More on Virtues and Vices

Wrathfulness - Viciousness

Cowardess

Treachery - Betrayal

Averice - Power Hungry

Delusion - Deception of Self and Others

Squandering (of Resources and Opportunities)

Sloth - Laziness

CIA director David Petrayas, an honored military officer, is in the news now because he disclosed that he cheated on his wife and for this reason must resign.  My first thought was to say "Who Cares?  We hired him as CIA chief to do a specific job and not as the head of the Chastity Club".  But the thing is high government officials must be held to a higher standard ad "pillars of the community" and all of that.  Also it is symptomatic of being "morally weak" as J Edger Hoover might put it.  He could be compromized is some gold digger gets him drunk and he starts talking.  It's funny the things will tell a man in a weak moment if he believes that it will impress her.  By contrast we come to Joel Olsteen's sermon this morning- - who says God does not like "peeping and telling" but puts a Curse on him and his posterity.  Well, let's take a look at this.  What do you think the parents of a child who has been molested think about "tatteling"?  Now personally I've found that tatteling on others "just is not a smart thing to do" because the Authorities probably already know what is going on anyhow and choose to look the other way.  So it is a condemnation of the Authorities as much or more than the actual perpeter.  The thing perhaps you should do is meet up with the offending individual in a back alley on some dark night and settle it there.  But we have people like Dennis Prager saying that a certain ammount of macho lust - - just goes along with positions powerful people are in.  Gene Scott has gone so far as to defend Bill Clinton's affair with Monica as well as to defending lying under oath.  I have one question for Joel Olsteen.  Would my "tatteling' on Gene Scott for defending a purgerer be a Sin?  It's no secret after all.  Everybody knows he's this way because they used to see him on TV every night.  And some will say "Well- - you yourself should live up to impecable standards while giving others allowance and "grace".  OK.  Here's a question I guarentee you  people like Joel Olsteen and Neil Savedra are afraid to answer.  "If I am routinely expected to live up to a high moral bar- - to build my character and all- - and yet I am to hold others to a low bar (and they often don't even meet that) over the course of time- - who will be the most moral, credible, virtuous individual?  Is it me or those who criticize me?  Also I knew there Joel Olsteen was going today.  He shifted the camera focus to inside the church.  You know where that one is headed.  Church Pastors say "Don't gossip" but they aren't afraid of gossiping about your church mates- - but rather, gossipping about your Pastor.  (Selah)  After all most gossip is pretty boring.  "Did you know Mr. Kelly has a Gambling problem?"  Did you know Mr. Galliger carries a flask of burbin and takes little nips from it before he goes into a business meeting?"  "Did you see the dress Thelma wore to the PTA meeting last week?"  "Did you know Thelma has been dying her hair for the past two years?"  On the other hand your pastor may have his own secrets.  He might be secretly meeting up with the local mass murderer in town who hasn't been caught yet.  He may get the inspirational message for his Sermons from reading Ayan Rand novels. Or he may have fathered a child out of wedlock.  I still have mixed feelings about Johnathin Edwards regarding this.  Let me ask you this.  What if more people in the early days in Jim Jones congragation had spoken up about "various irregularities" about their Pastor?  Mightn't they have possibly prevented him from getting into Deeper Sin?

So why are these listings a bit different than the previous posting?  Wrathfullness and Out of Control Anger- - is a vice unto itself and I believe one of the seven cardinal vices.  But the thing is when it comes to vices and virtues- - the opposite of one is not necessarily the other.  As follows.  Sin is "missing the mark".  But the BEST one can ever deviate from in terms of a number is Zero.  Zero deviation.  You can't get more accurate than Dead On.  Capish?  Sin goes out in all directions from that Point, but once you get to the Point, you have Arrived.  You have nowhere now that you need go.  Capish?  We spoke of that Karmic Funnel.  As such Good is inherently limited in Quality, but it is not limited in Quantity.  Evil has a way of karmicly limiting itself in Quantity- - but the depravity of Evil on the way down is Unlimited.  You can keep falling and falling forever, like a newtron star hold in that green grid golf course gravity model of the Universe.  Many Vices can be the opposite of one Virtue, and in like manner- - Many Virtues can be the opposite of one Vice.  This is why I strived too hard to arrive at opposites on that last posting.  The question is whether there is any entity below zero.  This is an interesting metaphysical question.  Consider this example.  We know what atnospheric pressure is of fifteen pounds per square inch.  So how come when you weigh a paper clip on your bathroom scale it doesn't come to hundreds of pounds.  We know that while there is an Absolute Zero- - that Zero degrees F is not it.  It could be perhaps this way with Sin some would argue where some "virtue" enters you and "lifts you up to heaven" when you die, defying gravity or something.  We have said the Ether is "The God particle".  Can gravity ever be less than nothing.  Can light refraction "go the other way" like a switch batter in baseball?  What if there were a substance with "less than the standard ammount of the God particle or ether in it?  Maybe??

We have David Petrayas and his womanizing, like so many others.  I was thinking of doing a blog posting on the whole idea of men's reasons for morally straying from their spouse as opposed to a woman's.  Which rationalization is "more moral" I suppose depends on which sex you're a member of.  Men tend tword this God Complex when they get into power and think they're infallible.  In fact they had this whole thing on KFI about "decision making' and how bottom up decisions are generally wiser and sounder than ones made from the Top.  This is because information tends to be selectively filtered up as it moved up the chain of command- - so the person at the Top makes decisions not based on fact.  My view is that people are basically moral and "there is wisdom in numbers".  Others such as this Hobbs philosopher Thom Hartman talks about disagrees- - saying that men at best are peons and at worst beasts- and "need to be reigned in" bu some Almighty King on high.  But back to adultry- - men and women are different from the start.  Men pick a mate and "Hope she stays just the way she was when I married her".  Women look at the thing less from desire but rather as some sort of economic investment, like Mom buying a house.  Maybe it's a "fixer upper" but the women believes there is Economic Potential in her investment later on.  But what happens is that the woman emotionally disengages from her husband's occupation - - and spends her time in fantasy life reading these steamy novels, watching her soap operas, or oogeling some Hollywood hunk on some Entertainment Tonight show.  She doesn't act on her fantasys, at least right away, but these fantacies grow and fesster- - and separate her from her husband till the man looks for a woman who will give him the emotional support he needs - - like the cute secretary at work. Scripture says the Devil is just looking for that "briech in your hedge", a venue of Sin, by which he may enter to do his damage. There aree two axioms that preachers need to bear in mind.  The first is that "Actions have Consequences- - - even for You" and also "Don't make a god out of your Own beliefs".  Of all the Cults out there the one I'm obviously most disturbed about in my Prophecy book was Jim Jones.  He could have been the next white Martin Luther King, if he played his cards right and not let the Devil get a hold of his ministry.  As to the matter of atheism being the cause of all evil- - not so.  Most atheists are very moral, thoughtful people.  We do have evil people of renound in the world.  You know who they are- - - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ivan the Terrible, Pizarro, Atilla the Hun.  Among Roman Emperors - - three stand out as particularly depraved- - Nero, Caligula, and Dometian.  Dometian the last of this triad of Evil- - may be the individual listed in the book of Revelation.  But the comon denominator is Evil and not Atheism.  I do not believe you "need God' to be Moral, or even that "God is the source of all Morality".  I reject that.

In my personal life I missed out on shopping at Wall Mart last Wednesday because all the lines on the sign up list had been filled by the time I got around to signing it.  The sign up sheet appears to fill up increasingly rappidly with each passing week.  Bill lent me money for a pack of John Black grape cigarettes, and I used the six dollars I had to buy coffee with, which I of course shared with Bill.  One of the reasons why I flip-flopped on Proposition 32, the Labor Union muzzeling amendment, is because somehow I'm on the UTLA call list and get their little updates I often find informative.  They told me that a NO vote on 32 would insure that Unions would continue to have a voice, which should not be taken away.  People pool their funds together for the mutual benefit of all.  And this is how government should work.  It should be never said that the Chief Executive Officer of a corporation has no idea how the service or product of his corporation - - is even produced.  You must have someone in charge who has acttually Done It for a season in his life.  The Hoi Palloi should rub elbows with the Commoners a little to get the feel of what "day to day life for the average person is really about".  Clearly democracy is a "bottom up" rule where things "trickle up" and not down.  You know the same applies for the economy money flow at large.  But the tea party types will never believe it.  Because to one degree or another Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, and Sheldon Addelson- - believe in a form of "The Divine Right of Kings" where certain people were Born to Power- - because some God they themselves invented - - tells them so.  People in power aren't cowed by something they can crush at will.  As such they are unlikely to have any moral restraints.  So in a sense people like Malcolm X who say "Power comes from the barrel of a gun" aren't far off the mark.  You have to use Force to defeat Force.  (Selah)