Theo Economics

Fundamentalist Materialism

THE LUST FOR LOOT

According to the Pew Research Center, 26 percent of the American population claims to be atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular." A similar trend is underway in Western and Northern Europe.

As vast numbers of people become disaffected from traditional faiths, those who dislike religion are emboldened to express their distaste.

According to one of their popular clichés, mainstream creeds like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism have been the primary drivers of strife and conflict. Some militant atheists go so far as to say that if humans weren't entranced by "the God delusion," warfare would be rare.

Military historian Eric M. Bergerud, PhD professor and author of four books about various wars, has a different perspective. While acknowledging that there have been a few religious wars, he writes that "most wars in history have been driven by the lust for power and loot."

In other words, the materialist mindset has been the main cause of hostilities between nations. People who believe there's nothing of value except what's economically and politically useful are the most dangerous of all.

In contrast to the "God delusion" is the delusion of fundamentalist materialism, which is the faith-based dogma that swears physical matter is the only reality and that nothing exists unless it can be detected by our five senses or by technologies that humans have made.

Addressing the freedom to be evil afforded by fundamentalist materialism, Nobel Prize-winning poet Czesław Miłosz wrote, "A true opium for the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.”

Fundamentalist materialism has another steep cost, as well. It is responsible for the ongoing genocide of nature. The cause of civilization's War on the Earth is not religion, but rather the lust for loot: the delusion that Earth's bounty has no value except when exploited to serve the pleasure and comfort and convenience of human civilization.

All the decimations listed below are driven by materialism, not religion:

• climate change

• habitat loss from agriculture and urbanization

• extinction of species

• loss of biodiversity

• diminishment in the sheer numbers of wild animals

• air and water pollution; increases in pollutants and pesticides

• damage to the oceans, including acidification, industrial wastes, agricultural pollution, plastic debris, and overfishing.

• shrinking reserves of fresh water

• agricultural monoculture

• invasive species

• desertification

• loss of wetlands

• rising ultraviolet radiation from a thinning ozone layer

• wildlife trade

In 2018, a northern white rhinoceros named Sudan died at age 45 in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a wildlife reserve located on the equator in Kenya. All other males had previously died. Two females remain, Najin and Fatu, but the species will die out once they depart. Their creaturehood endured for six million years, then went extinct during our watch.

Was it religion that caused this grievous loss? Belief in an invisible deity? Faith in spiritual principles? Was Sudan's, Najin’s, and Fatu’s species destroyed by Islam or Christianity or Hinduism or Judaism or Buddhism or Taoism or shamanism or paganism?

Of course not. As is the case for most of the creatures hounded off the planet forever in the last few decades, the cause was materialism. The lust for loot. The profit motive. The greed to turn everything into a commodity that can be bought and sold.

In the case of the northern white rhinos, they have been killed en masse by poachers who saw off their horns to be sold for use as faux medicine and status symbols. The price fetched for the horns has reached $75,000 per kilo.

As a majority of biologists have suggested, we are in the midst of the Sixth Mass Extinction—a loss of plant and animal species unmatched for 66 million years. Religion isn't causing it. Materialism is.

Yes, a lot of the materialism is capitalistic in nature. But as Russia and China has proven, Communism is an additional form of greedy, destructive, fundamentalist, nature-exploiting materialism.

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The main world religion is Theo Economics. Its Supreme Divinity, whom we might call Moolah or Mammon, is more real to the masses than Jehovah, Allah, Brahman, or the Christian God. The worshipful devotion that humans offer to Moolah far surpasses all other deities combined. His values and commandments rule civilization.

The doctrines of Theo Economics, though truly understood only by an elite priesthood of financial wizards, rule the lives of billions of people.

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What’s the antidote for materialism? What measures can we take to reverse the greedy pillaging and plundering that has ravaged nature?

Spirituality and religion might theoretically help, but they have often been hijacked by materialistic urges. Their teachings don’t necessarily empower us to be in direct, visceral connection with the Divine, but are concepts the ego covertly uses to reify materialistic agendas.

And there are the fundamentalist strains of religion, which are often so hateful, bigoted, and cruel that they have no room for a love of nature.

Luckily, there is an effective method for being in direct, visceral contact with the mysterious Divine. It’s readily available every day of our lives. It requires no steely act of will to use. All we need do to glide into intimate communion with the non-material realms is to fall asleep and dream.

Words above are a collaboration between Jonathan Zap, Aleister Crowley, and me

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SOME RELIGIOUS DEVOTEES DO GOOD WORK

To many people I regard as colleagues and like-minded allies, it’s unimaginable that Harriet Tubman was a devout practicing Christian dedicated to fighting racism and sexism. In our age, a sizable minority of American Christianity has been hijacked by right-wing fundamentalists and transmogrified into a pathological caricature of Jesus Christ’s teachings.

But I know that Martin Luther King Jr., one of the 20th century’s premier activists, was a Christian minister. I know that Cesar Chavez, a Mexican American civil rights activist and labor leader, was also a left-wing Christian, basing his civil rights rallies upon Christ’s example of achieving social justice through nonviolence.

Daniel and Philip Berrigan, whose early protests against the Vietnam War helped build the peace movement, were Catholic priests. In the 1980s, Christian organizations led the Sanctuary Movement, which sheltered political refugees fleeing right-wing dictatorships in Central America.

Other 20th-century heroes who were real Christians, the antitheses of modern evangelicals: Archbishop Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Desmond Tutu, Kim Bobo, Sister Joan Chittister, Helen Keller, Jesse Jackson, and John Lewis.

Going back further, the 19th-century abolitionist movement, which was crucial in ending African American enslavement, was led by Christians who rooted their antislavery work in their religious principles.

And so I experience no cognitive dissonance when I contemplate the fact that Harriet Tubman’s passionate connection with God was at the root of her struggle to free the oppressed.

There’s another reason I’m not confounded: I, too, aspire to cultivate an exuberant, intimate communion with the Divine Wow. I want that Source to fuel my fight for justice, equality, and freedom—and to love and protect nature.

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PS: Abolitionist Thomas Garrett, Harriet Tubman’s colleague and co-conspirator on the Underground Railroad, testified, “I never met with any person, of any color, who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul.” He said she “ventured only where God sent her.” Harriet’s early biographer, Sarah Bradford, marveled that she had “direct intercourse with heaven.”

In Harriet’s understanding, the Christian God saved those 770-plus enslaved people she liberated, providing her with guidance, some of it paranormal, while using her as a conduit.

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PPS: Patriarch Bartholomew, the leader of the Orthodox Christian Church, has a flock of 300 million. He is a religious leader who crusades for the preservation of the environment.

"To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin," he says. "For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God's creation; for humans to contaminate the Earth's waters, land, air, and life with poisonous substances: These are sins."

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MY BAND’S MUSIC IS ON STREAMING PLATFORMS

The album of my band World Entertainment War is now streaming on all major platforms.

I am stoked! Dream come true! This album, created in collaboration with five amazing musicians, is one of the best things I ever made.

World Entertainment War music on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/WEWspotify

Here's a story about the band's history: https://tinyurl.com/46uujpv2

Wikipedia article on the band: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Entertainment_War

World Entertainment War music on Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/WEWyoutube

World Entertainment War music on Amazon Music: https://tinyurl.com/amazonWEW

World Entertainment War music on Pandora: https://tinyurl.com/WEWpandora

World Entertainment War music on Apple: https://tinyurl.com/WEWapple

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of August 15

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The coming weeks will be a wonderful time to waste time on the internet. If you are properly aligned with cosmic rhythms, you will spend long hours watching silly videos, interacting with friends and strangers on social media, and shopping for products you don’t really need. JUST KIDDING!! Everything I just said was a dirty lie. It was designed to test your power to resist distracting influences and mediocre advice. Here’s my authentic counsel, Leo. The coming weeks will be a fantastic phase to waste as little time as possible as you intensify your focus on the few things that matter to you most.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Scientific research suggests that brushing and flossing your teeth not only boosts the health of your gums, but also protects your heart’s health. Other studies show that if you maintain robust microbiota in your gut, you're more likely to avoid anxiety and depression as you nurture your mental health. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to focus on big-picture thoughts like these, Virgo. You will be wise to meditate on how each part of your life affects every other part. You will generate good fortune as you become more vividly aware and appreciative of the intimate interconnectedness that underlies all you do.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The official term for the shape of a single piece of M&M candy is “oblate spheroid.” It’s rounded but not perfectly round. It looks like a partially squashed sphere. An Iraqi man named Ibrahim Sadeq decided to try the difficult task of arranging as many M&M’s as possible in a vertical stack. He is now the world’s record holder in that art, with seven M&M’s. I am imagining that sometime soon, Libra, you could achieve a comparable feat in your own domain. What’s challenging but not impossible?

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): I’ve heard many people brag about their hangovers. The stories they tell are often entertaining and humorous. One of my best laughs emerged in response to two friends describing the time they jumped on the roof a parked Mercedes Benz at 3 am and sang songs from Verdi’s opera *Falstaff* until the cops came and threw them in a jail cell with nothing to eat or drink for ten hours. In accordance with astrological omens, Scorpio, I ask you to *not* get a hangover in the coming weeks, even an amusing one. Instead, I encourage you to studiously pursue extreme amounts of pleasurable experiences that have only good side effects.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Most famous musicians demand that their dressing rooms be furnished with specific amenities. Beyoncé needs rose-scented candles. Rihanna expects her preparatory sanctuary to have dark blue or black drapes topped with icy blue chiffon. Eminem insists on a set of 25-pound dumbbells, and the hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd wants Super Soaker water guns. Since the coming weeks may be as close to a rock star phase of your cycle as you’ve ever had, I recommend you create a list of your required luxuries. This imaginative exercise will hopefully get you in the mood to ask for exactly what you need everywhere you go.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Sleep deprivation is widespread. I see it as a pandemic. According to some studies, over half the people in the world suffer from insomnia, don’t get enough sleep, or have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. Most research on this subject doesn’t mention an equally important problem: that many people aren’t dreaming enough. And the fact is that dreaming is key to our psychological well-being. I bring this to your attention, Capricorn, because the coming weeks will be a favorable time to enhance your relationship with sleep and dreams. I encourage you to learn all you can and do all you can to make your time in bed deeply rejuvenating.

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AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Only 47 people live on the volcanic Pitcairn Islands, which are located in the middle of nowhere in the South Pacific Ocean. Pollution is virtually non-existent, which is why the honey made by local bees is the purest on the planet. In accordance with astrological omens, I’d love for you to get honey like that in the coming weeks. I hope you will also seek the best and purest of everything. More than ever, you need to associate with influences that are potent, clear, genuine, raw, vibrant, natural, and full-strength.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Many Indigenous people in North America picked and ate wild cranberries. But farm-grown cranberries available for commercial use didn't appear until 1816. Here's how it happened. In Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a farmer discovered a secret about the wild cranberry bog on his land. Whenever big storms dumped sand on the bog, the fruit grew with more lush vigor. He tinkered with this revelation from nature and figured out how to cultivate cranberries. I recommend this as a teaching story, Pisces. Your assignment is to harness the power and wisdom provided by a metaphorical storm or disturbance. Use it to generate a practical innovation in your life.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Years ago, when I worked as a postal delivery person in Santa Cruz, California, I mastered my route quickly. The time allotted to complete it was six hours, but I could easily finish in four. Soon I began to goof off two hours a day, six days a week. Many great works of literature and music entertained me during that time. I joined a softball team and was able to play an entire game each Saturday while officially on the job. Was what I did unethical? I don't think so, since I always did my work thoroughly and precisely. Is there any comparable possibility in your life, Aries? An ethical loophole? A workaround that has full integrity? An escape clause that causes no harm?

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): From an astronomer’s perspective, Uranus is huge. Sixty-three Earths could fit inside of it. It’s also weirdly unique because it rotates sideways compared to the other planets. From an astrologer’s point of view, Uranus symbolizes the talents and gifts we possess that can be beneficial to others. If we fully develop these potentials, they will express our unique genius and be useful to our fellow humans. It so happens that Uranus has been cruising through Taurus since 2018 and will mostly continue there until 2026. I regard these years as your best chance in this lifetime to fulfill the opportunities I described. The coming weeks will be especially pregnant with possibilities.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Mountaineer Edmund Hillary is renowned as the first person to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest. It happened in 1953. Less famous was his companion in the ascent, Gemini mountaineer Tenzing Norgay. Why did Hillary get more acclaim than Norgay, even though they were equal partners in the monumental accomplishment? Was it because one was a white New Zealander and the other a brown Nepalese? In any case, I'm happy to speculate that if there’s a situation in your life that resembles Norgay's, you will get remediation in the coming months. You will receive more of the credit you deserve. You will garner the acknowledgment and recognition that had previously been unavailable. And it all starts soon.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): As an American, I’m embarrassed by the fact that my fellow citizens and I comprise just four percent of the world’s population but generate 20 percent of its garbage. How is that possible? In any case, I vow that during the next five weeks, I will decrease the volume of trash I produce and increase the amount of dross I recycle. I encourage you, my fellow Cancerians, to make a similar promise. In ways that may not be immediately imaginable, attending to these matters will improve your mental health and maybe even inspire you to generate an array of fresh insights about how to live your life with flair and joy.

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