Here and Hereafter

Here and Hereafter

The here and the hereafter. Politics and religion. Both verboten subjects. Especially in a society which puts opinion before reason. Where religion becomes political and politics becomes a religion, with no god before it beyond the State. The shysters and shamans of 5000 years ago are with us today.

Why?

Because in a pluralistic society one’s thoughts must coincide with the herd mentality - we must conform. Many think they are their ‘own person’ as they drive down the road in a mortgaged SUV heading for a home with two liens against it all the while babbling on a cell phone. They conceive of Jesus just as society has taught them, they vote for men and women with the largest following (to make sure their vote is not ’wasted’), they follow the advertisements of the false ‘profits’ - the ones with the glaring video and blaring audio and it excites them. Their TV gives them the sense of being part of the action - war footage on the evening news has replaced the Coliseum of yesteryear. Reality TV beats the real thing, the real life, no need to take chances or get dirty or injure yourself, let those on TV do it. Same way with video games - if the good guy gets killed, well, just push the reset button and bingo, he’s good as new and ready to go back to the front again. What shock and awe when the real good guy doesn’t get up for an instant replay; America suffers. He has no reset button. Kinda like the cowardly fraud of the Swift boat boys; they were paid two bits to lie and they did, as any cheap cowardly nationalist would. America has paid for that lie too, with no reset button.
Ratings and polls are based on the herd and the mass media sinks lower with each passing season. We can root for a favorite team, cuss out the opponent, throw food and beer all over the living room and let our emotions and frustrations run rampant in our own homes. No assembly required. No thought required. The TV and video games give emotional outlet and help fill countless free hours without the thought of consequences and consequently those thoughts have become a passive passenger, not the driver, on our road of life.

But how can we possibly think, when our food is adulterated with antibiotics, pesticides, halogens, some of the most dangerous poisons on the planet, such as Fluorine, Chlorine, and Bromine, which are the ones most frequently used. And then we ingest foods that are totally lifeless and without nutritional value like industrial white sugar, white bread, butter look-alikes, waxed fruits and veggies, dyed meats, and a plethora of goodies from Pandora’s box, after which we ask our minds and bodies to function at peak performance. Since the higher regions of the brain are used more for abstract thought, they burn more energy, polluted energy, and the cerebral cortex is affected early on. Well, what the poisons don’t get, the fluoridated water will, so you pretty much break even in the end, thanks to the beloved FDA.

Truth is, our minds cannot function completely with this barrage of foreign chemicals anymore than our bodies can without the adverse effects of disease. The list of diseases discovered in the 20th century is mind boggling, diseases which have not been seen or recorded before. But many of the older diseases are also making a comeback. Our bodies are rebelling against the greed driven food and drug industries and their government lobbyists. Our minds are slowed, higher thoughts are difficult in a world of cars, cell phones, and a ’sound bite’ lifestyle. Personal characteristics such as dignity have given way to a momentary materialistic madness based on the Power of Pride. Our televisions let us live an empty vacuous life, our cell phones let us ’socialize’ even while ignoring or affronting others around us as we follow our technology into an isolated oblivion. When confronted with social interaction we become rude and belligerent, we jump lines, tailgate other vehicles in our hurry to be somewhere apparently because we are so important.

The Imperial Citizen. Alone. Isolated. Lonely in the world. Lonely in our own country. Lonely in our own homes. The pollution of our brain has brought us to this. We are Lonely and Bored. The Bored Imperial Ones go shopping to while away feelings of impotence in their lives. They don’t have hobbies - that would transcend their mental time frame for activity, and they may have to learn something, anything - a scary thought. Consequently they suffer from self induced Attention Deficit Disorder, a handy little term for the pretend gods of the medical world to use when prescribing drugs, er. medications for you, forever. The worse part though, is their children see the plastic lifestyle of their parents, the shopping to relieve ennui, the aimless feel good purchases adding Pride, but not Dignity to life; the kids won’t know any difference because they have never been taught any difference. They will start their adult lives with a totally deluded mind! It will be filled with only one thing, Hypocrisy.

The instinctive clarity of the lower parts of the brain sends what seems to be a mixed message to a clouded higher brain which in turn tries to rationalize the need to ’keep up with the Joneses’, knowing we can’t afford it, while trying to live a clear life with a foggy consciousness. A real stressor. Real and Unreal become entangled. True and False become the same in an apathy driven relative lifestyle, Truth and Falsehoods become the same, the objective goals of the looters are realized as they have a field day with the poor confused hypocritical lumps. We don’t know, we don’t think, we don’t care, we don’t hear, we don’t see, but we pretend we have feelings.

Does this afflict everyone? No, of course not; but it does cross all generations. Special gated communities, fenced off compounds for McCastles, a large heavy chariot to display the opulence previously undreamt of in their youth, the cheap airs justifying their rude behavior , the conspicuous consumption to let others know a primate of apparent importance is in the midst of the unwashed lower orders; it’s enough to make one giddy! Or nauseous. Respect thy elders, was the bromide of my youth. But respect must be EARNED, not demanded or bought.

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The Grators and Boomers have instinctively put themselves 'out to pasture’ in the land of warmth, milk and honey. They then build their sand castles in the pasture isolated from the sheep who live there and have fed and clothed them all their lives. Now they can finally be a big fish in a little pond, trammeling formally untrammeled ground. Their pluralistic economic and political clout allows them to create the world they just left. New four lanes for their chariots, new shopping centers for their diversions, new laws and foreign mores for the local citizens, they are rooting out the vines where the grapes of wealth have been stored in their lives. Backed by a corrupt legal system and a jackbooted State funded police force, these ancient Anglo-Saxons goosestep across Canaan letting history repeat itself twice again.

But they spent their productive years letting their political henchmen and women make them feel secure and safe with guidelines, but they may come to realize that those guidelines (an unconstitutional thought if ever there was one) can now be used in other ways by the generations they have raised. Sure, many have lived with dignity, honorably and productively, and a good Christian life. But being good is relative, similar to equating legal and moral. They drive gas guzzlers that are a pox on personal and national budgets as well as the planet, and they live in boxes on the ground built exactly like wattle and daub houses of the early Anglo-Saxons. They have elected princes of former heroes, citizens who they think personify them, Imperial Citizens. Then when they have spent their productive lives chasing their one true god, Money, they retreat to the hills, subconsciously aware of what they have done. Of course it’s not their fault. They are victims. Victims of their own cupidity, victims of their own stupidity, their ineptness. Their quantity of life may be higher but their quality of life will not be, the poor hypocritical rubes fear their reward in the afterlife and are hoping their medical machinations will invent the Methuselah pill for them.

Their values have been passed to the next generation.