The RishRash

Some Preliminaries

  • Why choose a windmill as the icon for this section?  The RishRash has to do with a grinding and sifting process to discover truth.  For better and for worse, it is also likely to run on a lot of wind power.

 

  • Much of what is truth in this website is based on an assumption that we are judged as we judge.  I consider the development of my abilities with spirit for healing and self defense to be evidence for the validity of this assumption.
    • But even with this I think one needs to consider the variety of competing opinions about "truth" and what others should do to be considered moral.  How can any of us know which of these ever changing, to varying extents, views is correct.
      • Clearly it is not enough to base it on "majority" views.  Examples abound!
        • for example, plenty of majorities have enslaved minorities to varying extents
        • plenty of vast majorities are being almost entirely untruthful about what they know about what has been happening around me
          • many of these work very hard to project images of rightness and morality

    I claim that our guardian spirits are quite intelligent and somewhat clever by using our own judgments of others as assessments for ourselves. 

    • In this sort of vein I would hope all of us would work hard to clarify our own judgments
    • This also implies we might actually have to spend some time and energy getting to know others before we can point out to them what their own moral expectations should be!

 

  • It seems obvious to me that people who claim to be so involved and sources of "goodnesses" should also be very willing to really openly evaluate themselves based on clear standards.
    • I am constantly astounded at how so many government officials are able to praise themselves, their own efforts and those with particular nationalistic fervor, but so clearly contradict their claims with their efforts to shut down others who are trying to get these claimants to openly evaluate themselves.
    • This seems to happen far too in other groupings such as religions and many others.

 

  • Determining what is true can be very difficult, and I think a lot of people have a lot of illusions about their abilities to know truth.  As  see it, one of the greatest potentials of the RishRash is for determining what is clearly untrue.

 

  • In physical self defense there are at least three very basic principles
    • the more off balance your adversary, the easier they are to throw
    • no matter how big and strong an opponent is, you are almost surely stronger than their vulnerable points such as joints, gonads, or whatever
    • the more their attack is lacking in proportion the more likely they are to be exposing an easily exploitable weakness

 

 
  • These same principles are at the basis of what I am calling the RishRash.

 

  • While this will take some time to develop, I want to talk about a couple examples.

 

 

   Cops and Robbers?  Think about the pervasive presence of speed limits in the USA and many other countries.

Clearly, some people feel that they are capable of assigning these speed limits and others, maybe some of the same people, feel that they are capable of enforcing these speed limits.  Unfortunately, what motivates so many of these speed limits seems to not be particularly really in the interest of public safety.

I think that both these groups of people, lawmakers and enforcers, should be excited by the opportunity to have their driving speeds be constantly monitored in order to impress on us the importance of these laws and their abilities to follow them as they would have others follow them.

While I think this breaks down reasonably when enforcers need to catch up to those that are breaking "the law", enforcers should be willing to make their obedience to "the law" quite clear to the rest of us.

Unfortunately, we all know this will never happen.  But, in addition, I'm confident that many of us know of built-in systems where these lawmakers, enforcers and likely some of their friends/family gain exemptions from being subjected to these laws.

Even worse, almost all of these people think/feel they should be paid quite well to force this sort of hypocrisy on everyone else.  So who's being the robbers in this situation?

 
What if these people are actually being evaluated by more spiritual, much less hypocritical beings and it really has impact on many other aspects of their existences?

Most claim they are, but seem to forget this when convenient.

  
     

 

A Biblical Story.  I am going to cite much of chapter 12  from the Second book of Samuel of the Bible and then discuss it some to illustrate some major issues.  I'll copy some verses from The New English Bible since most people aren't going to be familiar with details of the story.  A brief summary of the background is in chapter 11.  I'll summarize further.  David, leader of Israel and Judah, has set up the husband, Uriah, of a love interest, Bathsheba, to be killed in battle to cover their liaisons that resulted in a child.  David tried all sorts of ruses to hide the source of the pregnancy, but they all failed resulting in the battlefield contrivance.

The Lord sent Nathan the prophet to David, and when he entered his presence, he said to him, "There were once two men in the same city, one rich and the other poor.   The rich man had large flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing of his own except one little ewe lamb.  He reared it himself, and it grew up in his home with his own sons.  It ate from his dish, drank from his cup and nestled in his arms; it was like a daughter to him.  One day a traveler came to the rich man's house, and he, too mean to take something from his own flocks and herds to serve to his guest, took the poor man's lamb and served up that."  David was very angry, and burst out, "As the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die!  He shall pay for the lamb four times over, because he has done this and shown no pity."  Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man.  This is the word of the Lord the God of Israel to you ... You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword; the man himself you murdered by the sword of the Ammonites, and you have stolen his wife. "

The chapter finishes with Nathan reciting to David what the Lord says will be the consequences of his way of life.
      
While issues of whether David should really be considered a "king" or whether it was common practice in that day for the men to share their wives with David have impact on the overall story, the lack of respect for Uriah is extreme.  

But one major thing I want to point out is that the Lord, through Nathan, did not cite any specific pre-determined laws that David had broken.   David was led to convict himself by his own standards, probably higher than typical for the day.  This can be seen in the  stories since they indicate that this was one of the reasons this Israelite God would have made such efforts with David.  In addition, from the perspective of other people, apparently, there was considerable trust for David in order for him to have attained such a position in the midst of large conflict while working for some sort of peace.

"You have pronounced your own sentence!"

It seems to me that several Biblical stories show the prophets working very hard to get their earthly leaders to do this.  Why?  This effort to get one's self to see one's self may have been because there was no exact law that applied or it may have been that there was no law that came close.  It was also likely to have been in large part to get them to see their hypocrisy, maybe develop more empathy and grow.

Even if there is a specific law, such as "thou shalt not lie", who defines what a lie is?
 
My last major comment about this situation and story has to do with how seldom Nathan appears to have approached David to correct him when he was clearly in error.  I think this is also clear in the relationship between Samuel and Saul.  While this is my own impression based on some "evidence", I bring this up because of a belief that people diminish their impact when they try to dictate too much to others.  They are almost certainly going to be hypocritical to some extent in doing it, they are also much more likely to be flawed because they get too sloppy or controlling.  Does it also seem to others that the prophets were quite focused on very large issues and not truly wrapped up in trying to dictate approaches to a lot of smaller day-to-day ambiguities? 

What sorts of things did the prophets truly try to impact?