capitalism

CAPITALISM

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”  Ursula K. Le Guin

Usury is a crime against God.
When we discuss usury we usually refer to it in reference of capitalism.
Usury is not only about money. Capitalism is not only about Money.
It is a mindset based on exploitation.
A trap, a noose, to capture into one more energy than one is exerting.
It is not an equality based strategy.
It is however a sin against God.

Non-monetary capitalism requires an example.

There are so many possible examples that we take it for granted as ‘normal’. These examples are invisible to us and when highlighted by being pointed out to us and having it explained, people react defensively by shouting down any perception that we might be erroneous in our behaviour. 

People attempt to decry and debase anybody who is pointing out that they have made a compromise with society to endorse the assumption that the way we do things is not wrong. A hundred years ago it was normal and acceptable to own slaves. So ingrained into a cultural mindset that anyone who spoke about how wrong it was, that it was inequality, was regarded as crazy and dangerous to the infrastructure.

Example: She desires Attention from friends and strangers. Attention is energy.

She tells a story about how upset she is that the man she fell for turned out to have been schizophrenic and therefore, with his mental difficulties, unsuitable as a life partner. She still cares for him but not with the same hope that she once did they might settle together as a family unit. Her story is based on a real person. He is not there to defend himself against the allegation that he is schizophrenic.

People believe her and gave her sympathy, tell her that she has a good heart for caring about such an unfortunate soul as the man who she had a brush with and a narrow escape from. Degrade the dirty, sweep it under the carpet, we live in a better society than one where crazy people l even exist. Good people pity unfortunates but do not wish to entangle with them. Social stigma against the mentally ill.

The guy is being capitalised upon. She is capitalising on him. She is exploiting others by exploiting him, by slandering his reputation. She gains from it. He is the fall guy.

She requires validation from others who tell her that she is a good person. Why? Were she, she would not need such validation. She would know it from inner connectivity with divinity. Good people do. She is imbalanced, living in sin (without divine connection). Seeking to fill in the painful hole in her, the missing thing, she requires others to temporarily reward her by listening to her problem and rewarding her with pretty words. They comfort her. It distracts her from the suffering. It might help her to reconnect with divinity by persuading her that she deserves such connection. Equally it might further distract her from achieving that connection. Balanced union within self.

The other people later encounter the man she had described to them. They recognise him from the visual description and are wary, making excuses to leave fast because they do not want to be contaminated by involvement with a crazy person. From his perception, he has no knowledge that he has been victim of slander. He finds their behaviour unusual, their attitude toward him derogatory. People who, had they bothered to get to know him on a one on one basis, would find him normal, pleasant, interesting and intelligent, with many shared interests. Instead he is left feeling lonely, a little confused about the anti-social attitude of people around here, and he decides not to visit this particular community centre again because the people there are creeps.

This is commonly called gas-lighting, a term named after a 20th century movie where a man persuades his wife that she is going crazy by altering the amount of gas going into the lights, so that the light level varies. He tells her that there is nothing wrong with the lights, that it is all in her imagination, that she is delusional. Once she begins to question her own sanity and believes that she is delusional, instead of trusting her own senses, she is no longer fully functional as a reliable person. After that that point, not before, she is technically insane (insanitary, it means dirty, polluting, toxic).

The problem stems from the singular point where a person puts their faith into trusting words by other people to be the reality, instead of trusting your own senses to be the reality. If a person can persuade a majority that blue is red, they will see blue and call it red. They will reaffirm to one another that blue is red by collectively agreeing that to be the case. Books, movies, educational systems, will be built to strengthen the indoctrination, all the time undermining the reality, the truth. They will call that delusion ‘normality’. Anyone who says, “no thats not red; thats blue”, they will describe that person as antisocial, insane and a problem maker. Compromising with Society necessitates that we do this all of the time. Society can not function without it. 

Humans however, can function without society. The historical precedent is that we function better without delusion. When the delusion becomes mainstream, that is the zombie apocalypse. You are in the middle of it. That you do not recognise this to be the case is a symptom of it, proof that you are one of them. Your initial reaction will be to laugh and reject it because the foundation of your reference system is not connectivity with the divine harmony. Your internal reference system is the delusion arising from compromise with society. It has turned you into one of its zombies. You are an agent for it. To undo that level of indoctrination requires a lot of work. Society if it can get away with it will turn against you and label you as insane, as a dissident.

“If you are not part of the solution, you are the problem.”

The Questioner of Loaded Questions.

He requests evidence from anybody at all that he is schizophrenic.
Nobody can provide this.
His actions are not those of a schizophrenic.
Other people say that he hears voices.
How would they know such a thing? He makes no such claim.
Other people pressure him and demand to know more about what it is like for him to hear voices. So he tells them that voices pressure him and make him feel uncomfortable. That they try to control him.

What he means by this is that the person asking the question spoke using their voice. He did not want to reply because it is a loaded question, an assumption, they are projecting onto him their fallacy that he hears voices and demanding to know about it. They are demanding he play their game, a game called “I say you are crazy, verify it.” He does not want to play that game with them. But they are pressuring him and attempting to control his reaction.

Hearing the voice asking the question he replies; ‘the voice is pressuring him and making him feel uncomfortable’.

Nobody has mentioned whatsoever that these are hallucinatory or figments of his imagination. They assume that by their not explaining this distinction, he will also make the logical jump that they are all agreeing they are discussing about the same undisclosed thing which they are goading him into. The questioner does this because of a social convention in which when discussing these matters it is normal to use the key phrase “hearing voices” to indicate “hallucinations” as opposed to the technically correct phrase “hearing imaginary voices.” These are two distinct entities. He replies directly to the words actually asked, because he does not accept to replace one with an undisclosed other. To do that would be insane.

The questioner goes away from the meeting feeling verified that the guy they have just spoken with is delusional and hears imaginary voices. He however goes away from the meeting knowing this  about the whole situation laughing at the delusion within which the aggressive questioner lives without them even recognising it. He has told it straight and told the truth. It is the questioner who has changed the context of the conversation from what was actually said to mean something different from what was actually said. That is manipulation. That is capitalism.

They have gone away having achieved more from it than was actually occurred at the time, because of their fiction, to the detriment of his reputation. This is why he does not trust these people. He does not accept modernity because he is spiritual and intends to align with the actual truth. He is not responsible for their confusions. Although when they do communicate with him, he does not further their confusions by conceding to put energy into a delusional version of the world. He tells it straight.

Their books say this: his lack of trust in modernity is a form of psychosis.

The book he is reading says this:
To know truth you must be truth.
To be truth you must align with truth.

There is a lot of guidance in the holy texts regarding how to behave when dealing with sinners. Sin literally means without; without ‘god’, without holiness, without spirituality. In essence; without Truth. You do not have to believe in ‘god’ to accept the wisdom of this. You do not have to believe in ‘god’ to recognise what is meant by it. It applies whether you believe in ‘god’ or not.  The very first question you should ask is “what is God?” Best answer so far: that Truth is the fundamental harmonic of the universe, of Life.

So many people compromise with society that they lose their connectivity with the divine. It is not always a conscious choice, although at some level you face up to it. Right here and now, face up to it. Am I going to go onward in Truth or in Sin? To accept confusion over reality, or to accept truth over socially re-affirmed delusion. This is not to persuade you that reality is god and sell you a religion. Far from it. It is the opposite. To sin is not a specific act of sin (and there are many healthy activities commonly described by society as sinful) but rather to go about ones activities from a godless base, an unholy frame of reference. To act in accordance with that mind which is without spiritual awareness.

Usury is the major common sin. 

Protective mantra to memorize:  

“That’s in YOUR world.”

Flickers of Hope

This is one from a series of short epigrams entitled: "Coffee House" inspired by Al Raqis.

1st draft.
It needs a re-write but at 1.30 am I need a break. The story could have been shorter and more succinct, but; sometimes things run on for longer than anticipated, as is necessary for the tale to emerge; to do it justice. Things develop in their own time and that is the time it takes. As the guru says; "When the time is right".


Flickers of Hope

Immediately my friend interrupted; "I was eating fruit a few days ago, it was not a fruit I had ever come across before. I do not know the name of it, something foreign I could not pronounce.” This coming from an immigrant drew smiles on pale faces. "From the outside it was really ugly looking; inside the flesh was soft like a…” He looked around to see who might be listening. The assertiveness and timbre of his voice was raised sufficiently to have cut off our agnostic friend who had began complaining about the insanity of the religiously brainwashed. “…I had never before tasted that flavour. It is so difficult to describe. Unlike anything of the traditional western pallet.” He looked directly into the eyes of the disbeliever. "I did not ever know before that I had taste buds in those places.”

He held his hand in what I have come to recognise as a flame position, an emulation of indian temple roofs, his fingertips all pressed together above the palm of the hand. Using the gesture to emphasise his point, fingers exploded outward like a flower opening. He performed it naturally as though untrained. Later in secrecy I mimicked the action and felt how rigid my bones to be. “Beautiful!” he exclaimed, fully rolling the word so that it explored a syllable for every petal. We were distracted once again by the shop owner grunting out a number.

Most of the onlookers failed densely to recognise the story as a defence of cultural tradition. I would not made any sense of it either had we not previously been discussing the merits of an education into such esoteric matters and how its journey changed a persons outlook on the world. Specifically he had been pondering the adverse; the noble mind of the primitive savage in Rousseau’s theosophy and how western culture appeared barbaric to students of learning.

We exited the chip shop, its oily fried cloud hanging in the street, blending with petrol fumes, dampening the cigarette smoke scent of crisp autumn air. Sweaty newspaper parcels of hot spuds squished heat into our fingers and through our jackets as we clutched them to our chests. Our agnostic companion was quiet, either thoughtful having forgotten the rant he had been attempting to establish like a foothold in our minds or gloomy from being interrupted.

We live during a time where Britain is once again being invaded, not violently but by numbers. People born into the migrant moslem holy empire are all over the world, except for Russia whose government claims it has no space for them despite it being the largest unified nation on the planet. Many who live in the urban zones of England claiming to fear the death of Britain as a Christian nation without recognising that to most Brits it has not been one for well over a century, if ever. I laugh and remind everybody that only a thousand years ago the indigenous Celtic religion which with my pagan dreadlocks I feel a closer affinity with, was exterminated violently by the invading Christian conquistadors; all across Europe.

The British Isle is historically a multicultural melting pot; ask any white person living in England what their ethnic origin is in greater detail than ‘caucasian’ or modern national descriptor, they will probably not know themselves whether they are Angle, Saxon, Norman, Norse, and so forth. Eight hundred years ago when the Magna Carta was created, the first British statutory document, based upon the Common Law of our Ancestors who in their wisdom recognised the only method of peaceable cultural coexistence and/or integration is by comprehending one another’s reference points.

My Islamic friend had discovered a way to do this through humour, but; it is an educated humour which is above the heads of most television programmed white Brits. In his own community he is respected for his wisdom, flecks of grey hairs in his beard revealing a transition from being a student to a teacher, from his lifelong study into literature. A passion for knowledge itself is not enough; it is the application of knowledge which is essential, otherwise what is its point?

We finished our chips at the bus stop waiting in the cold for a bus that did not arrive and decided to walk in our three respective directions home. As we ate we discussed the problems of insular societies and the abuse that goes on behind closed doors; how using mis-translations of books written a thousand years ago for stone-age peoples should not be permitted to justify human rights abuses today. Abdul frowned, finding it difficult to speak in derogatory terms and with non-moslems about the problem of Sharia as it is practised the world over; that it is not lived as it was originally intended. 

We resolved that somewhere in the cultural melange is the answer to necessity of change. We all agreed that the difference between wisdom and religion is vast. It is so for everyone; the things which we take for granted as everyday cultural normality, often we do not recognize to be abusive. This is surely as valid in western culture as it is in Islam. Perhaps this is something we can all learn from each other.

In our excitement to catch the bus we had left the chip shop without collecting our change and as a result, even between us we had not enough money for the bus fare anyway. Abdul’s parting shot as we departed for a brisk walk home left us with food for thought: “We do not have Usury in Islam, slavery is forbidden by God.”