FATHERS; Civilization's Last Hope

I almost escaped notice of this time of year.  I have not cared for it much since the day a man in black robes sentenced me to life outside the daily felicity of my children.  I applied for their custody and was denied.  I was devastated.  The children's mother felt vindicated--for a very short time.  I was not the kind of father I had wanted to be, but certainly not the villain she had made me out to be in their eyes.  There was a lot of transference of her feelings onto them in those days.  And sadly for her, the vindictiveness continues to this day.  The children have long since reached adulthood, but the impact of her vindictiveness and its secondary effects has not departed from their lives.  They struggle as did I, and the irony of it is, the oldest is worse off than the others, who had graduated from high school when the split up finally became official.

I did not have a father growing up, although I had a biological dad.  He was more an itinerant priest than father even though his profession was the construction and maintenance of pipe organs.  He was a war baby as I was a post-war baby, and that social atmosphere for him engendered a different attitude about the future than what was beneficial for post WWII.  In the middle of his life he suddenly found himself in an obsolete profession, his spouse dead, near broke, and no idea how to be a father.  Nor did he find himself possessed of the desire to finish the job.  In his panicked state, he cast about for a willing woman to take the reigns.  But of course she wished for her own offspring, and I bless all the stars in heaven she was infertile.  Those of us still left in the home were disowned soon enough as he redoubled his efforts to raise the rest of his Zionist tribal pack by adopting kids to suit her maternal over-drive.  Had she reproduced I doubt us pre-adolescent kids would have emotionally survived.  Dad would never have had the opportunity to send me away when he finally felt able to implement his Millenial Dream.  I would have either left town or this planet.

Be all this as black as it seems to me at this far distant shore, he did insist on a few things which I perceive noteworthy.  As my mother sagged over the years into the old woman in the shoe role, we were compelled to muster to the duties of laundry, house-cleaning, and feeding ourselves.  All of us had our turn at a rotating list of chores. It would have worked out well had not some of the older siblings been negligent.  Rebellion often lurked when dad was otherwise occupied--which was quite often.  About the time dad finally sent me away for good (or so he thought) I was performing most of the dish-washing, mopping, vacuuming, mowing and garbage detail.  All this in addition to 2 hours weekly of personal laundry and ironing.  The younger ones were not considered capable of performing any of those tasks, and when they did, it was often in haste.  I was tolerant of their incompetence for lack of skill, but I chaffed constantly at their laziness.  What I got out of it was a skill-set unusual for a father in these "modern" times.

Part of dad's exiling of his children was sending me off to work on the older sister's dairy farm.  The amusement of the operations lasted only a short while.  His excuse was to teach me to work.  But I was the only one he compelled to submit to such summer work.  And besides, every time I was gone he was off pursuing his Millenial Dream, dragging the remnant of our family half-way across the North American continent.  I especially did not understand his reasoning since I was handling more than my sibling share of household chores.  I didn't really learn anything about how to work for a boss (my brother-in-law resented my presence and preferred to focus on raising his own children--and rightly so), although I did learn a few things about farming.  But I did buff up considerably, at least to the point I lost my fear of bullies and popular athletes.

 Thousands of mile-markers distant from those days I am deeply disturbed when I read of men who receive little praise from their wives for their contribution to family felicity through their efforts at fathering.  These women have not learned anything about men really, and expect the world to turn for them as their father's provided for them while they were imbeciles.  All too many of them complain about their husband's lack of competence, and/or interest in domestic labor.  I have yet to see any of them know anything about REAL labor unless they were raised on a farm which required their participation in order to survive. Furthermore, they complain because men don't know how to make love to them once married. But I'm still looking for the woman who has learned how to make love to a man, especially as his virility diminishes with time. It takes more than looking like Barbie to fulfill his bonding urges.  Lest this be perceived as nostrum, my first wife although familiar with farm survival labor to some degree, still was sheltered by that of her father's labor who she despised for many years. She had no idea about the mechanics of sex beyond stick-figure action, and wanted to hide under the covers with the lights out on our wedding day.  Some farm girl.  As the oldest of six girls, she was especially adept at complaint, backstabbing, and competitive subterfuge as the rest of them.  When we met, her opinion of most males on campus was that men felt they were God's gift to women.  How I missed her stereotyping I cannot fathom.  What she never realized was that the real problem in her wifely repertoire was that she felt she was God's gift to me.

Contrary to the stereotyped clarion blasts in all the Media, men are not simply the equivalent of the dairy bull who's only reason for existence is to inseminate the entire herd.  There aren't any more dumb brutes among men than there are dumb broads among women.  Women are constantly prattling about this or that male-centered discriminatory issue.  What they don't understand is that while their hormone level may rise to thrice their childhood level upon entering puberty, the male's testosterone levels are seven times higher than females at this age.  Is it any wonder a male seldom has anything else on his mind?  It takes a well-tempered and nurturing father to guide his son past this rampaging period, to socialize him into managing those urges productively.  When men are given a chance to transcend the effects of the chemical changes that often drive them to insane acts, they discover they want and can actually achieve equal if not better in some instances, nurturance and parenthood than their spouse.  Their is no difference in capacity, only in understanding and opportunity.  And it takes a well grounded father who is blessed with a dynamic, vibrant, and flexible relationship with his spouse to teach his daughter how to be worth more than a Barbie late-comer.

So where does a mother fit into this?  If she does not participate with her husband in socializing her son to become a desirable husband, what does this say about her?  Women, you just can't have it both ways.  Good men are attracted to good women.  Women who understand the male psyche know what makes them tick and what motivates their paternal instincts.  Too many women enter marriage with the expectation their chosen mate will treat them where their father left off.  Enter Snow White and Cinderella.  Just as a man must learn how to polish his bride, a woman must learn how to cultivate a faithful groom.  And it is at this crossroad where it starts going South.

A Groom can never be groomed to be a woman's ideal mate.  This is the heart of a woman's misunderstanding.  She cannot and never will successfully groom a man into her desired image of perfection.  Men do things differently than women, and if she tries to mold him in her image, he will despise himself and other men will pity him should he measure up to her standard.  The good men are not all taken, deary.  They are cultivated.  Once a woman understands how this is carried out she will obtain her heart's desire, but rarely before.  So my deepest wish on this celebratory day is that women will get off their high pedestal of emotional superiority and go read up on what makes a man roll up his sleeves.  It doesn't take a lot of effort to implement and the rewards are mutually delightful.

Start with Dr. Kyle Pruett's research in The Nurturing Father, and Father Need.  Do what he counsels and watch the amazing transformation of your children and your relationship.

SethSmee

Why I oppose DOMA

Christians are hypocrites.  At least they do not follow the teachings of Christ, but have corrupted them.  Let us begin with a portion of the Lord’s prayer:
“…thy Kingdom come, thy Will be done, in earth, as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10, Luke 11:2)

Clearly, Jesus is indicating that the objective of His teaching is to bring the Kingdom of God down among men.  That is what the Christians seek; it is implied in all their sermons and in their belief in the “Rapture”, or the Second Coming of Jesus to rule personally the people of the earth.  Sounds like a dictatorship to me, but that is a secondary issue.

What did Jesus say about marriage? 
“…The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage:  But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:” (Luke 20:34-5)

Is it so hard to put this together?  There is no marriage in heaven, and this asocial institution is one that all faithful Christians should be working to bring about on earth.  If and when the Kingdom of God arrives on earth, there will be no marriage on earth either.  It is what the Lord Himself has so stated (if you can believe what is contained in the Gospels), but Christians in the Far Western world are supporting a political movement for the opposite.  Who are the children of this world?  Do Christians teach anything about this?  My take on the Lord’s answer to the Sadducees in Luke is that they are those who adhere to the institutions of men, but have no interest in the Kingdom of heaven, much less bringing it about on earth.  Within the context of Jesus’ own sermons, this is undeniably the case.

Some Christians will point to the teachings of the converted Saul of Tarsus in defense of their views on homosexuality.  But you cannot find any such teaching in the words of Jesus.  Get out your computerized scriptures people and find it if you can.  This doctrine is Paul’s exclusively, and is one of the body of teachings Peter and James eschewed from the Jerusalem church.  It was Paul’s twist on Jesus’ teachings as well as his departure from Jewish orthodoxy that forced them to banish Paul from preaching around Jerusalem.

Now some Christians (those who are ignorant of their own doctrinal history) will argue that Jesus created a church, and that church is the one that Paul expanded.  But today it is common knowledge among Christian theologians that the book of Ephesians is a fraud; Paul did not write that book.  Furthermore, the word church as Jesus used in Matthew 16:18 in Aramaic does not have reference to the Church that Paul created, which subsequently became the Catholic church of the Roman Empire.  The concept of church in this context is entirely different.  Any priest worth his salt in theological training will tell you these two facts are so.

If then marriage is a secular institution, it is plain the Church co-opted marriage, proclaiming it as ordained of God, not of men, contrary to the words of Jesus himself.  This is the myth the Church has promulgated down through the centuries, and the cause of it can be found in the early history of the Church when the Pope assumed the head of world government.

Today people enter into marriage predominantly by the action of a priest, but when they divorce, it is by action of a judge of the local court.  Everyone turns a blind eye to the fact that priests receive their commission to perform marriage from the State.  Marriage today, as is the case historically throughout the world, is the co-mingling of property in common cause.  Said Dr. Thomas Szasz:

“Success or failure in marriage depends not on whether husband and wife love each other, but on whether they want to merge their lives and fortunes.” Untamed Tongue p94

For generations, the Chinese custom of marriage was predicated on this very principle, as indeed were the Western royal marriages throughout the Middle Ages.  Love and heaven have nothing in common with marriage.  Those are the facts.  (The story of love, marriage, and living happily ever after originated with the Ring Lord culture which culture predates Sumer.  Their fairy tales were code stories used to preserve the origin of their tribes.)  In view of this it is dissimulating of both the homosexual community as well as all Christianity to support the notion that marriage is about love and raising a family.  The institution of marriage has to do with the property of the persons involved combining to support each other, and the rearing of children so that they do not become a burden on the community.  The African aphorism about a community is required to raise a child is not about the child’s physical support, for even they do not care for children in this manner, but the socializing of the child’s mores to preserve and support the community’s survival.

Now I am not in favor of the dissolution of marriage and its consequent impact on family.  The oldest of the human mythology speaks of the Golden Age where all men did right by each other, and there was never want for the necessities of life.  That was considered heaven on earth then, and the fact that nobody spent their lives acquiring property since none was necessary, did not preclude family association.  It seems evident from the old records that human bonding was simply predicated upon other values.

At this juncture some will conclude that I am in favor of homosexual marriage.  Not so.  The reason is secular, not moral or religious.  The US Constitution’s Amendments do not support rights by class distinction.  Retired people, colored people, GLBT people, and others do not as a class or subclass have specific Rights different from any other presumed class of people.  The Constitution considers the entire population of the country as a homogenous whole and makes no distinction based on race, color, creed, or sex (the exception being the inclusion of slavery which was ultimately amended out).

In order for one person to have a Right, there must be some form of claim by that person upon one or more people who have a corresponding obligation.  This is why the Bill of Rights clause, Amendment Ten declares that all privileges beyond that extended to the Federal government in the same document are reserved to the people.  Not to some people of one distinction or another, all the people.  Opposite to the interpretation Alexander Hamilton took (at great remonstrance from Jefferson and others of the Signers), the obligation the Federal government has is the protection of all Rights imaginable, except those enumerated to empower the Government to carry out such protection, on behalf of the People. What the Federal government under the aegis of Hamilton doctrine has been doing is subdividing and granting Rights to particular classes of people.  This is the crux of the problem with homosexuals and their false claim to the right to marry as a group.  The governments, both Federal and State, were never granted authority by the People to dispense any Right of marriage.   The Federal government was only granted the right to protect the right of all people regardless of distinction to marry as they see fit.  Once this door is opened, the Federal government then has the opportunity and impetus to invent all manner of Rights pertaining to family and marriage which was not and never should be its purview.  Any parents who have had dealings with Juvenile Court know just how bad this can get.

When the State of Hawaii was considering the issue of DOMA, the supreme court struck down the law passed because it was unconstitutional.  The homosexual community claimed it as a victory, the religious Right (particularly the Mormon church funding the movement) saw it as a step backward.  Neither realized the full scope of what the judge issuing the ruling was saying.  A public column in the local paper had a comment by one person that marriage is a contract with society.

It is no such thing, and never has been.  No contract with society is even implied.  When two people apply for marriage within the State, it is for the purpose of obtaining a license to do so, which covers the basic requirement of asserting monogamy and being free of contagious venereal disease.  Certain other minor matters are attested to by the applicants on the license.  There is no written contract with the State, nor with each other.  Only in divorce is a written contract honored, that of a pre-nuptial agreement.

If the government were properly doing its designed function, there were would be no distinction between applicants for marriage license based on race, color, creed, or sex.  Any discrimination on the part of the government in this matter is expressly forbidden in the Constitution.  Well, one may ask, what about clubs, businesses, or religions who discriminate against people in any one of these areas?  If the government extends itself into any of them to regulate, then this becomes racism, fascism, state religion, and sexism.  It is National Socialism, in the same vein as Germany 1932, one step away from a military dictatorship.  On this point, Jefferson erred in creating the Virginia Constitution, for he discriminated against homosexuals in the document, going back on his own principles.  According to his own doctrine, the majority cannot over-ride that of a minority in the Democratic Republic.  That slavery and distinction of sexual preference was written into constitutions was an error and defect.  It allowed moral favoritism to exist to the detriment of total equality as stated in the Declaration of Independence.

The fact that religious leaders have been fanning the flames of class distinction in the name of moral rectitude is an indication they crave power over the population greater than what they have been granted.  Through their own venality, infidelity, moral turpitude, and lust for total control over the population (in the name of God, always) they have alienated large portions of the pluralistic society in which we live.

If they happen to win in the courts over the DOMA issue, they will have unwittingly opened the door to their own destruction by the State.  Soon the Federal government will be dictating to them who can and cannot marry, who can and cannot be a member of their congregations, and who can and cannot enter into their sanctuaries for the purpose of religious devotion.   These religions who are financing and perpetrating this persecution in the name of moral rectitude shall find themselves suddenly with the shoe on the other foot.  They will be staring at the government’s discrimination against them.  Not just the religions, but the homosexuals as well.  If this continues we shall continue to dissolve as One Nation under God, and become a people divided, just as the people of Germany became after WWI, ripening for the military dictatorship that took hold of their country and ultimately lead to their total subjugation.

When are you going to wake up and learn the lessons of history, fellow citizens?  Neither DOMA nor the homosexual movement to "grant" the right of marriage is preserving our Constitution, but destroying it.


Seth Smee

The God Complex

Coming Full Circle

To recap the issues of my first post, I ask this question: Would I do it (mortality) all again?

Not on my life, nor yours.  Anyone who would repeat their mortal experiences went through most of them where there is no light. Mormonism certainly had a lot of things backward, and only the intelligent ones figured out their exit from that crowd.

Supposedly the glory of God is intelligence according to Mormon dogma.  But that is the glory of Man, for God was made in Man’s image.  God, as recorded down through the ages of Man by his alleged representatives is capricious, vain, venal, and pissed off with His creatures a hell of a lot.  Pauline Christianity asserted that God is Love, but you would never know it by the acolyte’s deportment, and most especially by the priestly caste.  It is commonly accepted in Western Society that religion is the purveyor and protectorate of moral rectitude.  My present (ex)Catholic neighbor still is much disabused by the idea for sure.  But no one can look at the history of Christianity, nor religion of any faction and conclude it has been free of violence, suffering, death, but possessed of an over-all absence of intelligence.  Where does one find God acting with love, compassion, forgiveness, immutability, instructive, much less intelligently?  By the way, does God have a personal name, and why so much fear associated with the mere speaking of it?  And too, where has He been down through the ages that He has been too busy to make Himself personally known to His creatures?  From whence came this Almighty disdain for personally nurturing and cultivating His “offspring?”

If God is such a great guy (or gal as feminists like to wag), why did He appoint the least able people to go around proclaiming His virtues and His will?  These people are invariably the variety that can’t find anything else better to do with their short-term mortal existence than to meddle in other person’s lives, heralding the validity of God at the least, and dictating behavior at the worst.  Inspection of their personal affairs reveals they can’t even manage the daily acts of cleaning up after their own shit—er keep their own house in order, as it were.  But the True Believers among them do mean to rule the lives of everyone within their sphere of influence—a sphere that like Boyle’s gas law, enlarges to fill the Void.

I have termed the actions of such people in its cornucopia of (mis)behavioral qualities the God Complex.  It is evident everywhere, once attuned to it.

You see, I could never quite get the concept of reincarnation.  A person gets to live again, perhaps repeatedly, until (s)he “gets it right.”  But there’s no telling if getting it right has happened before the end of life.  If ever Life were to have meaning at all, it certainly would have to be bound up in the simple idea that a person would know why they exist, what they’re doing on this planet in a fleshly body, and what is expected to be accomplished during its brief existence.  For Reincarnationists, this is the mystery of godliness (or Creation if you must).  For Mormons, it’s trying to fathom how a person can be like God and acquire Intelligence without offending their overseers.  And for heaven’s sake, DON’T take the mystery out of God!  The entire house of cards might collapse, and then what would the vain, God fearing people do with their puny, trivial lives?  Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher. (Ecclesiastes 1:2ff)  Did the “Preacher” know who was truly vain?  Helping profession my itchy ass.  Man helps himself who promotes God.

For myself, there has been far too much God Complex to want to do any of it again.  Talk about vanity.  By the time I acquired self-awareness, I was beset with affliction by persons suffering from the Complex.  I was lazy, they asserted vehemently.  Further, I deliberately didn’t do what I was told to properly, or worse yet, didn’t do what was expected WITHOUT being told what those expectations were, much less having been intelligently instructed on how to carry them out.  This God Complex permeated every nook and cranny, every crook and nanny of my relations.  Parents behaved this way.  Teachers, Priests, labor bosses, Police, Bureaucrats.  All “ministers” of the public “good” and domestic tranquility.  Even most of my so-called friends could not resist.  Is it any wonder that scapegoating (otherwise defined as fool, sap, butt, dupe, sucker, victim) is an integral part of the mystery of Atonement?  You’ve got to hand it to the Hebrews, they are the earliest known race to have figured out how to blame someone else for one’s own shortfall, and turn redemption into a mystery.

The God Complex IS the oldest profession.  Prostitution has honor in it at least. In that profession you know what is expected and get what you pay for.

I confess, I succumbed at an early age to engaging in the Complex.  Survival in this world’s social relations seems to be predicated on its astute adoption.  By the time I became responsible for the nurturance and survival of my own bambinos I was well on my way to “offending these little ones”.  They would be hard-pressed to concede I didn’t deliberately try to harm them.  During those moments when I could grasp the consequences of those acts, the remorse was overwhelming.  But still it did not bring forth “fruit”.  It took the death of my only (then) son to shore up the resolve to abandon the Complex.  It was a bit of a selfish act, seeking redemption for my misdeeds in bringing a second son into this disconcerted world.  If ever there were a true mystery and miracle, it was that the first son was restored to life, and the second has had an even chance at transcending the Complex.  The first son returned to make it all possible, and I don’t know of a sacrifice more substantive and meaningful, or purposeful, than that.  This Crucifixion business as promulgated by Pauline Christians is no equal to it.

In this vaunted era of advanced standard of living, the God Complex has virtually extinguished all freedom, Natural Rights, real science, and intelligence.  It has closed the gap between Religion and State, enclosing every facet of human sociality and suppressing individuality through conformity.  At its very heart is the paradigm so often heard among the peasantry: “there ought to be a law…” .  Justice is no longer conceived of as fairness, but as retribution.  The Catholic mantra repeated every Sunday in mass is regurgitated during the week as you have sinned, you have sinned, you have sinned, and for that you must pay.  There can be no redemption, either civilly or religiously, for mercy has been removed from the courts.  Thanks to GW Bush’s administration (and the peasantry who hailed and fought for it), all those Rights have been removed right along with Habeas Corpus.  A person can languish in jail indefinitely without due process.  Such is the socially advanced civilization some now proclaim exceeds the ancient Golden Age.

As has been remarked in earlier generations, choosing between two evils is still choosing evil.  Which is better for the restoration of freedom and social fecundity, a political candidate who is a Mormon in his ethical persuasion (now that IS a non sequitur!), or an alleged Mohammedan incumbent with a political history in the G.W. Bush eclat?  I would call upon God with His name at this point if I could learn it….

For those of you thankfully uninitiated to Mormonism’s philosophy, there is no earthly or heavenly institution more centered on oligarchy (Article 12).  Dictation is its modus operandi.  Oh yes, they preach Agency, but only if you keep to yourself and never divulge to anyone you have a differing view.  They avow freedom of conscience and expression of thought (Article 11), but not within the hallowed walls of their religious palaces.  And most definitely not anywhere your “misbehavior” may cast aspersion on their sacred institution and leading priests.  Despotism doesn’t just thrive in Mormonism, it is the very essence of its founding paradigm.  For those peasants who are obsessed with “there ought to be a law” paradigm, the choice of Presidential candidate is a hard one indeed (but not for Mormons—they have been dictated who to vote for).  Do you choose the "underdog" with charm, or the businessman who inherited his wealth, never having had to really work a day in his life to survive? Both profess they have nothing better to do with their lives than force you to be a “better” person by the instrument of the law.  They’re making a difference you know.

Come ON people!  Where does this God Complex come from?  The aristocrats and the oligarchs?  They didn’t materialize in a vacuum.  They were produced by a society that cherishes and sustains irresponsibility and scapegoating.  Every night on the news you hear someone wanting to “make a difference”, and it universally entails not changing their personal life, their attitudes, beliefs, credos and the rest.  It entails trying to improve someone else’s lot.  Not by invitation, but by vanity, and believe it or not, a colossal insecurity complex that is the byproduct of the God Complex.

There isn’t going to be another round of this.  I would not do any of it again.  Nada.  Nix the thought from the peabrain.  There is no intelligence in it.  In the movie  Defending Your Life, it is no coincidence Mr. Miller must break the rules to break the cycle, and is applauded by Mr. Diamond, his counsel, for it.

It is said by psychiatrists (the high priests to the Oligarchs) that the definition of insanity is to continue doing what you are doing, but expecting different results.  The late Laurence Gardner lets the cat out in his Origin of God, although he consumes a substantial amount of pulp before getting around to the fraud.

In my life's next round, I’ll be looking for a society that has put aside vanity.  Wish me luck.

Seth Smee