Strange Gods, Foreign Altars

A great many Americans and Indonesians seem to labor under a similar misconception, though the circumstances are slightly different.

Ask a random sample of Americans, and the majority will likely say that the US is a Christian country.  In Indonesia, the same question is liable to get the majority response that this is an Islamic country.

Both majorities are wrong.

The US was neither founded by Christians, nor was it intended to be a "Christian" country.  In fact, many of the founders of the US were Deists, which are defined as folks who believe the Creator is separate from the Creation, and that Humanity is allowed to go its own way within the Laws of Nature.  They reject the supernatural and shy away from revelations and miracles, preferring a more scientific approach to things.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because the ideas are woven into the US Declaration of Independence and its Constitution, especially the part where it says, "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free practice thereof..."

We must keep in mind that a large number of folks who came to the New World from Europe were, if fact, religious heretics and nut cases (by some accounts) and roundly persecuted for it back home.  All the wanted, really, was to be left the hell alone so they could do whatever it was that fulfilled their spiritual needs.

It's a slightly different situation in Indonesia, but the impulse is the same.

When the founders were trying to forge a nation out of a bunch of wildly different cultures with widely varying beliefs stretched out for thousands of miles across thousands of islands, that had all been colonized for centuries, they had to placate many different beliefs.

What eventually made it into the Indonesian Constitution is:

Article 29
(1) The State shall be based upon the belief in the One and Only God.
(2) The State guarantees all persons the freedom of worship, each according to
his/her own religion or belief.

In actual practice, this has come to mean that you are free to worship if you belong to one of the six "recognized" religions - Roman Catholic, Protestant, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, or Islam - and oh, by the way, Islam is more equal than all the others.

This was no more apparent than in a recent story out of Medan.  In brief, a baby boy was found nearly frozen in a cardboard box, abandoned in the town of Binjai, in Sumatera.  A Christian policewoman wanted to adopt the child, but was told she could not because only Muslims are allowed to adopt abandoned children.  Consequently, the evil Social Services (same in every country) snatched the child away and put him in an orphanage in Medan.  Obviously, they are really concerned for the welfare of the child, since an orphanage is preferable to a loving home.

The article goes on to state:

"...A national law, Government Regulation no. 54/2007 on Adoption, states in article 3, “In cases in which the origin of the child is unknown, then the child’s religion is conformed to the religion of the majority of the local population.”

In Indonesia, the religions may not be mingled.   Marriages and adoptions may only be among those of the same (or assumed) religions.  This law is primarily to protect Muslims from internarriage and/or the shameful possibility that children could be raised with liberal ideas concerning religions, such as may happen in a "mixed" marriage or cross-adoption.

To be fair, the Roman Catholics have done the same thing for centuries, though in this supposedly Enlightened Era, this kind of practice seems draconian, if not down-right medieval.

Indonesia is often referred to as the largest Islamic nation on Earth.  It is not.  It has the largest Muslim population under one flag, but it is supposedly composed of six equal religions.  In practice, however, this is obviously not true.

Not only are mixed marriages and adoptions forbidden, but Muslims receive preferenctial treatment by the government's Ministry of Religion, converts TO Islam are perfectly acceptable, but FROM Islam can and often do result in disinheritance, excommunication and even death in some areas.  Everyone is expected to respect (even follow) Muslim practices such as Ramadhan, but Muslims routinely ignore those fasting for Lent.  Mosques are built roughly every 200m all over the country, and their loudspeakers are cranked to 11 with no recourse, but churches and temples are highly regulated and frequently destroyed before construction is finished.

Had a Muslim policewoman, such as in the story, found an abandoned baby in a predominantly Christian area and wanted to adopt, I would likely not be writing this article, as it would never have become an issue of national attention.

I frequently hear local Muslims grousing about the way Muslims are treated in Europe and the US, and even Myanmar.  It is difficult to point out that perhaps some Islamic practices and demands rub the wrong way on others.  Perhaps, I want to say, intolerance begets intolerance.  Perhaps the willingness to heap suffering even on the innocent causes others to recoil in disgust, maybe even horror.

Certainly the upwelling of indignation in Indonesia over this particular case shows that a large number - even a majority - of people in this country want fairness, compassion and generosity, over dogma, inflexibility and favoratism.

Perhaps it's time for Muslims in Indonesia (and elsewhere) to re-examine the meaning of Pancasila and the founding principles of this nation.  People are either free or they are not, there are no partial steps or gradients.

A woman's love and care of a child is endowed by God - not your god or my god, but THE God.  Only a man could find it acceptable to put a child in an orphanage to "save" it from a life under the "wrong" religion and deny a woman's instinct to care for and protect a child.

It's time to ask what is more important, a book or a life?

When I Was A Kid...

When I consider the most meaningful learning experiences in my life, a TeeVee or computer do not figure into them at all.

The most meaningful experiences I had, and which still strongly affect my thinking, were the times I spent wandering around with my dog on the farm.  Chasing critters, watching ant piles, following the cows, fishing, looking through my telescope...all those things kids don't do anymore...taught me all sorts of life lessons, not to mention just plain old observation of the world around me.

In the old days, teachers would take us outside on pleasant spring or fall days and we would identify trees and plants, insects and clouds.  How did ants carry loads many times their size?  What kinds of clouds signaled what kinds of weather?  What times of the year did you see butterflies, cicadas and woolly boogers?  Where did squirrels bury their nuts and why?

Anymore, you can drop a kid off a block from home and they couldn't navigate back, because they've never been further than a few feet from a screen that gives them everything they are supposed to know, and even that screen is getting dumber.  I think George Carlin put it best when he said if you drop your kid off on a street corner and he's still there the next day, you got a dumb kid.

My folks hardly ever let us watch TeeVee.  My dad called it a "goddam commie conspiracy," while my more circumspect mom preferred that we read books for entertainment, and bless her for that.  It really didn't matter, though, because three miles outside Moulton, Texas, with no cable, we were rather limited on what signals we could pull down out of the atmosphere.

I grew up with the entire Life Cycle around me.  By the tender age of 8 or 9, I had already seen a dozen different animals mate, give birth and die.  We butchered some for food and had to kill some for medial reasons.  I had fun shaping freshly laid eggs (the shells are still soft), hunting and tracking, and learning how to field dress (gut and skin) an animal if I bagged one.

Every year I knew the joy of tilling soil, planting seeds and eating the results of my hard work.  In fact, nothing tastes better than fruits and vegetables you grow and harvest yourself.  Tomatoes still warm from the Sun with a dash of salt are still one of my favorite snacks.

I learned how to hunt edible mushrooms and pick wild berries - in Texas, wild dewberries, blackberries and Mustang grapes are everywhere in season.

An 8- or 9-year-old child today would likely starve to death in a field of food, never having seen edibles in their natural state.  He has never seen anything born or die, and even when the Boots the family cat passed on, he was too engrossed in Warcraft to notice, never having developed a bond with anything other than the game console.

Parents now plunk their kids down in front of a screen and they hardly stir for the next 18 years.  If the kids get a little antsy and want to blow off some energy, the folks shove pills down their throats to prevent them from interrupting Mom and Dad's stupor.

Animal breeders will tell you that animals kept penned up get stupid.  In humans, we call this "institutionalized."  They are unable to function in the real world, because they have no experience outside the confines of their walls.

There is plenty of blame to go around.  City living, corporate shilling and lazy parents come to mind.  Am major problem is that the parents of school-aged children are themselves the products of TeeVee and gaming consoles.  They don't know how to live in the real world, and thus are incapable of teaching their children how to do it.  Furthermore, they are unmotivated to change the situation, either for themselves or their children.

I suppose I'm kind of a weird one.  When I wanted to learn about cars, I bought some old junkers and tore them apart to rebuild them.  I can't imagine being a teen now and having no clue how to change the oil, much less re-shoe the brakes or tear down the block.  It probably helped that I had to use a tractor as a kid that would break down a mile from the house, so I either had to fix it on the spot, or walk two miles (round trip).

I took my kids out to West Texas, or to the mountains in New Mexico at least twice a year (summer and winter).  We would hike for hours, learn how to find water in the desert, how to get directions from lichen, or read animal tracks to know which ones we didn't want to encounter.  We would pick fossils out of the road cuts and see that below the K-T boundary, there were piles of fossils, but above it were none.  We learned what kinds of trees and plants grew at which altitudes, and the differences between conifer and deciduous trees, and which birds preferred to nest in which trees.

I don't know how many of the details they retained, but I know from watching them as adults that they learned to observe, analyze and act on information from the world around them.  That's more than I can say for many of their peers.

It would terrify me to raise kids now.  Everything comes through a screen, and then parents wring their hands because their kids find the real world boring and uninteresting.  This leads the parents to panic and shove pills down the poor children's throats, thus exacerbating the problem.

I have to think that if I were raising kids now, I would be like my dad and curse the "goddam commie" boob tube.  I'd at least take away the remote so they would have to stir once in a while to change the channel.

Hidupan, Alam Semesta dan Semuanya

One reason I write a blog is to exchange ideas with other minds out there, whether they see things the same as I do, or not. The mail I get is often inspirational and thanks to my blog, I have made new contacts in various parts of the world. A big note of tanks goes to George Ure, at UrbanSurvival, for giving me a wider audience!

Because of my eyesight (or lack thereof), I am a bit slow on reading and responding to email, but this morning I received an email that really inspired me, to whit:

"My daughter has enrolled her son and daughter in cyberschool. What a difference it makes. It gives them a lot of room for self expression. You are right about doing the same old thing over and over again.My daughter is an artist in mosaics, but when she was in school, if she dared to step out of the teachers way, she got into hot water, never allowed for self expression. It is a different mode now and if more parents did it, there would be more free thinkers. If the USA goes the way it looks like it is going, the schools won't be able to affort to run busses anyway.And I despise the fact that every school has a cop in it. What is wrong with these people. I always say it was created by the "puckerbutt Mamas" who had nothing better to do than go to PTA meetings and harp about a teacher touching their children. Lets face it "we have been had by the PTB and it is up to the free thinkers to change things."

In addition to giving me a wonderful new adjective, 'puckerbutt,' this letter also inspired me. I therefore replied in my usual brief and concise manner:

Please pardon my delay in replying, but WOW what a great letter to receive!

It's gratifying to hear that there are folks out there who are opting out of the system. Freedom of self begins with freedom of thought, and we can't think clearly nor freely if we are sent to cookie cutter schools.

I'm an artist, as well. I spent 40 years of my 50 total (so far) working in theater, film and TV. I had some brilliant, real teachers, beginning with my mother, who not only encouraged free-thinking, but demanded it.

Your letter reached me at an opportune time. I am currently developing a system for teaching English online so that it can reach students in Indonesia who are very remote and don't have access to the resourses available in Jakarta. You see, English is a way for people to move up here. They can use it to get good jobs and expand outside their villages and borders. They can access a much larger world of ideas by learning a single skill. However, when I teach English, I use ten different languages to do it. I show the students that language is simply a way to encode and decode information, just like math, computers and art. I come at the problem from a different angle than the standard rote memory curricula available on the market. Language is an organic, living thing and cannot be taught in a cold, rigid manner, just as plants cannot be raised without water and sunshine and exposure to the environment.

Anyway, I could wax philosophical for hours, as you can see from my blog. I am verygrateful to you for writing me. You inspired me with your ideas. Tha is one rreason I write, so that I can exchange ideas with a wider audience, and not only be inspired, but translate that into inspiration for the next generation.

I wish the best for you and yours. I am overjoyed that someone out there is seeking something different from the same ole same ole. We can win this Thing one mind at a time. It's daunting, but not impossible.

Thank you kindly for your letter, I know that to inspire someone to write back, there must be some ideas in my writings that move and motivate, and that is gratifying. Best of luck to you all, and blessings on you and yours.

Best regards,
Bernard

Education.

That's the key. That's how we defeat the PTB. One mind at a time. It took generations of indoctrination to get to where we are as a civilization, and it will take the same to get out. We just have to have the same resolve to be truly free that the bastards have to enslave.

Great books, such as Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, show us where we are heading now. But books such as, Shang-gri La and Stranger In A Strange Land and 2001: A Space Odyssea, show us where we could go.

People such as Richard Hoagland and David Icke, even if they are wrong, show us that thinking bigger can free us of so many constraints. People such as the reader who wrote me above show us that something as simple as art can elevate us above the mundane and propel us to new thoughts, new heights and New Frontiers of Humanity.

And it all begins with Education.

I was a threat to the United States. They castigated me and persecuted me because I did such radical things as forbid vaccinations for my children, filtered their water of things like flouride and chlorine, and homeschooled. I refused to follow the proscribed path and for that, my wife was killed and my children were used as weapons by the State.

the danger of free thought is very real. Trust me.

Ask Galileo. Ask anyone who presents to true and credible challenge to the status quo. If you push against the GAP (Generally Accepted Paradigm), you will be punished severely. People don't like their apple carts upset, especially those who profit from building the carts and growing the apples. They only profit when the apples are neatly stacked in a controlled area. If the apples are rolling down the street, then anybody can pick them up.

It comes down to this: who controls the mids of our children?

I've had some great teachers in my life. They were not famous nor did they want to be. They had one goal, to make me think.

There's Mrs. James and Mrs. Speck. There's Mr. Z and Stan. There's Swilley and my trig tutor, whose name I don't even remember, but who taught me that math can be understood.

But, at the core of it all, after years of education that has yet to stop, there's my mother. She taught me language and art and the most important thing of all: to read.

It's all there in a book somewhere. The collected knowledge of the ages is written down and waiting for discovery. To read is to be free. Because of reading, my teachers include: Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Plato, Aristotle, Ovid, Pythagoras, Nietzsche, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Benedict, Lao Tsu, Sun Tsu, Gengis Khan, and scores of others.

Because I learned art, I was trained by Monet, van Gogh, Michaelangelo, da Vinci, Rodan, Orson Welles, and so many more it would take an encyclopaedia.

There were my language teachers for Spanish, Latin and German. There were the incredible cast of characters I have met traveling. There were monks at Christ in the Desert.

All the great thinkers, artisits, writers, and philosophers of all time came to me through one simple skill: reading. Thanks Mom!

So, if you want to teach your children to think, not parrot, you have one job, and only one job...get them to read. Open the doors to the Universe by turning off the TV and the video games, and turn on the books, essays, manifestos, and papers. Give them inspiration, and the rest follows. Stop trying to be you kid's best friend and start thinking for the long term, far beyond your lifetime.

What can you do now that will affect generations?

I don't teach to get rich or even to make a living. I teach because I have a burning desire to open the mind of fresh, young thinkers who can change the world I will never live in. And in the end, that's the thing that must change: what is it that benefits us? Is it what car we drive or what house we live in or the luxuries in our lives? Or is it the world we can build through our children and their children, and the faces we will never know and the world we will never inhabit?

To paraphrase another great thinker, 'Ask not what the world can do for you, but what you can do for the world.'

And for God's sake, stop being a consumer. The real economy is not what we buy, but what we offer. Change your mind and change the world is the simplistic slogan that came out in the 80s. Though the intention was to sign folks up to comsume something, it is never-the-less true.

The difference between freedom and slavery, between wealth and poverty, is nothing more than a point of view.

It's that simple.