There are two types of people in this world, a man I was working with once told me: hill dwellers and valley dwellers. He placed himself, of course, in the former category. Hill dwellers have little gladness to dwell upon but hard-won pride. We made a festival together for a while. He dedicated his life – as many of us did then – to such endeavours. And every winter, in the very highest storm, he would take his lights and music and his huge cargo netting into the remote Welsh hills and string a carnival up inside the threat and sway of the trees. Storm parties were his offering for luck in the coming year.
Consuming read!! So many issues, so well put!! As an enslaved city dweller I am envious but exhausted reading about your life, I don't know how you do it, but it's amazing. I'd love to leave the city but your life would kill me!! Resistance is everything! Good luck to you!!
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." Albert Camus
Hello from midst autumn mud in Aotearoa New Zealand. I came in from digging out my toilet - six monthly chore - to catch up on my substacks. Shovelling your own shit does keep you somewhat honest, definitely righteous, but is easier with the promise of a bit of clever writing after. I I enjoyed this piece very, very much, if enjoyed is the right word. I hear you from the other side of the world - the former Ardernistan - and I feel akin. Thank you!
2) Pelagius/Morgan was right and Augustine was wrong. Augustine based original sin on the bad science that the seed of the man was grown in the soil of the woman, and since Adam's seed never got into Mary, then Jesus was without that original sin, and just had God-genetics.
Back then, the "homunculus" was thought to inhabit the sperm.
Now we know that Jesus, like every human, had equal parts of mom and dad genetics.
"Saint" Augustine was trying to get "sin" defined more as sexual-intercourse than debt-slavery-through-usury. Michael Hudson, economic historian, has the story.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/04/michael-hudson-debt-and-the-collapse-of-antiquity-part-2.html The old Carthaginian area was the breadbasket of the Roman Empire; that’s where the grain was made. The Christians there opposed the creditors. They opposed the Romans. They said, “No, what the Romans are doing is not Christianity.” Rome wanted them to turn over all of their sacred books so that they could be destroyed...The North African Christians, many of them refused to turn over the sacred books, and they were killed.
Finally, Augustine came to power, and he sponsored the pro-Romans. There was a civil war that went on decade after decade, preventing the local Roman landowners from indebting the population, from enserfing them. Augustine called on the Romans to take away their churches and to give him their churches. So essentially, Augustine expropriated the Christian churches and made them his own deviant Christianity– I hate to even call it Christianity, it’s really Augustinianism– in a wave of violence...
1) Surplus Energy Economics is easier to understand, because it looks at the energy needed to produce things as the main factor of production. Here is Dr. Tim Morgan's latest (hey, "Morgan"!)
Consuming read!! So many issues, so well put!! As an enslaved city dweller I am envious but exhausted reading about your life, I don't know how you do it, but it's amazing. I'd love to leave the city but your life would kill me!! Resistance is everything! Good luck to you!!
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." Albert Camus
Hello from midst autumn mud in Aotearoa New Zealand. I came in from digging out my toilet - six monthly chore - to catch up on my substacks. Shovelling your own shit does keep you somewhat honest, definitely righteous, but is easier with the promise of a bit of clever writing after. I I enjoyed this piece very, very much, if enjoyed is the right word. I hear you from the other side of the world - the former Ardernistan - and I feel akin. Thank you!
Brilliant as always thank you
Out of order:
2) Pelagius/Morgan was right and Augustine was wrong. Augustine based original sin on the bad science that the seed of the man was grown in the soil of the woman, and since Adam's seed never got into Mary, then Jesus was without that original sin, and just had God-genetics.
Back then, the "homunculus" was thought to inhabit the sperm.
Now we know that Jesus, like every human, had equal parts of mom and dad genetics.
"Saint" Augustine was trying to get "sin" defined more as sexual-intercourse than debt-slavery-through-usury. Michael Hudson, economic historian, has the story.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/04/michael-hudson-debt-and-the-collapse-of-antiquity-part-2.html The old Carthaginian area was the breadbasket of the Roman Empire; that’s where the grain was made. The Christians there opposed the creditors. They opposed the Romans. They said, “No, what the Romans are doing is not Christianity.” Rome wanted them to turn over all of their sacred books so that they could be destroyed...The North African Christians, many of them refused to turn over the sacred books, and they were killed.
Finally, Augustine came to power, and he sponsored the pro-Romans. There was a civil war that went on decade after decade, preventing the local Roman landowners from indebting the population, from enserfing them. Augustine called on the Romans to take away their churches and to give him their churches. So essentially, Augustine expropriated the Christian churches and made them his own deviant Christianity– I hate to even call it Christianity, it’s really Augustinianism– in a wave of violence...
1) Surplus Energy Economics is easier to understand, because it looks at the energy needed to produce things as the main factor of production. Here is Dr. Tim Morgan's latest (hey, "Morgan"!)
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2023/05/06/255-the-emerging-modified-consensus/