Occupy and Beatitudes - Chris Hedges Occupy Wall Street Dec 3, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I3CtdyuzD8&feature=player_embedded#

When the left recovers such well-informed moral sensibilities as these, it will then become a true 99er movement and unopposable. I notice how the concepts are introduced WITHOUT any compulsion to embrace the rituals and trappings (and, literally, "trappings" as in "trapped") of the temple, church, or mosque. Well said.

Judeo-Christian? Would somebody explain that term? My understanding is that Jews completely reject Christ, although Christians embrace the Old Testament prophets. That being the case, why this hyphenated term "Judeo-Christian?"

People like Rick give cover to fanatics. The world would be better offf with less beliefs and more understanding.

It seems to me that what he espouses is a fraud on the human race, his and bill's beliefs are a slave collar for the rest of humanity and their Jew/Christ religions are a blight ojn the human race.

Imagine where we would be without Judaism or Christianity! Just imagine.

This is hilarious. People that speak with anti-Christian secular religion fervor , those same people who are so offended when anyone suggests they should be denied their small minded bigoted way or thwarts their push to impose their religion on everyone else are talking about Christianity and "slaughters"

Did they miss the slaughters by the Romans, the Mongols, the Mayans and Incas, the Ottoman Turks, etc...and in modern days the slaughter of over two million Chinese, the two hundred thousand Viet Namese, the million or so in Cambodia the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the Muslim conducted genocide in Darfur, etc? No Christians among those and quite a few that practice the secular religion as a matter of fact.

If passages from the bible offends you, I recommend the Koran, it is even juicer. But if you are gay or a woman, weak or a member of another religion or have no religion at all, you won't like what they say about you at all.

I really tire of the childish diatribes that only include one group that the person holds a prejudice against, but bigotry and intolerance seem to be their stock in trade.

It occurs to me that the Christian faith is in fact the Nazi Party of ancient Rome, canonized by Constantine to serve as the gatekeeper to imperial government. It is probably due to the significance of Judaism within Christianism that has kept the former a viable faith all these millenia, rather than allowing it to disappear like the other religious curiosities of the western ancient world. Jacobinism, socialism, communism, fascism, and Naziism were attempts to reproduce Constantine's remodeling of the political world through the interior of his subjects.

~Take the law of the Sabbatical year: every seventh year, all debts are forgiven. (In addition the land must lie fallow — something under the tree, as it were, for environmentalists.)~

i figure the only way out of this colossal mess is to wipe the slate clean. however, the magical gods running the financial industry create debt in order to create "money" out of thin air. the entire human world's government debts loom ever bigger and bigger dwarfing the world's gross national product. actually, in truth, there is no magic only slight of hand trickery packaging unpayable interest on debt as profit like wrapping an empty box in tinfoil and pretty bows. and guess what, folks even the rumored "richest nation on earth" cannot begin to pay down the interest.

the "let land lie fallow" idea proves that agriculturalists very early on recognized the dangers of soil depletion. however, an ever expanding human population urges each generation to abandon the wisdom of the lesson for the sake of expediency. that plan for resource management should not be considered as a token gift to placate "environmentalists" but as our RESPONSIBILITY to the living environment. what arrogance! we late arrivals on the evolutionary tree of life think we own the place--it's our party and we can trash it if we want to!

Then there’s the Jubilee year: every 50 years — after seven cycles of seven — all land reverts to its original owners.

show us the "original" deed of title signed by gaia. when did the cosmos agree that our species is greater than the whole?

Heads up. The gods of unslakable greed are four: guanine, thymine, cytosine, and adenine.

Trylon

Learning about economic justice from the bible is like learning about mathematics from a phone book.

Given the high concentration of bull shit in the buybull, koran, et al, I thought they would be a nutritious amendment to my garden. Alas, they must have been to rich, as no organism came near them. I put some worms on them but they wiggled away in haste. I confess, they help control the buttercups.

Morris Berman, in his most recent book (Why America Failed), implies that an ethical approach is not only "right," but pragmatic--for he argues that throughout our history hucksterism has been dominant (rather than a "brother's keeper" philosophy), and this is why our society is currently "on its way out."

Why all this lack of tolerance? People should be judged by their actions, not by their religious beliefs. Religion has inspired some to do great acts of kindness. To argue that all religion is bad all the time is not logical. If sometimes a belief system can inspire geat acts of courage and benefit humanity, we should rejoice in that.

Sometimes it is not religion, but the lack of religious tolerance that is the problem. Agnosticism and tolerance for all might be a good idea.

Referring to religion in the West: So often religion is discussed as if it were somehow independent of the society that houses it. But in fact religion is an integral part of a society; and insofar as religious fragmentation exists, this simply reflects the variety of people that exist in the society. A criticism of religion is more properly directed at the nature of the society within which it occurs, for in the West at least (for the past few centuries) religion has played a supportive role, not a dominant one. In playing such a role, religion often becomes somewhat of a contortionist, and becomes subject to criticism because of that fact; but those who criticize religion for this reason fail to perceive that religion does not stand apart from a society but, rather, is a part of it--and primarily in a reflective sense.

The Bible can be used to promote many things, but it's a failure at promoting anything ethical. I've argued the Old Testament's Laws were an attempt to govern human behavior by putting the greed bug back in its bottle, but it failed spectacularly. Its latest incarnation, The Koran, tried to do the same and it too failed. Just look at the coming holiday we are supposed to celebrate and how it's been coopted to support greed. Indeed, every holiday is now a Marketing and Sale opportunity regardless of one's country/religion/culture. Not too long ago, humanity almost universally marked this time of year by celebrating the death of the old year and birth of the new--Universally. That most important of Feasts is now just a sideshow--we watch the ball drop, get drunk, and are fed exercises in marketing known as College Football Bowl Games that are devoid of what little meaning they once had.

George Carlin distilled the 10 Commandments to 2, which I echo in my own words: NO Killing Humans; No Coveting of Anything Belonging to Someone Else.

One of the main problems with religions is their exclusion of Mother Earth in their fairy tale morality plays. They treat our lovely planet much the same way as Exon, Monsanto and others of their ilk do: A means to an end. If your spiritual connection is with other living things and visible forces of nature (earth, wind, fire, the sun ,for christ sake) you are a pagan. The above comment asks why the lack of tolerance. Good question. Try running as an atheist for any office anywhere.
"I am the lord thy god. Thou shalt not have strange gods before thee." Alas.

philiphoko...Good points. Try being an agnostic - they are attcked by the religious and also by the atheists.

I pine away for a moral society to replace the legalistic one that consumes everything in its path. Soon the wealthy to wake up to that fact that we have the power, not them.

Economics goes all the way back to Egypt piling up grain under Joseph's direction, then buying its neighbors into slavery during seven years of famine.

Roman economics was a matter of conquer, govern, extract wealth as people starve ("Only a double handful of grain for a long day's work, and spare not the growing of olive oil or grapevines for export revenues" - Book of Revelations), and eventually let the starving people die of epidemics. Jesus preached that the Romans (and a few wealthy Jewish collaborators - lawyers, high priests, tax collectors) were sinning against Israel.

In the late 1600s the early Society of Friends (Quakers) was being starved by British judges who were taking their farms away for their constantly insulting the 1% and for their refusal to fight the King's wars. During this time they developed an internal economics of promising to pay each others debts, of always being scrupulous with customers, of setting their members up in businesses, of long-range research and development for the good of the businesses, of traveling to far-off lands and setting up trading stations so that Quaker mariners would be sure of a fair deal when trading between these stations. As a result of these internal rules they took over many major industries and most of the English and American banks. They started the English and American Industrial Revolutions. Their principles were the glue that made enterprise hum. Actually, the word "enterprise" refers to a strictly Quaker practice of always entering one honest price at market and never haggling.

Religion can be a practice, but it can also be a false cloak. Jesus railed against those who turned the temple "into a den of thieves". 400 years after Jesus, the Church united with the Roman Emperor and so it winked at the colonial wars. 100 years after the Quaker-driven renaissance, the wealthy children and grandchildren of the Quaker merchants often deserted their forebears' faith, loving their rich neighbors and the king's wars instead. Dickens pilloried false Quakers in his depiction of Ebenezer Scrooge. Marx had his own choice words about rich Quakers.

Religion as a whole isn't the enemy. The fake parts are separating you from your friends.

It's more about whether individuals and groups give a fig about what they mouth off all their lives. People are out worshiping God's gift to the poor of the world by feeding their own kids lots of slave-picked chocolate. Christ Mass is Christian in name, but the whole bankster-run Holy Day is contradiction city.

The decline of the middle class and the dramatic rise in poverty in the United States can be traced to the success of the racist southern strategy of the republican party much of it fueled by the growth in popularity of right wing religion. In the 1950's belief in religion was just under 50 percent in America while today it is nearly 80 percent much of it complete nonsense that promotes selfishness, greed and hatred against the poor, minorities, unions and women. Working class whites have been voting for the defenders of the one percent inspired mostly by resentment against perceived gains by blacks a heritage of a racist history that never seems to end.

The old testament is a manual to maintain empire. The Jewish authors plagiarized the ten commandments from the Egyptians and the great flood story from The Epic of Gilgamesh. Much of the rest belonged to the pagans. The ancient Jewish authors wrote that they were god's chosen people and the Zionists today know they are. The Warsaw Ghetto has been renamed Gaza. The Zionists aren't about to return any land to anybody and they are desperately dragging America into war with Iran. At some point in time I can only hope humanity will realize teaching children good and bad entities outside their bodies have influence or control of their actions is child abuse. The bible is trash, there are no answers there, only questions. Ancient Jewish history is the wrong roadmap for a modern world.

Life is brief and all will be judged
-- or in words of St. Andrew of Crete
(Great Lenten Canon 7th c)

The end draws near my soul, the end draws near,
Yet thou dost not care nor make ready.
The time grows short.
Rise up! The Judge is at the door!
The days of our life pass swiftly--
As a dream-- as a flower.

"I know that’s terse and I recommend the book over my summary. But since Sedlacek puts such stress on human sympathy and solidarity — which is another way to say, Peace on Earth, good will toward men — let me mention one more directive from the Hebrew Bible. It’s in the Ten Commandments and may be the only biblical law to forbid an emotion: Thou shalt not covet. What a pointless injunction. We have no control over our emotions; they come to us unbidden. Yet nothing is as destructive to human sympathy and community as envy or jealousy. It’s as if the Bible felt it was necessary to forbid them, even as it knew that was a hopeless order. It chose to at least draw attention to the danger."

An interesting and timely article, Rick, but the above paragraph misses the point about temptation and sin. We are limited in our choices to avoid temptation, but it is our spiritual duty to 'avoid the occasions of sin', circumstances which prompt us to sin, and to reject whatever temptations do occur to us; not once, but as often as they occur. Nevertheless, 'there is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins,' in the words of Ecclesiastes. But to be tempted is not, in itself, to sin; indeed, rejecting temptations, sometimes evil thoughts that have no attraction is the means by which we grow in the spirit, while to continually succumb to sin leads us in the other directon, an insensitive and eventually deadened conscience.

As regards debt, I believe you place too narrow an interpretation on it by identifying it as a sin on the part of the borrower. One can perhaps place such a restrictive interpetation on the word, 'debt', on the basis of Paul's stricture: "Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law." Yet even the second reference to debt there, namely, to love one another, indicates that the reference to debts in the Lord's Prayer would have a much broader import than a financial debt, namely, obligations, duties.

As regards physical debts, Christ, seemed to be more 'working class' than any of his Apostles, and was evidently well aware of the need of poorer folk to borrow from each other and to lend to each other from time to time. Indeed, there is the parable of the man who banged on the door of his friend in the middle of the night, to ask him to lend him three loaves bread, as he had a guest who had turned up.

You, Mr. Saultin, have no control over your emotions? Do they really just "come unbidden"? A commitment to ethical living brings with it the whole person, including emotions.

It may be impossible not to covet once you have allowed free rein to your instincts for aggression and sex and territoriality. Old habits die hard but they can die. If you cannot control the content of your emotions or any other aspect of your consciousness then you are addicted to that pattern of living.

Emotions are the children of the paradigms by which we live.