Scientific idealism has it that the last resort rescue of civilization from space will occur with the best instincts of European philosophy, the good of mankind. These are Social Democrats! so science hopes for the salvation of earth from pollution and overcrowding, but makes light of Stephen Hawking, who worries about the contact. Even if his ancestors were not felled by smallpox, his fear is they will raid us for our resources, that outer space capitalists seek earth the way Europe pillaged South America. Hawking may fear big ships from depleted solar systems, but billions have been spent and years to make Contact with them. Even though the most famous living scientific star fears this at least he endorses the alien. So goes the undocumented substitute messiah.
Lord Rees however, the astronomer royal, thinks this sounds like the Very One in whom he cannot believe. Rees warned that "aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding," like God, that “just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.” Aspects of reality, but not the whole! All this talk about reality is embarrassing. Having banded and put microchips, radio monitors and cameras onto every living species on earth to fathom their intelligence, that is, except themselves, who is as unreal as a scientist thinking to meet the mind of a superior after dismissing every other earth species as not measuring up?
Autonomy
Science is superior even to itself. It has determined that autonomous processes like the collective unconscious, evolution, "the market," exist of themselves the way deity used. These collectives function beyond influence so that, for example, when the unconscious perceives the need of a hero it produces one. These scientific autonomies are superior to Ocean, which cannot say as much, for it has changed its ph and temperature by external influence. Ocean is not autonomous but the stock market is! Hawking at one time under the influence of Einstein believed in a version of the LORD. Now that he finds the aliens a threat however, he says paradoxically that science makes God unnecessary.
No Competition in Space
Hawking, Lord Rees, Carl Sagan hope to find life on Mars. Mars, Titan and beyond. Either go to them or they will come to us. If we go out, as Sagan did in CETI, the presumption is a return. He sent our address so they could find us. It was "a sacred undertaking," the payload on Voyager I, and still remains so to the power of a "a thousand million years," "a kiss, a mother's first words to her newborn baby, Mozart, Beethoven...." What Hawking must worry about is that Sagan and NASA, who believe in the power of natural selection on earth, do not do so in space. Rivers, volcanoes, ice caps and every other aspect of natural science occur in space but not evolution! They don't believe in competition among species, survival of the fittest there! Indeed there are miracles! Mr. Goodbar Alien boggles Hawking's mind. But then NASA also believes in arsenic.
Alien/Redeemer
Spoil one planet and to another go.
Any fool knows that one and one are two.
The next is treated sooner than the first.
The Europeans eat the universe
And when they're done spit out the pit and run.
It's not that science has challenged the existence of a Creator/Redeemer, it has repudiated it and substituted an alien/redeemer mythology. It must seem religious, the beaming of all sorts of communications in hope of making contact. Global dismount is self-rapture. After despoiling earth, Contact to find "man's true place in the universe," begs the question of finding the true place of the human. The new Ancient Mariner says, "we must prevent their escape."
Whether going out or coming in, the nearest historical analogy to the "science" of the alien arrival in The Invention of America (O'Gorman) and The Invention of the Golden Age proves science infallible, for science corrects its error by means of more science. Every time science is wrong it is right, which rivals politics and religion as an equal claimant to the earth throne.
Confusion of TonguesTo discourage the thinking of CETI and confuse the alien, another message was sent to divert their landing, a confusion of tongues. Do they want to take the chance and be contaminated by us? Of course model aliens debate this. Space is like parliament. Space is like the human brain. There's no end to terrestrial thinking. Science thinks by projection that everything true of earth is universal, hence cosmic, except perhaps for natural selection. That's how Lowell found "canals" on Mars. They were in Venice. So aliens must "communicate," more earth talk, but do they have a sense of humor like our scientific believers? Nineteenth century poetry as a kind of religion has yielded to science. If alien mercy extends to Earth it depends upon alien plurality, another ambivalence of the projected human. As in the 2009 film District Nine, one hopes they remember the debate of Las Casas that Indians had souls. All revolutions are preparatory. Sartre and the French, taught by Franz Fanon, will go underground. Under Montana anyway, earth nuke silos, provided for by science as the handmaid of business, are already underground.
Rebellion
It's enough to frighten the rulers into active resistance. It's enough to frighten them into flying saucers. Mass rebellion takes counsel together. But what about and against whom? Not the space alien. But Mennonites have already proved it impossible to live in peace with the earth rulers. Are autocratic corporations less punitive? Is Revelations 18, Babylon City/Woman, an invention of the rulers to fake their own oppression, "a picture of bond traders and merchants of world capital, global internationals unmasked in the intercourse of traffic?" Is double think the fortune of “an idolatrous cult of Mammon, a cult that can only merit the name ‘fornication’” (Ricardo Foulkes. El Apocalipsis De San Juan, 189) in the democratic state? The most artful thing the powers ever did, whether in Revelations, Ezekiel, religion, business or politics was to turn themselves into liberators and cast the true redeemer as the oppressor. Would democrats execute Socrates? Never means always.
Folly Social Democrat Science Ballet
Social democrat science cannot find credence in its sophistication for let heaven and nature sing, which used to known as the Christmas carol, Joy to the World, as Psalms and the prophets continually say they do, the stars clapping their hands with the trees at the coming of the anointed one. Oh that pathetic fallacy, primitive, for stars are inanimate and trees, well you know what science does with them. Science and business and folly SD science dance for the credulous a performance with the proposition that there are beings just like themselves, who for all we know went to MIT or its equivalent, and they are good and if we are deserving they will come and free us from our partial truths. This is the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you democrats.
So rulers "take counsel" against the Lord, and against his anointed (2), but you will not catch them doing it. Such threats are only comprehended by fiction. The third part of the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, has to stand in for the truth because nobody will believe the removal of Karen Silkwood or anyone else who threatens these powers. These things are done behind doors where only prophets see. Ezekiel saw Lucifer's fall (Ez. 28), reduced you to ashes on the ground, the seventy elders of Israel each at the shrine of his own idol, holding hands together, worshiping all kinds of crawling things (Ezekiel 8). The most artful thing these powers have ever done, whether in Revelations 18, Ezekiel 8, religion, business or politics was to turn themselves into liberators and cast the true redeemer as the oppressor, instances which occur with frequency, as with the later cinematic cast as an incarnation of evil of Johnny Cash's There's a Man going round taking names.
The Man Comes Around, 2002 here.
The Man Comes Around (2002) was almost the last song of Johnny Cash, which he worked harder on than any other. The final scenes of the last 2008 Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, "What He Beheld," join it to a version of the space alien for a cinematic apocalypse.
The song references a kettle drum and the left hand piano serves its depth. The reportage of his singing / reporting in the song is, as it were, a message. In fact Cash digested many months of study, dreams and life into this version. The speed of the guitar rhythm slightly ahead of the words makes a felt urgency against the piano bass. The high rapid beats at "a hundred million angels singing" syncs with the words, implying a certainty at least of that. In reuses of this song in cinema, good is visualized as evil, as though the devil were the man, as if the rebel were the judge. So for all artistry it does not penetrate the pop rebel philosophical mind. Compare the deep tones of the left hand piano with the bass in Messiah, part 11, "The People That Walked in Darkness," especially in the bass tones of "darkness" and later in "the valley of the shadow of death" here
Establishing the King
It's hard to say without the White Horse Rider who's more afraid of corruption, the howling mobs of the Boxer Rebellion or the state control of Tienanmen Square. China watches its billion unenfranchised dangers. America mastered its social controls, but had a productive economy. Rebellions above and below the surface suggest earth a place not at all what alien propaganda media and governments allow.
There have been pictures of Justice in the reign of Queen Elizabeth celebrated by Spenser. Psalm 2 establishes "My king Upon Zion" (6). The nations have adopted the rule, "do what you want is the whole of the law." There is no middle ground, but there is time yet in the Psalm for kings to be "wise," to be "admonished." They can yet "rejoice with trembling;" they can "do homage with purity" (12). When did this happen? Nebuchadnezzar did it, Cyrus might qualify. Sennacherib failed in his warning (Isaiah, 36f). "Kiss the Son" (12) says King James, but planning for resistance had already begun. They say, "let us break their bands asunder." This refers to the recognition, really David's, that the Two that the nations contend with are the Lord, and his anointed. This is a coming trick or treat.
From the liner notes of the Cash CD:
I wrote and recorded ‘The Man Comes Around’ early on in this project, and for three or four months I recycled that song, over and over, until I’d have to get up out of bed, and turn on the radio. It worked for a while, but my inner playback system always went back to ‘The Man Comes Around.’
I spent more time on this song than any I ever wrote. It’s based, loosely, on the book of Revelation, with a couple of lines, or a chorus, from other biblical sources. i must have written three dozen pages of lyrics, then painfully weeded it down to the song you have here.
The initial idea for the song came from a dream I had seven years ago. i was in Nottingham, England, and had bought a book called ‘Dreaming of the Queen.’ The book talked about the great number of people in that country who dream that they are with the Queen Elizabeth II. I dreamed that I walked into Buckingham Palace, and there she sat, knitting or sewing. She had a basket of fabrics and lace. Another woman sat beside her, and they were talking and laughing. As I approached, the Queen looked up at me and said, ‘Johnny Cash! You’re like a thorn tree in a whirlwind.’ Then of course, I woke. I realized that ‘Thorn tree in a whirlwind’ sounded familiar to me. Eventually I decided that it was biblical, and found it in the book of Job. From there it grew into a song, and I started lifting things from the book of Revelation. It became ‘The Man Comes Around.’
‘Revelation’ by its mere interpretation says that something ‘is revealed.’ I wish it were. The more I dug into the book the more I came to realize why it’s such a puzzle, even to many Theologians. Eventually I shuffled my papers, so to speak, drew out four or five pages, and wrote my lyrics.”
No comments:
Post a Comment