Mike Ruppert: God on the Table

[GliderGuider]

GOD ON THE TABLE

November 1, 2010 – Arguably, the cause of the collapse of human industrial civilization has been a fundamental disconnect in consciousness that has led humankind to tell itself that it is exempt from the laws of physics and nature – that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet. That certainly defines the issue in terms of our survival because nothing less would permit continued expansion of human population and resource consumption.

Mankind is essentially expecting (or demanding) that technology overturn the laws of physics, chemistry and especially thermodynamics/energy. By definition, anything that can overturn natural laws is God. Under this construct, technology is, in fact, a religion. I think its, perhaps unwilling, “messiah” was René Descartes – the guy who said that empirical knowledge was the supreme knowledge (another disconnect) and therefore, by implication and application, the God of Knowing. This was a perfect mate for an infinite growth monetary paradigm and we are just awakening to the fact that its actual imperative is to kill us and all life on the planet.

Today we are awash in technology… and we are also dying. We are, in fact, killing ourselves with it. We make better weapons. We make better devices that require the extraction and consumption of more raw materials and then require us to throw away the energy and resources in old ones. We poison ourselves and our environment with chemicals and then we turn to chemistry to create drugs (using a lot of oil and energy) to imperfectly cure the diseases we ourselves created.

Having recognized that technology is essentially a religion we can also – without great emotional charge – say that technology can be judged as a religion to be either a success or failure; either outcome being measured by whether it adds to the health, longevity and survival of our species or hinders it.

I think the same tests are beginning to be applied to all religions. Soon they will be applied with a fury.

DOMINION -- THE FUNDAMENTAL DISCONNECT

An essential component of all of western (Abrahamic) religions is the theme of man’s “dominion” over the earth. That is the disconnect which is killing us. All other life obeys physical laws. In fact our so-called dominion depends on that. But we have believed, justified and acted as though we were exempt simply because we are “man”. This is a distinct difference between western religions and “eastern” religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism which loosely place man as an integral part of – but not supreme – in a spiritual universe. If however, we consider the Church of Infinite Growth – as expressed through fiat currency, fractional reserve banking and compound interest – we see that Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist faiths have, by (to one degree or another) encouraging detachment from or acquiescence to the material world, not prevented their adherents from suffering the same fate as we Westerners. We’re all going down more or less together and no religion anywhere has spared its adherents from what’s taking place. While western religions preached the unsustainable and the impossible, eastern religions have acquiesced to infinite growth saying essentially that the spiritual world is more important and the physical realm can be discounted. -- So much for those belief systems. The Abrahamic religions offer the ultimate bailout if the books aren’t balanced here -- there’s always the Afterlife.

More at the link

The idea of science and technology as the post-modern "religion of salvation" with Ray Kurzweil's "transhuman singularity" playing the role of the Rapture and economics making a cameo appearance as as the Devil resonates quite strongly with me.

So if religion doesn't cut it, and science is in some sense a religion (I know - objective evidence, matter and energy, scientific method, observable phenomena, yadda yadda, got it), what's left of any true human value? For me it's the simple fact of existence. No belief required, just the experience of living.

[villager]

1. sadly, not surprised to see this unrec'd here... as for the counter-weights

...to our voracious new religion of technology, you mention experience -- as in Being Here Now, fully present?

That, I think, is the challenge.

Who are we, really, away from our machines?

[GliderGuider]

4. Yes, that's my preference these days.

Who are we really - away not just from our machines and our outer constructions, but also away from our inner machinery and our constructed sense of self?

[villager]

17. That, I think, is "the work" for all of us....

Especially as more and more of those external-- what? "reifiers?" get stripped from us in the coming implosion...

[darkstar3]

2. So you have chosen ignorance.

If the simple experience of living is all you believe this world has to offer, if you would go so far out of your way to relegate science into the same box as religion, then you have given up all formal inquiry. You have thrown up your hands and refused to even guess at the question of "Why?". How tedious.

[GliderGuider]

5. It's not that I've stopped asking "Why?"

But that I've started asking it about different things.

And to be a little more precise, it's not exactly science that has failed us, but a toxic stew of economics, technological cleverness, an attitude of Manifest Destiny and an unwillingness to accept limits in anything we do.

[Jim__]

3. With respect to: "...technology can be judged ... to be either a success or failure"

More specifically, the claim: ... technology can be judged as a religion to be either a success or failure; either outcome being measured by whether it adds to the health, longevity and survival of our species or hinders it.

Who can judge it? How do we know if technology has added to the longevity of the species? Certainly, if it leads to the death of the species, we won't be around to make any judgement.

And, of course, with respect to: All other life obeys physical laws. So do we. And, like all other life, we are largely ignorant of those physical laws. Physical laws apparently led to the birth of a rational, conscious species. Can we say with any certainty that if we wipe ourselves out, this is not merely physical law?

The real question is, can our consciousness lead us to act outside of our nature? I think our nature leads to the ultimate death of our species. But, if it does, that's just physical law. Does consciousness change anything?

[GliderGuider]

6. Does consciousness change anything?

Not really. But it sure makes getting from here to extinction (personal or species) a lot more interesting.

[Raksha]

7. I can't imagine why anyone at DU would un-rec anything by Mike Ruppert,

but I'm more than happy to recommend it, and I see I'm not alone.

[skepticscott]

8. "By definition

anything that can overturn natural laws is God. Under this construct, technology is, in fact, a religion." WTFFFFF?? Why do so many religionistas and apologists have this deep-seeded need to brand science, technology and atheism as "religions"? Do they think that by doing so, the people who respect those things won't be so likely to criticize things that really ARE religions?

And does the thinking of these people never go deep enough to realize that "natural laws" cannot be broken or overturned (even by "God"), because if they could, they wouldn't have been "laws" in the first place? Even leaving all that aside, his statement is just silly hyperbole, ginned up to give him a lead-in to the point he wants desperately to be true. It would be more honest and accurate to say that people simply have unreasonable expectations of science and technology, based on a fundamental ignorance about what is possible. Nobody in real life is thinking about it in such grandiose terms as actually overturning the laws of chemistry, physics and thermodynamics.

[trotsky]

9. +1000

You win the thread. Overturn natural laws. Pbbbbt. Philosophical wanna-bes want SO DESPERATELY for science to be "just another religion" because they've had absolutely no success attacking it and its results otherwise.

[GliderGuider]

11. I think it's more the fault of the economists than the scientists.

Plus people seem to have a natural ability to delude themselves into believing that whatever they wish for hard enough is possible. Kind of like clapping for Tinkerbell. "The future is axiomatically going to be better than the past" is such magical thinking at its finest.

Technology brings concrete human desires of all kinds into the scientific sphere, so I don't think technological cleverness is as blameless as "science".

Human self-awareness is the root of our sense of separation from the natural world (and from each other, for that matter) and as such it's both our greatest glory and our fatal flaw.

[trotsky]

12. Science and technology are the opposite of wishing for something.

They are employing our very human tools of observation and reason to use (not break) the laws of nature for our benefit. There's no magic or wishing in science, just hard work. If you have a problem with that, perhaps you need to unplug your computer, turn off any heating or cooling appliances, and be sure NOT to even light a fire. Goodness, even the "invention" of fire is an expression of separation from the natural world. We are commanding flame to appear where it otherwise naturally would not.

[GliderGuider]

19. The wishing doesn't come from the science

The wishing comes in when we harness scientific knowledge to human ends via technology. We outcomes we choose to implement are based on our wishes. If our wish is dominion, we will use to scientific principles invent technology like mining machinery, continental energy grids, nuclear weapons and the automobile.

Now, each of those inventions is presented within our cultural narrative as an obvious, irrefutable boon. Of course, one of the points of having a cultural narrative is to put a positive spin on all human activity and provide a preferred interpretation of it that’s in line with the wishes of those who create and sustain the narrative. The fact that these inventions, the technological expressions of science, have a subtext of dominion over nature (and even if that fact is noticed, that it’s a bad thing) is carefully camouflaged.

I agree that the invention of fire was evidence of our separation from the natural world. That’s why I called the self-awareness that allowed us to invent fire our greatest glory as well as our fatal flaw - it's the inherent paradox of the human condition. We may choose to look closely only at the glory, but that doesn’t make the complementary flaw vanish.

[trotsky]

20. The classic equivocation gambit.

You're using two different definitions of the word "wish," changing between them as it suits you without regard to the varying meanings.

Still waiting for you to unplug your computer and go live on a rock.

[GliderGuider]

21. I don't see them as two different meanings

I see them as two points on a continuum. On one end is simple desire, on the other end is unreasonable desire. They are distinguished less by any intrinsic difference than by the attitude and realism of the one doing the wishing. It can be very difficult to tell when the reasonable morphs into the unreasonable. "I wish to own a small piece of land," becomes "I wish to own an entire island," which inflates into "I wish to claim a continent for my King," that eventually becomes "I wish to rule the world." I claim that the underlying desire is the same, it's just the scale and reasonableness of the wish that changes.

Whether or not a wish is realistic or deluded depends very much on the circumstances and knowledge of the wisher. There are people who wish for our (and by corollary, their own) material wealth to continue growing forever. There is no shortage of economists who will tell them that such a strange thing is possible. Are they deluded? Are the economists deluded? What laws of nature need to be violated for such a delusion to become reality? How is the worship of the Charging Bull of Wall street functionally different from worshiping the Golden Calf of the Bible, when both imply a violation of the laws of nature?

[trotsky]

23. Of course you don't.

Confusing two separate meanings is crucial to the muddled point you're trying to make.

Besides, you've already admitted there's no point in taking anything you say at face value.

[skepticscott]

13. The fact that people rely on something

to a ridiculously unreasonable extent does not mean that it's a religion, despite the fact that many people rely on religions and gods to a ridiculously unreasonable extent. It just means that people are stupid.

[laconicsax]

10. Who cares what happens in reality?

People who make their living pondering the intricacies of fantasy certainly don't.

[dimbear]

14. Quite the elogium of the Hindu world with its detachment from

the need for, oh, say, plumbing. Are we setting this up as an aspirational goal?

[struggle4progress]

15. I wasted years of my life trying to understand environmental issues as philosophical problems

They're not philosophical problems: they are material problems, grossly compounded by our modern political and economic culture

Philosophical analysis cannot address the problems, because almost everyone tailors his/her personal philosophy to justify his/her own personal behavior, and that behavior is largely determined by the political and economic context in which people live and work

[GliderGuider]

16. Interesting. I've gone in exactly the opposite direction

I wasted many years of my life (almost 50 of them) trying to understand environmental problems as material problems. When I viewed them in those terms, the fact that they even existed in a rational, scientific culture seemed nonsensical. However, when I recently began to understand them as consequences of a rupture in the human spirit they finally began to make sense to me. Yes, they are compounded by the political and economic context, but in my view even politics and economics are simply consequences of the same qualities of the human psyche.

When I began to view the situation like this, I was able to see that there are in fact solutions, where none had previously been visible. These solutions don't attack the problem directly as a material/political/economic problem, but seek to effect change as a consequence of letting people mature into an inter-connected adulthood and assume personal responsibility for their actions. This follows Gandhi's dictum, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

In that sense, the solution is not material, political, economic, or philosophical. It's orthogonal to all those domains.

[Odin2005]

18. unrec.

[DeSwiss]

22. Excellent! n/t

[GliderGuider]

24. Thanks to everyone who helped out on this thread

Special thanks are due to trotsky, darkstar3 and struggle4progress. With your help I've been able to organize my thoughts on this topic into a longer piece that is going up on an environmental blog and has already been posted to my own web site here: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Enough.html

I really enjoy having contrary opinions to work against. Thanks again!

[robertpaulsen]

25. If Technology is a religion & Infinite Growth a church & Oil is God...

Then that would make Nuclear Fusion the Messiah.

Thanks for posting this, GliderGuider. I had written a blog post back in September that referenced Michael Ruppert's spiritual views, but my perspective went whirled around the pop culture blender. I'll post it here later.

[DeSwiss]

26. Your post reminded me of something of Joe Bageant's I recently read:

Algorithms and Red Wine

...

"But the truth is that each gallon of fossil fuel contains the energy of 40 man-hours. And that has played hell with the ecology of human work, thanks mostly to the money economy. For instance, a simple loaf of bread, starting with the fossil fuels used to grow the wheat, transport, mill, bake, create the packaging materials and packaging, advertise and distribute it, uses the energy of two men working for two weeks. Yet this waste and vast inefficiency is invisible to us because we see it only in terms of money, jobs and commerce. Cheap oil allowed industrial humans to increasingly live on environmental credit for over a century. Now the bill is due and no amount of money can pay it. The calorie, pure heat expenditure as energy, is the only currency in which Mother Nature trades. Period.

Despite that America produced such thinkers on the subject of living simply as Thoreau, modern hydrocarbon based civilization has driven expectations of material goods and convenience, and the transactions surrounding those expectations, through the stratosphere. Money has abstracted the notion of work to the point where, I dare say, there are not 100,000 people in America who truly understand that, although there are at least a few million trying to understand and liberate themselves.

...

When viewed from outside the virtual money economy, and from the standpoint of the planet’s caloric economy, probably half of American and European jobs are not only unnecessary, but also terribly destructive, either directly or indirectly. Yet what nation or economic state acknowledges the need for a transition away from jobs that aren't necessary. None, because such an economy could not support the war machines or the transactional financial industries that dominate our needs hierarchy for the benefit of the few. Loaning us money we have already earned, stuffing us with corn syrup. And I won’t even go into the strong possibility that everybody does not need to be employed at all times for the world to keep on turning."

~ http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/10/algorithms.html">Joe Bageant, "Algorithms and Red Wine"

[klatu]

27. A bailout..........!

"The Abrahamic religions offer the ultimate bailout if the books aren’t balanced here -- there’s always the Afterlife."

That 'after life' may have been misinterpreted by theology for the last two thousand years. A new interpretation of the moral teaching of Christ is spreading on the web, and may very well offer a real bailout for the here and now, just when we need it most! Quoting from an online review:

"Using a synthesis of scriptural material drawn from the Old and New Testaments, the Apocrypha , The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Nag Hammadi Library, and some of the world's great poetry, as in the beginning, it describes and teaches a single moral Law, a single moral principle, a single test of faith, and delivers on the Promise of its own proof; one in which the reality and will of God responds directly to an act of perfect faith with a demonstration of his omnipotence, an individual intervention into the natural world, 'raising' up the man, correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries. Intended to be understood metaphorically, where 'death' and darkness are ignorance and 'Life' and light are knowledge,  this personal experience of omnipotent transcendent power and moral purpose is our 'Resurrection', and justification for faith. From here, on a perfectly objective foundation of moral principle, conduct and virtue, true morality and 'Life' begins."

"The first ever viable religious conception capable of leading reason, by faith, to observable consequences which can be tested and judged is now a reality. A teaching that delivers the first ever religious claim of insight into the human condition that meets the Enlightenment criteria of verifiable, direct cause and effect, evidence based truth embodied in experience. For the first time in history, however unexpected, the world must contend with a claim to new revealed truth, a moral wisdom not of human intellectual origin, offering access by faith, to absolute proof, an objective basis for moral principle and a fully rational and justifiable belief!" 

"This is 'religion' without any of the conventional embellished trappings of tradition. An individual, spiritual/virtue/ethical conception, independent of all cultural perception; contained within a single moral command and single Law that finds it's expression of obedience within a new covenant of marriage. It requires no institutional framework or hierarchy, churches or priest craft, no scholastic theological rational, dogma or doctrine, no ones permission and stripped of all theological myth, ‘worship’ requires only conviction, faith and the necessary measure of self discipline to accomplish a new, single, moral, categorical imperative and the integrity and fidelity to the new Divinely created reality."

"If confirmed and there appears a growing concerted effort to test and authenticate this material, this will represent a paradigm change in the nature of faith and in the moral and intellectual potential of human nature itself;  untangling the greatest  questions of human existence: sustainability, consciousness, meaning, suffering, free will and evil. And at the same time addressing the most profound problems of our age."

"Trials of this new teaching are open to all and under way in many countries, colloquial evidence already suggest confirmations have and are taking place. For those individuals who can shake off their existing prejudices, imagine outside the cultural box of history, stand against the stream of fashionable thought and spin, who have the moral courage to learn something new and will TEST this revelation for themselves, an intellectual and moral revolution is already under way, where the 'impossible' becomes inevitable, by the most potent, political, Non Violent Direct Action any human being can take to advance peace, justice, change and progress."

I've already downloaded the manuscript, studied it and was impressed enough to begin testing this new moral/spiritual conception myself.

Revolutionary stuff for those able to get their heads around it? More info at http://www.energon.org.uk