Rod,
Gee - Austria of Holy Spirit doesn't have same ring at all!
SOME INTRODUCTORY REMARK
It is life which is sacred.
You are defending Western reason. What is the evidence that points
to a very different conclusion about the record of secular states and
associated horrors?
There can be no doubt that, in an ideal world, there would be no Europeans
invading the lives and living countries of other peoples who are managing
their own affairs without need for enforced European practices. There is
a flaw in the life-design of Indo-European life generally in my opinion.
But they/we have and what is to be done? (and i notice you exclude
East Timor from your critique of Portugese colonialism.What now?)
You may be interested to read what John Ralston Saul has to say about
the role of Ignatius Loyola in the history of the Roman Catholic church,
and this set things up for life to be dominated by technocrats. See
Voltaire's Bastards - The Dictatorship of Reason in the West.
Saul, i would say, is writing from a secular position (with little if any
reference to the problems caused by the West to First Peoples. I
gather his latest book touches on Canadian indigneous issues). That
is probably why i find his work less than completely satisfying.
I have no trouble conceding that European invasion comes with
the cross in one hand and the gun in the other.
And who needs another round of ruining bodies and lives to save souls?
Hmm, look around at what your secular state is doing to lives and bodies
- not to save souls but to ensure that wealth is concentrated in the hands
of those with funded superannuation packages, stocks and shares. There
is no place in this system for a concern for the conditions life will be
endlessly reborn into. Oh great, they are going to make a living hell out
of my home planet.
I can't afford to buy the secular state model. Those who enjoy endless
suffering are most welcome to work to that end, but excuse me, i'm
off.
We (you and i) come from different starting points. I don't beieve that
a full historically account is possible. There may be thousands of
other things which can be said about Portuguese colonialism which
would sway us one way or another. Then thousands of more things
which could be said again.
The important questions of life become reduced to a game of western
style reason and who has the most resources. It is necessary to go
beyond reason. This produces fractal images for artistic purposes.
I would not be so quick to dismiss matters of transubstantiation and an
acknweldgement of transcendental dinmensions in our lives, and
at the core of our lives and (if we retain them) our institutions.
Religion, as something which otherwise lies at core of life, is a distant
memory for many Western peoples today. Note also that many people do live
in a non-secular state arrangement. What do you say to Muslim peoples on
this topic of the unequalled virtue of secular states?
The secular intrepretation of life opens up a space for the worst of
human forces to operative. Is it as destrucive as the other Western
imports. My guess is that, being spiritually empty, it is ultimately far
more destructive even if comparatively rich people like you and me
enjoy a degree of licence called 'individual freedom'. It's a fool's
paradise, mate. Good while long party goes on but the energy
which is being burnt off is both limied and required for other
purposes.
Life without respect turns upon itself in the ultimate nightmare.
Maintaining the higher messages of life is not a luxury, but the most
fundamental of necessities. These messages take us (raised in
a secular system) into mystery.
The God which Govenor Phillip brought with him denied the existence
of mystery and miraculous transformaiton. God was, you might conclude,
an Englishman engaged in 'commerce' and entering into a 'natural'
landscape from which the transcendal aspects had been 'removed'
Where are the priests of an earlier Britain, saying "Our trees and
forests are sacred." Cut to the enclosure movement. Cut to the invasion
of living country... And the chant is "Nothing is sacred! Nothing
is sacred!"
But, er, Governor-mate, life itself is the greatest of mysteries, as is the
existence of this planet which produces our lives. Secularism cannot
nail life down. That message is 2000 years old.
We live in a great mystery. By activating a living part of Being we
connect up with the generative context of Cosmos.
But don't worry Rod, i'm not going 'religious' on you. It is life which
is sacred, not the wooden images men have made of it.
TOTAL RESPECT FOR LIFE
An over-riding and total social l fact RESPECT for life (the whole of life)
is the thing which is of vital important. Not a secular state. If the
experiment with the secular state cannot deliver this total social
fact RESPECT, then that experiment has failed. It has had its chance.
We (who feel this failing keenly) need to imagine a better Way of living.
Think outside the State model. Why is it, Rod, that academic anthropology
in this country must systematically exclude certain obvious features of
the lives of First Peoples. Why? Because it is acting in keeping with the
instructions of its secular state masters.
Why again? So the popular mind can be denied the food for thought which
representations which are true to life would provide. The Anglo-Australian
state retains many aspects of a prison-farm-colony you know. I don't know
if i can say more than it requires a mere exercise of imagination to
realise that you do not have to remain imprisoned in the dimensions of life
fashioned for you like a suit of slops made up by the other inmates and
covered with inverted emu feet Crown markings.
IMAGINE
Is it possible to open up a space within yourself for the voices of country
to register? (Not allowed by the state sanctioned system of categories, for
the souls fashioned to the specifications of the secular state) what sort
of preamble and constitution would they write using you as a scribe?
A SIMPLE EXERCISE
Imagine a truly cosmic yet down-to-earth Way of living. Now put a face to
it.
I bet you don't come up with John Howard. Kim Beazley? Nup.
How about some of the faces you and i both know in places like
Ngurraditji (pardon my spelling). Gee, some of them could be contenders
i reckon. And their lives were in touch with both a great respect for the
whole of life and with truly mind blowing transcendental dimensions,
aka Wirnkara (Dreaming). And some very practical problems
If we seek to refashion life and to remodel ourselves in Australia, we are
not estricted to model imported from overseas. Rod, you were born here
(i am a Kiwi blow in). I respectfully suggest that it may be time for you
and your people to find your country. I most certainly have been.
MORE WORDS
A secular Anglo-Australian state represents the high point of European
occupation of this country, however much succour it offers to minority
religous groupings originating from failed social experiments overseas.
The universities and school are intellectual factories churning out
secualised models of life, day in and day out. These are the modern
monestries of a system of metaphysics which is so arrogant as to
deny it is a sytem of metaphysics and a cosmology.
You have to be able to step outside of the secular frame of reference to
be able to see that there is this enormous monocultural edifice and to
realise just what role it plays in virtually every aspect of our lives.
People who, for one reason of another, expereince life from a different
viewpoint (Catholic education? Senior Lawman? Alternative living types? )
are in a good posiiton to be alive to the existence of the secular code
for interpretation and to the amount of power which is expropriated to put
it into place as a kind of giant force field.
Hey, note well, Kerry Packer has just gained control of that great pump
for sucking money out of the heart of your community in Melbourne. The
secular state which you subscribe to applauds this kind of 'creative market
play' combining his infromation manufacturing empire with this failing
'financial' gamble. He will probably have to sell even more false image of
life mind fodder for the popular mind to break even (before his 'boys'
crack onto the right formula for covering casino costs and sucking
money out of the community.)
What's this got to do with anything? People have to process that poisonous
mind food. Local life gets wrecked.
Your secular state leaves us voiceless and powerless to defend aspects of
life which, in many social systems around this otherwise beautiful planet,
are held to be sacred and beyond the reach of powerful gangsters and
criminals (no matter how respectably dressed). The latter do busines
according to the law fashioned by the secular state - laws they made
themselves.
But there is another system of law in Australia which is of far longer
standing and which wasn't fashioned to specifications motivated
by $$$$$$$!!!!!
That law (or laws) is not an experiment in secularism. It has not has its
best features removed by the processes of genocide and ethnocide which
underwrite the 'spred' of Indo-European and which have given us - by way
of intellectual craftspeople working to satisfy their human masters -
secularism itself.
I don't know the answer Rod. But i have a very strong feeling it ain't more
of the same old secular state.
Bruce
5 March
PS Trudy, this is not the reply to your question. It is top of the list for
my next lot of surplus energy.
Rod wrote:
>Now this was not a time of great religious tolerance in Europe. Remember
>the Spanish Inquisition ("Nobody forgets the Spanish Inquisition!")
>Nothwithstanding De Quiros's religious intentions its hard not feel that a
> Portuguese / Spanish occupation of Australia at the height of the Spanish
> Inquisition would not have been a good thing for the original occupants
of
> Australia
----------
> Now my own view is that the indigenous people of this region would have
> been a damned site better off without either the protestant or the
catholic
> versions of life inflicted on them ("How would you like to suffer our
> hellish and barbaric European practices ? With transubstantiation or
> without?)
> No. The answers are NOT in this type of schismatic spiritual argument.
Lets
> face it. Christian invaders , in a host of guises, have done almost
> irreparable damage to the lives of people all over the world. So too have
> those who follow other dogmatic creeds.
>
>> From: Rod Hagen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [recoznet2] De Quiros et al
> Date: Thursday, 4 March 1999 19:02
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