"And Jesus said unto them, Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's," says Mark 12:17. The Gospel of Mark is considered almost universally to be the oldest of the New Testament gospels, the source of the rest of the synoptic gospels. It's also one of the most willfully misquoted and misunderstood (if not overlooked out of convenience) outside of the parable of the chances of a rich man getting into heaven and a camel passing through the eye of a needle. When you look at the majority of statements attributed to Jesus in the NT, most of them address that the priority is to care for the poor, the vulnerable--you can't miss it, yet many do because they're hatefully bonkers.This is not a debate over whether Jesus was the son of God--I don't believe that and never have. That's irrelevant to me, unimportant like whether Paul Bunyan's Ox babe was blue or not, that's about mythology and missing the point because you're an asshole.What did Jesus mean by the "render" comment? We've had the answer for almost two millennia now, right in front of our faces, just like the Nazarene's stupid disciples who almost never understood what he was going on about. God would have chosen a better lot than those dummies. When you look at orthodox Christianity's many flaws and horrific mistakes, look no further than these small-minded, patriarchal idiots. This was the best God could do? It had to be the Demiurge, but that's a bedtime story for another time. What did he mean? Common sense should be a guide here by posing a few questions: What did Caesar want? What did the Roman emperors want? First, they wanted taxes, but most of all, fundamentally, obedience to their rule and its proscribed laws. For the Jews, this was a tall order, because they had their own set or religious ones, hence why there were money changers in Herod's temple, for example, one of many, and frankly, not an especially big deal, more neurosis that became codified tradition.I think what Jesus said was pretty simple. Tell the Romans what they want to hear, go through the motions, but never give them your heart, never yield your soul. That's not a very difficult prescription for living under the occupation of another culture. To be sure, the Romans were brutal occupiers, we don't need to retread over that ground, it's settled. However, when it came to tolerance of indigenous cultures and religions, they weren't all that bad--better than what came after them in most cases in fact. There was a rub for the Jews: like all Roman subjects, they were supposed to acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor. After that, they could worship pretty much as they wished. Just as there's always some asshole heckling at a concert, this wasn't good enough for some people, and like the Christian martyrs that would come decades later, what they were about to engage in was pretty pointless: fighting an uphill battle nobody wanted over abstract concepts that weren't and aren't rooted in reality. When you're a fanatic, you do these things. Politics and religion were inextricably-linked in those days, and this is how one should read the synoptic gospels as well as the esoteric sects of Judaism and the region in that day in general.Jesus wasn't telling anyone to take up arms here, quite the opposite. He was suggesting the power of ideas and how they cannot be killed, how people can basically lie to their oppressors and keep the lamp lit in their hearts and minds. Yet, so often, this quote is used as an excuse by authoritarian-minded fools calling themselves Christians (they aren't by a long shot) to obey authority under all circumstances, one more divine cop-out exhortation to blindly serve evil.The last time I checked, Jesus never said, "Give the boss man a blowjob," only to tell the asshole what he wants to hear and to go on doing what you would anyway out of view. But hey, that's must just be me. I must have missed that after I got kicked out of Sunday school for asking too many questions...
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Wahrheit oder Fiktion?
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Hey Matt,
ReplyDeleteI hope that all is well with you. You are so intelligent - Though a history major myself, my focus was on a different era and my solid knowledge of Caesar is limited in comparison to your own.
The nut that I mention in my last post that has pursued me with a vengeance wrote a book about Caeser, but from the Roman soldier perspective. Anyway, the many reviews are so raving that I am curious if any or all are real. Someone like you would know. Contact me if you have a chance.
How is your own book coming along? I'll be first in line to buy a copy on Amazon - well, perhsps some of the parties in it will beat me to the purchase, but I can't wait. Looking forward to reading the masterpiece.
Take care,
Vic
Thanks Vicky, I hope all is well with you. We're about there, waiting on various steps in the process. The text is basically locked. My ex-wife knows classical history better than I do, that was her major. There are a LOT of classical references in the book, because what happened to Jeane suggests a lot of it, going into Greek and Roman mythology, even Gnosticism.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that she was an American Spiritualist like the Fox sisters, meaning seances, mediums, that whole deal, and there's that Spiritualist colony down there in Florida, she visited it according to Sibley's blog, but Jeane and I spoke about her spiritual beliefs a little bit--not happy hunting grounds ones either, she came off a Buddhist ultimately.
I look at her as being like some anachronism. She was like those descriptions you read of Victorian madams, how some of them were very philanthropic and progressive.
When Jeane talked about it being a witch-hunt, she wasn't kidding, and if the book finally drops around Halloween or the day of the dead in November, it'll be perfect, poignant, and a good way to close the door on it.
Yes, I won't be sending out copies to people like Senator Vitter, Harlan Ullman, Jack Burkman, Dick Morris, the former prosecutors, etc., hah.
The Romans were bastards, but they did bring a degree of civilization to some places where there had been none before, in a good way. But it was still a slavestate, like the Greeks, only worse, so it's hard to look at them as "good" cultures. But the Greeks produced Heraclitus, Plato, Thucyides, Socrates, Aristotle, etc., and the Romans gave us Cicero, the stoics--some great things, but most of what they contributed was in engineering. They did have their share of good philosophers though.
I look at history as cyclical. The Greeks and Romans lost their liberty twice after conquering their warlord kings--pissed it away in military adventurism and because of the mob mentality. We live in similar times. It seems to me something ended during the Palfrey proceedings and trial, something big, fundamental, another closing of a door.
Matt,
ReplyDeleteI just now am seeing your reply! That's one thing I do not care for with Blogger.
Really? Jeane used to go to Cassadaga? So did I. Sometime I will have to tell you about my most notable experience there - related to the case.
No, let the participants in Jeane's persecution buy a copy on their own. I certainly intend to, so I hope that you have a news release list.
Military adventurism and the mob mentality indeed. I have heard far more of it than I ever thought I would in recent days. The time we currently live in also has similarities to McCarthyism and the post World War 2 era.
The next person that calls me anti-American gets to star on my blog for a month. ;) Just kidding, but really - these are the people that claim to be "defending our freedoms" that we lost long ago, of course.
Matt - I can't wait to read the book! Make sure to notify me somehow if you do not post a news release here because I do not know where else to look for one.
All the best to you,
Vicky
Thanks once again Vicky.
ReplyDeleteI cannot see more than a week's more work on the little things that are left now. There will be a wait once I've submitted the book to CreateSpace/Amazon, but I've heard that it can take as little as a week, or even less.
Insofar as press releases--there will be a central one at the website when it goes up, but beyond that, I's no connections, which puts me in good stead morally. ;0)
America is an oligarchy like Russia, a shithole of human iniquity, a lie before the world. The sooner people stop buying into the myth of American democracy, the sooner we can take this shitty system apart and build a better one. If it means reforming it out of existence, so be it, but bloody revolution won't fix it, ask the French.
Found something interesting out: the Marquis de Sade was perhaps the first socialist. When he was a delegate to the revolutionary assembly after his rescue from the Bastille, he was part of the most far left faction, called for a direct vote of the people. He was also 100% against private property. A new portrait of him is emerging: one of the most subversive revolutionaries of his time, a father of nihilism, and really, a satirist of his own rotten class. He's been misread and victim of a propaganda campaign for centuries now, probably in-part by the Vatican.
Assholes who go on about "I/we fought for your freedoms" are fucking idiots. Most of the time they're saying it they either display an obvious contempt for real democracy, or they're trying to deprive you of it and the attendant rights. Fuck them all, the fucking rabble. See, this is where de Sade was brilliant: he believed in freedom and liberty for the individual, but he was no fool and saw people for what they are, rather than angels, as portrayed by classical liberalism. People are neither good nor bad, just what they are, and often, they're fucking greedy, cowardly, reactionary fucks. Calling someone "anti-American" coming from them is inaccurate, yet a compliment. They're intellectually and emotionally incapable of functioning as citizens in a democracy, any democracy.
Expect something in the book more jaundiced than Twain or Burroughs, both Midwesterners.
I agree, this era is a lot like the immediate postwar period in the US, a nuthouse. But that's what occurs when we're having an identity crisis as a nation. Expect lots of westerns to get made! ;0)
On Cassadaga: I go deeply into American Spiritualism in the book for context so that people understand what it meant that Jeane was an enthusiast of it.
I am more in the Houdini camp. ;0) That's not say that I think it's impossible to contact the dead, however, but that comes down to faith in the end, you cannot prove it, and that's the problem, so it comes down to faith.
Daniel "Trinity" Jackson sent me his--erm--book of what he calls channelings of Jeane. What's weird is, it DOES read like things she would have said in many areas. Did he speak with her? He said no, I think she did.
THAT chapter is titled "A Tale of Three Daniels," there's lots of occult symbology to the case, I don't think it was simply me reading into it, or others, it's real and embedded in the culture. There are references to Tarot and playing cards throughout the text. Everyone will be surprised with the book, even I am at how it turned out.
PS: Yes, I do go into the story of the Fox sisters w. Amer. Spritualism.
ReplyDeleteThe book is clocking in at 666 pages, no joke. It might be off by a few numbers in the end, but this has all been a lot like synchronicity or serendipity, meaningful coincidence, very hard to describe.
This is part of why I know that I'm on to some very deep truths here, about the case, about our culture, and how they interacted when the proceedings were going on, and beyond.
You sometimes wrestle with one word in a paragraph, a comma, and so on, or what to remove, what to pull back a little on--all judgment calls that can hit the target or go out the window, evoking horselaughs, like a minefield.
As for the bastards who might want to suppress the book once it's out: I will do whatever it takes to make it go wide, I have nothing to lose, everything to gain, and whoever wants to read it will get a chance no matter what happens.
Prior restraint is also illegal in the US, at least for now.
I will clutch and drag down to hell with me anyone who tries to sabotage the release of this book or who tries to prevent it reaching its audience. Let it be known that I am a man of my word, and that I'm not fucking around: this book is a bomb more because of my conclusions, even my raising of possibilities, because the case was in the epicenter of what's wrong with America.
You can only kill me once, and you can kill the revolutionary, but not the ideas. This book is a political act. It's a primary document, and it will service the historical record for generations to come, however insignificant some might think the case was (it was very important).
I'm sure there are going to be more threats, more fake cease and desists, even real ones--they have no right to keep me from expressing what happened to me, what I came across, what I learned, my musings, or my ultimate conclusions. Take me to civil court and I will expose that individual through discovery and place it all in the court record in the process, I will hit back far harder than anyone.
But they have no inherent or legal right to stop me or publication. Everyone in the book is in the public eye, or was during the proceedings, everyone.
That's why I believe I got the fake cease and desists: They got nothing, only the bluff. Well, fuck them and the horse they rode in on. Jeane deserves her vindications where it's due, so do I, so does Sibley, and others. We weren't always right, not always wrong, but we were on the right track. Had I had more access to materials, I'm sure this would only be confirmed.
Bring it on, if you dare, folks. It's not a challenge, it's a promise that I've done my homework, that I don't make wild allegations in the book--I was too fair, if anything--and this is all my right under the law. There are no grand jury materials, nothing I and anyone else wouldn't be allowed to publish, but I've published quite a few emails from Jeane on the blog, without challenge for years, sometimes as many as four-to-five.
PS: I expect absolutely no help whatsoever from the so-called "progressive" blogsphere or the popular websites. Not Huffpo, not Rawstory, maybe Talking Points Memo/Muckraker, not DailyKos--there will be more silence, like with Obama's war crimes and his assault on civil liberties that would make Bush II blush. Thank the rabble, because not everyone is a friend of democracy like they play at being. In truth, most Americans are ignorant and full of shit. That's the tone of a lot of the book.
ReplyDeleteYes, not all of that would fit into one comment. ;0)
ReplyDelete