On another page a friend posted a video of Evangelical worship. Spastic dancing as da Lawd takes over their bodies. Well...
America was founded by religious zealots,...fanatics. That, and predatory business slaver expansionists. This explains us.
On the up side we know how to throw a party. That, and we're still an ongoing experiment of the Enlightenment.
Results so far inconclusive.
About Christian snake dancing. Most faiths viewed from the outside are as inexplicable as Evangelical spirit frenzies. People have such primal needs. So we invented law religion, and created g-ds to fill the void.
This to explain or at least restrain the chaos.
"We have such beautiful dreams yet such frightful nightmares."
Carl Sagan
8 comments:
If you really think "Results so far inconclusive" then you are living in a dream world. It's over honey; get over it... period!
I'm taking the long view of centuries.
In that reading this thing has just started.
We had several foundation wars in the 19th, and 20th centuries external, and internal. We're only just coming to terms with our identities crimes virtues, and intentions.
Yes our first empire period is over as well as common mobility, and somewhat justly distributed wealth.
If that's one's whole view of us then absolutely that period is now over.
Other opportunities adventures disasters even other manners of empire are ahead.
The basic national mythology is generally set.
This usually is done in the first 400/500 years of any nation. We've just finished that.
A general starting point being Jamestown in 1609 through the Moon landing in the late 1960's. ...this a rough gage. We have an outline a sense of who we are through all that.
The struggles around the world with what is to us is still the new technologies. The earth, and climate changes. The pressures of a global world of which we are for now a major part.
In the future a middling to minor one.
Then like China in centuries to come another Imperial period.
These will come, and go.
China is a good example.
Think like a Chinese scholar. Given the Chinese histories of rising, and falling. From the point of view of such a person,...bleep it this show the American circus is just getting on the road.
Coming soon we'll have a kind of Mad Max period. This because we haven't prepared for all the changes that the ecology/climate of the world is already going through. They'll be a slow stability, and another Enlightenment. Some prosperity then for us a fall again...on, and on like China.
Also like China the American culture is here to stay.
A holdover from our first, and currently ending Imperial era is that the world wants,...amazingly still wants to be like us.
Or at least like what we were in the mid-20th century. That mythology is granite solid, and will remain so like Chinese food.
It's gone that era of wealth, and plenty, but it's memory around the world has, and will continue to stick. Though half of all Americans at this very moment are living in or near poverty. My grand nephews, and nieces will see it hit near total. This just before our "First Collapse",...Empires do this.
Yet Myths particularly the American myth will live forever.
...like China's.
So don't weep because we're in a bad patch,...history is one long bad patch with a few parties tossed in. The American mid-20th century was one such party. I was there it was one for the ages!
The USA isn’t really a nation. Nations grow organically from a common culture. Many current nation states are colonialist constructions that will likely break up under the intense historical pressures that can reasonably be expected: almost certainly including this one.
The ancient Greeks danced as part of their religious rituals. What the Evangelicals seem to be lacking is the sense of dance as an art. Art needs some technique. Frenzied writhing and gesticulation don’t cut it. I think it would be good if we taught kids to dance. In fact it would be good if this supplanted that idiotic “physical education” we were all subjected to.
Z
Re: PE - I should have said “idiotic and degrading.”
Z
Sidney, read this from Wikipedia. These are impossible odds to bet against. Stop your wishful thinking. It's over. Period. This is indeed GOOD news!
"More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct."
Everything collapses. All these empires come and go. Scientists now say we have entered the sixth extinction, this the first by the species own hand. You think something lasts forever? HAH! That is crazy! Even galaxies collapse and suns burn out. "Nothing lasts forever, even no November rain." That is a great blessing. Speed the day it comes to an end! That is very good!!!
Of course everything collapses. The sun will expand, and devour us all in a few moments by celestial time. I'm just noting the rise, and fall of empires, and the stability of myth.
As for dance I'm all for it. Creatures beings of all manner on this world dance. I think we're the only species that ever made laws against it.
Bleep'em.
DANCE!!!
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