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The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers,
which is available to all those who subscribe to the
printed magazine, International Viewpoints.
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Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory
6 May 1999
by Phil Spickler

Dear Friends,

        I should like to pay tribute to all of the folks that have been kind
enough to bring a multiplicity of viewpoints to the IVy list concerning some
of the goings-on upon the surface of Planet Earth.  It would seem as though,
once again, the fourth or the mankind (or the personkind, if you will)
dynamic is, in a certain part of the world, in quite a great uproar, as
various subgroups of the humankind dynamic called third dynamics have cloaked
themselves in the differences that are required to establish opposing teams
and are now busily engaged in creating waves of engrams, secondary engrams,
and enormous numbers of locks or key-ins of earlier engrams.

       For those of us not directly involved in the war games, we are having
the experience on what in Scientology would be called the third flow --
others doing it to others.  The third flow is very difficult to experience,
and can be highly restimulative of earlier experiences when one is watching
as an unwilling spectator perfectly awful things happening between
combatants, with a terrific urge to want to do something to stop the
inhumanity whilst being unable to directly have any effect on it whatsoever.
Many of us observing what is going on in the Balkans right now do not have
direct perception of the occurrences, and often depend on less-than-reliable
sources to know the full measure of what is taking place.  It's difficult not
to be interested in the conflict; it's also difficult not to be somewhat
restimulated by it, and it's almost impossible not to pick one team or
another to support -- difficult not to see some of the players as evil and
others as good.

       As was well pointed out by some of the cooler customers contributing
to the IVy list, the NATO/Serbian/Kosovo incident is the historical top lock,
which is to say the most recent occurrence of this kind at the top end of a
long historic and similar chain on this planet, and is as solid as a lump of
lead.  If one allows themselves the luxury of time travel, the known history
for the last 5 or 7 thousand years is loaded with parts of humankind savagely
falling upon other parts of humankind, filled with great death and
destruction.  Think for a moment about Rome and Carthage, and remember that
when Rome finished with Carthage and its people, they were no more, and the
earth where they had been was salted so that nothing could live or grow there.

         Anyhow, there have been many theories and efforts to discover why it
is so difficult on this planet for the human race to have a stronger sense of
itself, such that it would be very difficult to convince fellow human beings
to harm fellow human beings -- in other words, the dynamic recognition would
be so high that folks would innately see one another and say, "Oh -- that's
one of my kind, and I feel good towards my kind."  The theories as to why
this is not the case run the gamut all the way through prison planet with
implants and intergalactic insane asylum, all the way through earth-local
anthropologists who, regarding humankind as a direct earth-evolutionary
figure, have noted that even small differences in locality or custom have
served as sufficient motivation for warfare, enemyhood, to exist among groups
that had much, much more in common than their few piddling differences.  The
Native American was discovered to be a perfect example of this, with each
member of a given tribe or nation seeing any member of another tribe or
nation as an enemy to be exterminated (first tortured), and enslavement as a
common practice.

         One of the hardest things to do, in my opinion, is to attempt to see
human beings, Homo sapiens, as they are and have been, versus the way
religions, philosophies, spiritual ideologies, have claimed humans _should_
be.  So in my opinion there have been all kinds of things that have said,
"Here's how mankind should be and would be, if only it weren't for those
terrible implanters; or if everyone accepted Jesus Christ and Christianity as
the one and only final truth; or if everybody were clear; or better yet, if
everyone were exactly like me!"  (Now that's a really horrible thought, isn't
it?)

         Anyhow, my point is that in a study of humans, by humans, it would
be superfine not to write out a whole bunch of standards about what human
beings should be like, and all the terrible sins and wrongs that follow if
they're not exactly like that.  It may be good for business, but doesn't add
much to that rare substance called understanding.  Meantime, with the help of
Allen Hacker and a few others, despite the potentials for turning the IVy
list into a battlefield whereby humans fall on one another with horrible
violence (in this case mostly verbal) over real or imagined differences of
opinion, it did get indeed raised to a higher level of viewpoint, one that
makes us feel comfortably aware that we are blood brothers (and I hope
sisters) who have better hopes for Earth and its people than would be
demonstrated creating more enemies in the context of the IVy list, which for
my money is really a kind of a third dynamic itself, namely, a group of
people who have come together with a common purpose, a common purpose which I
hope to elaborate on in a further communique, but one which is clearly
self-evident to any who catch the spirit of IVy the magazine and its founder,
Ant, and the invisible brotherhood and sisterhood that has arisen called the
IVy list.

        I close with highest protestations of affinity, respect and
admiration for those who have communicated so well on this, St. Crispin's
Day.  With fondest regards,  Phil