Randy

Hmmmmm, something I am confused about. Wonder if anyone can explore this with me. I recently read an article by Zerzan, and he mentions the Garden of Eden myth. For some reason, this myth, its drama and imagery, and the fact it is ‘our creation myth’ captured my imagination as a kid, and this was emphasized radically after I found J.M.Allegro’s book, the STILL extremely controversial book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. It was that book which turned me on to looking closer at mythology and how it relates to us
Now Allegro was a philologist, and explored the root meanings of the text and symbols and metaphors of that story, and we find that the ‘Tree’ (which includes the ‘two trees’. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life) as actually cryptically referring to one tree, the World Tree. Which as you know is a central motif of the more anceint shamanism.

So, the Tree Allegro reveals is referring to a sacred mushoom. And as he and othes have shown, the imagery, the Tree, Serpent, Woman, Lover (Adam) are also part of the more anceint Goddess religion, with the ‘God’ of the story, looking after ‘his’ garden, as a bit of an upstart!

Now, as Zerzan says, this god curses Adam, and Eve and expells them from Paradise, and Zerzam claims this is first recorded document revealing mankind’s enforced subservience to agriculture.

So question: How come this Genesis myth is showing this if, as a patriarchal propaganda device it itself is the cause OF such a ‘fall’? What do you think is going on here?

Two word review: READ IT!

Derrick, you’ve written a catalyst for me at least—thanks.

Now to work…finally.

Randy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/809168.stm
http://www.ontheissues.org/Al_Gore.htm
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j092502.html

The actual Gore quote, from a debate with Bush II:

Well, when I got to be a part of the current administration, it was right after — I was one of the few members of my political party to support former President Bush in the Persian Gulf War resolution, and at the end of that war, for whatever reason, it was not finished in a way that removed Saddam Hussein from power. I know there are all kinds of circumstances and explanations. But the fact is that that’s the situation that was left when I got there. And we have maintained the sanctions. Now I want to go further. I want to give robust support to the groups that are trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and I know there are allegations that they’re too weak to do it…

Here is from CP, in which Gore is coming out almost two years in advance of the administration in support of Chalabi’s clique (not surprising, because Chalabi was the invention of a PR firm that worked both sides of the aisle):

In June of Campaign 2000, Gore publicly distanced himself from President Clinton on Iraq policy, reiterating that Saddam has to fall, and pledging support to an exile group called the Iraqi National Congress (INC), led by Ahmad Chalabi. In the late 1990s Chalabi’s cause was pressed by Republicans in Congress, most notably Jesse Helms and Trent Lott, and by that baleful schemer and hero of Israel’s ultra-rejectionists, Richard Perle.

A bizarre alliance, stretching from Helms to Perle and The New Republic to Vanity Fair’s Christopher Hitchens, pressed Chalabi’s call for the US to guarantee “military exclusion zones” in northern Iraq and in the south near Basra and the oil fields, to be administered by the Iraqi National Congress. In 1998, Clinton reluctantly authorized an appropriation of $97 million from the Pentagon budget to go to Chalabi’s group. But as a consequence of a fierce CIA attack on Chalabi’s credentials and prowess, only $84,000 was actually released, and that merely to pay for offices and some training in public relations.

So Gore’s stance on the INC in early summer 2000 was clearly preemptive groundwork for a fall campaign indicting the Bush family, along with Bush’s Defense Secretary Cheney, for being soft on Saddam and ratcheting up the possibility of another military strike against Iraq. Gore announced that he had differed with Clinton’s refusal to release $97 million in military aid to the Iraqi opposition. These posturings remain precisely that, for the simple reason that any serious plan for full-scale war to topple Saddam would involve (a) the cooperation of Saudi Arabia, and (b) a warm-up of relations with Iran, neither of which contingencies are in the least likely.

>With this as its basic constitution, civilization achieved things
of which gentile society was not even remotely capable. But it
achieved them by setting in motion the lowest instincts and passions
in man and developing them at the expense of all his other abilities.
From its first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of
civilization; wealth and again wealth and once more wealth, wealth,
not of society, but of the single scurvy individual – here was its
one and final aim. If at the same time the progressive development of
science and a repeated flowering of supreme art dropped into its lap,
it was only because without them modern wealth could not have
completely realized its achievements.

Since civilization is founded on the exploitation of one class by
another class, its whole development proceeds in a constant
contradiction. Every step forward in production is at the same time a
step backwards in the position of the oppressed class, that is, of
the great majority. Whatever benefits some necessarily injures the
others; every fresh emancipation of one class is necessarily a new
oppression for another class. The most striking proof of this is
provided by the introduction of machinery, the effects of which are
now known to the whole world. And if among the barbarians, as we saw,
the distinction between rights and duties could hardly be drawn,
civilization makes the difference and antagonism between them clear
even to the dullest intelligence by giving one class practically all
the rights and the other class practically all the duties.

^^^^^
I got my son to read this to me on the way to school today.

^^^^^^

Right on ! Peace in , forever !

Whether it is a case of clearing uncultivated ground or of conquering and occupying territory already inhabited by “other” human beings, ritual taking possession must always repeat the cosmogony … everything that is not “our world” is not yet a world. A territory can be made ours only by creating it anew, that is, by consecrating it.

These paintings sound to me like a secularized form of “ritual taking possession” … and the religious symbols and Garden of Eden allusions make sense in terms of “repeating the cosmogony.”

To distance themselves from European painters and to display their patriotism, the painters drew the wilderness with a token Indian. The wilderness, however, was portrayed from a safe distance, in soft colors and quite tamed. Occasionally, as in the work by Albrecht Bierstadt, landscapes from the Swiss Alps were transferred from Europe into California. Sometimes religious symbols were employed as well, alluding to the garden of Eden.

The most fascinating aspect is that the school took off in the decade after the Trail of Tears and other Jacksonian genocidal adventures because of which the South barely has any indigenous population. After the “savages” made way for civilization (ie cotton plantations) wild nature could be celebrated instead of feared.

The efforts of some sections of the Cherokees to become civilized by having newspapers, constitution and owning slaves were in vain, and they still had to make way, because they were unclean per definition. This reminds me of some so-called middle classes in the Arab world (and elsewhere)…as much as they try to prove that they are equal to their masters by speaking English only with their kids, driving SUVs and having regular plastic surgery sessions, they come out as brainwashed buffoons.