Precepts of Moderate Religiosity

Praying too little means you’re probably only praying when you need something.

Praying too much is disrespectful. You should pray more than you need to but less than you “have to.”

Make it special for Godsake!

Religion and edifying spirituality is the salt of the earth, not the dirt; it should not be everywhere all the time.

Turn the other cheek so the second punch misses.

It’s better to shop for churches than to go to just one.

All of the world’s Holy Books have many edifying qualities, and many, many stupid parts as well. See, ya gotta keep shopping.

It’s possible Jesus and others have been apotheosized into someone super-supernatural. But it’s a certainty that none of the Advanced Aliens believe in him. They might have their own. Point is, if any earthly entity has become godlike, its only in these parts. Not Andromeda. Those Crab Nebulans aren’t preaching our gospels, and why should they? ‘You gonna send a whole nebula to Hell?

The concept of hell need not be abandoned, just radically downsized. Hell is surgery not needless suffering. It makes things better or else God wouldn’t have made it. But its probably surgery without anaesthesia, so watch out.

The parts where Jesus sounds like a hippie are the best parts. But that still doesn’t make being a hippie the right way to go.

“This church is the only true one” is virus code.

Be fruitful and multiply has become virus code. It used to be good and therefore holy. But that was then.

The fruit by which ye shall know them is when they forbid you to look at the rest of the garden and they talk shit about it. That’s when you know your fruit has gone bad. And all fruit go bad.

That’s why you gotta keep shopping.

Postmodern Jungian Archetypes for Today’s American Political Scene

Jung’s genius was too far in advance of his times–the Katzenjammer Kids are not really the cosmic archetype of humanity that Jung held them to be. Today we know that the KJ Kidz are just archetypes of happy-go-lucky people too young to know that they will grow up to fight for Hitler.

Jung’s other big mistake was that Hedy Lamarr was not that hot.

Then again, maybe Jung was on to something…

But Jung’s basic idea has regained credibility as we develop better archetypes and as we learn the algebra by which these archetypes can be combined to provide more accurate and dynamic psychological representations. Politics, and our “political personality,” being a caricature of reality (a really bad one), are especially reducible to a few fundamental archetypes:

Conservative utopia =

 PLUS

Tea Party vision of Utopia =

 PLUS

Liberal worldview  (Being more complicated than conservatives, it takes three TV shows to encapsulate the liberal worldview, not just two):

 PLUS  PLUS

Feminist =

 PLUS The Mary Tyler Moore Show tv show photo

Radical Feminist = Just Xena

Moderates:  You might think they would be even more complicated than liberals, but they too can be summarized in just one TV show:  Seinfeld. “Good luck with all that in 2012!”

(c) 2012, Alan Brech