Civilization is a function of creative individuals -- not rules, "holy books", politics, or laws.

[wcepler]

Individual creativity is all.

All religions go back to an individual life. No exceptions. Only later do institutional religions feed on that unique life like bacteria on a wound. Theologians (mostly old men in dresses) invent ways to standardize the quantum jump intuitions of the original individual life into intellectualized "game rules" (all religions are mostly convoluted conceptual/games), and the transcendent experiences and breakthroughs of out of the box creativity are systematically buried alive.

The history of civilization (or the lack of it) is not kept alive by arrogant holy books and crystallized social game rules, but IN SPITE OF THEM.

How else has less than one percent of the human race (greed vampire elites) managed to suffocate and subjugate the all the rest of us? Said differently, how have the "Haves" been able to blatantly enslave the entire human race (the Have Not's, the middle and lower classes, etc.) from the beginning of recorded history?

It's for the same reason that you stay in a toxic marriage, or never break free from a dysfunctional family, or blubber your lips in a religious cult. And it's for exactly the same reason that you turn to "establishment politics" to transform a world in which parasitical international elites live like literal Greek Gods.

And the reason is because WE CHOOSE conditioning and authority over our own birthright intuitions, intelligence, and creativity.

This is so simple. So long as we the play the game of life (which certainly isn't a "game") with disempowering and castrating rules, laws, and religious "commandments", we will to that precise degree be obedient androids. Certainly, pragmatic conditioning can be highly useful and appropriate, but you don't stay in toxic marriages or deify elite dictated politics because of pragmatic conditioning.

Indeed, the "rules" version of life was elaborately and consciously invented by astronomically rich people to program the human race to have only game/social identities, because to the that precise degree they have been weaned away from their own innate creativity, intelligence, and courage.

However, human beings are INDIVIDUALS, not members of a set. In the dog/tail analogy humans nearly always identify with the tail. Well then, who/what is the dog? That's easy. It's that straight jacket of rules, laws, and social authority which is a Dictatorship of the Rich, i.e., basically all countries, past and present -- very much including the United States of America.

The tragedy is that we have so willingly and passively accepted this straight jacket version of human existence.

But civilization, at least at its best, is growth and creativity. It's that legacy of a tiny percentage of human beings who quantum jump out of the box of hammering conditioning.

The deep dynamic of human history is that of individual creativity and their magnificent worldly manifestations, e.g., the American Constitution, the music of Bach, quantum mechanics, St Francis of Assisi, the self portraits of Rembrandt, and even knowing how to make a great pair of boots, etc., etc., are so marvelous and pregnant with wisdom, kindness, and sanity, that they manage to just barely hold at bay what we might call the Freudian "Id" (limitless, subhuman, cruelty, greed, and violence).

We should be very, very clear that elite/establishment politics (our ONE party dem/pug system) is all of a piece with the Bush/neocon/fascist Heart of Darkness. These pathetic and meaningless political parties are part of the problem, not the solution. This is now apparent to barnyard animals.

IF (and, alas, "if" is the word), civilization and the planetary ecosystem survive this eight year blood sucking orgy of the vampire rich, which is literally and VERY rapidly killing not only the American Republic, but Mother Nature as well, it will be because a tiny collection of individuals (fewer in number even than the elites) are and have been for millennia fighting the good fight with awesome risk taking and individual creativity.

Conversely, what will NEVER save civilization and the planet is implicit and repetitious social conditioning, elaborately constructed by fascist/elites to transform Homo sapiens into insect-brained puppets.

Civilization or the human “Id”. Freud knew all about this and he wasn't hopeful.

At least civilization is a ball which history and evolution are still juggling, but it will almost certainly survive only with a dramatic increase of creative individuals, because the challenge of avoiding human extinction does not now and never will have a "social/political solution". As an ancient Zen Master once put it: "You don't wipe off blood with blood."

We're born alone; we die alone; and we must rise to the challenge of saving civilization and the Earth alone. Creativity doesn't come from a political committee. It comes from that place which has been described as "being alone with the beating of my heart." Relationships can be good, bad, or otherwise, but they have nothing to do with individual creativity.

Pick your phrase of choice: Heart of Darkness, the anti-Christ, international vampire elites, the resurrected Nazi Party, the Bush & Cheney Royal Families, murder-in-the-name-of-God religious fanatics, Republicans, or the Freudian Id, but the only reality which can restrain this unimaginable evil (much like the force field around nuclear fusion) are conditioning-transcending creative individuals.

More specifically, it all comes back to transcending fascist/elite and religious fanaticism brain washing and as Sir Gawain put it in one of the sublime 12th Century Holy Grail legends: "We must seek the Grail (transcendence) by going into the forest alone, not as a group, where it is darkest, and where there is no path." The English poet, T. S. Elliot, implied in his wonderful poem, "The Wasteland", that NOT to do this is to reduce the human condition to a land of inauthenticity and soul death.

Sound familiar?
*********************************************************************
W. Christopher Epler (Bill)

<http://theliberationofrealism.blogspot.com/>

[Oak2004]

1. And those individuals who create "stand on the shoulders of giants"

meaning they are a part of a community and civilization and have synthesized their ideas, not out of thin air, but from the ocean of ideas generated by their fellow community members.

It has happened numerous times in science and engineering that a new theory or invention is discovered simultaneously by two independent researchers. This isn't all that surprising when you consider that researchers around the globe, since the time of the invention of the printing press, and even before then in some instances, are working from a shared set of data, a shared set of scientific theories, a shared set of mathematical and physical tools, and a shared set of unanswered questions to be resolved.

No religions truly go back to a single individual. Every one of the major religions of today are rooted in preexisting religious traditions only marginally different from the "new" religion. Christianity merged Judaism with elements of the prevailing "Mystery Cults". Islam is a synthesis of Judeo-Christian ideas (including those of some "heretical" sects) and the prevailing pagan practices. Buddhism is a philosophical tweak on raja yoga. Judaism is an ancient tribal religion that likely came under the influence of Egyptian monotheism. Hinduism is similarly a highly developed indigenous paganism, one which likely merged the Gods of multiple tribes into one overarching system. None of them came out of nowhere as the work of one man in isolation. Every last one of them emerged from the existing culture.

I know I've mentioned to you before that I am a mystic, and have students. If I were to delude myself that I was an exceptional individual, I could try to manufacture a new "one true religion". But I'm rooted in my culture. I teach a liberal (as in "influenced by the enlightenment", not necessarily as in "going to vote for Kucinich"), modern Western mysticism, not because I've got some unique revelation, but because that's what you'll get in 21st century Western culture. I'm just one more piece in a recognizable cultural trend. If a new religion emerges from our culture, it will emerge from the collective insights and knowledge and needs of the culture, and not from any mythic Great Man who might be subsequently credited with its founding.

People seem to support the status quo for multiple reasons, the primary among them being fear. Standing alone as a rebel will get you squashed. In the absence of a credible organized resistance, people aware of the raw deal they get nonetheless sensibly lay low. Others can't quite grasp the facts of their situation because of widespread Stockholm Syndrome -- fear has led them to identify with their oppressors.

A secondary reason is simply not knowing what to do. Writing letters does not seem to do much, and molotov cocktails in the streets invites a good squashing. Organizing a monthly general strike, as is being discussed by some persons, might begin to do something, but then, that comes back to organizing people and building the structures and tools a community can use to right injustice and oppression.

Build a way to lift fear and empower a community. Organize. Aid others in emerging from their isolation, and bring them together. Then, you will see rebels.

[bemildred]

3. Well said.

This is almost like the Ayn Rand discussions. The individual vs the herd. It is a false dichotomy, society needs its creative individuals, and creative individuals cannot do without the culture they occur in, and sometimes step outside of. And stepping outside the box, really outside the box, is risky business. Einstein didn't live as a hermit, he taught at Princeton. You have to have your wits about you. Guys that really kicked over the traces, like Van Gogh, Baudelaire, Sade, Gauguin paid a price. Picasso could paint a very realistic cow, if he wanted to.

And there is always the chance you are just nuts.

[Demeter]

2. Society, or Civilization, Comes Out of Group Consensus

Change comes from individuals. We need both. If society is sick, then individuals will be destroyed. If individuals are sick, a healthy society can nurture, support, maybe even cure them.

In our case, we have a sick society that has a heavy load of sick people, people who have been damaged by that sick society, by abusive and destructive corporations, by war. Not a good place to be.

It's going to take a lot of work on all fronts to try to repair both the society and its injured simultaneously. We can't just wait for Darwinian socialism to do it. People don't die off that quickly, and their suffering increases all problems.
\
\And the crap that passes for religion these days is just another fraud and abuse engine.