RAPAHOLISM

©Fernando Caracena 2022

RAPAHOL is Running Around Pulling At Hair Overwraughty, Lunatically. A rapaholic is one who does so habitually. A rapaholic's behavior is running amok. Our society is collectively rapaholic.

Rapaholism is Is the dominant theme of modern life. Visitors from another plant, cloaked in space and observing humanity from their vantage point would no doubt ask them selves, "how did those dumb sh*ts, ever get this far?" Some scholars of ancient scrolls have offered an explanation. Modern society is a turtle on a post that was developed and put there by a very advanced group of space aliens as slaves genetically engineered from a backward group of knuckle dragging ape-men to do their heqavy lifting (eg, Zecharia Sitchin). These slaves were designed with with enough intelligence to be able to take orders and, on which bases execute involved tasks semi-autonomously. In this view, civilization is simply an atavism carried forward from an original order created by alien forces that is, a turtle on a post. Using the terminology of that explanation, I see humanity as a turtle sse falling off a high post. But this is a very pessimistic view of humanity because once we lose our presently elevated state of civilization, we will not ever be able to build back, certainly not better.

I am an optimist. I do not share the above point of view. What I think is that we are facing is a milestone in the natural development of an advanced human civilization, which will make our past look like a congress of baboons. We are destined tp flower into vast and glorious civilization. Perhaps planet Earth is the place where the seed of humanity was planted but its destiny points to a culture spread over the entire galaxy.

Ages

I believe that humans develop in stages. For civilizations, we call those increments, ages, because they happen on time scales that characterize the advances of the night sky against the background march of the seasons of the year. They are sort of a beat frequency generated by the relative motion of two superposed rigid patterns. The time scales are about two thousand years.

We humans advance in cycles, not on those of plane circles where the trajectory along the path resets at the starting point with each repetition. Instead, the main human path of development is that of a helix extending in the direction of time, where each turn of the cycle corresponds a step of development along the temporal axis of the helix. Astrologists would say that humanity is in the process of transition for the age of Pisces to that of Aquarius. Although I would not necessarily agree with their astrological analysis of the nature of our present transition, I would agree that the stars do mark this change in in the zeitgeist from life ruled from the Spiritual understanding brought by Jesus Christ to the new one of that life empowered by the development of technology based on scientific understanding. However, there is a learning curve here of developing means of harmonizing the Golden rule with solving longstanding problems of humanity, such as: starvation, poverty, environmental degradation, sustainability, effective education, etc. We are witnessing the destruction of good infrastructures of civilization that were previously defended by tradition, but now defenseless in the face of misguided technocracy.

The technocrat is the blind watch repairman who destroys much value because he cannot see what he is doing. A example of the pathology of the transition between ages is how a pathological match up can happen between the love, trust and sense of justice of the former age, which now look like gullibility, and the evil desire to completely dominate the mass of human beings through advanced technology. Technically ignorant, power informed politicians having access to psychological mechanisms of mass control take advantage of the citizenry by fostering rapaholic responses that deactivate their ability to resist totalitarian control by wannabe Hitlers. In the past this kind of situation brought about violence kn proportion to the degree of accumulated tension.

When those entrusted with power to manage the common good, misuse that power to enrich themselves and their friends or otherwise abuse thqat trust, traditionally they can be brought to justice by peaceful means, by arguments in courts of law instead of by bloodshed on the battle fields, or by mob violence in the street. The problems with using rapaholic control through technological and psychological means is that it destroys the protection that law and order gives everyone. Losing that, those who have violated the public trust are no longer treated in a relatively nonviolent way, but may be exposed to the anger of the mob. They may find themselves repeated to the fate of Mussolini when he lost his power-hold on Italy.

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