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good news (“resist not evil”)

“Resist not evil.” – Jesus
 http://bible.cc/matthew/5-39.htm

I am complete with sin and “maya” and injustice and other similar words, like “incurable illness.” Instead, I may use “inconsistent” and “mistaken” and “inapplicable” and “imprecise” and “ineffective.”

Yes, the second set are adjectives, not nouns. However, that is the point!

Consider that there is simply no such thing as “a sin,” or not until someone says so. There is even no such thing as a crime, or not until someone “criminalizes” something and then enforces their declaration of the existence of a crime.

English: Detail of Preamble to Constitution of...

Image via Wikipedia

For instance, in the US during the early 20th century, the production of alcoholic beverages was criminalized by an Amendment to the US Constitution, then de-criminalized by a later Amendment. So, is it inherently criminal to brew alcohol or not?

Alcohol may ferment naturally from fruits. If an apple falls from a tree and begins to ferment, producing alcohol, has someone committed a crime or not? Aha, but what about a grape!

In other words, is the natural biochemical process of the fermentation of fruit, which produces alcoholic liquid, inherently criminal or evil or sinful or shameful or bad or dangerous? Consider that there is nothing inherently criminal in any inaction (such as failure to join a national military) or in any action (such as dropping a bomb and killing thousands of people in the name of freedom or equality or retribution or terrorism or peace-keeping, etc…).

Governments criminalize certain activities as part of their normal functioning of regulating (governing) the behavior of the territories they occupy. Punishments (and rewards) are invented and enforced by certain people against others. All governments are occupation governments, operations of organized coercion or violence or intimidation, AKA military governments.

This is not a condemnation of any or all governments. They are not inherently evil. Nothing is inherently evil. Evil is a category in language that is invented and applied and later redefined, like the terms “crime, sin, and injustice.”


Even the definitions of what is an illness change over time. You may have heard of an incurable illness called scurvy. You may have at least heard that, at one time, certain medical professionals may have referenced an “outbreak” of incurable scurvy among sailors who were all on a long sailing voyage together. Perhaps the ignorant medical professionals simply misunderstood innocently that what they called scurvy was just the name for some symptoms of a certain level of Vitamin C.

When we identify something as “the symptoms of a relatively low level of vitamin C,” we are not creating an illness or performing a curse in black magic. A particular level of Vitamin C cannot be labeled an “incurable illness.”

Of course, there is really no such thing as an incurable illness or even an illness at all. Every so-called “illness” is declared into being (perhaps as distinct from such things as an injury or bio-chemical toxicity). An “illness” is fundamentally an activity in language, a process of categorization, a “social construction” of so-called “agreement reality.”

There are any number of actions that are inconsistent with a statement of intent or ineffective for producing a certain result, but the belief that there is something inherently wrong with anything in life – any of “God‘s Creation(s)” – is what I would call diabolical (from the roots dia-bolos, meaning accusational or villifying) as in Satanic or shaming or cursing. I did not come to condemn the world, but to remove the sin of the world, to free the humble from shame with a truth that many people may ridicule as foolishness…. or simply dismiss.

The humble will be innocent and curious and peaceful, like children, and experience what we might call the state of “heaven.” Those who worship vanity and wickedness and evil and illness may continue to burn with envy and animosity and condemnation and guilt and contempt and antagonism and belligerence.

Now, when a linguistic model fits well with a particular circumstance or context, then it is useful. When it does not fit, it is inconsistent with the circumstances, irrelevant, ineffective, inapplicable. Using an inapplicable model, especially obsessively or stubbornly, can produce surprises, frustrations, confusions, conflicts, and exhaustions.

So, the use of words like sin and crime and evil and injustice are simply for the influencing of behavior, for governing, for herding. So is the use of the words “our enemy.”

When we are taught by commercial media and public schools and governments that certain purchases are safe, such as because they are government-regulated or government-operated, consider that such teachings are what we might call a “sales pitch.” State lotteries and casinos and the FDIC and the FDA and the insurance industry and the mortgage industry and the Social Security Administration have something in common. What they are have in common is that some people have faith in them, some people value them particularly, some people regularly invest in them, and some people might even get insulted and argumentative or even violent at a reference to the reality of the extent of sustainability or wisdom or integrity in certain operations or trends of changing behaviors.

For instance, people may complain about the TARP program as a bail-out program for the banks redistributing wealth from the US taxpayers to the least responsible gamblers among the banks. However, the FDIC is also a very similar program for attracting business to the qualifying banks (and thus benefiting those who own shares of ownership in the banks). Previously, deposit accounts were insured by the US government for up to the amount of $2,500 (as shown in the image below), but that number has incrementally been increased 100-fold to $250,000.

Why should the US government be co-signer for billions or trillions of dollars of debt owed by all of these banks? Perhaps because the banks saw the benefit of that and lobbied for it. Whether it is FDIC or TARP, it is clearly a huge advantage for the banks at the expense of taxpayers.

FDIC placard from when the deposit insurance l...

Image via Wikipedia

Beware of those who worship a particular linguistic model for reality as if one particular linguistic model is inherently more sacred or moral or applicable than all other models. They may be fools who do not understand the function of language. Language, by the way, may be a tool for influencing the behavior of others, for organizing behavior, for governing.

Again, I am complete with sin and “maya” and injustice and other similar words, like “incurable illness.” Instead, I may use “inconsistent” and “mistaken” and “inapplicable” and “imprecise” and “ineffective.”

Yes, the second set are adjectives, not nouns. However, that is the point!

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This entry was posted on September 3, 2010 at 5:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “good news (“resist not evil”)”

  1. Mystic Angel Says:
    April 10, 2012 at 11:20 pm | Reply

    Thanks! this really resonated with me.

  2. Dr. Tickles Says:
    April 24, 2012 at 5:32 pm | Reply

    A nice grouping of jargonistic rhetoric. I like it.
    Ron

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