(Note: The following is an excerpt from a larger essay titled
‘The Ideological Epoch and the Genesis of a Meltdown’)
The Church and the Collapse of Western Civilization
“Many of the truths that we hold today were once themselves blasphemes”
(George Bernard Shaw)
Note: Ideology was the exclusive domain of the European elites; the aristocracy, the wealthy families, the Church, the land barons and the royalty. The agricultural revolution spawned the stratification of human societies which further begat disparate class structures…hallmarks of the ideological age. This new and untested phenomenon (stratification) was built upon the foundation of authoritarian rule over the masses for the good of the state (the elites). Control was its trademark and the peasantry was perennially deemed to be chattel (property) of the ruling class. Under these feudal conditions, religious authoritarianism was a ‘no-brainer’ – it was a perfect extension of the elites and served the system well as its spiritual organ of control. Jesus of Nazareth was not a proponent of this ideology and spoke-out against the system, advocating instead for the needs of the under-trodden masses….for which he was quickly branded a renegade and a trouble-maker. By the seventh and eighth century A.D. early Christian doctrine had been usurped by Europe’s elite class and was well on its way to evolving into the bloated leviathan we know it as today.
And it certainly didn’t take long for the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church to begin drifting away from the simplicity of Jesus’ original vision and down the slippery slope into the amassing of material wealth, property, gold and precious gems, fine art, land, world domination and hubris…. those very things that Jesus railed against so vehemently while he was alive. Nepotism and incest soon became rampant within the hierarchical structure of the organization…. the elites within the Church were drawn from the elites within society, i.e., the wealthy families, the Medicis, the Borgias, etc. This seamless join between church, state and the ruling class eventually poisoned the ‘soul’ of the movement and proved that the inclinations of the Holy Roman Empire leaned more towards power, control and wealth than it did towards the spiritual welfare of its flock. Over the course of history, and in accordance with the laws of consequence and causality, the infected structure was allowed to mutate and morph into the culture of violence, intimidation, corruption, torture, murder and other human rights abuses exemplified by the Catholic Church and the Inquisition throughout most of the second millennium).
Because Roman Catholicism was the progeny of Western Europe’s ideological movement, it was also a carbon-copy of the movement’s shortcomings. Hyper-ideology grew exponentially, starting out slowly and picking up speed over the six thousand years since the Sumerians, so it was only in the last two thousand years that things really started to go off the rails. By that time hyper-man had effectively removed himself from nature, natural law and his inner divinity, and from that void he birthed a monotheistic off-spring that would mirror and justify his own disintegration. The Holy Roman Empire would provide the ‘seal of approval’ for a disintegrated worldview, propagating a doctrine of separation – separation of God and nature, God and natural law, God and women, God and mankind.
‘Creation is underpinned by the tenets of quantum law and as such, harbours no quotient for the illusions of separation or exclusivity’.
For most North American Indigenous cultures, divinity (the Great Spirit) was a ‘here and now’ and inclusive reality… present within all humans, in all of nature and accessible to the living through the ancient practice know as the Vision Quest. (Jesus of Nazareth also spoke of a formless, limitless and timeless presence hidden deep within the human form…he referred to this inner, experiential reality as The Kingdom of Heaven). For Roman Catholicism, God was always some where else, at some other time and completely inaccessible until one reached some nebulous point in the illusionary future called ‘death’ where the religious hyper-linear mind could ‘believe’ any fantasy it could conjure up. By remaining ‘integrated’ with the divine life-force present within themselves, Aboriginals kept the experiential ‘life-line’ open for those who chose to use it. In essence, the integrated Aboriginals had ‘the goods’ while the disintegrated Church had what only an ideological age could procure; ideas, concepts, beliefs, books, dogma, ritual and lofty promises of a better lot in an illusionary after-life.
(Note: While we’re on the subject of ‘the after-life’, linear thinking is a man-made invention, an ideological construct…in reality the past or future do not exist, except as figments of our imagination. (All other living organisms exist by the dictates of their gene-driven instincts, the present moment and their immediate responses to environmental and natural stimuli). The advanced linear thought process, evolving in tandem with hyper-ideology, is still an alien and unnatural concept to humans. Young children, who live in the ‘here and now’ and in response to their immediate needs, do not have a natural capacity to grasp the concept of tomorrow, next year or next lifetime. Children have to be ‘taught’ to think in linear terms and western societies go to great lengths to ensure that kids are well indoctrinated with the process. Factory schooling, the entertainment industry and especially the Disney organization are adept at browbeating industrialized children with the poisonous notion that ‘some day my prince will come’, ‘somewhere over the rainbow’ or ‘when my ship comes in’. For the integrated Aboriginals, their prince, their rainbow and their ship exists right here, right now and within themselves).
“The world is but a walking shadow…pity the poor player who struts and frets his one hour upon the stage, then disappears and is heard no more.”
(W. Shakespeare…from Macbeth)
Throughout modern history western man has been warned and counselled repeatedly, by the likes of Plato, Rumi, Shakespeare, Gandhi, Voltaire, Thoreau, Emerson and especially Jesus of Nazareth about the pitfalls and tenuous nature of material wealth, land ownership and man’s lust for power and immortality. The example of sand slipping through one’s fingers has been cited. But it only stands to reason that if disintegrated and hyper-ideological man becomes alienated from the intrinsic values within himself, if he senses no strength, wealth, substance, beauty or divinity within his own being, then he has no choice but to look outside of himself – in the transitory, material realm – for something to satisfy his inner feeling of emptiness.
Back in the early days of agriculture and ideology, and combined with his sedentary lifestyle, western man began acquiring and hoarding material ‘stuff’. It may have started with grain and captive animals but his desires for material wealth soon gravitated towards gold, jewellery, land, property, slaves, sex, power and various other ephemeral baubles alluded to in the great works of William Shakespeare. Roman Catholicism, being the scion of a disintegrated and spiritually empty worldview also gravitated, in lockstep, towards the same ephemeral baubles listed above. How could it have been otherwise? Both systems were issued from the same womb. Both systems were distracted, empty and heartless. And both systems filled that emptiness from the only realm their vacuous minds could identify with…the temporal and fleeting world of materialism.
Don’t just take my word for it…below is a quote from Albino Luciani (Pope John Paul I) before a public audience in 1978. Luciani, like Jesus before him was a revolutionary intent on reforming and ‘down-sizing’ the Catholic Church, i.e., selling off some of the church’s obscene wealth to provide for the world’s less-fortunate, much to the displeasure of the conservative elements within the organization. Luciani was a very healthy and robust man and yet his papacy lasted only 33 days and ended with his unlikely and mysterious death (as well as the equally mysterious deaths of 33 of his closest advisors). Digitalis poisoning courtesy of the P2 Lodge of the Milanese Free Masons was, and still is, the prime suspect but the highly toxic herb leaves no discernible residue in the body thereby making it impossible to prove. Luciani and his inner-circle of advisors were assassinated because an internal audit – initiated by Luciani himself – had uncovered concrete evidence that 133 members of the P2 Lodge (as well as prominent members of the Italian Mafia) had infiltrated the upper ranks of the Vatican and Luciani was about to expose them. (This information courtesy of author David Yallop).
The following quote best represents Luciani’s personal ethos, which was no doubt the primary reason the P2 Lodge, the Mafia and the conservatives within the Vatican had to get rid of him:
“This morning I flushed my toilet with a solid gold lever edged with diamonds and at this very moment Bishops and Cardinals are using bathrooms on the second floor of the Papal Palace whose trappings, I am told, would draw in excess of $50 million at auction. Believe me, one day, we who live in opulence, while so many are dying because they have nothing will have to answer to Jesus as to why we have not carried out his instructions, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’. We, the clergy of the church as well as our congregations, who substitute gold and pomp and ceremony in place of Christ’s instruction, who judge our masquerade of singing His praises to be more precious than human life, will have the most to explain”.
This quote is taken from the writings of Lucien Gregoire, author of “Murder at the Vatican”. For those who would like to inform themselves as to the inner workings of this secret society (the Vatican), I strongly recommend David Yallop’s “In God’s Name”. Mr Yallop is one of the world’s leading and most respected investigative journalists. He is based in London, UK and his brilliant work provides an intelligent and in-depth analysis of the facts surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I as well as an expose’ of the corruption, graft and tyranny pervasive within the conservative ranks of this clandestine organization. Mr Yallop is not some disgruntled ex-Catholic sniping from the outer fringes of this issue…”In God’s Name” spent sixteen straight weeks atop the New York Times’ best seller list and has sold in excess of ten million copies worldwide.
Note: One final clarification needs to be made about the ownership and possession of ‘stuff’. The North American Indigenous tribes bartered and traded and they surely had some sense of value, ownership and possession, although meager by European standards. Living simply and according to one’s needs does not mean we have to become renunciates (I own a spiffy computer and used it to write this essay). So, having material ‘stuff’ is not the problem… looking to those things as one’s main source of happiness, peace, strength and fulfillment is. The same can be said for money – money was originally invented as a unit of exchange for bartering and trading of goods. Had it remained simply a unit of exchange…no problem. But once greed and hoarding came along, all hell broke loose. A wise man once said “Money is not the root of all evil…the ‘love’ of money is”. The pivotal components of the Aboriginal’s integrated worldview were survival, inner spirit, community and their inter-relationship with the Earth. All the other ‘stuff’ was secondary, like logs and detritus floating down a fresh and healthy river.
Dennis Lakusta
December 2022