Month: July 2006

“Bleessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Over 2,000 years ago our good friend on the mount made this rather far fetched prediction. What odds now? lenghtening all the time! The arrogant hold sway over the earth. “My point of view is right and if you do not agree I will impose it on you, I am strong, you are weak

Arrogance is everywhere, from the blind patriotism that flies the stars and stripes all over the USA and beyond, to the beliefs inherent in our great religions, e.g. Jesus is the only one son of God, Allah is the only name of the one true God.

So who are the meek? These are the human beings that can not only appreciate their own point of view, but can also appreciate anothers, the people who realise that we are all in this together, the ones that can see the bigger picture. By realising this

By realising this, and there are millions who share this point of view, arrogance can be isolated and seen as the disease it really is. The odds can shorten dramatically and the voices of the meek will be heard. Let the fun begin. I am backing the meek.

“Greed is good, greed is the driving force of human evolution the famous line from “Wall St as Gordon Gekko was addressing the shareholders, urging them to see the reality of economics and follow their natural instincts.

Survival of the fittest, the most selfish, the greediest, are the hallmarks of all life on the planet, and do not distinguish us humans, one jot from our relatives in the animal world.

We have taken these characteristics and honed and developed them, empires have been created and destroyed. countless millions have been butchered and slain, and eventually we have arrived here and now. Looking around it is obvious that this unshakeable belief in human nature as a totally selfish, grasping, greedy entity is continuing to shape the evolution of our species and life on the planet itself.

Or is the nature of a human being something more? Are words like love and compassion, truth and justice, freedom and equality, just words? We must hope that these are attributes of our true nature, we must believe that human nature can transcend its past and evolve into the truth of our situation. We share, we care. I have a dream.

This week we were treated to the inauguration of GW Bush as President of the good old USA for another four years. Did I see God there too, gee he must of thought something really important was going on. Now far be it from me to be the bearer of bad news, but no He did not make it and furthermore He is not on their side. This will probably come as a great shock to that very powerful nation, but they will just have to get it thru their rather dense skulls that God does not take sides. And who the f..k do they think they are talking of liberty and freedom. I should point out that the “they I refer to, is the conservative regime that supports the afforementionted Bush

Was Sitting Bull, at the battle of the Little Big Horn, making a last desperate and doomed stand in the name of liberty and freedom against the regime . Was Geronimo one of the great freedom fighters, but in todays terms, by the said regime, a terrorist and most wanted. And all this was happening in the good old Usa only a few generations ago. Whose side was God on there.?

This political regime holds power now and will do everything it can to hang on to that power, because it holds sway over most of the world as we know it, a vast empire of consumerism, creating riches for many and attracting more to its cause. Oh yea, then we have the poor, and a few Islamist states.

The polarity is manifesting more and more, rich and poor, east and west, material and spiritual. Even within the USA 48% ,of those who voted, did not vote for Bush. The ones who did were motivated by a manipulated fear, the enemy were all around, “terrorists were circling the wagon train.

That nation, mighty as it is right now, is not fit to lead anyone anywhere.

Freedom will begin to be understood when there are no us and them, when there are no rich and poor, when east is west and west is east. when there is just one state and that is humanity. I too have a dream.

In simplest terms what this most famous equation says is that mass and energy have an equivalence. They are two forms of the same thing; energy is liberated matter; matter is energy waiting to happen. Since c squared, the speed of light times itself, is a truly enormous number, what the equation is saying is that there is a huge amount- a really huge amount- of energy bound up in every material thing.

That includes you and I and every other human being.

An average sized adult contains within his/her modest frame; 7 X 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of potential energy- enough to explode with the force of 30 very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.

As pointed out very clearly by Bill Bryson in his fascinating translation of science into lay mans language, “A Brief History of Almost Everything.

Maybe we could write that equation another way and say E ( Love) = me x c squared. If we could learn to be free from our own selfish point of view, we could liberate a totally huge amount of Love, the real meaning of freedom. We as human beings have that potential and what a collective point we could make.

I had it in mind to talk about the true spirit of Christmas, you know where we commemorate the birth 2,000 years ago, of Jesus, the Son of God to some, a great teacher to many and one of the most revered and honoured human beings ever born. In his most public and defining talks he tried to teach us the philosophy of forgiveness and love. A big gig, the sermon on the mount, one of his best a lot of us there but not many of us have listened. Hear what he was saying, Ye have heard it hath been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say unto you, that you resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have your cloak also. Ye have heard that it has been said tou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy, but I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. That ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, for He maketh his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and unjust.

Powerful stuff and very meaningful for us today. The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln anchored off the stricken Indonesian coast reflects a semblance of a Christian spirit, the bombs rained down on Iraq do not.

The unfolding scale of the earthquake and the massive trail of human suffering and grief is nearly too much to bear, the realisation that the loss of life could have been so much less if resources had been concentrated on an effective early warning system, is dawning on us all. We will respond now with aid for the immediate saving of life and the rebuilding of shattered communities, but for a fraction of the cost and with the right will, we could have saved tens of thousands of lives. The lesson is, we need to care more for our fellow man and give more to each other, NOW. Lets get our act together.

This is a poem by Frank Scott (1899-1985) and appears on the latest Leonard Cohen album “Dear Heather

“From bitter searching of the heart
Quickened with passion and with pain
We rise to play a greater part.
This is the faith from which we start
Men shall know commonwealth again
from bitter searching of the heart.
We loved the easy and the smart
But now with keener hand and brain
We rise to play a greater part.
The lesser loyalties depart
And neither race nor creed remain
From bitter searching of the heart.
Not steering by the venal chart
That tricked the mass for private gain
We rise to play a greater part.
Reshaping narrow law and art
Whose symbols are the millions slain
From bitter searching of the heart
We rise to play the greater part.