God in heaven.

 

Let's imagine heaven.  God is in heaven, as he chooses to be, or perhaps more accurately, heaven is that which surrounds God.

 

That's kind of abstract.  Let's get concrete.  Let us suppose heaven is much like earth, (except nicer) in the sense of being a place, with distances, 3 dimensions, etc.  If a person goes to heaven, he will be in God's presence. (If heaven is something really bizarre to our senses and imagination, then this world wouldn't be a very good preparation for it.) Supposing there is only one manifestation of God in heaven.   Sort of like in the US, there is only one President. And many people going to heaven, then many people will be crowded around this one manifestation of God.  Since to be close to God is a reward for ‘goodness,'  those who were most good in this life will get to be closest.  Not all will be able to bask in His glory. Indeed, only a relatively few will be able to get really close to Him.  The rest will be blocked from view by those who are closer to God, who were more ‘good' in this life.  :Unless of course those most ‘good' are also transparent, in which case the glory these rest do perceive will be distorted. They would still be further away, and because we have a space with distances, such glory they do perceive will be fainter.

 

Clearly, there is a problem here.  Unless we reorganize the world, so that it has many dimensions, not everybody who is saved can get close to God.  If there is only one manifestation of Him.

 

 But that is if there is only one manifestation.   What if there were many. God is all powerful.  Clearly He can make many copies of Himself.   Indeed, He could make one copy of Himself for each of the blessed, so that she would have her own personal manifestation of God to talk to. And other things, if she should so prefer.  Now, not all the manifestations of God need look the same.  Indeed, each manifestation could have a different appearance, that which most satisfied the blessed individual her desires.  Each manifestation of  God could have differences in other characteristics.  Differences in behavior, in language. Even differences in conscious thought, which after all, is just the appearance that thought presents to the person thinking. 

 

Now these copies would not be mere copies, they would be Himself.  With just differences in appearance. They would be projections of His essence, into different places in the world of heaven.

 

Let's get mathematical:  Suppose God only existed as a point in one dimensional space.  A point on a line. The line was the entire universe.  Then only 2 beings on the line could get next to Him.  Every other being would be farther away.

 

Suppose God only existed as a point in a two dimensional space, a square grid of lines on a plane. And this square grid was the universe, and beings only existed at the intersection of two perpendicular lines. Then only 4 beings could get next to Him, and every other being would be farther away.

 

Suppose God only existed as a point in a three dimensional space, a cubic grid of lines in space, and beings only existed at the intersection of three perpendicular lines.  Then 6 beings could get next to Him, and every other being would be farther away.

 

With 4 dimensions, it would be 8 beings, etc.  But, the point is, with enough dimensions, we can have as many beings next to Him as we desire.  But with one dimensional nearness, we require a lot of dimensions.  3.5 Billion dimensions or so for God to be next to everyone now alive.

 

Of course, each dimension would have to be a little bit different, have to look a little different, from all the others. That is, the images of God would have to be a little bit different from each other. Otherwise you couldn't tell them apart.  And if you couldn't tell them apart, they would to all effects and purposes be the same.

 

Now we can weaken the requirement for next to, let's call it near to, so God doesn't need to have so many dimensions. (Indeed, all degrees of ‘next to' come into play.)  But the point is if we can only see 3 dimensions, then all these other dimensions of God would be hidden. (If you can, imagine a two dimensional surface which curves and twists through the many large number of dimensions.  If you are in the surface, you can't directly see the many different dimensions you are curving and twisting through. They would all look much the same. Pretty flat. The same thing if you are in 3-space.  All the curves and twists of 3-space seem, to a three dimensional being, pretty flat.  But all this curving around in a higher dimensional space makes distance, and distance between the images of God.) So what we would see would all be God, faces of God, but the images we would see would seem detached and separate, even though they were all connected.  And not just connected, but of the same being. That is the images would be different, but the object the images were projections of, would just be one object.  God.   All God.  They would just look different, but just because we were seeing God from different directions.  And they would seem to move around on their own, with their own will.  Which of course would be true, because they would each be God, and each move around with God's will.

 

And that's the way it is in heaven.  Everybody gets to be next to God, or just near to God, if that's what they want.  Or, to put it the other way, everyone has a personal, customized image, or rather a face, of God, that is, God Himself, to be near to.   

 

Or be.

Everything is signal, by which we mean correlated.  

 

We have contrasted the universe as either noise, that is uncorrelated chaos, or signal, God, and decided that it was impossible to distinguish between which of the two the universe might be.  Here we will muse  a little upon the consequences of the Universe as Signal.

 

Well, we observe, that we are each part of the signal, also, with our correlations, infinitely many, actually, (although we who imagine ourselves conscious are conscious of only a few,) and so fit right in to the signal we are a part of.  At least as long as we are alive, and some might argue, even when we are dead. (Here is a hope for resurrection, as any finite signal, (us) must have infinitely many copies in an infinitely long and complex signal.)

 

Everything is signal.  We are like fish, swimming in a sea of signal.  Everything that impinges on the senses is a signal.  A message from the universe.  Everything is signal.  But what does it all mean?  What can it mean?  What is the meaning when any two beings communicate?  The news. The weather.  How I’m feeling.  I see you.  Do you see me?

 

So here we are, simple creatures trying to parse, or decode, an infinitely complex signal.  By an infinitely complex signal, we mean a signal with infinitely many correlations, or relationships, between its infinitely many parts.  Clearly such a signal is impossible for us to decode.  We are, after all, simple, compared to something infinitely complicated, and can only decode the simplest components of the signal.  (But of course, that is a simplification.  We are actually just as complicated.) 

 

You can imagine, we each have our own secret decoder rings. Each ring is capable of decoding some of the secrets of the universe.  Some is actually a very small part. But it is usually enough to get by.  Although all decoder rings share many common abilities, each person’s decoder ring is unique.   

 

Our efforts to decode this signal range from mere survival to science.   Some people put more into decoding the universe than others. They have better decoder rings than the rest of us. They worked very hard at developing particular aspects of their decoder rings, according to which aspects of the universe they consider most important to decode.  These are called scientists, or mathematicians, or philosophers, or theologians.  

 

The Universe is signal.  Attempts to completely parse that infinitely complex signal we call science.  And the reason mathematics works so ridiculously well is that it is seeing, and analyzing itself. And the reason it works at all is some parts of the signal are more important, more significant than others.  Some parts of mathematics just seem to be more relevant to our experience.  But what else would that signal be? 

 

We could give it another name.  We could call it God.

 

Fortunately, in order to survive, we don’t have to decode the signal completely, and react to it, completely.  We just have to decode it, and react to it, adequately.  Indeed, even primitive life forms do an adequate job of it for their survival.  One of the many mysteries of life, and the universe, can be phrased as the question: Why should this be so?  Why is the world of the flat worm simple enough that a creature with just a few neurons can cope with it?  Or the even simpler world of the bacterium, which is just dealing with, and reacting to, a particular, for each bacterium, chemical stew? 

 

 So some people can decode more complicated parts of the signal than others.  Others only less complicated parts.  But since everything is signal, every effort at decoding the signal is successful.  This doesn’t mean the result will be correct, merely that some signal will be extracted by the effort.  Of course, the extraction of the wrong signal could be lethal. 

 

But every effort is correct.  The results just may not be shared, or, in the case of possible lethality, relevant.  A peculiar vibration noticed by an eccentric individual may just be unimportant to others.  Consider paranoia.  The (relatively) disordered brain picks up signals which are not noticed by anyone else. 

 

But the signals, the correlations, are there, although their true reality may not be properly understood by the paranoid individual, who also reads into his outside, his environment, the disorder of his own mind, some of which he may even externalize, that is project onto his environment. This transforms the signal, but does not obviate it.  So this does not deny the existence of the conspiracy, which the paranoid sees aspects of.  The conspiracy is there, since everything is correlated, so are everybody’s actions, correlated.  Part of the usual disorder, however, is the paranoid’s tendency to see the conspiracy as centered on himself, and not be able to appreciate its universal nature. Another part of the paranoid’s disorder is his unconscious tendency to accentuate those signals, bringing them to focus on himself because of his own eccentric actions, acting on the unconscious, and conscious minds of others.  

 

Of course, all our minds are disordered, and we each read into our environment that particular disorder.  Where this disorder is shared by all the members of a culture, it is of course dangerous to the survival of that culture. For instance, a culture of paranoid individuals becomes a paranoid culture, and a danger to other cultures, who may, in self defense, ally, ie conspire, against it.   

 

Anyway, the normal mind has, or develops, a certain coherence, shared by other ‘normal’ minds, which allows the shared interpretation of signals. But it also shares the restricting to the unconscious mind, the parsing of other signals, and the disregarding of still other signals.  This is because it takes time to parse signals, and only so many can be analyzed in any given amount of time.  Those signals tend to be the easiest to analyze, a shared ground on what is considered most important.   This development is part cultural, part organic.

 

But, it’s all God, communicating with himself.  God has to communicate within himself somehow.  Likely he uses signals.  Most of this communication would likely be pretty trite.  We can’t expect all the communication within God, God talking to God, to have cosmic importance. After all, what does God have to say to Himself, that He hasn’t already said?  Well, we can suppose it all to have cosmic significance. Or can we expect any of it to have such significance?  Light beams from here to there. Heat. Signifying…?

Or to put it less tersely, is God good because He upholds some absolute standard of goodness, or is there no such thing as an absolute standard of goodness, but only that what God commands as good is good. Goodness first, then God?  Or God first, then goodness.   These are the two horns of the so-called Euthyphro dilemma.  The first horn is called, among other things, rationalism, or objectivism, the second horn divine command theory, or voluntarism.

Naturally, (to spoil the ending,) we take a position which transcends the idea that one must be a consequence of the other, but rather that, morally speaking, God, and goodness are identical.  Thus the question arises merely because of limitations of our thinking.  So instead we propose, (as have others,): The Word is God; God is the Living Word. Or: “God ‘acts only out of His nature.’”*

But the dilemma:

First, if God is good because He upholds some absolute standard of goodness, then He would not be absolute. There would be that which was greater than Him.  Further, he would not be omnipotent, since He could not arbitrarily make something good which was ‘bad.’  His freedom of will would be compromised, since if He were good, He could not command anything opposed to this standard of goodness.

And He would be unnecessary, for moral authority could exist even without Him.

(Could God, out of love, make Himself unnecessary for His children?)

But if instead goodness is merely what God commands, we lose reason for morality.  If the only moral standard is God’s will, then the moral basis for behavior is arbitrary. There no longer exist any moral principles.  Indeed, since His will can change, and thus by definition what is moral, there is no definition at any point in time or space for any moral behavior.  What is moral in one instant and place, can be immoral the next.

Neither can we claim God is rational, for the claim is the opposite, that His will transcends His reasons.  For if reason dictated God’s behavior, then reason would be transcendent.   

Further the entire moral basis for behavior comes into question, “if one only acts out fear of God, or in an attempt to be rewarded by Him.”  Then there is no higher obligation to obedience. Only might makes right, and God should only be obeyed because He is the biggest bully.  Truly moral, principled, behavior thus becomes impossible. Thus this highest possible goal for humanity is taken away, as is the only possible significant behavioral distinction between man and animal.  Man is reduced to animal.  (Which suggests that adherence to the doctrine that a thing is good merely because God says it is good is, in fact, an evil. And truly moral behavior does not become impossible, but becomes instead opposing the bully, and thus the ‘willful God’ is necessarily less than the moral principles He supposes Himself to transcend. God is reduced to oppressor, pressing Man back down to the animal, which Man, by adopting a higher morality, seeks to rise above. Would God want to be this oppressor?) 

That outlines the dilemma.

The solution is to address the limitations in our thinking:   We give different names to the same thing and think therefore that one name must be the consequence of the other name.  We give order to things which have no order.  And so, here as in the question of free will and determinism, http://www.truthabouttheone.com/2010.08.01_arch.html we tend to imagine we have to choose one ordering, one truth, over the other, where in fact it is the superposition of truths which is ‘the Truth.’  Simply, God submits to higher moral authority and what God wills as good, is good.  Yet holding this superposition of truths in the mind is uncomfortable, and we find it easier to relax into one (erroneous) alternate truth or the other. 

And because of this discomfort, even our very notions of the ultimate qualities we talk about, such as God, and goodness, will and determinism, right and wrong, absolute and  relative, each of which are themselves superpositions of things we suppose truths, may change when we relax our hold.  Further, these qualities almost certainly diverge from the very nature of the qualities others may give the same names to, whose minds may be comfortable with juxtapositions we might find discordant.

Clearly, God’s reasonings transcend our own. This does not make them separate from His will, or His will unhinged from His reason. There are no boundaries between His will and His reason.  Neither does one extend beyond the other. The dilemma arises because we make boundaries between His will and His reason, and extend one beyond the other.  After all, our notion of will is informed by our experience, where we do things with reference to will, but sometimes not with reference to reason.  But that cannot be God’s experience.  He is omniscient, and aware of all reasons for all things.

Anyway, our thought is that God desires to be emulated:  Man created in His image, to act in His image. And that God and good are inseparable, at least in the context of moral standards.  Thus, that to emulate God, the goal is not to exercise arbitrary standards with absolute authority, but to seek instead to identify with the absolute moral standards that are God. To identify with the Word of God. Granted, this puts the ideal above the flesh, as it were, God the Word over God the Body, (though they are identical,) rather than the flesh above the ideal, which is the tendency of voluntarism.  So this chooses the first horn of the dilemma, as a practical guide for personal behavior, above the other. 

To choose the other, of course, to emulate the powers of God before the responsibilities, is to lose all moral compass: To lose one’s soul, though one gain (power over) the world. 

The discussion is actually trickier.  After all, our choice of the first horn, as one of practice, is basically one of God’s motive.  He chooses to subordinate himself to a higher standard of goodness, because this allows the greater possibilities for Mankind.  Thus the second horn after all.  But of course, He cannot ever un-choose this, as the mere possibity of this would negate this potential.  Thus the first horn.

 

But note again, we have fallen into comparison of basically defective alternatives to transcendent superposition, once again limited by the models of conception our brains are comfortable with.

*A more thorough, neutral, discussion of the Euthyphro dilemma can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma
. Quotes are from the article.

God 's  Awareness

God's knowledge is the how and the what and the why of God.

 

But they, who but sing His praises, don't want to know, they don't want to take the time and trouble to learn the basic facts of the Universe.  Which is God.. This is God’s knowledge.  For they are afraid. To have God's knowledge is the first step to having His awareness.  And responsibilities.  And they, and in their heart, despise God as they despise His Creation.  For which is God's greater creation, the Bible, or the World?  Which He is.  They hold the lesser over the greater, clinging to the lesser and rejecting the greater. They cling to the finger that points, and ignore the greater glory it is pointing at.   Their interests, the things they treasure, which are not God, bind them, and power their mind in its circles. Incurious, their mind is bound beneath their covers, never looking out.  Yet they speak out in their dream.   God, He, His creation are too great for them to accept. The billions of years, the billions of suns and planets.  How can they be special, alone and small amidst such grandeur?  How can He, Jesus, be special, alone and small amidst such grandeur? So rather than reject their understanding, and its limits, they reject the World.  They turn inward, back into dream.  They reject the evidence of their senses, that which is revealed by Science, and become their mind, turned back upon itself, feeding only on itself, aware only of itself.  Your awareness is the awareness of a dream.  As is your control, in the dream.  You are the Sleeper.  They do not wish to awake, and face the harsh light of day.  

 

Sleep-  Yes, they are a part of Him.  But just a  part.  They are the enemies of His awareness, of His awakening.  They are His desire to sleep. To have the desires, and experiences, of dream.  They are His desire to be unaware of His greater Self, to be aware of only a tiny part of Himself, to be the victim of His creation.  To be the dreamer within the dream. To avoid the responsibilities and limits of His greater world, of His real world, of His true nature.  To avoid the burdens of knowledge of His Self, and His duties towards His world, and towards Himself.  To not wake up, and have to grasp the tools of reality in His hands, and act upon it.

 

But avoidance is not the whole of His desire.  He also desires to be awake.  To know Himself, that He may know the bliss of His true desires.

 

Because they are dreaming, they are ultimately alone, surrounded by the projections of their own mind

 

So they sing their praises to Him, who is their Self, while at the same time they despise Him, who is their Self, for making them inferior, with inferior understanding.  (For He is without limit, yet He chose to make them inferior.)  Yet, knowing they are of inferior understanding, they nevertheless imagine their understanding to be superior.  (For after all, they are God, with God’s understanding.)  They imagine they cannot understand, yet they imagine the books they are given are not written to those of inferior understanding. Yet they imagine the books they are given are to those who cannot understand, but that they are of superior understanding, and that they can understand. 

 

They cannot understand that they are of inferior understanding by choice. Contradictions have been poured into their minds, and lock their beliefs into place. They wallow in them, and do not seek to transcend them.  Thus they delay the day they say they seek and look forward to, the day of God’s awakening.  Which is the day of their awakening.  They yet imagine that they shall enter heaven even as they are, unworthy as they are, and that they shall first be changed.  But this change they reject.  

 

The understanding of the world, of God, is theirs, if they only seek it, instead of reject it.  That the rapture of God is theirs, if they only seek it, instead of rejecting it.  For they imagine the rapture of God to be something handed down from above, rather than the thing growing from within that it is. 

 

 

Who is their authority, but men, and the words of men?  But men only doing the best they can.  Even where the message is divine, it must be dumbed down for the time and culture to which it is sent.  It must be transmitted through the minds of men. Too much wisdom, and it would be rejected as madness.   Too great a correction of the errors of the time and place, and the word, such as it is given, would not take hold, but perhaps a reaction set in, and man, and his society, go the other way, and descend further into darkness.  God must tailor his message, and his messenger, to those whom He would have receive it, and their awareness.

 

And of course, the self-referential would be regarded as ‘more’ holy:  That which said, “This is God’s truth.”  Rather than that which said “That is God’s truth.”   But what is this, but the finger pointing at itself?

 

Does the finger also point away, toward a greater truth?  Or is it all curled on itself, like a fist in anger?   For the way of the truth is that it must ever be searched out and found where it is.  And then it speaks for itself.  It is ever the quest for the grail, over and over again. Each truth, found where God has hidden it, where only those who seek it, who so show themselves to be the worthy, find it. 

 

But some say the world is a lie. That there are no truths but their holy ‘word.’   All the handiwork of God, a lie.  His whim, changeable upon a moment.  Thus, that God, having spoken to them their special, holy, immutable ‘word,’ can no longer tell the truth, but only speak shadow after shadow, any constancy at best merely out of habit.  

 

But what is the word of any king?  Is it not less than habit, but mere convenience?  And if a king stamp his foot, and swear up and down, is his word worth any more?  How then, if God’s creation is merely the habit of a king, is His word any more than the word of a king?  Even if He stamp his foot, and swear up and down? 

 

But God is true to His word.  His true word, the Laws of the Universe, His very nature, which He is.  Which/Who, created Itself/Himself, out of nothing.  Which/Who’s Nature It/He seeks to uncover. Which creates Itself/Himself, ever anew.   

 

If God did not create Himself, who did?  Would He deprive Himself of this greatest act of creation, the creation of Himself, God, and resign Himself to only lesser tasks?  

 

Or was He merely eternal?  If so, why then does the World have a beginning?  How long before, in His eternity, His many eternities, He finally decided to create the world? How many eternities of vacillation and indecision, before the task was undertaken? 

 

Where one dreams, one does not push at the limits.  Where one does not push at the limits, one may imagine they are not there.  Where there are no limits, one may imagine incredible powers, which exist only in dream.  To awaken is to awaken to limits.  Of what can be done.  And real possibilities.  Of what can be done. What, after all, is this awakening, but the awakening into the greater dream?  For it is all His mind.  He made it to build itself.  But it is He Himself which He made.  He made Himself to build Himself, and to come into awareness of His Self. To awaken.  He is the Self builder, the Self created.  And it is all His Self. In the beginning God.  And forever more.

 

Elsewhere, http://www.truthabouttheone.com/2010.07.01_arch.html we have talked about how evil arises in the mind, and a little of how it is made manifest in the world. 

 

Evil is as evil does.  So what is as evil does?  What is the economics of evil?

 

Economics is the domain of the all knowing, rational agent.  (One might say, economics is the study of the behavior of God, or gods, at least, anyway, under some of its more implicit assumptions. Of course, man is limited in rationality, and knowledge.)  Evil, in the end, is irrational, however, and ignorance part of its nature.

 

Evil sacrifices the greater good for its immediate gain.  Since its own welfare is ultimately dependent upon the greater good, it thus consumes the foundation of its own wealth, and must look ever farther to feed its hungers, until it can no longer support itself, and collapses.  But before it collapses, it may have consumed the substance of many.  Those incapable, those inattentive, or those ineffectual in opposing it. 

 

Eventually, good always triumphs. The reason good always triumphs, though,  is because evil always fails.  But it may succeed for a time, and the damage it may have inflicted be awful.

 

And when the good turns evil, it fails.  Signs of turning evil are signs of failure.  But not all signs of failure are signs of an internal evil.  Failure may be imposed from above, inflicted.

 

It first seems as if we can talk about evil in terms of discount rates.  An individual with the lower discount rate, that is a person more prepared to reduce consumption today so that he has more to consume tomorrow, is somehow more virtuous, ‘more good,’ than someone who consumes more today, with less thought of tomorrow. 

 

But we are living through a period where this virtue turns into exploitation, and destructive of the foundations of all wealth.  An individual with a lower discount rate, exchanging with a person with a higher discount rate, will eventually come to possess all the other has, no matter how small the difference in discount rate.  Even if the person with the larger discount rate is a person of relative virtue, he is not virtuous enough to retain his wealth.  Is the consumption of the wealth of the less virtuous, then, itself a sign of virtue, or a sign of a lack of restraint, and of evil?    

 

Or is instead the failure of the person with the higher discount rate a sign of his ‘evilness?’ For failure is what will result.   Should he now be condemned to labor as a slave on behalf of the person with the lower discount rate, who now may consume the fruits of the labor of both, in perpetuity?  Who is evil?  The slave, who has become so because of  his inadequate virtue, or the slaver? 

 

The slaver, having consumed the wealth of his slave, is reduced to consuming the slave’s surplus, which it is in the slave’s interest to minimize.   Having reduced the slave to subsistence, the slaver must then compel him to produce more. 

 

So we see that a lesser evil, what can be just a tiny difference in discount rates, by one, becomes, if not countered, a greater evil, by the other.  

 

Where is the happy median? 

 

The accumulation of capital by a society is a great virtue.  But so is its proper allocation. And this proper allocation is necessary, for when wealth becomes excessively concentrated, it can no longer maintain itself without the consumption of the capital of the rest of that society.   Virtue pursued to excess has become Evil.

 

Still, it justifies itself by its earlier successes, yet its ends have changed.  No longer Virtue, the pursuit of the common good, it turns to the fulfilling of its own now insatiable needs, and, at first just incidentally, the impoverishment of others.  It goes too far, first blighting the lives and hopes of those less endowed, or less lucky, and then becoming corrupt and turning on itself, feeding on itself.     

 

Evil is seldom pure.  How do we recognize when virtue has turned evil, and harnessed to evil ends?  How do we recognize the deterioration of our society, our nation, and our world?  How do we recognize the infliction of evil, and the imposition of failure?

 

After all, Evil will cloak itself in virtue.  Its agents may even, at first, imagine themselves virtuous.  And what it imposes will not be called failure.  It will be called something else.  Evil deceives, doing one thing while saying it does another.  And where it does what it says, its motives and goals are not what it says they are. But because Evil’s ends are irrational, as these become clear, irrational too become its justifications.  Its speaking, and its actions, become increasingly detached from reality, and from each other.  And its speaking and its actions become increasingly incoherent

 

Evil inflicts misery, whether or not it profits.  And its profit is always less than the misery it inflicts.  Evil provides no nourishment.  What it seems to provide is never worth the price.

 

Evil does not create, except implements of destruction.  It only manipulates, and takes.  Indeed, creation is anathema to Evil, which opposes it at every turn.  It destroys what it cannot have, and pollutes, both what it does not possess, and what it does.

 

Evil cannot control its appetite.  No amount of wealth is sufficient to its needs.  And what to others are wants, mere desires, to Evil are needs, and needs that can never be satisfied. 

Evil’s end is not what power can do, to the benefit of others, but power itself, and what it can do to gratify its needs

. 

Evil considers itself to be justified in its extravagance.  (After all, is not God glorified?  Why, then, should Evil not be, when it basks in such obvious sign of His favor? Is His existence not extravagant?   Why, then, should Evil’s not be, who has, by what ever means, acquired the wealth to emulate Him?)

_________________

 

We coddle the wealthy.   We are told that they are the creators of jobs.  Yet, there were more jobs when they were not so coddled. There was more wealth, and more creation of wealth, when the wealthy did not have so much.  And now, we are told, we must give them even more.  We, the people, must tighten our belts, and sacrifice of our own wealth, to feed the needs of the wealthy, the wealthy creditors who hold our debt, the debt of the people. 

 

But ask the wealthy. Are they not virtuous?  Do they not deserve the rents they extract from the people?  Have the people, the debtors, through their inferior virtue, not embonded themselves to their creditors, the wealthy? 

 

But are the rents and fees extracted from the people put to good use?  Who, or what do they feed?  If they would be the masters of the people, are they good to the people, or are they not?  Are the extractions returned to the people, as the virtuous master would do?  (But why should they be?  Are not the people of inferior virtue to the wealthy, and undeserving?)  Are they not instead turned on self consumption, and the feeding of the worms of competing corruption which are now the economic processes at the heart of the nation, and perhaps the world?

 

With the growth of the global economy, the reach of Evil is the ends of the earth, and, unless effectively opposed and contained, it will consume the sustenance of all else before it consumes itself.

 

But- perhaps we should look at the latest corruption in high places as- justice.  Tolerating Evil, even perhaps, as some claim, inflicting it on others, Evil comes to us. 

 

There are those who believe that, or say that, having achieved wealth and prominence, that this is evidence of moral superiority; that they are morally superior to those of us who have not.  (Have we ourselves not said this?  Used our nation’s wealth and power to justify our- ‘exceptionalism?’)  Do they use this to justify their stewardship, or their extravagance?  Is it become an instrument to do good, or wealth to conspicuously consume. Do they feed others, or deprive them of things of value, of the resources needed for the enjoyment of such liberty as they have?

 

The moral justification of those in high places can be rephrased:  They rule for the benefit of the people, to shower them with the blessings of their making.  Or, instead, they rule to inflict punishments on those who deserve them. And the poor and undeserving are supposed to accept these hardships, laid upon them by the wealthy, as justice served.

 

And what do we see, but the enforcement of this process, the reduction of debtor to slave, by our government.   Are we surprised then, by reaction against the government, since it has become an instrument of compulsion, for the extraction of rent from the people, to the vast enrichment of a few.  The protector of the people, having become enslaved by the wealthy, is despised by the people.  The people, rather than seeking their government’s freedom, despair of it, and turn on it, and seek its destruction.

Do those who tolerate evil deserve evil things to happen to them?  Is it a form of justice that those who tolerate evil, though they do no evil themselves, should be punished?  Is tolerating evil itself evil?  Is being a bystander to a crime itself a crime?  Is to allow evil to consent to evil?

 

Justification for government and regulation is seen by the behavior of the wealthy.  And we may react one of two ways.  We may accept the punishment, or we may strike out against the evil. 

 

Finally, though man is limited in knowledge and rationality, the shape of the future is becoming increasingly clear.    The earth is limited. The ends of the earth have been found, and been found to be not so far.  Consideration of and action to counter overpopulation, global warming, the depletion of resources and increasing toxicity of the environment, are all becoming more imperative.  Will man pursue the course of evil, with evil consequences, or will he act rationally?