In the 1790’s a certain Thomas Paine, who, although British by birth, was so highly esteemed as to have French and American citizenship conferred upon him, wrote one of the most controversial, yet thoroughly researched books of his or any other period. It was called “Age of Reason”, and in it he examined the question of whether or not there existed a “God” (or “god” of any sort). In his discourse he used the contents of the writings in the Holy Bible, both Old and New Testaments, to readily and unequivocally prove that the existence of “God,” as portrayed by the power seeking High Priests and Clerics of all religions, was purely in the minds of those power seeking High Priests and Clerics. They used this notion of “God” to subjugate the populace to their wills, by cleverly building into the minds of the populace the idea that only by conducting themselves in precisely the manner “God” had revealed, to those He had called to be His earthly representatives , could they, the populace, be saved from Damnation and Hell. It just so happened that it was only to His earthly representatives that He had revealed the existence of Damnation and Hell, and the necessary qualification for getting there. They, the High Priests, were thus able to induce into the populace a sense of fear and inadequacy by persuading them that without the guidance of the High Priests the ordinary mortal was doomed.
Just when the whole mess started is not known. It was certainly going on as far back as anthropological archaeology has yet been able to reach. Not just within the Judaic-Christian branches but in every religious creed/caste/belief on Earth. What is tragic is the indisputable fact that it is still going on, and on every continent, and, as necessity demands, the High Priests think up more ways of interpreting “God’s” revelations and consequently more ways for qualifying for Damnation and Hell . [What no one seems to have asked His earthly representatives is why such an almighty, omnipresent, precise and faultless Creator, as portrayed by them, should have produced creations (mankind) which were so imperfect as to need His earthly representatives, when He could obviously have made perfect creations to start with, and even if He needed to pass information to His creations, being omnipresent and watching over each one, He could have spoken separately to each one as needed. It must have been made clear to those same earthly representatives, however, that a capital “H” was always necessary in His, Him or He.]
At some point in time the Kings/Emperors/Pharaohs, who had originally gained power by the sword, discovered that by giving support to the High Priests and Clerics they could more easily control the population. The population could be heavily weighted down by religious “guilt” and “sin”, and taught that they were unworthy and inadequate by the High Priests and Clerics, who could also let it be known that the King/Emperor/Pharaoh was “the chosen of “God” (or “god”)” and to disobey the wishes of “the chosen of “God” (or “god”)” was to incur the anger of “God” (or “god”). This accord was global.
In some cultures the High Priests were also the Kings/Emperors/Pharaohs. (What a cosy little arrangement that turned out to be.) In most cultures the High Priests were the King makers and the King was the High Priest maker. The Holy Roman Empire was founded, supported and run on this system, as were the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Arabian “empires”, in the near east and North Africa, and the Indian caste system, pre-, during and post the Moghul Empire. The Chinese Emperors were held in power by High Priests and right up until our own age the Japanese Emperor was held to be a “God”.
It occurs right here today in Great Britain. The Archbishop of Canterbury crowns the Monarch and the Monarch (or his/her agent) chooses the Archbishop of Canterbury. Granted in the U.K. it is only symbolic today, because we have Democracy (or do we?). It is not without significance that our House of Lords has its Lords Spiritual alongside its Lords Temporal.
We see religious manipulation in action every day all over the world.
The Catholic Fathers keep their flocks under control by insisting that the good Catholic confesses his sins to the good Father in his little box, and only by so doing will he be forgiven by “God”. Now if this “God” is as all powerful and omnipresent as the good Father would have his parishioner believe then He already knows of those sins, and had he so desired, He could have prevented the parishioner from committing them (couldn’t He?). But just think of the hold that the good Father now has over his “guilty “ parishoner! He knows all about this poor sod and has him by the testicles.
The Ayatollahs and Imams tell their flocks that to be killed in a Holy war is the guarantee of instant transportation to Paradise. It is truly amazing how many people flock to become Paradise dwellers. It is also truly amazing how few battalions of fighting Ayatollahs and Imams there are. The Ayatollahs and Imams are also able, because of their direct “hot line”, to proclaim a Fatwa on any person or organization that has “transgressed”. It seems odd that the Ayatollahs and Imams need to be involved in this Divine Retribution when the “transgression” should already be known about by the most powerful Being in the Universe, who could have stopped it happening in the first place, and who could also bring about Divine Retribution unaided, should He think it necessary.
The T. V. evangelists, particularly in the U S A are able to raise billions of dollars for all manner of “worthy” causes, (some of them being, in reality, evangelist pockets, already overflowing), by offering the viewer the feeling of security and adequacy. This security and adequacy is always achieved by sending the evangelists money, in the same sort of transaction as the old Catholic ploy of selling indulgences. Give the church your money and buy your way into Heaven.
(Why have people accepted all this nonsense for all these millennia? Why has no one seen through it and rebelled? Well the early Christian “enlightenment” was suppresses by the “Inquisition” and the Moslem one has not yet arrived. However the real answer to these questions is to be found in the section of this site called Normality).
The criminal folly known as World War II saw both sides employing High Priests and Clerics to pray, to the same “God”, for victory, to be given sufficient resources to slaughter the enemy. Oddly enough, although both sides were slaying fellow human beings, created by The Creator, and one side was also busily engaged in trying to eliminate “ “God's” chosen people,” ‘the Jews’, “God” let it all happen. Just what the Japanese Emperor “God” was doing maybe we shall never know.
The Church of England has just completed a complete “volte face” in respect of its teachings about homosexuality (not really surprising when one sees how many of the clergy, and how many “statesmen” and M.P.s are directly involved). Not all that long ago, relative to modern civilization, homosexuality was punished in quite a brutal manner. This was succeeded by the less life threatening punishment of imprisonment, which was, in turn, followed by a hefty fine. Thereafter laxer morals only required a severe reprimand for allowing the matter to become public, but now homosexuality has almost become compulsory, to the point that currently anyone treating these deviants as anything other than perfectly normal is almost bound to receive some sort of punishment previously meted out to the homosexual. One can only assume that “God” has changed His mind and passed on to His earthly representatives His changed view, upon which their original “teachings” were based!
As mankind has “developed” and become “educated”, and learned more about the world and its ways, it has become apparent to many, who are not High Clerics, that the way to control others is by putting those others into a position of fear and inadequacy. This position of fear and inadequacy need not be real, it is only necessary that those who are to be controlled should feel to be fearful and inadequate. The fear and inadequacy need not be in any way connected to religion, although the example of religious false fear and inadequacy is a wonderful blueprint from which to work. In some instances the “adequacy” has been nothing more than a lot of guns, or swords or police thugs, and this can generate its own real fear.
In England the Church controlled the people for the King. When the Lords and landed aristocracy gained some measure of devolved power they were still aided by the church. It was the accepted order of things that the eldest son of the Lord of the Manor would go into the army, and then come home and take over from his father, whilst the second son would go into the church and maintain the power of the aristocracy, at the same time as making himself a comfortable “living” (a term still in use today) as he preached humility, obedience and the work ethic to the lower orders.
In many of the founders of the industrial revolution we see the same sort of behaviour. They would build chapels and encourage their workers to attend, in order that their workers became more pliable. Those with Anglican leanings would endow this or that to ensure that their workers could realize that compared to their employer they were indeed inadequate, just as the non-conformists in the chapels also recognized their employers over-adequacy. This would position the employers next to the clergy and thus nearer to “God” than their workforce. In the non conformist world some of the employers even became lay preachers. The landed gentry used the same dependency technique, in their relationship with their estate workers, as had the lords of the manors from way back in the middle ages.
During the history of our sorry little country the near absolute power of the King was removed by the Nobles and High Ranking Clergy, who had originally been called together as an ad hoc advisory council by the early English kings, and who, after the Norman conquest, became a formal ‘Great Council’. King John, early in the 13th century, called in selected knights from the shires to some of the Great Council meetings, purely for cooperative support in tax collecting. A favourite of Henry III, Simon de Montfort, in the middle of the 13th century, was instrumental in getting elected representatives from shires, boroughs and towns included into the existing mix of Nobles and High Ranking Clergy, and so was formed the first Parliament. Now the kings power was very much reduced and the power and influence of the High Ranking Clergy was increased.
A further century saw the formation of the two Houses of Parliament, the House of the Lords and the House of the Commoners. As time went on, and the High Priests and Clergy continued to preach humility, and the perils of disobeying “ the will of “God” ”, the House of Commons gained more power, albeit the “Commoners” were still the Lords of the Manor and the village Squires. It was not until 1832 that the ‘seats’ in the House were redistributed to reflect population density variations more accurately, although it was still only the Lords of the Manor and the village Squires who occupied them. Previously the geographic distribution of seats had not mattered, because the welfare of the “ruling classes” was the paramount concern. However, this redistribution was rather a matter of sleight of hand rather than any true reform and even after 1832 the paramount concern continued as before, and continued to be so even after the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884. It remained so even after the 1928 granting of universal franchise, and it remains so today. How frequently are we told that a little unemployment is “good for the country”, or some other thing is “good for the economy”? It may not be good for the general population but the ruling classes will benefit and disguising this as “the country” is a beautiful example of the political doublespeak that has developed over the ages.
Throughout all this time the local clergy have been preaching humility, obedience and the work ethic, taking their cues and texts from the High Priests, who have all the while been surreptitiously manipulating behind the scenes. The clergy had managed to anaesthetize the population into accepting that what has been done, said, omitted, and committed, whether it be fighting a war “for the good of the country” or “to create peace”, or, as at present, being bled dry by exorbitant taxes so that the ruling classes could play at being “world statesmen”, was in no way questionable because those in power were in some way superior and must not be doubted, and in any case “God” would watch over His creations.
It was done very cleverly. So cleverly that it is almost certain that an extremely high percentage of the clergy had no idea of what they were doing. They were just like their flock, sheeplike and unthinking, believing all the old claptrap dreamed up by the High Priests of old and thinking that they too must be superior because they were “doing “God’s” work”. If they had any concept of the real truth then they, like the originating High Priests of old, were lying hypocrites. Had the original lying hypocrites practiced what they preached then the whole world system would have developed with a vastly different benign and sympathetic outlook and the lot of the common man would have been so different that the expression “the common man” would never have come into being.
Some of those clerics who have a spark of individual thought, and a mind in place of the usual lump of putty, have begun to realize that all is not as it has been portrayed to be, but, sadly, amongst them are many who have taken advantage of their positions in various improper and disreputable ways.
Along the way the Commoners began to assimilate, possibly without realizing it, the idea that it was possible to create a feeling of fear and inadequacy in the public in ways that were not connected to religion and at the same time exercise “power”. Over the years, quite a lot of legislation has been introduced that, intentionally or not, had this effect. Much of this legislation was money based, (window tax, the old poll tax, stamp duty, shotgun license, death duty, in fact customs duty of all kinds including car licence fees, new car tax and fuel tax , alcohol duty, etc. etc.) and was double edged in that it raised vast sums of money that those in power could use to maintain themselves in power, by what ever means they could devise. These means include all parts of today’s welfare state, the support of the arms industry, the nationalisation of the public utilities and their subsequent sell off, meddling in the affairs of other countries, in fact virtually every thing that the Government of the day does is done with one purpose, and one purpose only, and that is the aim of maintaining the dominance of the ruling classes. The outrageous road safety hysteria, the antismoking hysterics and the general “mummy knows best” preachings about health indulged in by modern governments are solely to build fear and conserve money in order to use it for power keeping purposes.. However the cost to the health service of bringing life into the world, even working modern miracles on people who “God” has decreed shall be childless, is never questioned, because to do so would challenge the doctrines of the High Priests, particularly those leaning towards Rome. (It is even quite acceptable to be careless in bed, as a recent P.M. demonstrated, but carelessness on the road is unforgivable. How can a man control the lives of millions when he can not control his own?) One of the latest guilt building techniques is “polital correctness”. It is proclaimed to be totally wrong to be racially aware, and so if one does not want our country over-run by foreigners one is guilty of being a racist. Of course it is quite proper to support and cheer for the English/Scotish/Welsh/Gt. Britain teams at football/rugby/Olympics etc. according to political double standards
Reference was made above to war. Many will say that this is not a matter of maintaining the ruling classes in power, but is a matter of safeguarding the country. The “country” not “the people”, because those in power will stay safely at home (in order to ensure things are run properly) and send “the people” to fight and get killed. Those who are not sent to kill or be killed will be expected to labour tirelessly and without question, so that “the country” is safe. In several cases wars are embarked upon to assist in keeping in power “the ruling classes” of another country, who just happen to be “friends” of our “ruling classes”. It also happens that “industry” benefits enormously from war, and who owns “industry”? The lot of the non-ruling classes is not a great deal different in any developed country, and so to a great extent it would make little difference who was in power. It must be of some significance that in two world wars the ordinary people suffered inordinately more than “the defeated” ruling classes, who quickly regained their “rightful” place.
The history of the western world and the middle east, going back for thousands of years, is one of an endless succession of wars. Wars not started by people, but wars started by rulers of people. Wars not started for the benefit of people, but started for the benefit of rulers of people. In those days the people were nothing but the resource from which, directly or indirectly, the rulers drew their wealth, their fighting men, their body guards, their ‘secret police’, their everything. A moments careful reflection will reveal that the situation has not changed in those thousands of years. Did the ordinary German want a world war ( I or II )? Did the ordinary German want to see the Jews exterminated? Did the ordinary Norman have a burning desire to cross the sea and kill Englishmen? Did the ordinary American want to kill his English kinfolk? Look at all wars. Official history will tell us only what the establishment want us to know. Look how much history editing went on in Russia for much of the twentieth century. Look how much modern knowledge is rewriting much of traditional history.
It just so happens that, as education has helped to draw back the curtain of false inadequacy, there have been some people who have seen the possibility that, by “making a career” out of politics, they too could, if they joined the right grouping, become one of the ruling classes themselves, and gain wealth, power and prestige which they could not get in any other way. Now ask yourself ‘What sort of a person would want to make a career out of cheating, lying, subterfuge and hypocrisy in order to gain power over others?’ and then ask yourself ‘Is this the sort of person that I would trust with my own well being?’ or ‘Is this the sort of person to whom I am prepared hand over a third of my income, so that he and his cohorts can do just what ever they like with it, without telling me what they have done with all of it?’. Also it could be asked if this is the sort of person who should be deciding on the education and moral outlook of our children, and just what is “political correctness”, and who decides, and who benefits and how?
Now, as the century changes, the political groups in power are more than ever interested in maintaining their grip on that power. In times long gone by the confidence tricksters in power would try to hang on to their power in subtle ways, but now the façade of decency and the charade of gentlemanly behaviour has been replaced by open antagonism and hostility. The general public have been educated to the point where they can see through many of the old fashioned tricks, but, unfortunately, the whole sordid business has gone on so long that there appears to be no other way. A recent P.M., in fact, got elected by claiming to have found “The Third Way”. He failed to detail what the other two were, but we were left in no doubt that his Third Way was one of the other two disguised as the other one.
In a way he was right about the third way, because it is becoming more evident, with each passing day, that the third way is financed by big business. It is significant that in the U.K. the traditional source of funding for the Labour party, the unions, has been supplanted by business and businessmen in return for “help”. This help for business and businessmen was always there from the Conservative party since most, if not all, the Conservative M.P.s were from this background. It now seems that this situation is world wide. (Who puts the U.S. president in power?)
There is another way, however, and that is true Democracy. The various empty headed power seekers never seem to tire of using the word, but it is always used to mean what they want it to mean, which can change as often as the wind. It is probable that the majority of them, having grown up in this ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ world created by their predecessors, do not know the correct meaning of the word.
