Are We Programmed?

Prepare me for the afterlife and
don't steal my religion. It's mine!

Are we programmed? How can we tell if we're programmed? We may think we are freethinkers, but are we really?

Maybe we are programmed in certain ways to keep our society orderly. Maybe our leaders want to program us in a specific way to better meet their ends.

The best example in history of a re-programming was when General Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome to help unify the failing empire. The plan worked better than Constantine could have EVER imagined.

One of the shocking and even chilling discoveries I have recently made is how closely modern Christianity resembles Ancient Egyptian religion. Both religions feature an afterlife, demons, a judgment day, a similar creation story and more. Much to my recent surprise, our modern religion just didn't appear in the First Century, rather it appears to have evolved over thousands of years.

However, one constant in our continually evolving religion is that it always personifies humans. Only 150 years ago, religion in the U.S. was used to justify slavery and then in 1960s it was used to justify civil rights. Today, religion is used to justify the persecution of gays, but some denominations are challenging this "norm" and moving society forward. The conservatives have circled the wagons and are mounting one last offensive with the gay marriage ban, just like conservatives in the South resisted school integration in the early 1960s.

So, like we learned from Emperor Constantine, religion is a great way to "program" the people and ensure an orderly society. Of course, the Romans borrowed these ideas from the greatest society of all — the Ancient Egyptians. Their society lasted a stunning three thousand years. A few simple programming tricks include making your leaders God-like and keeping the people united with an elaborate religion — preferably one that focuses on an afterlife. What a great way to keep the citizens preoccupied. What a great strategy: Let the government handle current affairs — you need to focus on heaven!

Though the U.S. has only been around a paltry 200+ years, our leaders are learning too. Our politicians use religion and fear to keep us controlled and compliant. They masterfully play the abortion card to get the single-issue voters out en masse. The single-issue voters then put more "conservatives" in power, who, in turn, dismantle labor and environmental laws as a way to repay corporate donors. What a wonderful marriage of convenience.

But one thing is wrong ...

The one big difference I see with the Ancient Egyptians and today's religions is that the ancients appeared to be genuinely happy. Despite common myth, the Pyramids were built by skilled workers, NOT SLAVES. They were well fed, many lived with their families, and they built the Pyramids as a labor of LOVE, NOT FEAR.

Yet, after the Roman Empire collapsed and the Dark Ages began, the "joy" of religion seems to have become tempered with endless guilt and fear. Why was God always punishing people? Why was life so hard? What did we do to deserve the Black Death? Actually, it wasn't God that devastated Europe with the Bubonic Plague, rather it was the little Oriental Rat Flea. And it was not God that destroyed the Twin Towers — it was a group of young, middle class Saudi males.

Maybe when we fight Saddam and terrorists, we are really fighting a form of symbolic evil. Maybe our government is using this as an opportunity to "unite" us, when, in fact, they are really just programming us.

free·think·er n Somebody who refuses to accept established views or teachings, especially on religion, and forms opinions as a result of independent inquiry.
—Encarta World English Dictionary