Point 1) President Obama had the power to not sign off on renewing the Bush tax cuts last December. The buck is supposed to stop with the President and he actually had to twist the arm of Congress to pass the extension so he could sign it for the Republican's benefit.
Point 2) The economy of the U.S.A. isn't based on debt. The U.S. public debt is the result of tax cuts during a time of high military spending. To finance WWII F.D.R. raised the top tacket rate at 90%. Raising taxes and sutting spending and paying off the U.S. debt is the honest way to go.
Point 3) The political-economic concept of consuming as a thing in itself isn't necessary for a democracy. All human beings consume energy of course, yet the quality of life issues a rational democracy should use to have an intelligent design principle of a recovering ecosphere, full employment and strong individual liberty and civil rights differs from a Sodomite criterion of pure consumption for-itself with few individual rights and an existential interpretation of the idea of capitalism.
I have recently been reading a biography of Abraham and it has a philosophically interesting exposition of ancient Sodom's sociology with the principle of what I would consider to be fundamental sadism wherein the interiority of others is violated and the external things such as consumption are too highly regarded. A healthy society needs high values for the interior, spiritual life and self of individuals and not just the outer fashions and conformity of the day.
Americans could create a zillion jobs in a high quality, sustainable ecological economy with a stable population, and be an example for other nations to follow.
9/2/11
National Black Unemployment rate at 16.7%-Obama's Tax Cuts for the Rich to Blame
America's black population is suffering through very high unemployment through the Obama years. The remedy was in the President's grasp in December 2010 when he could have let the Bush era tax cuts expire and balance the federal budget automatically within two years. Then he could have negotiated with Republicans to cut a trillion dollars of federal spending and reallocate it to pay off a trillion dollars of federal debt each year eliminating it entirely in 15 years. With good fiscal policy investors would have returned to hiring.
Instead the prospects for American economic degradation seems to paint a bleak picture. Rick Perry of the Republican party grew up on a cotton farm in Texas and would have no problem find a regressive way to employ people in the cotton patch pickin at a reduced minimum or no minimum wage while cutting taxes on the rich to stimulate employment in China.
Even in Alaska prospects are tight. The economic insiders have the state byshort hairs of small mammals. The state economy is structured to allow total control by extraction industry globalists with a preferred, privelaged in-state population of bureaucratic servo-units. Any sort of non-controlled liberty is somewhat eradicated even in Anchorage where putting up a tent in the city's forests is now illegal, and the concentration and labeling of the poor and homeless with the mark of the globalist beast is requisite.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/02/news/economy/black_unemployment_rate/
I have wondered why Mayor Sullivan doesn't put up the overflow of the poor in the city's Sullivan Sports Arena instead of leveraging city churches to shelter the homeless and innoccent campers that failed to find a job and afford a plane ticket south berfore the harsh winter cold blankets the city the next several months. The logic of the advantaged insiders is to prevent free enterprise competition and any sort of change to the status quo ante. President Obama failed to comprehend that point about the real world last December and was a cheerleader throwing in the towell for tax cust for the rich. Rick Perry and the oil mob of Texas smell the blood in the waters. Mitt ROmney may be the only possible relief for American blacks and unemployed Alaskans for short term, no-strings-attached earnings relief.
Instead the prospects for American economic degradation seems to paint a bleak picture. Rick Perry of the Republican party grew up on a cotton farm in Texas and would have no problem find a regressive way to employ people in the cotton patch pickin at a reduced minimum or no minimum wage while cutting taxes on the rich to stimulate employment in China.
Even in Alaska prospects are tight. The economic insiders have the state byshort hairs of small mammals. The state economy is structured to allow total control by extraction industry globalists with a preferred, privelaged in-state population of bureaucratic servo-units. Any sort of non-controlled liberty is somewhat eradicated even in Anchorage where putting up a tent in the city's forests is now illegal, and the concentration and labeling of the poor and homeless with the mark of the globalist beast is requisite.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/02/news/economy/black_unemployment_rate/
I have wondered why Mayor Sullivan doesn't put up the overflow of the poor in the city's Sullivan Sports Arena instead of leveraging city churches to shelter the homeless and innoccent campers that failed to find a job and afford a plane ticket south berfore the harsh winter cold blankets the city the next several months. The logic of the advantaged insiders is to prevent free enterprise competition and any sort of change to the status quo ante. President Obama failed to comprehend that point about the real world last December and was a cheerleader throwing in the towell for tax cust for the rich. Rick Perry and the oil mob of Texas smell the blood in the waters. Mitt ROmney may be the only possible relief for American blacks and unemployed Alaskans for short term, no-strings-attached earnings relief.
Politically Regressive Homo Marriages Confer Bondage Upon Men
Homosexual marriages and civil unions in a few politically regressive American states confer an illiberal phenomenal degradation envelopement of enslavement of men over the fundamental freedom of men. It is wrong to tranch society with perverse socio-economic policy for tax and more purposes as if it were a Wall Street quant sophism of CDOs for the advantaged. A corrupt society will wither and die as a more rational and true nature overgrows it.
Marriage developed as a social contract between men and women in order to afford protection for the weaker sex during her procreative struggle and vulnerabilities of raising children. The feminine physiological design was specially adapted to bearing offspring, yet that design specialization made her comparatively unsuitable for war and heavy lifting labor. Like a low mileage SUV during the 2nd Bush administration, she could not get very far without gas and energy supplied by an oil depletion allowance tax subsidy.
If slavery were legal in the United States today perhaps a tenth of the population would voluntarily slip into it voluntarily over time because of social pressures and moral weakness. A minimum wage keeps people from working for nothing in Texas Cotton fields singing that ole song 'Massa he pay dem bills, We totes deh bails, Massa he go up deh hill, Massa he go to hail'. Slavery is no joking matter, and free men need to remain free and not enter into inferior status of any form of legal social bondage such as homo marriage.
Some men in a society must be free and remain free-not everyone can hide behind an inferior socially protected status if society is itself to be free. Perhaps the right response to the contemporary social tendency to create a new institution of male bondage is simply to require of the liberated modern women that she in longer require marriage of her husband, that in order to conserve freedom for society in general that women relinquish their former socially reinforced right of matrimony and simply bear the risk of freedom and her own economic support that males as head of families formerly had for both. In the modern U.S. economy women earn as much as men at any rate, and adequate government emergency safety nets for women exist.
If traditional marriage is being phased out in the United States then a defense of freedom act might be considered to eliminate the possibility of creating new marriage structures to enslave men to other men through legal fictions of corrupted marriage establishments as Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii. Because of American social corruption and failure of political wisdom to provide health care for the poor and job security for all such as to preclude the pressure for the weak to yield to homosexual enticements for health care or financial reasons it may be that an evolution phasing out marriage in favor of short term marriages with different grades such as drivers licenses have for different kinds of relationships, purpose or time integral might be made.
Others have written about 5 year renewable marriage licenses, and payroll deductions of 20% for community marriage account distributed evenly upon expiration of marriage might be given-there would be no inheritance rights for anyone at all including the rich and rich homos. Individuals could dispose of their property as they wished and be subject to ordinary social laws regarding gifts and taxes. If homes are purchased during the period of marriage or other property is purchased they could be made with joint legal partnerships as might anyone not married.
Class A marriage licensing with right of renewal every 5 years could be set for relationships intended to procreate children. Class B licenses could be given for non-procreative relationships. Class C license could be set aside for one year convenience flings. It seems unfair to subvert the equal rights of single, free citizens to have non-traditional marriage benefits and tax dollars given to a homosexual sector of the population working to degrade the rights of man and make dependent wives with protected legal status as weak beings of some men as might be derived from the logic of protecting women with matrimony.
with all of the world's major religions against homosexual marriage besides, the innovation of American political perversion into law of homosexual marriage works counterproductively to U.S. national security. It is quite possible to defend the individual civil rights of men to be free and secure without the regressive deranged turn into homosexual marriage. Prosperity, national health care for the poor, full employment and ecospheric recovery may be better constructed by free and honorable men and women than by the evolution of pretending that weak and/or corrupt men are housewives requiring procreative legal protections of marriage.
Marriage developed as a social contract between men and women in order to afford protection for the weaker sex during her procreative struggle and vulnerabilities of raising children. The feminine physiological design was specially adapted to bearing offspring, yet that design specialization made her comparatively unsuitable for war and heavy lifting labor. Like a low mileage SUV during the 2nd Bush administration, she could not get very far without gas and energy supplied by an oil depletion allowance tax subsidy.
If slavery were legal in the United States today perhaps a tenth of the population would voluntarily slip into it voluntarily over time because of social pressures and moral weakness. A minimum wage keeps people from working for nothing in Texas Cotton fields singing that ole song 'Massa he pay dem bills, We totes deh bails, Massa he go up deh hill, Massa he go to hail'. Slavery is no joking matter, and free men need to remain free and not enter into inferior status of any form of legal social bondage such as homo marriage.
Some men in a society must be free and remain free-not everyone can hide behind an inferior socially protected status if society is itself to be free. Perhaps the right response to the contemporary social tendency to create a new institution of male bondage is simply to require of the liberated modern women that she in longer require marriage of her husband, that in order to conserve freedom for society in general that women relinquish their former socially reinforced right of matrimony and simply bear the risk of freedom and her own economic support that males as head of families formerly had for both. In the modern U.S. economy women earn as much as men at any rate, and adequate government emergency safety nets for women exist.
If traditional marriage is being phased out in the United States then a defense of freedom act might be considered to eliminate the possibility of creating new marriage structures to enslave men to other men through legal fictions of corrupted marriage establishments as Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii. Because of American social corruption and failure of political wisdom to provide health care for the poor and job security for all such as to preclude the pressure for the weak to yield to homosexual enticements for health care or financial reasons it may be that an evolution phasing out marriage in favor of short term marriages with different grades such as drivers licenses have for different kinds of relationships, purpose or time integral might be made.
Others have written about 5 year renewable marriage licenses, and payroll deductions of 20% for community marriage account distributed evenly upon expiration of marriage might be given-there would be no inheritance rights for anyone at all including the rich and rich homos. Individuals could dispose of their property as they wished and be subject to ordinary social laws regarding gifts and taxes. If homes are purchased during the period of marriage or other property is purchased they could be made with joint legal partnerships as might anyone not married.
Class A marriage licensing with right of renewal every 5 years could be set for relationships intended to procreate children. Class B licenses could be given for non-procreative relationships. Class C license could be set aside for one year convenience flings. It seems unfair to subvert the equal rights of single, free citizens to have non-traditional marriage benefits and tax dollars given to a homosexual sector of the population working to degrade the rights of man and make dependent wives with protected legal status as weak beings of some men as might be derived from the logic of protecting women with matrimony.
with all of the world's major religions against homosexual marriage besides, the innovation of American political perversion into law of homosexual marriage works counterproductively to U.S. national security. It is quite possible to defend the individual civil rights of men to be free and secure without the regressive deranged turn into homosexual marriage. Prosperity, national health care for the poor, full employment and ecospheric recovery may be better constructed by free and honorable men and women than by the evolution of pretending that weak and/or corrupt men are housewives requiring procreative legal protections of marriage.
9/1/11
Helium.com Sells My Philosophy Article & Keeps Profit
note- This is a copy of an email sent to me at hotmail recently, from Helium...
> Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 19:41:50 +0000
> From: content@helium.com
> To: garycgibson@hotmail.com
> Subject: You've sold an article on Helium!
>
> Dear Gary C. Gibson:
>
> Congratulations! A publisher reading Helium has licensed your article on "The relationship between metaphysics and physical cosmology theories" through our Stock Content offering. The article you sold is here on Helium: http://www.helium.com/items/1443173
> iMake News is the Helium client that purchased your article. We need to remind you that the Helium User Agreement asks that you do not contact this client directly. Publishers use Helium because they don't have time to work individually with freelance writers. By contacting the client directly, you could jeopardize Helium's relationship with the client for future purchases of other members' content.
>
> You will see a credit for this purchase within 10 business days. To view the credit detail, from your My Helium page click on Earnings & Payments then click on 'Adjustments'. This page displays all credits and payment requests on your account.
>
> Per the publisher terms, they are only licensing nonexclusive rights. So don't worry, the copyright to the article still remains with you. And, because the article remains on Helium, you will continue to earn from this article on Helium as well!
>
> Find out more about Stock Content and how you can benefit at.
>
> Thank you for contributing to Helium. And congratulations again on the sale!
>
> Do not reply to this email. If you have any questions about this, please forward this email to.
>
> Team Helium
My reply-
Dear Helium; You banned me from publishing at Helium on 24 December 2009 and confiscated all of my earnings for the future. Please stop rubbing it in. I know I have about 800 five star posts at Helium and have lost any profit from that the past two years as I have slept outside freezing in winters, drinking ice water, unable to afford a bottle of propane for coffee and feeeling like Helium is generally like the KGB 2nd directorate sending writers into destitute exile in Siberia.--thanks much.
looking forward to another winter (please do not contact me again as your Mr. Logan said he would write to the F.B.I. and tell them I am some sort of malefactor)
Gary C. Gibson
I have incidentally developed a theory about human digestive processes in cold weather in retrospect since last winter. I believe that if one drinks icewater instead of warm beverages and sleeps on the ground for months when the temperature is about 10 degrees or so the bacteria that processes food in the intestines is killed off. Well, in the spring one's digestion does not work near as well and one puts on weight much more readily in the warmer weather.
In the winter the weight gain and inefficiency in processing food is not as apparent because extra energy is needed to keep warm. Calories are burnt producing warmth. I listened to a doctor on the radio talking about diet in the summer and he mentioned that yogurt and its live culture offsets it weight gaining effects. I started eating yogurt and thereafter more food was processed and less weight gained as my own bacterial culture in the colon was recharged.
This is simply speculation of course. I am sure that there is documentation on the Internet of the effect of cold weather on digestion that I haven't time to locate because my webbook computer screen broke last January and I use public computers a few hours a week now.
The delayed effects remind me a little of when I immersed my combat boots in icewater and snow for 18 hours, then had my feet swell up quite a bit a day or two later, losing a a few toenails and having cyanotic blood flood for several years in even near freezing temperatures.
> Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 19:41:50 +0000
> From: content@helium.com
> To: garycgibson@hotmail.com
> Subject: You've sold an article on Helium!
>
> Dear Gary C. Gibson:
>
> Congratulations! A publisher reading Helium has licensed your article on "The relationship between metaphysics and physical cosmology theories" through our Stock Content offering. The article you sold is here on Helium: http://www.helium.com/items/1443173
> iMake News is the Helium client that purchased your article. We need to remind you that the Helium User Agreement asks that you do not contact this client directly. Publishers use Helium because they don't have time to work individually with freelance writers. By contacting the client directly, you could jeopardize Helium's relationship with the client for future purchases of other members' content.
>
> You will see a credit for this purchase within 10 business days. To view the credit detail, from your My Helium page click on Earnings & Payments then click on 'Adjustments'. This page displays all credits and payment requests on your account.
>
> Per the publisher terms, they are only licensing nonexclusive rights. So don't worry, the copyright to the article still remains with you. And, because the article remains on Helium, you will continue to earn from this article on Helium as well!
>
> Find out more about Stock Content and how you can benefit at
>
> Thank you for contributing to Helium. And congratulations again on the sale!
>
> Do not reply to this email. If you have any questions about this, please forward this email to
>
> Team Helium
My reply-
Dear Helium; You banned me from publishing at Helium on 24 December 2009 and confiscated all of my earnings for the future. Please stop rubbing it in. I know I have about 800 five star posts at Helium and have lost any profit from that the past two years as I have slept outside freezing in winters, drinking ice water, unable to afford a bottle of propane for coffee and feeeling like Helium is generally like the KGB 2nd directorate sending writers into destitute exile in Siberia.--thanks much.
looking forward to another winter (please do not contact me again as your Mr. Logan said he would write to the F.B.I. and tell them I am some sort of malefactor)
Gary C. Gibson
I have incidentally developed a theory about human digestive processes in cold weather in retrospect since last winter. I believe that if one drinks icewater instead of warm beverages and sleeps on the ground for months when the temperature is about 10 degrees or so the bacteria that processes food in the intestines is killed off. Well, in the spring one's digestion does not work near as well and one puts on weight much more readily in the warmer weather.
In the winter the weight gain and inefficiency in processing food is not as apparent because extra energy is needed to keep warm. Calories are burnt producing warmth. I listened to a doctor on the radio talking about diet in the summer and he mentioned that yogurt and its live culture offsets it weight gaining effects. I started eating yogurt and thereafter more food was processed and less weight gained as my own bacterial culture in the colon was recharged.
This is simply speculation of course. I am sure that there is documentation on the Internet of the effect of cold weather on digestion that I haven't time to locate because my webbook computer screen broke last January and I use public computers a few hours a week now.
The delayed effects remind me a little of when I immersed my combat boots in icewater and snow for 18 hours, then had my feet swell up quite a bit a day or two later, losing a a few toenails and having cyanotic blood flood for several years in even near freezing temperatures.
8/30/11
WIll Independents 'Go Romne'y in 2012 General Election?
Democrats will be democrats, and Republicans will be Republicans, yet independents would probably vote for Mitt Romney vs. Obama, and yet lean toward Obama in a general election vs Perry.
Independents preponderantly tolerate public heath care-Perry is agin that though the courts will likely decide which of the half states for or against will get their poison. Probably the majority of states suing the government over Obamacare are from states with fewer electoral votes than the other 24 that aren't.
Independent voters preponderantly don't want four more years of Texas led wars. Neither do they want global warming. They also believe Rick Perry is clueless on economics.
Mitt Romney does better with independents than Perry, who would like to restart Reganomics with the borrowing well dry, and drill like James Watt to get Texans working and the rest of America further in debt to OPEC political control.
Mitt Romney might be the first constructive Republican President since Reagan, and he would have to find a new way to restart the economy than Reagan did. Anything is possible-even fundamentalist voters would reconcile and vote for Romney vs. Obama.
Independents preponderantly tolerate public heath care-Perry is agin that though the courts will likely decide which of the half states for or against will get their poison. Probably the majority of states suing the government over Obamacare are from states with fewer electoral votes than the other 24 that aren't.
Independent voters preponderantly don't want four more years of Texas led wars. Neither do they want global warming. They also believe Rick Perry is clueless on economics.
Mitt Romney does better with independents than Perry, who would like to restart Reganomics with the borrowing well dry, and drill like James Watt to get Texans working and the rest of America further in debt to OPEC political control.
Mitt Romney might be the first constructive Republican President since Reagan, and he would have to find a new way to restart the economy than Reagan did. Anything is possible-even fundamentalist voters would reconcile and vote for Romney vs. Obama.
On ‘Abraham-The First Historical Biography’ by David Rosenberg
Reading this fine book published in 2006 is a kind of journey through mind and of space and time as Rod Serling might have said. One returns to a kind of aboriginal dream time of the foundation of civilization catching glimpses of the people of Ur in the year 3300 B.C.E., then learns more about the life and history of that civilization and its people unto the time of Abraham in 1800 B.C.. A crucible driving Abraham to a break with his cultural past bringing him to make that momentous journey out of Sumer to the land of Canaan is brought to life with Rosenberg’s word portraits of the Patriarch’s world.
The author points out that after leaving Ur, Abraham was ‘houseless until his death’; not such bad company for today’s homeless to be in. The meek it is said, shall inherit the Earth.
God is a creative being, one whom makes things exist. Sin on the contrary is nihilistic activity, making things not exist and abnegating individual integrity for-self and for-others. Sin is destruction of creation-the production of broken forms.
A logic of sustaining beings that allow things to exist in the universe or in any possible form of universe, rather than to not exist, is plain enough, and good. The meek are more compatible with creative eternal life than are those reinforcing continua of nihilism and eternal death.
Abraham we learn was obedient to God. Abraham’s conformal behavior was compatible to the principle of life and existence over death and non-being. The founding patriarch of three faiths was simultaneously bold yet meek. Abraham was of course faithful to The One (who is three).
There are not too many biographically descriptive references to Abraham in the Bible that one might easily get much data describing the life at Ur of the founder of what today is thought of as the Jewish religion. Rosenberg-who provides his own translations from Hebrew carefully considers Biblical material and tries to create a reconstruction of the culture and time of Sumer and the home town of Abraham-the city of Ur, drawing upon ancient material and sources such as large numbers of cuneiform clay tablets of the Sumerian civilization that were excavated in the 20th century and now.
Rosenberg mentions a Sumerian epic story-history called ‘The World Order’ that probably was known a thousand years later at the late 11th century B.C.E. court of King Solomon. It is apropos that President G.H.W. Bush’s term ‘The New World Order’ was coined in the era of the first U.S. war with Iraq. Not so much changes after 5000 years in politics-at least where fossil fuels are concerned.
Scholarly translations and compilations of that ancient data from Sumerian libraries and elsewhere have increasingly shed light on the culture of ancient Sumer unto Abraham’s day.
David Rosenberg is a poet and biblical scholar. He is also a co-author of ‘The J Book’. That interesting work is an exposition of the J (Jehovah?) writer of the earliest parts of the book of Genesis. Scriptural criticism supposes that there were four primary scribes, writers and or redactors of the first five books of the Bible that have reached us today beginning with the J writer most likely of Solomon’s court; and surprising to some, possibly a female writer. The treatment of Sarah’s response to news of her planned pregnancy (planned by God) seems to have a more feminine touch than a male writer of the time might have had-yet if it was originally a scribbled note by Abraham himself-who can say? His relationship with Sarah and other highlights of the journey could have been saved as an outline-diary of meaningful events. Such jottings of one of the best writers of Sumer making his own exodus out of decay may have made it down through history and much retelling to J at King Solomon’s court.
-note Abraham is said to have wandered with his father Terah toward the CIty of Haran up the rivers toward Damascus or Megiddo on his way to Shalem (Jerusalem) where lived King Melchisedek and his Jebusites. It makes more sense that an ancient traveller would follow along the water way for drinking refreshment than that he would have turned southwest toward the Arabian deserts. I have elesewhere in this article mentioned Abraham as wandering around the Arabian Pennisnusla that after reading Rosenberg's book I would tend to agree that it would be an improbable route of travel.
Shimon Gibson in writing about his excavation of the cave of John the Baptist a couple of miles from his home town also made the point that early Christians were much less sexist than later ecclesiastical structures and traditions that developed in reflecting perhaps the pervasively male hierarchical social establishment of the era. The early Christian ideas of social priorities have themselves been eclipsed a little by the secular social hegemony over Christian organizations.
Abraham may have trained his own scribe to keep the cuneiform writing alive on his journey out of Ur. John Smith brought his own scribe to write down his actions exploring Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps the ‘disciple Jesus loved’ was a reference by one of John’s school of writers at Ephesus to their founder. Some of the more important writers of history had others complete their works under supervision-Julius Caesar for instance in his history of ‘The Civil War’ and wars in Libya and Alexandria.
The additional possibility exists that Sarah too learned to write cuneiform, and became one of the world’s first secretaries, added personal points of view to her husband’s recollections.
The topic of Abraham writing cuneiform leads me to wonder if a synthesis of cuneiform and hieroglyphic literacy traditions by Moses upon leaving Egypt led him to create an alphabet to write down Jewish speech about 1500 B.C.E. during the Exodus. I believe the Hebrew symbol yod is from the cuneiform numbering system. It would be interesting to have a map of archaeological locations of cuneiform writing outside of Mesopotamia. An alphabet representing sounds may have been simpler for Moses to construct than a synthesis of two less phonetically based writing systems. Were the Ten Commandments the first alphabetically based legal code?
Rosenberg builds with scholarly learning, poetic inference and creative insight an exegesis of J’s construction of Genesis from earlier sources including a hypothetical X writer in King Melchizedek court. We discover that Abraham was likely to have been a Sumerian writer himself who left Sumer at a time when the New Babylonian rulers were repressing the religious and culture creative license of Sumer that had already existed more than a thousand years. Abraham was called to venture away and found a new religious civilization or culture, and his heir would be named Israel.
Rosenberg’s book on Abraham is fine reading. One learns philosophically new ideas-perhaps worth being called a religious ontology, that might be quite different from the usual assumptions about the religious culture of ancient Ur. For some, the idea of treating Abraham as a real man albeit in a reconstructed and good spirited, best effort historical scenario could be a little bit faith-shaking initially. How could Abraham emerge from an evolving cultural religious paradigm and quite reasonably have a personal God flowing rather naturally from the culture and history of the time? Shouldn’t Abraham have simply been thwacked on the head by a finger of God and provided with divine insights while he was just minding his own business even though secularists already would be developing hagiographical details about the saintly, deserving soul?
Philosophically speaking, the development of a history outline of the religious culture of Sumer is brilliantly informative. There are other approaches to interpreting ancient civilizations and the foundations of some religious practices obviously, and some things are left out perhaps from this books such as one might expect existed in ancient culture such as human sacrifice, yet the book accomplishes rather convincingly presenting the picture of Abraham & ancient Sumeria while explaining mankinds theoretical and practical relationship to the divine and unknown in the ancient context. One knows that much is left out and much is poeticly liberated from nothingness with creative speculation, yet that is the brilliance of the work in finding so much in the scant and occluded historical record.
Religious ontologies may exist simultaneously with mundane, familiar weltanschauung, Sartre’s existential personal world experience coheres within the phenomenality of social dialectical reason and the cultural environment. Mankind and his civilizations exist within an apparent universe emerged or selected from all-possible-universes put up in some way fine tuned to support life.
From an unknowable perturbative vacuum with quantum uncertainty perhaps a void and space-time plus energy emerge. No one knows if a quantum uncertainty field before all universes really exists or why even one virtual particular particle would ever become a temporarily real thing or where it could appear or why, before anything materially was. One would think that all things existing become the past, presenting a form of paradox for-itself even if one regards a temporal linerar series of events mechanically and as self-explanatory.
The Sumerians had their own way of examining the juxtaposition of the supernatural and unknown with the natural and known-the Babylonians repressed that artistic and intellectual liberty with the dogmatism of the cult of Marduk and Abraham with his sculptor father Terah set out over the Arabian Peninsula to change the future history of mankind.
Sodom and Gomorrah were said to be located near the confluence of the Dead Sea and the Jordan River. Perhaps the mud brick towns were new and located on opposite bank of the Jordan. Over historical time it might have occurred to someone to dam the Jordan and one such dam broke sending a raging wave to sweep the perverse townsmen and their bricks before a river wave down to return to the elements in the Dead Sea.
Looking back into ancient history is a good thing for scholars. Culturally though societies may stagnate in the past or forget its lessons dooming themselves to repeat its errors. When Abraham’s nephew Lot was ordered to flee the city of Sodom before its destruction he and his family were told not to look back.
Leaving a corrupt civilization is what Abraham did when departing Ur that had fallen into economic and spiritual stagnation. Lot’s wife had to stop and look back across salt collection and drying ponds outside Sodom and was perhaps splashed and covered over with quick drying salt-slurry when some kind of collection retaining wall collapsed or a splattering thing struck down the city.
There are several messages in the story-a true story that one may take concerning the need for social and cultural reformation, the need to not have contempt for God and/or about the phenomenality of existence in a phenomenal Universe.
Perhaps we should not have smug politicians ignoring global heating, ecospheric depletion and economic corruption because they own stock in Exxon-Mobil or have investments in China. When capitalism is corrupted such that it puts a price on people and what they are worth to delete the economic methods assaults democracy and becomes a tool of financial democide. Corrupt political parties ping-ponging an economic ball with hypocritical moral paddles over an oily atmospheric and biospheric decay have too much of the Sodomites about them to be reformers and escape the enveloping return unto inanimate being without free will in-itself.
I recommend reading Rosenberg’s book ‘Abraham’. It is a serious effort to reconstruct more about ancient writers and what they thought of life. Some people believed that God could have evolved the world if he choose, yet philosophically it’s easy to understand that God also would have complete foreknowledge of all quantum variables at any level so far as he like. People have free will yet God’s will entirely determines how things are-even quantum mechanics has similar paradoxes on the nature of matter and of getting information about it.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is also a kind of quantum displacement principle as all things determined are yet grounded in the infinite and unfounded expect for the phenomenal-perhaps inclusive of the human mind and of human experience. Abraham might have emerged from a culture supporting the religious concepts that emerged and in part formed elements of the religious paradigm of Judaism, Islam and Christianity-yet so what, would God not human beings to develop a religious or spiritual capability bringing them to recognize His true self the Universe phenomenalized?
There are still Sumerian ethnic peoples-Amorites living in Iraq. Those we might regard today as Jews were just another Semitic people many of whom had moved to Sumer though some lived in Canaan. The ideas of Sumer continue with us including some of the religious paradigms in some regards. Abraham in leaving Sumer became the first Jew, it is said; a religious way of relating to the transcendent.
It is good for Christian faith that the principals in our own first century a.d. drama of reality were all real people, Jesus Christ was a real man too, for whom the witnessed experiences of the Apostles, disciples and countless others of the miracles of Jesus were given, transcending the foundations of experience and history to become a reliable ontology for-itself…the best a human being may have.
The author points out that after leaving Ur, Abraham was ‘houseless until his death’; not such bad company for today’s homeless to be in. The meek it is said, shall inherit the Earth.
God is a creative being, one whom makes things exist. Sin on the contrary is nihilistic activity, making things not exist and abnegating individual integrity for-self and for-others. Sin is destruction of creation-the production of broken forms.
A logic of sustaining beings that allow things to exist in the universe or in any possible form of universe, rather than to not exist, is plain enough, and good. The meek are more compatible with creative eternal life than are those reinforcing continua of nihilism and eternal death.
Abraham we learn was obedient to God. Abraham’s conformal behavior was compatible to the principle of life and existence over death and non-being. The founding patriarch of three faiths was simultaneously bold yet meek. Abraham was of course faithful to The One (who is three).
There are not too many biographically descriptive references to Abraham in the Bible that one might easily get much data describing the life at Ur of the founder of what today is thought of as the Jewish religion. Rosenberg-who provides his own translations from Hebrew carefully considers Biblical material and tries to create a reconstruction of the culture and time of Sumer and the home town of Abraham-the city of Ur, drawing upon ancient material and sources such as large numbers of cuneiform clay tablets of the Sumerian civilization that were excavated in the 20th century and now.
Rosenberg mentions a Sumerian epic story-history called ‘The World Order’ that probably was known a thousand years later at the late 11th century B.C.E. court of King Solomon. It is apropos that President G.H.W. Bush’s term ‘The New World Order’ was coined in the era of the first U.S. war with Iraq. Not so much changes after 5000 years in politics-at least where fossil fuels are concerned.
Scholarly translations and compilations of that ancient data from Sumerian libraries and elsewhere have increasingly shed light on the culture of ancient Sumer unto Abraham’s day.
David Rosenberg is a poet and biblical scholar. He is also a co-author of ‘The J Book’. That interesting work is an exposition of the J (Jehovah?) writer of the earliest parts of the book of Genesis. Scriptural criticism supposes that there were four primary scribes, writers and or redactors of the first five books of the Bible that have reached us today beginning with the J writer most likely of Solomon’s court; and surprising to some, possibly a female writer. The treatment of Sarah’s response to news of her planned pregnancy (planned by God) seems to have a more feminine touch than a male writer of the time might have had-yet if it was originally a scribbled note by Abraham himself-who can say? His relationship with Sarah and other highlights of the journey could have been saved as an outline-diary of meaningful events. Such jottings of one of the best writers of Sumer making his own exodus out of decay may have made it down through history and much retelling to J at King Solomon’s court.
-note Abraham is said to have wandered with his father Terah toward the CIty of Haran up the rivers toward Damascus or Megiddo on his way to Shalem (Jerusalem) where lived King Melchisedek and his Jebusites. It makes more sense that an ancient traveller would follow along the water way for drinking refreshment than that he would have turned southwest toward the Arabian deserts. I have elesewhere in this article mentioned Abraham as wandering around the Arabian Pennisnusla that after reading Rosenberg's book I would tend to agree that it would be an improbable route of travel.
Shimon Gibson in writing about his excavation of the cave of John the Baptist a couple of miles from his home town also made the point that early Christians were much less sexist than later ecclesiastical structures and traditions that developed in reflecting perhaps the pervasively male hierarchical social establishment of the era. The early Christian ideas of social priorities have themselves been eclipsed a little by the secular social hegemony over Christian organizations.
Abraham may have trained his own scribe to keep the cuneiform writing alive on his journey out of Ur. John Smith brought his own scribe to write down his actions exploring Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps the ‘disciple Jesus loved’ was a reference by one of John’s school of writers at Ephesus to their founder. Some of the more important writers of history had others complete their works under supervision-Julius Caesar for instance in his history of ‘The Civil War’ and wars in Libya and Alexandria.
The additional possibility exists that Sarah too learned to write cuneiform, and became one of the world’s first secretaries, added personal points of view to her husband’s recollections.
The topic of Abraham writing cuneiform leads me to wonder if a synthesis of cuneiform and hieroglyphic literacy traditions by Moses upon leaving Egypt led him to create an alphabet to write down Jewish speech about 1500 B.C.E. during the Exodus. I believe the Hebrew symbol yod is from the cuneiform numbering system. It would be interesting to have a map of archaeological locations of cuneiform writing outside of Mesopotamia. An alphabet representing sounds may have been simpler for Moses to construct than a synthesis of two less phonetically based writing systems. Were the Ten Commandments the first alphabetically based legal code?
Rosenberg builds with scholarly learning, poetic inference and creative insight an exegesis of J’s construction of Genesis from earlier sources including a hypothetical X writer in King Melchizedek court. We discover that Abraham was likely to have been a Sumerian writer himself who left Sumer at a time when the New Babylonian rulers were repressing the religious and culture creative license of Sumer that had already existed more than a thousand years. Abraham was called to venture away and found a new religious civilization or culture, and his heir would be named Israel.
Rosenberg’s book on Abraham is fine reading. One learns philosophically new ideas-perhaps worth being called a religious ontology, that might be quite different from the usual assumptions about the religious culture of ancient Ur. For some, the idea of treating Abraham as a real man albeit in a reconstructed and good spirited, best effort historical scenario could be a little bit faith-shaking initially. How could Abraham emerge from an evolving cultural religious paradigm and quite reasonably have a personal God flowing rather naturally from the culture and history of the time? Shouldn’t Abraham have simply been thwacked on the head by a finger of God and provided with divine insights while he was just minding his own business even though secularists already would be developing hagiographical details about the saintly, deserving soul?
Philosophically speaking, the development of a history outline of the religious culture of Sumer is brilliantly informative. There are other approaches to interpreting ancient civilizations and the foundations of some religious practices obviously, and some things are left out perhaps from this books such as one might expect existed in ancient culture such as human sacrifice, yet the book accomplishes rather convincingly presenting the picture of Abraham & ancient Sumeria while explaining mankinds theoretical and practical relationship to the divine and unknown in the ancient context. One knows that much is left out and much is poeticly liberated from nothingness with creative speculation, yet that is the brilliance of the work in finding so much in the scant and occluded historical record.
Religious ontologies may exist simultaneously with mundane, familiar weltanschauung, Sartre’s existential personal world experience coheres within the phenomenality of social dialectical reason and the cultural environment. Mankind and his civilizations exist within an apparent universe emerged or selected from all-possible-universes put up in some way fine tuned to support life.
From an unknowable perturbative vacuum with quantum uncertainty perhaps a void and space-time plus energy emerge. No one knows if a quantum uncertainty field before all universes really exists or why even one virtual particular particle would ever become a temporarily real thing or where it could appear or why, before anything materially was. One would think that all things existing become the past, presenting a form of paradox for-itself even if one regards a temporal linerar series of events mechanically and as self-explanatory.
The Sumerians had their own way of examining the juxtaposition of the supernatural and unknown with the natural and known-the Babylonians repressed that artistic and intellectual liberty with the dogmatism of the cult of Marduk and Abraham with his sculptor father Terah set out over the Arabian Peninsula to change the future history of mankind.
Sodom and Gomorrah were said to be located near the confluence of the Dead Sea and the Jordan River. Perhaps the mud brick towns were new and located on opposite bank of the Jordan. Over historical time it might have occurred to someone to dam the Jordan and one such dam broke sending a raging wave to sweep the perverse townsmen and their bricks before a river wave down to return to the elements in the Dead Sea.
Looking back into ancient history is a good thing for scholars. Culturally though societies may stagnate in the past or forget its lessons dooming themselves to repeat its errors. When Abraham’s nephew Lot was ordered to flee the city of Sodom before its destruction he and his family were told not to look back.
Leaving a corrupt civilization is what Abraham did when departing Ur that had fallen into economic and spiritual stagnation. Lot’s wife had to stop and look back across salt collection and drying ponds outside Sodom and was perhaps splashed and covered over with quick drying salt-slurry when some kind of collection retaining wall collapsed or a splattering thing struck down the city.
There are several messages in the story-a true story that one may take concerning the need for social and cultural reformation, the need to not have contempt for God and/or about the phenomenality of existence in a phenomenal Universe.
Perhaps we should not have smug politicians ignoring global heating, ecospheric depletion and economic corruption because they own stock in Exxon-Mobil or have investments in China. When capitalism is corrupted such that it puts a price on people and what they are worth to delete the economic methods assaults democracy and becomes a tool of financial democide. Corrupt political parties ping-ponging an economic ball with hypocritical moral paddles over an oily atmospheric and biospheric decay have too much of the Sodomites about them to be reformers and escape the enveloping return unto inanimate being without free will in-itself.
I recommend reading Rosenberg’s book ‘Abraham’. It is a serious effort to reconstruct more about ancient writers and what they thought of life. Some people believed that God could have evolved the world if he choose, yet philosophically it’s easy to understand that God also would have complete foreknowledge of all quantum variables at any level so far as he like. People have free will yet God’s will entirely determines how things are-even quantum mechanics has similar paradoxes on the nature of matter and of getting information about it.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is also a kind of quantum displacement principle as all things determined are yet grounded in the infinite and unfounded expect for the phenomenal-perhaps inclusive of the human mind and of human experience. Abraham might have emerged from a culture supporting the religious concepts that emerged and in part formed elements of the religious paradigm of Judaism, Islam and Christianity-yet so what, would God not human beings to develop a religious or spiritual capability bringing them to recognize His true self the Universe phenomenalized?
There are still Sumerian ethnic peoples-Amorites living in Iraq. Those we might regard today as Jews were just another Semitic people many of whom had moved to Sumer though some lived in Canaan. The ideas of Sumer continue with us including some of the religious paradigms in some regards. Abraham in leaving Sumer became the first Jew, it is said; a religious way of relating to the transcendent.
It is good for Christian faith that the principals in our own first century a.d. drama of reality were all real people, Jesus Christ was a real man too, for whom the witnessed experiences of the Apostles, disciples and countless others of the miracles of Jesus were given, transcending the foundations of experience and history to become a reliable ontology for-itself…the best a human being may have.
8/26/11
The Seven Voyages of Fleet Admiral Zheng He Between 1405-33
Reading an excellent collection of history articles in an edition titled 'China Goes To Sea’ one may find a good treatment of the interesting voyages of a 15th century Chinese sailor from a Muslim family of south China for the Ming Dynasty’s third Emperor- Yongle (Zhu Di).
Zheng He was the name of the man castrated after capture during war eventually promoted to be the Emperor Yongle’s admiral of a vast fleet of as many as 250 ships. Politicians of the era castrated their subjects in some instances in order to help concentrate wealth and power for elites. Even as a third Ming political ultimate insider Emperor Yongle would want enough eunuchs as court functionaries- adequately compensated and unlikely to produce rival heirs with undesirable anti-imperial ambitions.
‘The Maritime Transformation of Ming China’ by Andrew Wilson is an article in the book that recounts the voyages of Zheng He and his fleet to points as far as Jeddah on the Red Sea, Ceylon and Mogadishu.
The book collection ‘China Goes to Sea-Maritime Transformation in Comparative Historical Perspective’ published in 2009 elaborates the contemporary decision paradigm and historical background on the crucible that China finds itself in on choosing what extent it should develop its sea power beyond the coast to dwell the seven seas.
The book’s essays provide additional data on the rise of modern Chinese shipyards of large size-more than 200, and on the People’s Liberation Army Navy (The PLAN). Presently the PLAN has at least 5 nuclear attacks subs, 55 diesel attack subs, 30 destroyers,45 frigates, 35 missile patrol craft and 55 amphibious ships. The multinational dialectical or quadralectical evolution of ship buildings arms races is interesting to consider. In some cases even the top leaders may change sides (e.g. Alcibiades) when different employment compensation packages arise to provide suitable beyond the beltway incentives.
In some periods of history such as that of China’s warring states diplomacy has not been able to prevent the people of the next valley over from acting in the logic of arms races and war. The inevitable high risk of failing to be ready to war in a primitive social environment and consequences of defeat-execution, castration, enslavement and torture incentivize readiness for high casualty lethal battle engagements. The odds for incidence and intensity of conflict increase in relation to the transformation of the geodeographic region universally to one of militarized societies.
China was quite a naval power in the 15th century, yet its military capability at sea was largely a development of the domestic conflicts on rivers and lakes as well as along the coast of China. China’s naval power largely ended during the Ming dynasty too, as the Emperor believed that any naval power-especially those of rivals and pirates- comprised a threat to state security.
Chinese history is interesting reading for the variegated complexity and quantitative substance of its internal permutations. The Zheng He story is another of the lines for historical inquiry that take one to contemplation of those early and for most of us rather hazy times.
Zheng He grew up in a late 14th century Muslim home in south China informing us a little of the spread of the Moslem religion across Southern Eurasia. Perhaps Yongle promoted Zheng He to admiral of a 250 ship expeditionary fleet to the Moslem world because of his religion.
In the early 15th century the crusaders had been forced out of the Middle East and points south were prevalently Moslem. The Osmanli tribe and horde would soon take Constantinople-last hope of the Byzantine Empire. Eventually the Ottoman Empire would rule present day Saudi Arabia and Jeddah too imposing its will upon Iran. Centuries before Moslem invaders had compelled Iranians to speak Arabic and lose their native Persian languages.
Zheng He may have moved his fleet with expendable, smaller faster scout boats in advance. Many of the voyages travelled the same course on the later missions. Perhaps several ships were lost although with so many in the flotilla modest attrition was tolerable. The voyages were expensive though. Emperor Yongle got into office by rebellion and some speculate may have used the great mission to reinforce his apparent power.
I cannot help comparing these expensive voyages over known travel routes a little like our potential American missions to Mars in the cost and scale. There must be smarter, faster ways to get Americans and others to Mars and back at less cost. Maybe Yongle might have sent horsemen to the Moslem world; for sure Genghis Khan the Mongol ruler did, and perhaps Kublai Khan had little interest in Beijing in funding missions with boats to place other than Japan.
The matter of Zheng He being the Ming Emperor’s possible way of establishing cultural contact with the west as a way to find allies against northern Mongol and Manchu dangers aside-as if he was a 15th century Byzantine looking for an Eastern Prester John ally to defend against Moslem and/or Mongol/Manchu forces, one might still wonder if the idea for a 400 foot Chinese built junk originated with Zheng He’s youthful learning about Noah’s ark through religious instruction. It is interesting that the insurrection against the Qing Manchu dynasty by the Christian neo-heretic (I say that with kindness because he didn’t have good religious instruction) Hong Xe Quan
Who believed he was the younger brother of God in a somewhat confused religious education brackets a little the Manchu Qing era rule of China until 1911 about the time Ottoman rule was ended in the Middle East; one can find parallel occurrences in history ad infinitum and interesting.
Maybe mankind should build a habitat on Mars under thick glass before sending two of every kind of animal to live there should the opportunity arise.
The ancient world probably has numerous untold maritime voyages perhaps at best hinted at by reason, logic and archaeological finds. Crete had human settlers by sea as early as 20,000 years ago. I have wondered about the linguistic similarity of Chukotka to the 12th century Missouri town of Cahokia with its 300 foot high Earth mound pyramids. One must wonder if ancient Irish or Vikings crossing the Atlantic to New Foundland via Greenland the St. Lawrence Seaway and Wisconsin eventually made it to the near St. Louis site of indigenous American civilization at Cahokia that lasted less than 200 years. Further west one of the only known pre-Columbian instances of mass murder and city defense wall storming occurred in an excavated Amer-Indian site in North Dakota. Where such banzai storming tactics learned from Vikings moving on after stimulating the Cahokian civilization to rise? Did they eventually make it to Wrangell Alaska via the Stikine River of Canada and leave spiral carvings and beehive huts at 54 degrees north latitude-about the same latitude as Newgrange Ireland’s oldest in Europe remaining Neolithic building? Did the voyagers portage skin boats from Skagway Alaska and find the Yukon River to float down to Bering Strait and across to Chakotka?
These speculative histories are fun to consider, yet the voyages of Zheng He are historically available for research. One can still imagine the progress of a 27,000 man floating city slowly through the Strait of Malacca, over the Indian Ocean and to the scorching Red Sea as a site to behold. Sailing a boat without a motor near Santa Cruz island one night with the wind dropping to about dead calm I saw a marvelous lighted structure moving through the night-unfortunately it eventually moved toward me and turned out to be a large ocean tug and tow. I had thought watching its lights move through the dark that it might be a gambling ship taking patrons offshore for a night of extra-territorial dice throwing.
Zheng He presented a formidable appearance to the pirates and potentates of the day and night I would think-yet finally the expense was too high for later Ming Emperors engaged in military conflicts closer to home to continue the encounters with the Muslim world and perhaps Buddhists too of the Theravada of Ceylon and elsewhere south of the far east.
Maritime activity may be many things from private shipping for trade, dumping toxic waste in African coastal sites with a small bribe to corrupt local officials, a way to access and plunder fisheries from underdeveloped nations as well as the even worse problem of private or government pirates preying upon commercial shipping and hapless boaters seeking refuge from tough economic times. Naval power may be developed for several reasons including coastal defense against foreign invasion and piracy, assertion of global hegemony and so forth. Naval forces may build up in order to get jobs for special interests or as excuses for overcharging taxpayers for unneeded vessels at two or three times the off the shelf price at Ships Are Us.
In the article by Wilson the history of the Ming rise to power in a series of large naval battles on Chinese rivers and lakes (The Poyang Campaign) is described as a turning point. The Ming navy defeated a rival Chinese navy.
One might compare the rise of American space power to the rise of Ming naval power and wonder if the shying away from a previously impressive government manned sea or space program coinciding with the decline of select economic prospects was related.
Space power may be used for peaceful or military purposes, yet like the Ming era pirates may plunder global interests and aspire to become national or planetary rulers. One might anticipate that space pirates will also aspire to plink the earth with hyper-kinetic rocks/asteroids from outside the inner solar system if their demands are not met in some future crisis. A competent yet not break the bank scale coast guard is requisite for many coastal nations historically.
Zheng He’s fleet only sailed downwind during monsoon season at 4.5 miles per hour top speed. Yet it might have had the largest wooden ships ever built (beside that of Noah) of a little more than 400 feet. Dr. Wilson mentions that there may have been as many as 27,000 men on each mission. The vast armada may have been trade missions to advertise that the Ming dynasty was ready to do business.
The articles in the book regard the rise of several nations navies produced by largely land powers; Persia, Sparta, Rome-Ottoman Empire sea power of ancient times as well. The political factors that brought the investment in a fleet and the historical result of those investments are considered along with more recent examples such as imperial Germany.
I would like to mention something here a little off topic. Germany after the First World War was forbidden to have much of a navy-so it built many submarines and had that one excellent battleship trapped and sank in Paraguay by several British destroyers. The French agreed to have their fleet kept in ports under their control yet with Nazi supervision so they would be neutral during the second world war after the Germans invaded France, while the British had to decide (Churchill largely) if they would send their fleet to the United States if Britain lost to an invading Germany or if a Prime Minister more like Chamberlain replaced Churchill who would order the fleet Vichified (made neutral in order to comply with Nazi demands) and remain in port or be given over eventually to the Nazi navy.
These calculations about the value of a navy and its use have many political elements to them not uncommonly in history. By the 17th century China’s navy was atrophied and unable to compete much with that of the west. Rather than the lack of a navy though, China’s imperial power was largely responsible for its comparative decline as a world power.
One finds the Qing dynasty and the Manchu taking over China. The Mongol land power had extended over much of Eurasia making the question of global naval power somewhat problematic. When the Qing dynasty ended, I believe, in 1911, the process of a discovery of a new identity for China began transformatively unto the present when China has risen to be a world trading power much as during the Ming dynasty.
The United State’s space program and moon landings were important and even impressive national symbols comparable n some ways to the vast Ming fleets of Zheng He sailing around the south littoral of Eurasia seven times as the high point of the ancient Chinese navy. National leaderships goals and abilities may conserve a nation’s role in world political economy. While the United States seems to be setting aside active progress in a too taxing for the political intellect affordable manned space exploration program, China and other nations are taking it up. Russia has continued the Soviet era manned space infrastructure, yet the U.S.A. has no present manned space flight capability besides hitching a ride on a Soyuz rocket from Siberia.
One reads in Andrew Wilson’s article as well of the use of the Ming navy in defeating Hideoshi’s Japanese army that had invaded Korea.
Zheng He was the name of the man castrated after capture during war eventually promoted to be the Emperor Yongle’s admiral of a vast fleet of as many as 250 ships. Politicians of the era castrated their subjects in some instances in order to help concentrate wealth and power for elites. Even as a third Ming political ultimate insider Emperor Yongle would want enough eunuchs as court functionaries- adequately compensated and unlikely to produce rival heirs with undesirable anti-imperial ambitions.
‘The Maritime Transformation of Ming China’ by Andrew Wilson is an article in the book that recounts the voyages of Zheng He and his fleet to points as far as Jeddah on the Red Sea, Ceylon and Mogadishu.
The book collection ‘China Goes to Sea-Maritime Transformation in Comparative Historical Perspective’ published in 2009 elaborates the contemporary decision paradigm and historical background on the crucible that China finds itself in on choosing what extent it should develop its sea power beyond the coast to dwell the seven seas.
The book’s essays provide additional data on the rise of modern Chinese shipyards of large size-more than 200, and on the People’s Liberation Army Navy (The PLAN). Presently the PLAN has at least 5 nuclear attacks subs, 55 diesel attack subs, 30 destroyers,45 frigates, 35 missile patrol craft and 55 amphibious ships. The multinational dialectical or quadralectical evolution of ship buildings arms races is interesting to consider. In some cases even the top leaders may change sides (e.g. Alcibiades) when different employment compensation packages arise to provide suitable beyond the beltway incentives.
In some periods of history such as that of China’s warring states diplomacy has not been able to prevent the people of the next valley over from acting in the logic of arms races and war. The inevitable high risk of failing to be ready to war in a primitive social environment and consequences of defeat-execution, castration, enslavement and torture incentivize readiness for high casualty lethal battle engagements. The odds for incidence and intensity of conflict increase in relation to the transformation of the geodeographic region universally to one of militarized societies.
China was quite a naval power in the 15th century, yet its military capability at sea was largely a development of the domestic conflicts on rivers and lakes as well as along the coast of China. China’s naval power largely ended during the Ming dynasty too, as the Emperor believed that any naval power-especially those of rivals and pirates- comprised a threat to state security.
Chinese history is interesting reading for the variegated complexity and quantitative substance of its internal permutations. The Zheng He story is another of the lines for historical inquiry that take one to contemplation of those early and for most of us rather hazy times.
Zheng He grew up in a late 14th century Muslim home in south China informing us a little of the spread of the Moslem religion across Southern Eurasia. Perhaps Yongle promoted Zheng He to admiral of a 250 ship expeditionary fleet to the Moslem world because of his religion.
In the early 15th century the crusaders had been forced out of the Middle East and points south were prevalently Moslem. The Osmanli tribe and horde would soon take Constantinople-last hope of the Byzantine Empire. Eventually the Ottoman Empire would rule present day Saudi Arabia and Jeddah too imposing its will upon Iran. Centuries before Moslem invaders had compelled Iranians to speak Arabic and lose their native Persian languages.
Zheng He may have moved his fleet with expendable, smaller faster scout boats in advance. Many of the voyages travelled the same course on the later missions. Perhaps several ships were lost although with so many in the flotilla modest attrition was tolerable. The voyages were expensive though. Emperor Yongle got into office by rebellion and some speculate may have used the great mission to reinforce his apparent power.
I cannot help comparing these expensive voyages over known travel routes a little like our potential American missions to Mars in the cost and scale. There must be smarter, faster ways to get Americans and others to Mars and back at less cost. Maybe Yongle might have sent horsemen to the Moslem world; for sure Genghis Khan the Mongol ruler did, and perhaps Kublai Khan had little interest in Beijing in funding missions with boats to place other than Japan.
The matter of Zheng He being the Ming Emperor’s possible way of establishing cultural contact with the west as a way to find allies against northern Mongol and Manchu dangers aside-as if he was a 15th century Byzantine looking for an Eastern Prester John ally to defend against Moslem and/or Mongol/Manchu forces, one might still wonder if the idea for a 400 foot Chinese built junk originated with Zheng He’s youthful learning about Noah’s ark through religious instruction. It is interesting that the insurrection against the Qing Manchu dynasty by the Christian neo-heretic (I say that with kindness because he didn’t have good religious instruction) Hong Xe Quan
Who believed he was the younger brother of God in a somewhat confused religious education brackets a little the Manchu Qing era rule of China until 1911 about the time Ottoman rule was ended in the Middle East; one can find parallel occurrences in history ad infinitum and interesting.
Maybe mankind should build a habitat on Mars under thick glass before sending two of every kind of animal to live there should the opportunity arise.
The ancient world probably has numerous untold maritime voyages perhaps at best hinted at by reason, logic and archaeological finds. Crete had human settlers by sea as early as 20,000 years ago. I have wondered about the linguistic similarity of Chukotka to the 12th century Missouri town of Cahokia with its 300 foot high Earth mound pyramids. One must wonder if ancient Irish or Vikings crossing the Atlantic to New Foundland via Greenland the St. Lawrence Seaway and Wisconsin eventually made it to the near St. Louis site of indigenous American civilization at Cahokia that lasted less than 200 years. Further west one of the only known pre-Columbian instances of mass murder and city defense wall storming occurred in an excavated Amer-Indian site in North Dakota. Where such banzai storming tactics learned from Vikings moving on after stimulating the Cahokian civilization to rise? Did they eventually make it to Wrangell Alaska via the Stikine River of Canada and leave spiral carvings and beehive huts at 54 degrees north latitude-about the same latitude as Newgrange Ireland’s oldest in Europe remaining Neolithic building? Did the voyagers portage skin boats from Skagway Alaska and find the Yukon River to float down to Bering Strait and across to Chakotka?
These speculative histories are fun to consider, yet the voyages of Zheng He are historically available for research. One can still imagine the progress of a 27,000 man floating city slowly through the Strait of Malacca, over the Indian Ocean and to the scorching Red Sea as a site to behold. Sailing a boat without a motor near Santa Cruz island one night with the wind dropping to about dead calm I saw a marvelous lighted structure moving through the night-unfortunately it eventually moved toward me and turned out to be a large ocean tug and tow. I had thought watching its lights move through the dark that it might be a gambling ship taking patrons offshore for a night of extra-territorial dice throwing.
Zheng He presented a formidable appearance to the pirates and potentates of the day and night I would think-yet finally the expense was too high for later Ming Emperors engaged in military conflicts closer to home to continue the encounters with the Muslim world and perhaps Buddhists too of the Theravada of Ceylon and elsewhere south of the far east.
Maritime activity may be many things from private shipping for trade, dumping toxic waste in African coastal sites with a small bribe to corrupt local officials, a way to access and plunder fisheries from underdeveloped nations as well as the even worse problem of private or government pirates preying upon commercial shipping and hapless boaters seeking refuge from tough economic times. Naval power may be developed for several reasons including coastal defense against foreign invasion and piracy, assertion of global hegemony and so forth. Naval forces may build up in order to get jobs for special interests or as excuses for overcharging taxpayers for unneeded vessels at two or three times the off the shelf price at Ships Are Us.
In the article by Wilson the history of the Ming rise to power in a series of large naval battles on Chinese rivers and lakes (The Poyang Campaign) is described as a turning point. The Ming navy defeated a rival Chinese navy.
One might compare the rise of American space power to the rise of Ming naval power and wonder if the shying away from a previously impressive government manned sea or space program coinciding with the decline of select economic prospects was related.
Space power may be used for peaceful or military purposes, yet like the Ming era pirates may plunder global interests and aspire to become national or planetary rulers. One might anticipate that space pirates will also aspire to plink the earth with hyper-kinetic rocks/asteroids from outside the inner solar system if their demands are not met in some future crisis. A competent yet not break the bank scale coast guard is requisite for many coastal nations historically.
Zheng He’s fleet only sailed downwind during monsoon season at 4.5 miles per hour top speed. Yet it might have had the largest wooden ships ever built (beside that of Noah) of a little more than 400 feet. Dr. Wilson mentions that there may have been as many as 27,000 men on each mission. The vast armada may have been trade missions to advertise that the Ming dynasty was ready to do business.
The articles in the book regard the rise of several nations navies produced by largely land powers; Persia, Sparta, Rome-Ottoman Empire sea power of ancient times as well. The political factors that brought the investment in a fleet and the historical result of those investments are considered along with more recent examples such as imperial Germany.
I would like to mention something here a little off topic. Germany after the First World War was forbidden to have much of a navy-so it built many submarines and had that one excellent battleship trapped and sank in Paraguay by several British destroyers. The French agreed to have their fleet kept in ports under their control yet with Nazi supervision so they would be neutral during the second world war after the Germans invaded France, while the British had to decide (Churchill largely) if they would send their fleet to the United States if Britain lost to an invading Germany or if a Prime Minister more like Chamberlain replaced Churchill who would order the fleet Vichified (made neutral in order to comply with Nazi demands) and remain in port or be given over eventually to the Nazi navy.
These calculations about the value of a navy and its use have many political elements to them not uncommonly in history. By the 17th century China’s navy was atrophied and unable to compete much with that of the west. Rather than the lack of a navy though, China’s imperial power was largely responsible for its comparative decline as a world power.
One finds the Qing dynasty and the Manchu taking over China. The Mongol land power had extended over much of Eurasia making the question of global naval power somewhat problematic. When the Qing dynasty ended, I believe, in 1911, the process of a discovery of a new identity for China began transformatively unto the present when China has risen to be a world trading power much as during the Ming dynasty.
The United State’s space program and moon landings were important and even impressive national symbols comparable n some ways to the vast Ming fleets of Zheng He sailing around the south littoral of Eurasia seven times as the high point of the ancient Chinese navy. National leaderships goals and abilities may conserve a nation’s role in world political economy. While the United States seems to be setting aside active progress in a too taxing for the political intellect affordable manned space exploration program, China and other nations are taking it up. Russia has continued the Soviet era manned space infrastructure, yet the U.S.A. has no present manned space flight capability besides hitching a ride on a Soyuz rocket from Siberia.
One reads in Andrew Wilson’s article as well of the use of the Ming navy in defeating Hideoshi’s Japanese army that had invaded Korea.
8/25/11
Rick Perry 'Dislikes' Washington D.C.-Does He Really Mean 'Hates It'?
“I dislike Washington. I think it’s a seedy place. But our country is in trouble and I don’t have the privilege to sit on the sideline and watch our country be destroyed economically by a president who has been conducting an experiment on the American economy for the last two and a half years.”-Rick Perry
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/perry-hits-obama-romney-on-laura-ingraham-show/2011/08/25/gIQAzTF4dJ_story.html
I too am concerned about ineffective government and believe Rick Perry would continue the record of preponderantly dumb or crooked presidents since President Reagan.
Rick Perry doesn't think global heating is a serious issue, or a clear and present danger to the United States of America and the rest of the world, and is fundamentally a global warming ostrich. He also has no clue about what ecological economics are. He seems to prefer to find a concrete wall to joust against to stimulate defense spending and arms contracting business while also lowering the national miles per gallon standards to increase oil consumption and drilling.
Maybe treating Washington D.C. like dirt is the problem with some Presidential candidates; they should like democracy and work to maike it function well even assurring that all poor Americans have no-cost health provisions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/perry-hits-obama-romney-on-laura-ingraham-show/2011/08/25/gIQAzTF4dJ_story.html
I too am concerned about ineffective government and believe Rick Perry would continue the record of preponderantly dumb or crooked presidents since President Reagan.
Rick Perry doesn't think global heating is a serious issue, or a clear and present danger to the United States of America and the rest of the world, and is fundamentally a global warming ostrich. He also has no clue about what ecological economics are. He seems to prefer to find a concrete wall to joust against to stimulate defense spending and arms contracting business while also lowering the national miles per gallon standards to increase oil consumption and drilling.
Maybe treating Washington D.C. like dirt is the problem with some Presidential candidates; they should like democracy and work to maike it function well even assurring that all poor Americans have no-cost health provisions.
8/23/11
Humans In Mars Orbit Could Operate Brainless Robots on Planet Surface
Human beings on Earth could operate human shaped work robots on the Earth's moon without a time signal delay problem, yet for Mars the time signaling delay would make human working of the robot tools (that have no independent operating system) more difficult and less accurate in mining and construction work on Mars. The answer might be to create a human guidance control station on Phobos-a Martian moon as well as in a space-stationary platform over the Martian work area.
Delivering work robots to the moon and Mars would be cheaper than sending humans to create shelters and agricultural laboratories initially. Jobs might be created on Earth operating robot workers on the moon directly as well as on Mars if the several minutes delay can be substantially compensated for.
Science fiction writers have pointed out for generations the dangers of thinking robots. An easy fix to that problem is to make robots completely unthinking and just have a human on Earth or in orbit someplace directly operate each individual robot through its workday. Exploring dangerous to humans solar system planets and moons with human like robots directly operated by a human through wireless control might safely expedite exploration, construction and human habit in vacant spaces on other worlds.
Delivering work robots to the moon and Mars would be cheaper than sending humans to create shelters and agricultural laboratories initially. Jobs might be created on Earth operating robot workers on the moon directly as well as on Mars if the several minutes delay can be substantially compensated for.
Science fiction writers have pointed out for generations the dangers of thinking robots. An easy fix to that problem is to make robots completely unthinking and just have a human on Earth or in orbit someplace directly operate each individual robot through its workday. Exploring dangerous to humans solar system planets and moons with human like robots directly operated by a human through wireless control might safely expedite exploration, construction and human habit in vacant spaces on other worlds.
Does God Intervene in History or Presidential Elections?
This question of teleology at a human historical level might be regarded from numerous vantage points. Physical determinism from initial boundary conditions of the Universe would seem to logically follow if the Universe were isolated from anything outside of its expanse. We may have no assurance of that-energy may be added to or taken from the Universe at any time one might think as reasonably as the opposite opinion. The Universe itself may have started proximally as a quantum unit of scale; there is no indication that once begun it must remain so.
Roman 13:1 “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.”-the Apostle Paul writing a letter to the Romans during the reign of Nero. Later, the Roman Emperor Constantine would declare Christianity the State religion of the Empire.
Hebrews 11-3”Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”
The Apostle Paul has informed us that politicians are workers of the will of God existing in the world plan, yet Paul has also informed us all of the willingness of God to work in all of our lives. We read in the letter to the Ephesians in chapter two of the nature of human experience in the world;
E2_1”And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; 2-2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past fulfilling the desires of our flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others."
We may discern in the above passage the possibility that the teleology of the world may have a different, branching course from the teleology of the saved.
E-2-8 “For by grace are we saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; lest any man should boast: it is the gift of God.
E-2-10”For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."
E-2-18”For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.”20”And we are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.”
E4-4”There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;5 One Lord, one faith and one baptism,6 One God and Father of all, and through all, and in you all.”
We learn here of challenges to the body politick as well as to the church of Christ…
E12”For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Romans 9-22”What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory."
St. Matthew 20:25”Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.26 But it shall not be so among you; but whosoever will be great among you shall be your minister; 27 And whosoever shall be chief among you, let him be your servant.”
In history many political leaders have believed themselves divine-some had themselves worshipped and made it a death penalty to fail to do so. Today we feel those people were full of crap and resist that sort of pressure as ridiculous if it ever occurs even a little. Democracy requires good servants and ministers rather than outsourcers of jobs and cronyism in the political leadership class. We find tiresome anyone’s claim to be a gift from God even if he is so because it’s nearly impossible to believe or find credible proof of. Good political works provide good political opinion poll ratings instead of good p.r. propaganda.
Even so we can believe in God and that God acts on history if He likes. Though with omniscience and omnipotence it might be redundant to expect Him to change anything from the way it will be anyway. God’s will was perfect to start. We ask for His help in correcting our environmental and ecospheric use mistakes as well as other free will caused human problems often turning out to be some kind of sin.
Just Jesus Christ was the authorized Son of God, Christians believe. His act in history appearing as mankind’s savior was the only requisite political intervention for true salvation-now we have to discover ways to keep good Christianity from becoming bad politics.
We know that within our human lifetimes and personal experience that the laws of nature seem to flow on at a regular rate with its fine-tuned physical constant values seemingly unchanged. Taxes may vary and government fiscal competence to adapt to challenges may fluctuate leaving citizens stranded in poverty or set on the summit of wealth, and we know that the Bible explains that governments are tools used by God-so in a democracy the faithful should elect the smart, wise, just and beneficial to its high political offices in order to make out voter electorate roles as much in the image of God’s perfect goodness as we can. We must wonder how, given human failings and the selection of bad governments over history even unto the present as not quite a rule but not so exceptional either, God might intervene in human affairs to change government leadership in a right direction that would actualize His purpose for human destiny.
In some way we might expect God to act quantitatively in changing human social personnel and political directions in a way similar to quantum mechanics and the various energy content values of atomic nuclei and of electrons flying around them. It would be easier if we could know that the Creator would only permit so much public debt before governments flew apart or radiated citizens or subjects to new lands, or if revolutions formed in particular phase change relationship protocols that might be quantified. If that were so some people might decide that the immutable or rarely changed laws of the natural universe merely acted upon human government and politics as well as upon atoms and elements. Scientists have sought for large scale order in the universe-and actually discovered super-clusters of galaxies maybe a fifth the size of the observable universe as the largest ordered things in the universe. We tend to believe though that forces like gravity or the lambda dark energy force that may exist are discrete forces quantified in little packets phenomenally rather than having a unified large superstructure in the universe itself. That may or may not be so.
It is difficult to know what the really large scale structures of the universe are when some may be unknown. M-Theory I believe searches for extra dimensional strings and membranes as fundamental quanta in order to extrapolate a theory that explains the phenomena of nature with somewhat traditional notions about what sort of structures exist in it large and small.
Physicists and cosmologists also seem to work on developing theories about the realm of virtual uncertainty. Large scale structures of space, time, energy, mass and dimensions may exist that comprise things-in-themselves that are presently unknown or even unknowable. We see through a glass darkly, and like Moses glimpsing just a reflected fraction of the passing glory of God, some of these structures may be too large, small or just incomprehensible for a human being to encounter.
That is no reason to quit trying to understand the cosmos, the will of God as expressed in the Bible and how or why politicians can make such terrible economic conditions sometimes. The ways God acts upon history might be known as it is His will to disclose any finite portion of any infinite sequence-probably a little of that goes a long way. The 1968 U.S. Presidential race is a case in point to study profitably.
There were several good candidates in the 1968 Presidential primaries, two of whom were shot with one dying in Los Angeles. The nation’s youth were restive and protesting by the millions a war in Vietnam that had gone on for nearly a decade. Black Americans unhappy with the pace of economic and social change were burning ghettos in Detroit and Los Angeles. President Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for re-election and would die not long in the future.
The causes for the war in Vietnam have been written about much. It would be challenging to blame god for the war instead of human political activity. I will leave it at that for now, since the larger concept of politicization of teleology could be generalized to just be correction from original sin in a space-time phase shift that made human beings mortal and of finite intellectual capacity.
The probable winner of the 1968 Democratic Presidential nomination was the charismatic Robert F. Kennedy. The likely independent party nominee was Governor George Wallace. Each would have run against Richard M. Nixon. Kennedy was the easy winner in that contest if it had happened.
Yet with J.F.K. dead and Wallace critically injured and crippled for life, and with the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago besieged by a virtual riot outside in the streets by agitated youth against the war the comparatively calm, rational republican candidate seemed the very reasonable conservative choice. A fairly good Democratic candidate-Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey-the Happy Warrior-might have run well against Nixon and won the 1968 general election if not for the spectacle of the Democratic riot in Chicago. It is a little ironic that so many agitated Nixon haters helped elect Nixon indirectly to the Presidency in 1968.
Is it in such political mass confusion that one might discover the will of God to direct mankind’s political course through history on occasion? Certainly no political script-writing crew of 99 monkeys given several million years would have produced such an improbable election outcome.
President Nixon accomplished détente with the Soviet Union setting the stage for a future Gorbachev administration in part. Even President Vladimir Putin was liked by Yuri Andropov back in the day. Nixon accomplished the initial rapprochement with Red China that has continued to the present, and withdrew U.S. combat forces from Vietnam during his first administration-then he left office with the Watergate scandal and disappeared from the world political stage as America had Dick Nixon to kick around just one more time.
Some people would perhaps credit natural selection, or Darwinian evolution with the 1968 Presidential race. They might prefer to speculate that political change is not optimized in a dialectical progression of the dumb side versus the corrupt, but that no progress happens at all that isn’t incidental aggregation of structure in a discrete context. They would not deign to credit God with intervening at all to make course corrections now and then to save the human race from itself and its implicit characteristic of being unsafe at any speed even with democratic elections.
Large scale teleological structures may exist with being reducible to discrete, quantifiable units of measurement. I do not have any sort of certainty of what the actual course of God is for any election today. I believe that the electorate shouldn’t be reduced to drawing lots between bad candidates though as if one might discern God’s will in that process. The U.S.A. probably needs to do its homework well and elect high quality candidates and then thank God for the grace to do so.
Roman 13:1 “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.”-the Apostle Paul writing a letter to the Romans during the reign of Nero. Later, the Roman Emperor Constantine would declare Christianity the State religion of the Empire.
Hebrews 11-3”Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”
The Apostle Paul has informed us that politicians are workers of the will of God existing in the world plan, yet Paul has also informed us all of the willingness of God to work in all of our lives. We read in the letter to the Ephesians in chapter two of the nature of human experience in the world;
E2_1”And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; 2-2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past fulfilling the desires of our flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others."
We may discern in the above passage the possibility that the teleology of the world may have a different, branching course from the teleology of the saved.
E-2-8 “For by grace are we saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; lest any man should boast: it is the gift of God.
E-2-10”For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."
E-2-18”For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.”20”And we are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.”
E4-4”There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;5 One Lord, one faith and one baptism,6 One God and Father of all, and through all, and in you all.”
We learn here of challenges to the body politick as well as to the church of Christ…
E12”For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Romans 9-22”What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory."
St. Matthew 20:25”Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.26 But it shall not be so among you; but whosoever will be great among you shall be your minister; 27 And whosoever shall be chief among you, let him be your servant.”
In history many political leaders have believed themselves divine-some had themselves worshipped and made it a death penalty to fail to do so. Today we feel those people were full of crap and resist that sort of pressure as ridiculous if it ever occurs even a little. Democracy requires good servants and ministers rather than outsourcers of jobs and cronyism in the political leadership class. We find tiresome anyone’s claim to be a gift from God even if he is so because it’s nearly impossible to believe or find credible proof of. Good political works provide good political opinion poll ratings instead of good p.r. propaganda.
Even so we can believe in God and that God acts on history if He likes. Though with omniscience and omnipotence it might be redundant to expect Him to change anything from the way it will be anyway. God’s will was perfect to start. We ask for His help in correcting our environmental and ecospheric use mistakes as well as other free will caused human problems often turning out to be some kind of sin.
Just Jesus Christ was the authorized Son of God, Christians believe. His act in history appearing as mankind’s savior was the only requisite political intervention for true salvation-now we have to discover ways to keep good Christianity from becoming bad politics.
We know that within our human lifetimes and personal experience that the laws of nature seem to flow on at a regular rate with its fine-tuned physical constant values seemingly unchanged. Taxes may vary and government fiscal competence to adapt to challenges may fluctuate leaving citizens stranded in poverty or set on the summit of wealth, and we know that the Bible explains that governments are tools used by God-so in a democracy the faithful should elect the smart, wise, just and beneficial to its high political offices in order to make out voter electorate roles as much in the image of God’s perfect goodness as we can. We must wonder how, given human failings and the selection of bad governments over history even unto the present as not quite a rule but not so exceptional either, God might intervene in human affairs to change government leadership in a right direction that would actualize His purpose for human destiny.
In some way we might expect God to act quantitatively in changing human social personnel and political directions in a way similar to quantum mechanics and the various energy content values of atomic nuclei and of electrons flying around them. It would be easier if we could know that the Creator would only permit so much public debt before governments flew apart or radiated citizens or subjects to new lands, or if revolutions formed in particular phase change relationship protocols that might be quantified. If that were so some people might decide that the immutable or rarely changed laws of the natural universe merely acted upon human government and politics as well as upon atoms and elements. Scientists have sought for large scale order in the universe-and actually discovered super-clusters of galaxies maybe a fifth the size of the observable universe as the largest ordered things in the universe. We tend to believe though that forces like gravity or the lambda dark energy force that may exist are discrete forces quantified in little packets phenomenally rather than having a unified large superstructure in the universe itself. That may or may not be so.
It is difficult to know what the really large scale structures of the universe are when some may be unknown. M-Theory I believe searches for extra dimensional strings and membranes as fundamental quanta in order to extrapolate a theory that explains the phenomena of nature with somewhat traditional notions about what sort of structures exist in it large and small.
Physicists and cosmologists also seem to work on developing theories about the realm of virtual uncertainty. Large scale structures of space, time, energy, mass and dimensions may exist that comprise things-in-themselves that are presently unknown or even unknowable. We see through a glass darkly, and like Moses glimpsing just a reflected fraction of the passing glory of God, some of these structures may be too large, small or just incomprehensible for a human being to encounter.
That is no reason to quit trying to understand the cosmos, the will of God as expressed in the Bible and how or why politicians can make such terrible economic conditions sometimes. The ways God acts upon history might be known as it is His will to disclose any finite portion of any infinite sequence-probably a little of that goes a long way. The 1968 U.S. Presidential race is a case in point to study profitably.
There were several good candidates in the 1968 Presidential primaries, two of whom were shot with one dying in Los Angeles. The nation’s youth were restive and protesting by the millions a war in Vietnam that had gone on for nearly a decade. Black Americans unhappy with the pace of economic and social change were burning ghettos in Detroit and Los Angeles. President Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for re-election and would die not long in the future.
The causes for the war in Vietnam have been written about much. It would be challenging to blame god for the war instead of human political activity. I will leave it at that for now, since the larger concept of politicization of teleology could be generalized to just be correction from original sin in a space-time phase shift that made human beings mortal and of finite intellectual capacity.
The probable winner of the 1968 Democratic Presidential nomination was the charismatic Robert F. Kennedy. The likely independent party nominee was Governor George Wallace. Each would have run against Richard M. Nixon. Kennedy was the easy winner in that contest if it had happened.
Yet with J.F.K. dead and Wallace critically injured and crippled for life, and with the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago besieged by a virtual riot outside in the streets by agitated youth against the war the comparatively calm, rational republican candidate seemed the very reasonable conservative choice. A fairly good Democratic candidate-Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey-the Happy Warrior-might have run well against Nixon and won the 1968 general election if not for the spectacle of the Democratic riot in Chicago. It is a little ironic that so many agitated Nixon haters helped elect Nixon indirectly to the Presidency in 1968.
Is it in such political mass confusion that one might discover the will of God to direct mankind’s political course through history on occasion? Certainly no political script-writing crew of 99 monkeys given several million years would have produced such an improbable election outcome.
President Nixon accomplished détente with the Soviet Union setting the stage for a future Gorbachev administration in part. Even President Vladimir Putin was liked by Yuri Andropov back in the day. Nixon accomplished the initial rapprochement with Red China that has continued to the present, and withdrew U.S. combat forces from Vietnam during his first administration-then he left office with the Watergate scandal and disappeared from the world political stage as America had Dick Nixon to kick around just one more time.
Some people would perhaps credit natural selection, or Darwinian evolution with the 1968 Presidential race. They might prefer to speculate that political change is not optimized in a dialectical progression of the dumb side versus the corrupt, but that no progress happens at all that isn’t incidental aggregation of structure in a discrete context. They would not deign to credit God with intervening at all to make course corrections now and then to save the human race from itself and its implicit characteristic of being unsafe at any speed even with democratic elections.
Large scale teleological structures may exist with being reducible to discrete, quantifiable units of measurement. I do not have any sort of certainty of what the actual course of God is for any election today. I believe that the electorate shouldn’t be reduced to drawing lots between bad candidates though as if one might discern God’s will in that process. The U.S.A. probably needs to do its homework well and elect high quality candidates and then thank God for the grace to do so.
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