.
Tuesday
May 1st (May Day) 2007
ANGEL NEGRE'S GOSPEL OF MYTHOKLASM
@@@
TODAY'S QUOTES:
"A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth."
-- Albert Einstein, 1901
-------
"No justice, no peace. No truth, no justice. No mythoklasm, no truth. No peace, no happiness. No mythoklasm, no happiness."
-- Angel Negre, 2007
@@@
Dear Jaromir & Magda,
AND SO IT CAME TO PASS that I, Angel Negre, Mythdiver and Servant to the Zeitgeist, began to gather together as many as could be rescued and preserved of the twinkling insights of my anagrammatic other, Galen Green (1949-2049).
Let us now gather in these remnants of his insights, twinkling as they are, 'midst the murky muddy muddle. Twinkle, twinkle, tiny specks of mythoklasm, sparkling in the darkling! Let us now gather them like the scattered pieces of some puzzle spiraling outward.
Where, then, is the center of this spiral of scattered puzzle pieces? Shall we locate it just outside the dining hall at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri, at around high noon of an otherwise lovely April day in 1984? Why not? Watch now, as these remnants spiral outward from that midpoint, that still point of his turning life story, outward toward both the past and future simultaneously, until they bring us to that moment which is "now" and which, therefore, keeps changing in rhythm with the flux of its own inner imperative.
Or shall we locate that spiral's center in that same Midwestern city, but on a time-space coordinate involving September 11, 2001, a day which, I believe we can all agree, will live, not only in "infamy," but, like several assassinations I could mention, indelibly in the imaginations of everyone of a certain age.
How is it that the life of one human creature somehow becomes the life of their time and place in history or -- stranger still -- the life of their people? If you figure that one out, please let me know right away. The poets and storytellers seem to be able to make it happen at will, and yet as if by magic. Jesus becomes Everyman and every man becomes Jesus -- and every woman, too -- suffering, dying and sometimes rising, that others might live (to suffer, die, and sometimes rise, etc. etc.)
Well, that's one way of putting it. And gazing, thus, through such a framework, we're afforded some inkling of how the seemingly trivial, insignificant life story even of one so tedious, puny, lame and limited as my anagrammatic other might provide grist for (dare I say) universal tragicomic relief from the darkness that surrounds us.
Let us now gather in what's worth gathering in and leave the rest to the flames of oblivion. Angel Negre, who am Galen Green's anagrammatic other, stand here before you now, not so much as an Angel Negre, a "Black Angel" or Dark Angel, as merely another way of saying the same thing, only differently.
For it's not so much that this world is a lie as it is that so many of the statements that have heretofore been employed to define it have been lies and systems of lies -- which is to say "myths." As delicious as dear old Joseph Campbell gave us to misunderstand myths to be, he gave us only half of the story. For History teaches that myths cause people to do bad things to other people. The Good News is . . . the Gospel of Mythoklasm is . . . that we who have slept through the past ten millennia are now beginning slowly to awaken to the realization of this inconvenient truth.
(But in this world's darkness, IS NOT ALL TRUTH INCONVENIENT?)
Faithfully Faithlessly Yours,
Angel Negre
.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Saturday, June 7, 2008
How to Save Humanity from Itself
.
Subject: HOW TO SAVE HUMANITY FROM ITSELF
Thursday
November 16, 2006
Dear Jaromir,
I guess that, by now, you guys have figured out that I tend to share a lot of poems with friends. Hope you don't mind. Many of them, such as "Kryptonite" (below) get forwarded to me by my old friend Art Dunbar, who lives in Des Moines with his longtime wife Nancy and who is about to take early retirement from the State of Iowa where he programs computers.
In the interest of continuing to celebrate Marie's and my new friendship with you and Magda, I thought I might pick up more or less where we left off last time in our e-mail exchange concerning the abyss which our species is quite obviously teetering above as a result of its unwillingness to grow up and turn loose of its toxic superstitions and its highly destructive organized religions (i.e. tax-free recreational bigotries).
Any discourse from Galen Green on this topic must needs begin with my drawing what the logicians sometimes call "a bright line" between individual spirituality and organized religion. Before I pause to begin a sequel page to this one, let me just say that, in my view, organized religion is the problem, and is, in fact the enemy opposite of individual spirituality.
That said, let's meet on the next page.
Faithfully Faithless,
Galen
.
Subject: HOW TO SAVE HUMANITY FROM ITSELF
Thursday
November 16, 2006
Dear Jaromir,
I guess that, by now, you guys have figured out that I tend to share a lot of poems with friends. Hope you don't mind. Many of them, such as "Kryptonite" (below) get forwarded to me by my old friend Art Dunbar, who lives in Des Moines with his longtime wife Nancy and who is about to take early retirement from the State of Iowa where he programs computers.
In the interest of continuing to celebrate Marie's and my new friendship with you and Magda, I thought I might pick up more or less where we left off last time in our e-mail exchange concerning the abyss which our species is quite obviously teetering above as a result of its unwillingness to grow up and turn loose of its toxic superstitions and its highly destructive organized religions (i.e. tax-free recreational bigotries).
Any discourse from Galen Green on this topic must needs begin with my drawing what the logicians sometimes call "a bright line" between individual spirituality and organized religion. Before I pause to begin a sequel page to this one, let me just say that, in my view, organized religion is the problem, and is, in fact the enemy opposite of individual spirituality.
That said, let's meet on the next page.
Faithfully Faithless,
Galen
.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The Mythdiver's Take on Dawkin's God Delusion
A BRIEF NOTE ON DAWKINS' GOD DELUSION
%%%
TODAY'S QUOTE:
"I can look at doctrinaire traditions only with a historical and psychological perspective; they have no other significance for me."
-- Albert Einstein
%%%
Wednesday
July 11, 2007
Dear Jaromir,
When I ran into Magda at the Leawood Library yesterday evening, I asked her to persuade you to e-mail me a few words about the book she tells me you're currently reading on the history of Kansas. But then I decided to send you this direct personal invitation to that effect. If you'd have even a few minutes to share your unprocessed impressions of what you've read so far, I'd enjoy hearing whatever you have to say.
I'm nearly all the way through THE GOD DELUSION by Richard Dawkins. I'm going to infer here that you've already had a chance to read what I said about it in my open letter to my cousin Jay in Boston earlier this week. To that, I'd just like to add this:
As much as I'd like to recommend THE GOD DELUSION to everyone as the most definitive analysis of organized religion to date, I found it lacking in three areas, one of which stands out in my mind enough to warrant a word or two here. This particular shortcoming centers around Richard Dawkins' conclusion (and I'm paraphrasing here, of course) that RELIGION SERVES NO USEFUL EVOLUTIONARY PURPOSE. I couldn't disagree more.
In my opinion, this glaring flaw in Dawkins' analysis springs from his unfortunate emphasis on the "belief" component of organized religion acting as a function of INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY. Perhaps the reason I'm so attuned to this misdirected analysis is that, until relatively recently, I found myself distracted from the scent of our authentic quarry by the very same red herring, i.e. the red herring notion of institutional religion springing from a community of individual "beliefs" regarding God -- i.e. "the God delusion." My own current view is that all available historical evidence urges the alert observer to analyze institutional religion as A MANIFESTATION OF GROUP PSYCHOLOGY (or more accurately, as an anthropological, economic and political phenomenon).
Dawkins' would have been wise to borrow a page from the numerous writers of the 18th century Enlightenment who considered all organized religions to have been the invention of various PRIEST CASTES who colluded to devise all manner of ingenious means for robbing, controlling, enslaving, exploiting, etc. the rest of the poor schnooks in their tribe with whatever confabulations proved most expeditious toward that end. Another way of saying this would be to simply say that INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION IS A BUSINESS SCHEME AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN. My favorite paradigm of how the money, power and resources got redistributed as a result of this GOD FRAUD may be found in the vast culture and civilization which evolved around THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD. Instead of saying "Give me your lunch money or I will beat you up," that priesthood said "Give me your lunch money or I won't rescue you and your loved ones from spending eternity in misery." (Sound familiar?)
History teaches that ORGANIZED RELIGION HAS SERVED A NEGATIVELY USEFUL EVOLUTIONARY PURPOSE by seeing to it that (as Benjamin Disraeli put it) "the wrong people have all the money." Which is just another way of saying that all the wrong people have been selected for survival, procreation, and the otherwise unearned privilege of spreading their seeds, eggs and slanders into the next generation and the next.
Am I Making Any Sense???
Galen
%%%
TODAY'S QUOTE:
"I can look at doctrinaire traditions only with a historical and psychological perspective; they have no other significance for me."
-- Albert Einstein
%%%
Wednesday
July 11, 2007
Dear Jaromir,
When I ran into Magda at the Leawood Library yesterday evening, I asked her to persuade you to e-mail me a few words about the book she tells me you're currently reading on the history of Kansas. But then I decided to send you this direct personal invitation to that effect. If you'd have even a few minutes to share your unprocessed impressions of what you've read so far, I'd enjoy hearing whatever you have to say.
I'm nearly all the way through THE GOD DELUSION by Richard Dawkins. I'm going to infer here that you've already had a chance to read what I said about it in my open letter to my cousin Jay in Boston earlier this week. To that, I'd just like to add this:
As much as I'd like to recommend THE GOD DELUSION to everyone as the most definitive analysis of organized religion to date, I found it lacking in three areas, one of which stands out in my mind enough to warrant a word or two here. This particular shortcoming centers around Richard Dawkins' conclusion (and I'm paraphrasing here, of course) that RELIGION SERVES NO USEFUL EVOLUTIONARY PURPOSE. I couldn't disagree more.
In my opinion, this glaring flaw in Dawkins' analysis springs from his unfortunate emphasis on the "belief" component of organized religion acting as a function of INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY. Perhaps the reason I'm so attuned to this misdirected analysis is that, until relatively recently, I found myself distracted from the scent of our authentic quarry by the very same red herring, i.e. the red herring notion of institutional religion springing from a community of individual "beliefs" regarding God -- i.e. "the God delusion." My own current view is that all available historical evidence urges the alert observer to analyze institutional religion as A MANIFESTATION OF GROUP PSYCHOLOGY (or more accurately, as an anthropological, economic and political phenomenon).
Dawkins' would have been wise to borrow a page from the numerous writers of the 18th century Enlightenment who considered all organized religions to have been the invention of various PRIEST CASTES who colluded to devise all manner of ingenious means for robbing, controlling, enslaving, exploiting, etc. the rest of the poor schnooks in their tribe with whatever confabulations proved most expeditious toward that end. Another way of saying this would be to simply say that INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION IS A BUSINESS SCHEME AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN. My favorite paradigm of how the money, power and resources got redistributed as a result of this GOD FRAUD may be found in the vast culture and civilization which evolved around THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD. Instead of saying "Give me your lunch money or I will beat you up," that priesthood said "Give me your lunch money or I won't rescue you and your loved ones from spending eternity in misery." (Sound familiar?)
History teaches that ORGANIZED RELIGION HAS SERVED A NEGATIVELY USEFUL EVOLUTIONARY PURPOSE by seeing to it that (as Benjamin Disraeli put it) "the wrong people have all the money." Which is just another way of saying that all the wrong people have been selected for survival, procreation, and the otherwise unearned privilege of spreading their seeds, eggs and slanders into the next generation and the next.
Am I Making Any Sense???
Galen
Friday, October 12, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED
1.
You don’t know your steering wheel from your transmission.
You don’t know your tailpipe from your ignition.
Yet you think you can control the spark
In me with which I disembark
From you with all your booby prizes,
Plastic trash in bright disguises.
You’re fooled into thinking that you’re so patrician,
But you’re miles from home and it’s getting dark.
If you could see how Nature individualizes,
Then maybe you could tell a lamb from a shark.
2.
It’s too late to shop for an antidote;
You’re married to your mother, that unholy cutthroat.
Your nightmares are merely her nocturnal emission.
The only phase left is your decomposition.
You vote for a con man who talks like Candide:
It’s no mystery why you never succeed.
By mere accident, you stay afloat,
Puffed with panic and inhibition.
I’ve often wondered where you learned to misread
The obvious facts of the human condition.
3.
You don’t know a vulture from a skylark.
You’re makin’ me feel just like the Prince of Denmark,
When I watch you whore after church and flag,
Then turn to me and start to nag
That it’s my fault whenever the price of bread rises,
Yet it’s your own face that your mirror despises.
When you were a girl, did you like to park -
To court and spark and maybe snag
A boy in that mouth which evangelizes
Now about lies scribbled on an old rag?
4.
You follow wherever the bad shepherds lead,
Then wonder why your pockets bleed.
A TV preacher hypnotizes
You into thinking one god fits all sizes.
I invite you, instead, to study a dust mote,
Then rethink to what god your time you devote.
Superstition is unsafe at any speed.
Spastic-but-surely, it pulverizes
Any innocent soul it can use for a scapegoat.
Yet it’s the stale script that your blood memorizes.
Words and Music by Galen Green c 1986
1.
You don’t know your steering wheel from your transmission.
You don’t know your tailpipe from your ignition.
Yet you think you can control the spark
In me with which I disembark
From you with all your booby prizes,
Plastic trash in bright disguises.
You’re fooled into thinking that you’re so patrician,
But you’re miles from home and it’s getting dark.
If you could see how Nature individualizes,
Then maybe you could tell a lamb from a shark.
2.
It’s too late to shop for an antidote;
You’re married to your mother, that unholy cutthroat.
Your nightmares are merely her nocturnal emission.
The only phase left is your decomposition.
You vote for a con man who talks like Candide:
It’s no mystery why you never succeed.
By mere accident, you stay afloat,
Puffed with panic and inhibition.
I’ve often wondered where you learned to misread
The obvious facts of the human condition.
3.
You don’t know a vulture from a skylark.
You’re makin’ me feel just like the Prince of Denmark,
When I watch you whore after church and flag,
Then turn to me and start to nag
That it’s my fault whenever the price of bread rises,
Yet it’s your own face that your mirror despises.
When you were a girl, did you like to park -
To court and spark and maybe snag
A boy in that mouth which evangelizes
Now about lies scribbled on an old rag?
4.
You follow wherever the bad shepherds lead,
Then wonder why your pockets bleed.
A TV preacher hypnotizes
You into thinking one god fits all sizes.
I invite you, instead, to study a dust mote,
Then rethink to what god your time you devote.
Superstition is unsafe at any speed.
Spastic-but-surely, it pulverizes
Any innocent soul it can use for a scapegoat.
Yet it’s the stale script that your blood memorizes.
Words and Music by Galen Green c 1986
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)