...What variety has Man found in buildings, attires, husbandry, navigation, sculpture and painting! What millions of invention he has in arms, engines, stratagems and the like! What thousand of medicines for the health...of eloquent phrases to delight, of verses for pleasure, musical inventions and instruments!
How large is capacity of Man if we dwell in particulars!..."
I will ask anyone who is about to read these pages to stop for a second and try to answer this simple questions:
- Any idea when they were written?
Little confession: when I first come across them in the book: “Human Accomplishment” from Charles Murray, the 2003 edition, I gave them a modern note: they sound familiar…maybe around the industrial revolution? Maybe even more recent…
Well, I was wrong…
They belong to a man who wrote them on the turn of the 5th Century AD, Augustine of Hippo, 354 – 430, also known as St. Augustine, who was bishop of Hippo the Roman Province in Africa, present-day Annaba, Algeria. He was a Latin speaking philosopher and theologian. His writings proved very influential in the development of Western Christianity…
Those are his words that marvel Rome, on the peak of Roman civilization, just before he was ransack by the barbarian Visigoths...Augustine praise the city but he also warned of many flaws in the roman civilization, including the greed of the roman officials, on their inability to rise above the roman vices, as wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony, all seven of them...Rome was bathing in them, as well as Augustine for the good part of his life, till he switched from pagan to being a devoted Christian, left behind the City of Man, and call the Humanity to join forces and build a City of God, where the marvels of the Man will be accompanied by the virtues of God Grace...
St Augustine was a dreamer who was lucky never to see his dream diminish by the reality: Rome fell in 476 AD, in the peak of his technological development, bankrupt, worn out bickering about the expenses to maintain the city needs and empty talk about restoration of the republic while they lost the whole civilization…
After the fall of Rome, the religious zealots and fundamentalists took the Faith of Augustine to be a subject of their limited, and most of the time malicious interpretation!
The shiny city on the hill that would benefit from the marvel of the Human advances under God Commandments never saw the light of day...au contraire, so many of the advances Romans enjoyed were lost for Centuries under the rules of medieval Kings who were without exception ruled by Churches Fathers whose agenda was to spread the Words of the Holly Bible as they wished, having the rest of the population holding upon their words, unable to even read much less question the meaning of the religious blindness...
The wisdom of Aristotle was lost, the surgical tools of Galen were replaced with the sword craftsmanship of the blacksmiths, the numerous
inventions of Archimedes, his discoveries “eureka’s“, all forgotten- as well as many, many others whose scientific contributions was lost in the religious flames that burned over half of Europe…
The Glory of Rome was replaced with the time of history known as the Dark Ages!
The peak of the medieval darkness came with the Spanish inquisition, which swept so many innocent people under the rug of intolerance of their religious beliefs, prejudice toward different sexual affiliations and malicious hatred of science…
It took the Black plague to wipe more the a half of the population in the World to break the chain of the religious serfdom into a new era of enlightenment that become a Renaissance of the Humanity, a new born world…after all, out of the decay of the bubonic plague we Humans came out stronger then ever…
Did our conscience came a long way since St. Augustine time?
They say history repeat itself for those who never learn from her mistakes...
Surly we have building that are marvel for the eyes of pedestrians, dwelling of glass and steal, we can compete with the magnificent Coliseum who has stood the test of time for 2000 years…
-We navigate the Earth, the oceans and the air and we can even reach the moon...
-We conquer so much of the invisible world of germs and viruses, and we found cure for so many illnesses…
-We improve our tools to the precise mechanic of cyber robotics in order to make our life easier…
-We discover materials that our previous generation did not even know could exist…
There is not a single scientific field that did not undergo a dramatic
leap forward in the last couple of centuries: mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, earth science, medicine, all of them achieve unprecedented technological advances, not to mention unbelievable advances in virtual art, music and theaters…whole new level of entertainment on the click of our fingertip…
We are living in a digital age!
Yeah…Just turning the pages in the book of Human Accomplishments make me feel proud of all of Us Humans…and that is 2003 Edition, well, I say to my self:
-I-phone was not even on the market then!*
*The first I-Phone was unveiled by Apple CEO on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007.
From Wikipedia
Yes we Human can pride ourselves…we came a long way ahead…
Science and technologies wend so far ahead just in the last couple of decade and yet, this is the World we live in today: protests all year long all over the world...
The protests all over the world can be summarized like a result of massive unemployment, skyrocketing food prices, wages cuts...
Home, we facing unprecedented attack on our safety net from a Political Party that will make the austerity measure in Europe look like a walk in a park for the American People, already stretched to a breakpoint for the last tree decades!!!
Marie
The underlining reason common to all of the protest all over the World is that the diminishing economic prosperity trigger global insurrection against terrorist bankers, dictators, crooked oligarch and deceitful politicians...
There is another underlining reality, common to all of the protests, but We will never see any sign about it:
-The Political Ruling Establishment don't pay much attention to all the human misery that is spreading around the World, cause they believe the power of money that is yielding all the strings of the Society will never have a loose end, that all those protests will mean just a bad TV if any, and that their Corporate paid pundit will sway enough of the concerned people into believing that we are all in this together, and we all need to share the suffering...
We see that attitude in France, with Sarcozy, we see that in England with Cameron, we saw that in Greece with Papandreou!
Conservative Governments pursuit their goals under the same religious zealot of the Spanish inquisition, so they passing left and right all the cuts they can in order to balance the national budgets shortfalls caused by diminishing budgets revenues as a result of the lower taxes paid, while ignoring the suffering and the pain of the ordinary people...
-We all need to tighten our belt…cried out Conservatives: - We all need to live within our means…and they pass another tax cut bill, then board their own private jets…
In the Third World countries who are ridden by poverty and hunger, lack of any human right make the voices of all the oppressed people ignored and forgotten, decade after decade they endure hardship...until they took it to the streets, hungry masses that rise like a Tsunami overturning some dictators no one ever believed can be taken down: think of Tunisia and Egypt!
Media called those protests Arab Spring, and they still strolling the streets of Bahrain, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Libya...little do we hear about them, but being out of the Corporate News did not make them go away...it make them more severe and bloody…
The Arab Spring is turning into a Mediterranean Summer starting with Greece were people don't want to accept another useless bailout before they bally up...cause bally up they will, bailout or notits just a question of time, just like the prospect of the same street unrest facing Spain, Portugal, Italy, Croatia, up to the big trio: France, Germany and UK...
The record unemployment, the resilience of the crises and the impotence of the current government intervention bring no solution to millions of Americans who suffer in silence, totally forgotten by the Local and Federal Government, our soaring deficit threaten to turn the Mediterranean Summer into an American Fall…
America is on a crossroad: we hear over and over the call to go backwards to the system that was choice at the time when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution…those calls omit, out of ignorance or in purpose the underlining not so "cplor me pink" reality of that time: the trails of tears they send the native americans, the black people slavery, the woman’s social position or the terrible workers condition…
The reality is so distort that we even hear voices who are saying that we never really have “Free Market Economy” and we should give it a try…
To all of them I say laud and clear as possible:
- Wonder no more, just take a good look at the Middle East Streets…listen to those people…they live without any safety net under the mercy of the ruthless system, but they know his true name: Capitalism…
- Wonder no more, just take a good look at the Middle East Streets…listen to those people…they live without any safety net under the mercy of the ruthless system, but they know his true name: Capitalism…
In the West we can give him a fancy name, we can call him “Free Market Economy” plausible adjective will not change his true colors…
We can put a lipstick on a pig…its still going to be a pig…
We can turn our deaf ear, or our blind eye, we can shut our senses and live in a bubble of ignorance, but that will not make the problems disappear…
We can indulge in lots of false theories that are circulating around to apologize and find excuses for the undeniable reality:
The whole World is in crises cause it is a failure of the Capitalist system as a whole…
When the conservative governments all over the world strip every welfare queen from their cadillac’s they drive, when they take a way all of our hardly won safety nets with their “European austerity measure” also known as “American Government spending cuts”, then what?
When conservatives use all the newly print money, and they spend all the bailout they can possibly sign us on, and after they waged all the wars they can wage under “Humanitarian actions flags” or "spreading democracy" and the system still undergo another recession…then what?
There is a new Religion rising up in the World and especially in America and its called “The Free Market Economy"!
Its Deity is called The Market…
In America its house of warship is called Wall Street…
Its followers are called The Grand Old Party, they have many cults: Republicans, Conservatives & Libertarians!
Every morning they wake up and they turn their computer to pray that their deity will bless them plentifully, that abundance and good fortune will grow their business, so they can serve it better…
Its clergy are elected officials and they are unfiltered in the highest offices with a pledge to deliver abundance to its followers in order to serve her better…
Their offerings are unprecedented, humans of every walk of life, from every race and affiliations, even children are sacrificed on their altar called Corporate greed…
Their relics are called stocks, rents, interest rate, dividend and the most cherish of them all, the most sacred one is called Profit…
Their Saints are called Founding Fathers, every word written by them, authentic or not is elevated, passed around like a sacred
communion…
Their Holly book is called the Constitution…
Their New Testament is called The bills of rights!
Their call to build a shiny City on the Hill come some 40 years a go, they still regard him dearly building a myth around his name…
The Corporate paid pundits are their anchor boys singing every day:
-Holly...holly...
The Corporate paid pundits are their anchor boys singing every day:
-Holly...holly...
Maybe We, the people, will never learn from history and we are doomed to repeat it, cause if the religious zealots get to power they will again interpret every action of our lives…
They will strip us of every benefits we enjoy and we will be left on the mercy of their Deity…The Market…
How many will fall under the modern day bubonic plague called Poverty because of our ignorance and intolerance in the age of Internet, Apollo, and nano technologies?
We can provide many time over for every human on this planet, yet so many of Us die all over the world out of hunger, not because a lack of food, but because they have no money to buy the food…
When we will learn that poverty is not some disease one catch walking on the wrong side of the street, or because he is born on the wrong side of the globe,or he bow to inferior deity,or he has a wrong color of his skin, but a consequence of the Capitalism?
- When we will wake up and realize that this system work well for only a few and live so many behind?
- When we will look at the mirror and realize that we are the gatekeepers of the system and that we enable the system to grow stronger every time we tolerate his trespassing…When we will learn that poverty is not some disease one catch walking on the wrong side of the street, or because he is born on the wrong side of the globe,or he bow to inferior deity,or he has a wrong color of his skin, but a consequence of the Capitalism?
- When we will wake up and realize that this system work well for only a few and live so many behind?
I am a dreamer…I dream every day…I dream of a better world…I know its possible…I know we can achieve any goal we can set our mind to it…
I know there is no limit to human imagination, but most of all I just hope that the progressive forces will prevail, and that the World will be spared never to undergo another kind of medieval Dark ages…
conservatives don't care about "shared sacrifice". They won't even consider a 1% additional tax on millionaires or 2% on billionaires? Why? Because they won't raise taxes on themselves. They put their own best interests ahead of the country they serve.
ReplyDeleteThanx for posting this Marie...good ideas...i like your reading of the free market run amuck in Arab countries...that rings true...
ReplyDeleteBeautiful entry, thanks a lot for sharing, bookmarked and shared FB profile
ReplyDeleteVery well said.
ReplyDeletePoverty is not a disease, it is disguised slavery. Equality would force the wealthy to raise their own children and clean their own toilets.
We are the country of the haves & have-nots and that is how capitalism work. The surprising thing these past couple of years is how blatant they are about maintaining their ground and gaining more. They are desperate, they hate thinking people, but most of all, they are thugs and bullies.
The only way to combat the decline and turn the tide, is by doing what you so well stated in your post: LEARN from the PAST and please, oh, please, let's take away their power to write and disseminate school books, we can't afford the revisionist history and a further increase of uneducated and incapable of critical thinking Americans.
I look forward to more of your posts. I see you can't keep them short either (my last one was 2 much for some people)... But it had to be said :-)
PEACE -Olivia
Thank You all for tuning in today:@Bob; @Mark, @Carlos and @Olivia...
ReplyDeleteMy post truly are long...lol...yeah, I heard that before...I wish people read more...
Those who cant read a blog post, probably did not read many books also...
Wonderful posts, Marie! I love your irreverent religious analogies! This one is my favorite so far.
ReplyDeleteThat was me , Lola
ReplyDeleteAs usual, wonderful post Marie. We in the United States have long lived with the mythical belief we are more fortunate than others and we are blessed when, in fact, we are only the beneficiaries of Imperialism and the wealth it siphons off the backs of those people we do "business" with. I'm afraid, based on what you have so eloquently pointed out as our worship of the "market", we are beginning to see those chickens come home to roost. The right wing will never give up their illusions the invisible hand of the market will solve all our problems. More the pity, those illusions will disappear when the people finally rise up . . . as they inevitably will. I don't think it will be pretty. My only regret is it didn't happen when I was young, as I once thought it would.
ReplyDeleteThe wealthy are becoming more desperate in their power-wealth-grab because only a fool can see that the current elite are largely useless.
ReplyDeleteIn the US, our major product has become "securities", created such that any change in the market results in "profit". This is non-sense.
World-wide: only a fool can't see that oil has to be replaced and all those who own oil and oil related industries are going to be much less important.
But, in the mean time, they grab more and more. And they fragment the middle-class more and more over silly things like religion, teabagging, abortion, etc, avoiding an actual revolution where the wealthy would have to seize power. Should the middle-class ever get its act together and vote these people out, will they go quietly or will there be a war? Presumably a war.
We'll see.
I hope we will not get any War...
ReplyDeleteI am so worry about the safety net they attacking but we should stop kidding our self that democrats will do better...we need progressive who believe why we have safety net, not people who use and abuse our need like a political chip to score points on the upcoming elections...
Both Party will cut the safety net...
Should we clap our hands high cause Democrats will get smaller cuts compered to Republicans?
Of course not...
Should we clap our hands high cause Democrats will ask for some revenues too, not just cuts?
I will never clap to begging, sorry, that's how Democrats requests look to me...
Should we clap our hands high cause they will compromise in the end and make some deal in order to rise the dept ceiling...
Of course not...
The dept ceiling was and is just an excuse to undermined and cut our safety net, no more, no less...
The triviality of it is merely sickening...
Excuse...keep that in mind...
Lately the excuse become tented with politics so much that get out of control...
The undermining of the President is astonishing and is so shameful for this Nation...
What they should have done very first day was bring some revenues: agree Bush tax cuts to expire and close some trivial tax loopholes, like corporate jet tax deduction, would have been a no brainer, in exchange for the cookies bar coming out of the "Gang of six", I called them "Another sorry commission" which will bring so much real safety net cuts that will impact generations of Us...
But the hatred manifested toward the president get out of control...
So, yes...they will rise the dept ceiling, cause the dept ceiling was never the issues at all...
I agree that the debt ceiling was never the issue. It was the excuse to jam their crap down our throats and what is truly dangerous is that just like rock and roll and coca-cola, this country has exported the insanity of the tea party abroad.
ReplyDeleteCanada has its tea party admirers as I was discussing recently with a good friend on Twitter who is Canadian and look what happened in Sweden.
If the tea party had never been courted by the GOP we would never have seen this mess happen in the first place. The GOP is being destroyed from within systematically. Unfortunately, they are going to need the democrats to show up in 2012 to get rid of these lunatics and for the benefit of our Nation. Democrats need to show up. Period.
Otherwise, the ugly stuff we don't like now, is going to get uglier later. President Obama is, in my opinion, doing the best he can possibly do. He does not like the results either, but without his rational way of thinking, we would all have been standing in line in soup kitchens or in a major war with Iran (as a form of revenue).
We all know what they all should have done. Unfortunately, the tea party freshmen have this one-track mind, no clue what any of this means and want to be viewed as heroes who "took their country back".
From me, they'll have the fight of their life, because I will do everything in my power to move this country forward by joining democrats of all stripes to elect the right kind of people, help voter registration efforts and through my blog, keep pertinent information readily available.
I understand the frustration. We all feel it, but our safety net is not going anywhere. It is one of the most significant democratic achievements in this country.
I really understand the frustration and sadness because the President does not have absolute power, but that, is a good thing. Look what happened during the Bush years. Balance of power must be restore in all branches of government, specially the Supreme Court.
Sorry this was so long.
PEACE to you.
Its never too long Olivia...
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading every word of it...
Keep in touch...
Keep the fight...
I say "Primary" to all who mum the word shared sacrifice, cause their is no such a thing like shared sacrifice...
People who barely make the ends meet and people who will not even notice the blip on the Wall Street Corporate stock performance can never be place in the same basket of "shared sacrifice"...
The politicians who use those words to justify the politics that serve their Masters should be remove from power, period...
No matter what the their name is, what party they belong to, or what talking points they like to use in their speeches...
That is my opinion...
Not Orthodox, but I stand behind every step of the way...
Tea Party in my eyes are just as used and abused like the Progressives or Liberal on the other side...
We are all American Workers, and they slice and chop us, and make us believe we are different while they have their Bilderberg meetings, or G8, G20 summits and they keep their lines steady...
So, yes we need to wake up, smell the coffee, or have a cup of tea, but whatever we do, we need to recognize each other as one Nation and stand to Corporate Powers and crooked politicians who dont have our interest in mind...
And that's the case for the whole world...
I named my post: Arab spring, Mediterranean summer & American fall for a reason...
Marie
"we need to recognize each other as one Nation and stand to Corporate Powers and crooked politicians who dont have our interest in mind..."
ReplyDeleteWell said! *but I won't drink their damn tea* :-)
Excellent comments by both of these intelligent women. Maybe one day the opinions of the liberal and progressive voices will have merit in the political discussions of America. Tho' I doubt it will be in my lifetime.
ReplyDeleteHello there, just to inform, I changed the blogroll, now your blog is on Blogroll II thanks, dear Marie, Carlos from Brazil
ReplyDelete