Image – A choice of swords. Both quality Japanese implements. Top Circa 16th century, bottom, perhaps late 18th/early19th. NB – very sharp but not much good for shelling oysters.
Author – Calligula (FRSUB)
I’m told a movie called “Dogma” has been out for a while featuring Jay and Silent Bob.
Apparently it has to do with the second coming and seems to roll around the theme that to “BELIEVE” is dogma but to call one’s religion a “nice idea” might lead to a better world.
Despite all the publicity otherwise there seems to be quite a number of perfectly fallible humans who desire to practice the latter concept as best they might.
Some number of them are even clerics.
Few would deny that in ages past our Christian religion was somewhat zealously exploited as an instrument of state.
The rulers of emerging nation states promoted homogeneity, grand style.
They wanted their expanding enclaves to feature as much as could be organized one race, one religion and a populous, fairly benign, undereducated, superstitious, thus homogenous, peasant class.
All of this seems entirely at odds with the situation in a modern, successful, multi-cultural nation like Australia
We may, for instance, still have concentration camps here and there but that doesn’t mean they are not politically useful.
They provide an arguably ultra-vires ( unlawful) means of keeping enough people behind bars to keep the press happy and pages padded on slow days.
It also provides the new age clergy and a few carefully selected do-gooders something to bellyache (sermonise) about.
The clergy are kept happy if the press provides them enough time to broadcast their bellyaching (profound knowledge) to the population.
The do-gooders are happy that they can bask in the reflected glory and tacit agreement of the clergy. (well, after all, we don’t want any dissent amongst the panel on air, do we?)
The population is happy if their clergy are on the ball enough to risk admonishing our government for being ‘tough enough’ to lock up all these oceangoing gatecrashers.
Last but not least we must not forget the ‘gravy-trainers’ – that hodge-podge of pseudo intellectuals, consultants, uni odd bods, ex-politicians, writers, the odd lawyer and the like who all subsidise their gratuities by giving the odd leftie speech or media appearance.
Yes indeed these high maintenance types need to be kept happy too.
Now while the clergy keep shoving their paddle into the turmoil we can keep alive that fallacious old furphy that it is all an eternal war between Christendom and Islam.
Which keeps governments happy because it provides the populace with something remotely abstract to ‘think’ about – in other words hopefully keeps them flat too busy to think about those real issues about to dump on our collective heads.
As a ‘red herring’ it’s a hum-dinger since those suffering detriment are not Australians (except when the odd mistake is made) and it certainly plays a fair volley towards keeping attention away from a few tiny matters like how we treat aboriginals, our minorities, or the lack of anything like a charter of rights.
The point I make is that even this ‘soft’ dogma – the choreography, the pretence that ‘they, the trusted ones’ are struggling ethically in unison with an immensely complex, chronic, brainstraining issue is exactly the same old game that has been played on the punters for far too many centuries.
In short if this fait accompli or other ‘useful’ red herrings didn’t exist or were somehow resolved ‘they’ would have to invent replacements.
So, in this age of the 24 hour media cycle and the constant, repetitive bombardment – where not only do they tell you what to think but how to go about thinking, what and when they want you to think – some of us have moved onto alternative means of communication and information gathering.
So what might we find there -
Since some of you have already quit reading this – outraged; firm in the belief that a latter day Mr. Goebbels could never be permitted to shove his propaganda down the necks of Australians – that only leaves we cynics to persevere.
That leaves me the opportunity to speak plainly with this document in mind -
The document IS a bit of an eyeful but essentially relies upon a cross section of net content to prove that interpersonal communication and information sharing on the net is even more compromised by the actions of private individuals than it is by governments.
While some unfortunates might hold to the idea that governments have a right to manage the media and news content even totalitarian states permit some semblance of dissent (saves them from sooling out the hotheads themselves).
Meanwhile there is a modern set that seem to want to operate along the same lines as the old despots bending new age insecurity towards the maintenance of new age dogma in the new medium - weblogs.
They seem, some of them, quite incapable of accepting any sort of different viewpoint whatsoever.
A reasonable bloke could say that the only reason they accept ‘comment’ (the word itself implies dissent) in the first place is that they apparently lack comprehension.
Once they work out someone disagrees – hoo boy, watch out.
In a way it is as pathetic as my own poor efforts. Blah, blah, big words and specious blether followed by a begging request for comment.
Any normally aspirated, reasonable, thinking human being would realize beyond any shadow of a doubt that such would be an open invitation to bring mayhem down upon their heads.
But is there some agenda other than the up-front appearance of someone speciously burring up a complete stranger and telling them to piss off?
Could, say, a rusted-on laborite be truly so sparrow-brained to believe lathering abuse on a conservative correspondent actually improves their pro-labor pages?
I’d been following a few blogs for some while (just type “CALLIGULA” into google search) and on one particular turnout notices a couple of blokes copping more flak than the Eighth AirForce over Augsburg
I wondered about this and decided to say something in their favour.
The result was interesting in that a normal person might notice that support and say a bit in my favour when the big guns instantly turned my way.
Mind you the lack of such a friendly response might just vindicate my opinion about those who vote conservative but might well demonstrate that his literary efforts were ring-ins concocted by management in order to provide their pro-labor pals someone to snarl at. (call it an internet equivalent of shooting at paper targets instead of hunting real game)
A plausible scenario –
This blog I’m talking about.
Could it be possible that it’s not really a pro-labor page at all?
Could it be a confection set up by conservatives with faux conservative comment all carefully articulated and strategically included in order to bring out the worst habits of abusive pro-labor contributors?
Surely the conservatives couldn’t be that smart and the laborites that dim?
Does anyone remember the term “Agent Provocateur”?
Or could a ‘political sword’ wielded so completely aggressively in inexpert hands become no less than a ‘dogmatic cudgel’?
Reading for the day –http://www.softpanorama.org/Social/Toxic_managers/index.shtml
- some elements of which might account for but not excuse stupidity on the internet. http://www.dictionary.net/stupid
Thought for the day -
When someone many years ago peered heavenward and allegedly declaimed “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” – he was probably misquoted.
He might as well have said “Jesus wept”.
Either way, he was right about the human condition and the foolishness we ALL display.
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