Is it really the case that our laws

Laws and customs having the effect of law in our days can be traced directly to some powerful organized church or churches? That even in the US where they have an amendment separating church and state, the churches managed to have placed on the statutes the individual church’s code of moral taboos.

In his novel, For us, the living, Robert Heinlein writes and I quote

All forms of organized religion are alike in certain social respects. Each claims to be the sole custodian of the essential truth. Each claims to speak with final authority on all ethical questions. And every church has requested, demanded, or ordered the state to enforce its particular system of taboos. No church ever withdraws its claims to control absolutely by divine right the moral life of the citizens.

Robert A. Heinlein, For us, the Living

Such laws include but are not limited to tax exemption for church property, practically all laws pertaining to marriage and the relations between the sexes (laws against polygamy, adultery, birth control and others), censorship laws, laws prohibiting alocohol use, cigarettes.

In his book Genealogy of morals, Nietzsche makes the same argument and calls for a re-evaluation of morals. The difficulty I see is that after a while, these laws begin to have the form of common sense and thus their religious beginnings become obscured.

Do you agree or am i missing something?

On free enquiry

Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; not upon rumour; nor upon what is in scripture; nor upon a surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, “The monk is our teacher”.

Kalama Sutta- The Buddha’s charter on free enquiry

Why do poor people stay poor

You would think no money need to be wasted on research to answer such a question. But no. Researchers must make money. So here we have the results of such a study & we are told because they live on minimum wage, they can’t accumulate wealth. Wasn’t this obvious? But then if everyone were rich, how would our present economic system survive without exploitation?

Random things

In Nigeria presently is in crisis. It is a good time to say black lives matter or should we say African lives matter. The irony of it all was to hear Raila urge the Nigerian government to stop police brutality. Kenyan police seems to have learnt only how to brutalise citizens.

In his book, for us the living, Heinlein makes a point that has been made here and elsewhere that to reduce war, there has to be a vote. He argues that those who vote yes must be in the first draft. This must include those billionaires who fund wars. And we can’t allow them to buy poor people to fight on their behalf. He then says those who are undecided should be in the second draft and finally those who vote no in the last draft, if the war lasts that long. I am almost sure fewer wars will be fought.

Is this narrative of perpetual progress that’s been sold to us sustainable? I like a new phone. A new computer. A new car and all but in some way this all has a cost to the environment and available resources. Question is how long will keep this on? I am no enemy of progress but I wonder if all progress is good or even desirable.

I used to wonder if automation will take away jobs or make our lives easier. But it does look like we continue to toil away- seemingly after the biblical dictum that they who don’t work shall not eat- at sometimes boring jobs that we don’t like just to make a living. Does the future hold better prospects for our working people?

Have a thoughtful weekend everyone.

Random pictures

A jkia sunrise

I think that’s kilimanjaro in the background

Today is Mashujaa Day

Where we celebrate our mashujaas or as others would say heroes. And for a long time these heroes have been famous people or those connected to someone high up and they get head of state commendation and all.

The real heroes however are those street sweepers, nurses, teachers, drivers, farmers whose disparate actions keep us alive. These heroes whose stories don’t get to be told because their work is considered ordinary make the biggest difference in our lives. But I go ahead of myself.

This day used to be called kenyatta day. It’s starting from the night of 19th to several days that the leaders of KAU were arrested. On 20th October 1952 the colonial administration declared a state of emergency that would last 8 years. In naming the day kenyatta day, prominence was given to one person who wasn’t even pivotal in the struggle at that point in time & generations of school children still learn this lopsided view of history.

So today we celebrate all the heroes. The house girls/boys, the flower girls, the gardeners & all those whose ordinary work make extraordinary contributions to our lives.

on freewill

do you have it? does it matter

of men and wokeness

we live in very strange times. or maybe it only happens on the internet. with all the wokeness doing the rounds, group identity, victimhood olympics and cancel culture one always finds themselves walking on glass shells when they are asked to mention who is their favourite anything. you start asking yourself whether you can still listen to R Kelly’s storm is over or do you cancel him; can you read Mencken on religion or will we cancel him because of his racism or cancel Nietzsche for his whip statement? It’s all tricky.

For some reason that I still yet don’t know, many of the works I admire greatly were written by people who are now dead. And for some reason they are mostly male. And with the woke brigade on their cancelling march, they too, might soon be cancelled.

Why am i writing all this? Well, I don’t know but i wanted to share this short essay i found yesterday written by Bertrand Russell before some woke person decides we must cancel him, especially now that people are being cancelled left right and centre.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy — ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness — that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss.

I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem
too good for human life, this is what — at last — I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart.
Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

What I have lived for by Bertrand Russell.

Have a cancel free Sunday.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet

I usually get boring spam comments on wordpress but there are some end times comments that i get that always leave me laughing. They remind me of the emails I receive from scammers telling me about their god asking them to right to me and leave me their inheritance. I hope to one day cash on this inheritance but for now, let’s deal with what’s in a name.

[….]. There are many testimonies from people online who believe this man will be Barack Obama who is to be the biblical Antichrist based off dreams they have received. I myself have had strange dreams about him like no other person. So much so that I decided to share this information.

I had a dream too, that I had the keys to heaven and the first person i allowed in was Obama. And when I awoke, there was still no heaven and no Jesus. What a life we live.

He came on stage claiming to be a Christian with no affiliation to the Muslim faith…

“In our lives, Michelle and I have been strengthened by our Christian faith. But there have been times where my faith has been questioned — by people who don’t know me — or they’ve said that I adhere to a different religion, as if that were somehow a bad thing,” – Barack Obama

…but was later revealed by his own family members that he indeed is a devout Muslim.

What does it matter whether Obama is a devout Muslim, Christian atheist? Can people be really this stupid?

So what’s in the name? The meaning of someones name can say a lot about a person. God throughout history has given names to people that have a specific meaning tied to their lives. How about the name Barack Obama? Let us take a look at what may be hiding beneath the surface…

Whatever could be the meaning behind a person’s name, we can agree generally agree they don’t usually choose their names.

In the Hebrew language we can uncover the meaning behind the name Barack Obama.

This is where they lost me. Why Hebrew meaning? None of the parents as far as I know was or is Hebrew. But I guess making sense is not these people’s strong point.

Barack, also transliterated as Baraq, in Hebrew is: lightning

baraq – Biblical definition:

From Strongs H1299; lightning; by analogy a gleam; concretely a flashing sword: – bright, glitter (-ing, sword), lightning. (Strongs Hebrew word H1300 baraq baw-rawk’)

Barak ‘O’bamah, The use of bamah is used to refer to the “heights” of Heaven.

(Obama is such a jaluo name that to start to look for Hebrew meanings is beyond ludicrous)

bamah – Biblical definition:From an unused root (meaning to be high); an elevation: – height, high place, wave. (Strongs Hebrew word H1116 bamah baw-maw’)

The day following the election of Barack Obama (11/04/08), the winning pick 3 lotto numbers in Illinois (Obama’s home state) for 11/5/08 were 666.

In the book of general ignorance I learnt recently that the number of the beast is 616. Those who think it is 666 have got the whole math wrong and i have been laughing myself silly since I found out.

Obama was a U.S. senator for Illinois, and his zip code was 60606.

This is what we call pushing it.

Seek Jesus while He may be found…repent, confess and forsake your sins and trust in the savior! Jesus says we must be born again by His Holy Spirit to enter the kingdom of God…God bless!

And here we have the final pitch.

Have an antichrist free day won’t you!

just thinking

History is not about the knowledge of the events, it is about the ability to recognise the continuum of the resulting influences on our consciousness, carried through to the present day.

I have been reading a book, Civilised to death, recommended by my good friend, Mary and it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, the bible considered not as god speak but as a response to a changing a world. Consider the garden of Eden as the natural habitat of the first humans where they lived as hunters and gathers and the fall as the beginning of agriculture.

The many wars are not really about god’s chosen ones but intertribal wars over land and watering points.

The book of kings can then be seen as state formation with their rigid rules and demands. For example taxes and all. In this way, the author of kings is not writing about things to come but things already experienced.

Jesus, then represents the archetype of the socialist or anarchist opposed to big government (here I kid) but you see where this is going.

I think Schopenhauer, that pessimistic philosopher, already tried to give the bible a very generous reading. Devoid of the claims of god inspiration and what nots, the bible begins to make sense as a response of those living in the crescent to the changes in lifestyle from hunters ad gatherers to farming and all.

What are your thoughts? Am i making any sense?