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Hello, Who Are You?
Welcome, Brother and Sister. Peace be unto you.
So a while ago we finally had a chance to meet, strike hands and exchange pleasantries, after all this time of crossed schedules and missed opportunities. Chumba has been busy with the trials and tribulations of personal apocalypse. Indeed, we shall all experience our own revealing in one way or another, and sooner rather than later, perhaps sooner than you expect, or want.
Let us sit down now at the table. I'll bring out the board. It'll take some time to set up all the pieces and explain how each operates. After all, if one is to engage in a contest, it is only fair that each player know the parameters of engagement.
CONTEST. To make defense to an adverse claim in a court of law; to oppose, resist, or dispute the case made by plaintiff. To strive, to win or hold; to controvert, litigate, call in question, challenge; to defend, as a suit or other proceeding. - Black's Law Dictionary, 4th Edition, p. 391
Indeed, the Court of Chumbawamba is always in session. But don't mind your first insinuation. This is not as serious as it may seem. You haven't been accused, but you are being challenged.
Or if you prefer, we can use an alternate paradigm to describe this engagement. Instead of a gameboard we can call it a stage, and instead of pieces we shall instead have characters. In fact, just bring your own paradigm. This spectacle can and will be observed in any number of familiar constructs, all featuring their own nuanced perspective that altogether bring a fuller understanding of that to which I am to minister. Pick the one best suited for you and go with it; I'll be a gracious host and adapt to your preference. Think nothing of it, Arabs are typically like that.
Keep in mind that no apocalypse is the same twice, so a lot of this is going to be new for me as well. In fact, I expect to learn as much from you as that what I am going to proffer.
Now, before we discuss the structure and semantics of this engagement, I should first start with the most important aspect here, which is you.
Who are you?
Do you remember?
Do you remember where you are and why you're here?
...
Let's do an exercise. Take a moment now, and quiet your mind. Remove unnecessary distractions. We're going to meditate on this. Close your eyes and relax for a moment.
Now, open your eyes, and look around you.
What do you see?
I guess that really depends on where you are. Most of you, my dear cohorts, are inside a man-made structure somewhere, likely surrounded almost, if not entirely, by man-made objects. And if you thought about it for a moment, all of the things you use on a daily basis--your bed, your clothes, your house, your car, your roads, your place of work--basically everything, is man-made.
If you're like most people in the developed world, you might go your entire day without touching anything made naturally. Think about it. Even much of the food you stuff down your gullet is processed, man-made. Short of the purely plant and animal products you might consume, like a salad or a bowl of fruit or a steak or some chicken, much of your food these days is artificial, processed meats and vegetables.
Unless you're blessed to be living in a "country" environment, in your world, nature is merely the backdrop or garden adornment of your man-made worldly universe. Yours is a world almost entirely made by man. Your concrete walkways stingily allow for some meager foliage to protrude into the tidy man-made world, and perhaps you're blessed with front and back yards where you allow a lawn, some flowers and shrubs, and perhaps a few trees to exist, tidily maintained and confined to your preferences.
But the vast majority of your landscape, I'm guessing, is the creation of the hand of man. And it just sits there generally, not doing anything. It's all dead. Even the things that do something, like a clock, or a radio, or an oven, are just neat boxes that perform magic tricks based on properties of the physical universe that man has learned to master, but each of those objects ends in and of itself. In order for there to be more clocks or radios or ovens, and in order for there to be even working clocks and radios and ovens, requires the constant presence of the hand of man.
Now, I interject here my apologies to those who are reading these words on a farm, or a mill, or in the woods, on the beach, or just somewhere outside. Here, I am not primarily speaking to you.
But for the likely majority of you, contrast your likely setting with, say, a healthy forest. There, you have tall, lush trees. Creatures like birds and squirrels are zipping about; bugs flit here and there. There are flowers, an array of shrubs, aromatic grasses. In other words, there is an abundance of life all about you. Everything you see in such an environment is alive in the truest sense of the word.
So, uh, who made it? In your (“your” again being the majority of you) world, someone somewhere made your stuff. So, who made the forest and the trees and the birds and bugs and flowers? You see what I'm getting at here. I don't believe stuff like that “just happens” or is “just there”. In my Earthly experience, nothing just shows up without someone, or something, putting it there. Though they seemingly appeared out of nowhere overnight, someone put those Georgia Guidestones where they are. They had a maker. No one will dispute that. No one is going to argue that four slabs of granite self-assembled and spontaneously expressed a philosophy of global genocide and universal control of the world's population through some heretofore unobserved process of momentary sentiality of a previously inanimate substance.
Getting back to the forest and its contents, one might say that it was created as a result of “natural processes”. Ok, fine: natural processes. But who set those natural processes in motion? Somebody, or something, somewhere, had to have initiated it. Forgive me, but the “big bang” explanation just does not satisfy me or anyone who actually thinks for a moment and considers the proposition.
At this point there is none to arguing this either way. I beg you, my beloved guest, simply to accept and agree, for the time being at least, that we answer the inquiry as to who made the forest and all that is in it thusly: "It is natural", where "natural" has the meaning "made by nature". Let us just agree on this definition. Definitions are important, and to communicate effectively, it should go without saying we must agree on them. And if you plan to stick around, that is the definition I intend to use...for now.
So in conclusion, I pray we can agree that everything we can observe, and beyond, all of what we can see and touch and taste and smell and hear, natural or otherwise, has a maker. Cool?
Good.
There is a point to this. A major one. One that we must continue to explore later, after you have acclimated to our now agreed upon propositions above.
As for me, the Kingdom is presently under seige, and Chumba is dispossessed of his lands. A battle to turn the tides is in the making; plans must be lain and provisions garnered. And so with this I must take leave to my chambers. I shall return, and I pledge, in an expeditious manner.
In the meantime, make yourself comfortable, relax, close your eyes, and remember who you are...
I am Chumbawamba.
»
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Ray Kurzweil: The accelerating power of technology
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comment: there it is, the master plan for the sheeple, it is not a secret.
hard fate perhaps.
Yep. Kurzweil is either intentionally evil or deceptively stupid. He and those of his ilk are dangerous Pied Pipers.
http://www.thehappydrone.com/2013/06/brain-hack/
Ray Kurzweil wants to hack your brain
NanotechTop— 25 June 2013
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look here, reggie has one !
[KR470] Keiser Report: Real Estate Auschwitz of Our Day
Posted on July 13, 2013 by Stacy Herbert
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http://www.maxkeiser.com/2013/07/kr470-keiser-report-real-estate-auschwi...
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the end must be near. "this the end, my only friend, the end." j.m. the lizard king.?
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Meeting Kurtz (Apocalypse Now)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9oBiD7-kAM
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The Doors - The End (original)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSUIQgEVDM4
Daniel Lanois - The Maker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBw3S9IAKPc
"Who are you?"
I ate rice in the morning and now I'm hungry
To one of these is,,, your cat that feels so much love and joy and is trained by you to do 8 tricks has no concept of joy or love. To be full and safe in its environment is all it needs. That same cat would eat your body to maintain its life if you were to suffer an untimely death and be its only food source. This whole Walt Disney,,, fish have feelings crowd like you do the whole planet a disservice. However you are great for the pet food makers. You might while you are busy training teach the animals that are made into your cats food to run the other way when the semi truck to haul them away pulls down the drive. Cats are predators, nothing more nothing less unless domesticated. I have no problem with your pet cat. Don't put on them human capabilties, feelings and emotions. I never said animals can't feel pain. Don't put words in my mouth. By the way, I have never shot a deer I knew I couldn't humanely kill. That means one shot, vitals. Think on that conundrum. By the way, the dove the feral cat took was feeding at my birdfeeder a few minutes earlier, have a nice day.
Deerhunter, thanks for your time and your input.
If you'd really read and understood what I was trying to communicate, (I did give it my best shot!) you'd have understood I haven't trained trained my cat do do "diddlysquat", I merely provided for his needs as best as I can, because I like the creatures genrally, and he specifically, is a responsibilty I have taken on.
If there is a trainee in that particular deal who is being taught to do tricks, it is in fact me.
And lets be honest, if I were really starving, and he was dead, then much as I claim to love him with my higher human ideals, I'd scoff him in a trice, and in all honesty, If I were truly starving, I am not sure how long my higher state of human love would over ride my hunger, although in a post apocalyptic scenario with all rules invalid, I might well choose to kill and eat a human not known to me, in preference to a creature, that does serve a function in my life. In such a situation, matey, if I have the "drop", together we would dine on your vitals, soon as look at you!
Should I be unlucky enough to kark it in my home and not be discovered for a week or so, my ghost would be very disappointed if my cat didn't chomp on my more edible bits, and I really can't see why you'd think I'd expect other wise or be dismayed by the concept, unless you are arrogant enough to think that you know how "people like me" think, based on a few paragraphs on a website.
I'm definitely not sure why you'd think I would feel that "fish have feelings", I have never closely observed or even considered them, but I have had a lot of time observing my cat, and despite your assertions, and the undeniable fact the he is wired to be a predator, his pampered existence means he doesn't HAVE to hunt for food, and in fact in the 8 or so years I have been living with, and observing him I have only seen evidence that he has killed a few moths and messed with the odd spider. He does enjoy chasing my hand under a sheet, and playing with his mechanical cat toy, which is clearly predatory behaviour, but just like SOME humans when they don't actually HAVE to kill to eat, he seems to have chosen not to kill other creatures, (which in fairness, in my experience is rather unusual for a cat) and I am sure that this non characteristic level of lethality to small animals isn't because he is "sentimental" or "kind" but simply because he is the sort of cat that wouldn't last five minutes in a "proper natural environment", becuse he isn;t predator enough.
I am also not sure exactly where in my post I discussed whether you think animals can "feel pain", and I am at a loss to see where or how I managed "put words in your mouth".
All I was doing was trying to correct your belief that animals have no "feelings" analogous to those which we, "oh so superior" humans feel (alledgedly) all the time, when my observations taken over a long period, and backed up in this particular case by other people who are acquinted with my cat would suggest otherwise.
I will observe that you posts so far, would indicate that the full extent of your interaction with other species appears limited to either killing them (hopefully with a "clean shot to the vitals" if your hands aren't shaking too badly with the excitement of it all) or enjoying watching them kill each other, and since this IS fight club, I'll take the liberty of telling you, that in my book that gives you the appearance of being something of a useless psychopathic cunt... (no offence is particularly intended, I'm just calling it how I see it!)
Stay out of my way, is the best advice I can give you, sonny-jim. I'm obviously not going to be good for the likes of you...
Oh, and despite encountering an unusual amount of "jerks" today, I HAVE had quite a nice day, thank you for asking.
Correction:
Sorry, I went a bit too far calling you "useless" back there, Deerhunter.
I am sure you'd at least make good eating, and probably a decent leathery bag or some other useful item...
This is the sort of article you have to read while stoned.
TD loves to comment on CNBC loss of viewers. This article, and the comments, is a great reminder that ZH has also completely lost its way. It has devolved into just another internet meeting place for lost souls, pretending to intellectual superiority, whie the real world goes on, unconcerned.
...the real world... lol
Yet here you are...
Oh great ZH is now giving a platform to some two bit wannabee cult leader who lulls his audience with a few soothing words in these tumultous times.
Just what we need another narcissist leading the lemmings astray - only this one has a messianic complex.
I can read the Bible and pray To God on my own - I dont need any clown to define faith for me.
It is ok, 13 weeks is not long enough to developed the proper understanding: he is Chumbawamba.
Nothing more can really be said about it but folks will try.
You missed the point entirely chap, but don't worry, you are bright enough, you'll catch up!
Chumba appears to discovered a great truth, which when you understand DOES fill one with the urge to share. Give him a chance to develop it, and it should go somewhere useful, that's the way of great insight.
But unitil you figure out the correct ways of sharing and develop the finesse required, it can look like madness or self absorbtion, or a scam.
But thanks for your input, at least you have learned the first truth, QUESTION EVERYTHING, all the time.
Very enticing article. I share this bullshit world with all the rest of you and when the wonderful essence of truth drifts by from outside myself, the awareness of that truth is immediate. I definitely detect something real in chumba's use of language. Having followed many dead ends, I am somewhat skeptical (sorry chum) hopeful though also -:)
As for: "So in conclusion, I pray we can agree that everything we can observe, and beyond, all of what we can see and touch and taste and smell and hear, natural or otherwise, has a maker. Cool?"
I'd just like to offer for consideration a possibly 'profitable' lead in discovering some light in so far as how one might approach becoming more familiar with the nature of this 'maker'.........
http://www.innerexplorations.com/catjc/st.htm
Consider setting your biases aside, forget what you 'know' and have courage.
Isaiah 45:7 KJV - I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these [things].
Job 31:15 KJV - Did not he that made me in the womb make him? and did not one fashion us in the womb?
Job 31:18 KJV - (For from my youth he was brought up with me, as [with] a father, and I have guided her from my mother's womb;)
Psalm 22:9 KJV - But thou [art] he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope [when I was] upon my mother's breasts.
Psalm 22:10 KJV - I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou [art] my God from my mother's belly.
Psalm 58:3 KJV - The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.
Ecclesiastes 5:15 KJV - As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.
Isaiah 44:24 KJV - Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I [am] the LORD that maketh all [things]; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;
God is the ONLY Answer to your musings ....
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Maybe you ought to have a look at something known as the 'new testament'?
Just sayin'
Are you saying that god was jealous and vengeful and then changed? Or that the Old Testament doesn't apply since the New Testament was published?
If you were Christian you wouldn't be asking right? So to answer your question, Christ represents a new covenent between God and humanity and yes, the new covenent was to replace the old. It is Christian belief that Christ the Son stands between man and God as both our savior and our judge.
Are you trying to bait him or do you just not know how to use a Search engine?
my search engine says the new testament was forged. the new testament was written hundreds of years after the myth.
Congratulations -- I think you may have just stumbled on one of the key distinctions between Old and New testament (with a little help of course).
The way you've framed it is a bit odd though -- FWIW the way the story goes is that someone came along and told people these notions were incorrect (angry/jealous/vengeful) -- which was a direct challenge to established authorities on these matters.
The story also seems to indicate that more than a few people were captivated by these ideas.
tl;dr Seems to be some unproven pseudo-religious propositions to, at a later time, prove something about religion.
Chumbawamba, are you any relation to Chewbacca?
I can't figure out what he's trying to say either.
Just finished reading Proof of Heaven, A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, by Eben Alexander. M.D. It made me smile.
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Mr. Sacks should perhaps withhold his opinion until after he has his own near-death experience.
Yep
Confirmation bias much?
"Creation is, with its partner Destruction, a continuous dance."
The yin and yanf of things. Like breathing
I am everything
I am nothing
I can never know the true consequences of my existence
A child of Sophia in the arms of deception. Well met, friend Chumba.
Oi.
"People often change
But when I look in your eyes,
You could learn a lot from
A life like mine.
The secret to me
Isn't flown like a flag
I carry it behind
This bleedin little badge
What says..."
Bell Boy - The Who (Quadrophenia)
My earliest meaningful influence, Jane Roberts (aka Seth), sums up my basic view:
"You make your own reality. There is no other rule."
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
It fascinates me that in order to have the human journey we seem to have forgotten who and what we really are. If we are fortunate we can spend our life rediscovering the magical pieces of our Self... all those small treasures we were carrying around inside the whole time. It is the reconciling this with the Matrix that is so convoluted.
chumba, show me your face before you were born.
As for the very important question 'who are you', I would answer: I am you in a different form.
A bit strange an very wordy Chumba. Tell it already then, even my time is valuable.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
The hand of god rests uninvited on my galaxy tablet causing me great angst.
It is just a fucking book. If it was Aesop's Fables would you still be pissing your pants?
(They have this stuff called Vagasil -- you should try it.)
Patience is a virtue so they say. Time waits for no man is the order of my day.
Can we kick off with the man who would be king erDOGan who tramples brutaly on his sheeples to satisy his lust for something less aesthetic in the park.
Definitely agree about the Big Bang. It had to be caused by something and scientists have not been able to explain why. Furthermore they have worked out that this universe is infinite, so you can't have other infinite universes outside of this universe since if this universe were finite then you could partition it into infinite slices, but the components which make up the universe can't be scaled down to something of infinitesimal length (as far as we know).
Which leaves us with one option; the fundamental elements of the universe do not approach zero length if you were to take a limit and since the universe is infinite it cannot be finite in length. If it were finite in length this would imply there are a finite amount of elements, but since the universe is infinite then there must also be an infinite number of elements.
Thus we have one universe and if this said universe were caused by the Big Bang who set off a reaction when there was no space, time or energy in this infinite domain of nothingness? Something omnipotent must have created all of this, furthermore if the universe started as a tiny pinprick and is now infinite, this can only mean the time-line of the past is infinite; or moreover it was a beginning with no beginning.
So there hast to be a god-like entity to cause all of this.
It doesn't matter Big Bank or not, the true value of the Big Bang theory is that it gives, (Creates?) a starting point for everything, our brains crave linearty, our creativity allowed us to create something that so far, seems to work fine, Don't knowk it unless you've got something better
Big bang was an orgasm. Life began as + and - energy met together, attracted to each other. Friction over time, created a pulse and that pulse expanded the elements with gas/heat. We are all the same energy locked in earth's atmosphere by gravity, and we are pulled into anything with a heart beat, developing characters needed to survive. Maybe love but the need to survive rose above anything else. back to work now. Just a passing thought.
One of the hardest jobs that can ever be undertaken is to convince the human being that their intellect is nothing more than a mote of dust. How any one with even the most rudimentary exposure to philosophy, science or history can make statements like "So there has to be", "So it must have been created by" is beyond my comprehension.
Chumbawumba, your reasoning, your progression of assumptions, your logic is so flawed it borders on infantile. How many times have we heard the watchmaker analogy by theists, it's a bit tired. You take your most infinitesimal and local experience of the universe (and I can't understate just how vanishingly small your experiences are in the scheme of a system known to be at least 15 odd billion light years across and most likely vastly more) and make the assumption that because someone made your toaster, it didn't just appear, then someone made the universe. This view is not worthy of disseminating. Religions and their followers have been egregious in disseminating flagrant garbage as fact. We have to move beyond this as a species. We have to grow up for goodness sake. Let me spell it out. We don't know, nobody knows. A statement such as "God created the universe" is as equally vacuous as "The universe is a computer simulation running on an advanced alien’s computer". I take my hat off though to you for the absolute certainty you speak with, I've never heard a theist speak with such conviction and knowing /s.
Your use of the word He and Him betrays your programming. My guess is you're a US citizen. It is possible to program the human mind from birth to recite scripts and perform actions and rituals and for that human who hosts the program to believe with absolute and utter conviction that their program represents truth, fact, reality. You can program a human to wear a turban their entire life, to wear a skull cap or veil their entire life and what's more (and even amazing) program them to think something bad will happen if they don't. You can program a human to turn up every Sunday to a building with a spire and listen to a man read from a book and enact rituals. We are biological machines that are programmed from birth by the parents, culture and nation we are fated to. I've had many debates with theists and the only outcome I strive for is an admission of ignorance of the nature of this universe. I try to extract the virtue that theists proselytize and that is honesty. The great and unyielding irony though is the blatant lie of claiming knowledge where knowledge is impossible. Let me spell it out. We don't know, nobody knows.
I ask you, don't argue with me, ask yourself just like to you ask your readers, "who are you". Is it conceivable that the thoughts you profess with absolute conviction have been seeded from birth in your mind. Is it possible that through constant reinforcement that the very neural structure of your brain has been changed to accommodate these thoughts? The very structure of your brain, stop and think about this. It is a marvellous conundrum of consciousness that to have a thought you must have the neural network in place to invoke or instantiate that thought. Once that thought is replayed over and over it is no longer transient but forms p-art of the very substrate of your mind you are doing the thinking with. You cannot think otherwise, you are part of the matrix with which you have been programmed. Is it remotely conceivable that what I propose here is possible? Can you answer that question with absolute honesty? Is it remotely possible? Let me spell it out. We don't know, nobody knows.
We are nothing more than an intransient collection of atoms and molecules. To think we are more alive after we have died than we are alive when we are asleep is silliness in the least or stupidity at it's worst. Sure, maybe we do go on to live after death but then maybe we don't. Maybe our consciousness ceases (as it does when we go to sleep). If you died in your sleep does that mean you are consigned to eternal sleep in the after life or do you wake up into some other dimension without a brain, without a nervous system, without a body? If that is the case that would be one hell of a disorientating trip. Have you ever wondered, if there is an after life, and you don't have a physical form do you emerge with your consciousness and memories in tact or is the soul something different. If it's different and does not manifest your consciousness and memory then, well, I'm at a loss what difference does it make. Our conviction in these concepts is symptomatic of our still immature intellects. Let me spell it out. We don't know, nobody knows.
Let me ask you. What were you doing before you were born, who were you. It's a silly question isn't it. You were nothing, did not exist. Looking back on it were you concerned you weren't alive during the roman empire, were you fearful that you weren't alive during the time of the Pharaohs and the great pyramids, were you upset at the carnage during the great Permian - Triassic extinction event. They're all silly questions because you were not conscious to know, to worry, to think. I suspect very strongly once you die the same applies, you are no longer conscious to worry about it. I am comfortable with dying , I am not scared because I coped very well with it for eternity before being born. This is simple, this is most likely probable. But let me spell it out. We don't know, nobody knows.
Let me summarise Chumbawumba, let me spell it out. We don't know, nobody knows, are you honest enough, intellectual enough and wise enough to admit this.
You're right: I don't know. Neither do you.
You can interpret what I say any way you like, but don't put words in my mouth you arrogant fuck.
What's sad here is how lost you seem to be. You will never know who you are, even if such could be truly "known", because you are running in the opposite direction from it.
I thought you'd accept criticism with a bit more aplomb. Strike a nerve did I?
You make it sound as if you've already the second part of the piece -- I don't think it has actually been published yet.
You did succeed in putting a lot of words into the author's mouth.