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  hardie karges 11:36 am on May 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 467 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 163 ), GOD ( 24 ), ISLAM ( 67 ), religion ( 168 )   

  GOD’S MANY FACES 

  Jesus Christ is now starring on the God channel, speaking from the grave in tongues and English, parables shining through the fog with colored lights and music. He broadcasts his message with satellites and stars to lands where Muhammad still speaks with sword and scimitar. Buddha can’t compete head-to-head with his non-message of middling accommodation between extremes of aggressive violence and aggressive entertainment. He communicates heart-to-heart with a message of non-aggression and reconciliation at all costs. The costs can be steep, payable in dignity and self-esteem, poverty and need. Some things just can’t be bought and some things just can’t be sold. Buddha picks a middle path through a maze of lotuses on one side and chrysanthemums on the other. Jesus can’t make up his mind between the conformists and the protesters. Muhammad tolerates no pussy footing. The Muslim Channel blares from loudspeakers five times a day in thirty some-odd (some VERY odd) countries. The middle path for Islam lies somewhere between a rocket launcher and a razor blade. The true middle path chooses no sides. If it doesn’t lead to eternal bliss, at least it leads to another tomorrow and an infinite, if indefinite, future. All paths lead to God.

  Joram Arentved is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Joram Arentved 5:02 pm on July 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply

    Helt i orden, Andreas V., hvis du VIL have det at vide, er det netop Buddhismen, du jo ér vel- kommen til at tage op med mig, så jeg lettere kan forklare & sætte dig & f.x. mig selv etc. ind i, hvad min status som ‘sund-fornuft-tilhænger’ egentligt er ensbetydende med & mærkeligt nok p.g.a. en ufortjent arbejdssag, jeg stadigvæk ikke rigtigt tror på, ikke rigtigt ved, om jeg kan
    se mig selv som ‘nu-igen-skyld’ i.
    Ven- & ærlig hilsen fra Din, fortroligst,
    Joram Arentved, Santiago, Chile.

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  hardie karges 8:19 am on May 11, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: JESUS ( 21 ), WAR ( 11 )   

  JESUS THE FEMALE PRINCIPLE 

  Jesus came to remind us of something long forgotten, that we are essentially good if not holy. The wickedness learned has to be unlearned. Man’s original goodness, reverence for Nature, and the worship of the female principle, had long been hijacked by warriors and their war gods by the time Jesus came along. Emperors were steadily performing Caesarian sections on what remained of a previously female-based society, throwing out babies with bath water, only a few being able to escape by hiding in the reeds and saving up their rushes, floating out to safety down river. Coincidentally, this all gained steam with the ascendancy of cities and their increased stratification of life, including professional soldiers and slaves. Along with militancy and the rise of cities, came the rise of plagues and epidemics, hitherto unknown for lack of a population base to feed upon. When the nomads of the steppes created a warrior’s life for themselves, they took the hit as being barbarians, but really they were just claiming what was theirs in a lawless world. Nevertheless, Jesus knew what was real and what was not, and told it much like it was in words that could go down easily. The performance of miracles didn’t hurt the road show, either. Miracles were commonplace in a miraculous world. Their absence in a world of science is the price we pay.
   
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  hardie karges 10:30 am on May 10, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ISLAM ( 67 ), SUICIDE ( 5 ), TERRORISM ( 3 )   

  SUICIDE BUMMERS 

  Islam has suicidal tendencies. The Bali bombers strike again, suicide bombers doing it all for the love of God. October must be the suicide season, fresh fertilizer for fallow fields. Flowers grow where tourists fell, the death knell for picnics and frolics and Muslims on the beach. This is unholy war. This is suicide. This is apocalypse. Muslims grab the torch of negativity from the communists and run with it. If neutral countries convert to Islam, then they’re on to something. The world could use a new Messiah, but I don’t think Osama’s it. He might be wearing robes, but I don’t think the Messiah will be demonstrating proper use of a machine gun. I think he’ll be speaking seven or eight languages fluently, preferably Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Swahili, French, Spanish, and, uh, oh yeah, English. That’s nine, a lucky number in China. I think the Bible or somebody predicted there’d by ten divisions of the world by about this time in history, so let’s add Malay/Indonesian, representing three countries and a quarter bil people directly, the entire Polynesian world by extension. Muslims should be happy to have four on the list, maybe five counting Swahili, so Africa’s got two with Arabic. Asia’s got a few, Europe’s got four, so everybody’s represented linguistically except American Indians. Maybe we should add Quechua, the language of some ten million dirt-poor Native Americans in the Andes Mountains of South America.

   
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  hardie karges 9:32 am on May 9, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BALI, INDONESIA, ISLAM ( 67 )   

  NO MO’ INDONEASY ISLAM 

  It used to be you’d eat in a Chinese restaurant during Ramadan in Indonesia since the locals were closed (not that the locals have that many restaurants anyway, outside the tourist areas). That’s getting harder. Bali used to get some special consideration for its tourist clout and the fact that it’s not Muslim anyway, Hindu-Buddhist since the early days, written and spoken language deriving much from the same wave of Hindu-Buddhism that converted Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand. Not anymore. The Bali bombers changed all that. They said they were only ‘Sari’ that their victims weren’t American. Sounds like somebody needs a geography lesson. Ever seen students in these madrasahs bobbing their heads and chanting? You’d think you were in a back room in Brooklyn if you didn’t know better. Now if they start strapping little books around their heads… what would a visitor from another planet think? Indonesia would be a basket case if all the Chinese were forced out of the country, but it’s happening, little by little. First they go to Bali, and then they leave altogether. Indo-Aryans have been propping up Islam commercially and intellectually for centuries, but they can only go so far, especially when Iran itself and now Pakistan are both hotbeds of radicalism. Thailand’s better off than Indonesia, but the problem spills over in the three southern provinces where Muslims are the majority, as they have been for centuries. It’s all so much bullshit politics and posturing. Malays will raid Thai whorehouses to make sure there are no Malay girls there, while Surabaya in Indonesia plays host to the biggest red-light district in the hemisphere. As it continues to make gains in the ‘Arabization’ of sub-Saharan Africa, Islam increasingly is the religion of the poor and people of color. David slew Goliath with a slingshot, and they can bring down Consumer Culture with fear. A word to the wise probably won’t be sufficient.

   
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  hardie karges 12:26 pm on May 8, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: communism ( 21 ), ISLAM ( 67 ), religion ( 168 )   

  NEGATIVE SPACE, NEGATIVE RELIGION 

  Indonesia’s being ruined by the jihad. Fundamentalists hate Islam lite almost as much as they hate Western hedonist consumerism. Actually I’m not that crazy about that blind materialistic part of Western culture myself, but religion is everyone’s personal choice, isn’t it? Not in Islamic countries, it’s not. You don’t get to change your mind. In that they’re similar to the previous Communist regimes, lack of freedom and the lack of fun. But Islamic countries stress non-materialistic goals while many of them are rich beyond imagination, yet the communist regimes were totally materialist with barely a pot to piss in. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think that the downfall of Communism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism were timed by some cosmic clock. It’s funny how most, if not all, the Communist countries and client states joined the rush to capitalism with hardly a second thought while very few have joined the jihad. That’s too bad for Indonesia, which traditionally shares affinities as much with the South Pacific and Southeast Asia as it does with Islam. They became Muslim to facilitate trade centuries ago, and the rest is history. Philippines made the switch from Islam to Christianity under Western imperialism, except for Mindanao, but Indonesia didn’t. It’s no problem until fundamentalists decide to impose their negativity on the rest of the populace. I was asked to leave a Muslim mosque in Malaysia once, simply because I’m white. I’m a student of religion, a BA in philosophy, but unmistakably white. So are Bosnians, but that’s another story; they ‘surrendered’. I was sitting there minding my own business, soaking in the atmosphere, meditating just like everyone else, but to no avail. I was asked to leave. I decided right then and there that Islam is probably not the religion for me.

   
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  hardie karges 4:04 pm on May 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ISLAM ( 67 ), religion ( 168 ), sex ( 39 )   

  MUSLIM OUTCALL 24/7 

  Muslims just don’t get it. Life can be fun and religious, too. The two are not mutually exclusive. Or are they? Certainly Christian fundamentalism is almost as conservative as the Islamic variety, but at least it allows for some good clean fun. It doesn’t lock women in the house or behind the veil. I doubt Judaic fundamentalism is much of a rocking time, either. I think that a negative attitude toward life emanates from the Middle East, for what reason I don’t know. It could just be a guilt complex at finding pleasure in sensation rather than God, or just good old-fashioned female control methods to assure male dominance, but I suspect it’s low cultural self-esteem at seeing their once vast domain now vastly reduced. Fortunately it’s not all like that. Moroccans are certainly some of the nicest people in the world, at least once you get past les faux guides working the tourists in Interzone. Indonesia is the same. Without the local Taliban policing people’s panties, you’d have something like a low-key Thailand. I guess that’s what they don’t want. That’s why the jihadis blew the Balinese joints up. Laos maybe? Communism is more fun than Islam any day. The problem is that all restrictions are restricted to women. Men can do whatever they want, and do. Bar boys twitch their butts and giggle and make chitchat at bars in Bali. Beach boys (no, not THOSE Beach Boys) escort young Japanese girls and older Western women openly and freely (pay in kind). Gay guys roam Kuta Beach at night preying on tourists and praying for tips to the point that I’d rather watch TV than suffer the annoyance. Girls used to walk that beach until the Mafia or the Taliban moved in to protect its turf. I had sex in a lifeguard stand there once. Hey, we were in love! What’s wrong with those Muslims anyway? The last time I was in Indonesia, a week before the 10-12 Bali bombers, a guy stalked me all over the streets of Malang, speaking perfect English and talking about the CIA. Life’s weird.

   
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  hardie karges 10:08 am on May 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: CLONING, history ( 42 ), jihad ( 8 ), OIL ( 6 )   

  STATUS QUO 

  Al Qaeda may have saved us all when they invaded our playground, took our toys, and used them to bloody our noses. They didn’t intend to save us at all, of course, any more than native Africans ever intended to protect wild species, but the end result may be the same. Whatever humans may do in their history, the Earth will survive, and so will Life, I feel sure. It is the human race itself that is most at stake. Nature’s most precious and precocious creation likes to play with fire, and that’s dangerous. When we create nuclear bombs and splice genes, the genie is out of the bottle, and may not go back in. If the human race goes extinct, it won’t ever come back. By the same token, if culture degenerates, it may never come back either. When western culture degenerated previously in the Dark Ages, there were others to pick up the slack and make it their own. This time around, the stakes are much higher and the world much more integrated. Frankly, I’ll be glad when all the oil is gone and we can get on with our lives either with something else or nothing at all. Oil is bad politics, reminiscent of the lust for gold five hundred years ago, reminiscent of the lust for lust that we struggle with every day. Maybe we should just slow things down a bit and see if our lives aren’t just as good at a slower speed. Unfortunately we can’t ask others to accept a status quo which leaves them at a permanent disadvantage. I guess we’re on this roller coaster until some unseen hand decides to put on the brakes. At least maybe we could agree to stop molecular biology short of cloning. After all, everybody likes sex, right?

   
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  hardie karges 1:19 pm on May 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ARAB ( 4 ), JEW ( 2 ), SEMITIC   

  QUIEN ES MAS SEMITICO? 

  Arabs and Jews share much of the same Semitic history and culture, but the DNA is taking different paths. Suddenly Jews don’t look so Semitic anymore after centuries in the West and elsewhere. Persians, who speak an Indo-European language, look more Semitic than ever. Races and languages parallel each other with imperfect lines, multiplying and dividing all along the way. Certainly Jews and Arabs aren’t sharing many body fluids these days, though they’re certainly spilling a bit.

   
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  hardie karges 4:28 pm on May 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history ( 42 )   

  PROGRESS 

  Everything is the opposite of what it seems. In their pure unadulterated love of Allah and hatred of life, the jihadis may save us all from our own excesses. In their impure totally adulterated love of theory and hatred of life, the Communists inspired many of these excesses. Space flight is an offshoot of the cold war between the US and the USSR, a war of initials and slogans, CIA vs. KGB, DMZ on LSD, Marxist theory vs. domino theory, sputniks and beatniks, nuclear fallout and college dropouts. It was their Germans versus our Germans, those who managed to escape the wrath of Adolph’s meat tenderizer. Policies of mutual deterrence and massive retaliation and mutually assured destruction meant that missiles needed to be launched and systems needed to be developed. There wasn’t much time, but fortunately there was plenty of Space, so we blasted our rockets into it, jerking off in each other’s faces, in an ancient adolescent masturbation contest. Like pandas pissing on trees, whoever shoots highest gets the girls, all of them, sexy Latinas and Asian hotties, out-call only, twenty-four hour service, satisfaction guaranteed, clean and discreet. Allah can have Africa; he deserves it.

   
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  hardie karges 10:55 am on May 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: religion ( 168 ), revolution ( 3 )   

  CONSIDERATA 

  Good things can happen for all the wrong reasons. If I had been more successful in business, then I wouldn’t be writing this tractatus right now. If jihad weren’t threatening the foundations of the western world, then capitalism might very well kill us all before it knows its limits. All revolutions go too far by definition, three hundred sixty degrees and you’re back where you started. Except that the entire plane where you started is also in revolution, so you actually come back to a different place in the larger plane, for better or worse, like the difference between tropical and sidereal years. An individual mind, ‘brain’ if you’re an absolute materialist, makes revolutions per minute on a good day, depending on the horsepower of your engine. There’s a world of free will on the inside, pure and innocent. Your wish is its command. The real world is not so naïve. It has a mind of its own. It can give and it can take away without explanation and no apparent causality. It’s larger than any of us individually.