The Likeness of God is to Create not Consume

The following post written by Bruno de Landevoisin on February 2nd, 2014, first appeared on The Slope of Hope.  I implore you to spend a few minutes taking it in, as it's the real deal and well worth the read.

The astonishingly mesmerizing supernatural image pictured above is of the Temple of Poseidon in Greece, off the cliffs of Sounion, facing the Mediterranean sea.  My friends, If that sight does not take you outside of yourself and onto something else, I’m not sure anything will.  Trust me on this, as I have had the good fortune to have actually been there myself, and it is indeed spectacular.

The Likeness of God is to Create not Consume.  Ingenuity and innovation are hallmarks of our human creativity. Curiously, those marvelous characteristics unique to mankind, which have delivered the most astoundingly advanced technological productivity gains ever conceived, are now fast displacing a multitude of relatively menial jobs previously attended to by human beings, who having been anchored to unsatisfying and unfulfilling laborious routines, were less able to enjoy the free time and space certainly required to become more creative enlightened beings themselves.

Surely, the simple answer to our current macro economic dilemma, namely low growth with vanishing jobs, is to once again call upon our God given human ingenuity and innovation, so as to quite simply redesign and rearrange the furniture in our grand house more adeptly.  If we so choose, we can freely create more, we can joyously labor less, and we no longer must be slaves to the degradation of excess consumption.  See how that works?

A word of caution, getting there will not be plain sailing and rather tempestuous I’m afraid.  Change will be vigorously opposed and resolutely resisted, particularly by those who have attained much power, privilege and affluence, as they have been conditioned to measure and value their own success, sense of significance and acquired tenure in the presently established order of society. They will understandably do all in their power to defend and cling onto an organized societal system and set of values, where they have clear vested interests and which has seemingly served them so well, no matter how obviously clear it is that the world around them is increasingly becoming unglued before our very eyes. The desperation of the QE monetary policy dependency itself, is but a misguided manifestation of the dangerous hubris and arrogance that puts forth and fiercely holds on to an obtuse refusal to acknowledge and accept the reality of the inevitable change in the winds that is now howling so vociferously upon us.

Purposely degrading this Nation’s hard earned reserve currency status, which was so honorably passed on to us by previous generations who built this great country from the ground up with their virtuous and industrious blood, sweat and tears, only to then implement a disgraceful monetary policy that deliberately steals from future unborn generations in order to facilitate living standards beyond our means, so as to sustain an unearned, undeserved and unprincipled culture of grotesque illegitimate debt financed over-consumption, can only be characterized as a deplorable unconscionable abomination of Biblical proportion.

We physically finite mortals just so happen to inhabit a physically limited globe also made up of finite resources, inevitably, the days of unlimited growth and excess mass consumption must be expeditiously put behind us. To artificially sustain this decadent overindulgence via unsustainable debt financing is absurdly short sighted lunacy which borders on sheer insanity. Either we adapt or we die, same as it ever was.

This free choice which has been divinely granted to us is entirely ours to make.

Comments

[tradewithdave]

First, we are not designed to "fear" "the problem" as we are more than conquerors.  You would know that because you studied that... fear God, not the problem.  Right?  Secondly, it is not "easier to destroy than build."  It is harder on the soul to destroy than build as evidenced by the current need to look up when walking past financial towers to avoid hard landings. 

The arsonist, in this case let's suggest that the arsonist is the prince of the power of the air, doesn't have an edge as he is already defeated and he knows that.  Indeed, "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." but there is a cure for that and you are correct that the cure is not technology.

What blessing can you pass down to your children and your children's children that will endure.  The Good News of the forgiveness of sins that you may have life and have it more abundantly. 

The father of lies wants you to believe that you are not made in the likeness of the Creator and that there are other gods before God. 

[Disenchanted]

Not In His Image by John Lamb Lash

Basing much of Not in His Image on the Nag Hammadi and other Gnostic writings, John Lamb Lash explains how a little-known messianic sect propelled itself into a dominant world power, systematically wiping out the great Gnostic spiritual teachers, the Druid priests, and the shamanistic healers of Europe and North Africa. They burned libraries and destroyed temples in an attempt to silence the ancient truth-tellers and keep their own secrets. But as Lash reveals, when the truth is the planet Earth it cannot be hidden or destroyed.

Not in His Image delves deeply into the shadows of ancient Gnostic writings to reconstruct the story early Christians tried to scrub from the pages of history, exploring the richness of the ancient European Pagan spirituality—the Pagan Mysteries, the Great Goddess, Gnosis, the myths of Sophia and Gaia—and chronicles the annihilation of this Pagan European culture at the hands of Christianity.

Long before the birth of Christianity, monotheism was an anomaly; Europe and the Near East flourished under the divine guidance of Sophia, the ancient goddess of wisdom. The Earth was the embodiment of Sophia and thus sacred to the people who sought fulfillment in her presence. This ancient philosophy was threatening to the emerging salvation-based creed of Christianity that was based on patriarchal dominion over the Earth and lauded personal suffering as a path to the afterlife. As Derrick Jensen points out in the afterword, in Lash's hands Jesus Christ emerges as the agent provocateur of the ruling classes.

and:

John Lash's heretical book is a precious act of spiritual disobedience that seeks to save the world from Salvationism. Lash opens new ground between myth and ecology, and helps one feel what the planet feels. He proposes direct knowing and moving beyond belief, and advocates animism as a proposition to test. He leaves the future open and in need of human imagination. Humanity is implicated in the future of the living planet, but Lash exercises caution when making suppositions about our role as a species. This book is learned, courageous, and full of insights. Some may find it challenging and even shocking, but it is an important read for those interested in life on earth. It is made for readers to chew on, rather than believe.

—Jeremy Narby, anthropologist, author of The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and the Origins of Knowledge and Intelligence in Nature: An Inquiry into Knowledge

[drstrangelove73]

Read it again.
What can it hurt?
No western man before this past century who was not thoroughly acquainted with it was considered knowledgeable.
I dare you

[Dr. Sandi]

Every time I read 'the word' I hate mankind a little more.

[mayhem_korner]

Why? 

[Disenchanted]

excerpt from here:

Humanity Betrayed

All through my life I have faced a paradox: feeling compassion for humanity and, at the same time, suffering a certain repulsion for it. Eventually I came to understand that the repulsion I felt was not for human existence as such, nor was it merely a projection of self-repulsion on others. Rather, it was a spontaneous, gut-felt response to human behaviors and attitudes. (The attitudes that inform behavior are values, and these are what Nietzsche sought to shatter and recreate.) Even as a child, it seemed to me that certain forms of human behavior are incompatible with genuine humanness. This may not seem like such a radical view, since most readers would agree that some human acts are repulsive, unworthy of humanity. But I was in a terrible fix quite early in life because I was repulsed by actions and attitudes that were normally regarded as admirable—in particular, religious righteousness and moral rectitude. What the world at large considered to exemplify the best in human nature, I found quite deplorable.

Living with this conflicted feeling, I came to realize something that is extremely difficult to define: namely, how humanity stands in danger of betraying itself through what it holds as its highest ideals. I wondered how such a weird proposition could be true, how the self-betrayal of an entire species could actually be effectuated. In time I realized that I could not even suspect such a betrayal were I not adhering to an innate standard of humanity by which I was judging human behavior, including my own. But what could that standard be? How did I acquire it? Why did other people not have it as well? How could I apply my sense of values, the code of misanthropic humanism I found in Nietzsche, in a compassionate way? And even if I came to define my “innate standard of humanity,” and live up to it, what then? How would this dispose me to the rest of the world? And most importantly, would I then be able to see how humanity’s self-betrayal plays out? Even how it might be averted?

[Bdelande]

BTW,

Tim Knight was not the author....

Bruno de Landevoisin wrote this excellent piece.  He is a regular contributor on Tim Knight's fantastic financial blog "The Slope of Hope"

[Sir Edge]

May The Wind Always Be At Your Back Laddie...  :o)

[edge]

"et’s get to it, before it forces are mortal hands"  our?

[Bdelande]

"Let's"  not "et's"

Get your head out of your ass......................

[chump666]

I actually really like this post.  We should marvel at the ancients who built monuments to outlive man.  Now, as we stand in this current reality, we are doomed.  Economics and financial croynism and corruption are so systemic and widespread it is now seen as a norm.  The lords of stupidity (financial academics) believe they can manage human nature within economic theory, but that is joke and a bad one.  For one economics isn't nature and man stands outside the natural system.  Our only hope is to rebel against our predicament i.e "god", our masters, nature, but so far we are complicit in our pointlessness.

[weburke]

I would caution you about letting the politicians claim "stupidity" and you believing it. They prefer acting dumb to telling you the real reason for actions. -oh gee, we made another mistake-

[DOGGONE]

Over consuming well shown! Comment by ttsmyf
http://patrick.net/forum/?p=1237859&c=1050925#comment-1050925

[Creeps]

Reminds me of Buckminster Fuller's quote about not changing existing reality by fighting it, but creating new models that make the old unnecessary.

[scrappy]

How about older ideas updated for today's needs instead of todays "newer" ideas which are not new at all, but a step backwards for all to see.    Neofuedalism.

http://www.wealthandwant.com/index.htm

A Moral - Ethical Economic Model that addresses todays problems.

http://www.henrygeorge.org/isms.htm

How?

The living Sage's ideas that transends both, and more...(he's 90 so Sage is ok)

The Mason Gaffney Reader: Essays on Solving the "Unsolvable"

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mason-Gaffney-Reader-Unsolvable/dp/0974184462/...

His other recent books - very timely and relevant.

http://www.amazon.com/After-Crash-Designing-Depression-free-Economy/dp/1...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Corruption-Economics-Georgist-Paradigm/dp/0856...

[steveo77]

IAEA is now promoting jobs and sales in Cancer Treatment

This guy has one of the lousiest jobs in the world….convincing people that cancer is a "natural" part of our lives, and promoting a huge money flow into the radiation industry.

He is the head of "Technical Communications" at the International Atomic Energy Agency. That mean Czar of Propaganda. He is promoting channeling money to the radiation industry, while dispelling "myths" related to nuclear energy causing cancer.

————————————————————————————————-
Fortunately a young lady in the crowd wasn't impressed with his credentials or his credibility, she stated….

And who the hell are you to be talking about cancer? You of the unholy alliance of Atomic Energy who has subjugated the WHO World Health Organization to lying about the damages caused by nuclear energy. You of the IAEA who are complicit in the coverup of damages and ongoing problems at Fukushima. You who kills our children and destroy our human DNA genome, as you serve the financial interests of your multi-national corporation puppet masters.

And you are here telling us that nuke plants are safe and clean, and you want to channel money to radiation workers…

http://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2014/02/iaea-is-now-promoting-jobs-and-sales-in.html

[jeff montanye]

this seems wildly off topic.  the person referenced by your verbatim quote is kwaku aning.  what has he to do with this "slope of hope" post?

[steveo77]

I can't believe Tim Knight had a grammar error in his last sentence....

[jeff montanye]

where?  the commas around "which has been divinely granted to us"?

[steveo77]

The last sentence, are instead of our

[lordbyroniv]

OUR mortals hands.

PS - Jay Carney called and agrees that jobs are a mere trap that prevent us from living.

[NeoLuddite]

Work is the curse of the drinking class...

[J S Bach]

No one "created" quite like Johann Sebastian Bach.

[Peter Pan]

Two dogs and a cat attempted to gain entrance to a classical concert but were stopped by the doorman who informed them that dogs and cats were not allowed in.

One of the dogs replied pointing to himself, then to the other dog and finally the cat:

"But I Bach, he Offenbach and that's Debussy."

[drstrangelove73]

Amen

[Goldilocks]

Paul Simon - Graceland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FEBDNJtNWk (5:14)

[Bdelande]

Who wrote this?  It's amazing.........................

[Grinder74]

Will this inspire us to create faster-than-light travel???  Inquiring Klingons want to know.

[Clint Liquor]

Is the author suggesting a world where every person felt it was their moral responsiblity to produce more than they consume?

[mjcOH1]

The Lord did not collect the EBT for 6 days and knock over a liquor store on the 7th?