Monday 31 January 2011

The Rapture


I was having a chat on Sunday with AJay in New Delhi. Well he thinks five hours is more than a chat but later on I had yet another lovely time for a couple of hours with a good friend in Baghdad.

They were both forced to listen to my "three options for the species thinking" but only because it sounds so preposterous that I wanted some feedback, and good feedback it was. I'll be posting my "brave new capitalism post on that topic as soon as the time strikes right - I never know when that will be in advance. 

I know, I know. 

You can't wait can you? 

If it helps alleviate the anticipation then you might enjoy knowing that the meat of the idea was so disconcerting that Rob Campbell didn't want to read it when the inspiration struck and I emailed him. On reflection though, that was good of him to ignore me  because a) It would have scared him off b) It looks very bonkers as a raw idea and c) it's still just plain scary now I've applied some sandpaper to it. *winks at Rob*


OK, moving on because I know time is limited, I wanted to pick up that I was sharing some thoughts on eschatology (end of the world) language when I stumbled as I couldn't remember the exact word. 


I'd been explaining an article I read in terms of the self fulfilling biblical nature of Israeli archaeologists tunnelling away under Jerusalem's Old City Wall in close proximity to the third holiest mosque of Islam, the Al Aqsa mosque and of course the Temple Mount too which is considered the third holiest site in Judaism. If it weren't for the hostility between the faiths this is a subject I'd feel happy to study till the end of my days but it's just a bit too raw to be useful in this day and age.


It struck me that there's no better way of fulfilling prophecy than to either pick or respond to a fight over who owns what, at what time, and where or when, it's been articulated in scriptures. What makes that whole outcome really weird is that nobody knows if the future has been predicted or whether we are writing the future; to use Nike vernacular.



The word finally came to me. The Rapture. It's one of those provocative words because if we look at the nutty Christian fundamentalists in the US. Well they would LOVE shit to go down in Jerusalem because that fulfils their biblical end of the argument and to this end are quite happy to fight tooth and nail for the Israelis on any issue, at any time and at any cost. Which kind of leaves the door open for American backed hostility towards Muslims in the Holy Land and beyond.




I've added the Jungian art above because it fits nicely with my Baghdad learnings on evolutionary psychology, plus it looks kind of Holy Landy like, it is red (and thus progressive) and squeezes neatly into the end part of this post, where I thought if I waffle on enough at the beginning, the nutters will get bored and leave without misunderstanding my words about a Jungian analysis of UFO's. 



Basically I caught this rather interesting Youtube clip shortly after reading the Temple Mount piece and though 'that's kind of interesting' and 'somewhat coincidental'. I still have barely any idea what the video shows but if I use the Jungian approach then I ask myself, not 'what is it?' but instead the much more useful question 'what is its effect?'. 


Take a look for yourself what was filmed. Sure its a ball of light. But its behaviour is loaded with context.




And so I leave you with the final reason for posting this nonsense which is that I came across a second video of the same event just now, and while it doesn't capture the vertical action above, it is close enough for me to say finally and definitively. I DON"T KNOW.



Thank You.