Culture and Theology, 2020

We look into the past, and when there is a burst of scientific advances, what usually follows was religious stamping out of intellectual thought by various authorities (the centre of the decision making body in society). Despite recessions, since WW2 the western world has been a steam train of relatively unfettered development.

What we are seeing with this post modern stamping out of independent thinking is made up of at least two factors that come to mind; the doctrine of individualism, and those in the centre of the decision making economic bodies who manipulate this individualism to their advantage.

Let me explain.

We are in society being driven into little boxes, both physical and metaphorical. More people than ever before live alone. You're taught like a toddler in the supermarket that you can choose anything (of the choices presented before you...). This illusion of free thought and choice within our matrix like world is getting increasingly burdensome, and many are feeling it emotionally without the language or capacity to know why. Property developers are selling people ever smaller boxes to live in, maximum profit in the name of 'independent' living (1), trendy 'co-working communities' that feel like more expensive gym memberships than genuine places for creative relationships. The supermarket is trying to make their own branded 'freedom' products so you feel better about the whole thing.

Then there are those that seek to profit from the increased drive for 'independence'. Whilst a pure rhetoric, it's easily twisted. If you have a culture where parents teach their children to take advantage of other people, this search for independence through material world will only lead to conflict and the opposite of the intention. The 'defense' industry. 'Independent' news like Ruptly, Institutions like 'The centre for liberal democracy' in various universities, programming populations with agendas funded by shady investors who are anti anything that makes them less money.

The problem comes when qualitative life experiences are driven by quantitative desires. Pursuit of profit rather than of the benefit of people. Where they obfuscaste this is through qualitative to qualitative converters, people to people interactions, that make the intention hard to see.

Your individual choices are an illusion and if you take inspiration only from the world or people around you, you will continue to be trapped by the same supermarket choices that you grew up with. The same problems in a different form. If you work really hard you can change the colours on some of the labels.

This all points to having a sense of objective inspiration that is not bound by time and space in the same way we see things linearly, the natural tendency of humans to look 'beyond'. The only new information that can truly exist has to come from this point of singularity. God.

'Pray' in Hebrew means 'to meet with'. This is not a purely individual or collective phenomenon, but happens at any time, in multiple ways concurrently and can influence our perception of time and space because we are talking with God.

We must share these sparks of inspiration with one another with more urgency than that of the sense of closed possibilities.
What you speak, you create; this is key.
If you focus on the chaos, you are only giving it room to grow in your own mind. Hold on to what you can do, and share it with others.

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1) Isaiah 5 https://biblehub.com/isaiah/5-8.htm