Posted on 04/28/2010 7:42:28 PM PDT by ancientart
Sometime before the dawn of history, a clever individual made a fascinating discovery.
Pick an object. Any object. A rock will do nicely. Stare at it intently. Almost automatically, anyone who happens to come by will begin staring too. And if there are enough “starers,” the tendency becomes almost irresistible. Anyone new on the scene is drawn in irresistibly: One can't help but focus on it.
Transform that stare into something slightly stronger. Begin to praise the object, to honor the object, to treat the object as if it were truly important, and others will do so too. If you play the game just right, you will have created a god - a god, surprisingly enough, with real power - the power to unify people and to get them to work together to accomplish what might otherwise be left undone.
And, if you are clever enough, you can use the same phenomenon with a person. Get people to focus on a person, to praise him, to honor him, to treat him as if he were something really special. Do it in just the right way, and you will have turned him into a god - and, again, a god with real power: the power that comes from unity. Let's build a gigantic wall around our city. Let's drain this swamp. Let's go conquer the Canadians.
The rock god can do all sorts of things for you - and all he asks is one little thing: that you worship him. And it's not just the rock god who wants you to worship. Everyone who wants the swamps drained, the walls built or the Canadians conquered wants you to worship the rock god as well - and it disturbs them if you don't. Anyone who doesn't stare at the rock drains something of the unifying power of the rock god. And if you stare at something else, well, that's really bad: a short circuit.
Intolerant at the best of times, the followers of the various rock gods are particularly dangerous when real-life events threaten their political or religious belief system, when the evidence begins to mount that their rock god is not a god after all. Confronted with a choice between reality and adherence to their belief system, they will often decide that it's reality that has to go. The result is often unbelievably tragic, perhaps the launching of a Jim Jones-style orgy of murder and suicide or the launching of a genocidal “final solution.”
Is there a moral to all this? Only a word of caution. People desperate for solutions in troubled times are vulnerable to the temptations of the political and religious cults, often succumbing to the rock-god phenomenon without even realizing what they are doing.
So how can one tell if one is drifting in an unhealthy direction? The main test is the way one handles disagreement. Those who not only tolerate but welcome the public discussion of opinions other than their own are almost certainly healthy. Those who can't tolerate dissent, who demand that their opponents be silenced, who fly into a rage at those who disagree with them, who can't resist the temptation to turn every Internet discussion into a flame war, whose dream of peace and unity imagines a world where everyone agrees with them - well, almost certainly they are worshipping one rock god or another.
LOL...we used to go out and stare up in the sky, then watch people walking by as they began to stare up...:)
Frikking kids...
All hail the magic conch!
Thank you for posting the article.
It was a great read.
Me (staring at ceiling): "Whoh, check that out"
Foil: "Oh my, what is that?"
Me: "Looks pretty bad"
Foil: "I see it, what could it be?"
Me: "Man, does the building manager know about this?"
Foil: "I don't know, maybe someone should tell him"
Me: "Wow, this really is something, ehhh?"
And on and on and on it goes ... meanwhile other ppl start to stare up and look, wondering what the heck we're talking about .... its an old ruse, but a fun one nonetheless :)
bookmark
When I was a kid my dad told us the signs along the road that said “Watch for Falling Rock” were for a little Indian girl who got lost. Kept us kids busy for hours looking for her. I still chuckle when I see a “Watch for Falling Rock” sign.
“...who fly into a rage at those who disagree with them...”
Never mind straight jackets. Start investing in either black or brown dye. (Not to mention companies that make shirts.)
IMHO
Moral of the story: don’t be caught between a rock god and a hard place.
"You mean, THIS?"
That’s it!
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