The Chinese Taoism believe that Heaven and Earth gave birth to Humanity. Change of the energy of Heaven and Earth will also reflected in the human circumstances. The Chinese Fengshui (风水）study have lend us the knowledge of Threes Cycles and Nine Periods. According to this theory which as went back for thousands of years in practices, we are at about to enter the last Period (the Ninth phrase 离卦) of a Sequence that started on 1864, as each Period is about twenty years in manifesting the archetype of one of the Nine Flying Stars. You can gain some of the understanding by reading the article Things to know about Period 9 (九运, Jiu Yun) in Fengshui (风水). But one thing is the energy of the Period Nine Fire is going to be very different from Period Eight of Earth Energy.
As the season changes, we also noticed many important people has recently passed away. First was Chinese Prime Minister Li KeQiang had suddenly left us because of heart attack. Then two days ago, investment sage Charlie Munger passed away at 99 years old, and then yesterday, former US secretary of state, national security adviser and long term U.S diplomat, Henry Kissinger Passed Away at 100 Years Old. These are very important people who have far reaching impact to the world affairs. Their pass away may be signalling of the ending of Period Eight that started 1984, according to the theory of Three Cycles of Nine Periods.
With so much social political conflict domestically and internationally everywhere, no one can totally avoid the criticism and argements. Buddhism believe our personal life circumstance is the reflection of deeds of past life, and the future life will be reflect this life’s deeds. And we produces our karma by action, speech and mental perceptions. 欲知前世因，今生受者是，欲知后世果，今生作者是. There is an metaphysical principle in operation, including each of our destiny and karma. As the The Buddha Speaks The Sutra OnCause And Effect In The Three Periods Of Time says:
Wealth and dignity come from one's destiny From causes planted in lives in the past. People who hold to this simple principle Will reap good fortune in lives in the future.
Same is taught in the Sutra of Infinite Life: 《无量寿经》云： [人在世间，爱欲之中，独生独死，独去独来。当行至趣，苦乐之地，身自当之，无有代者。].
Great Master Chin-Liang stated in his commentary of Avatamsaka (Flower Adornment) Sutra (P63) that” one who has not yet severed one’s afflictions or become awakened, find his or her extensive knowledge leads to erroneous viewpoints. It is essential to be balanced in both cultivation and understanding. A dharma lecturer who does not cultivate often will have erroneous thoughts and viewpoints and will therefore mislead others. This person uses his or her own viewpoint which distort the Buddha’s teachings into worldly viewpoints. ” Knowledge and enlightenment is two different thing. Here are some excerpts from Kodo Sawaki (1880-1965)’s Book To You may shed you some insights into the confusions.
I must admit I am guilty of that criticism quoted above myself in the first place. I am an Buddhism aspirant, who knows very little about Buddhism theories before 2016, but the confidence in the Chan Masters from my hometown helped me gain certain degree of clarity to maintain my stability and further learn to keep myself afloat at a time when the tsunami of discords and confusion almost engulf us. But I have not been enlightened yet, and I have told you guys I am at the kindergarten level in regard to my understanding of Buddhism. So please pardon me if I have say anything inappropriate or my unconscious wrong viewpoints have somehow negatively affect you. But one thing I am very sure is the invaluable wisdom Buddha had sparked the light in me.
I am also very grateful for all the supports from many teachers and fellow Buddhism practitioners who worked so hard behind the scene to do their best in guiding me under such an circumstances, as well as numerous fellow volunteers who donate their energy and assistance to make this blog happen. Without government subsides, many Buddhist temples are working under very tight buget, unable to provide more programs to help coping the difficulites we are in. I suggest you at least donate to the temples I quoted on my websites if you feel you benefits from my writing since the very start years ago. And I thank you in advance and congratulate you for taking your part towards upgrade our collective wisdom of civilization.
As the world around us increases in technological complexity, our understanding of it diminishes. Computation brings hunanity more darkness than enligtenment: a goblin horde of digital superstituions, invented and unleashed in just half a century. Underlying this trend is a single idea: the belief that our existence is understadable through computation, and more data is enough to help us build a better world. In reality, we are lost in a sea of information, increasingly divided by fundamentalism, simplitic narrative, conspiracy theories, and post-factual politics. From rogue financial systems to shopping algorithms, from artificial intelligence ot state secrecy, we no longer understand how our world is governmed or presented to us. The media is filled with unverifiable speculations, much of it generated by anonymous software, while companies dominate their employees through surveilance and the theat of automation. Meanwhile, those in power use our lack of understanding to further their own interests. Despite the apparent accessibility of information, we are living in a New Dark Age – fearlessly author, theorist, artist and technical visionary, James Bridle, aruges that technology as an open question and urgent problem, nevertheless needs to be confronted in order to think the present and free the future from false algorithmi certainities. Technology is not the answer. Nor is it a solution.
With all that in mind, I certainly do not want to further misled you or adding more bad karma to myself. I have a lot of repentance to make and I need time to practice and gain personal insight on Buddha’s teachings myself. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single first step. And with so much resources online, in bookstores available to the western public, and even more auspiciously, more and more Buddhist Masters arriving to the West, we all are blessed with great conditions to find out our own spiritual path and become wiser. With Period Nine coming, I Wish You All the Best on Your New Endeavor to Ignite Your Fire of Wisdom! We all can Beginning Anew! Just remember that our Collective Awakening and Purification takes a Process!
As the Palestine civilian death increase drastically, 70% of the death are the women and children – WHO says a child is killed every 10 minutes in Gaza. Unprecedented’ death toll among Gaza’s journalists. As the Gaza’s largest hospital being bombarded, the Red Cross said medical facilities and workers in Gaza needed to be protected, warning the health system in the territory had “reached a point of no return”. U. S House Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, was making her closing arguments on a resolution she sponsored (HB 31C) calling for a ceasefire in the war “Israel and occupied Palestine.” “We are at 10,000 dead Palestinians,” Nixon said during the debate. “How many will be enough?”
This program that just came out made by Middle East Eye – Why American Politicians are ‘lying’ about Gaza, shares with the western public on a big picture about the how we are miseducated and misinformed all these years by the American political media class. Are there Hamas tunnels under hospitals? Did Israel give up Gaza in 2005? Why fire cease had not been success since 1960s. Did the Palestinians reject their own state? This program examine a widely shared interview with Hillary Clinton which was praised as informative and illuminating, and postulated that the reason that many political medias mislead the public because of financial ties to Israel, and influential Israeli lobbies in the United States. With the scale of destruction of Gaza spiralling, with its people trapped and helpless, with American politicians just passed 14 billion aids to Israel, if they are not willing to pull their allies from the brink, with no political solution on the table, what then is the logical end point?
This other program from Novara Media look into the political makeup in the USA that causing lopsided blindly support of Israel. It argues that many American politicians are not fit for their jobs – a fact that has getting more and more blatant obvious when the American political is causing more and more damages and pain to the world. This further brings up the very question of American political structure and the process of election selections. The news media as an important pillar of U.S. democracy is decay by the money and monopoly. Huge wealth gaps in the United States and the large amount of money required to buy votes will tend to select the representatives for the minority wealthy, thus causing the American political life very unhealthy. Why Americans are losing trust in elections and the media interviewed two researchers from pew research center and discussed the implication. In the 2016 presidential election, almost 42% of the American electorate didn’t vote. The percentage was lower in 2020—33%, doubts About Election Fairness Affect Voting—and Democracy.
Sunday morning Nov 11, I find this old video – Journalist Gideon Levy’s 2015 speech on Israel’s occupation of Palestine goes viral, which gave more insight into the nature of Israel-Hamas war. An award winning Israel journalist, Gideon Levy’s discussion of the long-standing Israel-Palestine conflict has gone viral on social media. The journalist Gideon Levy’s insights on the situation have proven to be prophetic, given the current state of affairs in the region. Levy talked about the Israel’s illusory notion that they are the God’s chosen people.
This remind me of the four Leo planets in Israel’s national chart: Moon, Pluto, Saturn, and Mars all in the sign of Leo close to MC. In our endless samsara, there lives we are in the the realm of heaven, human, and there are lives in the realm of Hell, Ghost, and animals. It is just a cycle of different evolutionary stages. People who have too many Leo elements tend to nassitistic, self centered, and blind to the truth that we are all of the creation of Divine, and we are all blessed with “specialness” of some kind. Take the example of vegetables, which can not move, but also possess different nutritious qualities.
There has been heated debates as to USA’s support of Israel. Here is a survey result. Some people pointed out that the reason Elite class unconditionally supports Israel and Ukraine with US Taxpayer Money is because there is a huge amount of money to be siphoned off and profit from in these backdoor deals. The more tax money that gets sent overseas with minimal transparency is just an opportunity for the rich and powerful to gain more wealth and control. So this is a scam and U.S taxpayers are the victim. A case in point, billionaire Bill Ackman cut secrete back door deals with Zelenski, there are other ten people there which was organized by JP Morgan. These ultra wealthy have invested heavily in Ukraine’s infrastructure and financial services etc. before the war. To protect their investment they push on destroying Putin with Nato expansion to the Ukraine-Russia border which was violating the previous treaty signed in the early 1990 with Gorbachev.
America’s involvement into Middle East War from start of the century has caused millions and millions of refugees all over the world. In helping Israel, USA has indirectly caused many sufferings. This program air an section of BBC Question Time when an audience brought up all the facts of Israel double standard in Palestine issue. The program then argues that the western countries’ skewed framing of Palestine, and the reason Palestinian felt no hope and Hamas became popular because Israel had completely undermined Palestinian authority, the Israeli made it impossible to have any kind of solutions. Palestinian became desperate because of Israeli actions. A similar situation happened to Libya’s Gaddafi as shown in this video clip. , Called in western countries as dictator, he gave a speech in one of the UN assemblies 2009, “We are 192 nations and countries, and we are like Speakers Corner in London’s Hyde Park, we just speak and nobody implements our decisions. We are mere decoration without any substance. We are speaker corner, no more no less, we just make speeches and then disappear. This is who you are right now.”
On the other hand, the Hamas attacked of the civilians are war criminals regardless how much animosity you have towards Israel. This type of Unrestricted Warfare terrorism should be condemned.
‘Enough of this’: Hamas co-founder’s son speaks out. Mosab Hassan Yousef is the eldest son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef. “Since I was a child, I asked my father many questions about Hamas delusions, about their brutality, about their abuse of power, and he always justified their position,” Mosab Hassan Yousef said. “Then I was imprisoned with Hamas. I spent about 27 months in Israeli prisons where Hamas was torturing their own members … within Israel prisons. They killed and tortured hundreds of prisoners. “This is when I started asking myself the question: what if Hamas becomes the ruler at some point, what will they do to our people?”
Yijing Expert Mr. Cen asked for Yijing Oracle the case of Hama and Israel conflict, and he got Yijing Hexagram #7 – Leading/Discipline. He explained the divination for the Hexagram and hold the opinion that the conflict should be resolved as soon as possible. An elder will be the key for the resolution of the issue. He talked about Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the State of Palestine and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)，who is 88 year old now, and is a perfect edler to help steering away the situation from further complication and deterioration.
The Guardian has Israel-Hamas war live reported. More than 720,000 displaced people across the Gaza Strip were sheltering at 150 facilities run by UNRWA, as of Thursday Nov 9th.At shelters, the lack of water makes it hard to maintain even basic hygiene.Families are packed into a school building in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, with tents set up in the playground, washing hung up to dry in corridors and children sleeping on mats next to their worried parents.
Suzan Wahidi, from Gaza City, says as many as seven people might share a mattress – if they can find one.Our children are now suffering from an epidemic. They suffer from all the diseases that you can imagine, diarrhea, vomiting, fever. There are no medicines, there is no food to provide us.
.Prayer is extreme important at this time. As we keep in mind what God instruct St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi:
‘WHO WOULD HARM YOU IF YOU SOUGHT NOTHING BUT GOOD?… IF THEN YOU RETURN TO ME, WHO AM YOUR PRINCIPLE, AS THE RIVERS RETURN TO THE SEA FROM WHICH THEY CAME, YOU WILL ENJOY PERPETUAL HAPPINESS, BECAUSE YOU WILL LIVE IN ME — WHO AM THE LIFE OF YOUR SOUL AND YOUR SOVEREIGN GOOD.’
A few month ago, we talked about the book written by Dane Rudhyar’s 1974 book The Astrology of America’s Destiny, since then few discussion had been cover it. The recent wars and conflicts in different part of the world again challenge an old American belief: These words — “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”, which “reclaimed the beliefs of a relatively small group — of educated men who had been stirred by the ideals formulated by the Humanists and the intellectuals of the Renaissance and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”. I would like to read together with you the Chapter Two: The Roots of American nation.
Every birth has antecedents which conditions its character and define its essential purpose. It has a purpose because it satisfies a need inherent in the time and place of its occurrence. We may think of this need in terms of the desire of the parents for a child who will fill their emotional wants, prolong their existence, perpetuate their sociopolitical and religious beliefs, and contribute to the preservation of the human race. We may also refer this need to an overall planetary process of spiritual-mental development (a religiously inclined person would speak here of “God’s plan”) which requires that a particular type of person should be born in a particular environment to fill a definite place in that vast evolutionary scheme, somewhat as a particular cell fulfills a definite function in the body of a human being.
Relatively speaking, a great personage or genius uniquely fills some need of his time and society; but, any human being can be said to be born in answer to some collective human need. Whether he is actually able to fulfill this need is another matter. He may fail or only partially succeed, but the potentiality inherent in the fact of his birth was there, whether it is actualized or not. It is this “Potentiality” that a birth chart formulates in the astrological code represented by the positions and interactions of the celestial bodies in the cosmic environment of the birth. The birth chart defines the potentiality, but not the degree or the quality of the actuality — that is, of what the person will turn out to be and to achieve.
This applies equally to the birth of a collective person — a national organism. A nation is born at a certain time, in a particular place and under definite telluric, climatic and magnetic conditions in order to contribute in a more or less definite way to the evolution of mankind as a whole. What it is to contribute is essentially a certain quality of humanhood — a special way of meeting the problems involved in existence within the Earth’s biosphere and of responding to the challenges which life in an international and geophysical world constantly brings to a nation and to its leaders in all fields of human activity. We can speak of such a “quality” as the character or temperament of the people participating in the collective activities of the national whole; it is possible, for instance, to characterize the English, American, French, German, Russian, Arab or Indian temperaments.
Such a national character both produces and results from a particular culture. A typical way of life and characteristic institutions are built in order to actualize, consciously in rare cases, but mostly unconsciously and according to “the force of circumstances,” the birth-potential of the nation and to externalize the motives that brought about the formation of the national entity and its emergence from whatever surrounded it and led to its birth. A nation is often formed in a violent or somehow cathartic manner by “colonists” from an older nation who wilfully seek independence from the mother country that through them had sought to extend its field of operation and to export its economy and its culture. In other cases a nation is born when after overcoming a disintegrating society, a number of migrating tribes coalesce into their own sociopolitical organism. This is what happened in Europe during the early Middle Ages as Germanic and Slavic tribes developed into small feudal units which eventually were absorbed by a powerful governmental nucleus giving its characteristic organization to the nascent national entity.
The ideas stated above imply a purposive view of history and of human (and even planetary) evolution. They are not likely to be acceptable to most academic historians of our day. Neither is the concept of cycles of civilization popular in academia, in spite of the extensively documented work of historians like Oswald Spengler (whose major work, The Decline of the West, was written sixty years ago) and Arnold Toynbee (whose A Study of History was written after World War 1). The cyclic concept of the development of civilizations, however, is implied in the astrological approach to history, and the study of great planetary cycles and precessional Ages provides an objective and rational foundation for the belief that civilization — or “societies,” in Toynbee’s use of the term are — much like organisms which are born, develop and disintegrate — according to some kind of structural rhythm.
In this study of the destiny of the American nation we therefore have to deal with two basic factors: on the one hand we should survey the development of the karmic relationship between the new American nation and the nations and cultures of Europe, and particularly England as the official mother country; on the other hand, we should consider the basic reasons and the more external and temporary motives which enabled the people of the Colonies, or at least their leaders, to become I willful and effective protagonists in a vast historical process of transformation of human society which had begun many centuries before the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble of the Constitution set the pace for a spreading sociopolitical revolution. Such a revolution may be only the first phase of a more far-reaching, more deeply rooted, upheaval — a revolution in consciousness.
The “vast historical process of transformation of human society” to which I am referring can be identified with the development of Western civilization, a development which really began around the sixth century B.C. in Greece. It had been heralded by the great and unsuccessful reform of Egypt’s religion by Akh-en-Aton, and by the also relatively unsuccessful revelation which Moses brought to his people: the revelation of a God Who declared Himself to be the very principle of I-am-ness — thus, of individuality in its most absolute sense. The foundation of our Western civilization indeed is the concept of the individual person, along with the assertion that this individual person has an essential “worth and dignity” regardless of its condition and circumstances of birth, and of what it can produce in and for the society into which it is born.
The story of Western civilization is one of attempts to a concept of society allowing, nay encouraging, its members to regard themselves as individuals — individuals who are essentially “free and equal” and as such endowed with inalienable rights in any social conditions. These attempts have been constantly frustrated; they represented a definite challenge to the foundations upon which all societies had previously been built, foundations we can characterize as the expression of the “tribal order.” This tribal order was a manifestation of biological and psychic realities. It was rooted in the deep feeling that the unity of the social grouping — the tribe — was derived from a reality, a more or less mythical Great Ancestor or a god, that was in the past. Everything “sacred” was meant to reproduce a past event, a creative event by gods or a man-woman pair of a quasi-divine origin.
It is this concept of the tribal order — and later on, of a social order based on the different abilities of human beings to produce wares, ideas or acts of service to the expanded community, kingdom or empire — that our Western civilization has tried to supplant, or at least to polarize, The tribal and post-tribal order emphasized production and made human beings almost totally subservient to the requirements of this production. In contrast, the essential character of the democratic order is that it stresses the absolute spiritual character of the individual person. In more recent times our Western society has also stressed the nearly absolute individual rights of its collective persons — thus the concept of “national sovereignty”.
It is evident that these two rights — the right of a community to enforce patterns of productivity for the welfare of all its members, and the right of the individual to become and remain an independent person centered in his truth-of-being and essential spiritual identity — have a polar character. From the point of view of Western civilization, both have to be recognized and kept operative. The basic problem concerns the relative strength and value accorded to each by any particular society, nation or community. Because these two concepts of rights easily become the foundations of two opposite philosophies of life and of social organization — individualism versus collectivism — they constantly generate internal as well as external. conflicts: conflicts within nations, and conflicts between nations which at least theoretically, have opted for a way of life and institutions emphasizing one or the other of these principles. The basic conflict even manifests in two opposite concepts of knowledge and scientific inquiry, atomism versus holism.
Western civilization at all levels has been and is based on this polarization. We see its manifestation in the contrast between the ideals of free enterprise (or laissiee-faire capitalism) and socialism. The two-party system in the United States is a watered-down aspect of this polarization. The essential point is that our civilization is based on conflicts, and that because of this it has proven to be exceedingly dynamic; but this dynamism nevertheless tends to express itself in the form of violence, violence which has become a way of life.
Such a dialectical way of life has been accepted and even justified by our American nation, which inherited it from the European past. America inherited the religious form of violence strongly implied in Puritanism — violence against oneself and one’s biopsychic urges, and violence against dissenters and scapegoats (the burning of witches). It inherited also the conquistadors’ kind of violence, which led to the destruction of Indian tribes and the crude, even if at times heroic, conquest of a vast continent subjected to all kinds of depredation and exploitation for personal gain. America also went one step further than European serfdom by importing thousands of African slaves and allowing as many to die in transit from their native land.
The destruction of Indians, Negro slavery, and finally the wholesale pollution of the land, water and air — plus the psychological pollution accompanying the cult of violence featured by motion pictures, television and a myriad of popular books — have been a heavy price to pay for an amazing, yet chaotic, productivity and for a life of abundance which, welcome as it is, has often turned out-to be morally and biologically self-defeating because of its implications and its uneven repartition. Feverish and ruthless forms of competition, always an inch away from the boundaries between legality and crime — and often ignoring these boundaries — constitute only the shadow of the individualism and the freedom which Western civilization has been meant to uphold. By making an ever more intense productivity possible, science and technology exacerbated and intellectualized man’s instinctual drive for power; power over other human beings as much as over physical nature, power whose great symbol became the dollar.
We can lump the various movements against which the builders of Christian orthodoxy fought under the general term of Gnosticism; but there were many kinds of Gnostics, some linked with the Hermetic movement in Egypt, others with what, at a later period, was set down as the Hebrew Kabballah and no doubt was influenced by the old Chaldeans’ wisdom of Babylon. Still other Gnostic groups sought to prolong the Orphic, Eleusian, neo-Pythagorean and neo-Platonic traditions, and even the teachings of the Buddhist missionaries who, in the time of the great Indian King Asoka, had settled on the shores of the Dead Sea.
The Catholic Church was successful in condensing, appropriating and transforming much of the complex esoteric material that had been poured out by the Gnostic “sects,” center in what it was able to keep of all these highly intellectual ideas and of the great symbols of the ancient Mysteries around the personage of Jesus Christ, considered the one and only Son of God. After a series of councils in which dissident groups were anathematized, the Church triumphed and became the official religion of the disintegrating Roman Empire, then of the slowly settling down Germanic and Slavic tribes. It also absorbed the old Celtic traditions. But this success was never total. Gnostic movements sprang up here and there during the Middle Ages. The Crusades, by bringing French, English and German noblemen in contact with the still flourishing centers of Near Eastern culture and tradition — especially with the Sufi Movement, which had become the esoteric aspect of Islam(4) — spurred the spread of mystical and occult movements. This was especially the case in southern France, where the influence of the Mozarabic culture of Islamic Spain, and of kabbalistic doctrines, had been strongly felt. There the Albigenses flourished along Gnostic lines; and in northern France the Order of the Templars also gained in importance and (unfortunately for its members) in wealth.(5) This led the French monarch to savagely destroy the two movements, with the help of the Pope.
At the same time, and under the influence of similar ancient traditions, the masons who were building the magnificent Gothic cathedrals, under the leadership of architects whose names are mostly lost, incorporated in these cathedrals and their rose windows an immense amount of traditional occult and astrological symbolism. These lodges of “operative” masons were precursors of the lodges of “speculative” Masons which were formed in the early eighteenth century or a little earlier. On June, 24, 1717, a Grand Master, Anthony Sayer, was elected and for the first time given jurisdiction over several Masonic lodges, marking the effective beginning of modern speculative Freemasonry. (It is called “speculative” because it used basic philosophic concepts and symbolic rituals to bring to the intellectual classes of the Western world a free, nondogmatic, nonecclesiastic approach to man, God and the universe.)
A fast-growing network of Masonic lodges became the means whereby the rationalistic and humanistic ideals that for three centuries had been developing in Europe could effectively be propagated. Masonry had reached the American colonies during the seventeenth century, and according to the Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates (a fascinating mine of information published by T. Y. Crowell Company), in — 1682 one John Skene became the “first Freemason to settle in Burlington, New Jersey. He belonged to the Lodge in Aberdeen, Scotland, and came to the colonies through arrangement with the Earl of Perth, chief ‘proprietor’ of New Jersey and an outstanding Freemason.” Later, in 1730, “Daniel Coxe became the first appointed Grand Master of Masons of the Provinces of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.”
In 1789, less than three months after Washington had been inaugurated, the French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille. In the ensuing years Paine urged President Washington to declare America’s support for the country which had been of such great assistance during our revolutionary crisis; but Washington was both afraid to involve the United States in a conflict which might have been detrimental to our early national growth, and repelled by the radicalism of the French revolutionists — a radicalism very foreign to his nature. The President may have been right from a national point of view, but not only did his actions not avoid the War of 1812 with England, but he established an isolationist policy that lasted for a century The sharp disagreement between Paine and Washington symbolized the basic conflict between political-economic realities and the humanistic idealism which has ever been strong in American history. It is also the conflict between two concepts of social organization: one seeking to perpetuate whatever can be saved of Europe’s aristocratic past, and the other founded upon the new vision of society which had emerged from the minds of a few Greek thinkers as well as from Jesus’ teachings — a vision which never has had much chance to be fully implemented. This conflict also took form in the contest between Jefferson and Hamilton.
The practical realities and expediencies of life, especially in a newborn nation, had evidently to be considered, and the stand taken by Hamilton and Washington had value; but developments that occur in infancy do persist in later years, and once a definite quality of social and national living becomes habitual, it becomes extremely difficult to alter it, except perhaps through violent crises which often solve nothing fundamental.
The question that should be asked by anyone accepting a purposive approach to history and human evolution is: To what extent has this collective person, the United States of America, fulfilled its destiny as a new and powerful agent within the cycle of Western civilization?
The answer to this question, I believe, rests upon a grasp of what the Industrial Revolution and our more recent Electronic Revolution have meant. Undoubtedly the development by Western man of new intellectual, faculties made available a tremendous amount of power. But when power is made available, another question immediately arises: To what use will it be put?
In a very real sense the answer was already foreshadowed in the first cargo of Negro slaves that reached Virginia. It was further implied in the refusal by delegates of Southern states to accept the provision against slavery that Jefferson had included in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence. It was reasserted when Benjamin Franklin’s example of friendship to the Indians was negated by nineteenth-century men intent upon the development of a big powerful nation dominated by an individualistic yearning for power and wealth and utterly conditioned by dogmatic ideas concerning the absolute value of their religion and culture. It is true that in the past the building and growth of a nation or empire have never proceeded humanely, but America was to be “the New World” and not merely a new nation. Two basic conceptions of America have always been in conflict: the great new ideal of world Americanism which Walt Whitman extolled, saying: “O America, because you work for the world, I work for you” — and that of a nationalistic United States.
Many people will say that the United States had to be and now more than ever must be a strong united nation to offset the drive for power of other nations embodying social systems opposite to what I have described as the great and so often frustrated ideal of our Western civilization. But how can we effectively fight for principles and values which we uphold in beautiful phrases while in so many ways betraying them in actions and in a general quality of living and behaving?
What we are facing today in America is not merely a political crisis, but a crisis in collective consciousness. We have to reassess the fundamental meaning of what our Western civilization has brought to mankind and what the meaning and destiny of America essentially are now. We have to try, first of all, to clearly understand, the present world, which we have been largely responsible for transforming through our industrial and managerial skills, and the example of which we eagerly export.
Talleyrand once said that politics is the art of the possible; but so is civilization. What is possible today? Economic or political theories are not inclusive enough to provide a truly satisfying answer. An individual of course has his intuition, or whatever is back of his consciousness as a guiding power, to show him the way. But when we deal with vast collective and global issues, the real answer lies in the universe itself and in its majestic rhythms that, no man or nation can deviate or alter. We can ask of the universe that surrounds us: What time is it for mankind according to the clock of planetary destiny? What time is it for America?
A brief study of some of the larger cycles which define this global “time” should give us a background for a more detailed analysis and interpretation
The whole world is watching the Hamas and Israel conflicts that has recently escalated to casualty not only of thousands of civilians, but also booming the hospital, schools, mosque, killing hundreds, killing hundreds of, if not thousands of little children and homeless refugees. When we see the blood, and the atrocities is obvious. But there are many things in our era that are just as violent, but is much obscure, not as noticeable.
The unfortunate situation in Gaza is very complex because of globalization, industrialization, historical hangover, religion, and politics tanglings. It is horrendous to learn about the huge suffering of the Middle East, but we do not know enough about the history, religious and culture of that area to make objective comments. The article The Global Consequences of the Israel-Hamas War by Mark Leonard, Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, pointed out that the expectation that Israel could normalize ties with the Arab world without addressing the Palestinian question, was an illusion. Israel may need to possibly rethinking its strategy toward the moribund Middle East peace process entirely. There is urgent need for Muslim speaking nations and Christian nations increase communication and mutual accommodation of each other, through systematical bridging of religion, culture and governmental agency.
Another recent article from Project Syndicate War and Dollars by Harold James, Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University, sketches a more clear picture of the underneath struggles. Professor James wrote: ” Today, however, the dollar is increasingly vulnerable to financial turbulence, readily apparent in bond markets that scrutinize long-term US public debt. These problems are partly technical, of course; but they are also political. Without uncertainties about America’s long-term fiscal position, markets would remain calm. But President Joe Biden’s administration has deployed large public investments at a time when the US Congress has become completely dysfunctional, casting doubt on its ability even to keep the government running and the debts paid ……. The dollar is also vulnerable because the rest of the world is connecting the dots behind the US strategy to defendUkraine against Russian aggression; Middle East diplomacy, which Hamas has now derailed; and efforts to preservethe peace in the Taiwan Strait. The dots, of course, are dollars. As Juan Zarate, a former US deputy national security adviser, noted a decade ago, sanctions work extremely well against small and relatively isolated states; but the bigger the target, the more sanctions will hurt those imposing them.”
I want to add that the problem is not just because of Biden, it is the accumulation result of four decades of capitalism running into dead end since Reagan Administration. U.S. Debt By President had specific data.
Industrialization and urbanization post great challenges when the fiat money is used. As the central banks all over the world and the Fed can just print money out of thin air, the create huge wealth gap because of tax reduction as well as the compound effects. For example, during the pandemic covid-19 in 2020, Fed pump trillions of money into the system to help government handle crisis. While the household get some relief check of couple of thousand dollars, The total wealth of the U.S. 1% reached a record $45.9 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021. Their fortunes increased by more than $12 trillion, or more than a third, during the course of the pandemic.
I also want to point out that violence is not just what we observed in human casualty. The nature, the environment, the water, air, earth are all in shabby shape, desperately need for maintenance and protection. Take the example of the space: Space junk is out of control – the directly affect the global air quality and radiation I would assume. About 25,000 are pieces of obsolete satellites, rocket parts and debris — space junk orbiting out of control and posing a threat to the satellites people need.
Not to mention, the violence of American medical/insurance system, the consequence of weaknesses in fractional reserve lending (The monetary system , Macroeconomics ) of central banks, the dominance in finance as parasite of national economy, the frauds in money creation like scam of crypto currency, and numerous frauds like recent cases in FTX/Bankman Fried, and many other financial fake guru who exploit the loop holes of tax law, bankruptcy laws (such as: How do Rich People File Bankruptcy and Not Lose Anything ), and the lack of accountability in public accounting. There is no blood (except medical system) involved, but the violence is no less pungent.
Our era is marked by chasing after capital/wealth that without pay its due for either social costs or environmental damages. How will the Middle East refugees be settled eventually ?
The Hamas and Israel crashes brought our attention to a part of the world many of us may only hear the name but knows very little about. I have to admit that I was too arrogant as an intellectual to express opinion when I did not even notice the name of Pakistan and Palestine are two different countries in that part of the world just a week ago. But my heart is with the refugees and people who died and suffered because of religious and political conflicts.
At that time, the division bodies of Earth Store Bodhisattva began gathering in the palace of the Trayastrimsha Heaven from billions of inexpressible, inconceivable, immeasurable, ineffable, limitless asamkhyeyas of worlds. [……] the World Honored One stretched forth his golden-colored arm and rubbed the crowns of all the division bodies of Earth Store Bodhisattva Mahasattva gathered from billions of inexpressible, inconceivable, immeasurable, ineffable, limitless asamkhyeyas of worlds, and said, “I teach and transform obstinate beings such as these within the evil worlds of the Five Turbidities, causing their minds to be regulated and subdued so that they renounce the deviant and return to the proper. But one or two out of ten still cling to their bad habits. For them I again divide into thousands of billions of bodies and use numerous additional expedient means. Those with keen roots will listen and immediately believe. Those with good rewards will respond to exhortation and strive to succeed. Those who are dim and dull will only return after being taught for a long time. Those whose karma is heavy will fail to show any respect.
“My division bodies take across and liberate all those different kinds of beings. I may appear in a male body. I may appear in a female body. I may appear in the body of a god or dragon. I may appear in the body of a spirit or ghost. I may appear as a mountain, a forest, a stream, a spring, a river, a lake, a fountain, or a well in order to benefit people. I use all these ways to save beings. I may appear in the body of God Shakra. I may appear in the body of Lord Brahma. I may appear in the body of a Wheel-Turning King. I may appear in the body of a lay person. I may appear in the body of a national leader. I may appear in the body of a prime minister. I may appear in the body of an official. I may appear in the body of a Bhikshu, a Bhikshuni, an Upasaka, an Upasika, and so forth up to the body of a Hearer, an Arhat, a Pratyekabuddha, or a Bodhisattva in order to teach and rescue beings. It is not that I appear to them only in the body of a Buddha.
“Reflect on how I have toiled for repeated eons and endured acute suffering to take across and free stubborn beings who resist being taught and continue to suffer for their offenses. Those not yet subdued undergo retributions according to their karma. If they fall into the evil destinies and are enduring tremendous suffering, then you should remember the gravity of this entrustment I am now making to you here in the palace of the Trayastrimsha Heaven. Find ways to liberate all beings in the Saha world from now until the time when Maitreya comes into the world. Help them escape suffering forever, encounter Buddhas, and receive predictions.”
At that time, all the division bodies of Earth Store Bodhisattva that came from all those worlds merged into a single form. Then he wept and said to the Buddha, “Throughout long eons I have been receiving the Buddha’s guidance and from that have developed inconceivable spiritual power and great wisdom. My division bodies fill worlds as many as grains of sand in millions of billions of Ganges Rivers. In each of those worlds, I transform myself into millions of billions of bodies. Each body rescues millions of billions of people, helping them to return respectfully to the Triple Jewel, escape birth and death forever, and reach the bliss of Nirvana. Even if their good deeds within the Buddhadharma amount to as little as a strand of hair, a drop of water, a grain of sand, a mote of dust, or the tip of a hair, I will gradually take them across, liberate them, and help them gain great benefit. I only hope that the World Honored One will not be worried about beings of the future who have bad karma.”
In that way he addressed the Buddha three times: “I only hope that the World Honored One will not be worried about beings of the future who have bad karma.”
At that time, the Buddha praised Earth Store Bodhisattva and said, “Excellent! Excellent! I will help you in this work you so willingly undertake. When the vast vows that you keep making throughout so many eons are fulfilled and all those beings have been saved, then you will be certified as having attained Bodhi.” (End of Chapter Two)
Please take note that we can pray to Earth Store Bodhisattva to guide us to the Amituofo Buddha’s Pure Land in our afterlife. And for those whose lives have ended, we can also work on blessings powerful enough to rescue them, especially throughout the 49 days after their death. Earth Store Sutra will teach you how-to. And do remember to transfer the merits of your work to them.
As we observe the huge social inequality, the disparages of social split in America and more and more so in China, it seems to me that any mentioning of sharing resources/wealth redistribution would triggers fear of authoritarian of socialism or communism, as the western mind hold the individual right/liberty to such lofty height of happiness and freedom, which was further over emphasized by Ann Ryan’s objectivism in the last half century, I suspect the idea of dualism had played a huge part in such mentality, causing a self-feeding of larger than life ego grandeur and selfishness.
The Eastern mind (or Eastern Traditional Philosophy) is centered on the Tao or Divinity. It is Dinvine that give that provision (生死有命，富贵在天），no matter how wealthy you are, it is Dinvine’s provision through you. If you share with others, as taught in the 《了凡四训〉，Divine will bestow you more as it use you more as a conduit, otherwise, your merit account （福报）is limited, and when it is used out, you will start to fall. So be very careful with your merit account for selfish usage, especially in those unwholesom deeds. 天命谓之性，率性谓之道，修道谓之教。 淨空法師：如何得到福報？ 佛教你三個修大福報的方法。什么都是有因果的， 福报也不例外。福報用盡，災禍必來！出現這3個徵兆，就是佛菩薩在提醒：你的福報即將耗盡【佛心福樂】 It is all about the cause(conditions) and effects in work.
Dualism is a deeply entrenched view point in the western mindset. It is closely associated with the thought of René Descartes (1641), which holds that the mind is a nonphysical—and therefore, non-spatial—substance. Descartes clearly identified the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and distinguished this from the brain as the seat of intelligence. As such Descartes is often called The Father of Dualism, due to his proposing the theory of substance dualism, or Cartesian dualism. Dualism is a theory which entails the belief that the mind and the body are two completely separate substances. René Descartes is also often credited with being the “Father of Modern Philosophy.” This title is justified due both to his break with the traditional Scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy prevalent at his time and to his development and promotion of the new, mechanistic sciences.
Dualism can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle, and also to the early Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy. Plato first formulated his famous Theory of Forms, distinct and immaterial substances of which the objects and other phenomena that we perceive in the world are nothing more than mere shadows.
Platonic Dualism: Splitting the Body and Soul. Plato offers the first, oldest argument that one’s physical body and soul are separate entities and that one lives on after the other has died. Dualism holds that reality or existence is divided into two parts. These two parts are often identified as the body and the soul. To dualists, the soul is a real substance that exists independent from the body. Socrates, Plato, and Augustine were all dualists who believed the soul to be immortal.
Nietzsche’s statement, “Man, in his highest, finest powers, is all nature and carries nature’s uncanny dual nature in himself” attempts to deal with the duality of humankind. His viewpoint had influence the mindset of the west for the last century: Within the natural casing of humanity lies the capability for great triumph and, in turn, great degradation.
Belief in the possibility of the soul’s existence separately from the body suffices to make one a dualist, but Aristotle rejects that belief for at least most types of soul. If Aristotle is committed to dualism, he must be committed to a weaker version of it which admits that the soul cannot exist apart from the body.
The Differences Between Plato’s And Descartes’ Views On The Concept Of God is that Descartes believes that his God is omnipotent, and Plato does not give that characteristic to any of his Deities, because he believed that Gods should not have the ability to commit bad actions as nothing that is purely good can be harmful, and ‘nothing that isn’t harmful can cause harm’.
In a more recent paper, A Defense of Dualism, John Foster hold the view that the mind and its contents are radically nonphysical, that is, that they are neither themselves physical, nor the logical product of anything physical, nor, except causally or nomologically, dependent on anything physical.
So what does Buddha teaches us about Nondualism? Read the article Nondualism in Mahayana Buddhism would give you a much clearer sense.
As it is depicted in the Movie The Matrix, we are living in a web of illusions. There are two types of reality, one is the state of ultimate truth as experiences by Buddha that described in Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra. Another type is secular truth for us standard human being, we should call a spade a spade. In a era of so much confusion, disorientation and drug abuses, speaking truthfully, frankly, and directly about a topic, even to the point of bluntness or rudeness, even if the subject is coarse, impolite or unpleasant, is the only way of keeping our sanity. Yes, John 8:32 says: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” In a similar manner Buddha taught his disciples to vividly visualize the interior of a human body, with blood, coarse intestines etc, etc as a way to counter lust, or go to the graveyard to do meditation to get into your senses of the impermanence nature of life.
Contrary to what talk show host George Noory claimed that “Monumental Myths , is a veritable buffet for so-call conspiracy theorists”, when certain themes of phenomenon keep on repeating itself, you find so-called “conspiracy theory” turned out in time to be reality, and the so-called “conspiracy theorists ” are actually conspiracy analysts, who are the courageous heroic whistleblower. These “conspiracy theorists” turned out are the ones that called out the Emperor is naked!
Monumental Myths of the Modern Medical Mafia and Mainstream Media and the Multitude of Lying Liars That Manufactured Them Paperback – November 5, 2013 mentioned above is truly a eye opener. The author Ty Bollinger, wrote at the conclusion of the book, “George Orwell couldn’t have been more accurate when he said, ‘In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’ It reminds me of an old proverb: ‘It’s hard to accept the truth when the lies were exactly what you wanted to hear.’
Ty Bollinger continues, ” I told my wife that this book was going to be the one that got me killed, so if you hear about me committing “suicide” by shooting myself in the head twice (like Investigative journalist Gary Webb purportedly did) or committing “suicide” by beating and torturing myself like Officer Terry Yeakey (Oklahoma City Policeman) allegedly did, or committing ‘suicide’ by shooting myself in the head and then wiping off the fingerprints after I’m dead (like deputy White House counsel during the first six months of the Clinton administration Vince Foster allegedly did) … don’t believe it. If I die in suspicious circumstances, then you can rest assured that ‘they’ got to me. Honestly, I’m not worried about it in the least. God is sovereignly controlling all things and I’m his kid, so He’s watching out for me”.
“God gives us the power of reason ‘for a reason,’ to discover truth. By definition, monumental myths are not true. They are contrary to reality. They turn truth on its head. they point fingers the wrong way. They’re pretexts for militarism, wars, mass killing and destruction, sickness, occupations, domestic repression, and other extremist national security state measures.
Hopefully, this book has helped you understand and appreciate why I said in the introduction that most monumental myths are not really as much of a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’ as they are a ‘furtive foothill of foul-smelling feces wrapped in a fairytale inside a fable of fabrications and falsehoods.’ I hope that this book has inspired you to think for yourself, so that when the next false flag occurs (yes, there will be more false flags), you will not ‘blindly believe’ everything that the bimbo bobble-head bleached blonde on television tells you.”
” …. Since the invention of television, untold billions of people have been relying on a ‘television anchor’ to ‘explain the pictures.’ And even if the official explanations make no plausible sense, most folks believe them because ‘they’ told us so, and we all know that ‘they’ would never lie. As a result, scores of people, like lemmings, following one another right off the proverbial cliff. It is time to end the insanity. And this doesn’t just apply to television. it also applies to the ‘anchors’ in the ‘health’ care (which some folks refer to as ‘sickness perpetuation’) industry. ‘Well, Mr. Smith,’ the M.D. says, as he pins an X-ray to the wall. ‘See this thing?Right here? This lump? We’ll need to start chemo immediately, we’ll follow up with several rounds of radiation, and then, just in case, we might want to remove a large chunk of your brain. Then, as a preventative measure, we may need to remove an eye. If you find yourself in this position, say NO!!!!”
子曰：“非礼勿视，非礼勿听，非礼勿言，非礼勿动“。本来三界唯心，万法唯识。（指十方三世一切有漏无漏法，皆因八识心王而有而显，八识心王复依第八识及无明而现于三界，无明业种及上烦恼随眠复由各自第八识所持而藉缘变现色身及世界山河，唯依第八识心而有，依第八识心而现，以第八识为根本。 心者：总有八识，唯第八识如来藏恒常坚住不坏，自凡夫位乃至成佛，皆是此识。） 但是如果我们的修行境界还没办法到达那样的高度，那么就要 不符合礼不看，不符合礼不听，不符合礼不说，不符合礼不做； 要符合礼的看，要符合礼的听，要符合礼的说，要符合礼的做。Confucious taught his students do not watch, listen, speak or do anything that does not ahere to the ethical standard. We have to be very vigilant in adhere to the rules. This requires constant introspection and self-reflection. And be alert the sway of the mind. I have to admit this is very hard to achieve in an environment bombard with all the information explosions. The power that be intentionally want to create many disinformation to confuse people, as they are afraid to the correct information that expose their not-so-decent intentions and abusing of power.
This vow indicate to us the importance of culture and environment in influence our mind, body and spirit. That was why Amituofo had worked very hard to create a western paradise for advanced being to further cultivateboosting their practices. So Amituofo and Confucious teach us the same thing about interaction with media.《四种清净明诲》这是修出轮回的基础，是戒律中最高的“摄心为戒”。淫心、杀心、盗心、妄心，都是无量诸佛共同宣说的内容，是放之四海而皆准的恒定准则。 These practices is to help you depart from the four type of attachments. 所谓由戒生定，由定发慧，是为三无漏学。
Grown up in China Fujian Province where there was a general deep culture influence of Chan Buddhism and Confuciounism, I could not understand the widespread corruption and decline of moral standard in America, until I read the reseach paper Eclipse of Rent-Sharing: The Effects of Managers’ Business Education on Wages and the Labor Share in the US and Denmark by Daron Acemoglu (MIT), Alex Xi He (University of Maryland), and Daniel le Maire (University of Copenhagen). Fundamentally, the business degree including MBA education, which posts a huge number of college enrollment and tuition income, has plague the nation with a selfish mind and rent seeking greed, the silent destruction to the world is more violent than that of the neclear weapons.
The elites’ ethic debasement ranges from political arena to business, diplomatic circle to military group, from CEOs to school education, the decay from toxics of the mind is beyond words to describe. The research paper (Eclipse of Rent-Sharing mentioned above) provides evidence from the US and Denmark that managers with a business degree (“business managers”) reduce their employees’wages. Within five years of the appointment of a business manager, wages decline by 6% and the labor share by 5 percentage points in the US, and by 3% and 3 percentage points in Denmark. Firms appointing business managers are not on differential trends and do not enjoy higher output, investment, or employment growth thereafter. Using manager retirements and deaths and an IV strategy based on the diffusion of the practice of appointing business managers within industry, region and size quartile cells, we provide additional evidence that these are causal effects. We establish that the proximate cause of these (relative) wage effects are changes in rent-sharing practices following the appointment of business managers. Exploiting exogenous export demand shocks, we show that non-business managers share profits with their workers, whereas business managers do not. But consistent with our first set of results, these business managers show no greater ability to increase sales or profits in response to exporting opportunities. Finally, we use the influence of role models on college major choice to instrument for the decision to enroll in a business degree in Denmark and show that our estimates correspond to causal effects of practices and values acquired in business education – rather than the differential selection into business education of individuals unlikely to share rents with workers.
Confuciounism is the totall opposition of the Mercantilism. 子曰：“无欲速，无见小利。欲速，则不达；见小利，则大事不成”。为什么不要只关注利益？孟子跟梁惠王讲了一个故事，深有启发。不与民争利；欲望是无止境的，民众得到再多的利益，也是永远不会满足。 只有让大家不要关心利益，而是关心仁义才能得到长治久安。 这里的仁义就是利己和利他。 如果整个国家的人都是自私自利，只有每一个人都能关心他人，整个国家才能得到蓬勃发展。 孟子的思想就是集体主义精神.
於是有讀者和我分享了一篇論文（參見《Eclipse of rent-sharing: The effects of managers business education》），針對美國和丹麥商業主管接受MBA教育後的實際表現做了詳細統計分析，發現他們不但不增加產品銷量，連對利潤都沒有絲毫貢獻，唯一可以測量到的差異，在於他們大幅改變了薪資結構：削減底層而圖利高層。論文作者進一步確定，支付這些薪資的資金來自公司舊有的生意傳承，和他們的“管理”毫無關係。總結來説，資本主義體制是圖利大資本的設計，而商學院教育在其中所扮演的角色，在於通過誘惑鼓勵經理階級參與分贓，來為掠奪勞工生產價值做普及和掩飾；這些MBA別説對國家社會，就是對公司和商場也是毫無正面價值的毒藥，有興趣深究的讀者可以參考聯想的案例。
The Chinese has a proverb, 天有好生之德，meaning Divine has the virtue of provision. Human’s responsiblity lies in living in harmoney with Heaven and Earth and have a congruency in coexistance everything else in nature, abiding by the great Tao (道）of Divine Principle, as all are the reflection of the diversity of cosmic love.
Like the rivers eventually returning to the ocean, individually we may be on differnt stage of development, different cycle of spiritual evolution, differnt path, but ultimately we are all on the same journey returning back to universal consciousness. In that sense we are one and the same.
As such we all have right to have access to basic necessity and human diginity: like clean air, unpolluted water, basic living condition like healthy food, a roof over your head to stay, and free education from K-12 and basic medical care provision. This is my understanding of the “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”. It is injustice for America to control the world’s food supply (more on that by Professor Michael Hudson later of this blog). It is unjustice for a handful of elites to have 90% of the resources of the society while so many live in the street and plagued by drug abused untreated without clean water and food. Because every mental disorder, every drug addicted posts a further debasement/environmental cost of the whole society.
Of course, the popullation growing put a high pressure on the resources. So how to consolidate ways and means to live within budget is the challenge. GDP as a measure of national productivity which is often accompanied by tremendous waste, resources misallocation and huge disparity in distribution, is not a proper index to cover the basics for all. In this aspect we have a lot to learn from Indegenious people for living in community and sharing resources. We may need to have part of society to revive agriculture for organic food, vegetables and medical herbs in paralle to the industrialized plants and office employment. Organic plants grow without chemicals and non genetically modified organis food takes up more labor and produce less quantities. But the food will reduce many modern disease and help boost immunue system for the society, and thus reduce medical cost.
Government has a responsiblity to enforce and implement norms, customers and proper order for a functional society. Government also has the responsiblity to organize and help provide the public good mentioned above. Our time is prevalent with corruption. Different branches of the govenment spend a lot of time fighting on small details rather than work coherently towards a mission to serve the people. Not to mention abusing of the power and blantly violence. We should be ashame of our sin, but we should not ashame of our repenance. While God has patience with us, the Noah’s Ark is building, the flood will come. From the Dust we come, and to the Dust we shall return. There is judgement days awaiting. Day by day what we think, what we do, and what we talk forms files/records for the final judgement when we depart this world.
The government official has accountability not only towards their constituents, but also towards Divine’s order, Tao’s way, or whatever you name it in that sense. Structurelly, U.S government do not have systematic way to select officials who are both decent and competent for the job. Chinese has a idiom, 人贵有自知之明，which is similar to Know Thyself, know the strength and weakness of your ability and capacity to take up a certain position to serve. The lack of a human resoures function in the govenrment open the door to unfair treatment and unjustified favorism. Another function structurely lacking is the system of Independent Commission Against Corruption to monitor government officals’ conduct and finance， which should be different from the current FBI or CIA.
Professor Michael Hudson had degree in Germanic pilology and History and Linguistics. Most of his studies, apart from that, were at Roosevelt University and Depaul in Music. At early days, It never occurred to him to even tread an economics book. It was just like another world. He was into history of culture, art, music and literature. That explains a lot about his later use of economic history in terms of understanding economic theories. The use of deficit payment in terms of being an imperial state was the one of the three pillars that are very central to his thesis.
Michael Hudson explained Why the US has a unique place in the history of imperialism? Prof. Hudson speaks on the nature of US financial dominance, the role of World Bank in developing countries, USA’s ability to run a huge balance of payment deficit, changes in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, the problems of US economy with post-industrialization, and the role of neoclassical economics in all this.
Question: Contrary to the understanding of most people that world Bank as a very benevolent institution committed to developing the third world, ………….Actually the World Bank was directly complicit in restructuring the new imperial world order and particularly its effect on the deveoping world was terrible. It suppressed any radical restructuring of the agraian order.
Hudson: the World Bank was always been an arm of the U.S military and very often its president has been the former Defense Department head or a military head. The World Bank, upon its founding, had one basic purpose to make sure that other countries did not produce their own food. The idea was to hav eother countries produce goods, food, and services that United States didn’t produce, such as tropical climate crops or planation crops….. the state department fought any reform….. on the ground tat anywhere that there was a land reform, there was an anti-American policy.
The one heaviest element of America’s balance of payments was its food exports. It realized that here was a way to strangle the global south, Latin America, Africa, and what was called the Third world, by being able to cut off its food supply and starve it if it would decide to pursue any policy that the United States did not approve of. It wanted to use food like it’s using oil today against Europe by blocking access to Russian oil and by invading the Near East to seize the oil of Iraq, seize the oil of Syria, control the pipeliness in Afghanistan, and destroy the oil production in Libya. Agriulture was what the fight was all about in the 1950s and 60s and early 70s. I (Hudson) wrote my master’s dissertation on the World Bank missions to countries. All of the missions said you have to promote domestic agriculture, domestic family farming and food production. The World Bank wrote into its articles of agreement that it couldn’t do this. The World Bank only made foreign currency loans, maily in dollars for projects that would earn foreign exchange.
Well, if a country like India or Pakistan feeds itself, this doesn’t earn foreign exchange. Feeding yourself did not even qualify for loans from the World Bank. Only if you make exporet crops or produce things that America wants to import, low-wage manufacturers will do it. I (Hudson) published an article along those lines in a periodical, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Catholic Church became one of my major supporters in the years leading up to the publication of Super Imperialism in 1972 because their liberation theorlogy came out in favor of land reform. The United States said if there’s land reform, then the American corporations can’t control the bananas in Guatemala and Ecuador.
One of the first regime changes right after iran was the coup d’etat that the CIA overthrew the government in Guatemala, where people wanted to feed themselves. And the United Fruit Company said if they feed themselves, then where are we going to grow our bananas? The World Bank from the beginning was even more destructive of the Global South and Third World countries than the IMF because it just blocked any attempt to be self-sufficient. And it loaded down these countries with debt. The projects that the World Bnak funded with U.S. dollars and U.S. engineering companies was raods to the export facilities, ports. The World Bank funded electricity that would serve the American companies there, lower the cost of producing exports for firms that Americans bought control of. So if the American company would buy into a country, the World Bank wold suppoly all of the external costs so that the American company would not have to build roads, would not have to build port facilities. None of this actually helped the Third World countries develop at that time. But they did help the American investment and it was always looked at that. The idea was to make American investment in foreign countries more profitable, prevent other countries from becoming independent in food. In the 1950s, America tried to starve China by blocking all grain exports to China. Canada broke the blockade and enabled China, fortunately, to obtain its grain elsewhere. but the United States wanted to use that tyhreat against countries.
That’s now coming to be very beneficial for the American military today. The Charles Schwab and the World Economic Foundation says the world population ahs to drop by 20%, wha tthey mean is not the white population, they mean the global south population. The United States is trying to prevent Russian grain, as you’ve seen in Ukraine, from getting to the global south countries. only letting Russian grain be exported to help Europe and the united States, not to anyone outside of NATO. you have the result of warped one-sided development of the World Bank is funded, resulting in today’s crisis throughout the global south countries. While these countries are running a balance of trade deficit for their food and energy, they also are still paying the World Bank and foreign bondholders in dollars, where the dollar is going way up against their own currency. You’re seeing a massive kind of default that the United States is trying to use as a godsend to force countries into dependence on another military agency, the Internatiuonal Monetary Fund, whic will only mkae them loans to be able to import the food and the energy they need, if they agree U.S to control their infrastructure and complete the privatization takeovers that have been taking place for the last 30 years. The world Bank is run essentially with a neoliberal economic philosophy, strongly by the pentagon, by the military and the state Deartment interests, as a tool of American economic neo-colonialism….. the World Bank was structurally in favor of unbanizing projects and that led to a massive unstable immigration to the cities.
Origins of debt: Michael Hudson reveals how financial oligarchies in Greece & Rome shaped our world. Many people think debt and the payment of interest, the fact that all debtors have to pay their debts. It is assumed that the rules of Finance are Universal, they’ve always been this way, and there is no alternative. The political message of modern economic history is there is no alternative, and there has never been one. Therefore there isn’t any alternative in the future, all debt have to be paid.
The common theme that made Western Civilization different from everything that went before was the fact that they didn’t cancel the debts. In the ancient time, the near Eastern counties had a common practice, which was a Jewish religion called the Jubilee or the cancellations of debts in 50th year, that was put at the very center of Mosaic law in Leviticus Chapter 25. Jewish laws were taken word for word from the Babylonian practice. You cancel a personal debts (not the commercial debts) that were due, liberate the bond servants that were pledged and you restore lands to people who lost them. That way you prevented an oligarchy from developing and taking over all of te land. what happend was a very bad climate from 1200 BC -800 BC. Population couldn’t make it on the land that they lived on.
Western Civilization let an oligarchy take over, and instead of the basic rule that debts have to be written down to the ability to pay, Rome introduced a pro-creditor law. All the debts have to be paid no matter what the social consequences are. No matter how much Society is injured by families losing their land, and the land being concentrated, the money being concentrated, wealth being concentrated, political power being concentrated in the hands of a creditor oligarchy. Debt is a debt and it has to be paid. Roman law is still the philosophy of modern law, the whole modern legal system is still based on that of Greece and Roman.
Debt in Discussion with Michael Hudson. Professor Hudson said people are trying to compliment him by saying he is an economist, but he said he has not spoken with economists for the last 50 years. Since 1972, he decided call himself a futurist or historian. Professor Hudson said he is NOT an economist who have to get rich by making other people poor, and get richer off them, basically that is why they give Nobel prizes for. We need a name for a new discipline, Professor Hudson said he does not know what to call it, he was at Harvard University’s anthropology department for 25 years doing the five colloqui on ancient economics and det cancellation. Professor Hudson said he could say he is an anthropologist, but then he remember the joke in the 1960 that when governmet suspicious of somebody as a government agent, the jobk is: is he FBI or is he an anthropologist, meaning CIA? that is why Professor Hudson said we need an other terms for Economist.
Professor Hudson worked outside of mainstream, David Graeber was drawn to Michael Hudson’s work, because of its brilliance, and the kind of brilliance that often has to come from outside of mainstream. Hudson was not appease any aprticular trend or try to game the Tanger track game, instead were researching trends that he had been studying for decades. And so he had conviction of the soundness of his arguments. People in the mainstream are unable to see just how complicit they are in the problems that they are supposed to be solving, but are in fact creating through means of capital accumulation.
Based on his decades of work in the area, Professor Hudson take the view that the debts can’t be paid. He argues for debt cancellation. Especially now because of the sanctions against Russia on World War III. Obviously rising energy and food prices forces Global South countries to make a choice, either they pay the U.S dollar debts and impose austerity or they don’t pay the debts and put their own growth first. That is the big political fight, Professor Hudson is working with several European economists to write a book on debt cancellation, and how this can be done from the members of the Shanghai cooperation organizaiton, how the rest of the world can become independent from the dollarized debt.
Professor Hudson had been teaching history of economic thought, and he was using Marx’s theories of surplus value, and that infuriated the marxists, they say you are not a member of any marxist group, only their member can teach Marx……. Hudson’s main concept is focusing on economic rent is unearned income. and extend the concept of economic grant to interest Financial charges to the rentier economy and almost all the work he had been publishing in the last two years have been were not in industrial capitalism, were in a retrogression of Finance capitalism, in a way is rolling back all of the historical tasks of industrial capitalism to free economies from the legacy of fedalism – to free it from Land Run Monoploy rent and privatized banking to go back to the same kind of rentier economy that you ad under the landlors except now rent is for paying interest and landlords paying in the 19th century has been taken over by bankers and the financial sector. Professor Hudson want to integrate his analysis of finance and debt with the concept of economic rent which is basically what the banks in the financial sector Finance. They finance real estate and capital gains, actual asset price gains for Real Estate housing, they finance the oil and gas natural resource mining industries and finance technology monopolies. Hudson wanted to revive classical economics. Hudson said he can say he is a n economist as long as he say he is a classical economist.
Basically that is Adam Smith in the whole 19th century emphasis on Price and Value Theory where price is the excess of market price of economic rent, in excess of the cost value….That was what people like Henry George had no concept of. Paul Krugman was a reader for a book yale University press wanted Hudson to publish. Krugman thought Hudson is a follower of Henry George. Well, Henry Georgedidn’t have a Price and Value Theory. He was against the big government without realizing that the only way you’re ever going to be a le to tax the renties, the only way you’re going to make money and credit a public utility instead of a priate monoply is to have a government strong enough to check the oligarchy and that’s what the classic antiquity is about.That’s really the prolem of western civilizations.
So what David was doing in his book and where he and Hudson both were at the time he was riting it, and afterwards, was to say, well, if you look at anthropology, look at all the damage that does, look through ages how societies cope with debt, either of us made the logical jump to say this is the path that western civiliztion went that become a unique totally new detour around the 8th century BC and ever since we’re still living in the aftermath of Rome’s oligarchy, and the creditor-oriented law that developed.
So Hudson really developed his own ideas quite further when he began to write the book on Antiquity and just to a higher level of abstraction, and then when he began to look at the Crusades and find how awful they were, he forgotten what evil the Vatican had been in the early centuries – the second, third, fourth, fifth all the way down to last week. He forgot the utter evil of the popes and trying to be emperors, and it was a Crusades that brought in the Inquisiition. When Hudson looked at the Wikipedia, people think Crusades were to free holy land Jerusalem from Muslim, that wasn’t it! …. The crusade were against Christians!
The Crusades was to kill the French catheters who said that the rich people are evil. No, that is our constituency to fight the German kings. He said we want to be independent of the Popes. And we don’t want the churches to send all their money to Rome to fund the wars against people that don’t want Roman leadership. The Crusades were to destroy Constantinople and destroy Eastern Orthodox, the real Christianity that had survived. The Crusades were to introduce them, we dont know what call it, but it was not Christianity. That was why the Pope has not invited Hudson to help him write a new encyclical on this topic. But that really is what is needed. Hudson realized that it was The Crusades that led to the Pope saying, well, we’ve got to finance the wars so that we can fight Germany, France, Spain, Sicily,… that doesn’t accept our dictatorship. In order to fund these wars we need Bank to support, so let’s get rid of all the church’s anti-usery law, let’s say credit is good, not bad. Like the animal farm with Orwell.
All of a sudden a total inversion of everything that Christianity western Christianity was about. You get the key to this inversion as Hudson at the end of the Collapse of Antiquity with the Lord’s Praye saying: “Forget our sin, in other word, Lord. Don’t screw around sexually, instead of forgive us our debts they’ve done.” ….. It is just a travesty of mistranslation that Western Christianity suffered for the last thousand years, all that comes from the Crusades.
It hadn’t occurred to Hudson until he actually began to study Saint Augustine and as Peter Brown, the biographer of St. Augustine at 5th century pointed out: it was really Augustine that founded the spirit of the Inquisition, although it didn’t really come through until the Dominicans. The Dominicans realize the genius of the Pope was you can’t have Christianity unless you’re willing to kill everybody who can read the Bible. You have to prevent it from being translated so people can read it, because if people read the Bible, they are going to realize that we (Dominicans) are the opposite of everythg that Jesus was fighting for.
Yet, Hudson was supported by all of the various Christian groups. They were publishing, sending him across the country at a lecture. So there was a kind of thinking in the late 1960s and early 70s that somehow there was some hope for Christianity. But again that was befor ethe Pope from Hell, the Polish Pope came in, and the German Pope from hell that followed him, before the Catholic church was captured by the Spanish fascists. Hudson hope he haven’t offened anybody.
You can’t not have reindustralization with the labor under pay. you can not reindustralize without reversing this whole philosophy of past industrial society as a class war against labor.
In the last chapter of Hudson’s book, he showed the battle isn’t about Democracy and anti-democracy. The battle is really oligarchy and autocracy. In light of post-1970 world, one of the point Graber makes in the last chapter is that now that we’ve gone off the gold standard, and we’re decoupling ourselves from bullion, and are gong to a more virtual credit oriented kind of economy, in Graber’s mind, it allows for the opportunity of volume, so it doesn’t necessarily guarantee it, but if these historical patterns are accurate, it will at least open up a possibility. Graber said there are two conditions to Democracy. One that you’ve got to have people want to act democratically – basically an assumption that Pluralism is better than one person rule. But he also argues that you’ve got to have a strong government in order to bring about the kind of changes that Democratic change implies. Hudson think the concept of democracy and autocracy today has gone way beyond what it was even five years ago. …….. the value of study classical antiquity is that you realize that Aristotle was very clear that democracy evolves into oligarchy.
What the oligarchy wants to do is prevent any kind of central power strong enough to challenge its control of society. They called in Greece that any reformer wanting to have a strong enough ruler to cancel the debts and redistribute the land was called a tyrant. Because that’s what the tyrants did in 7th and 6th century BC. Well, the tyrants were who introduced democracy to Greece. They were the people who got rid of the mafiosi type leaders and cancelled the debts and redistribute the land. Now all of a sudden Tyant became a bad word, sort of like communist. In Rome, anyone wanting to cancel the debts and redistribute the land like Julius Caesar or Catalan were called seeking kingship. The Roman Kings, according to the Roman historians, cancelled the debts and supported access to the land by the people in the Bible. The Jewish rabbinical class, the Pharisees wanted Rome to Crucify Jesus, they said, well Jesus wants to be king. He want to be the king, the king of the Jews. they knew that for Rome saying somebody wanted to be king, is to do what Jesus said, his mission in life was to do to bring about the debt cacellation of the Jubilee year, and to restore the laws of leviticus against the rabbinical school wanting people to sign the prose pool of Rabbi Hillel where you waived all of the rights under the Jubilee.
The internal econonic dynamics is such that democracy leads to oligarchy, and so democracy is essentially ends up leading to what you have in the United States today. It’s led to finance capitalism overpowering the progressive tendencies of industrial capitalism. So when you have community party led China trying to support policies to raise producivity raise living standards provide a health care, education, transportation, alll the basic public utilities, that is called autocracy. American will say, well, under democracy you have to have a free market, meaning you have to let the American oligarchs buy control of transportation, you have to make America Banks create your money at interest, you can’t have public banking, you can’t have a central bank creating money. You need that to be aprivate monoply. That is democracy. That is what the whole term means today.
The power that being like to put great actors, communicators and media personalities on the public arena to play the role of fake guru. Ronald Reagan played a tricky role in the “Making American Great” trickle down economics. In the 1980s, as the United States struggled financially, Ronald Reagan was ushered in. From trickle down Reagonomics, cut social spending, upped the military budget, and reduced the taxes on the wealthy, union busting to decimating the middle class, infiltration of Christian fundamentalism into American government and more, Ronald Reagan is responsible for many of the shifts that occurred at the end of the 20th century that caused the major inequalities we see in America today. We’ve basically been living under four decades of Reaganism, under both parties. The way Clinton expanded it doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. Watch How Reagan Ruined Everything.
It is also interesting that Dr. Helen Caldicott met with Reagan briefly and later said that Reagan was “diagnosable,” i.e. he was already suffering from Alzheimer’s disease long before he left office. What was the real impact of Reganomics? Here are some of the quotes from audience to the youtube program Miserable and Broke in the US? Blame Reagan.
Comment from audience: this should be a multi-part series covering Ronald Reagan’s Legacy, because this is just covering Reaganomics and doesn’t touch the AIDS crisis or other events tied to his administration. In short we need a part 2 and probably a part 3.
Comment from audience: Don’t forget that Reagan also stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act resulting in almost immediate mergers, acquisitions, leveraged and hostile buy-outs of corporations. Now we have fewer but stronger corporations interfering in our politics, elections and in our lives.
Comment from audience: I remembered what Reagan did to unions and how it impacted American families even to this day. When I was a kid in the 70s, every mother in my neighborhood was able to stay home and take care of their children. One income could support a family of seven in a blue-collar neighborhood. Today, everyone on my street has to go to work. Families are smaller, and while all of us are highly skilled, we struggle to make ends meet. We have been screwed for so long, most of us don’t even realize that we are being screwed. There should never be such a large wealth gap as there is today.
Comment from audience: Most companies in the 80s that got tax cuts didn’t respond by giving their workers more money, They responded by taking their jobs and businesses overseas.
Comment from audience: He said the homeless camped all around D.C. were there because they “preferred” to live outside. NO! They were there because he had axed the budgets of all the mental health hospitals and VA treatment for mentally ill service people. He said that “community-based programs” would care for these folks…only, those programs didn’t exist. And let us never forget that his and Nancy’s answer to the exploding drug addiction problem was “Just Say No.”
Comment from audience: When Reagan refused to take AIDS seriously because it was the “Gay Virus” almost 90% of severe Hemophiliacs also contracted AIDS, such as my self, during this time due to lax testing protocols. We were essentially given $100,000 and told to fuck off forever. Fast Forward to today, I’m 42 years old, still an AIDS survivor and incapable of working due to my health conditions. My ‘relief fund’ is entirely exhausted as they never expected any of us to survive this long. I was 2 years old when I was infected with HIV, and when I was 5 I also contracted Hepatitis C due to the same lack of real testing protocols. The Reagan administration completely destroyed my life and I’ll never be able to forgive the Republican party for these crimes against humanity.
With a mindset of social darwinism, America has misused its power in its way for dominance. Just the 20th century alone, U.S.A has been through World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War and the War on Terror (which encompasses the War in Afghanistan and Iraq War). Isbel Hickety (1903-1980) is a New Age Sages. She taught meditation and was Director of Boston School of Astrology. Her guidance, classes, retreats and books lifted countless souls. In her book Astrology: a Cosmic Science , she had discussed the atomic bomb to Japan in 1945, and she said something to the effect that United States will suffer from the karmic retribution for that brutal act. Isabel Hickey had some very famous quotes.
Karmic retribution is a powerful force that can’t be ignored. It’s a reminder that our actions have consequences and that we should always strive to do the right thing. Whether it’s in the form of instant retribution or delayed retribution, it’s important to remember that our actions have consequences. This article gave some very powerful examples. Used metaphor of water, How Does Karmic Retribution Exact Itself? describe the complexity of kamic retribution. And if we do not change our behavior of injustice, we will suffer much more.
The Book by Professor Michael Hudson The Collapse of Antiquity: Greece and Rome as Civilization’s Oligarchic Turning Point describes how the dynamics of interest-bearing debt led to the rise of rentier oligarchies in classical Greece and Rome, causing economic polarization, widespread austerity, revolts, wars and ultimately the collapse of Rome into serfdom and feudalism. That collapse bequeathed to subsequent Western civilization a pro-creditor legal philosophy that has led to today’s creditor oligarchies. In telling this story, The Collapse of Antiquity reveals the eerie parallels between the collapsing Roman world and today’s debt-burdened Western economies. In the program Origins of debt: Michael Hudson reveals how financial oligarchies in Greece & Rome shaped our world, Professor gave you more detail account of his thoughts.
In ...and forgive them their debts, renowned economist Michael Hudson – one of the few who could see the 2008 financial crisis coming – takes us on an epic journey through the economies of ancient civilizations and reveals their relevance for us today. For the past 40 years, in conjunction with Harvard’s Peabody Museum, he and his colleagues have documented how interest-bearing debt was invented in Bronze Age Mesopotamia, and then disseminated to the ancient world. What the Bronze Age rulers understood was that avoiding economic instability required regular royal debt cancellations. Professor Hudson documents dozens of these these royal edicts and traces the archeological record and history of debt, and how societies have dealt with (or failed to deal with) the proliferation of debts that cannot be paid – and their consequences. In the pages of …and forgive them their debts, readers will discover how debt played a central role in shaping ancient societies, and how it continues to shape our world – often destructively.
The Big Question: What happens when debts cannot be paid? Will there be a writedown in favor of debtors (as is routinely done for large corporations), or will creditors be allowed to foreclose (as is done to personal debtors and mortgagees), leading to the creditors’ political takeover of the economy’s assets – and ultimately the government itself? Historically, the remedy of record was the royal Clean Slate proclamation, or biblical Jubilee Year of debt forgiveness.
The Real Message of Jesus: Jesus’s first sermon announced that he had come to proclaim a Clean Slate debt cancellation (the Jubilee Year), as was first described in the Bible (Leviticus 25), and had been used in Babylonia since Hammurabi’s dynasty. This message – more than any other religious claim – is what threatened his enemies, and is why he was put to death. This interpretation has been all but expunged from our contemporary understanding of the phrase, “…and forgive them their debts,” in The Lord’s Prayer. It has been changed to “…and forgive them their trespasses (or sins),” depending on the particular Christian tradition that influenced the translation from the Greek opheilēma/opheiletēs (debts/debtors).
Contrary to the message of Jesus, also found in the Old Testament of the Bible and in other ancient texts, debt repayment has become sanctified and mystified as a way of moralizing claims on borrowers, allowing creditor elites and oligarchs the leverage to take over societies and privatize personal and public assets – especially in hard times. Historically, no monarchy or government has survived takeover by creditor elites and oligarchs (viz: Rome). Perhaps most striking is that – according to a nearly complete consensus of Assyriologists and biblical scholars – the Bible is preoccupied with debt forgiveness more than with sin.
In a time of increasing economic and political polarization, and a global economy deeper in debt than at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, …and forgive them their debts documents what individuals, governments and societies can learn from the ancient past for restoring economic and social stability today.
The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism Paperback – May 2, 2022, explains why the U.S. and other Western economies have lost their former momentum: A narrow rentier class has gained control and become the new central planner, using its power to drain income from increasingly indebted and high-cost labor and industry. The American disease of de-industrialization has resulted from the costs of industrial production being inflated by the economic rents extracted by this class under the system of financialized monopoly capitalism that now prevails throughout the West.
The book explains why the U.S.-China conflict cannot simply be regarded as market competition between two industrial rivals. It is a broader conflict between different political economic systems – not only between capitalism and socialism as such, but between the logic of an industrial economy and that of a financialized rentier economy increasingly dependent on foreign subsidy and exploitation as its own domestic economy shrivels. Professor Hudson endeavors to revive classical political economy in order to reverse the neoclassical counter-revolution.
