Once upon a time, we all knew the Earth was our Mother. We worshipped Her as sacred deity. Then yaj the Jealous* roared into town on his Harlie. He bellowed, “Mother Earth is dirt!” He jerked his index finger at humans and said, “You! ‘Subdue’ Her.”**
Feast your eyes on a few synonyms Microsoft Word keeps in its synonym drawer for 'subdue': ‘crush,’ ‘subjugate,’ ‘defeat.’
To Christians the Earth is a pitiful pile of dirt so dangerous it needs to be kept under lock and key. Oh – but it’s a handy place to throw all your kadiddle and dung.
MY QUESTION: If the world had never known christianity, islam and/or judaism, would we today be facing death by global warming?
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*yaj is yahweh/allah/jehovah, who pretends to be three different gods, but is really one. His other name is Jealous (“[T]he LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” Exodus 34: 14)[yEAH, gO rEAD THE bIBLE -- hE rEALLY dOES sHOUT oUT hiS nAME lIKE tHAT]
**27 “So God created man …, male and female he created them…. 28 God … said to them … ‘Fill the earth and subdue it.’" Genesis 1: 27-28
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Thnx to clio girl for the foto
Who knows if we wouldn't have taken on another form of Yaj?
ReplyDeleteBut, if your question is "Would we now be facing global warming if we hadn't taken a very wrong turn back about 6000 years ago?", I think I'd be inclined to answer "No".
However, we did make that wrong turning, and now we are all supersaturated in the hierarchical, deadly-to-life culture.
The trick I'm trying to manage is to turn my own thinking around, conditioned as it is by thousands of years of life-threatening culture.
I hope to make some progress in the next 50 years or so.
Love,
Terri in Joburg
Yes, I think our planetary slide to eco-oblivion can be traced to Abraham. The WarGod picked him to father Judaism, christianity and Islam. The rest has been inevitable--unless and until we and Goddess turn this whole mess around.
ReplyDeleteHow'bout picking a day as Abraham's birthday and proclaiming it the "INTERNATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING"?
After all, ol' Abe elevated the '3 M's' to unheard of heights: Monotheism, Misogyny and Murder.
MONOTHEISM: "I am a jealous god". And forthwith started genociding Goddess people, of both genders, who revered nature in all its riotous, fecund abundance.
Consider the garden of eden creation myth, written by Abe's minions. It took place in an apple orchard! Not a wild river scape, nor a verdant savannah, nor a majestic, untrammeled forest---but a garden, a friggin' apple orchard. We are still slaves to this evil, controlling mentality.
MISOGYNY: Women-from-Adam's-rib myth. Again, written by Abe's scribes to elevate (homoerotic) men (in denial) and their horny, sexually frustrated god over women. And, to DENY BIOLOGY!: "without (the release of) testosterone all fetuses develop into females. Adam springs from Eve, not Eve from Adam." Quote from Carl W. Bushong, PhD, LMFT in his pamphlet, "What is Gender and Who is Transgendered."
Consider the impact of this amazing and perverted story on human civilization. And on all Earthly life. Just like Bush(let) got away with the war on Iraq, and so plans to do it again in Iran, Abraham's religion got away with reversing the WAY GODDESS CREATED HER WORLD, and so did it again by giving 'dominion' over all life to (male) humans. The predictable result of Abe and his god: the IPCC report of 4/6/07 that predicts "20-30% of all species will face irreversible extinction" by 2050 (or so) without dramatic global rollback of ghg's. Good job, Abe. You left no stone unturned, no smokestack or tailpipe fettered. But, I'm surprised it took you 6,000 years to get this close to the catastrophe you have craved since the deserts of Sinai.
MURDER: Let's leave Isaac alone, if we can. I have a special rant for that story. Abraham's god is not happy with mass murdering humans (see Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Afghanistan for some wars on the current list). He demands the blood of ALL creatures--see above. Why? Because he is an insecure, fucked-up god (who wants to worship a 'jealous' god, anyway?) who includes only humans as worthy in his world. And denies the rest of Goddess' sacred creation.
My own mantra: any religion that includes only humans is doomed, and dooming. See the IPCC report of 4/6/07 for conclusive evidence that we humans, under the WarGod, have become a lethal global disease--a scourge for every other species, except rats and cows.
And, so, it is clear that civilization's 6,000 year run with the profaning WarGod is coming to an end. Will the end be as some climatologists predict: ""...before this century is over, billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of humans that survive will be in the arctic region where the climate remains tolerable." THE REVENGE OF GAIA, by James Lovelock, 2005.
Or, will Goddess return and prevail, so that human creatures can embrace all creatures as sacred. And structure human life to venerate ALL life?
Whew!
I love the way our rants match, Athana.
Duff
Athana,
ReplyDeleteYou have written Religion, Global Warming and Ecological Crisis. Human species is the only species that has indulged in Overactivity - Exponential Overactivity on this planet. We are the only species which has destroyed all ecosystems. In this context I want to post a part from my article which examines the impact of Speed, Overstimulation, Consumerism and Industrialization on our Minds and Environment. Please read.
The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.
The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.
Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.
If there are no gaps there is no emotion.
Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.
When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.
There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.
People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.
Emotion ends.
Man becomes machine.
A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.
Fast visuals/ words make slow emotions extinct.
Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys emotional circuits.
A fast (large) society cannot feel pain / remorse / empathy.
A fast (large) society will always be cruel to Animals/ Trees/ Air/ Water/ Land and to Itself.
To read the complete article please follow any of these links :
FreeInfoSociety
ePhilosopher
sushil_yadav
Terri, you’re right – it’s not easy to buck all that poisonous conditioning most of us have inherited. Maybe we all need to hang huge pictures of the Great Cosmic Mother in our living rooms to remind us that we’re all totally equal in Her eyes. Big, little, squat or bean-pole thin, we’re all alike to Her. She adores us all. Which means we must adore all of us too – equally. No one any better than anyone else.
ReplyDeleteI’m in the process of collecting Great Guiding Goddess pictures for my book. Those Neolithic and Palaeolithic people are the best I sometimes think at getting the essence of the Divine Creator into a piece of mere clay or stone. She’s something more than human, otherworldly, strong but gentle, awesome and yet playful and sensual at the same time. I’m trying to decide which image captures her best (for my living room wall, that is).
Beautiful rant, Duff. It did my heart good to hear someone other than myself ranting and raving. Guess I’d better go to the Arctic to bury my Time Capsule stuffed with instructions on how to start the world over again. With of course a Great Guiding Goddess this time.
ReplyDeleteVery thought-provoking article, Sushil. Some good, meaty, new-thinking stuff in it. However, when I got to “Intelligence is the only cause of destruction in this world other than natural causes,” and “Life can never be good,” I had to stop and *mentally/emotionally* protest.
ReplyDeleteOf course life can be good! Just because it’s not good for most of us now doesn’t mean it didn’t used to be far, far better. And that we can’t get to “better” again. Life may not have been perfect before 3000 BC, but it had very little war, violence, social ranking, despotism, poverty and uptightness, and except for the medical issues it was a heck of a lot better than any of us have it today.
And there’s nothing wrong with human intelligence that some good intelligence can’t fix. Such as your ideas on slowing things down to get to healthier ways of thinking and feeling. Getting more physical movement into our lives. And, getting rid of rabid, moldy role models like the power-over gods (I don’t know what your religious background is, but I’d include all the Hindu power-over gods in this, too).
Lizz Duff: disagree about Eden. It's not an apple orchard, it had many kinds of plants and animals in it.
ReplyDeleteTo me Genesis is saying: People were hunter gatherers (Adam and Eve) then they left the forest (maybe actually cleared it or were driven out - it's not clear whose story this is - OT seems to be many different tribal legends muddled up). Next they took up farming (neolithic revolution), but mixed farming split into to arable farming and nomadic pastoralism, causing conflicts over land (Cain and Abel).
The story of Jacob and Esau comes later, but seems out of place, as it describes a conflict between Jacob the mixed farmer and Esau the hunter.
I'm puzzled about why Christians , Jews and Muslims bring Jehovah/Allah into this story