#belief-systems

[thepersonalwords]

Whatever you believe is true is true even if it is not true

Saji Ijiyemi

[locusnegotium]

Reminder to pick out inconsistencies from *within* the belief-system, “for argument’s sake,” otherwise any claims from an outside perspective just deviate from the main subject. (E.G., if Person A is arguing the semantics of a hypothetical alien-invasion, and Person B chimes in with, “Well, aliens aren’t real, so nothing you say about them matters, actually,” then nothing has been contributed.) 

[timegeist]

Lots of Caliphates

That old rascal Mao Tse Tung once made the observation that “in every political situation there is one, and only one, principal contradiction. All other contradictions are secondary, and derived from the principal contradiction.”

A Caliphate is an empire of intolerant beliefs.

An intolerant belief-system is a practice of mind that distracts us from our unresolved trauma imprints.

An unresolved trauma imprint is an experience, or series of experiences, that overwhelms our natural survival mechanisms and leads us to the fear that we might possibly not exist at all.

So, such a belief-system must be defended at all costs. Any threats to it will produce blind rage against the perceived source of such a threat. One important such source is, of course, any belief-system different from our own.

In today’s world there are lots of Caliphates.

The Mother of All Caliphates is the Sunni Caliphate called ISIS.

The history of Islam is of course the history of sectarian hatred. But do not blame Islam, because the history of Christianity is also a history of sectarian hatreds. These came to a head in The Thirty Years War (1618-1648), which ended with the Treaty of Westphalia, in which secularism was invented. The clergy was disenfranchised and belief-systems were handed over to secular authorities.

Religion itself is a sedative for unresolved trauma imprints. When trauma is healed, human beings can access their transcendent destiny by themselves. The Buddhist saying is: “When you realize that everything is just a flashing into the vast universe, then you become very strong and you existence becomes very meaningful.” But this realization requires introspection, and introspection is impossible for the unhealed traumatized.

But besides the Sunni Caliphate of ISIS, there are other intolerant Islamic belief-systems.

We have the Wahabi Caliphate of the Saudis, and the Shia caliphate of Bashar al Assad. The Alawites of Syria and the Houthis of Yemen are both Shia hill-peoples suppressed for centuries by their Sunni neighbors. So, they have reacted with Caliphates of their own.

Then, scattered around the Western world there are numerous little caliphates, little empires of privilege and intolerance.

Some of them are religious and some of them are secular. On the religious side we have the Christian intolerance of homosexuality, even though homosexuality is the work of nature, and nature, if you please, is the work of God. Then there is the little Catholic Caliphate of intolerance of contraception. I call it the Hobby Lobby Caliphate, or the Little Sisters of the Poor Caliphate: “If you work for me, you cannot practice birth control, no matter what you believe.”

This is odd, because the original American political arrangement said, “You can believe anything, but you can impose nothing on others. Religion is private.” But little Catholic Antonin Scalia managed to circumvent that. He was afraid we would all go to hell, a place whose very zip code is known to him.

On the secular side we have The Freedom Caucus Caliphate: “Govern according to my beliefs, or I will not let you govern at all.”

We have the Wall Street Caliphate: “Leave me alone, or I will impoverish you.”

We have the Google-Apple-Microsoft Caliphate, also known as San Francisco 2.0: “Unless you have a million dollars, you cannot live in My Town.”

We have to Donald Trump Caliphate:  “Send all of them back to Mexico, and build a very big wall.” (It sounds like the Berlin Wall, which was built by the Soviet Caliphate.)

We have Vladimir Putin’s New Greater Russia Caliphate, intolerant of homosexuals, and natural ally of Bashar al Assad’s Alawite Caliphate.

Ah, the war of all against all, in which everybody is working for the Common Good.

At least in America, we still have the option of the ballot box. Do not vote for Caliphates.