The Worst Story of All

When I was a church leader we practiced a technique called "love
bombing." This is when you smother a newcomer with "love" and
integrate them into the organization. The goal is to make them a
"mature Christian," which I later learned was a euphemism for "good
tither."

The people attracted by this recruiting system are typically those
with serious problems -- health, addiction, financial, relationships,
etc... The goal is to stabilize them (make them "mature") and turn
them into good volunteers and revenue streams.

In regards to world problems, the flock is told that "We are living in
the end times" and that all bad things are "a part of God's plan."
This is called the Theology of Despair.

It came as a total shock to me when I realized that the evangelical
church actually WANTS to keep our world dysfunctional because it
supports their premise for existing. Unfortunately, U.S. policy is
strongly influenced by the conservative Christians, which explains the
indifference toward global warming and the lust for Middle Eastern war.

For the Christians, they are taught that God is going to destroy the
world after he lifts all the Christians into Heaven (I
will be left behind to collect shoes). The religion offers a great
"carrot and stick" package - say a three or four sentence prayer
asking Christ to "come into your life" and you spend billions of years
in a private mansion. Your days are spent petting lions and singing
hymns to Jesus. If you don't say the magic prayer, expect to spend
billions of years in the "lake of fire" where you are swimming around
with Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer while Satan pokes you with a pitchfork.

Needless to say, such stories keep many Americans mentally screwed up. And this is exactly what the religious organizations want. To be a "mature" Christian simply means you are more screwed up, as you are forced to believe illogical and conflicting nonsense.

Author Daniel Quinn says that if someone is to give up their "story" they need a better one - one that will inspire them.

Here is their story -

The Theology of Despair: Crime, corruption, famine, environmental
ruin, tribulation, nuking Persians, Paris Hilton, etc...

Here is the story I offer -

The Theology of Hope: Slower, peaceful, non-materialistic, greener,
lifestyle. Coming to grips with our animalism, stabilizing our
population, learning to live as part of the world, with a renewed love
and respect for indigenous peoples. Most importantly, zero footprint.

This is my dream, and this is the "story" I would like to present to
the world in general, and particularly to the right-wing Christians.

Theology of Despair

Sometimes my friends on the Left use a favorite tactic of the Right — they use sensationalism to foster fear and gain attention. As a former conservative church leader myself, I seriously doubt that Focus on the Family or anyone else really wants a theocracy. And I'm pretty sure that most Hard Right Christians still support separation of church and state. So, I don't think the new book by Chris Hedges, titled American Fascists, is totally tuned in.

However, I applaud Mr. Hedges for his mention of the Theology of Despair — he is right on in this respect. The religious culture of fear was enough to get my mom to buy a Y2K "survival kit" and pull her money from the bank. In fact, she gave her money to a Christian con artist and lost her entire life savings. So, I know all about how the Theology of Despair works.

The problem is that the Theology of Despair works directly against the two things that I have dedicated my life to: peacemaking and global sustainability. Here is a great quote from Mr. Hedges in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

"[Theology of Despair] is a theology that has no hope in the life around us, that there is really nothing in this world that is worth saving other than committed Christians, and that all else has to be destroyed. That gives you a horrible kind of mind-set that spreads out in many ways. For instance, the callous disregard of gloabl warming, for what we're doing to the environment, a belief that chaos, mayhem, violence, and war in the Middle East is a good thing, because it is hastening Armageddon. These are the byproducts of this Theology of Despair, which for me is the best way to define this belief system."

There you have it. This is the essence of the major roadblock I am up against. This makes me think about what the book Ishmael points out — that people live out the stories they are given, and it's particularly nice when you even know the ending.

As I said a few posts ago, the stories, technically, are lies. Religion and capitalism are full of lies that people treat as non-negotiable truth. Herein lies the heart of the problem.

Biofuels & Population

I had one of those moments yesterday where I just freaked out. I am re-reading Daniel Quinn's book Ishmael and it gives a lot of ink to the relationship between population and food production.

In the last few weeks I've read several articles on the impact of biofuels, and by a great stroke of fortune, I actually even met a cattle rancher a few weeks ago who verified what I had read.

Okay, here is the scoop: Among other things, biofuels are going to soak up world surpluses of grain. Farmers in the U.S. really don't care about world famine — they simply sell their crops at the highest price possible, and if a biofuel distillery offers them more money than some foreign entity, then so be it.

So, what freaked me out is that author Daniel Quinn was already talking about the food-population relationship in his 1992 novel. His writings seem to suggest that population is related to food production. In other words, we humans will just keep breeding to the limit of our food supply, just like any other species. We are NOT above the laws of nature, even though we think we are — this is a key point in Quinn's books.

What this means is as the biofuel industry grows, food will become more expensive for everyone but it's going to especially impact the Third World poor. In the long-term, it would be a good for our Planet, but starvation is a miserable thing and I don't wish it on anyone.

The bottom line is that I wish all people had the common sense and maturity to self-regulate their reproduction. For the U.S. and other countries, it will come down to either achieving more energy security or feeding the Third World's skyrocketing population. It will be interesting, and probably unpleasant, to watch this scenario play out.

From an article by Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute:

The competition for grain between the world's 800 million motorists who want to maintain their mobility and its 2 billion poorest people who are simply trying to survive is emerging as an epic issue. Soaring food prices could lead to urban food riots in scores of lower-income countries that rely on grain imports, such as Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, and Mexico. The resulting political instability could in turn disrupt global economic progress, directly affecting all countries. It is not only food prices that are at stake, but trends in the Nikkei Index and the Dow Jones 500 as well.

An Open Letter

Dear Conservative Christians and Industrialists,

I'm glad the two of you are getting along so well. I'm glad that both of you agree on something — that Global Climate Change is just a myth invented by nasty liberals. By denying global warming, you help to keep YOUR myths alive — that it is all part of God's plan, and that addressing the problem will harm the economy, etc...

No, don't recycle, don't take responsibility for the World you have helped to screw up. Don't support environmental protections — instead do what you can to dismantle them. Do whatever it takes to destroy, plunder, rape, and murder what is left of this Planet, so that you can enjoy your short-term comfort and profit.

Don't worry about healing the Earth. Don't worry about taking responsibility for the Planet. What's more important is saving souls and maximizing revenues. God's going to destroy the Earth anyway, so who cares. So, you Industrialists may as well screw it over, while poisoning us and giving us cancer in the meantime. Oh right, then we can give the medical industry billions of dollars to heal us after you have sickened us. Makes perfect sense to me.

Don't ever question a single word of your Bible. Every word is literal. Yes, it's okay to own slaves — the Bible tells you so. It is okay to "have dominion" over the Earth. Doesn't that mean you should screw it as mercilessly as possible, with zero regard for wildlife or our future? Yes, of course it does.

Small wonder that you Industrialists and Conservative Christians are in bed together, snuggled under the blanket of the GOP. You both have EXACTLY the same goals — you just spin them differently.

Please continue to live in your hypocritical little worlds. Please continue to believe your lies and continue to discredit anyone who challenges them.

You've created a nice, comfy little world for yourselves. Why don't you pat yourselves on the back. When the whole thing starts to crumble and implode, you can blame it on the gays and the pro-choice people — just like you always do. And of course, you can blame it all on the Evil Liberals who took prayer out of schools. Sure, that was the turning point. Things were so much better before then, with all the racism and Jim Crow Laws. Hell, at least you guys MAINTAINED ORDER. God bless ya for that.

But in the process of creating your perfect little world, you have screwed me, and you have destroyed the nature that I so dearly love. All in the name of God, Growth, Money, Progress, Development, and all those other twisted values that you perfectly intertwined without thinking twice about it.

See Industrialist and Conservative Christian: You are both exactly the same. Your goals are not really different — both of you grab for my wallet, worship your stories, defend your lies, and destroy my world.

God bless all of you. I am sure God is proud of your good works. I am sure He is pleased with the widows you never cared for, or the hungry you never fed, and for the comfort you always blindly pursue.

Good work, gang.

Sincerely,

The Goose

A Peaceful Feeling

This week I started re-reading my favorite book of all time — the 1992 novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It has given me a strange sort of peace.

It's like after all these years I'm finally starting to understand the "big picture" and I have a good feeling about that. Whatever happens to either me or humanity as a whole, I'm cool with it.

I still want us humans to win, but I am no longer so perplexed at why humans are so non chalet about their demise — the book Ishmael helped me to understand.

I also have peace in having the courage to finally say that religion is a collection of stories. I was on to this at age 15, but who wants to be struck down, so I kept quiet about it most of my life.

As for Darwin, he nailed it. Many people are taking a long time to accept it. I imagine the same thing happened when folks finally had the balls to say that the Earth rotates around the sun. I know that was a shock and probably took a few decades to swallow, but people are okay with it now.

To get people to understand that we are like any other animal species and that we could very well go extinct, well, that is going to be a reality shock for a lot of people. It's funny that when I bring this little problem up to people I know, they just zone it out, and they even zone ME out.

Christian fundamentalists are not surprised that the World is going to end. They've already been given the story line. The shocker is that the end is not going to follow their script. The World is NOT going to end, only our Culture. But maybe we will screw things up so badly that the World WILL END. The only problem is that the good Christians will have to ride it out with the rest of us — the Almighty doesn't do rescue missions, especially for irresponsible people.

Well, I've entered a new level with all of this thinking, but I think I'm okay with it. And yes, most of the ideas above come right out of Ishmael.

Oh don't we wish that life could just go on the way it has been — like a long episode of Leave It To Beaver. Sorry.

Looking At 2007

First, I want to applaud by dearest friend Snaildarter for his quote today. He was talking about the options available for saving the world.

On this path all the things that Todd, or I, or anyone else does to slow the fall will help because we are just buying time (and habitat) in the hope of a new Gaian Enlightenment. I believe that religion is the reflection of human thought, not the cause of it. It can help channel thoughts but it won't turn the battleship unless the will or need exist to underpin it. This is why I'm pursuing a religion that will compliment the last option.

This is my absolute dream, to provide a spark for the Great Awakening, and will continue to be my goal in 2007.

Naming Our Movement

It just occurred to me today that what we need is an Earth Rights Movement. Yep, just like the Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Women's Rights, and all the other great movements. But the Earth movement won't be about people — sorry. This movement is going to be about standing up for the biosphere and creatures — the things that can't defend themselves and exist at our mercy.

Here are some goals for the Earth Rights Movement:

• A stable human population.
• All humans should strive for "zero footprint." If they must make some impact then they should engage in compensatory activities, like planting trees, environmental education, rescuing stray animals, etc.
• Everyone should take responsibility for their carbon deposits. This means things like converting your yard back to forest so that you don't have to mow it, ditching the Hummer, etc.
• All people should reject violence as a way of problem-solving. That means don't buy your nephew a toy gun for Christmas — by doing this you are condoning violence. Just how Christian is that?

Well, I could go on and on, but for now I just want to think this out more. The Earth Rights Movement — yeah, I really like that.

Fall Activism

Today I had fun playing with Google's cool online photo service, called Picasa. I have already created a couple of albums, including one of all the local Sierra Club events I attended over the past two months. I'm really starting to get interested in photography again, and the camera my brother gave me is awesome. Check it out - and get involved!

A HAPPY NEW YEAR to all!!!

2006 Fall