The Forerunner Website :Email Conversations on Various Subjects

Email Conversations on Various Subjects

Subject: (fwd) Origin of the State
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 01:39:54 -0500
From: [email protected]

(from a freedom technologies mail list; interesting topic as bombs 'fall' -- nobody drops them? -- on Kosovo.)

Justice" by Richard J. Maybury. Chapter 30, page 159:

When living in a government-controlled economy as we do today, you will be better able to manage your career and investments if you understand the nature and behavior of government. Obvious, right? If you try to make decisions based on fictions you'll be running much risk.

So, what is the real nature and behavior of government? Where did government come from?

Any child knows the answers, right? It's easy. The institution of government was invented long, long ago to help us. People needed certain essential services, especially law enforcement, so they got together, chose someone to be their government, and voluntarily agreed to pay taxes for the services the government would provide.

This is the official story we are all taught. It sounds good except for two small problems.

First, no historian has ever been able to find an example of this happening.

In A THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE, anthropologist Robert L. Carneiro writes, "We now know that no such compact was ever subscribed to by human groups."(41) Sociologist Franze Oppenheimer, writing in THE STATE, is more blunt. He calls this explanation "a fairy tale,"(42) and is distressed that it is "prevalent in university teaching."

Carneiro and Oppenheimer explain, in a much more scholarly fashion than does Maybury the real reason government was invented. He briefly explains how the robbers and brigands stopped raiding the towns and communities and moved in and took permanent control. They set up this scheme called "government" and "taxes" and all the rest. He continues:
Carneiro says this was the essential process for the invention of governments in "Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Japan, Greece, Rome, northern Africa, Polynesia, Middle America, Peru, and Columbia, to name only the most prominent examples."(44) Oppenheimer adds Britain, France, Arabia, Italy, Germany, Spain, Mexico, and many others.(45) All governments today have evolved from these origins.
In other words, governments do not collect taxes to provide services, they provide services as an excuse to collect taxes. A tax is a substitute for a raid.
...Thomas Paine asked, "From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?"

Carneiro observes: "A close examination of history indicates that only a coercive theory can account for the rise of the state."(47)

...The Romans had owned plantations called latifundia. A gang of barbarians would overrun a latifundium, force the workers into a kind of slavery called serfdom, and make these serfs build them a fort called a castle. The gang would set up housekeeping in the castle and live off the taxes they collected from the serfs.

This is royalty. We are led to believe kings and queens are like movie stars, glamorous and wealthy. Children are told stories in which the young heroine dreams of becoming a princess and marrying a handsome young prince. Marrying a handsome young prince meant marrying a handsome young gangster, and, in some cases, a handsome young mass murderer.
... My experience has been that deep in their hearts most people sense there is something inherently wrong with government. Is there any country where the word politics is not pronounced with a sneer?"

The world's early governments evolved into those we have today, and all have retained their essential natures. To get what they want they use force. The force is usually hidden but it's there and you will feel it if you resist. I believe a major reason America and the world have gotten into so much trouble during the 20th century is that we have forgotten that, fundamentally, governments are predators. Attempts to make them do good are attempts to make the leopard change his spots. Maybe it can be done, but 6000 years of history are not encouraging.

Original poster: "Feel free to pass this along to other appropriate lists. All typo's were mine. --Chris, ARRw/oP"

41. A Theory of the Origin of the State by Robert L. Carneiro, Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University, VA, P. 4.
42. The State by Franz Oppenheimer, Viking Press, Free Life Editions, New York, 1944, p. 5.
43. Ibid. p. 4.
44. Ibid. p. 6.
45. Ibid. p. 8.
46. Ibid. p. 6.
47. Ibid. p. 8.

-- Jeff -- http://www.wellnow.com

Subject: Re: (fwd) Origin of the State
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 08:05:37 -0700
From: Roan Carratu <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

Wow, Jeff... An academic finally saying how it was! Gee, maybe now people will believe it, now that someone with 'credentials' is putting it out.

I started telling people this 25 years ago, and nobody would consider it in the slightest since I HAD NO CREDENTIALS! A rubber stamp from the proper subculture is required or what is said is meaningless, it just another 'opinion'!

He still doesn't take it back far enough. The first to do this was one of the last remaining 'hunter/gatherer' tribes, who enslaved agricultural tribes and started 'civilization' 10,000 years ago, but I guess I will have to wait until someone with a credential comes out and says it before anyone will even consider it as possible.

Oh, well... at least some folks are starting to understand. To understand how things got started points the way to how to change things in workable ways.

Subject: Re: PeaceBuilders - Russia On the Brink: The Meltdown of a Nation
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 22:23:41 -0700
I knew only a month before it collapsed that the USSR was going to fail. It was the most possible outcome in the patterns I study, but I didn't want to believe it. I told some people and they considered it impossible, a universal reaction to most of what I say.

When it did happen, I had one thought above and beyond all else... that if the people there found living under the restrictions of Communism hard, wait until they lived under the restrictions of capitalism... They had progressed faster and farther in the 60 years of their rather stained government than any nation in history, but that would be lost almost immediately as capitalists came and carved up the country, and once again, the patterns were correct... but I didn't want to believe it either.

They can still pull it out, but it will have to come from within the hearts of the people, who band together to survive. They are still looking for someone else to make them work together, and that will not likely happen. They need some essential understanding of spirit fast, or they will blow apart even faster. And maybe take everyone with them. That is not in the patterns yet, but it is a possibility.

We are Universe being aware of itself. Without ego, this statement points to how to surmount all obstacles. Cooperation without accounting results, and all prosper. This alone will bring about the best for all people who experience it.

Love,
-Roan

Subject: Re: The Survivable Path
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 21:56:08 -0700
From: Roan Carratu <[email protected]>
To: * MIRAI * <[email protected]>

Yes, you may use it any way you like as long as you don't change the meanings. I don't mind it being edited either, if the meanings are maintained. It has always been my policy that anything I write can be used by anyone who uses it without distortion, even those things which I said in not so well said words... grin And that goes for anything on my web pages also.

* MIRE * wrote:

Hello Roan,

May I have your permission to put your last posting on my homepage?, where the kids can read it? (the age bracket on our page is on average, around 18-28 years old)

You said it all there- I would also like to use an abridged version of it for posting elsewhere and for my gigs, events and so forth.

In fact, maybe you could contribute some text to our new CD "Civilizations"??

You summed it all very well.

Our CDs always represent a unity of many global artists. What our new one is lacking is some great text. It has to be a shortened version of your posting because of space limitations but I will also get it translated in various languages.

Let me know
thanks in advance
MIRAI

A Global Futurist Network for the 21st Century
Art group & Mailing list
http://japan.co.jp/~ummo
:UMMO DISCS & Radio UMMO
<> http://www.federation.8m.com

Subject: Various...
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 16:20:29 -0700
From: Roan Carratu <[email protected]>

I actually have trouble with the whole money thing, because I work for Universe, for the Goddess, for Humanity and I know what economic pressure does to people's minds and hearts. Whenever I ask someone for money, even traditionally as pay, I feel like I am inflicting a negative thing upon them, which I would never do without the negative thing put on me by others, paying to be allowed to breath and eat and not freeze. It has nothing to do with 'worth' because the money system is not based upon worth, really, but upon cashflow and opinion. There is not enough money in the world to pay for one cell, one feeling, one thought, one instant of any human's existance... Our worth is far beyond such evaluation. Universe itself testifies to our value, and of what 'worth' is another's opinion compared to that. (grin)

But the landlord has that economic pressure also upon him, and behind him, enforcing the whole system, is the men with guns, who follow not their higher consciousness but their 'duty' (a military concept) and do not question that concept and enforce the system for the Owners, even if they do not know it. So the pressure passes from the men with the guns... to him... to me... and now to you, who sustains my life in the compassion of the Goddess.

I sometimes wonder, in moments of doubt, if I might have been able to do more for the Goddess if I had gone for the money and the freedom it allows rather than go on faith and concentrate upon seeing the whole pattern... I could not do both, or I would have. Goddess must not have wanted it, however, since any efforts I put in that direction failed without the slightest splash. Well... as Goddess wills... Long ago I dedicated my life to the purposes of the Whole, the One, no matter what happened or where it took me, and one cannot draw back from that kind of agreement. I do not regret it, but sometimes it is very hard not to get tangled in the hardness of it.

Love!
--
Peace and Long Life,

Roan Carratu

Subject: Re: Curious
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 06:31:07 -0700
From: Roan Carratu <[email protected]>

I'm no visionary like the rest of you all, so I'll propose an idea and leave general enough for an interpretation which I hope will get a reponse. ([email protected])
If you can ask this question, you are a visionary. Non-visionaries would not think about such stuff at all, much less ask a question about it. (g)

Supposing that unconciously, we are more or less defiling a world for ourselves and are looking for an easy way out of dealing with our problems by imagining places that we can go and start over. For an example and hypothetical situation, we all know that the world is spending billions and billions of dollars on space exploration with intentions unknown. To suppose some more, we are doing it to someday be able to live on another planet because our planet might not be habitable someday. This is where I'm not really sure why it goes, unless is merely to prove that we able to do so for self indulgance.
Considering it from the global/ecology perspective it seems apparent that we are doing the space thing to transplant the ecology on other planets around other stars for the same reason life on this planet does not remain in any single micro- environment here on the planet. Dispersal and a vast variety of slightly different microecosystems have, up to now, been the only defense the global ecology has had from forces interior and exterior which have almost sterilized the planet many times before. We were evolved as the reproductive component of the planetary ecoentity, to take life beyond this single planet. That is not the only reason we were evolved, but our conceptual reasons for doing anything may well be superficial in the face of a much deeper species embedded evolutionary dynamic. Or so it seems to me.

I'm not real sure I understand the nature of why this is so. I'd say that billions of years of life on Earth working and reworking perfection kind of tells me that we're looking beyond ourselves for something that we've already had before.
If we are a response of Nature to a danger beyond it, there is likely no past 'something' that would be perfect for us. Even population growth may well be something not decided by us but by our natural programming as a species, the same integrity that creates the interactive species evolution which evolves multiple species into balanced ecological niches... All our thought about it, our valuation system, our intellectual pondering may be nothing but our equivalent of dogs howling at the moon. Since we are in constant flux from a continuing gathering of ever increasing amounts of data from Nature and the development of leverage from that data, it seems to me that all the seemingly illogical largest scale behaviors may simply not have come to conclusion yet, and since it is uncomplete, it appears rather suicidal. It is such a vast synergy, and we can only see the tiniest parts of that synergy, so we cannot deduce the end result of the process.

So, new societies and new planets don't really excite me other than just to sit around and think about what they might be like and what else lives there. What excites me is that I know that where I'm sitting is where I belong though not in the state of condition that it ought to be. Yet, to be broad in all perspectives, if anybody has a good viewpoint on moving human civilation elsewhere for whichever reason, could you e'mail me for a better understanding. I'm just thinking all the ways of how things work so I'm not real critical.
It appears to me that the human species is evolving to become the nervous system of the planet as well as the reproductive component to transplant the ecosystem to other planets through terraforming. I think we will do this regardless of our egotistical selfcenteredness. I cannot see any evidence that humans are particularly more important than any other part of the ecosystem we are 100% part of and have to remain part of, even if we travel with it to other stars. I do think there is a 'quickening' occurring, with a change in human behavior and understanding as dramatic as the evolution of humanity in the first place... it may be that all of human evolution is not much more than the growth of a nervous system in an embryo, and Nature is that embryo... It is obvious that Humans are far more than they can THINK of themselves as being...

Nice talking to you....
--
Peace and Long Life,

Roan Carratu

Subject: Re: B.S.
Date: Fri, 05 Mar 1999 05:31:13 -0700
From: Roan Carratu <[email protected]>
To: Paal Soerensen <[email protected]>

Paal Soerensen wrote:

I read your public profile, I would just like you to know that I think you are so full of bullshit :)
Interesting... did you check out my personal web page as well? It's at http://www.bibbs.com/roan. Let me know what you think, since you are such an honest fellow.

Look, in your profile you say that you are a boddhisattva... What the f... is that suppose to mean?
What it says.

Does that mean that you are a boddhisattva, something special, somewhat different from the world? Or are you one of them who says: "Well... Everybody are enlightened, they just don't know it. But I am aware of my enlightenment, therefore not the same..."
Do I say that? Where? Are not both the 'options' you give the same? Are there no others?

What is the use of saying i'm a boddhisattva? When absolutely everyone is one. The image you give to the world when you say so is one of coldness and distance.
From a few sentences you jump off a cliff... Everyone are bodhisattvas, few know it. This doesn't mean exclusiveness, but awareness, and none are superior, for knowing it precludes such arrogance.

I am a bodhisattva, beware of my knowledge and wisdom... :( It seems to me that maybe you are very caught up in concepts of good and bad, like there is the slightest difference between the lord buddha and excrements from a dog :) There is no difference, so how can you say that you are enlightened?
Hmmm... but lord buddha does not have to be scraped off the shoe, nor does lord buddha stink so much. lol! Water flows, rock doesn't. Good and bad are concepts. Starvation and gluttony are not. Unlike the words supposedly accredited to the fellow who taught 2500 years ago, I find no evidence of reincarnation. Awareness is not inactivity, enlightenment is not noninvolvement. The concept of reincarnation blinds the mind to action, for who will interrupt the progress of another's 'soul' through this incarnation? But there is no separate 'soul', only compassionate action from knowing that. What soul can the whirlpool have? Where does it go when it fades?

Maybe you think you are intelligent? Maybe you think you have come a long way on the "path", you have not come any longer on the path than the bum on the street :)
There is no 'path' to enlightenment. So what are you speaking of?

And when you say that "you" have come up with the solution to the problems of the world... I have the urge to fly off to america and give you good slap on the face :) What do you mean save the world?
I would like to meet you, honest fellow. Please travel here and you may slap my face. ;)

I know there is a way to solve some of the major problems of the world in ways that do not require total awareness of enlightenment of all peoples. 'Save the world' means ending unnecessary suffering and the destruction of our greater body, the ecology of the planet. Some suffering comes from ego among those who choose not to realize their enlightenment, (which I am applying the phrase 'necessary' to, although such attachment is not really necessary,) and some of the suffering is correctable without dealing with the favored ego attachments of others.

Save the world from what? Suffering? How could you find the solution to that? And after 40 years of research... Bullshit! What do you think karma means? Do you think you alone have come up with a solution, the buddha did not find any solution by himself, he was helped by the world, and the endless time before him.
Yes. Unnecessary suffering. Why did that ancient fellow speak all those words to those who chose not to accept or realize their own existing enlightenment? It's called 'compassion'. The 8 fold path and all that is to diminish unnecessary suffering, nothing else. The world is in bad shape, and more than words are required now. But words come first, and compassion demands their saying.

Karma is cause, effect, result, not some mystical belief in reincarnation and scores in some 'soul' book... And 40 years now is worth 10,000 years before now. Pay attention! Who is not helped by the world and the endless time before us? Who could divide the world from us?

Nonself, dependent co-arising? Do you really know what that means?
I haven't heard that exact phrase before. If it means what my mind interprets it to mean, I know exactly what it means. If you mean something different by it, then I don't know what you mean. Such are words so easily convoluted.

You seem like an intelligent guy, that is why I'm saying this. I'm not trying to put you down in any way, i do not feel threatened by you, actually I think you are on to something. But. You can not write all this bullshit, think of all the searching souls out there who you most definetly confuse.
Confusion is the first step towards fusion. Without confusion, no realization is possible. Speak what you can, as you can, for anything else is un-compassionate.

Action! Action based on compassion, wisdom and non-ego. That is what counts, anything else is just masturbation of the mind :)
The action of one is equal to the action of one. The action of two is worth the action of three separately. The action of three is worth the action of nine separately... Even that ancient fellow would be forgotten if not for those who acted upon his words. When you wish to change the world, you do not change it by yourself.

Peace, my friend.
Pal
Peace to you also, my friend. It is nice masturbating with you. (grin) Remember, even that fellow 1500 years ago had an ego. But it does not get out of hand if one keeps it on a tight leash.

No offense meant, no offense accepted. ;)
--
Peace and Good Health,

Roan Carratu

Subject: Ported from a Yahoo Club
Date: Wed, 03 Mar 1999 10:58:34 -0700
From: Roan Carratu <[email protected]>

Ported from a Yahoo Club

Do not worry, your message is not an attack, nor can I be offended.

Those who say �everything is empty, everything is a void, nothing exists.� may not be saying what you hear. Words come from concepts, and concepts come from ego, and ego swims in illusion like a darting fish.

A man stands in total darkness. He sees a light. He runs towards the light. He gets run over by the train. lol

�Everything is empty, everything is a void, nothing exists.� are meaningless grunts. Sometimes meaningless grunts are useful, and are used by those who seek to compassionately help others. But the phrases are still meaningless grunts.

I never said that effort was not required, but only to end the effort. If you wish to pass through a door, and the door has a thousand coats of paint, and the door is not painted shut, which is the door, the wood panel hung upon hinges, or the thousand coats of paint? Is it required to strip off the paint to open the door? Are there beginners, advanced, and Masters at opening the door?

All 'paths towards enlightenment' are like those who have myriad ways to scrap off or remove the paint, saying one must strip the door to raw wood to open it. Are there beginners, advanced, and Masters at stripping the door? Yes, there may be.

But anyone can open the door, anytime. It does not take thought to do it... in fact, all thought is but coats of paint. All meditations seek to remove the coats of paint. All practices strip off coats of paint. All yogas strip off coats of paint. All 'masters' and 'teachers' who teach stripping off the paint do not know of the door, and have not even reached the raw wood. Beautiful souls, full of wisdom, great compassionate beings, they may be, but they struggle with the same paint as their students.

By their nature, words cannot express enlightenment. Yet, they can point to it, and one can say "all are enlightened" and it is true. But for those who take enlightenment as a word, a concept, they cannot realize their natural enlightenment until they no longer use words or concepts.

Enlightenment has no resemblance to the concepts of nilhism, nothingness, voidness, emptiness, extinction, any more than enlightenment resembles the concepts of creation, everything, fullness, totality ... What enlightenment is, is non-conceptual. If enlightenment was hard to know, then how would all be enlightened before their grandparents were born? A newborn baby is perfect Buddha. A truck driver steering through a tight alley is perfect Buddha. An EMT working desperately to save a life is perfect Buddha. You as you read this, are a perfect Buddha. The words I use mean nothing to Buddha, even as you read them.

Peace and Good Health,
Roan Carratu

Subject: My Friend sadamhi
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 06:55:22 -0700
From: Roan Carratu <[email protected]>

I read your email stating your difficulty. You are simply caught at a crossroads having an idea which direction you want to go, a turn in another direction, but with dependents to give you inertia, you are pulled down that direction you no longer want to go. You words; "I feel my work is unethical..." show that you have recent experience that draws you towards right livelihood.

You have an agreement with your dependents to support them. I expect that means children and/or parents or grandparents who need support. But you cannot undo your experience which changed the game for you, and your fellow workers have noticed your lack of enthusiasm so there will be changes down the line. But it is not the experience that you learned from that they are seeing, but the conflict in you between the two directions.

Do not worry about the change of direction. Do not cling to it. Do not cling to the direction you were going either. Let the changes come in their own time, and remain calm and lucid and responsive to the now. Keep your eye open for the direction which will fit your inertial movement while taking you away from the direction you have been traveling in. If you try to turn too fast or push towards the direction you wish to go, like a car on a motorway, you will have difficulties. If you resist the changes which proceed from the experience, you will fight for nothing, for you will change.

Many in Buddhism think that nothing changes when one is centered within buddhism, forgetting that liberation from suffering did not stop the changes in Buddha's life in any daily way. He lived simply, as he had before giving up the game, he grew old, and he died. He simply did not suffer while living his life.

Since you know of right livelihood, you will find your life moving towards right livelihood. Right livelihood is the manifestation of a bodhisattva, and follows dropping from the game as surely as actions follow thoughts.

The ego has only three 'modes'... fear, need, and reproduction. If you identify with your ego, then you can perceive only that which fits these three modes.

We are not our egos, however. We are the power source behind the ego. Identify with the power source behind the ego's generated thoughts, rather than with those thoughts, and you will be able to face the most intense changes without flinching.

This will help you.

Peace and Good Health,

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