Posted on 12/22/2009 10:30:23 AM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
The sociopolitical concept known as socialism and/or communism is not new. In fact, it is very ancient. Some ancient Greeks attempted to make communism a reality. That experiment ultimately failed. Plato spoke of it admiringly, even though he understood that it was not feasible.
However, the first attempt at building socialism was in ancient Shinar. It came about when the terrible-willed Nimrod (Amraphel in the Old Testament, also Gilgamesh and Hammurabi) the great-grandson of Noah killed God and then declared himself two-parts god, only one-part man. The pyramid-shaped ziggurat (Tower of Babel) built by Nimrod symbolizes socialism/communism, a sociopolitical system characterized by nature worship, dehumanization of large numbers of people (to be used as slaves, sex toys, etc), mind-control, inverted morality and hedonism, collectivism (all wealth and resources in the hands of the few), self-idolatry, and lack of emotional control, especially envy. It was not an accident that the myth of the Evil Eye arose in ancient Shinar.
In his seminal work, Lord of the Rings, the author J.R.R. Tolkien portrays socialism/communism as Saurons blasted hell over which unceasingly sweeps the burning gaze of the sleepless Evil Eye of Envy. Fueled by the dark spirit of hate, the Eye ceaselessly and minutely scrutinizes every face for signs of politically incorrect thought and/or possession of forbidden property.
Underlying and fueling the drive for socialism are four spiritual aspects of fallen man: self-idolatry (pride of mind and flesh), resentment of the way things work in the real world (particularly mortality), abuse of free will, and fear of individual freedom.
Because the terrible-willed man and those whose wills are only somewhat less terrible, find that saying no to their gnawing impulses is a great cause of suffering, salvation from suffering means liberation from morality and the way things are designed to work in this world. In short, they seek power (license) not only to give into their basest impulses, but to escape reality by destroying the existing order. In reaching for the necessary power (Saurons One Ring), they fall, for as base impulses (pride, lust, gluttony, hate, greed, envy) inflate, one is eventually transformed into a conscienceless beast-man. The Fall as a downward-spiraling process of transformation is depicted by Tolkien by way of various beastly characters: Gollom (who goes about on all four)., Sauruman, Grimma Wormtongue, and the very standard of evil, Sauron the Evil Eye of envy. In reaching for forbidden power, Nimrod called himself god, but was in reality transformed into a murderous tyrannical beast-man symbolized by the Evil Eye of envy.
Those who for selfish purposes abuse volition (free will) will not, as a consequence, develop emotional and/or impulse control. A further consequence eventually manifests itself as fear of individual freedom. This is because the first impulse to become inflated is always pride (narcissism), hence its through the distorted, dark glass of his own narcissism that he sees everyone else. As other base impulses inflate, the terriblewilled selfish man falsely assumes that everyone else must be like himself: out-of-control, selfish, lying, greedy, lusting after power, sly, resentful, hateful, etc.
Simultaneous with all of this, pride seductively whispers to him that he is superior to all others and entitled to whatever he wants. His conscience seared and shriveled and possessed by the darkness of iniquity, the transformed Sauruman (beast-man psychopath) seeks control over the minds, actions, and property of others. Dehumanization is the necessary precondition to the vital control and/or harming of others, but in his transformed state the beast-man finds this to be no barrier at all. In short, those who are to be controlled, enslaved, and/or harmed must be reduced to pond scum, soulless animals, machines, weeds, insects, etc. Dehumanization as science, the science of materialism, was invented, promoted, and practiced by soulless beast-men: Karl Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, the Frankfurt School, Stalin, Hitler, Mengele, Mao, and Pol Pot, among others - 20th centurys mass murderers and assorted psychopaths.
In America, the necessary precondition of dehumanization has been met. For its by way of the teaching of Darwinism that Americans have been reduced to soulless animals and/or meat machines.
Socialism appeals greatly to the type of man previously described, as well as to neurotics, the resentful, fringe-elements, and the downtrodden, who buy into the seductive utopian promises of the beast-men. Individual liberty, on the other hand, appeals to a type of person vastly different from the one previously mentioned. This sort can be characterized as self-sacrificial, self controlled, and personally accountable (able to submit to moral authority), self-reliant, creative, and, in short, able to suffer without blaming others. This sort possesses a hardy can-do spirit. It was this sort of people, primarily Christians, who journeyed to America in search of freedom from tyranny. Though suffering much hardship and loss of life, they nevertheless built the freest, most enlightened, decent, and creative civilization the world has ever known.
Today, the light of liberty is going out in America. Why is this happening? Its occurring because the former sort of man - the terrible-willed beast men - have gained the upper hand precisely because too many of the freedom-loving people are cowering in fear, intimidated by the wrathful temper tantrums thrown by the terrible-willed ones. Either we find the courage to stand up to the threats and temper tantrums today, or we will find ourselves fighting for our very lives tomorrow, for the Evil Eye of envy is like unto the law of gravity. Where the purpose of gravity is to pull all things to earth, the Evil Eye of envy serves one purpose: it kills, steals, and destroys.
Ping!
You can identify Nimrod with Gilgamesh, if you wish, and believe him to be Noah's grandson.
Hammurabi, OTOH, was a real person who lived long after Nimrod. You can also identify him with Amraphel, although there isn't any evidence outside the Bible he ever existed.
What you can't do is claim these are all four the same person.
BTW, Hammurabi established the first known written code of law. By definition it thereby limited the ability of the King to be capricious in his rulings.
What does it take to light the fires, gents? No one openly talks about a coup, but what catalyzed the situations for the America Revolution and the Civil War? Are we waiting for a terrible situation (i.e. terror attack) to turn the nation into a military dictatorship? The DC police, the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service... when do they lay down their arms against armed, angry Americans? Does anyone really think that they’d let an armed cabal make it within 50 miles of DC let alone on the steps of the Capitol to erect gallows?
Thanks, now I know why I refer to commies and socialists as “Nimrods.”
“Either we find the courage to stand up to the threats and temper tantrums today, or we will find ourselves fighting for our very lives tomorrow,”
So what would you have us do that we haven’t done before?
We’ve marched on Washington (biggest crowd ever on the mall).
Argued and fought for the truth at townhall meetings.
Demanded to see something as simple as a birth certificate but thwarted at every legal twist and turn.
Earnestly worked at spreading the truth through every venue available to us.
(Stolen from another post; http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2381975/posts)
those who worship the sin of envy as if envy were divine
Envy has been changed from a sin to a virtue.
“They have exchanged the truth of God for a lie”
(I read that somewhere)
So the question remains; what else are we supposed to do?
Wait until 2010 and 2012 to vote? I seriously doubt that we will ever have another free election.
Google “Garden Plot”.
They have carefully prepared for what they knew would happen.
No, but if something like this were to happen, which side would the Army and Marines be on? The military would be the deciding factor.
There's deeply keen wisdom and insight in this observation, IMHO.
Ms. Kimball is writing within the context of socialism here. That is, in terms of just one species of "second reality" (i.e., a gnostic mental operation whose main operators she has so ably described above) among many others.
Lately I've been spouting off a lot about "second realities" at home [I mean, just look at the latest Obama speech, or the fulsome fulminations of a Harry Reid, etc., et al. which show up everyday, with relentless, seemingly escalating noise/pressure, not to mention the sheer inanity, sheer substanceless of such diatribes], so much so that my husband is (understandably) quite annoyed with me by now. He demands a definition. I am working on it....
Meanwhile, may I point to the problem at the level of evidence that I plan to cite to support my definition-in-progress?
This is a recent inspiration I got from the astonishing Austrian novelist Heimito von Doderer, which on my assessment supports the idea of "open" and "closed" existence (e.g., as articulated by the great philosopher Henri Bergson). The quotation is from von Doderer's The Demons, depicting an exchange between Schlaggenberg and his then financée/soon-to-be-estranged wife, Camy:
...[W]e began to describe, first I, then she, what we considered to be our deepest and most intimate feeling about life. Our relations were such that that sort of thing would come up between us at any time.... I put forth the idea ... that I felt my own psyche or my inner life to be like a well-shaft of unlimited depth, or at any rate like a room that cannot be pictured as closed on any given side, there always being a side from which something still unknown, something I have never before experienced, might come rushing in. Camy came to a halt, obviously quite astonished; she looked down on the ground, thought for a while, and then she said to me in her precise, sensible way that that sort of thing was incomprehensible to her, for she felt her own nature to be a familiar space enclosed on all sides, so that it would be quite impossible for anything she could not understand that is, anything actually new to come at her from it....My own hypothesis (theory?) is that second realities are "intellectual justifications" intentionally constructed by/for mind/experience lived in "closed" existence à la Camy....
Meanwhile, may I note that Schlaggenberg's description the "first reality" position (strange for him!) is founded, not only in Judeo-Christian, but in Classical thought as well? [i.e., in the great pre-Socratics; then Socrates himself, then his first- and second-generation descendants Plato and Aristotle, together with their followers... unto the present day....)
People who accept this legacy are people grounded in first reality, on the firm (i.e., self-evident) bases of first principles, as "backed up" (evidenced) by historical, universal (and personal) human experience. In this sense, life and history are always "open" for them. Ever new things constantly come into the picture. Human responses to the newness constitutes the human future. Without openness to the "new," human life personal and social would become static, "dead."
Or to put it another way, existence is "open" for them because they realize they are not ones who can "fashion," or even "make terms" with Reality, always with the intent of bending it to human will. Rather mainly, Reality is something the terms of which must to some extent be passively received, understood, and accepted, as experienced, by the human subject. He does not, and cannot, make up the "rules of the game" by which the heavenly and natural orders are eternally constituted. He can do nothing about the fact that he is caught in the net of space and time, a "fellow prisoner" with the rest of Nature, a seeming captive of four-dimensional Reality, relentlessly subject to its inexorable change, its contingency, bearing down on himself all the time....
He just understands himself to be more than that. The traditions alluded to above Classical and Judeo-Christian everlastingly declare his personal dignity as a denizen of First Reality. And so does the Humanist tradition that developed, during the Renaissance, from those roots:
To you, O Adam, we have given neither a fixed location, nor an unchanging face, nor any function peculiar to yourself, so that whatever the place, face, or offices you choose for yourself, you will have and possess these by your own desire and declaration. Other beings are limited by the laws we have laid down; no restrictions are placed upon you; by your will, into whose hand I have given you, you will define your own nature. I have placed you in the center of the world, that you may look about you and see what the world offers you. We have made you neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, so that you yourself, as your own judge and appraiser, your own shaper and sculptor, may conceive yourself in the manner you prefer. You can descend to the depths of the brute creation or rise to the heights of the divine, according to the decision of your own soul. Pico della Mirandola, De hominus dignitate. c. 1601The great Renaissance humanist Pico here elaborates the starkness of human liberty. Just suffice it to say that the "liberty" of First Reality and the "rights" of Second Reality do not occupy the same moral universe.
Or so it seems to me. Still, what Pico seems to have lost in his discourse is the idea of specifically divine Judgment. Yet ultimately, his own argument, not to mention his own personal authenticity, depends on it....
The Renaissance was a great turning away from the Mediaeval past, from the "spiritual" to the "more-physical," to a greater concern with the nature of the human person. Pico had a foot in both worlds.... In a time of great transitions, like our own.
Kudos to Ms. Kimball for elaborating these problems and illuminating their "psychic" or subjective qualities in this excellent article.
Your contentions can be laid to rest through some research. Begin here: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=295&letter=N
Betty remarked, “ He demands a definition.”
To aid in your definition:
I once knew a pathological liar. Her rages were of such monstrous fury that even the neighbors knew of them. They were fueled mainly by pride and covetousness (envy). In a quieter moment, she told me that her father did not understand her.
Though he accused her of lying, she had never told a lie said she to me. It was her father who refused to allow her to tell the truth, she concluded.
There in a nut-shell is a ‘second reality.’ Note the inversion of truth and reality; the willful self-delusion, subsequent paranoia, neuroses, and hysteria, also known as cognitive dissonance.
To further aid you:
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” Winston Churchill
“The envious man thinks that if his neighbor breaks a leg, he will be better able to walk himself.” Helmut Schoeck
“As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a man.” Saint John Chrysostom
Which contention?
That Hammurabi and Nimrod were different people? (If Nimrod ever existed. Your link shows one possibility is that he was a tribe, not a person.)
There is nothing so blind as they who refuse to see. You prefer contention—quibbling-— to fact-finding.
It is not quibbling to ask you to be more specific about which of my statements you disagree with.
Then, if you wish, we can do fact-finding to determine which of us, if either, is correct.
The "closed world-view" versus the "open world view" from the von Doderer example sheds yet another ray of light on that subject about which I often pontificate.
To me, the "closed" view is typified by
wherein the universe remains ego-centered -- like that of an infant, and its life-long extent never exceeds the limit to which the uterus (worldview) can be "comfortably" stretched... To pierce that ego/homo/geo-centered world-womb (spatially, temporally, or spiritually) is existentially threatening... And it demands a god that can be comfortably fitted therein...
Conversely the "open" self/world view is typified by
and
Wherein the most minute expansion of insight into the former or the most magnificent resolution of micro-detail in the latter are both causes for rejoicing in the majesty of a God whose extent transcends both by an order at least as great as the difference between the two.
~~~~~~~~~
Perhaps that insight into the difference of the two types of personal realities can help me appreciate what "drives" those with radically different views of Creation than mine own...
Indeed, TXnMA. Very well put! Plus notice the fetus is in its "normal" position (Doderer points this out in his novel): its little hands up to its face, as if trying to ward off or "block its eyes" from things it doesn't want to see....
You continued: "To pierce that ego/homo/geo-centered world-womb (spatially, temporally, or spiritually) is existentially threatening... And it demands a god that can be comfortably fitted therein...."
A most penetrating insight, dear brother in Christ! Of course, this "god" would have to be the projection of some Second Reality.... For the God of First Reality cannot be made to "fit" within a state of closed existence; i.e., He is immeasurable and ultimately utterly indefinable. All too often, a "god" from Second Reality is simply the ego itself, hoisted up onto the divine "throne." JMHO FWIW
Thank you ever so much for your outstanding essay/post!
This could be, with virtually no elaboration or explanation, a precise description of Harry Reid, Speaker Pelosi, Barney Frank, a host of similar characters, or even of Dear Leader himself. Recent events should not so dominate our thoughts that everything comes to turn on them. Nor should they either be dismissed simply by virtue of their proximity. Particularly the case in this instance, when one need do no more than simply point at this misanthropic collection of sorry humans and utter, Yeah, what she said.
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