The Father of Cynicism

Diogenes was asked why he always begged.

"To teach people," replied Diogenes.

"Oh yes, and what do you teach?" people would ask him scornfully.

"Generosity", he replied.

Prophilactics 5

in the days of wifi the land was plagued by talibans
and the westboro klux klan roved the plains
with signs uttering blasphemies against the Spaghetti Lord
coocoo they were, our Noddly Lord judged
coocoo fur shit's sake
blow them all away!

and a waco-like cloud of manjuice exploded
like sperm from a pornstar's ballsaque
bang!
and there was a great white flood
and the spaghetti spirit laid its meatballs on the face of the heinous, hated hate-preacher
and said "you wanted divine fury motherfucker?"
and the devil that was in the body of reverend phelps left
and the entire klan was made into goo before our eyes
yay, thusly they entered a black hole in the center of the galaxy
never again to be heard of again
but our noodly numen knew better
and revealed that they had been sent to the planet of the apes

and so the great spaghetti monster saved the day again
from the evil that had settled itself
like a tick in our asses
this is why henceforward the people called this day
"the day of our lord's cumming"
ra-men

My Act of Defection

When I was an infant, my parents baptized me into the Catholic Church. Like almost all children who grow up in Christendom, at no point was I ever consulted and the ceremony, plus the indoctrination, all took place without my consent. It took me many years to realize the fraud and the dangerous cult that is the Catholic Church, to begin to realize that the high clergy of the church where I was nurtured as a child has always had fascist sympathies and seeded them in the culture, and how detrimental its agenda is to global human rights, and gay and women's rights in particular.  Once I left the church, it's taken me many more years to overcome the anger of having been lied to on so many fronts.

After having last year compared gay people to the Ku Klux Klan, this year Chicago Cardinal George does it again! Now that gay marriage is likely to be approved in Illinois, he wants to play politics even as he dodges his taxes by writing a lil letter calling gay marriage unnatural.

Let's put aside the fact that his church has spent 2 billion dollars covering up the crimes of predator priests and that the pope has headed an international criminal conspiracy to cover up child molestation over generations.

Isn't morality itself unnatural? It's meant to tame our natural aggression. Nature is completely amoral: there's cannibalism in nature, some species of birds sacrifice one chick if that increases the chances of survival of the stronger chick.

Plus, dogs, dolphins, octopi, apes, and almost all mammals engage in homosexuality. What does he mean by unnatural, and in what way would that be relevant to ethical questions?

No species exhibits celibacy.

His doctrine is so unsophisticated, feudal, archaic, bigoted and stupid, and his church so lacking in credibility that it's embarrassing that this type of nonsense is still coming out of his mouth and that he even thinks he has the moral authority to utter this.

But there's more. The pope has given a blessing during the Christmas holidays to a Ugandan Parliamentarian, Representative Kadaga, who had promised her constituents earlier in December that she would pass the Kill the Gays bill in Uganda as a Christmas gift. She was unable to pass the bill because the Parliament went on vacation but it will be considered during January. News about her visit with the pope, how the pope blessed her (and presumably didn't admonish her or mention the Kill the Gays bill) and how the papacy has not ever, not once, assumed any type of leadership role with regards to stopping the bill from passing, as well as pictures of her kneeling and kissing his hands, have gone viral in Western secularist media.

Generally, the Catholic Church makes it nearly impossible for people to declare apostasy and formally leave the church: they try to talk you out of it, to convince you to consider returning "home", to continue treating you like a child. But after exchanging some emails with former Catholic atheists on January 2 of 2013, I figured out what I needed to do and sent this letter to the assistant of the bishop at the dioceses where I was baptized as an infant:

January 2, 2013
Nicholas DiMarzio
Bishop of Brooklyn
310 Prospect Park West
Brooklyn, NY 11215 

Dear DiMarzio, 

I am hereby formally defecting from the Catholic Church and request an execution of the Actus Formalis Defectionis Ab Ecclesia Catholica for myself to begin this process in accordance with canons 1086, 1117 and 1174 of the Code of Canon law as well as notification Prot. N. 10279/2006 from the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts (PCLT). 

This request is being made by me personally, freely and consciously in order to sever all bonds of Catholic faith, sacraments, and pastoral governance and constitutes a willful act of apostasy of my part. I am providing herein all necessary information with an explanation for my decision.
I was born on ... in Brooklyn, NY and as a matter of custom received baptism as an infant in New York. In 1991, shortly after turning 15, I stopped believing in Catholic doctrine and left the Catholic Church. I have now chosen to leave the Catholic Church in a formal and open manner for a number of reasons: 

• I am not a believer in Catholic teachings or any other salvific or revealed doctrine 

• I am not religious, and in fact consider organized religion to be fraudulent and harmful to society in many ways 

• I exhibit a profound distrust and skepticism of supernatural claims in general 

• I am a gay male and consider the anti-gay doctrine and the open hostility of many in the ranks of your clergy to be insulting to our human dignity and harmful to LGBT youth struggling to come out

• I am a firm believer in the equal validity of same-sex marriage 

• I am appalled at the culture of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church 

• The decision to baptize me, and to raise me as a Catholic, was made without my consent when I was an infant 

• As an adult, I have found that most of the authentic questions I have are best answered within the realm of secular philosophical discourse 

• I find that my political and ethical views are in direct contradiction with those of the Catholic Church and I vehemently disagree with Church teaching with regards to, among other things, human sexuality. I consider these doctrines as harmful, feudal, archaic and irrelevant 

The decision and declaration of initiating excommunication is made out of my own free will, being of sound mind, and in full cognizance of the repercussions. I do not expect to ever get married in a church and see no need to be a hypocrite in order to participate in sacraments. I also do not wish to be considered Catholic for census and demographics purposes.
I recognize that many members of your church exhibit a high quality of character and it is not my intent to personally attack you or any member of your staff, but simply to respectfully assert my right and my choice of pursuing philosophy instead of religion and to raise my voice in stalwart dissent against the teachings and actions of Catholic leadership. 

For these reasons, I hereby request to be officially excommunicated as soon as possible, to have my name removed from all church accounts, to provide that this act be noted in the baptismal registry (cfr. can. 535, § 2) with explicit mention of the occurrence of a “defectio ab Ecclesia catholica actu formali” and to record that I am no longer a member of the Catholic church according to the PCLT. I want no membership in your church for the rest of my life and expect these wishes to be honored. 

Should you require further information to proceed, please advise accordingly. I look forward to receiving official confirmation of this action at your earliest convenience. 

Sincerely,

..... (signed)

And so there it is. I now await my certificate of apostasy (or whatever they send us post-Catholic gentiles), glad to have not been among the sheep that, while not really believing their lies, still went along with the hypocrisy so that sensibilities of sincere Catholics would not be insulted. I am sickened by the cardinal's comments and by the pope's blessing of a woman who has vowed to subject gays in her country to genocide.

I am happy to formally commence the process of excommunicating the Church of Rome from my life. I'm happy to pronounce a firm indictment against at least a small portion of the innumerable crimes that it has engaged in throughout the world's history, and having finally done this I am happy and proud of my place in history.

"If you never wanted to hurt me, why am I running away?" - Madonna

As part of my act of defection, and having read that in antiquity the followers of the Epicurus made a vow when they entered the school of Epicureanism, I also created a certificate on my computer where I formally declared myself a disciple of the philosopher Epicurus, and signed it, in order to formally assume the practice of philosophy in lieu of religion and I have the pleasure to announce that, after many months of studying the philosophy and cautiously pondering my need for this discipline, I am now formally a bona-fide Epicurean.

Epicureanism: an Introduction

Epicureanism is a humanist philosophical doctrine for human happiness. It requires us to make a firm resolution to live a happy life and to apply philosophical and empirical methods to the pursuit of happiness.

Its first tenets are contained in the Four Remedies:

Do not fear death
Do not fear the gods
What is good, is easy to attain
What is evil is easy to avoid

For non-believers, the first two negative statements may be translated as "Do not fear chance or blind luck, for it is pointless to battle that which we have no control over. It generates unnecessary suffering."

The latter two positive statements lead to Epicurean teachings on how we should evaluate our desires and discern which ones are unnecessary versus which ones are necessary, which ones carry pain when satisfied or ignored versus which ones don't. By this process of an analysed life, one learns to be content with the simple pleasures in life, those easiest to attain. The best things in life are free.

"The wealth required by nature is limited and easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity ... Do not spoil that which you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for." - Epicurus

The three goods are friendships, an analysed life, and autarchy which translates as autonomy or self-sufficiency. Epicurus taught that friends are the most important ingredient for happiness. Difficulties are much more easy to bear, and pleasures much more easily enjoyed, in wholesome association with our trusted friends. We should seek them often and blend our minds with them.

The process of living an analysed life leads to the cultivation of what philosophers called ataraxia: a state of satisfied serenity, content, and self-control. It translates as imperturbability. Its attainment signals philosophical maturity.

The serene grounds of the Epicurean Academy were known as the Garden. There, an egalitarian community evolved where men, women, and slaves discussed philosophical matters among equals. This was very progressive, and even scandalous, in those days. Epicurean Gardens flourished for over 700 years until the Christians destroyed all the philosophical schools and philosophy was banned.

We must not underestimate the influence of Epicureanism in contemporary political philosophy and in modern life. We ultimately owe the inclusion of the 'pursuit of happiness' in the Declaration of Independence to Thomas Jefferson, who was a disciple of Epicurus. In his letter to William Short, he said:

"As you said yourself, I too am an Epicurean ... I consider the genuine doctrines of Epicurus as containing every thing rational in moral philosophy"

For a vast resource of writings by Epicurean thinkers throughout history, visit:
http://www.epicurus.info/

The following is a series of videos detailing Epicurean philosophy by youtuber Lootra:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEA3D3F7070776AD5

Tax the Rich: Animated Fairy Tale

2012: The Awakening of the Sleeping Monster of Global People-Power

Thousands descended on Stonehenge to celebrate the 2012 winter solstice and busloads of New Age pilgrims from all over the world made their way to the Mayan ruins of Guatemala and Southern Mexico in celebration of what many considered the end of the world, but for others the world was coming to a start. Latin American celebrities and common folk went to Guatemala and participated in public cleansing rituals under the guidance of Mayan shamans.

In recent years, the Mayan script has been decoded and great advances have been made in our understanding of Mayan culture. This has inspired a renewal of interest in Mayan traditions, and has also called to our attention that the last day in their calendar was our winter solstice (December 21) of 2012. Our current 20-year Mayan calendar period or katún, from 1992 – 2012, is known as the Time of No-Time since these were the last years of the sun’s 5,125 year cycle in the Mayan calendar. Mayan elders believe that there had been many humanities before us and that the fifth humanity would emerge on this day from the ruins of the previous one.

There have been innumerable doomsday predictions. Ancient Vikings believed in Ragnarok, the Day of Doom. The authors of the Gospels said that Jesus announced his imminent return within that same generation, which never happened. Ever since, Christians have been postponing the end times.

The pastor of an early Christian American sect known as the Millerites convinced his flock to await the end of days on April 28 of 1843. Some of his followers sold everything they had and gathered on a hill to await Christ’s return. When nothing happened, the pastor announced a new date, December 31 of 1843 … then March 21 of 1844, then October 22 of 1844. Eventually, the disciples distanced themselves from Miller and renamed themselves the Seventh Day Adventists while others became Jehova’s Witnesses. These groups have continued to postpone the date and turned fear-based doomsday predictions into a tradition, as have Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and their ilk.

More recently, homophobic preacher Harold Camping squandered millions on doomsday propaganda that assured his followers that the world would end May 21 of 2011 and blamed gays for just about everything he perceived to be wrong with our planet. When God failed to exhibit his wrath, he postponed the date to October 21 of 2011, and when nothing happened again, the fraudulent preacher stopped playing God’s ventriloquist and receded into irrelevance. He failed to offer a money-back-guarantee to his gracious donors.

It’s difficult to understand why some people get so easily seduced by doomsday prophecies: our species’ scientists have advised us that the sun is not scheduled to expand, swallow the Earth and explode as a super nova for at least another 3.5 billion years. Unless a comet hits before then, humanity should be fine and will probably have migrated to other planets by then.

One possible theory is that certain generations are more vulnerable to mass hysteria: this was certainly the case when the black plague killed a third of Europe and many people believed the end was nigh. Our generation has seen an increase in populist uprisings throughout the world. Increasing poverty in the US may also contribute to the phenomenon, as more people turn to faith for consolation.

The ancient Greek tragedy and our modern glorification of violence and gore in media, including violent apocalyptic imagery, may also have deep psychological roots. Carl Jung, the father of psychoanalysis, proposed that the mass hysteria and violence of the Third Reich and II World War was the result of generations of repression of the primal Odin principle within the culture of the Germanic peoples. He identified the ancestral deity Odin as symbolizing the savagery of the old untamed Germanic psyche. Perhaps humanity does need some form of controlled outlet for its repressed violence and anger just as volcanoes serve to vent the repressed magma within the Earth, and art can be explained as one such civilized, tamed, acceptable outlet.

But it would be unfair to say that all of the discourse around 2012 is fire and brimstone. 2012 is an indigenous American cultural phenomenon and its relevance must be understood within an indigenous and neo-indigenous context. No assessment of 2012 would be fair and complete without the voices of indigenous peoples. Prophecy can function as a generation’s assessment of its place in history and as an extension of vision-seeking, or framing the collective history and destiny of a group. 2012 represents a return to an ancestral continental American cosmovision.

There have been several Pan-American Gatherings of the Elders in Perú, where indigenous shamans and leaders from the entire hemisphere have come together in mountains in the Andes that have always been considered sacred to seek visions and are weaving a new continental myth-making tradition centered around the prophecy of the condor and the eagle. The elders say that when the condor (South America) and the eagle (North America) are seen flying together, there will be peace on Earth.

There are other hope-filled indigenous prophecies, most notable among them the Warriors of the Rainbow prophecy which emerges from the Hopi tribes and which the indigenous Bolivians associate with their rainbow flag. The Rainbow Warriors are said to be light-workers who will come from all the tribes and languages of Earth at a crucial time of near-destruction and will teach people through deeds, not words. They would help the spiritual traditions of the red man to reemerge within new cultural paradigms after 500 years of repression and marginalization. Invariably, these traditions reflect cooperative, egalitarian, community-based values and models of human interaction.

Of the films that cashed into the 2012 craze, the documentary 2012: Time for Change stands out. It features interviews with Jacques Fresco, a futurist architect that some consider a genius, and delves into complementary currencies, workplace democracy through worker cooperatives, sustainable energy, emancipation from oil dependency and other solutions to global problems that, whether or not we address them, will make our generation pivotal to humanity’s fate. The movie The 11th Hour also proposes similar shifts, but focuses on the environment and the creation of technology that seeks to imitate and weave itself into the cycles of nature rather than dominate nature.

Of equal importance, 2012 serves as an excuse for cultural renewal for people of Mayan and other indigenous ancestry in the Americas.

We of the last katún of the Mayan calendar are the generation that saw the first indigenous president ever in Bolivia, Evo Morales, whose first ceremonial act as president was to make a humble offering to Pachamama (Mother Earth) and whose nation was the first on Earth to pass a law granting rights to Mother Earth. This happened after all the water in Bolivia had been sold by the previous neo-liberal regime to one American corporation, Bechtel, and it had become illegal for indigenous and poor Bolivians to even gather rainwater. The water wars ensued in Bolivia, where people died on the streets to take back their access to the water that fell from the sky. In the end, the people won and Bolivia’s water is now in public hands again. While this was all happening the water wars were not mentioned in U.S. corporate-owned media.

Our generation also saw a Zapatista revolutionary uprising among the modern descendants of the Mayans: the indigenous people in Chiapas, rebelling against attempts by corporate powers to penetrate their society and dismantle their societal values after NAFTA was approved. In these days of corporate lack of social and environmental accountability, acts such as these represent a paradigm shift.

The Arab Spring, the Indignados, the Occupy movement and similar populist ones focusing on the 99 percent effectively changed the discourse and countered generations of corporate, elitist and political propaganda and tyranny. This global awakening is exacerbated by the fact that we were cast into the information era in an evolutionary blink of an eye. We’re all rapidly reinventing ourselves and re-contextualizing ourselves in the midst of more changes within one generation than any other group of humans has seen. Global access to the internet did not even exist twenty years ago.

It was a curious fact that the NATO gathering in Chicago occurred during an eclipse, bringing into focus the international military industrial complex and all that it evokes. For all these reasons, it was not at all difficult for 2012 prophecies to gather this vast constellation of cultural memes around itself.

Thomas Jefferson once said ‘When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; When the government fears the people, there is liberty.’ There is a sign that one would see at the boundary of the autonomous territory of Chiapas that reads:

“You are in Zapatista Rebel territory.
Here, the People Command and the Government Obeys.”

Indigenous groups have always been community-oriented, collectivist cultures and in Chiapas today all decisions are made communally, by vote and by consensus, not too different from how the local assemblies at Occupy make their decisions. Chiapas has become a model of decentralization of power and participatory democracy, and of course a huge challenge to the power of the corrupt Mexican state.

Post-insurrection Chiapas remains a stateless society where the mothers and grandmothers make sure that no one goes hungry, without an education or any of the basic requirements for human dignity. It is there that the Mayans originally made their home.

Autarchy and Its Relevance Today

The word autarchy derives from the Greek: αὐτάρκεια, which means "self-sufficiency" (derived from αὐτο-, "self," and ἀρκέω, "to suffice").  Today, it's used mostly to refer to the self governance and self sufficiency of small states or provinces.  There is also military autarchy, and some libertarian thinkers today have proposed that autarchy should replace anarchy in contemporary libertarian discourse.

Autarchy, in its original context, was one of the goals of life in Epicureanism.  The philosophy of Epicurus has been subjected to so many layers of misunderstanding and bias over the centuries that today most people link epicureanism with gourmet food and unrestrained hedonism.  Like many of the things that Epicurus taught, autarchy has also shifted in meaning.  In this case, it has been reduced to the realm of politics and economics although Epicurus himself encouraged his disciples to never get involved in politics. Epicurean autarchy does involve self sufficiency, and economics are inescapable from this, but the philosopher stressed mental and emotional autarchy: the ability to be independent, content and happy with the simple things in life.

Epicurus taught that there is an economic component to a good life and encouraged simple living and self sufficiency.  In the year 306 BCE, he acquired land outside of Athens and founded The Garden, where he lived with his close friends and disciples and where they discussed philosophical matters.  The Garden evolved into a model of Epicurean community and became their Academy or philosophical university.

The ideal of simple living which Epicurus proposed has today been resurrected in the frugality movement.  Yet, simplicity is not just a lifestyle for hippies or the poor: it is also one of the main roads that can lead to riches. 

Years ago, I read the book The Millionaire Next Door, where the authors tracked 7 habits of first-generation self-made millionaires and found that --contrary to what was expected-- most of them lived a frugal life.  They lived below their means, drove normal cars and lived in normal homes: no mansion, no Lexus, just your normal average Joe.  The authors of the book discovered, among other things, that people who are ostentatious about their wealth are generally in debt: frugal people who care more about financial independence than keeping up appearances are oftentimes the ones who end up truly wealthy. 

The ideals of frugality and autarchy resonate profoundly with the financial times in which we live and I think they're deeply interrelated: simplicity can and does lead to mental and financial self sufficiency, just as Epicurus taught 2,300 years ago.  Perhaps with the cultural awakening of the so-called new atheism, we'll begin see his Gardens mushrooming again in the modern world.