Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00487)

> From: "stevestubbs" <stevestubbs@yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
> To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Theos-World Out of Afrca
> Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 12:06:14 -0000
>
> Ali: "Karma has nothing to do with it?"
>
> I don't see any evidence that "karma" as most people think of it
> exists. The good die young and in poverty, while bad people prosper,
> enjoy themselves, live long and healthy lives and die painlessly with
> perfect teeth and eyesight. The usual notion of "karma" is supposed
> to somehow nullify ratr fact by assuming scores will be settled
> later. I am also reluctant to dismiss someone else's misfortune as
> karma.
Maybe you're on the wrong list, if you can't take it any deeper than that? 
Later in this post, we go into the U.S. Civil War history a bit.
Don't you see that war as just possibly karmic in a nation that was 
established "Under God" with the argument that all men were entitled to 
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
All wars are karmic, in fact.

> Ali: "When one thinks of China reinventing itself, even the millions
> of casualties under Mao and the Japanese before him, seem like a very
> clean rebirth, overall.
>
> Are you kidding?
Does millions of deaths sound like someone is kidding?

> Ali: "From even a double digit I.Q., that sounds like the bleating of
> a Rush Limbaugh. A certifiable idiot. 200 years ago, there were
> entrenched royalty and nobility who were very rich? they were the
> CEO/management class of their day. Everyone else was poor.
>
> You need to learn something about history. 200 years ago kings and
> popes were less comfortable than you are today. They wore wigs
> filled with lice and plotted to kill each other. Cathrine II had her
> own son imprisoned at Lubyanka at an early age. He was released on
> her death to become Czar.
I know something of history. I know a red herring too. What you mention here 
may be true enough, but it's irrelevant, except that if they were having a 
bad hair day because of lice, they could order the death, imprisonment, 
torture of anyone below their station. Look it up.

> Ali: "When America was Europeanized, one remarkable thing was the
> continent was so rich that any industrious person who wanted to could
> become quite well off.
>
> If that theory made any sense, the Indians would all have been rich.
It's exactly because that theory makes sense that the Indians were made 
dead. If you knew a bit of American history, you'd know that. There were 
unbelievable resources everywhere, and there would soon be very cheap labor- 
or at least cheap enough to profit off.

What the Indians were not was materially covetous or industrious in 
anywhere near the same scale as the white folks. Don't get me wrong, I don't 
paint them in some idealistic notion- they were cruel to enemies, they stole 
from enemies- but they never committed the sort of evil outrages against 
humanity and nature the white man did to establish nations in the Western 
Hemisphere.
The Protestant ethic combined with the conviction of Manifest Destiny- that 
God gave this continent to the white men merely because He did not prevent 
them from raping it into shape- sounds somewhat like what you mention about 
karma- led to a very prosperous middle class, and an even more prosperous 
upper class. And perhaps there was a Manifest Destiny, a huge energy behind 
it all? There had to be. The great Indian prophets saw it, saw their tribes 
as doomed because their day had come and gone- is that not theosophy to the 
core?
What a heartbreaking thing, to see the inheritors of the Great Land having 
basically the spirituality of locusts. Try imagining that.


> Erica: "Your affirmation that there is no solution is quite
> pessimist and is based on what?
>
> What I said is, I don't think anyone KNOWS a solution. Look at the
> cynical Bush effort to take over Iraq and run its oil wells for the
> personal profit of certain individuals in the US and you can see what
> would happen if someone tried to impose their wlll on Africa. Or
> look at Oil Man Bush I's effort to take over oil rich Somalia while
> at the same time pretending he was concerned about the poor people
> there. If outsiders cannot impose their will on them, then they have
> to do it themselves, unless you believe in miracles.
>
> I don't think visiting web sites and making meaningless statements of
> sympathy counts for much. Everyone I have ever met limits himself or
> herself to just that and no more. It makes them feel good but it is
> meaningless.
>
> Erica: "We don't have a political system build upon noble
> principles
>
> Yes, if you are talking about the characters who invaded Iraq and
> destroyed the place so its oil money could be funneled through
> Halliburton, which just happens to be the company of the fellow who
> instigated the whole thing in the first place, then you are certainly
> right. We have not seen that kind of blatant corruption since the
> Civil War.
We have seen exactly a history of blatant corruption by U.S. corporations in 
third world countries ever since the Civil War. Iraq is just the latest 
chapter in an ongoing saga. It was the period following that war that 
corporations were unleashed and given gigantic leeway with no checks or 
balance.

That war was a turning point for American economic policy in terms of these 
"legal instruments" now being able to influence national policy to provide 
umbrella coverage for their exploitation of 3rd world neighbors....in 
addition to domestic pillage. The Civil War forced smart businessmen to find 
a different source of cheap labor than American slaves....which was 
ridiculously easy to do. Yankee ingenuity, once again. Look at how this 
country pushed tired old Spain out, and moved into all its possessions and 
colonies.
Fast-forward to today....which is why I think personally that the present 
political conflict with the Muslim terrorists is a prelude to a second sort 
of American Civil War crisis. I see it as a related ongoing 
syndrome......with dreadful possibilities on this continent not imagined 
since that war.
We Americans are so insulated, so provincial.

regards-

Ali

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