[GJM] Replying to Peter Challen

[Steve Consilvio]

Three cheers for Orwell and coining the term "doublethink," which is  
defined as the ability to hold two mutually exclusive ideas  
simultaneously.

All you have to do is change the name, and something is no longer  
what it is.  War is not "murder," it is "killing."  Killing is just,  
but murder is not.  Greed is evil, but "motivated self-interest" is a  
virtue.  Usury is bad, but taking interest is okay.

War is peace; slavery is freedom; ignorance is strength, 2+2=5.

Do you see the pattern here?

"Everything I tell you is a lie,"  said Captain Kirk.  Just because  
words can be strung together, it does not follow that their content  
makes sense.  Is the previous statement a lie, the truth, a paradox,  
or the nonsense of doublethink?

Like a little bit of cancer, or a little bit pregnant, the statement  
quoted at the end of this e-mail  reads:
Usury is interest.
Interest is usury.
Interest is not usury.

How can something be something and not be something simultaneously?   
This is intellectual denial.

So what do we end up with?  The dividing point among men is simply  
the intellectual honesty to admit that they are sinners.  That  
doesn't change their sins, it only changes their understanding of  
themselves.  The net effect, however, is that it reveals the paradigm  
of doublethink.  Only when we can understand our own errors can we  
understand the errors of others.  Since we can love ourselves with  
our own errors, we can also love others with theirs.  And from love,  
progress is possible.  The Bible, the Quran, etc, are all just pieces  
of paper if the words they say are transformed into doublethink.

Hypocrisy need not be a pejorative world, but simply a description of  
intellectual struggle, which is probably the root meaning of the word  
jihad.  The struggle is not against the evil in others, the struggle  
is always against the evil in ourselves.  From bin Laden to Bush, and  
all the interest-bearing capital in-between, we are world of  
sinners.  How does one live a moral life in an immoral world?  Are we  
not all equal participants in the system?

Self-righteousness takes root because we accuse others of having the  
sins that we do not have, and they accuse us because we have sins  
that they do not have.

Just to be clear; I know I am a sinner, and I know I come across as  
too self-righteous sometimes, but what I am most trying to say is  
that the math that drives this immoral system is undeniable.   
Interest and profit are both forbidden in Leviticus, because money  
has a nasty habit of concentrating and causing inflation.  2+2=4 is  
what we teach in math class; 2+2=5 is what we teach in business and  
economics.  This situation is doublethink (or perhaps double-math)  
but what it is is a double-standad.  Doublethink is the root of the  
double-standard.

Before we "do" the wrong thing, we first "think" the wrong thing.   
Ideas rule the world.

Not only do definitions matter, the definitions we use are  
everything.  While a punch, torture, and an execution all have  
different meanings, they are all a form of violence.  To say that my  
punching you is not violent is absurd, it is simply less violent.  To  
say that my punching you is good for you, makes the absurd more  
absurd.  Yet, that is what we commonly teach our children.

peace,
steve consilvio
www.behappyandfree.com


On TuesdayJan 15, 2008, at 11:40 AM, Myro Ashenopolitus wrote:

> "The Quran forbids usury, not interest. Quite a few
> states in USA have laws against usury. Usury is
> defined as excessive interest.

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