Tyranny of Chance - opposite of Intelligent Design

Tyranny of Chance is the opposite of the half-assed concept called Intelligent Design.

Tyranny of Chance is my intelligent free will human response to ID.

The universe is either a controlled, managed stage set with scripts as in ID or it is the randomness and tyranny of possibilities.

Life is static or it is fluid. It is all a question of energy.

I am reminded of the story about how Charles and Diana, Prince and Princess of Wales, were onto the concept of reincarnation as a matter explaining their rank and good fortune. Like how could so wonderful a dual be blessed with so much wealth and power unless they deserved it from another life and it was just a formality to carry it all from one soul incarnation to another.

Sounds rather intelligent, Eaton, Oxford, and all that from their point of view. Don't you think? You don't think. That's the whole point. You are not Intelligently Designed or that well made on your level and as an offset of that, you are not sanctioned by God to rule over others? Yeah right.

The rest of us get the leftovers in life, this life. We have not tried hard enough to be as good or as lucky or as full of grace as Charles and Diana. Or so it goes.

Am I mixing apples and oranges mixing the odds of being born royal and throwing in ideas like reincarnation and the unfairness in life in general to the majority of us?  Perhaps.

This present top down culture where elites rule in politics or elites invent Intelligent Design to justify their ungodly paychecks and perks is a culture that needs some re-examination on a macro and micro level in this modern age.

Were Charles and Diana destined to have been born into such pomp and luxury or was it merely the tyranny of chance? Only one bum gets to sit on the royal throne so to speak. The rest of us I suppose are shit out of luck - sounds like tyranny to me.

The universe is pure chance. It is also a tyranny of chance by our intelligent evaluation of it. Any intelligence in any equation of the forms and energies of the universe is purely human and not “divine”. The Creator remains the creator and that creation is in motion to any, all and other points in history. Whether the Creator is intelligent, I cannot say, not having ever yet met that entity.

Otherwise, they, Charles and Diana, have had God’s imprimatur stamped in red ink on their shiny white heinies in this and every succeeding lifetime. The rest of us I guess just lose out in such a random equation of such things.

Just a thought.


https://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2010/05/tyranny-of-chance-opposite-of.html

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Saint-Gaudens Diana – Cultural Rape and Banking Sponsored Commodity Art At The Philadelphia Museum of Art

In line with the new Global Corporate Spreadsheet, formerly the Wharton Global Spreadsheet (local-USA), and the emerging global culture thing ongoing, I was taken aback when I learned that Bank of America came in and gilded the Statue of Diana at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I called this “cultural rape” in comments on a the history blog below mainly because Diana in her salvaged state is the image I saw all my life from childhood onward and therefore it was imprinted on me as “questionable art” if not “decorative art” considering its varied history and usage in the past 125 years since its creation and or variation, adaption of creation by the famous gilded age sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens as a decorative weather vane on the second Madison Square Garden 1890-1925.

After some months, I stand by my decision that this is cultural rape by a commercial bank in a global cultural sense on the art museum in Philly - it is still an abomination. Piss on the commodity vision of art by capitalism.

http://articles.philly.com/2014-07-12/news/51361036_1_timothy-rub-fiske-kimball-weather-vane

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/28809

Comment by Mike McShea

2014-04-15 08:35:48

...Been following the story of the Philly Diana for decades, being a native of Philly now living in Gotham for close to forty years. Ran into your original article recently about the – about to re-gild story while amateur researching some other forgotten items, lost architectural NYC treasures of that so-called gilded age.

Now in catching up on some modern things such as this recent unveiling of Diana Regilt at the PMA, the thought occurs to me that this is somehow cultural rape of a native Philly Icon. Coming from an old geezer, nobody will care what I think of all this. Considering that Philly bought her as scrap and for the price of scrap at thirty eight dollars, the true re-gilding I would think is in the revisionist art history of her.

I suppose it is only a matter of time before some other philanthropic or publicity starved banking interest puts arms back on the Venus de Milo in the Louvre and why not throw in a nose ring and tattoos while they are at it.

2014-04-17 20:24:26

...She was art to me as a little boy over half a century ago with her mere green patina. My POV is that yes she had gilt on the top of MSGII but she was a mere replica of the original bronze piece on top of the too big and too heavy to be a weather vane statue that McKim Meade and White moved to their Agriculture Building at the Columbian Exposition and later lost in the fire of July 1894. The Philly Diana was art as she was salvaged and placed in her niche in the PMA just like the Venus de Milo in the Louvre.

Outsiders with money have now decided she wasn’t art unless gilt. Art and beauty are truly in the eyes of the beholder. Now she is too loud in her once quiet niche. “Look at Me!” Maybe a coat of Neon Green Paint to jazz up the natural stones of the PMA main staircase is needed as well.

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Moses King New York Guide Book Cover – Inspiration for O.Henry’s short story The Lady Higher Up?

https://archive.org/details/kingsphotographi00kingrich

New York World Sunday Magazine, July 24, 1904, The Lady Higher Up by O.Henry

http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/o_henry/172/

I have to thank the Internet for the coming together of ideas. Researching the latter part of the nineteenth century New York I came across the Moses King Photographic Views of New York originally published in 1892.

I cannot but help to think in the last twenty four hours looking at the cover of the King’s Tourist Guide that Bill Porter hanging around pool halls, billiard parlors and rummy saloons around Fourteenth Street, fingered his King’s Guide to New York to inspire a story for a much needed sawbuck to pay his bar tab and some back rent on a furnished room. 

That about a year and a half to two years into residence in New York City he may have been ready to toss that book - feeling like a native NYer - but instead fingered that guide for inspiration, in a copy newly purchased when he has first arrived or in a dime used copy at a bookstore outdoor stall – with the cover image of Diana the Saint Gaudens sculpted weathervane on top of Madison Square Garden - pointing an arrow at Lady Liberty - may have just been the visual inspiration trigger for the story mentioned above.  

Just a thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Henry

http://lastcivilizedyank.blogspot.com/2011/07/miss-diana-of-staircase.html

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Augustus Saint-Gaudens – Goddess, Diana of the Tower (MSG), Diana of the Staircase (PMA)

A few views of the famous Saint-Gaudens statue of Diana that was once the weathervane on the second Madison Square Garden, (right off Madison Square NYC) 1890-1925, before finding a permanent home at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Square_Garden_(1890)

The original eighteen foot Diana by sculptor Saint-Gaudens was made of bronze and thought to be out of proportion when first put on the Second Madison Square Garden in 1891 - and too heavy to maneuver quickly in the winds.

In 1893, it went to the top of a building at the Columbia Exposition in 1893 in Chicago. 

Agriculture Building - Columbian Exposition Chicago 1893

Bottom half of statue was lost in a fire in Chicago. Top Half of statue, whereabouts unknown, and presumed lost to history.

The second Saint-Gaudens Diana as weathervane on Madison Square Garden was of gilded sheet copper and thirteen feet high.

This Diana eventually founds its home as the centerpiece of the grand staircase main hall entry way of the Philadelphia Museum of Art after demolition of the second Garden arena.

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Philadelphia Museum of Art

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Billy and Diana - Philly Mascots

Something strange happened to me last week. I had been looking though some old research and I came across one of my favorite art objects in a photo.

There is the Augustus Saint Gaudens statue of the Roman goddess Diana that decorates the main hall of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I am of course aware of all the trials and triumphs of this statue as art and its ability to survive. It started out as a weathervane on the second of four Madison Square Gardens. The second Garden was actually right off Madison Square in Manhattan.

To make a long story short, this one time symbol and “goddess of Manhattan” got ditched when they tore the building down and it survived to become art in Philly. There is even an O. Henry short story, rather dated in language and understanding, The Lady Higher Up, in conversation between “Miss Diana” and “Aunt Liberty” in the New York harbor.

More boring details I will not talk about. But the strange thing is that when I looked at this statue, this work of art, and its setting in a treasure house of human culture, a museum I have many times visited, I slipped into the transcendent and felt spiritual and close to the Divine.

Art, and not pagan idol, touched something in me. The feminine road to the Divine was more pronounced in ancient, primitive, obsolete pagan cultures. Maybe that pathway should consider being reopened in the traffic jam of today’s uncertain global common culture.

I have to wonder how the world progresses that if some art might be a true pathway to the divine.

Speaking of superstition, there is the local Philly myth of the Curse of Billy Penn.

Curse of Billy Penn

The Curse of Billy Penn was an alleged curse used to explain the failure of major professional sports teams based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to win championships since the March 1987 construction of the One Liberty Place skyscraper, which exceeded the height of William Penn's statue atop Philadelphia City Hall.

The curse was supposedly overturned by placing a small statue of William Penn on the top of the tallest building in Philly, the Comcast center at 975 feet, in 2007 just in time for the World Series Title in 2008.

Superstition, myth, religion – many times wishful thinking and self fulfilling prophesy.

In any case, in an ancient sense and in honorable titles, Statues, Art, are mascots, honorary gods, in a vaguely pagan parameter, at Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, the Quaker City.

Pagan Transcendency into the Divine

Christianity is not a holistic religion in the ways that ancient religions were concerned with the whole and the parts of the whole and the interdependence of those parts.

By strictest definition, the word pagan means rural. In the context of ancient Rome with it hundreds of official and non-official gods and temples, pagan was a label for a country bumpkin religion with a country bumpkin god etc. As such Rome was the big time and so were its gods.

Along comes Christianity and every non-Christian religion gets a pagan label and then gets the heave ho off the side of the boat. Past wisdom, culture and insight got tossed as well. A respect for nature got a bad rap and label in the Christian stream of thought thing.

I have to laugh when I hear the apocryphal story of the mother of Jesus coming to live her last days in Ephesus and living with Mary Magdalene.

I do not think that that happened. Ephesus was home to the largest and grandest Greek style temple on earth, pictured above, and dedicated to a Greek earth goddess called Demeter. The temple was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Demeter can also be Gaia etc. The Roman version of the name Demeter is Diana.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the best you can do for a basic earth goddess in the male dominated monotheistic Christian religion. With a handful of sentences mentioning her in the NT, Mary is the stuff of myth and legend and not based on much sacred scripture.

I was doing some recent research or refreshing my memory from Freshman highschool English class whereby we had to memorize all the names of the Greek and Roman gods as a background to reading stories of ancient mythology.

What’s wrong with myth? Nothing. Before there was culture or churches and mosques, there was myth. Myth is the verbal and later written down sharing of culture around the small community nightly fire. Tribes are smaller than modern day countries. Myth is no longer small. Small myth sometimes now covers big modern countries and cultures but not too well. Something missing perhaps in old myths not properly retrofitted to today. As such, most myth is relegated to obscure storage and forgotten library shelves.

Myth or no myth, the western culture follows ancient Rome’s hatred of Nature to this day. Rome is long gone. Western civilization is not far behind using the British Petroleum’s behemoth haphazard failure to manage nature responsibly as a watershed mark in human history.

Do we finally take macro responsibility of the planet or do we, and all cultures globally, continue to ignore our environment? Our platform of life, on which we see life happening on many levels, must be shared with other living creatures in the oceans and on the lands. One species, if it goes extinct, sets the stage for other extinctions including our own species.

The ancient religious myth that God set us in change of Nature is a poorly written piece in that it leaves out the implied statement that we must take charge of nature responsibly.

I am not talking Neo-Paganism here. I am talking about resuscitating those portions of ancient culture that saw, felt and acted in response to the key points of nature that cause mankind to survive and prosper.

Gaia as the earth goddess is not really an ancient concept. Gaia as resurrected myth is an accumulation of many ancient earth goddesses. And what are earth goddesses? They are symbols of the sacred feminine.

The west and its hatred of nature is mixed with hatred of women in the mean desert monotheistic religions. Nature is buried along side with the feminine. The Roman military calendar replaced the lunar calendar. Conflicts were settled in blood along with the destruction of ancient pagan belief systems, based many times on nature. A world religion like Hinduism is based on many previous cultures and many previous cultures’ beliefs, gods and goddesses. Inclusive is one way to do religion.

Christianity, if it wants to survive must look differently at the world and be part of nature, God’s nature or be prepared to quickly, at this point in time, fade out permanently of historic view.

Part of a culture war in recent years in the west, or more accurately America, is between the dying western culture and against Secularism or Neo-Paganism. Neo-Paganism also goes by the name of Pantheism, whereby you believe in many gods instead of the mean singular desert gods of Judeo Christian Islamic monotheistic myth.   The many gods or idols that some secularists or neo-pagans would seem to worship are science, technology, cars, fast food, fashion, and greed and or success.  Any means to succeed including warfare are okay so long as you win at any cost.  Any cost these days means at the expense of humanity and the fragile nature of our planet.

Of course, the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims do not all agree that they are talking about the same god. As such and to such people, I label their beliefs myth. There seems to be many gods even amongst the so-called monotheists.

Transcendence into the energy of the universe is possible on any level, at any time and in any culture.

Transcendence into the concept of God is a way pagans used to channel into the Spiritual. The universe did not live, breath and evolve for a billion years waiting for the one true religion (there are so many) to finally arrive on this planet.

The ancients, the pagans, the pre-Christians did a thriving business in many belief systems. Those forced from the scene belief systems were many times balanced in being male and female. Transcendence into the energy of God was possible within some of those belief systems. Human or animal sacrifice though crowded out the clarity of any hoped for vision of God as we think of Him today.

Western civilization is in a way an extension of a single male god myth – now gone sterile over time. Western Civilization on the religious level is an extension of a long, out of date myth created by Constantine. The forced male only paternalistic religion thing does not work anymore in a total member, total cultural global society. That the culture attached to that lone god myth has perhaps travelled as far as that culture and myth can travel.

Time to think outside the sterlile (at present) western Christian box.

Any ideas I have at the moment are to restore at the very least the regular value of the feminine if not the sacred feminine back into western culture and its institutions in order to save it at this critical time in history.

Time to re-examine some of the ancient pagan ways of reaching out to the spiritual and the Divine that are in true balance with Nature and Nature’s God / Goddess.