Ranty McRanterson

How do you gain access to the sacred? The sacred is never found in the ordinary, familiar, normal world. Normal people cannot show you it. The sacred has a space of its own. It is a separated, guarded space, unlike anything in the ordinary world. Only the special ones can enter it. When they return, they are at a higher level. They are no longer normal. Only then are they qualified to say sacred things, extraordinary things, the things that none of your neighbors could ever tell you. The enemy of the sacred is the banal, the bland, the conventional, the ordinary, the familiar, the normal.

On Planet Dumb, every day is a stupid day. On Planet Dumb, everyone in power is a dunce. On Planet Dumb, the dumber you are, the better. Reason and logic are treated like diseases. Smart people are quarantined in universities in case their contagion of knowledge affects the benighted masses.

No need to travel to Planet Dumb. You're already there. Don't worry about applying for your Dunce Passport. It's your birthright. You get it as a matter of course. You can never check out of Planet Dumb. You can never leave. You're here for the duration.

"I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself." - Oscar Wilde

Thanks to the likes of Wilde, the world is now overrun by asses. The Pope of Fools, the Abbot of Unreason, has been unleashed to preside over the Dumbocalypse. No one needs to burn any books these days since no one reads any books. That would require intelligence and effort. Who needs such things in this time of the internet, the domain of cyber idiocy, of the global moronocracy? In the land of the men with no brain cells, the one-brain-celled man is king.

America is approaching MEANING ZERO. Jean Baudrillard wrote, "We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning." When meaning vanishes, emotion fills the vacuum. Emotion is the only thing that means anything to most people these days. They slavishly worship their own feelings and experiences, and trash any notion of objective Truth. They proclaim their own truth. Everyone these days believes whatever they want to believe, regardless of any facts to the contrary. This is the post-facts world, the post-truth world. The only good news is fake news telling you exactly what you want to hear. All fake news with which you agree is true; all fake news with which you disagree is disgusting fake news! That's the way this game is played. Believe whatever serves your agenda, and dismiss anything that doesn't.

Have you ever wondered why people have faith? Why don't they choose not to have faith? How does it help you to believe things for which no reasons or evidence can be provided? Is faith pure wish fulfillment? Is it social conditioning, brainwashing, mind control? Imagine a world where no one had ever heard of Moses, the Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed, but everyone had heard of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Would our world be better or worse? Imagine that not a single person believed in anything. Imagine that no one placed any faith in anything. Imagine that everyone was rational, logical, and committed to evidence and proof. Imagine that everything was rejected that didn't involve reason, logic, evidence and proof. How would that lead to a worse world? Wouldn't humans be much smarter? Wouldn't they evolve much faster?

Good old Freddie Nietzsche announced that God is dead. Most of the world obviously didn't get the memo. God seems to be alive and kicking, worse than ever. He's in our face. He's out, he's loud, and he's proud. More people believe in God now than at any time in human history. This guy's on a roll. He's a lot more successful than Nietzsche, that's for sure. Freddie said, "Success has always been the greatest liar." Sore loser!

It's not enough to proclaim God dead. You actually have to go and perform the deed. You have to get your hands dirty. You must strike down the tyrant, as Brutus and Cassius did to Caesar.