A MOSTLY SPIRITUAL POSTING

Religion was not a particularly important part of my youth into adulthood, and remains so today.  My parents were Buddhists, but nothing too spiritual.  It was mostly cultural.

As our home in Kakaako was only a block or so from a large park owned by a Christian church, I spent a lot time there, and sort of became a Christian. In any case, my knowledge of religion was minimal.  So when I began to write Simple Solutions for Humanity, I had to begin educating myself by reading books like:

B. Toropov and L. Buckles, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the World’s Religions [IDIOT], Alpha Books, New York, 1997. This could well have been my first and favorite book on religion. I was brought up a Buddhist, attended a neighborhood Christian church because it had a fun summer school program, went through a few months of Catechism in high school, joined a Nisei Methodist Church because that was socially convenient, participated in Presbyterian rituals at Stanford University, went back to Buddhism during my sugar plantation work period because of social pressures and gravitated towards active intellectual searches later in life.  But I never took that early religious stuff seriously, and was able to synthesize a knowledge of religion for the very first time because the Idiot series is written for people like me.

From Simple Solutions for Humanity, Part 6, I compared Santa Claus to God.  To quote:

Santa Claus and God are almost eerily similar. In my mind, they are both Anglo-Saxon males who promise gifts or a reward if you are good. Christmas celebrates the birthday of God’s only son, Jesus, and the eve is when Santa operates. Many, men in particular, once believed in Santa Claus, then, reached a maturity that told them better, but, not long after that, became Santa Claus, and later in life, looked like him. So goes the joke, anyway.

In Part 7 I touched on how adults universally collude to dupe children about the reality of Santa Claus.  I long wondered why we grow up and almost all stop believing in Santa Claus, but perhaps 90% of Americans continue to believe in God everlastingly.  

This blog site goes on into Part 46 on the Golden Evolution, where Humanity survives a global test of monumental proportions:

Step One, to challenge our survival: a cataclysmic series of events, such as, perhaps, oil suddenly jumping to $200/barrel and tens of millions perishing through global heating one hot summer, with the prospects of Planet Earth converting to Planet Venus (where the surface temperature is 900°F, see Chapter 5 in Book 1) to arise with such fury that all elements of Mankind compellingly unite and take coordinated action, which would be Step Two. Having overcome this global crisis (let’s be at least positive about the outcome), Step Three would be that evolutionary transcendence towards a higher respect for the environment and a fading away of the supreme being concept.  (One by-product would be peace on earth forever.)

I went on to say:

As we today don’t need a feared deity to serve as an enforcer, for earlier reported studies have shown that most of our citizens, religious or not, choose the righteous and ethical pathway in life, maybe we can shift our belief and have faith in ourselves, instead. Mind you, there really isn’t any real requirement for worshipping as such, but, in the transition, as our current society appears to have a psychological need for some higher order symbol, perhaps Planet Earth can serve as that tangible object. Instead of depending on our environment to take care of us, though, while in the midst of overcoming Peak Oil and Greenhouse Effect, the Golden Evolution will be the process by which we switch roles and take on the necessary task for remediation and sustainability as a common goal for humanity. In time, and this may take many millennia, we will then expand our vision to our Galaxy as our domain. In anticipation, Book 3 could well be called SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for the Whole Universe.

To end this Sunday posting, here is a You Tube site someone sent me, a compilation of the most popular song each month in the 1960's.  Took me through junior year in college, through my sugar years, then into graduate school.  Watched the whole thing in 25 minutes.  There were so many where I immediately linked to something I was doing that month of that year.  Hairstyles changed.  Elvis had a lot of hits in the early years, but the Beatles midway began to dominate to the end of the decade.  The final two songs were Elvis singing Suspicious Minds in November of 1969, ending with the Beatles' Something.  Many songs I had not heard for more than half a century.  Saw what some performers looked like for the first time.  What memories.  Only three or four were vaguely familiar.  If I were to go through this from 2000-2020, perhaps only three or four would be recognizable each decade.

• 
  While I enjoyed that, if you're my age, the songs of the 1950's might have actually been more memorable.  I'll return after I send out this posting.

• 

  But for younger folks, what about the '70s?  Well, heck, then, the '80s, ''90s  and '2000s.  Pick your decade, or watch them all.  This is, after all, Sunday.  Got anything better to do?  Well, maybe the NFL playoffs.  The Super Bowl in two weeks.
• If you're short of time, Uniquely Madison took only 11 minutes to string together a century of American music.  She did a great job.

Finally, last night on Saturday Night Live they spoofed the confidential documents scandal of Joe Biden and others, and even worked in a Kamala Harris insult.

-