Marx was innocent

Post #24,172 by mhuber 1/13/02 7:14:42 PM Reply	Marx was innocent Well, sort of. Without the exesses of 19th century capitalists, Marx would have been just another loud-mouth poly-sci professor with a meaningless theory. It takes a pretty bad situation to make Communism look like a step up, or Marxism look like a workable idea. ---- "You don't have to be right - just use bolded upper case" - annon.
Post #24,203 by nking 1/13/02 10:29:20 PM Reply	Forget Marx, Jesus had it right. Before Socialism, there is the type of society that Jesus had proposed. The rich helping the poor and giving up their riches to do so. People and Companies not working for profit, but working to do unto others as they would have them do onto them. Which means, spread the wealth around, help out the hungry, the poor, the homeless, the sick, the disabled, etc. Marx, I assume you meant Karl Marx and not Groucho, Cheeko, Zheppo, or Harpo, but Marx had an idea but poorly executed it and caused more trouble than it fixed. Communism failed because the government forced it to be the only party, and anyone who opposed it was crushed. Jesus had a better idea of socialism, where the rich volunteered to give away their wealth so they could enter the Kingdom of God. Not all would, but those who didn't had the chance of a Camel passing through the eye of a needle to enter Heaven. "In order to completely solve a problem, you must make sure that the root of the problem is completely removed! If you leave the root, the problem will come back later to get you." - Norman King
Post #24,212 by Andrew Grygus 1/13/02 11:16:03 PM Reply	Equally unrealistic, in a changed world. The threat of punishment in the afterlife has faded with the credibility of the priesthood. Improvements in communications allow the rich to see there are hundreds of competing priesthoods, each telling a different story with equal conviction. This has resulted in great dilution of the power of the threat of eternal damnation. Petty crooks are often devout Christians, because Christianity assures them of salvation through "believing in him", which washes away all sins and assures them of entrance into heaven. I can't recall ever meeting a used car salesman who wasn't a comitted Christian. As you move upscale, you find less and less concern about heaven and pretty much total disregard for those at a lower economic level. THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE. This phrase is commonly misinterpreted as impossibility. The "eye of the needle" referred to the low, narrow, easily defended portal left open at night in city fortifications. A camel could indeed pass through the "eye of the needle", but with great difficulty, shuffling on it's knees. Horses don't do that, so hostile cavelry was pretty much excluded. This was by design. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #24,220 by mhuber 1/13/02 11:51:05 PM Reply	Not sure much has changed The situation where Jesus was preaching was experiencing a decline in the authority of religion as well, in large part because of improved communication technology (That whole post office thing. Sure, it was old news in the core of the Empire, but out in the boonies...) bringing other religious ideas. The Roman occupation also challenged the rather concrete view of the place of faith. Good was supposed to prosper and evil fail, except for the occasional test, and that was supposed to happen for the most part in this life. And here are these polytheistic Roman occupation forces getting all the goodies while faithful Jews get zilch if they are lucky. So is polytheism good, or Yahweh weak, or did we do something wrong, or what? I'm not real convinced that things have changed much where it counts. Most people, for most of time, have been aware that there are others with other beleifs. Sure, we have access to more details about exactly what those are, but if you were curious you could almost always go to the next valley and find out. The situation in Europe in the middle ages, with one extremely dominant religion covering pretty much the entire known world, was a bit unusual. There have always been slimy zealots and good people that bad things happen to. People are born, learn that the world beyond Dad's house is scary, learn to deal with that, scrape together their daily bread, eat said bread preferably with friends and family, have sex and realize that there is something quite disturbing about the way the quest for sex transcends reasonable thought and prudence, get sick, die. And worry about all of it, try to fit it into the big story. I am no smarter than the guys who painted those cave walls 20,000 years ago. And except for ultimately not particulary important details about tools and toys and precise modalities, I'm looking for the same things, doing the same things, worried about the same things. I may not have to worry about predators much, but it never was predators that worried people, but the sudden violent death predators bring. Sudden violent death hasn't gone away. And while it isn't likely that famine will strike my family, I worry about keeping them fed in bad years anyway. ---- "You don't have to be right - just use bolded upper case" - annon.
Post #24,238 by Ashton 1/14/02 6:50:47 AM Reply	Small disagreement You (nor for that matter, I) may not be any 'smarter' than the lesser members of those tribes whose artists did the drawing - but you are quite less burdened than many - with the freight of accumulated dumbth and the illusion that You Know (all that stuff). Or so it seems. Anyway, I deem that the Sufis got it right, ~ the wise one can be noticed - s/he is the one who insists that s/he knows little or nothing. I tend to think that maturity consists in the gradual then accelerated shedding of as much as possible - of most everything we have been 'taught'. (But then - what do I know? ;-) Ashton The Prime Oxymoron: I Am Wise :-\ufffd
Post #24,329 by tseliot 1/14/02 4:11:14 PM Reply	I'm not sure the Roman occupation was anything new to them. The Roman occupation also challenged the rather concrete view of the place of faith. Good was supposed to prosper and evil fail, except for the occasional test, and that was supposed to happen for the most part in this life. And here are these polytheistic Roman occupation forces getting all the goodies while faithful Jews get zilch if they are lucky. So is polytheism good, or Yahweh weak, or did we do something wrong, or what? "Occasional" is, I think, a misleading adjective when you take into account the centricity of the Babylonian exile to the Jewish worldview at the time. How many decades did that last? You've got to figure there was a whole host of theo/philosophical explanations for that "test" floating around which then were (re)applied to the Romans. Not to mention that, after the return from the diaspora, things didn't go so easily for them. You get a more wordy feel for this from [link\|http://www.jewishgates.org/history/jewhis/exile.stm\|this link] (just the first one I found that touched on the subject). --------------------------------- A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas;...despair and time eat away the bonds of iron and steel, but they are powerless against the habitual union of ideas, they can only tighten it still more; and on the soft fibres of the brain is founded the unshakable base of the soundest of Empires." Jacques Servan, 1767
Post #24,339 by nking 1/14/02 4:34:00 PM Reply	At times, things went bad for God's people. God allowed them to be captured, and put into slavery. Some say he allowed this because they disobeyed them. Then he usually sends someone to free them, and they are free again. Jesus was sent to free the Jewish people from not jst Roman rule, but also from the sin they had fallen into from the Roman influence. Well apparently he came for the gentiles as well, after all he did heal a Roman soldier after the soldier's superior asked Jesus too do so. Jesus was also upset about the money changers in the temple and the way the temple was run. The temple had a black list and some people were not allowed to go in, like the sick and the lame, etc. Jesus went out to reach these people to tell them that God had not forgotten about them. "Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
Post #24,395 by inthane-chan 1/15/02 12:37:59 AM Reply	Hate to poop on your parade... THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE. This phrase is commonly misinterpreted as impossibility. The "eye of the needle" referred to the low, narrow, easily defended portal left open at night in city fortifications. A camel could indeed pass through the "eye of the needle", but with great difficulty, shuffling on it's knees. Horses don't do that, so hostile cavelry was pretty much excluded. This was by design. Turns out that's not quite true, at least according to [link\|http://www.wnetc.com/scripture-l/Footnotes/Footnotes2.html\|this]... In fact, if the author is to be believed, it was an attempt by the clergy to hold onto that upper crust that you talk about them losing... I was about to post the same thing in this thread, and did a google search on it. That's what came up. "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post #24,401 by Ashton 1/15/02 4:56:57 AM Reply	It may be that it doesn't matter, too. Just this one phrase can launch a PhD thesis or two; add in all the other ones and.. why you could create an entire priesthood! to endlessly reascribe, retranslate and reinterpret every word. And we can all see how silly That would be, now can't we? Funny how most Sufi sayings are so clear that - you have to work really hard to miss the point being made. Even translated to Engrish. Wonder why that is? A.

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