MAGA, apparently, isn't working. . .
America isn't great.
In fact, it's such a miserable place, one out of every 15 or 20 Americans (depending on up-to-date population numbers) is addicted to an intoxicated or narcotized state.
Healthy people can use alcohol or narcotics on occasion in a celebratory fashion. . .partying, it is called. But when a person becomes addicted to the intoxicated or narcotized state, when the alcohol or opioids or whatever becomes the person's life, then that person is no longer healthy. This is one out of every 15 or 20 Americans.
A person chooses to live intoxicated or narcotized for one reason: the un-intoxicated or un-narcotized life was not sufficient. Intoxicants and narcotics are used for escape. Thus we can say one out of every 15 or 20 Americans found the *American Way of Life* insufficient, and sought escape in a liquor or pill bottle or a syringe.
We can also state an additional x number of other Americans are equally disillusioned with the *American Way of Life* and desire to escape it through intoxication or narcotization, yet refrain from doing so because of some form of guilt (family obligations, religion, for example). These are the *white knuckler* Americans who through sheer force of will endure the *American Way of Life.* This x number of Americans are the *12 Step Program* addicts and others who, on their own, simply grit their teeth and endure the *American Way of Life.* How many millions are this?
And there may be a further x number of other Americans equally disillusioned with the *American Way of Life* who desire to escape it through less life-threatening addictions, such as gambling, pornography/fornication, video gaming, eating, shopping, body modifying and countless other past times. Yet some of these may be considered hallmarks of the *American Way of Life,* so that we could say the addicted of these are seeking to escape the *American Way of Life* through the *American Way of Life* in an American Spiral of Misery. . .
In any event, we can say tens upon tens of millions of Americans, if not hundreds of millions of Americans, find the *American Way of Life* so miserable, their existence has become nothing but a mania.
Why? What do tens of millions of Americans find so miserable about the *American Way of Life* that they run to life-threatening addictions (or just go ahead and kill themselves)?
We answer that question by asking another question: what is there in the *American Way of Life* to live for?
The *American Way of Life* is organized by two dominant systems:
FINANCE CAPITALISM: As a result of original sin, man was left to sweat for a living. But though labor was meant to be hard, it was never meant to be soul-crushing, as it has become ever since man *civilized* (meaning to turn against God). Civilization has only meant bondage for the vast majority. Today's Western worker's bondage comes in the form of debt slavery. The masses toil in jobs that have no existential meaning for a paycheck that allows them to borrow money to *makes end meet*. . .perpetually in debt, almost all of their adult lives are consigned to scraping for a paycheck. . .most bounce from job to job, forced to work for numbskulls who got loans large enough to start their idiotic businesses. . .tiny fish working for small fish, both of them eaten up by finance capitalism, which is the variation of the ancient system of civilization, by which 99% of sinners work so 1% of sinners can live as if blessed by God.
We know that this soul-crushing system of debt slavery was never God's intention from a study of His economy as outlined in Leviticus 25 and explained in fair detail here.
Let's say the average American sleeps 8 hours a day. . .therefore he/she is awake 112 hours a week, of which 40 is spent working. . .meaning more than 1/3 of the average American's waking life is given to labor.
What's a typical job for an American?
Cashier.
How many millions of Americans stand behind cash registers for over 1/3 of their lives scanning the bar codes of Big Gulps, Marlboro Lights and foot-long hot dogs for a paycheck that keeps them permanently indebted to the *American Way of Life's* organizing economic system?
There are millions of other equally unrewarding forms of labor. . .
I have no idea the percentage of America worker bees who consciously mull the DEPRESSING contradiction: an infinitely vast universe of immense wonder. . .one tiny planet, an invisible speck on the cosmic scale. . .on that invisible dot, the miracle of life. . .the pinnacle of which is human consciousness. . .and this miracle organism drags itself to work, prostitutes itself as a distributor of Breath Mints, exchanging its limited time on this side of the infinite for a system of credits that barely allows it to keep itself fed and sheltered. . .the miracle of life wasted. . .beyond wasted. . .the miracle degraded to an essentially electronically controlled existence. . .human life is financed. . .judged on its ability to make payments. . .six hundred threescore and six is a *credit score* marked in the right hand or forehead.
It appears most worker bees have little conscious awareness of their true condition, of the absolute waste of their lives. If there were awareness, they could not sit placidly in front of their flat screens watching The Masked Singer. BUT we must insist upon the unconscious awareness. Buried deep within the lifewreck is the soul, and the unconscious awareness of the soul's utter degradation must be a generator of the worker bee's flight to intoxication and narcotization.
DIMINISHMENT CULTURE: Original labor was never meant to bring mankind into bondage, but as a means to make offerings to God, as an early shadow of the Cross on the long road to Redemption. The human family was meant to spread across the earth as the terrestrial image of the heavenly—this was the original culture, culture being the nearly two-thirds of our waking lives not spent in labor. But beginning with Cain's murder of Abel, and continuing with the Nimrod-led planetary rebellion in the land of Shinar, and on down through the ages, the herd of men have always followed bent leaders on the path of diminishment culture. God's culture diminishes, and man's increasingly bizarre culture increases. The human family as God's people laboring on earth awaiting its redemption and its fulfillment as the image of the heavenly gradually becomes eliminated over the generations until we have the neurotic hash of the present age, where not only has sight of God been lost, but even the individual identities of the herd have been lost, such that the sheeple do not even know whether they are male or female. The confusion and anxiety resulting from the loss of purpose and identity is the rotten fruit of the diminishment culture, making it the second organizing system which produces the misery leading the herd to seek escape through intoxication or narcotization.
We began by questioning what it was in the *American Way of Life* that produced such distress, but, in fairness, is it not the case that it is the *Way of Life* in general? The Global Way of Life? If not entirely Global, then certainly it is the predominant mode of living in the ironically named *developed countries.* Is America any different than any other *developed country?* Certainly there is nothing in the rates of death by alcohol, drugs and suicide that mark America as a glaring outlier. Russia has a far higher suicide rate, Italy's is much lower.
The only area in which America is a true outlier from other *developed countries* is in its homicidal violence, both individual and collective. America's murder rate is much higher than the *developed countries* of Asia and Europe, and is even higher than Africa's Somalia, which is described as a *failed state.* And collectively, America has been at war in 226 of its 243 years of existence.
But let us not stray from the path of the suicidal into the homicidal. Let us suggest that the *American Way of Life* really isn't all that different from the *Way of Life.* Generally speaking, large percentages of human beings seek escape.
Where can the herd go?
Off a cliff and into the sea?
Unfortunately, they have nowhere outside themselves to go. The only alternative is to pollute the mind with intoxicants, narcotics, pornography, etc. and float away in innerspace in a chemically induced state of bliss. . .and then suffer the always-accompanying crash to an increasingly depressing reality. . .
Well. . .
But. . .
Hasn't it always been so?
Is our contemporary *Way of Life* any worse than it's ever been? The manias and obsessions may be more bizarre, but isn't misery, in the end, just misery?
2500 years ago the Preacher looked around and saw nothing but vexation of spirit.
And it had been that way forever then, and it remains that way forever now:
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Man struggles though life, then he dies. . .
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
Even the modern secular preacher agrees:
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. . .
Is there way a to beat the system, other than self-harming escape?
We know of one (there may be unknown others, but if there are, they probably follow a similar path): to live in this life as an outsider, as a stranger and pilgrim, as one not seeking a home here, but one to return to. To exist in two realities simultaneously. To exist here as sojourner from the Kingdom that already is and the Kingdom that will come.
And when He was demanded of the Pharisees, when the Kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said, The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.
One must see oneself in this world as a servant sent to show the way out of this present darkness into the light of the Kingdom to come:
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. . .
If one lives this peculiar life, then one is not jailed in this world's misery, but is a liberator of the miserable. . .that is the Way.
America isn't great.
In fact, it's such a miserable place, one out of every 15 or 20 Americans (depending on up-to-date population numbers) is addicted to an intoxicated or narcotized state.
Healthy people can use alcohol or narcotics on occasion in a celebratory fashion. . .partying, it is called. But when a person becomes addicted to the intoxicated or narcotized state, when the alcohol or opioids or whatever becomes the person's life, then that person is no longer healthy. This is one out of every 15 or 20 Americans.
A person chooses to live intoxicated or narcotized for one reason: the un-intoxicated or un-narcotized life was not sufficient. Intoxicants and narcotics are used for escape. Thus we can say one out of every 15 or 20 Americans found the *American Way of Life* insufficient, and sought escape in a liquor or pill bottle or a syringe.
We can also state an additional x number of other Americans are equally disillusioned with the *American Way of Life* and desire to escape it through intoxication or narcotization, yet refrain from doing so because of some form of guilt (family obligations, religion, for example). These are the *white knuckler* Americans who through sheer force of will endure the *American Way of Life.* This x number of Americans are the *12 Step Program* addicts and others who, on their own, simply grit their teeth and endure the *American Way of Life.* How many millions are this?
And there may be a further x number of other Americans equally disillusioned with the *American Way of Life* who desire to escape it through less life-threatening addictions, such as gambling, pornography/fornication, video gaming, eating, shopping, body modifying and countless other past times. Yet some of these may be considered hallmarks of the *American Way of Life,* so that we could say the addicted of these are seeking to escape the *American Way of Life* through the *American Way of Life* in an American Spiral of Misery. . .
In any event, we can say tens upon tens of millions of Americans, if not hundreds of millions of Americans, find the *American Way of Life* so miserable, their existence has become nothing but a mania.
Why? What do tens of millions of Americans find so miserable about the *American Way of Life* that they run to life-threatening addictions (or just go ahead and kill themselves)?
We answer that question by asking another question: what is there in the *American Way of Life* to live for?
The *American Way of Life* is organized by two dominant systems:
FINANCE CAPITALISM: As a result of original sin, man was left to sweat for a living. But though labor was meant to be hard, it was never meant to be soul-crushing, as it has become ever since man *civilized* (meaning to turn against God). Civilization has only meant bondage for the vast majority. Today's Western worker's bondage comes in the form of debt slavery. The masses toil in jobs that have no existential meaning for a paycheck that allows them to borrow money to *makes end meet*. . .perpetually in debt, almost all of their adult lives are consigned to scraping for a paycheck. . .most bounce from job to job, forced to work for numbskulls who got loans large enough to start their idiotic businesses. . .tiny fish working for small fish, both of them eaten up by finance capitalism, which is the variation of the ancient system of civilization, by which 99% of sinners work so 1% of sinners can live as if blessed by God.
We know that this soul-crushing system of debt slavery was never God's intention from a study of His economy as outlined in Leviticus 25 and explained in fair detail here.
Let's say the average American sleeps 8 hours a day. . .therefore he/she is awake 112 hours a week, of which 40 is spent working. . .meaning more than 1/3 of the average American's waking life is given to labor.
What's a typical job for an American?
Cashier.
How many millions of Americans stand behind cash registers for over 1/3 of their lives scanning the bar codes of Big Gulps, Marlboro Lights and foot-long hot dogs for a paycheck that keeps them permanently indebted to the *American Way of Life's* organizing economic system?
There are millions of other equally unrewarding forms of labor. . .
I have no idea the percentage of America worker bees who consciously mull the DEPRESSING contradiction: an infinitely vast universe of immense wonder. . .one tiny planet, an invisible speck on the cosmic scale. . .on that invisible dot, the miracle of life. . .the pinnacle of which is human consciousness. . .and this miracle organism drags itself to work, prostitutes itself as a distributor of Breath Mints, exchanging its limited time on this side of the infinite for a system of credits that barely allows it to keep itself fed and sheltered. . .the miracle of life wasted. . .beyond wasted. . .the miracle degraded to an essentially electronically controlled existence. . .human life is financed. . .judged on its ability to make payments. . .six hundred threescore and six is a *credit score* marked in the right hand or forehead.
It appears most worker bees have little conscious awareness of their true condition, of the absolute waste of their lives. If there were awareness, they could not sit placidly in front of their flat screens watching The Masked Singer. BUT we must insist upon the unconscious awareness. Buried deep within the lifewreck is the soul, and the unconscious awareness of the soul's utter degradation must be a generator of the worker bee's flight to intoxication and narcotization.
DIMINISHMENT CULTURE: Original labor was never meant to bring mankind into bondage, but as a means to make offerings to God, as an early shadow of the Cross on the long road to Redemption. The human family was meant to spread across the earth as the terrestrial image of the heavenly—this was the original culture, culture being the nearly two-thirds of our waking lives not spent in labor. But beginning with Cain's murder of Abel, and continuing with the Nimrod-led planetary rebellion in the land of Shinar, and on down through the ages, the herd of men have always followed bent leaders on the path of diminishment culture. God's culture diminishes, and man's increasingly bizarre culture increases. The human family as God's people laboring on earth awaiting its redemption and its fulfillment as the image of the heavenly gradually becomes eliminated over the generations until we have the neurotic hash of the present age, where not only has sight of God been lost, but even the individual identities of the herd have been lost, such that the sheeple do not even know whether they are male or female. The confusion and anxiety resulting from the loss of purpose and identity is the rotten fruit of the diminishment culture, making it the second organizing system which produces the misery leading the herd to seek escape through intoxication or narcotization.
We began by questioning what it was in the *American Way of Life* that produced such distress, but, in fairness, is it not the case that it is the *Way of Life* in general? The Global Way of Life? If not entirely Global, then certainly it is the predominant mode of living in the ironically named *developed countries.* Is America any different than any other *developed country?* Certainly there is nothing in the rates of death by alcohol, drugs and suicide that mark America as a glaring outlier. Russia has a far higher suicide rate, Italy's is much lower.
The only area in which America is a true outlier from other *developed countries* is in its homicidal violence, both individual and collective. America's murder rate is much higher than the *developed countries* of Asia and Europe, and is even higher than Africa's Somalia, which is described as a *failed state.* And collectively, America has been at war in 226 of its 243 years of existence.
But let us not stray from the path of the suicidal into the homicidal. Let us suggest that the *American Way of Life* really isn't all that different from the *Way of Life.* Generally speaking, large percentages of human beings seek escape.
Where can the herd go?
Off a cliff and into the sea?
Unfortunately, they have nowhere outside themselves to go. The only alternative is to pollute the mind with intoxicants, narcotics, pornography, etc. and float away in innerspace in a chemically induced state of bliss. . .and then suffer the always-accompanying crash to an increasingly depressing reality. . .
Well. . .
But. . .
Hasn't it always been so?
Is our contemporary *Way of Life* any worse than it's ever been? The manias and obsessions may be more bizarre, but isn't misery, in the end, just misery?
2500 years ago the Preacher looked around and saw nothing but vexation of spirit.
And it had been that way forever then, and it remains that way forever now:
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Man struggles though life, then he dies. . .
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
Even the modern secular preacher agrees:
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. . .
Is there way a to beat the system, other than self-harming escape?
We know of one (there may be unknown others, but if there are, they probably follow a similar path): to live in this life as an outsider, as a stranger and pilgrim, as one not seeking a home here, but one to return to. To exist in two realities simultaneously. To exist here as sojourner from the Kingdom that already is and the Kingdom that will come.
And when He was demanded of the Pharisees, when the Kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said, The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.
One must see oneself in this world as a servant sent to show the way out of this present darkness into the light of the Kingdom to come:
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. . .
If one lives this peculiar life, then one is not jailed in this world's misery, but is a liberator of the miserable. . .that is the Way.
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