The subjects may seem disparate but they are intimately tied, romantically tied, in fact.
There doesn't strike me as any controversy in saying the Vatican is the Mother Church to Christianity. Even if there is controversy, that's the position of the article
There is a direct and immediately obvious parallel between the Catholic Church and the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz which was central to the story of "The Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter Miller. The Abbey has existed since before the nuclear war and exists as one of the massively-damaged survivors afterward. The Abbey serves as the storehouse of human knowledge while the rest of the world goes back to barbarism.
The story is exceptionally dark and there's comedy as well. You may take some amusement in the Abbey working through its post-war history to beatify a man, Saint Leibowitz, who was known only be a few scraps of information, one of which turned out to be a shopping list ... for bagels. Perhaps it occurs there is another time the Catholic Church did this.
There is amusement in that type of comedy but the ultimate darkness comes in the recovery of the human race, human spirit, and, most of all, human science. Culture evolves and so does science with the, ostensibly inevitable, result there is another nuclear war and we blow ourselves up all over again. The first example of Leibowitz' religion is comic, maybe even funny, but the latter aspect is fundamental to current logic in nuclear aggression which is, in effect, we have to do it because we will do it anyway.
We are not EVEN going to try to defend that position as we don't believe it for a millisecond. That we are destined to destroy ourselves is so antagonistic to everything we know of life that we will not entertain it. Life's destiny is to survive and it will do anything it possibly can to achieve that. This position needs no defense as you know it already. The position of an arbitrary predestination for self-destruction is such a fatalistic view of our future that we would seriously consider the need for professional intervention to manage it.
However, given the nuclear weapons exist now and we are living in the pre-Canticle society, we could easily end up in the first stage of the story and the barbarism of post-nuclear Armageddon. We see no predestination in that but rather incompetent management of the weapons. The political aspect of that in this context is not important as all that matters is we built them and we don't know how to get rid of them. Whether this group or that wants to keep them is irrelevant as the only salient aspect to any of it is we can't get rid of over three thousand megatons of nuclear weapons (i.e. aggregate of all operational ICBM payloads).
Note: Tsar Bomba was fifty megatons and it vaporized, absolutely incinerated, a circle about fifteen miles out from ground zero, with correspondingly enormous damage moving outward. Just one of these and London doesn't exist anymore after being there well over a thousand years. Hiroshima gives no comparison as you still see things standing because the bomb was tiny, in comparison. After Tsar Bomba, there is nothing left, no buildings, trees, nothing.
If we play this out through the first stage of the Canticle then, assuming wistfully anything survives, it's likely that world wouldn't be so far off what Miller foresaw. The Vatican, in that context, returns to the role it held through much of history in which it was the storehouse of knowledge. In actuality, the Vatican would be incinerated as fast as everything else but that aspect of the storage of knowledge in some little abbey is not so far-fetched, that's what we did previously.
There's quite a bit of resentment here at the Rockhouse that this is still a topic after all these years when the weapons really haven't changed in that time, they just sit there doing nothing except saying 'fuck you' to each another once in a while. Submarines do it too, they just do it more quietly. The aircraft we don't care as they will never get anywhere near their targets anyway. Military aircraft are more a hobby than anything else as they may amuse kids but they won't do anything to win a Third World War, assuming the truth of a ridiculous notion that it's even possible to win such a war.
The focus of it is Iran and the justification is North Korea wanted to build a nuclear weapon. Clinton said no and NK did it anyway. That is used as the rationalization for vaporizing Iran because, naturally, they will do the same thing, it's human nature, don'tcha know.
In fact, it's the cheesiest kind of crap psychology and it wouldn't even make the cut for "Psychology Today." These are disconnected events and what motivates the one is not what motivates the other.
Any idea the U.S. can control it is too weak to defend as the U.S. is not willing to honor the rules it attempts to enforce. You will never get disarmament unless you are willing to do it together ... or ... you occupy the country and take away their arms. You see how that goes in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc.
There is the perception, here at the Rockhouse, that some of the religious ilk are looking forward to the End of Times battle with the Muslims. This battle has been waged for over a thousand years and now it must be done.
Like bleedin' hell it must be done. Wrapping statecraft in religion has been the trap throughout that time. Now it isn't wrapped in much of anything and war sits exposed as a bleeding cancer on humanity without any justification except the artificial provocations constructed by second-rate leaders.
If you want to burn Iran, take a look at "A Canticle for Leibowitz" first and see if you still want to do it.
There doesn't strike me as any controversy in saying the Vatican is the Mother Church to Christianity. Even if there is controversy, that's the position of the article
There is a direct and immediately obvious parallel between the Catholic Church and the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz which was central to the story of "The Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter Miller. The Abbey has existed since before the nuclear war and exists as one of the massively-damaged survivors afterward. The Abbey serves as the storehouse of human knowledge while the rest of the world goes back to barbarism.
The story is exceptionally dark and there's comedy as well. You may take some amusement in the Abbey working through its post-war history to beatify a man, Saint Leibowitz, who was known only be a few scraps of information, one of which turned out to be a shopping list ... for bagels. Perhaps it occurs there is another time the Catholic Church did this.
There is amusement in that type of comedy but the ultimate darkness comes in the recovery of the human race, human spirit, and, most of all, human science. Culture evolves and so does science with the, ostensibly inevitable, result there is another nuclear war and we blow ourselves up all over again. The first example of Leibowitz' religion is comic, maybe even funny, but the latter aspect is fundamental to current logic in nuclear aggression which is, in effect, we have to do it because we will do it anyway.
We are not EVEN going to try to defend that position as we don't believe it for a millisecond. That we are destined to destroy ourselves is so antagonistic to everything we know of life that we will not entertain it. Life's destiny is to survive and it will do anything it possibly can to achieve that. This position needs no defense as you know it already. The position of an arbitrary predestination for self-destruction is such a fatalistic view of our future that we would seriously consider the need for professional intervention to manage it.
However, given the nuclear weapons exist now and we are living in the pre-Canticle society, we could easily end up in the first stage of the story and the barbarism of post-nuclear Armageddon. We see no predestination in that but rather incompetent management of the weapons. The political aspect of that in this context is not important as all that matters is we built them and we don't know how to get rid of them. Whether this group or that wants to keep them is irrelevant as the only salient aspect to any of it is we can't get rid of over three thousand megatons of nuclear weapons (i.e. aggregate of all operational ICBM payloads).
Note: Tsar Bomba was fifty megatons and it vaporized, absolutely incinerated, a circle about fifteen miles out from ground zero, with correspondingly enormous damage moving outward. Just one of these and London doesn't exist anymore after being there well over a thousand years. Hiroshima gives no comparison as you still see things standing because the bomb was tiny, in comparison. After Tsar Bomba, there is nothing left, no buildings, trees, nothing.
If we play this out through the first stage of the Canticle then, assuming wistfully anything survives, it's likely that world wouldn't be so far off what Miller foresaw. The Vatican, in that context, returns to the role it held through much of history in which it was the storehouse of knowledge. In actuality, the Vatican would be incinerated as fast as everything else but that aspect of the storage of knowledge in some little abbey is not so far-fetched, that's what we did previously.
There's quite a bit of resentment here at the Rockhouse that this is still a topic after all these years when the weapons really haven't changed in that time, they just sit there doing nothing except saying 'fuck you' to each another once in a while. Submarines do it too, they just do it more quietly. The aircraft we don't care as they will never get anywhere near their targets anyway. Military aircraft are more a hobby than anything else as they may amuse kids but they won't do anything to win a Third World War, assuming the truth of a ridiculous notion that it's even possible to win such a war.
The focus of it is Iran and the justification is North Korea wanted to build a nuclear weapon. Clinton said no and NK did it anyway. That is used as the rationalization for vaporizing Iran because, naturally, they will do the same thing, it's human nature, don'tcha know.
In fact, it's the cheesiest kind of crap psychology and it wouldn't even make the cut for "Psychology Today." These are disconnected events and what motivates the one is not what motivates the other.
Any idea the U.S. can control it is too weak to defend as the U.S. is not willing to honor the rules it attempts to enforce. You will never get disarmament unless you are willing to do it together ... or ... you occupy the country and take away their arms. You see how that goes in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc.
There is the perception, here at the Rockhouse, that some of the religious ilk are looking forward to the End of Times battle with the Muslims. This battle has been waged for over a thousand years and now it must be done.
Like bleedin' hell it must be done. Wrapping statecraft in religion has been the trap throughout that time. Now it isn't wrapped in much of anything and war sits exposed as a bleeding cancer on humanity without any justification except the artificial provocations constructed by second-rate leaders.
If you want to burn Iran, take a look at "A Canticle for Leibowitz" first and see if you still want to do it.
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