President's Obama Inaugural Speech and American Civil Religion

This essay is a follow-up to “Religio and American Civil Religion” in response to President Obama’s inaugural speech. The contents will reveal a continuity with traditional themes delivered by past Presidents. The speech also includes some departures that show a novel development in respect to typical tenets of American civil religion.

Lady Di: A Media Consecrated Icon

In this essay we explore how the media has dislocated the legitimate role of religious institutions in providing traditional forms of religious experience to the masses.

Religio and American Civil Religion

With this essay we propose a reassessment of American civil religion developed by Robert N. Bellah. The recent Religious Right’s political activism has somewhat changed the landscape of American civil religion, inaugurating a state of religious and political exceptionalism. Shattering the idea of a cultural and political inclusiveness inherent in civil religion. As a result of the changes, a reevaluation was deemed appropriate. To do so we examine Roman religio as a case study of civil religion.

A Discourse on Spirituality
An outline of basic concepts on spirituality over the ages, especially from a Judeo-Christian perspective. Ending with some controversial views on how religiosity took an unexpected turn with the advent of post-modernism.

Corporatism

Similarities between the rise of Fascism in Italy and forays of US Corporations in the Capital. Resulting in the creation of a new body politic. The subsequent advent of the consumer who has unceremoniously displaced the citizen as the pillar of Democracy.

Hacker-Art

Two tricksters that have used the Internet to their advantage in diverting people to their own web site by impersonating popular brand names. In folklore and mythology, the trickster is mostly portrayed in the guise of a fox or a coyote. Tricksters typically play pranks on unsuspecting characters of a story by breaking normal rules of conduct.

The Da Vinci Code & Mary Magdalene

Thanks to Dan Brown’s book, the overshadowed heroine was brought back to the forefront. Raising several controversial questions about her relationship with Jesus and her role in his ministry. The much talked about secret code of the Holy Grail is given a different spin. Especially in view that the Gospels are also literary works, revealing the importance played by the metaphor.

Significant Other

Our tribute to Simone de Beauvoir, and an overdue acknowledgment of her contribution to philosophy and existentialism. The contents of the latter were mostly credited to her celebrated life long companion, Jean-Paul Sartre. Her invaluable analysis of a devalued notion of the Other  as an essential part in the expansion of Being.

Freedom in the US is predominantly lived in terms of mobility. From the beginning, the early settlers escaped religious persecution as a way to salvation. The great migration to the West signified a break away from an unsettling past and the hope for a better future. Today the car is the symbolic representation of that mobility, and freedom. However, this mobility is being constrained by high oil prices and a growing number of bigger vehicles on roads that have remained the same size for decades, constricting the arterial essence of mobility.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

February 4^th 2006 marked the 100th year anniversary of the birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A remarkable German theologian. Bonhoeffer was involved in several clandestine missions to help Jewish people escape Nazi Germany. He also participated in failed plots to overthrow and assassinate the Fuhrer. His unpatriotic actions led him to the gallows. He was executed on April 9^th 1945. Only three weeks prior to the end of the war.

Mythical Process in Ideology, Culture and Religion

An outline of basic concepts like the sacred, the profane and their dynamic interaction. This dynamic opens the ways to the wholly other. Not in terms of a wholly alterity, although it begins as such, but in terms of a wholly embracing totality.

From Backlash to Messianism

Ramblings about the dire consequences of the advent of the Working Group on Financial Markets and the implementation of Executive Order 12631. As a result, the healthy separation between the government and the financial markets has been dissolved. Creating in the process the use of the government’s power and resources to sustain the financial markets’ misallocation of capital into excessive and speculative market’s swings.

Creation and Goddess Symbols in Genesis 1-3

A literary expansion on the meaning of creation. Complemented by the unearthing of some obscure goddess symbols in Genesis II. And a discourse on the drama of the fall of Adam and Eve in the primal Garden of Eden.

Hypertext

A short piece on how the advent of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) has dismantled the idea authority.

Bottom's up

How bottom-up systems can exist without a leader and thrive on self coordination and emergence. Bottom-up systems present a challenge to the ancestral top-down hierarchies that have ruled the world through control, secrecy, violence and conquest.

Batman: The Masks of the Gods

An alternative view of this popular American super-hero. The mask is the device of choice to conceal an identity. The question is, what ideology lies behind this identity? A critical analysis of how mythology masks ideology.

On Spirituality and Religion

Additional comments on the basic principles of the sacred, the profane and the wholly other that have been outlined elsewhere on this web site.

In terms of the religious studies, Exodus is perhaps the most invaluable text that describes the birth a religion. The story of leader without a kingdom and a people in search of the Promised Land.

God the Father: The Patriarchal Tradition

An outlined of basic concepts of God in the Old Testament.

A portrait of Jesus in terms of whom he chose to share his presence with; the outcasts and the powerless. Paying the price for his love of God and of his followers. This love was seen as threat to the established order by ignoring their own religious and political authority.

Attempts to reveal the essence of the most elusive person of the Holy Trinity, the nurturing Giver of Life.

Additional inquest into the nature and identity of the Holy Spirit and the profane reality of the Mother of God.

The Holy Trinity as a dynamic interaction between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This dynamic triad also relates to a spiritual synergy between the sacred, the profane and the wholly other.

A Preface to The Quest for Independence

Biographical notes as a prelude to the article on The Mythical Quest for Independence.

Net Art: The Pioneers of the Net

A rehashing of an article posted on Unita Online about pioneer artists of the Internet.

The Mythical Quest for Independence

The recounting of a mythical quest of a paradise lost by the people of Quebec. Their lone search for cultural affirmation and recognition in a North American Anglo dominium.

A Fallen Star in Iraq

The portrait of a casualty of war. One who sacrificed his life for the love of his country. A fallen hero that will be forever missed by his loving wife, children and fans.

Thank You Librarians

Who would have guessed that unassuming librarians would be the inconspicuous defenders of free speech in the darkest days in US’ history. Thanks to their dedicated efforts and behind the scenes networking, Michael Moore was finally able to publish his book Stupid White Men.

Washington National Monument

A step by step re-enactment of the building and inauguration of the giant obelisk. The erection

of the Washington National Monument stands as a visible sign that celebrates the mythical foundation of its founding Father. Revealing in the process how myth and politics blend-in together to generate an ideological consolidation of power.

Interactivism

The medium is the message; the Internet ushered an unprecedented bottom-up interactivism that challenges the ancestral top-down systems.

Spiderman: A Mythical American II

A blue collar teenager who turns into a genetically modified super-hero when challenged by a villain. Spiderman is American mythology at its best. Revealing the dual nature of a hero’s character as the result of the medium’s super-natural creative powers.

Zuni Cosmology

This short essay allows us to display a splendid Zuni mythology. In many respects, 

the Zuni represent a beautiful example of the aboriginal cultures that thrived in North America. 

It allows us to disclose the Zuni's conception of the world which was created long before 

the West made its imprint on the whole continent.

1999

The first netage article posted on the Web in 1999, about the first major event covered by the Internet. Revealing unprecedented disclosure of documents appearing out of nowhere challenging the “official” story about the war on Yugoslavia, of a US led NATO attack on a continent with an inconspicuous rising currency, the Euro. Our prediction that journalists rather than newspapers were bound to determine the political agenda in the future was somewhat confirmed.

Linux operating system reveals how open-source systems are emerging as an alternate form of 

governance. Challenging the top-down system by a synergetic force that gravitates around a 

self-regulating center. Where the “good” of the whole system is the primary goal. Disposing 

of the “individual” as the center of attention.

Among the more popular essays on this site. It outlines the principle of the Lord-victim. Job who 

at the beginning of the story was God’s preferred character, is suddenly and for no reason, cast 

out of favor. Our hero who once at the top of system that he controlled, is now an outcast and 

rejected from that world. As a pariah, he sees the system as an outsider and is able to perceive 

the whole reality of lordship and victim.

Hierarchy in governance is the most elusive power scheme. Although the power is eminently 

present, it is invisible and unfathomable. The tier top-down levels of control is so efficient that

it has survived and expanded since the beginning of civilization. A control system that is 

consistently confused with the power of God. 

When I first introduced the idea that Superman was a mythical hero in 1992, the notion came as 

a surprise to many. Over time it became acceptable to most. Today we can safely say

that mythology plays a similar role in American culture and ideology that it did in ancient Egypt, 

Greece or Rome.

Teilhard de Chardin: A Human Phenomenon

A tribute to a scholar and visionary mystic who predicted the advent of a noosphere that we call today the World Wide Web. With additional definitions and clarifications about some of his ideas.