BOOK FOUR

God, Property, and The Structure of Thought

500 years ago
catholic church
circumnavigation of planet
magna carta
patent law
mathematics
printing press
dissection of human body
telescope and microscope
gun powder
cannon

250 years ago
collapse of monarchies
descarte's philosophy
malthusian/machiavelian politics
newton's laws
declaration of independence
united states constitution
declaration of rights of man and citizen
democracy, socialism, communism
industrial revolution
vaccinations
steam engine

100 years ago
alleged freedom of slaves and women
world war one
Einstein
human flight
atomic theory
genetics
internal combustion engine
automobile
radio
telephone
electric motor
camera
cocaine
cell theory
mass production
ball bearing
skyscraper
refrigerator
machine gun

75 years ago
quantum mechanics
cinema
television
Godel's theorem
penicillin
empire state building
atom smasher
liquid fuel rocket

50 years ago
the united nations
declaration of human rights
DNA identified
mass consumption
open heart surgery
computers
satellites in space
laser
world war two
jet air plane
atomic bomb

25 years ago
global democratic/communist conflict
man goes to moon and back
human heart transplant
DNA mapped
test tube babies
personal computers
LSD
space station
robots

NOW

whats goin' on
&
what it is

the pit of human behavior
&
the pinnacle of perception

how the head
- out of fear -
forces the hands
to cut the throat
of our common being
- while god watches -

the mass media, most notably television, and our
personal and public communications systems,
local and global
PLUS
capitalism - the acquisition and distribution system
of our planetary resources
established by the self through slavery
PLUS
our polluted environment
PLUS
all of us together, the whole of human relationship
EQUALS
a primitive planetary being

an electronic nervous system
an economic circulatory system
an ailing respiratory system

and a twisting, churning digestive system
- thats the poor being poisoned -

That is our self in common,
a primitive, stone-age consciousness
with space-age tools,
an immense power controlled
by a small fragmented mind,
our common mind.

The Poverty of the Planet

The foundation of our present worldwide social structure
is a mass of rotting, stinking corpses
upon which sit starving children with bloated bellies
whose despairing mothers
are parchment wrapped skieletons,
while teenage boys with guns
shoot indiscriminately at the innocent and guilty alike
to instill fear
and prove a warped manhood
in search of a petty glory.

Then there are the soldiers
in the hills outside the city
and in the trenches
and in the cover of burned out urban dwellings
and the rubble of once thriving market places,
where again innocent citizens die
as the result of a mistaken service.

There are also those few regions of relative stability with varying degrees of prosperity, from the poor and destitute of the vast slums to the affluence of those with property. As the power of technology and the scope of authority increases, the health and stability of the people decreases. Our global social condition is epitomized in our cities, while the destructive, deteriorating human behavior in the cities is epitomized by the psyche of the individual.
Thanks to high technology decreasing the death rate and increasing the birth rate and releasing the vast majority from having to work the farm, the over population of the world gravitates toward the pit - the great urban centers where they spend their lives conspicuously making, buying, selling, using, and disposing of things. That is, if they are of the more fortunate whose numbers are dwindling. If not - as a result of the biological laws of overcrowding (savage competition, increased physical and mental disease, sexual perversion, the breakdown of the family, pervasive violence both subtle and gross) then they are of a proportion of the people whose numbers are exploding even faster than is the population as a whole - the poor and destitute, the criminal, the violent, and the insane.
Due to our need to compensate psychologically for the expanding fear and tension and the ill health that we must deal with daily, we begin to shift the parameters of what is considered "normal" to include what was once deviant, which in turn contributes further to our moral decline. An effect snowballing synergistically with the destruction of our environment and the wasting of our resources brought about by the conspicuous making, buying, selling, using and disposing of things on a global scale.

Its that inherently contradictory nature of ourselves
-cooperative/competitive-
where we give over our life
to the religion, nation, corporation,
or whatever organization,
(usually the power structure we were born into)
and these organizations compete ruthlessly for resources
in a world exploding with ever more powerful social structures.

which evolved out of the tendency of the universe
to form ever higher and more complex forms of orgnaization

in circles and cycles
and spheres of influence
expanding and contracting

subatomic, atomic, molecular
biological, psychological, social
local, global, and cosmic

The social organization of the world is rooted in the structure of thought,
the structure that dominates the world of man,
the structure whose foundation is culture, the creator of our civilization.

the self is the center
with god
as motivation and justification
to conquer and control
to gain property
to finance technique
to conquer
to gain property
with god
as motivation and justification
ad infinitum ad nauseum