Why I Have Stopped Worrying

September the 11th, Iraq War, War on Terror, Afghanistan, Israel wants to bomb Iran, the National Debt, the uber-conservative religious right, Personhood bills, ending women's rights, banning contraception, NDAA, censorship, protests over gay marriage, budget cuts to higher education, OWS, the Patriot Act, and so much more. Some of these things have come to pass, and others might actually happen, and others might be dead on the proverbial table. The conservative right is in fear that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, and the left feels the same way. Atheists feel like their getting the shit end of the bargain, and Christians feel the same way, while the true religious minorities are actually getting the actual shit end of the stick.

So much is happening lately that I don't even know where to begin. And can I even begin to address any of this? I think not. In fact, it's so worrisome that it's hard to even worry about it. Why? Because I have a typical human ability that many of us fail to utilize: foresight.

It's nothing psychic or magical. It's just the frontal lobe doing it's job. The frontal lobe is a very unique part of the brain that allows us, and any animal, to synthesize experience with new stimuli, and allows us to determine whether or not something might taste good (liver and onion ice cream will more than likely taste bad, but we don't have to try it to find out), or what might occur if I throw this rock at that mama bear (likely getting mauled). There are patterns to events and outcomes, which our frontal lobes give us the power to predict.

I have talked considerably with my mentor Scott Sworts about Nostradamus, and I have written elsewhere about him, not about him being a prophet, but as a historian of Jungian historical archetypes. Jung established archetypes for psychic entities, projections, and processes (operations). Nostradamus established archetypes for historical events and outcomes. Essentially, if Event A occurs to Society B, then the outcome will be Ramification C. A + B = C. The only difference is Nostradamus coded his work, probably to protect himself from repercussions that may arise from religious organizations and governmental authorities.

Nostradamus, if I may use Scott's words, isn't prophesizing the future, but telling us who we are. If Nostradamus' work is in fact historical archetypes, then clearly history repeats itself. And all we have to do is look at events in history to see where things might go from here.

One common archetype in history is that mass artificial control, usually in the form of oppression, will always be overcome. Maybe not in the short term, but always in the long term. We may be regressing in our progress as a society, but that bubble of oppression cannot be maintained. If women lose their rights, homosexuals executed, and religious persecution of non-Christians does prevail, it is an artificial Promise Land. A utopia, if you get my drift.

But if they weed out all the infidels, all who are different, how will equality and peace arise out of such oppression? one might ask. The oppression is a bubble, an artifice of control that is maintained only by power, wealth, and little else. But it's a bubble, and all bubbles pop eventually. No matter how long the oppression is maintained, difference will arise in the system, and that difference will gain enough momentum to pop that bubble.

They may burn all the libraries, but eventually someone will find a book in a treasury and revive a better tradition. I think this is what those old myths of the hero, who is supposed to be euthanize, but somehow evades death, are all about. Zeus was replaced by a rock, Moses in a basket, Krishna in a basket as well, Jesus was born out of Galilee and into Egypt, and so forth. In the end, the oppression was carried out, but what can pop the bubble evaded euthanization, because eventually the artificial system will fail to weed out all who are different. Difference is inevitable; even in nature, evolution, deformations, defects, and mutations occur, and sometimes they win over the established system.

A more current myth I think is fantastic example is the film Dark City. Aliens, known as the Strangers, have an illusion of absolute control over an artificial city they built to house a human zoo for experimentation. Every day they "tune" to put everyone in the city to sleep while they change the city, and even switch people's memories. Every once in a while people wake up while these changes occur. "It's not supposed to happen, but it does," as one character says; exactly the point. The Strangers usually do away with these people who wake up, but finally one of them gains the power to defeat these aliens, and sets everyone free. Just as Moses set his people free.

These puritanical ideals of women being little more than house slaves and baby-producing machines, homosexuals having the gay prayed away (usually a Clockwork Orange kind of aversion therapy), intolerance and persecution of other religions (currently Muslims), et cetera... this 13th Century puritania pursuit will eventually fall apart. If the world falls to shit, I know that maybe a century or three later Enlightenment will come again. Everything we have worked so hard to achieve will be revived. It is inevitable.

I regret that I never lived to see America in its golden years (if there ever was such a thing), and I am saddened that I will never see the true ideals of what it meant to be American fully lived out. We may be on the verge of a Dark Age, but I don't worry about it anymore, because I know that that bubble will pop. What saddens me the most is that when Enlightenment comes again, it too will wane and pass back into an age of darkness again. Such is the cycles of history. I can only hope we leave enough of a world left (nuclear war, toxic wastes, the throw-way society, climate change) for future generations to have another Enlightenment.

I am saddened that much of the discoveries that are being made in science today (M-theory, quantum computing, Relativity, nuclear physics, genetic processing, etc) are being discarded by the anti-science movement, and will probably be lost for centuries. But I delight myself with knowing that one day someone will find hidden in the ruins of some university a copy of Einstein's Relativity that evaded getting burned, and suddenly become filled with wonder as to how much we knew. Or that someone might find in a dilapidated house a copy of Wealth of Nations, or Godel, Escher, Bach and find a world of wonder from the minds of the past.

I can't worry if the religious right reigns supreme with an iron fist over all who are not white, conservative Christians. Why should I worry? What am I supposed to do about it? I'm just one man, and there are thousands of Americans striving to keep their rights, and they don't seem to be doing much good.

Know this: these glory years of America and of the world will come to an end. But some day, if we leave enough of a world left, that oppression will end and be replaced by a better world. Which, in turn, will eventually give way to another dark age. Such is the order of things until the final demise of humans altogether.

"Why should I lament the disappearance of my people? All things die; white race will find this out too."
~Chief Seattle.

Meta-Conspiracy Theory

So, I was recently pondering Area 51 and UFOs and the likes (because that's what I do when I'm ready to throw my computer out the window when AutoCAD is giving me a hard time), and in particular, the conspiracy theories that surround them. I just felt compelled to write about what I was thinking. I have written on conspiracy theories before, so I would like to take a different approach.

One conspiracy theory I would like to discuss is the Roswell crash in 1947. It is important to note that two years prior to the Roswell incident the Cold War started. And I just wanted to ask what is more believable: extraterrestrial intelligent lifeforms flew a spacecraft to planet Earth and crash landed in the deserts of New Mexico; or the US government was working on a top secret project (which they do frequently) involving new stealth technology with modern avionics, which went wrong, and the project crash in the desert.

When we seriously think about it, the likelihood of intelligent beings from a nearby solar system (which would be several thousand light years away) is quite slim. We made manned missions to the moon, and that's about the best we've done. We can get to Mars, but we can't leave Mars. When you look at how much infrastructure is necessary to get objects out of our planet's orbit, about the same amount would be necessary to get a person off of Mars, since Mars is only slightly smaller than us. And these intelligent beings, with technology so superior that a single vessel, about the size of garbage truck can make it from a planet light years away with no problems, and just so happens to crash once it gets to earth? I know I'm making the whole thing sound ridiculous, because it is.

In all likelihood the US military was developing new aircraft prototypes, and one of those crafts probably had an accident and crashed. Many things from the crash that were strange, technology-wise, are now common technology, such as the strange material that supposedly self-heals when crumpled.

But what better way to cover-up a classified, top secret project during the Cold War than to give an outright lie, such as "It was a weather balloon," and then send a few people out to say they saw "alien bodies" and a "spacecraft" to get the public's attention away from secret government projects. We don't like the government doing secret stuff, so make up something to get the people riled up about so they don't think government is doing what the government is actually doing. One is very likely, and the other we have to tie ourselves in conspiracy-theory pretzels to make it sound plausible, but we just come off looking like a bunch of new age nutcases. Hell, it's so in genius that it could work. Consequently, I think it did work.

What's scarier: creatures from outer space crashing on our pale blue dot? Or the government creating a conspiracy to cover-up a top secret project? Personally, I think the latter is more scary, especially if it's true, because a lot of us bought into it. I know, it's a conspiracy theory for a conspiracy theory. But the logic of the whole thing makes so much sense that the meta-conspiracy is more plausible than the conspiracy itself.

Open your eyes, people! The Secret Government is plotting the end of the world! And aliens in spacecrafts that look strangely like a hubcap are helping them! And the Mayans were right! Because aliens made their calendar! Right after they built the Pyramids! And the Freemasons will take over the world right after it ends! Because aliens started the Freemasons!

You don't have to "believe" like Fox Mulder. You can just stop being a moron. 

Pondering American Religiosity

It has become common, practically acceptable, today in America for the uber-zealous, religious right to be incredibly either-or. It is this thing, and no other. It is that thing, and no other. The Promise Land is that place, and no other. God is this thing, and no other. The apocalypse is that event, and no other. Everything is expressed by the will of God or the acts of Satan, and nothing in between. It is enemy or friend, and nothing besides. And we have to wonder, how did it ever come to be like this? How did such a myoptic dualism ever emerge? We can only ponder the idea of such an evolution of zealous religiosity. Let us ponder it.

We can't exactly pinpoint when and where it began. As Thomas Mann says, "Deep is the well of the past, should we not call it bottomless." But we can uncover a good idea of when and where it began. Since this country is primarily Christian, we can safely say it begins with Abrahamic traditions.

We know that the Hebrews were originally polytheistic. In fact, the only thing that made the sons of Abraham unique was that they had a "God on Most High" (El Elyon). In most polytheistic religions there was always some deity that was better than another, and not in a terminal sense, which ended up a hierarchy circle. Zeus may have been the chief deity, but he was terrified of Night. Night, consequently, was subservient to Themis (mother of Zeus) and Gaia. Zeus was thought to have procreated with Themis. Circles of dominance exists in polytheistic cultures. But not the Jews.

When we think about the phrase God on Most High, it clearly implies that there is a hierarchy of other deities, of which YHWH would have been the highest of them all. We still use this phrase commonly, which makes me question the common person's understanding of the words that come out of his or her mouth. But why a God on Most High? Something must have made the Jews suddenly think something higher existed above all else, in which nothing higher existed. Thomas Mann gives probably one of the best parables for why this would have happened.

According to Mann, Abraham, in his journeys searching for the god most suitable for him, would have recognized the hierarchy of terrestrial institutions that are worshiped. Abraham would have done as most did, worship the earth, because our life comes from the milk and substance of the earth. But the earth is one of the lowest institutions of life. Annually it dies and is reborn. It is dependent on the warmth of the sun and the rains of the skies. So he couldn't worship the earth. So he looked to the heavens. But the sun sets and is replaced by the lights of the night, so the sun is not worthy of his worship. The moon dies and is reborn every month, and clearly not worthy. Nor the stars, because they shift throughout the year. The stars that reign in the winter are replaced by others in the summer. So Abraham concluded that there must be something above all of these that was The Highest. And so, without being about to name it, he called it God on Most High. And at that moment God popped into existence. God did not exist before Abraham (or was just waiting in Limbo for someone to realize him/her).

Why would God not "exist" before Abraham? (Let me stress that it's not so much there was no God before Abraham, but that God had no purpose before Abraham). Because God does not need to create. Some orders of Qabalah teaching believe that Lucifer created the world. Lucifer did this to show that he was comparable, if not equal or higher than God, which landed him upon his terrestrial creation. (Where Lucifer came from, I haven't the faintest idea). God is supposed to be incorruptible, perfect, and All. Being perfect would mean that nothing can be subtracted from or added to God, but for the worst (the Platonic definition of beauty). If God created the world, then he did it for some reason, need, or desire. Perhaps he was lonely. But those would imply that God is incomplete without creation, and had to create it. Or some internal or external inspiration required him to do so. Maybe he was compelled, but these human reasons only diminish the perfection that is supposed to be God's.

All this sounds demeaning and paradoxical, and quite rightly so, toward God. But let me give a solution that comes from Hermetic philosophy: God never actually created the world, nor did Lucifer. God simply thought it all up. There is no creation, just a thought, and idea of God's, that we are currently a part of. If he just thinks up the whole of creation, then he never did anything that would subtract or add to himself.

Needless to say, the God on Most High had to be realized by a human in order to exist. Only human reason can create something on Most High. Mann believes that at some point the Jews would have "confused" the God on Most High with the One and Only God. Before this Only God idea emerged, the Jews, worshiping only one deity, did recognize and accept other deities of other cultures. Somewhere along the way monotheism gave way.

Monotheism is really a simple corruption of polytheism (corruption, as in important elements are lost). The Jews may have worshiped the highest god, a single god, but most people had a patron deity of their region or town that they strictly worshiped. Members of the Cult of Dionysus only worshiped Dionysus, and didn't worship Athena, though they still recognized and respected her. They recognized her and respected her, as well as her followers, because polytheists believed in layers. There was none of this, "It is this God and no other!" The worshipers of Dionysus needed the cult of Ceres, because they mostly farmed, and Ceres would yield cereal. They needed the cult of Athena because Athena protected Athens. There were layers to the hierarchies of the gods, and all were necessary. And even though these are specific religious cults, most people worshiped all the gods. So layers of society and religious worship was believed to be necessary. I say "society" as well as religious, because all the gods are incarnations of human institutions.

Monotheism eradicates all of those layers. There is no longer a recognition of layers. There is no respect for degrees of difference. It is good or evil, and nothing in between. Enemy or friend, and nothing besides. When, in fact, every opposite, every polarity is the same thing, with degrees of difference. This is a part of Hermetic teaching, where the two poles are only difference of each other. Hot and cold are opposites, but there are degrees of hot and cold, and blurry line that arbitrarily divides them. God and Satan are the same thing, only with a number of degrees of difference between them. In the Book of Job, Satan is treated as an aspect of God, not an enemy. The only true opposites are gender, which is why Hermeticists classify gender as something completely different. Only in Freudian psychology do I think we can talk about degrees of masculinity or femininity. But that is not exactly what the Hermeticists mean when they speak of gender (which entails creations).

And so this is where we can start to understand the insanity that is the uber-conservative religious right. That doesn't explain the whole picture. But it's a start. Somewhere God on Most High became The Only God, which destroyed any concept of degrees of difference. There is no acceptance for being in-between. You are either a "good Christian" or you're going to hell! (Don't get me wrong, I live in America, and I really only see this from the Christians. Every religion pulls this kind of stuff, so it depends in what region of the globe you are on). You are either a Broncos fan, or you're going to hell! An American or anti-American. Because apparently questioning what it means to be American is anti-patriotic; because freedom of speech is not American.

Like a coin, there are two sides, opposites, but are still the same thing. And there are many layers in between the two sides. We have come to only see two sides, and nothing besides.

A World Built for Cattle

Last semester I took a class called Human Factors in Design. It was a good class, and I certainly learned a lot. My problem with the basis of the whole class was that it primarily focused on designing environments for cattle, livestock, sheep. Though there was a fair amount of lectures on ritual, mysticism, symbols, and primitive / ancient environments, the majority focused on extraordinarily primitive aspects about human behavior in environments.

Psychology, sociology, and anthropology has taught us a lot about the basic foundations of human behavior. For instance, people like views to the outside. It makes us work better, stay more alert, and feel more comfortable. But some things behaviorists have found has made its way into architectural design that are really for primitive aspects of being a mere organism. For instance, when turning, humans find that 45 to 90 degree turns are more "private" turns, as the shift in direction causes a drastic sense of place. Turns that are 15 degrees or less are more "public" turns, as not much about direction, and therefore sense of place has changed.

This has become very important in architectural design these days, as there is a huge emphasis on the public and private realms, as well as the separation and melding of the two. Humans feel more enclosed when the height of surrounding buildings to the space between buildings are at a 1:3 ratio. Humans don't really like big, empty, open spaces (like Boston City Hall Plaza). So a sense of enclosure, privacy, and swaddling have become a part of the environs we habit. These are all great, and very important, but there is something lost that the Ancients seemed to have gotten right. What could it be?

I believe what has been lost is ritual. Ritual elevates the simple self to something larger than itself. Ritual raises the individual out of being just an individual into something greater that he or she is a part of, as rituals are usually done with several people. Procession in environments used to be important. Now its a matter of wayfinding, how cattle intuitively understand a space and can map their way through it. This is called "imaging," where one's mental mapping kicks in to help navigate a space. With ritual there was a sense of communion, where one was part of something larger, e.g. society, and followed paths that were established by a higher idea of how we should move, and not by how we are going to move because of basic brain activity.

It's amazing how little credit scientists will give to ancient peoples. The Greeks invented cogs and steam engines, and even had basic robots. The Romans had concrete that, to this day, is far superior to our own. The Egyptians were excellent psychologists and chemists. But the Egyptians didn't have psychology like we think of it. They had something like therapy, where one explained their mental problems, and a psychologist would explain what they had to do to alleviate their mental demons (usually symbolic prescriptions). Usually exercising thought, focusing on certain aspects of suffering, facing fears, and relaxing. Sounds a lot like what psychiatrists do today, right? In fact, it sounds so much like modern psychology, it is modern psychology. Wow!

What is different is our psychologists do today is focus on brain actions, mental functions. They don't really focus on things to actually put the individual on a higher plane of thinking and living. Today it has become a matter of medicating the pain away. They had some herbs in ancient Egypt, some narcotic, some hallucinogenic, some didn't do anything, and others might kill you. Most of it was meditative, like yoga or Zen meditation. They didn't have Prozac to nullify life without ever actually addressing the problem.

To give a bad fallacy, it would be like encountering a mystery in how black holes work mathematically, and instead of actually facing and working out the math, we just give the equation Prozac to nullify the perplexing math.

I read quite a bit on the secular and occult life ancient peoples. Nothing was ever as basic and primitive as we address our world today in our rational society. We look at humans as something mechanical. They looked at humans as a vessel for the embodiment of a higher idea of living. They addressed human factors as something that could be divine and in accord with nature and the cosmos at large. We address human factors as cattle, something that has basic functions that can be understood as little more than predictable mechanisms.

We are machines that have predictable reactions to certain tunings, like drugs.

Want to know why society is degrading? There is no, or very few people who imagine themselves as part of something larger than themselves. The ancient self image seeped out into society, nature, and the cosmos (anyone whose didn't was an idiot, meaning "inward" or "private"). Our self image usually ends at around 1.5 to 3 feet, depending on environmental circumstances and which psychologist you are talking to about "personal space."

TL;DR: today humans are cattle with basic behavior that we can design the world around. In antiquity humans had a higher sense of self and didn't need to medicate their problems away.

The Unrealized Architect

There has become a sort of mini-cult of architects that deal only in theoretical designs. This isn't unheard of. In the past there have been numerous designs by architects that were never built, and some of those were never meant to be built. Etienne-Louis Boullee is but one example. A few of Bramante's works were theoretical, as well as Michelangelo, Serlio, and Palladio. Since the Modernists, there has arose an architectural vocation unto itself that deals only in theoretical architecture. To name a few of the Modernists: Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Bruno Taut; and to name a few Post-Modernists: Lebbeus Woods, Zaha Hadid, Peter Zumpthor. In fact, Lebbeus Woods is only known for his theoretical designs, and that's how he makes a living. Hadid is really a theorists with a few built works, as is Zumpthor, Eisenman, and so forth.

I don't want to barrage this post with architects no one knows, nor works no one knows, because that's not the point. This isn't just a rant about theoretical designs, which, in fact, I find intriguing and sometimes excellent. The problem is that architects have become divorced from material reality, which really is what the vocation is all about.

Architects have become a bit like mathematicians, in that they come up with a lot of really cool ideas and forms, but these are so distant from physical reality, that they get stamped with the label of "theoretical" and are supposed to be honored as some sort of misunderstood artist's genius, worthy of our respect. While theoretical designs serve a purpose, usually to challenge what architecture is and can be, today it has become a circus of ugly bullshit that deliberately cannot be built, or built at a very high price. For instance, Le Corbusier's Maison Domino was really designed to illustrate how we can build, and how that method of building can impact aesthetic design. Lebbeus Woods' works explore parasitic relationships between post-apocalyptic industrial wastelands with post-apocalyptic, bug-shaped buildings latching onto these other buildings. GENIUS!

But today architects have to be unrealistic. Architects have to divorce themselves from reality, like a mathematician. A mathematician thinks in abstractions, and ponders intriguing mind games from there. For instance, did you know you can mathematically turn a sphere inside-out? The rules are you cannot crease or tear the sphere, which is made up of an incredibly fragile, yet elastic material that is capable of passing through itself. It's strange but proven possible, at least mathematically. You can also take a sphere and break it up into an infinite number of smaller pieces, and reconstruct two spheres with identical mass and volume as the first (Banach-Tarski paradox). And did you know mathematically you can never get anywhere. It's called Zeno's paradox. In traveling from point A to point B you must go half way, let's call it point C. And from point C to point B you must go halfway again, called point D. And halfway from point D to B... it's an asymptote, and you never arrive.

But we live in a real, physical, material world where we do get from point A to point B just fine, and we can't turn a sphere inside out without putting a hole in it, and we can't form two spheres from one. Architects have become just as unrealistic as mathematicians. In fact, non-theoretical mathematicians tend to be more realistic than architects.

When you look at pictures of the stairs in the Armani flagship store in New York, they look awesome. See them in real life, you realize there was no possible way to build it without it just looking like shit up close. But who cares! It's for magazines! And that is part of the problem. Magazine architecture, architecture built for pictures, becomes the real thing. The actual building is less real than the pictures.

This is a problem I have. I used to love Steven Holl's Simon's Hall at MIT. Even when one visits it, outside it is still pretty cool. But once I went inside, well, let's say I was pissed. Those curving, undulating, cavernous walls looks like concrete, and therefore amazingly gorgeous in pictures. But walk up to them and put your hand on those walls, and you find out they're hollow fiberglass. Of course those walls couldn't be built out of concrete (note that no architecture magazine or book on this building will admit it's fiberglass, nor show pictures of them building those walls). But it looked cool in pictures. I felt the building was more alive, more real in pictures than when I was actually there.

Then we get design competitions, such as eVolo, which asks for the "reinvisioning" or "reimaging" or "rethinking" architecture. What that means is to produce the most slick, sexy, and absolutely unrealistic thing that computers can digitally render with algorithmic programming.

No wonder contractors and developers are thriving in the construction industry. They produce real buildings. Architects live in a fantasy world where materials are subjective, and buildability doesn't matter. Like in Whose Line Is It Anyway? where the materials are made up and the physical reality doesn't matter. And isn't it the truth? I mean, in architecture school, often "thinking about materiality" means "recognize that this isn't going to be a solid block of concrete, but otherwise who cares exactly what material it is! Be free and expressive!"

And all of this is just on the form and physical substance of a building. I don't even want to get started on political, social, psychological, or functional aspects of theoretical design... where the sociological behavior is made up and the people don't matter.

Architects have questioned and reinterpreted architecture to the point they don't even know what it is. Ask any architect what a house looks like and watch them struggle.

Religious Taxation: Questioning Religious Practices Pt. 2

In my last post I talked about the government's involvement in religious practices pertaining to yoga. Of course, there are numerous examples of the government's involvement in religion in the US, and yoga is only a small part. One of the primary ideologies of the US is the separation of church and state. In the First Amendment it reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." So in keeping with the previous post, the government cannot create legislation for or against the establishment of a religious organization, but any aspect of that establishment that bleeds out into secular life is subjected to governmental regulation or prohibition.

About two weeks ago on Reddit there arose such a clatter, as if someone gently rapping, rapping for the taxation of the Church. Churches make a lot of money in this country, as well as almost every other country. They get tax exemption, they file themselves as non-profit organizations (because of the whole charity thing), and don't have to pay taxes. So the solution on r/atheism was to tax churches to help with the deficit. For one thing, that will barely put a dent on fixing the deficit, and second, that will officially and legally end the separation of church and state.

Now, the separation of church and state already has blurry and ambiguous boundaries in this country. In fact, many legislations have been put forth that practically already end it. But the ideology of it isn't dead... yet. Sure, America is growing more and more as a theocracy, but the longer it can be resisted, the better. America is the only country ever founded on the principles of reason and logic. And those those foundations have long degraded, why end it all so quickly? And by the hands of liberals, at that! We're throwing all that away, while other countries are striving for it; many with their own lives.

We should consider the effects of taxing the churches would have on American policy. For one, religious organizations are given tax exemption because with taxation comes political say. Citizens get taxed, but we also get to vote. Churches themselves can't vote, although they can encourage their congregation to vote a certain way (walk into any church for the next nine months and you will find pamphlets and signs on who you should vote for and why). If we started to tax churches, then they will have political pull, especially with the money some churches have... and some already do have political pull, such as donating funds to a particular Republican candidate's campaign.

If I'm not mistaken, churches were originally taxed in the early years of this country. But that plug got pulled quickly when churches demanded political say. Taxing religious organizations not only ends the separation of church and state, redistribution of wealth will take a portion of each person's pay check and put that money in the bank accounts of religious organizations. I was glad someone wrote that bit of information on r/atheism, but like most idiots, that didn't have a lot of impact. They naively carried their cross of oppression, as all people in this country tend to do.

Now, it sounds so horrible that in taxing churches they would get a portion of tax payers' dollars. But the sad thing is that churches already do get tax dollars. During the Bush Jr. administration a piece of legislation was passed that gives federal funds to churches for "charity" purposes. No doubt some churches actually use the funds to promote charity work, but I doubt everyone with that much free money and power uses it all for charity... *cough* megachurches *cough*. Where there is power and wealth, you are sure to find corruption (i.e. Zimbardo's Lucifer Effect).

This faith-based initiative is, in my opinion, absolute bullshit for one reason, and one reason only: it is the government taking social programs and giving them over to religious organization. And to give an extreme of how social programs can be horribly effected by religion, just look at Romania during the Ceausescu's reign. The Ceausescu's demanded each family have at least eight children, in order to better Romania's army. Many families could not afford to have eight children, but because of fertility police, they had eight, and usually kept one or two. The other children were shipped off to orphanages that were run by overzealous, superstitious nuns. These orphanages were often more horrible than some concentration camps, with starved, beaten, diseased children. Which is why many orphanages in the States are government run, or, at the very least, regulated.

The faith-based initiative takes the responsibility of social programs and hands that over to church. This can be seen two ways: the breakdown of government and what government does, as well as a switch to theocracy. Now that religion can run social services, if you want food, you have to pray to Jesus. If you want to rehabilitate from a life on the street, you have to pray to Jesus. As opposed to just being able to feed, house, clothe, and rehabilitate people. And anyone who has ever spent a significant amount of time around homeless people, they will say anything, or pray to anyone for food. Ask a starving man to pray to Satan himself for food, I'm sure he will do it. Primitive instincts override God.

The point of all of this is, one, where it is secular, it should remain in the hands of the People and the government; and two, where it is religious, let it stay in its houses of the holy. I have absolutely no problem with Evangelicals getting so much money from their congregation, nor people practicing the rigorous and respectable discipline of yoga. I do have a problem with churches getting tax payers' dollars for stuff the government should be doing, or fraud yoga teachers making money without regulation as a secular activity.

I mean, churches building great, big, monumental buildings through the tithings and donations of their members is a long held tradition. In fact, most cathedrals of the Middle Ages were lavishly built by the funds of trade guilds. Essentially, the guilds wanted the Church out of secular power, so gave money to their churches to build bigger and better structures, but asked them to stay out of politics, which churches gladly obliged. I don't oppose churches with wealth. That's not a problem, because they have a right to get donations from their members. As for churches getting government funding, we might as well close the book on the separation of church and state idea and say, "Fuck it. It was a nice experiment. Initiate theocracy."