Thursday July 23, 2020

Thursday July 23, 2020

– Crescent Moon Phase  – challenge, growth, struggle, expansion, gathering

– Gardening tips  (from the Farmer’s Almanac) –July 20th – 23rd – A most barren period. Kill plant pests and do general farm work.

– Aspect of the Aeon Sophia: (Wisdom): Dhumavati (The Goddess Who Winnows) –

– Aspect of the Aeon Thelete: (Will/Desire): Kathe, God of the South, God of Experience

– Sabian Symbol for the Solar-Lunar Month: “On a ship, sailors lower an old flag and raise a new one” (& Earth An Indian chief claims power from the assembled tribe)

– Sabian Symbol for the Solar-Lunar Year: “A Triangle with Wings”

SUN:  2 LEO: An epidemic of mumps

EARTH:  2 AQUARIUS: An unexpected thunderstorm

“What you see & what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.” C.S. Lewis

Much of the world that we believe we live in has been dictated to us. Consider who it is that is dictating this message.

Back in the middle of the last century, we were asking ourselves a lot about this. Consider the time:

Nazi Germany

Communist Russia

Communist China

Fascist Spain and Italy

The world was flirting in a very large way with totalitarianism. Was it that the 80-90% of the people WANTED to have an all controlling and encompassing government? Or were they driven into it?

Consider what the motives of beginnings of these movements. Its a much much longer discussion than this blog post will go into. But I would like to point out that the fictioneers of the time were noticing it. And they were writing the stories about it. Consider:

George Orwell – 1984 and Animal Farm – Dystopian fiction about life under totalitarianism – Russia, Nazi Germany

Aldus Huxley – Brave New World – Dystopian Government controlling the masses with Drugs – China and the Opium Dens

JRR Tolkien –  Lord of the Rings – World war and Good Vs Evil – WWII

CS Lewis – Narnia, Screwtape – Good and Evil, God vs the Devil

Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, We the Living –  Personal Civil Liberties vs Social Control

Consider how the “Where they Were” affected their view on the  world. How their experience through Totalitarianism made them want to tell their stories. Stories to dramatize the depth of their experience. Stories to teach us to not to repeat it.

The “What kind of person you are” goes much deeper. There is the questions of their backgrounds and how they were raised.

Consider religion. Tolkien and Lewis were both Christians, and wrote from that perspective. Though they were not Christian or religious stories, they wrote about the values known within the faith.

Huxley and Orwell wrote about specifically Non Religious lives. Ask yourself what a government would be devoid of religion or where it was specifically limited.

Rand goes a step further by being openly atheistic and antagonistic toward religion.

Consider how these Points of View shaped the characters and actions of the stories.

Then 1984 Happened

I was born in the 60’s, so I did not live the lives of these authors. We are the result of the mindset known by the authors names above. My parents, born in the 30’s grew up with these pieces of fiction – as well as life during wartime and The Cold War. And a world shaped the the Media’s spin on what was going on in the world.

We found out later about the depths of what the CIA were doing throughout the world in battling the Cold War. In the name of protecting our liberty they broke just about every rule of our society. Was it a reaction to the Soviet KGB and slaughtering of millions of their own ethnic populations? Possibly. But where do right and wrong become part of the equation?

In response to the heavy-handedness of our government, we have seen liberal and progressive educational systems forced upon the children of our country. We have gone from Reading Writing and Arithmetic to:

Common Core math reading and writing

Revisionist history

Focus on Environmental science over hard science

Psychology, Sociology and social sciences

The textbooks are mass produced by left-leaning progressives trying to mold the understanding of the next generation. The teachers have been taught by the most progressive teaching standards that the university system can churn out.

There is no question about why the millenial generation is by and large (65%+) favorable towards Socialism. They have been taught that there should be a government that provides protection, and healthcare, and high paying jobs, and everything else. And HAVE NO CLUE what it will take in order to get there, be it the cost in dollar terms or the cost in personal liberties.

Consider this. Doctors have traditionally been considered one of the highest paying professions. It requires YEARS of Schooling and sacrifice to get there. BUT. How many people will really have an interest in the medical profession if the top dollar earning potential is chopped off? The light at the end of the tunnel is turned off. There are not many government workers who can make in the millions. Doctors will become unionized chattel.

And Then There is The Media

The liberal bias in media is pretty much complete in the USA now a days. Anyone who wishes to dispute this, please do so in the comments. I will laugh at you. I have touched on this subject many times. And I hope to do an extensive study of it. But not today.

I came to my understanding of the liberal bias in the media back in the 80’s. For Newspapers, I grew up thinking that the LA Times was a “Conservative” publication. This was something that I would have to live and learn about. For the most part, I had no understanding about bias. I had thought that Reporters were all pretty heroic people dedicated to finding the TRUTH.

Then I traveled to England. There I learned that every tabloid paper was basically dedicated to one political viewpoint or the other. There was not illusion of being “unbiased”. I was shocked by this. But then later appreciative. It became easier to discern which side’s BS you were really reading about. When the news in the US was supposed to be unbiased, you didn’t have to think about it. Or at least that is what they hoped.

Where Does That Lead Us?

As the movie The Matrix showed us by example, there a lot of people who do not want to know, or are not ready to know, the reality around them.

For all of us who took the Red Pill, we must remain diligent. With our own background and education, we must discern what in front of us is fact and what is illusion. Or what is being placed before us to drive us in a specific direction (think cattle down the chute to the slaughter house).

Who do you listen to? What do you read? What do you watch?

These are important questions.