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IT IS! IT IS! IT'S THE INDUSTRIAL RELIGION!



JJP wrote:
 
> This is all quite well and fine, but softening the consequences of an
> economic agent has an efficiency cost, one which this country is bearing
> to a very large degree.  I, for one, am not interested in softening the
> consequences of markets.  It has a short term 'humanitarian' benefit but
> the long term consequences are to cripple the entire economy and create
> a segment of society that feel that they have a 'right' to governmental
> support from lifes consequences.

IT IS!  IT IS!  IT'S THE INDUSTRIAL RELIGION! <G>

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                  THE INDUSTRIAL RELIGION     revised 12/29/95
                       by Jay Hanson

 To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World
 truly seemed incredible because of the natural endowments.
 The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out
 into the ocean. Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524 smelled the
 cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out.  The men of
 Henry Hudson's Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the
 fragrance of the New Jersey shore, while ships running
 farther up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of
 floating flowers.  Wherever they came inland they found a
 rich riot of color and sound, of game and luxuriant
 vegetation.  Had they been other than they were, they might
 have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took
 inventory.
                                         -- Frederick Turner
                          . . .


  As the new century rises like a wave on the horizon, we sense
that we are not going to be able to ride this one out, that
uncontrollable currents will pull us to the bottom and tear us
apart.  We have good reason to be frightened because we are in
the midst of a "paradigm shift";  a tidal wave of change that
threatens to overwhelm and annihilate us.

  This new century brings with it dangers and challenges that we
can scarcely imagine.  Human society has experienced paradigm
shifts in the past, but nothing compared to what is yet to come.

  For 14 centuries, Ptolemy's astronomical theory (that
everything in the universe revolved around the Earth) was taught
as religious dogma throughout Western Christendom.  But, Copernicus
changed all that and caused tremendous controversy in religion,
philosophy, and social theory by proving mathematically that the
Earth moves around the Sun.

  The implications of Copernicus' ideas were devastating for the
Catholic Church.  No longer was the Earth the center of the
universe.  In fact, man might not have a special place in
creation at all!  This was heresy on a grand scale.  The medieval
churchmen even refused to peer into a telescope to "see for
themselves" because doing so meant defeat for their current
religious dogma.

  Before Copernicus' time, knowledge was based on "authority"
(reading scriptures or philosophical tracts).  In contrast, the
new knowledge was "empirical" (by scientific observation and
experiment).  Ultimately of course, science defeated religious
dogma.  The Copernican revolution successfully challenged ancient
authority and caused a paradigm shift in our entire conception of
the universe.

  If we substitute "Industrial Religion" for Catholicism,
"ecology" for Copernicus' astronomy, and "Growthmen" for churchmen,
we can see that a parallel situation exists today.

  In the 16th century, Martin Luther established a new form of
Christianity that ultimately came to regard work as the only way
to obtain love and approval.  But behind the Christian face arose
a new secret religion that actually directs the character of
modern society.  At the center of Industrial Religion is fear of
powerful male authorities, cultivation of the sense of guilt
for disobedience, and dissolution of community by promoting
hyperindividuality and mutual antagonism.  The "sacred" in
Industrial Religion is work, property, profit and power.

  Industrial Religion is incompatible with genuine Christianity
in that it reduces people to servants of the economy.  The most
aggressive and ruthless are rewarded with even more power and
riches.  Industrial Religion was destined to fail from the very
beginning because it actively destroys its own premises (both
morally and physically) by encouraging its members to dominate
and exploit each other and nature.

  Evidence that Industrial Religion is failing, ipso facto, is
everywhere:  desertification, topsoil loss, falling water
tables, filling garbage dumps, ozone depletion, global warming,
human sperm decline, rising cancer rates, loss of biodiversity,
collapsing ocean fisheries, depletion of oil, nuclear waste,
300,000 to 400,000 polluted ground water sites, pesticide-
resistant pests, antibiotic-resistant disease, billions of
people in the Third World planning to industrialize; social
problems such as jobless futures, the national debt, crack
babies, declining SAT scores, skyrocketing teenage pregnancy,
violence and suicide . . .

  Growthmen are today's equivalent of the medieval churchmen.
They refuse to look at the scientific evidence and "see for
themselves", because once again, it means the defeat of their
current religious dogma;  it means that they must give up their
faith that the problems caused by growth can be cured by more of
the cause.

  There is however, one big difference between yesterday's
churchmen and today's Growthmen.  Growthmen carry the collective
responsibility for the deaths of billions of lives as once-civil
societies gradually disintegrate into insurrection, chaos, and
oblivion.

*************************************************************

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