Subcultures within subcultures...

CONTEXT

In the 1950s, the Beatniks were a youth subculture.

Bob Denver plays a Beatnik HERE

Within the transition from the Beatnik subculture to the Hippie Subculture (e.g. the 1960s), popularized SF Zen emerged. Zen, in the N.Y.C. area had arrived a decade or so earlier. That is/was the Alan Watts, D.T. Suzuki wave of Zen.

SF Zen Center was part of the Haight Ashbury Scene in San Francisco.

Another factor during that time was the "free love" movement

and, to a lessor degree, wife swapping.



FInal Scene...



So, to say that Richard Baker was "sleeping around" was only to say that Richard Baker did not divorce himself from the Scene in San Francisco - especially around the Haight.

What I am saying is that Rickard Baker was not evil. He simply did not detach himself from the world of hedonism that surrounded Zen Center. That was, at worst, a weakness on his part.

Hedonism's motto was: "Find your pleasures and maximize them." Drugs, sex, and rock and roll.

Do not make artificial distinctions based upon ignorance. Either educate yourself or withdraw from the useless activity of condemning others for that which you do not understand - or can not understand.

People who live in Glass houses...

So, when I mention a glass house, what is the obvious obtuse choice?

Well, Carter Glass was an unreconstructed rebel.

He was on the cover of TIME (June 9, 1924)

An obvious Southern Democrat (now a Republican ideologue), he was weaned on a pickle! He was "the Senate's last surviving member born in the antebellum South, Glass unapologetically fought to retain a society in which property-owning, white males sat at the top of the pyramid."

Carter Glass earned his fame by pursuing his ultimately successful goal of denying the right to vote to as many black Virginia as possible. As he told one reporter, “Discrimination! Why that is exactly what we propose. To remove every negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate.”

Runs on the banks were threatening the inherited wealth of the landed gentry! FDIC ended that! He's the Glass in the Glass–Steagall Act!

And his much coveted "Glass" mansion is where Jerry Fall-well died. (and his fatness is buried in the front yard)

We can't fault him for having fat friends...

This $100,000 gold certificate is "chump change."

Glass appears on the half-valued $50,000 Treasury note!

And now you know why the Xtian fat-man wanted to live in a Glass house!



People who live in Glass houses should not stow thrones!

"In one of those truly bizarre things that you really have to see to believe, multimillionaire “Reverend” Sun Myung Moon was crowned messiah on March 13, 2004 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC. Attending the ceremony were apparently seventy-one congressmen, including two senators, dozens of ambassadors to the United States, and various other figures from the religious and political establishments of the nation."

How many gods are there?

You mean this week? I don't know, but PLENTY.

Adherents.com reports 22 "Major Religions" - each with half a million followers (or more) - throughout the world.

However, these 22 include secularism, atheism, and agnostics as "one group" and there may be no "god" in some segments. Buddhism also has no "god" in the western notion os the word (e.g. we are all gods or there is not a god that can be known to the vast majority of people).

Neo-paganism, as a group, is used to incorporate a large group of modern revivals of ancient religions. Most Neo-pagans would have multiple gods and/or goddesses thereby making counting gods nebulous.

Shinto has a multitude of gods - research that one yourself. Rei Hino is a Shinto priestess (Miko) who transforms into Sailor Mars...

Another problem comes from Hinduism which, according the their scriptures, has 333 million gods.

Some Hindu's will say there is only one god with 333 million avatars or manifestations, but enough believe in the 333,000,000 total that the total number of gods would be well over 330,000,000 gods. Others go for just 33,000,000. Yet others say 3003... or 33 Celestial gods?

Steve Jobs had some interest in aspects of Hinduism. We know he (Steve Jobs) eventually adopted ZEN BUDDHISM as a spiritual path.

Somewhere, there is a bottom line.

See also: HERE

Buy Silver, Sell God.

People are often EMOTIONALLY involved with religion so REASONING with them is completely off the table.

5 years ago, in a Comparative Religions class (Calif. Secondary School) I said: "There is but one god - Aten - and Akhenaten is his prophet."

Of course, that was a setup for: "There is but one god - Allah - and Muhammad is his prophet" mentioned later in the course (and about 1500 years later in history).

BTW, do not confuse the issue: Akhenaten influenced the Levant and not the other way about. Some say Akhenaten and Moses were one and the same man!

God was added to American coinage during the Civil War.

"God" was "a device" that was useful in keeping the union from falling apart.

Then, by 1956, SILVER no longer backed paper money. If you can't trust paper currency that is backed by SILVER, then what do you "sell' to the populace as backing paper? GOD is the emotional answer.

HERE is an 1866 50¢ coin without the MOTTO.

and here is a worthless $100 bill - backed by God!

You have been sold a bill - with no goods behind it!

MORE

Later, the SILVER was removed from coins! All that remains is an illusion!

Cognition, recognition...

With more than 30 percent of the Bible market, the NIV has loyal following. When translators introduced a language update of the NIV (the TNIV), ass-backwards "Americans sounded the alarm."

First, translations are - by no means - certain. A word-for-word translation has limited value because while languages change, the speakers of those languages recycle old words to fit new meaning (thereby erasing recognition - or cognitive equivalence). Translation of the cognitive equivalents (e.g. thought-for-thought) is -at best- a patchwork of approximations because no one today is certain just WHAT the ancients were thinking or to what they might have been alluding. Also, parallels (cypher) have been lost more often than not. Add that puns and wordplay were often employed by the pre-standup comic element of the genre [of scriptural writers].

Bible translation differences clearly point out how modern words are 'best estimate' selected to translate or illuminate the metaphor in the ancient scripture.

Let me add that the same word-for-word and thought-for-thought problem exists for Buddhist Scriptures (including the more recent - comparatively - writing of Dogen)! Furthermore, more recent examples are available.

The debate itself is informative of how little we know - or can know. It also explains the generation-to-generation language gap.

So, my advice to those who wish to endlessly argue over minutia: "Shut the f*ck up!"

Besides, it's not creation that is being described in Genesis 1, it is only a sunrise (over the Gulf of Aden to the east of Ethiopia)! The spirit (e.g. breath) of god was carried by a bird - the BA - fluttering over the ocean at dawn.