skipper

  • Chicken Little is whimpering in the henhouse. He whimpers more loudly when another indication of encroaching authoritarianism occurs. Online access to the press already is shut down. Now it’s the knowledge, d […]

  • The mariner attended his county’s off-year caucus a few days ago. There were about 80 or so in attendance. As he told a friend, the room was full of millennials – from the last millennium. If the Democratic Par […]

  • A few posts ago, mariner introduced the writings of Yuval Noah Harari, a renowned futurist who has provided books, articles, lectures and opinions about how to interpret today’s reality and project the i […]

    • Maybe human history is mostly made up of ‘nice days’, and you only see the catastrophes when you take the long view. Maybe there is much to be said for the short view!

  • Adam Davidson, a freelance journalist associated with PBS, wrote an article for New Yorker magazine that exposes neatly why Donald didn’t want to give up his taxes. When Donald was unexpectedly elected P […]

  • The latest impact of the election is just beginning to trickle in. It is hard to glean from the mismanagement of the administration compounded by the old Republican Congressional machine (which includes many […]

  • Frequent readers know the mariner has three alter egos: Chicken Little, whose fears are a response to imminent events, Amos, a skeptic and critic of human ethic and behavior, and Guru, a futurist, generalist and […]

    • Good advice! When I had a desk job, a chiropractor told me that she could tell by my spine that I “needed to look up more” and it struck me as sort of profound…

  • Mariner was depending heavily on the Emolument Clause in the Constitution to be the baseball bat that would make Donald sit up and make a decision whether he was a business man or the President of a Democratic […]

  • Mariner has been writing often about myths. Myths are a legitimate, indeed critical part of religious understanding; without myths, the indescribable spirituality we draw from our faith would not be possible. From […]

  • Today, religious folk are having a hard time with spiritual icons. Viewing the main religions over two thousand years, it is obvious religious institutions have inserted disciplined belief systems which largely […]

  • Sharyl Attkisson is an independent, somewhat conservative news journalist. She covers stories that are one step away from “Big News” stories that often are more telling than splashy headlines. Attkisson unc […]

  • Recently, the liberal economists and the conservative economists began expressing growing concern about the same thing: inequality. Virtually every validated and respected futurist, economist, even international […]

    • This is why I voted for Bernie in the primary. I’m not sure he could have changed much, but he was shedding light on the issue. He called it a political revolution and if inequality continues to grow, eventually there will be revolution. The video mention the Arab spring as one such example.

  • A couple of readers commented that the mariner has not written much about Donald and the Federal and state Governments. That is true. Mariner has written pointed letters to his Senators and Representative and […]

  • There are a few satanic religions and a few pragmatic religions, for example, capitalism, communism, socialism, Nazism, etc. But many hundreds of standard religions have the premise that a religion is here to do […]

  • As mariner suspected, suggesting the definition of pieces that together comprise a base for religious practice is challenged by many who have unique beliefs already in place. Mariner has no business disturbing […]

  • Robert, you appear already well founded in your faith. That is an advantage over the Starter Kit. You can imagine the mariner trying to put together a skin-and-bones instruction manual on how to reintroduce religious values into one’s daily life. If any premise thwarted your faith or theology, it was not intended. Religion is a very personal…[Read more]

  • Review your accomplishments.

    You are aware that there is a different kind of existence than you know in your current life; your current life exists in a state of duality. The different existence is a state of […]

    • I can accept God as a singularity, but I cannot accept that that Singularity is a mindless aimless thing. I have to believe that this Singularity is headed somewhere and we are part of this movement. That being said, I feel it is right for us to respect this Singularity. I feel that I can get in touch with the Singularity through prayer, ritual, and music. Religion without these is, for me, a dry sterile thing.

      • Robert, you appear already well founded in your faith. That is an advantage over the Starter Kit. You can imagine the mariner trying to put together a skin-and-bones instruction manual on how to reintroduce religious values into one’s daily life. If any premise thwarted your faith or theology, it was not intended. Religion is a very personal construct. The Starter Kit attempts to lay a road to positive ethics that will hold the course in one’s life while oppressed by the negative abuses we experience in the present.
        Singularity is an important concept that often is not addressed in traditional afterlife – instead being pushed aside to paint a three dimensional heaven with nothing but reunions. Even this image is accepted if that anticipation represents perfection and is a reward for living a positive life. The bottom line is none of us living folk have experienced singularity as a holistic life experience but as you anticipate, it is a dynamic perfection, not a static one.
        Look at singularity as a glorious experience that will be meaningful to you, not a communist ward of blandness. Look at singularity as a state of continuous bliss with duality left behind.

        • You didn’t thwart my faith or theology, in fact what you’ve been saying is, I think, right on the button. It’s good stuff. Keep it up. Your latest post about love, seems to me, says it all. Love must be the big “antibiotic” for the “germs” (racism, selfishness, bigotry, xenophobia etc., etc.) that infest our current society. But it’s really really hard for me to manifest any love for some of the characters on today’s landscape. I do try, but I constantly fail.

  • Thanks for ‘elegant.’ Your curiosity about the hero’s path, a description of the arc of one’s life from Joseph Campbell’s writings, is an excellent description of the path to singularity. It is covered later in the Religion Starter Kit. If you are interested in extracurricular research, DVDs of his works are available online as well as a book.…[Read more]

  • In one way or another, the past three posts deal with H. sapiens’ relationship with the physical world. Other post series deal with H. sapiens’ treatment of fellow humans and some deal with how H. sapiens has all […]

  • Increasingly, but now only a lightly utilized technology that soon will alter dramatically our economic theories of value, solar energy unbelievably will modify every nation’s model of what it costs to live a d […]

  • As a creature on this planet, we weren’t supposed to be super smart. We were supposed to be the smartest primate, perhaps, but not super smart. We’ve always known it was a mistake. To be honest, as a primate, hum […]

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