, the lesson unlearned. Start thinking of it as this, "Power corrupts and petty power corrupts petty people. We are all petty, therefore once anyone has been given any power, they can no longer be given the benefit of the doubt." Power should not be respected. It should be actively suspected of everything imaginable and treated appropriately. This is a first step. Fixing this world is going to take a number of steps greater than 12. We'll solve the other steps when we get the 1st one accomplished.
Side note- We must remind our journalists that no one other than themselves and the powerful benefit when they "speak truth to power" since the odds are power has not gifted them the with the truth. All power has done is enthralled them with the possibility of getting that gift. That codependent and exclusive relationship needs to end, now. What is needed of them is to "Speak truth about power to the people after taking the time to lie, cheat, steal or straight up shovel the truth, by any means necessary, from the powerful.
Have a great revolution and future or apocalypse and enslavement, which ever you choose!
They do know and don't care because they've succumbed to evil forces due to their love of money. The devil and his minions don't care about money, they can acquire it easily from bankers who create it at no cost. They care about acquiring souls in this world to prevent their eternal life with God through salvation in Jesus and get additional joy and power from the suffering of the innocent and unaware people who are caught up in their plans.
We are all tempted many times in the course of our life and make choices between following the wide and easy path with many others or the narrow and difficult path by ourselves. God has given us free will to choose for ourselves whether or not to have integrity and be righteous despite the personal cost and effort.
Anne Can't Stand it wrote and drew about this in her post today regarding Stefanie Turner, collegiate fencer who refused to compete against a former male athlete. The doctors and nurses in the Abbotswood Care Home Massacre chose the other path. See this and try not to be moved https://substack.com/home/post/p-160122913
"We are all tempted many times in the course of our life and make choices between following ... the narrow and difficult path by ourselves. God has given us free will to choose for ourselves whether or not to have integrity and be righteous despite the personal cost and effort."
Thank you for acknowledging this fact. It is sometimes lonely and takes a toll on friendship and family relationships. People don't often understand that. It causes us to often be silent and not engage fully in conversations, even less so seek counseling, because we're automatically labelled. It's been tough the last 5 years, and God doesn't talk out of my Moses' Burning Bush.
The great reset is the great awakening. We always have a choice. It's called free will. The Hawaiian prayer "Ho'oponopono" I'm sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you, I love you, promotes healing and self-love. Getting back to nature is necessary, forest bathing has proven to be immensely helpful. I concur, mistakes were not made.
Have you considered intimacy as a multiplier? To me, like other species we're a species that needs (local) intimate interaction. I think it gets right into our biology and survival that we have it, and I think our modern world throws a twist. Out of intimacy arises a grassroots, organic movement of the people, and this is what we've been missing.
It may seem hard to see, but I think the rearrangement, reformatting, and re-modalizing of us in the modern world has gotten us out of our nature. On my substack, I focus on old-timey, generic, democratic architecture. I welcome you to check out the intro (I'll link it). This includes an idea for implementing our own (democratic) NGO. ;-) Democracy, when done properly, is intimate.
https://markgmeyers.substack.com/p/now-and-for-the-future
I agree! Once everything became "automated" we lost touch. No more customer service you can do it all online! I hate it and try to interact with people when possible. It broke my heart when my company did this and it severed relationships we had with our CS team. I bet it ruined them too. We are being turned into automatons whether we want to or not.
Yes, I think the technology is isolating. I think it's like building a human zoo.
Exactly
@Will T Wilkinson
"If there is an all-wise God who made everything, how could he/she/it make a mistake and create evil … or was this part of some plan?"
Folks who ask this question overlook that the creator is, in human terms, inhuman. The creation of evil was part of some plan. There is no need for a salvation plan if there is no need for salvation.
Well written essay. Thank you for writing it.
God didn't create evil. He allowed all creatures to have free will. When people and angels have free will to make their own decisions, someone's going to choose not to do the right thing. Satan was the first to make that choice. God didn't create Satan to be evil; Satan decided he could be as powerful and equal to God. He rebelled against God. When he recruited followers, God threw him out of Heaven. Satan told God that it wasn't fair; he hadn't had a trial. God agreed. Humans are the trial, the testimony that creatures can be made with free will, and have the same choice Satan did. Adam and Eve lived an unknown number of years before Eve fell for Satan's lie that she could know as much as God, and then she talked Adam into following her sin. As a result, her original sin is passed to all human beings genetically through the female line. That's why Jesus Christ was born to the Virgin Mary. He was the Son of God, but had the sin of man through his human mother, Mary. When He died on the cross without having committed any personal sins after 33 years on earth (no anger, no lying, no stealing, no jealousy, no cheating, etc.), all the personal sins of every human ever to exist were imputed to Him during those three hours. When He said, "It is finished," God accepted His substitutionary payment for the sins we've all committed. After that, anyone who tells God they believe that was done for them is born again into the family of God, a believer, and has life everlasting. If they commit a personal sin afterwards, and they will, they admit that sin to God, and since it's already been forgiven by Christ's sacrifice on the cross, they can be in fellowship with God again. Prayers are all directed by the Holy Spirit in the name of Christ to God. There are no intercessions needed, no priest, no Mary, no pope, no preacher. You have a direct line to God. (Free info is available, really no obligation, free, streaming, and written information, at Berachah.church).
The need for salvation was not "created" by God; it was a free will choice of Satan, then man. We humans are part of an angelic conflict, a trial in heaven, and we are the testimonial witnesses to prove that free will can result in beings accepting salvation, in changing their minds, and following the Plan of God. The final testimony will happen sometime in the future, unknown after all the battles and history told in Revelation. If all this is BS, when we're all dead, we won't know; if it isn't, we'll know then too.
@Deborah Gregson
The creator is, in human terms, inhuman. The creation of evil was part of some plan. There is no need for a salvation plan if there is no need for salvation.
I am not a Biblical scholar, so I can't participate in a worthy debate regarding spiritual truths or protocol. I'm a student with a bit more knowledge than some, but not enough to engage in the philosophical discussion you've presented. I have thought about it, but don't have the Biblical background from original languages, nor the extensive information on the essence of God, His relationship to man and Satan, or the Divine Plan, or how that fits into the Angelic Conflict and the trial of Satan, to explain that God did not create or cause sin.
I do know that parts of God's Essence wouldn't allow Him to create or cause sin - Righteousness, Justice, Omniscience, Immutability, Veracity. Those attributes would prohibit Him from having anything to do with sin. Creating a being with free will doesn't mean that He created sin. He may have created beings that had the ability to sin, if they chose to do so, just as Satan and the angels who followed him chose, but He didn't create their sin. I think that's a doctrinal point that I may not be able to "argue" without more knowledge of original languages or specific verses to perhaps begin to open your mind.
As I mentioned earlier, the pastor/teacher I follow is at Berachah Church in Houston, TX, and their information is available online and always free.
I've led such a sheltered, privileged and blinkered life that it took until my fourth decade to personally encounter the prospect of evil. It is the only concept I have to 'explain' that our society injects babies with poison. Repeatedly. An act of violence, delivering poison, held up as life-saving. It doesn't get much more vulnerable and defenceless than a baby.
Completely agree with "“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn’t exist.”
Also have no trouble believing that "They know and they don't care". The belief by many that the cruelties don't know and would change course if they did provides the cruelties with even greater capacity to continue to do as they please. But for many (most?) people, reality is too much too bear; they prefer the lie.
Whenever people bring their concerns about evildoing through systems, or power/control hungry groups and individuals, to a beloved spiritual master, the response is often, “It’s Kali Yuga.” As in: duh, this is the age of immorality. The typical, cryptic advice on how to navigate it tends to boil down to “do good things and don’t do bad things” or “just give love.”
Your piece describes what that looks like and why it matters. Whether for tikkun olam or to resist the demons of indifference from infiltrating our minds and souls, this kind of care is crucial.
Mental, emotional, and spiritual hygiene is the boundary work of our time, like the internal equivalent of gray rocking a narcissist. The more of us who commit to not feeding the beast with our attention, our outrage, or our desperation to be understood, the less power it has. Eventually, it loses interest.
And just like that, it disappears.
Peck...! Interesting, I think that's still on my mom's bookcase somewhere. He was pretty good, as this fine guest piece reminds me.
Anyhow, MAA, I'm mainly here to announce my new substack gig to you and any others who may remember me here. I've been writing at PostModernConservative substack for three or so years now, which is a group stack thing, and covers a wide-variety of topics. I've now got my own stack, which will be far more focused on the topic of the Suppression of the Covid-vax harms story, and particularly on the "conservative" side of that Suppression. Hence the name: DISSIDENT CONSERVATIVE. I intend to get quite a bit more confrontational with established conservative thinkers and platforms, something I had to hold myself back on when at Pomocon. Come give it a look, Looking Glassers! https://dissidentcon.substack.com/p/dissident-conservative-and-its-mission
Forgiveness gives power to the perpetrator. Self-forgiveness gives power to oneself.
The filantropaths have hidden it well, in plain sight. You will love this one:
https://dhughes.substack.com/p/lissa-johnson-transhumanism-and-covid