Book - Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

I have been completely absorbed by something very disturbing. I've been reading a book called, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. Here's the Prologue. I belong to a weekly Bookgroup composed of myself, my best friend, a retired pastor and two MFCCs (I forget who's the ...ologist and who's the ...iatrist, sorry guys). At Paul's request, we are reading this book. Now Paul and I differ in political tendencies, so at first I thought I was gonna have to have one of them give me a prescription of lithium just to get through this book. But it turns out (as it often does) that that would have dulled my instinct to solve problems. I have been poring and obsessing over two projects since starting this book.

• I emailed Dinesh D'Souza who's research and writing on economics I have respected and enjoyed and in a fit of pathetic confusion and sense of betrayal, wondered in print if he was an EHM and if not, what he was gonna do about this.
  
• I have nearly completed my design and Call for the formation of a local Christian Community that will concentrate on sustainable, productive living so as to bless the local community and beyond to the World.

Mr. D'Souza has been very gracious to accept my request that he look into this guy's story, but will have to put it off until he gets through some research that he's currently in the middle of. I will have to keep myself busy with other things while I wait so as not to panic and bug him even more. The sense of urgency I feel is overwhelming.

I'll write some stuff in my profile later about the Community thing, as it's quite lengthy and I want it to always be easily accessible. I really cannot stand the idea of American-Dreaming my life away while victims of our secret economic policies are starving and dying. I've told my daughter about my intention and asked for her thoughts. She's teasing me about starting a cult. Poor thing. It's hard being my daughter.

I'm thinking of trying some other things too but I'll have to think them through very carefully.

I'm anticipating some polemic wars about this, so let me be up front. I am politically Conservative. This book has not changed my mind about political loyalties because the problem transcends party politics. This problem transcends everything we normally think of as politics, period. In fact this is one of the biggest Principalities and Powers (see the "Connection to Faith" section in my review for "The Incredibles") I've ever seen. It is very much like one of those visual aids that Daniel was shown about Empires and Kingdoms. You know, the ones that made him so sick that he went to bed and ate nothing for days! Horrifying! The Monster is huge and gobbles up the right and the left and everyone in between. No one is immune. The stated goals for the Republican Party as condensed in "The Oath" are good ones and I agree with them. But they are only stated goals; and they, along with any other statements coming from any organization with it's fingers in the pie, are becoming empty and pointless. I am afraid for my Country and for the World and for my friends and for those who think they hate me because I'm an American. We're all being played in this deadly game.

Last Saturday, I attended my best friend's son's Eagle Scout Award ceremony. As I sat there and watched these men and boys talk about the ideals of The Boy Scouts and my friend's beautiful proclamation of how much they have blessed her throughout her life by being kind and respectful towards her as a girl, I messed up my mascara crying in agony over the incongruity of it all. Here's the list of what a Scout is:

Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent

And, of course, the Oath is something that everyone has heard and heard mocked:

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

The reason I've neglected posting about this until now is my raw state of anguish and concern that people will be put off if I sound like a freak about it. A month ago, I would have been put off if I was reading this. If I sound like a cliché, I'm so sorry. All I can do is hope you trust me when I say that I am no cliché, and never have been. Nor will I ever be.

Now I must attend to family concerns which have been rudely put aside...

A Useful Reference

I've been far too busy lately trying to establish my ground and not enough time using that ground to do my work. If a farmer waits too long to plant his seed, he may miss an entire season. So here I am.

I've been trying to figure out how to put a blogroll on this thing, but I think I have to go outside of blogger to do it. I don't feel confident enough to mess with that just yet, so I've decided to make a post listing as many of the blogs that I read as I can remember. I'll make that a separate entry so that it can stand alone and not have all this intro junk on it.

For now, I'd like to pass on some interesting info that I came across the other day. It happened on the way to trying to find a definition for "onanism" because I'm working on a big thing about The Matrix that I'd like to open up to the world eventually. Yeah, I had to look up that word. I had no clue. I heard Ghost say it in the computer game clip section on the Ultimate dvd collection thing that I got. I thought it was some mystery religion. Maybe it is in a way... I'm a dork. So, while I was figuring out how to spell it correctly (how humiliating), I stumbled upon this link:

The Skeptics Annotated Bible

It fascinated me how much effort (and bandwidth) these people were putting into denying the validity of the Bible. But that aside, I made note of the list of issues on the right side of the page which they deemed important enough to give icons to and categorize their objections under. This list is very informative.

Before anyone goes off half-cocked and says that's the list we need to root out their weaknesses and debate them on... lets take a moment to contemplate the fact that the Church has not done enough to remove the need for such a list...

Some of the items on the list are purely reactionary such as: "Family Values", "Cruelty and violence", "Sex" and "Language". Those identify the things that we typically complain about in secular society, but have not lived out, thought out or at least articulated clearly enough to help people understand what God is after, so they feel the need to call attention to our hypocrisy. Good call. Since Hollywood Jesus itself focuses on mass market entertainment and said entertainment is a major concern for Christians for the reasons listed here, I think we need to look hard and long at this and try and figure out why we're not being understood correctly.

And then there are the 20th Century Civil Rights issues which created the need for proactive interest groups such as: "Injustice", "Intolerance", "Women" and "Homosexuality". Those, ironically, reflect the standards of relating as human beings being raised in the secular arena, while the quality gap widens between that world and the Church. The Church is certainly in upheaval about the morality issues and bringing all the science, psychology, philosophy and hermeneutic to bear on it as it can, but rarely does it make it's stance on how to behave lovingly very clear. This is a thorn in their side.

[Sidebar:]
Read a rippin' great book on this issue recently called, "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis" by William J. Webb. Every Christian should read the Forward and pages 13-66. The rest is for egg-heads. I wish that section were printed separately as a kind of tract for people in the church, with a web-address to the rest tacked on at the end. So few people who attend church actually understand the subtleties of interpretation and application and it's impact. Nor do many realize how flexible we can be and still maintain orthodoxy. It's so important.

[Back to the list of issues:]
The issues I have the least appetite to deal with are the Reason and Logic ones such as: "Absurdity", "Contradictions", "Prophecy" and "Science and History". This stuff irritates me to no end because as I've been discussing with some others lately about the Bible, the rules of debate are corrupted and they provide a place for people without understanding to hide their willful refusal to understand. I am sick to death of hidden agendas and want everyone to put their cards on the table so we can get real. I feel too easily provoked about that and so dislike discussing these issues. I guess what I'm saying is that the Skepticism has become (like what the Church used to be and sometimes still is...) the New Intellectual Oppressor, Dominating World View and Controlling Meta-Narrative and I'm waiting for them to stop being hypocrites before I engage them. Blah-blah-blah. Talk to the hand.

What's left? "Good Stuff" and "Interpretation". Now this is something that interests me! Not just because I like to be told I'm right (because that's not what they're doing here anyway), but that it signals someone who is approachable. Ignoring "good" points and acknowledging only "bad" points is a sign of blind-spots and a lack of willingness. And the Interpretation issue signals the acknowledgment of one of my favorite issues. How do we know that we know what we think we know? Epistemology. If I could, I'd eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If the difference of Biblical interpretation is acknowledged, then it's safe to question all perception and interpretation. Ri-i-i-ight?!?

What a wonderful place to start! So I'm hoping to keep these catagories in mind as I write in the future, always being sensitive to what kinds of things they think are important and how Jesus might address those concerns. I am certain that He would as He intended His News to be Good for all.

Interesting related tid-bit. I read something this morning on Planet Emergent that struck me as pleasently jolting. Instead of calling people who don't believe in Jesus "The Lost" or "Unbelievers" or "Heathen" or "Pagans" or other such marginalizing terms, I saw someone refer to them as "The Missing". Imediately I got a picture in my head of someone on the side of a milk carton with the little frame around their face and the blurb requesting information, offering a reward, and a phone number. Someone loved and missed and agonized over. Fan-freaking-tastic. I'm always on the look out for new terminology that doesn't carry all the gunked up baggage that has been added to it over the centuries since Jesus walked the earth. Anything that is helpful. Anything inclusive and loving. Lewis did the same with analogies. If it doesn't work for you, forget it and move to another one.

Post Script:
I used Outlook Express to do my spell-checking and I just had to "add" the word onanism to the dictionary. Now I don't feel so dumb.

The Wave

I hate the media.

I feel so provoked when they do things like this. I get really nasty when I get this provoked. I cuss. I think things like, "They should all be lined up and have 'SOCIAL DISEASE' branded on their foreheads." Sometimes I say these things out loud. I'm not proud, I'm just practicing self-judgment so that others don't have to do it for me.

I should know better than to write when I'm so provoked. I should have to go through a mandatory waiting period before brandishing this weapon. And so I have. It's been over 24 hours since I read the blurb on Jason Clark. I feel as if I have calmed down a bit. I read the Archbishop's article in full, N.T. Wright's as well, and all the comments in Jason's Blog. I believe that I am now ready to begin to say something worth reading instead of just disjointed and inferior yet witty versions of what the Big Boys have already said. I feel purged now.

The Earthquake and Wave in Asia has been haunting me ever since my boyfriend told me about it and I considered my Name and mascot Hokusai picture. I felt fear and shame and anxiety about it. My voice. Where is my voice? I feel as if my Name has killed millions of people. Silly, I know. But since there is so much meaning for me in my Name, I feel an intense connection to the actual thing itself. My Name has not degenerated into a complete simulation yet. So while I am hurting about this, I am also relieved to know that there is still alot of meaning in the world.

There is immeasurable amounts of pressure on Religious people to make explanatory and/or comforting noises at times like this. All eyes turn upon us, shooting daggers of accusation and awaiting the cue to pounce upon our inadequate efforts. No one can say anything good enough. There is no right thing to say. I've been to funerals where one persons comforting thought is another person's crushingly oppressive thought. It just doesn't matter what you say, deep Grief is by nature inconsolable.

The human being expects satisfaction from a God at times of crushing loss. Why? Is it the inescapable sense of injustice that makes us seek the final source of Justice? "No one else will make someone pay for this, I have to appeal to a Higher Court!" And since there really is no one to blame, then the Judge should pay. I've seen this kind of dynamic happen in famous court cases. The victim rages at the Judge when Justice fails to follow through with satisfaction.

What is satisfaction? Really. It doesn't matter when one's emotions are ramming through your chest seeking to bludgeon something, someone. Emotions cannot consider these reasoning thoughts.

Why? What is this drive, this instinct? If there is no Justice, why do we seek it with such primitive force? Do animals do this? After the cubs are killed, the urge to protect dissolves into simple sorrow. But they don't go running to Mufasa to get him to make someone pay. They just get over it.

I'm sure there are several undergrads working on this problem in their evolutionary anthropology labs right now, so expect their postulations to be published at a later date. They will probably begin by saying something like, "Scientists have discovered..." If they wear white coats, we will believe them.

But will we be satisfied? Are those two things the same? Belief and satisfaction?

Personally, I believe in Demons. I believe in the Prince of Demons. And I believe that he is ultimately responsible for the origins of destruction and suffering. People don't like this idea very much, though. It delays gratification. It spiritualizes it and disassociates it for some, when what they really want is a concrete enemy. But I believe that's his trick. He is better off staying out of the realm of the visual and the physical because it keeps our wrath directed upon each other, which has been his plan all along. So like the bullfighter, he dodges our horns by providing us with a decoy. He taunts us and mocks our primitive drive for vengeance and shows us pictures of one another or of God. That's his M.O. And so we rage.

But this is just more explanatory noises coming from a Religious person. It does not satisfy. In all honesty, I believe that satisfaction will not come in this life. Not real satisfaction. The satisfaction that our guts tell us exists somewhere. We want it now. And it will not come.

Along with Mr. Williams and Mr. Wright and other wise Believers, I will hold a space open for inconsolable Grief. I will fight for our right to suffer. I will not attempt to close it down with explanations or minimizing or denial or platitudes or hostility or defensiveness or any of the other things which people do to resist this all consuming Wave of Rage and it's irresistible undertow of Survivor's Guilt which takes the rest of us who were left behind.

My next review will be "A Series of Unfortunate Events". Go figure.