[SeaGypsy]

The bible is so full of contradictions, I find it laughable that people can earnestly say they 'believe' it.
Having read the olde testament several times and the new testament countless, listening to proclamations of faith leads me to analyse the quality of brainwashery involved and not much else.
The only churches I have been in and enjoyed are free speaking evangelicals, where the laeity are encouraged to interject on the sermon, where there is no solid authority structure. Most churches are not like this, therefore are ignorant of the core purpose of Yeshua Ben Yusep's continuation of the work of John the Baptist.
Bob Marley put it best when he said;
''You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time.
'Sick and tired of your ism schism games,
''Die and go to heaven in a Jesus name''
We know and we understand, mighty God is a living man.
So now we see the light, we're gonna stand up for our rights.
So, come on, get up stand up, stand up for your rights everybody.
Don't give up the fight''

[mos6507]

I've come to the conclusion that human beings can never let go of their imagination. We all live inside the story we construct in our mind, which is inspired by the stories we are exposed to. That would be true of the bible, all sorts of fiction, myths, memes, movies, TV, etc...

No matter how much you try to wipe this stuff away, it keeps creeping back. That's why we're always clutching for analogies, like Mad Max and Soylent Green. The way we make sense of the world is to try to reduce it to a story with good guys and bad guys, a beginning, middle, and end.

That's how we're able to get anything out of going to the movies or reading a book, by projecting ourselves into the role of the protagonist, or relating the scenario in the story to our own lives. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, coming of age, fish out of water, the underdog saves the day, the tragic fall, etc...

Truth lies beyond these stories. These stories are attractive illusions that give meaning and purpose to our lives. Truth is something much more mundane, the stark and amoral truth of nature and ecology, let's say. That's why Montequest used to use the word "hubris" all of the time. Our egos make us blow our sense of self-importance up way beyond what it should be. We're all protagonists in the stories we construct. Whether you're religious or not, it makes no different. We all build illusions in our heads.

Most people see themselves playing out some sort of Rocky rags to riches motif. That's what the american dream and consumerism is all about. Doomers tend to look at themselves as victims of a world gone mad, like Candide.

The important thing is to recognize the artifice of the whole thing. It doesn't mean you have to abandon these stories altogether. They serve as useful personal motivators, and without them you might otherwise lead towards a self-destructing nihilism (which is why some of the brightest people who ever lived were depressives) but try to resist the temptation to seal your vision of reality with a bow and proclaim that the rules of the world can be summed up in some simple catch-phrase like "power corrupts" or "just keep moving forward". The real world defies such simple explanations.

Too many people use this inner storyteller as their truth barometer, and that's where we go astray.

[Revi]

Awesome post, Mos.

I think we need to re-invent our story. The first thing we did with our Maple enterprise is to make a story happen. We need to create a story here in our town. We started with a maple festival in the spring, now have a farmer's market and a grist mill. It is time to make it happen.

Kunstler's World Made by Hand series is a good example of a way to make a new story happen, but it's time to make that story happen in the places where we live.

Here's a part of the story, from the Grist mill.

http://somersetgristmill.blogspot.com/

[efarmer]

Ahh, a taste of the true Mos there for sure.