Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Gluttony &Envy but who cares ? Sins are not serious anymore

That's what we hear from the TV --"The church wrong to frighten us with talk of sin"  .The TV tries to say "Everything will work out fine really in the end"    There no cliffs,  only flat landscape to drive fast through when your God is a PhD . PhD Progressive hopeless Determinism -let me call it.

Hamlet saw this flat unweeded garden - why can't we ?
Our Jennifer Byrne ( ABCbookclub )has enough knowledge of the old civilization sustaining  faith to know that we can and have over millennia now gone where angels fear to tread, She has not enough knowledge of the substance of sin  to avoid falling through the cracks that angels and devils still know about .
Lots of light footed observers like her have their eye on " New ideas and so called science " and their feet firmly in publicly funded studios.
Science doesn't always help us decide when mind over matter matters . Infact, the greatest advocates this century of PhD were tyrants . Angels , evil and devils still exist  - kids know it ( games dress and in house talk)  even if their parents are in denial about it -esp in own household where it matters
 Presumably her regular colleagues couldn't cope with her fearless foray into real fear territory , but then, she never got there anyway . Playing around the edges on the The Book Club  ABC
Her Seven deadly sins were like her picture of reality -  an outside glance that's positive ....whatever is in the woods behind the trees, doesn't matter ; we have sunshine and grass on this landscape with comfortable chairs ,books and unreality. Dull and Flat up close but maybe curved on the horizon ?
On the book club ,to  its all smiles, its late ,we only have 1/2 an hour and its fiction/fantasy after all . Not hard to see why determinists enjoy escape even more than we do -- the world according to them has been fixed in concrete formulae for eons --it will do what evolution means it to do and that 's that .
Mind over matter is useless chatter , so lets play with words and some more  constructs,  Reality is  ..just steps and blocks , even if we talk  the blocks (components of reality ) on the show ----- we know its only Lego and we are only doing child's play. Suits us.... its that time of night and maybe we in that mood ?
As Chesterton said , rather a philosophy that deals with the evil inside and finds something good there than one that is bright and positive on the outside --but never deals with the rottenness beyond skin deep. Trouble with breaking the surface is you maybe  breaking bad; you don't know how deep you are going to go;-maybe one step too far ( now there is real fear territory) Maybe there are cliffs and no comeback ?

ABC  Book club photos show them all smiling as they talk about and dismiss guilt and ineffectively try to explain it away - as children do.  Guests too come unread and unaware of the soft floor and soft centred sweets when talking of sin.( The apple after all was sweet ) Lets dismiss what we don't like ; No such thing as temptation or restraint let alone good intent mixed with evil action. appetite rules so gluttony must be at least half positive  Lets dismiss what can't be pushed into a simple equation 1+1=1. No tension when we are being pulled and drawn through history.

The phenomenon of superficial featured in all the episodes I saw = not getting to the gist of why a good God would make life better and easier by naming bad choices . Even kids today now talk more than her crew about it - call them" the breakout generation" and lets hope they get beyond the superficial.

Take Gluttony which is not about how much but about taking seriously our role as members of community ( the ecological view ). We are designed in the image of God to make things and to share them . Its not bad to have excess (Who wants the stupid stoicism and simplemath of marx when you are offeredand given  the abundant life)  Its just not good to keep the excess for yourself . Equations even tell us that .  God is concerned if he's made you wealthy, how you use it . Equally God created the world not like some endless chocolate factory but with limits . We are are here to share and enjoy sharing like microbes and other " lower life ;' do . Scarcity and Abundance are normal parts of the cycle  . Enough is not a threat- its our God given opportunity,
God made the world good- his rule for the stewards who have dominion is to share . He gives us ENOUGH  - not all we want , but enough . Wise occupants of the planet know this and poor people know it best ( why is that ?) Why don't rich people get it and why do they seem not to have enough . Has someone deceived them , or have they deceived themselves about what they really need .
 If Jennifer and her colleagues ever dig deep enough they will find that to really identify and hate sin is a positive thing cause its the real waste factor of life .

Practical example  - we are in  denial about what we and others really need   .. 
IF ABCTV had dug deep over the last decades,  it might realise that its science programs on "need" ( Landline Quantum,  Innovation news in Ag) are quite ill focused / distracted. The problem with food is NOT a science one ( higher production as the myth ) but a sharing one . All this concentration on getting more kg/ hectare has pushed the earth too far in the wrong direction - those hectares and that sin ( over the edge , what,s good turns bad; what threatens  resilience limits ) .
Wrong prognosis of poverty traps  has lead to even less wisdom in action - real waste. My generation have failed to progress the science of poverty.    REAL progress is about the RIGHT direction . Real productivity is good;  real waste is evil =sin . But we are not to know that via ABCTV .  Hear about it here

Are we to to believe them when they assume that the best problem  solving occurs when everyone goes off in their own chosen direction ?   Whitehead saw this nonsense coming

"The church frightened us with talk of SIN " true  .PhD's  focus on the fear and miss the point of warning .
In denial it has to be that everything will work out fine.  .    It always does as their predictable god is named  PhD Progressive if hopeless Determinism  itself .(but also  featureless and cruel to individuals ) The only trouble with this clear cause and effect religion is that it leaves us mere mortals and individuals out of the picture;  so , maybe even atheists need a mind construct of their own to cope-- maybe they have to invent some power over evil of their  own?-- books and fantasies ?  .

Maybe too  its just easier to just keep on ignoring the effects of sin, guilt ,anger hurt ,waste and robbery  ( how did Seven deadly sins come up anyway?)
Maybe if we just  keep acting on what we feel and spend the rest of our lives justifying why we let our hormones rule our heads. If that's progress and moving on ( Tony Jones favourite phrase 2 date )  I'm outta here.

PS On moving on.  When something appears in the rear view mirror that we don't like , like the flashing red and blue ,it doesn't always help to speed up. It pays to slow down reflect and maybe even take a different route  Good on it when government ministers stick to the real guns and are not tempted by fantasy, fatalism. and fast fixers

Monday, May 26, 2014

Haven't you sold it all yet ?

One day our parliament will realise the consequence of not believing in its role as owner and gatekeeper will be that its off the main highway . Sounded like a good idea at the time .
 Not only  have we have sold the Telecom lines to some rich capitalist, but somehow that new philosophy of ownership means that that  capitalist purchased the right to employ his servants to ring us over tea time to join the chorus of business quacks to tell us how some new fear should envelop us .
Tonight I had a call from a servant determined to give me some free light bulbs-
"I don't care how many globes you give me mate" - I don't want to support the Govt. to try and persuade me it knows what's good for me .

Worse,  business sure knows how to drum up business - get us worried about something.  

I thought we put the Libs in to stop this presumption and give us back our freedom to be good , our freedom to learn ( so we didn't fear )  and our freedom to put our own choice of globes in .

Monday, April 28, 2014

Edge or Centre politics

Most politicians are easily confused.  ( partly because even good ones have lots to think about ) When they talk the value of diversity( Proverbs 11:14) but don't practice it ( like now) best ,I feel,  to refer to someone who observes one of their key church doctrines ( well at least Capitalism) with some objectivity.  Lester Thurow .


Thurow is his imaginative work on the Future of Capitalism makes some very telling points about the cost of not using older trained people into old age . It costs a fortune to educate one person and yet the way the government follows the quick fixers ( pges 286 etc of his book) to take over , its no wonder Joe Hockey has finally realised they need to very positively encourage SOME people to stay in the workforce ( esp desperately lean public service in some areas like environment) till they are 70's --typically the liberal dummies think they can motivate us with mere money!

Not that reading Hockey an dthe others know what they are missing now it gone . maybe its just that 4/5 of people are looking to the pension and SKIING through the later years and te realization that like Labour they have no effective long term savings policy
tI  was forced out at 56 with at least 20 of my best years to my first love -- service of the public good. They like the PPublic service "of now,  hardly know the fun of saving a dollar before you make a dollar . All they know about is handing out our dollars . All the fun jobs are gone when all you see all day is accountants  studying 2 columns ( and out of context)  


Letter to the editor

If Vic Libs want a sure way to win the November election they should ditch the monitoring disease that insults the initiative and sense of responsibility of our talented and trained citizens . The disease and its cause  "misanthropy" were so well named by ( Brendan O Neill on  ABC's  Q&A last week . Whether its the fisherman at Apollo Bay or the teacher trying to teach, the distrust and monitor madness is killing initiative and common sense. 
So why is this now , the most unproductive exercise in the country , still being pushed by polys of all kinds.  We know they don't trust us, but does this glass half empty downer have something to do with they  fact that they don't know very much , and a pile of stats is better than what they have to go on otherwise .

Either way,  we deserve better treatment so we aren't spending our lives trying to show we are competent to those who are not- to those who think accountability is about filling out forms. 

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Most polys don't deserve the job - they don't ask enough questions

It has always been the role of Western governments  to anticipate risks for the sake of its people . Thats one way they have helped BUILD and lead highly productive ( in both the short and long term ) countries with sound health and environment policies.
We think the Greens are bad for losing faith in our history of effectiveness in this ( which means losing faith in our training and governing methods) -You don't believe me tell me HOW they would run " the education revolution " and see if you would vote for their suggestions !  Naturally the ABC Big Ideas hasn't tested the water on this , even though its suddenly realised recently that its "dangerous new ideas"( not highly inflated concepts of Big ideas ?)  that are really critical in the history of sustainable change .

But the Liberals are just as bad
. Having caught the same disease of self abnegation about themsleves ( not admitted of course) parliament and the people,  they have been hellbent on demolishing the systems of learning training and disciplining as well.Some CEO , by definition, is supposed to know hat he's doing .  Like some quiet revolution, many Libs,  if they ever thought about what they say they believe in,  would be happy with no government.They are the dummies who gave us excessive faith in CEO's - a top down "we know what we are doing "CEO culture .
You want an example - take The idea of improving water supply 
specifically Take the way both sets of ignoramuses have let Coca Cola Advertisers and Pure water manufacturers steal our children's right to a panic free future with OUR rain. We now pay really big for NO apparent or known RISK factors.


All you need to make money out of the consumer and keep your party in the media spotlight these days is to create a bit of fear .The wannabes aren't wise enough to know either way - nothing new there.

What's new about this pathetic lot of wannabes is that  they no longer care that they are "ill advised"
  And so then where "the public health benefit system" when the public needs em? ---when the vulnerable audience to " authority " need  a good cooling off over media induced panic and a little bit of common sense talk about real risk levels.  .

Democracy dies ,not with a bomb, but with wimps (afraid to ask questions and challenge the popular myth)